Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Centennial Tributes: Eve Arden
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By Edward Copeland
Nearly every time you see Eve Arden on screen in black-and-white, she seemed to have a cigarette firmly ensconced in her hand. Somehow it was appropriate that embers would be slowly dripping off her smoke since inevitably sparks would be flying from the dialogue emanating from her lips. In fact, her photo should appear next to the definition of wisecrack in the dictionary. Born Eunice Quedens on April 30, 1908, Arden almost always was the girl Friday or best pal to other stars, but she many times she ended up being the best thing in bad films, raised good films to a higher level and was just plain fun more times than not. Her lengthy time in film led to a longer time in radio and television. Along the way, she managed one Oscar nomination and several Emmy nominations, including one win. She even appeared in the infamous Broadway flop Moose Murders, though she was replaced during previews before the show got its one night run. In only her second film appearance as Eve Arden, she played one of the many smart-mouthed broads trading barbs in the Footlights Club boarding house for aspiring actresses in 1937's Stage Door. With Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball and Ann Miller among the many cracking wise, Arden might have been lost, but she's easy to spot since in nearly every one of her scenes she uses a white cat as a prop, usually draped around her neck like a scarf.
In 1939, she got to hold court with one of the kings of fast-talking comedy, Groucho Marx, in At the Circus. The first role that really allowed her to shine was as model scout Cornelia "Stonewall" Jackson in the 1944 musical Cover Girl. She got to be the voice of reason and a funny voice at that. When her older boss sees a vision of a lost love of his past in Rita Hayworth, he asks Cornelia
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Labels: Cary, Cole Porter, Crawford, Eve Arden, Ginger Rogers, J. Stewart, K. Hepburn, L. Ball, Marx Brothers, Musicals, Preminger, Television, Theater
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Saturday, April 26, 2008
THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD!
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By Edward Copeland
When I first planned to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, I'd hoped to integrate thoughts on Scorsese's recent Rolling Stones film, Shine a Light, but it slipped in and out of town before I got a chance to see it. It was probably for the best. When you've already made one of the greatest concert film/rock documentaries of all times, it would be pretty difficult to top.
When I saw The Last Waltz for the first time, I was very fortunate: It was in a Manhattan movie theater on the occasion of its 20th anniversary re-release. For those unfamiliar with The Last Waltz, it chronicles the farewell concert of The Band on Thanksgiving 1976 at San Francisco's Winterland theater after 16 years on the road, since the musicians couldn't imagine continuing touring and playing for 20 years (an interesting contrast to the Stones).
The thought of two decades on the road is daunting because, as Robbie Robertson says, it's a "goddamn impossible way of life." The event turns out to be more of a celebration than a concert, with countless musical greats showing up to give The Band a suitable send off, including Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Emmylou
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Labels: 70s, Documentary, Dylan, Movie Tributes, Music, Scorsese
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Monday, April 21, 2008
A few words about Lars
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By Edward Copeland
"Whimsical." "Touching." "Funny." Those were some of the adjectives pulled out of reviews for quotes to praise Lars and the Real Girl, the film that inexplicably received an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay and that I just now caught up with on DVD. Here are my alternatives: Mannered. Ridiculous. Excruciating. Unbearable.
I have liked Ryan Gosling in roles before but he is all tics here to the point that I was just hoping at some point someone would slap him silly. What's even worse is that the portrayal of the town his character lives in and its willingness to indulge his delusion that the sex doll he purchased over the Internet is a real person goes beyond straining credulity.
Aside from a few moments where his brother (Paul Schneider) expresses true concerns about Lars' mental health, everyone seems to think that nothing is out of the ordinary, prompting me to think that perhaps the entire community belongs in an institution.
How anyone could mistake this film for a comedy (or a movie for that matter) is beyond me. It drags on and on and on.
In the end, the doll, Bianca, may well be the most realistic and well-formed character in the entire charade.
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Friday, April 11, 2008
Something Old, Borrowed and Blue
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By Josh R
It has been said that surest way to divest your self of sanity, acumen and a sense of a proportion is to run for office. While all-too-recent history has provided no dearth of compelling evidence to support that contention, for the common man with neither the yen for power nor the clout to actualize it, planning a wedding will do just as nicely. As a guest and/or participant at many nuptial celebrations — thankfully, none of them my own — I have seen how quickly things can spiral out of control when delusions of grandeur meet the concept of buying on credit.
The same rule applies to the process of mounting a musical on Broadway, a folly reserved for those with deep pockets, a hunger for success and a commensurate lack of forbearance. Like marriage, commercial theater production is a highly speculative pursuit, requiring a great deal of expense and no small amount of optimism. In both cases, there is no guarantee of success — no matter how much money is spent, or how pure of heart the intentions are, the honeymoon can be short-lived.
