Close.

Albert Nobbs, a lumbering saga about the pitfalls of a woman posing as a man to hold down employment as a butler in 19^th-century Dublin, opened for one week in December to qualify for Oscar nominations. It is now expanding to commercial marquees for public scrutiny. Thanks to a quirky performance by Glenn Close featuring enough prosthetics, wrinkles, painfully binding corsets and pinched diction to generate critical acclaim and give Meryl Streep a run for her money, attention must be paid. But not too much. As a period piece, Albert Nobbs is slower than Proust, and nothing of any consequence ever happens to write home about. In her bowler hat and high starched collars, Glenn Close looks like Conan O’Brien playing Oscar Wilde.

Awkwardly directed by Rodrigo Garcia (son of acclaimed novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez) from a novella by George Moore that was turned into a play Ms. Close performed off-Broadway 30 years ago, it’s a dull little fugue in a minor key centered on the secret life of a woman who was gang raped as a child and so severely traumatized that she vowed to never submit to male violence or domination again. So she assumed a male identity her entire life, parting her hair and binding her breasts to pass as a member of the serving class. Working as a shy, poker-faced butler in a modest but attractive lodging house called Morrison’s (today it would be considered a desirable, overpriced Dublin boutique hotel) at a time of radical unemployment and rampant poverty, when hundreds of young men were walking the streets looking for jobs, Albert is a proper, humorless, starchy and reliable model of discretion, observing everything and saying nothing. He performs his duties with impeccable precision, polishing and serving meticulously, carting heavy luggage up and down the stairs like a stevedore, living his life inconspicuously without a shred of emotion or unfulfilled passion and storing away his wages and tips in a secret compartment under the floor. The result of this subterfuge is a claustrophobic life of suffocating denial, but all goes well until the fateful day when a room shortage forces Albert to share his room with a male housepainter named Hubert Page. Albert is mortified to sleep in the same bed with another man, but even more alarmed to face the risk of discovery. His worst anxieties are realized, but a twist of fate changes his life irreversibly when Hubert turns out to be a woman too. Played with a rough, brittle texture by the forceful, statuesque, granite-faced Janet McTeer, Hubert not only opens a new door for Albert but displays an alternative to a life in hiding when she introduces her wife. Albert Nobbs turns into an awkward file on gender confusion and same-sex marriage a century before it was legal, dealing plausibility a fatal blow from which the film never entirely recovers.

With Hubert as a role model, Albert entertains the idea of opening a tobacco shop and starts courting a pretty hotel maid named Helen (Mia Wasikowska, from The Kids Are All Right), whose only interest in the weird Mr. Nobbs has to do with his money. The movie plods along aimlessly until the third act, when in a desperate attempt to introduce some action, the plot racks up a rapid succession of too many soap opera elements to keep up with—Helen’s infatuation with a handyman who makes her pregnant and leaves for America without her, the death of Hubert’s wife and a typhoid fever epidemic—spelling upheaval for everyone. Despite the contributions of a stellar cast that includes Brendan Gleeson, Brenda Fricker, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Aaron Johnson, too much unrequited love results in unrequited audience interest.

A middling attempt to peek through a lace curtain for a glimpse of the other Upstairs/Downstairs staff members only leads to too many distracting social functions that fail to relieve the film’s otherwise solemn pacing. This leaves the star to pretty much carry the weight on her own slight shoulders. Straight-backed as a Windsor chair, the quiet, studied but seemingly effortless centerpiece performance by Glenn Close is undeniably fascinating. There are times, from certain angles, when she resembles a slim, clean-cut, preppie schoolboy. Other times, she looks like an aging effete. Obviously, she is obsessed with this project. In addition to playing Albert Nobbs, she produced, cowrote the screenplay and composed the lyrics to a dreary end-title pop song sung by Sinead O’Connor. The point is to show the misery of a underprivileged woman ahead of her time, but so much dedication for such a small payoff makes you wonder why.

rreed@observer.com

ALBERT NOBBS

Running Time 113 minutes

Written by Glenn Close and John Banville

Directed by Rodrigo García

Starring Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska and Aaron Johnson

2/4

A day when the drinks were on Mr. Joyce's tab.

Fans of James Joyce -- and fans of open bars -- flocked to Ulysses Folk House yesterday to celebrate Bloomsday with traditional Irish food, pints of Guinness, plenty of Jameson,  Irish dancing, readings from Ulysses and piles of oyster shooters served, for some reason, through an ice luge with a Guinness logo.

Bloomsday has always driven bibliophiles to drink excessively before the sun goes down. It celebrates June 16, 1904, which everyone knows is the day chronicled in Joyce’s most famous (and famously challenging) book, Ulysses. An extra reason to get drunk and ponder whether history is a nightmare from which you are trying to awake: like in 1904, June 16, 2011 happened to be on a Thursday. Another round of Guinness!

Outside of the tavern, on the hidden-away cobble-stoned section of Pearl Street, people dressed in period costumes and shirts recalling Bloomsdays past.

Christie Mannion, a woman that The Observer thought was dressed as Molly Bloom, turned out to be an upright bass player who dresses in Edwardian era outfits every day.  She ran from the West Village after hearing word of an open bar and the appropriateness of her outfit to the occasion. When tourists asked to take her picture, she very obligingly hid her cigarette.

"This is my casual wear," said Christie Mannion. "I just love the Edwardian era. Everything was  beautiful, it was decadent, it was rich. Women looked like women."

And what's with the pendant around your neck, Ms. Mannion? With the silhouette of a man's face? An important symbol from a long-lost past?

"Oh," she responded. "That's Tom Waits."

Not exactly Edwardian...

"You can't beat Tom Waits!"

A few feet over Michael Quinn stood polishing off the bloody mary shooter. His shirt was emblazoned with the iconic final words of Ulysses -- "Yes I said yes I will yes" -- and he announced that he teaches high school in Bay Ridge, but took the day off to stop by the Bloomsday festivities.

"I asked the head of the English Department if I could have a senior elective course, the whole year, for Ulysses," he said. "But there'd probably only be four kids who'd want to do it!"

Things were getting rowdy. Towards the end of the open bar, The Observer took a nearby seat at the center of the promenade, to enjoy a smoke and finish our Guinness. But the chairs belonged to another shop's owner, and he was none too pleased. After he kicked us out, a local Irishman, beer in hand, offered some friendly advice.

"Did that guy just take your chairs?" he bellowed over from a table, dog-eared copies of Ulysses nestled next to glassware licked with only a few specks of Guinness foam. "You shoulda put that cigarette out on his forehead and thrown the beer in his face!"

Tempting, but no thanks.

Of course, not everyone was taken with the literary spirit.

“What day?” asked a fresh-faced and fresh-suited J.P. Morgan trainee after The Observer asked if he was celebrating Bloomsday.

“Ulysses? So it’s the namesake of the bar and they are celebrating?” asked another flummoxed young banker.

With that the JP Morgan trainees went elsewhere. For some reason the lure of intelligent conversation on Joyce -- even if it came with free beer -- could not persuade them to stay.