The matrimony-themed A Catered Affair, the new musical currently in previews at The Walter Kerr Theatre and set to take its stroll down the aisle April 17, hedges its bets to some degree with a production that is modestly scaled by Broadway standards.
In an age of grandiose spectacle, it is admittedly refreshing to see a show whose creators don’t try to camouflage its simplicity by stacking it in tiers and burying it under a blanket of white icing. While admirable for its lack of pretension, and the fact that it manages to achieve an emotional resonance of the kind largely absent from most of this season’s musical offerings, this resolutely old-fashioned entry by composer John Bucchino and librettist Harvey Fierstein doesn’t quite make the grade as an affair to remember. Despite fine, heartfelt performances by Tom Wopat and Leslie Kritzer, and a beautifully calibrated one by the superb Faith Prince, this drab, homey little brown loaf of a show doesn’t leave any more of a lasting impression on the palate than the flashy confections it’s trying to outclass with its unadorned simplicity. With or without the frosting flowers, it’s still Betty Crocker, made from a mix and a bit on the bland side.
Adapted from the 1956 film of the same name, which featured Bette Davis and Debbie Reynolds in de-glamorized mode, A Catered Affair is nothing if not earnest. Like its source material — written by vaunted screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky before his sense of social indignation had crystallized into the lacerating acerbity of Network and The Hospital — the musical serves up a gentle, slice-of-life consideration of family dynamics viewed through the prism of working class struggle. Janey Hurley (Ms. Kritzer), a firm-minded young woman from a blue-collar family, wants to get married. Her boyfriend Ralph (Matt Cavenaugh) is only too happy to comply; together, they decide to have a simple, no-frills civil ceremony. Their plans hit a snag when Janey’s mother, Aggie (Ms. Prince), balks at the notion of a hasty City Hall marriage, and insists on giving her daughter a full-blown formal wedding — a course of action which not only runs contrary to the desires of the prospective newlyweds, but creates a financial burden that Aggie and her husband, Tom (Mr. Wopat), are not really in a position to assume. As the wedding plans become increasingly elaborate, tensions run high in a family already divided by deep-seated undercurrents of guilt, resentment, and grief that have never been openly acknowledged. Equal parts kitchen-sink drama and social commentary, A Catered Affair is at its most compelling when examining the manner in which the problems specific to poverty can take a harsh toll on the bonds created by birth and relation, or those forged through love and intimacy. As Aggie basically states, it’s hard for romance to retain its bloom when the bills keep piling up and sentimental notions are swept aside by the stark realities of daily routine.
Equally difficult is the challenge of bringing a sense of freshness and immediacy to a work of theater that feels so firmly grounded in the past. Director John Doyle, best known for his post-modernist take on the works of Stephen Sondheim, seems to be out of his element with the sort of hidebound material that doesn’t furnish a lot of room for creative interpretation; accordingly, his staging techniques tend towards clunky functionality. That said, the blame for A Catered Affair’s waterlogged condition can’t really be laid at the feet of the ship’s captain, given how less-than-seaworthy the vessel is. An obvious effort has been made to imbue the show’s low-key dramaturgy with a kind of careworn, old-fashioned charm, but since neither Fierstein’s libretto nor Bucchino’s substandard music and lyrics are particularly memorable, the lavender-and-old-lace nostalgia factor never really kicks in. As it is, the show can’t avoid seeming like a musty relic of a bygone era — the olfactory experience is less redolent of lavender than mothballs. One can understand the impulse to recreate the feel of vintage book musicals, of the sort that favor substance over style — but the approach is so humble and self-effacing that it’s like training your gaze on an old photograph that fades before your eyes.
Fortunately, there is one figure in the sepia-toned snapshot that remains as sharply defined as a work of digital imaging — specifically, the production’s leading lady. As the mother of the bride, Tony-winning actress Faith Prince gives a poignant performance which believably communicates the full weight of Aggie's numbing workaday existence — the product of years of compromise, struggle and diminished expectations. Like S. Epatha Merkenson, who enlivened the similarly fusty Come Back, Little Sheba a few months ago, Ms. Prince invests her portrayal with deep reserves of empathy and insight, capturing the essence of the unsophisticated, rather frumpish character she is playing with an unaffected simplicity that never stoops to condescension. Sturdy, unruffled support is provided by Tom Wopat, as the cab driver husband who seems like a burnt-out shell but still longs for the things that are just beyond his grasp, and the equally fine Leslie Kritzer, who delivers an understated, eminently credible portrait of a smart, down-to-earth woman whose brisk pragmatism exists mainly as a coping mechanism to weather disappointment.