• Moody's downgraded Ireland's credit rating five notches and said more downgrades could come if the country didn't figure out how to deal with all its debt. [WSJ]
• If Ron Paul proceeds to hector the pants off Ben Bernanke in his new role as congressional Federal Reserve overseer, he'll be following a long-established tradition of berating central bankers. [NYT]
• It sounds ridiculous, but someone's asking the question: Could the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high next year? It's theoretically possible! [AP]
• Congress has passed the tax cut extensions. [Reuters]
• New York required foreclosure mills to certifiy the validity of their paperwork following revelations that some foreclosure paperwork was not valid. They are not really doing this. [Naked Capitalism]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• According to one powerful shareholder group, Wall Street firms still tie executive pay too closely with the pursuit of short-term profit and fail to penalize executives for thoroughly gumming up their companies. In fact, this situation has only gotten worse since 2007, which wasn't exactly a banner year for corporate responsibility. [WSJ]
• The Justice Minister of Ireland is accusing the European Central Bank of trying to force his country to take a bailout. He also believes the ECB is now putting the screws to Portugal. [Bloomberg]
• In October, increasingly combatitive and off-kilter former car czar Steven Rattner dramatically refused to pay $20 million to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The Attorney General's office has since responded by seeking $26 million against Rattner in a big pension-kickback investigation. [NYT]
• The trial of Sergey Aleynikov, who stands accused of stealing a high-speed trading program from Goldman Sachs, begins today. [Reuters]
• General Motors still owes Americans $2.1 billion in preferred shares, plus the common-stock stake it's been offloading to private investors. [TheStreet]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• We hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving, but we know everybody had a spendy Black Friday, because on that ridiculous annual exercise in porcine consumerism, U.S. retail sales were 6.4 percent higher than a year ago. [Bloomberg]
• Oh and have you ever heard of Small Business Saturday? Because now there is another one of these insipidly named shopping days. [AP]
• Related? ... Debt collectors are suing people who can't pay their bills. This would just be normal, except that debt collectors are suing an unusual number of people, because an unusual number of people can't pay their bills. [WSJ]
• Private equity titan KKR has agreed to buy Del Monte, which makes cat food and other prepackaged comestibles, for $5 billion. [FT]
• The European bailout of Ireland continues to move forward, and according to rules outlined by the IMF, government bond holders, banks and basically everyone involved will feel substantial pain as a result. [AFP]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• The Feds are wrapping up a three-year project aimed at cracking down on insider trading. Some of the biggest names in finance (Goldman Sachs, SAC, Janus) are being bandied about, as are the following phrases: Criminal and civil; three-year investigation; bankers; hedge funds; analysts. This should be a lot of fun to watch. [WSJ]
• Ireland has accepted a $100 billion - plus bailout. Greece has also been rescued; will Portugal and Spain be next? [NYT]
• The Federal Reserve should continue to pursue a goal of low unemployment, says Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Some Republicans had been saying that maybe the Fed should just stick to fighting inflation. [AP]
• Economists are not super excited about the economy's prospects in 2011; they expect the unemployment rate to drop to a still-discouraging 9.2 percent. [Bloomberg]
• When Bank of America and PNC sold shares of asset-management behemoth BlackRock, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and Norway's central bank were lining up to buy. [FT]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• As he fielded two lawsuits from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and settled his beef with the SEC yesterday, former car czar Steven Rattner also went on the offensive, suing his former buddies at private equity shop Quadrangle Group. [NYT]
• Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is still mad at China for undervaluing its currency, but he still isn't calling the country out by name. [Bloomberg]
• European countries are saying to Ireland, "Please! Take a bailout!" and Ireland is saying, "We don't know how much we need!" and some Eurpoean Union sources are saying "Between 45 billion and 90 billion euros." [Reuters]
• The Obama administration's $800 billion stimulus package is improving the economy, according to economists employed by the Obama administration. [AP]
• On the advice of JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley and after much debate, the government sold more of its stake in General Motors than it had originally planned. [WSJ]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• The Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed some former Citigroup brokers as part of an investigation into the mega-sized, bailed-out bank's handling of leveraged debt funds concentrated in municipal bonds and mortgage debt. [WSJ]
• You know what's still a big problem? European sovereign debt. Ireland is looking precarious, but let's not forget about Portugal, Spain and Greece. [NYT]
• Small banks are still failing like the dickens. [AP]
• Some people -- like the nation of China -- are unhappy with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's decision to flood the economy with $600 billion in quantitative-easing liquidity. Goldman Sachs, one of the banks that will be trading Treasuries to the Fed for cash, thinks Bernanke made an excellent choice. [Bloomberg]
• Third-quarter net income at Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway fell 8 percent year over year to a measly $2.99 billion. [CNNMoney]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

Well that was unpleasant.

I lost 76 points today, my worst performance in a while. Only four of my stocks went up.  And I was down pretty much all day. Lower at the open, tried to fight back to breakeven, then a late-afternoon nosedive to finish the session. Total bummer.

It didn't help that the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose to 465,000 this week, up from 453,000 last week. Plus, the debt market in Europe still looks really shaky, after Ireland posted that 1.2 percent GDP decrease for the second quarter. And if I weren't already expecting it -- or actually thought it would make a difference -- I guess I'd be more excited about the big $40 billion stimulus bill that made it to President Obama's desk today.

I was also really upset about Blockbuster's bankruptcy. That company used to just dominate the video-rental game, and now -- Chapter 11. (Or, as they used to say in Spanish class -- Capitulo Once.) Just shows how cruel and unforgiving business can be, I guess.

On the bright side, I'm still up 6.5 percent for September. I was probably due for a comedown after five straight days of gains and then yesterday's slim loss.

Anyway, I just need some time to clear my head. As always, tomorrow's a new.

Keepin' on keepin' on,

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