The remainder of the cast makes less of an impression, although only one member seems entirely out of place. As the gay uncle trying to shoehorn his way into the nuptial preparations, Mr. Fierstein seems to have wandered in from a different show altogether. It goes beyond the fact that his particular brand of comic relief, which relies on rather obvious gay humor, feels out of keeping with the tone of the show itself. For reasons difficult to fully comprehend in show that otherwise seems so firmly ground in the realm of realism, his character hovers on the outskirts of scenes in which he is not featured as an unseen, omnipresent observer; whether this is represents some form of commentary or merely a case of authorial hubris is anybody’s guess.
It is Mr. Fierstein who delivers the show’s all-too-cozy coda, a song encouraging the audience to live life to the fullest. A Catered Affair labors mightily to meet that standard, but in spite of the best efforts of a few of its actors, it mostly feels dull, sluggish and out-of-date. When done correctly, old-fashioned charm can still give off the rosy glow of a polished antique. Unfortunately, when this bouquet of withered roses goes sailing through the air, there’s no one around to catch it — Janey and Ralph may be engaged, but the audience isn’t.
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Labels: Bette, Chayefsky, Debbie Reynolds, Musicals, Sondheim, Theater
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Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Another Turn at Bat for the Mother Who Just Won’t Quit
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By Josh R
In baseball, a batter who resists the urge to swing on bad pitches, and fights off the good ones by blocking them into
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Gypsy, the classic backstage musical chronicling the exploits and escapades of Mama Rose and her brood (and loosely based on the memoirs of her eldest, celebrity stripper Gypsy Rose Lee), has demonstrated nearly as much
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The roster of ambitious climbers either brave or foolhardy enough to attempt to scale the peaks of Mount Rose constitutes a virtual Who’s Who of Broadway leading ladies; it includes Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daly, both of whom won Tonys for their interpretations, while in the last 10 years modern legends Bernadette Peters and Betty Buckley have each taken their crack at it. The latest heavyweight to enter the ring is Patti LuPone, she of the rabid fan base and earth-shaking vibrato. The marquee at the St. James Theatre proclaims that Rose is the role Ms. LuPone was born to play, and going strictly by surface appearances (and considerations of decibel levels), the assertion is not without merit. With her bold, Italianate features and clarion voice, the actress has always been a commanding presence. Harking back to her Tony-winning turn in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita — the poperetta anvil on which her star was forged — she has always favored a performance style characterized by strident affectation and a tendency to show off; in the field of vocal pyrotechnics, she has been the undisputed standard bearer on Broadway for more than a generation. It's worth wondering if she's ever been entirely able to shake the role of Eva Peron; aspects of that performance and persona may have bled into her subsequent efforts. Certainly, she has stardust in her bloodstream (and possibly some of that Merman DNA), a strong sense of theatricality, and the confident swagger of a woman to be reckoned with. These are qualities that can work for Rose when administered in the proper dosages. Ultimately, they are no substitute for emotional authenticity, or the ability to create a real sense of the conflicted feelings, primal instincts and inchoate yearnings that make Mama one of the richest and mostly intricately layered characters ever created for the musical stage.
Watching Ms. LuPone in action on the stage of the St. James — in a performance that is never less than vivid — there is never any doubt that she is connecting to the thorny Rose as a star role. Only at select intervals, and never for any sustained length of time, does she seem to be connecting to her as a character. The actress is a much more logical and natural choice for the assignment than that eternal nymphet with the fizzy champagne pop, the kittenish Bernadette Peters, who played the part a scant five years ago and couldn’t avoid seeming a bit out of her depth (moral: never send a kitten to do a tigress’s job). What Ms. Peters more convincingly conveyed than her successor was an acute awareness of the peculiar forces that drove Mama; namely, the need to experience vicarious fulfillment through her daughters’ success, and the barely suppressed rage of someone all too achingly aware of her own lost opportunities. Ms. LuPone brings a considerable amount of star power to her depiction of Rose, to be sure — it’s a Diva performance that commands the spotlight without going over the top — but it exists mostly on the surface, without bringing the internal life of the character into sharp focus. There’s something rather smug and arch about the way she embellishes the role with so many flourishes; her cadence of speech suggests Katharine Cornell as Cleopatra giving grand speeches and occasional orders to the servants. With her cultured style of delivery, it doesn’t really make sense when Rose uses words like “ain’t”; she sounds like she ought to be walking around with a martini in one hand and a long-stemmed cigarette holder in the other. Of more critical concern, the anger, the need, and the despair that have to be present in order for the character to make sense can only be discerned in fits and starts. As a result, the show seems to be less about a woman determined to make her daughters into stars than one determined to win a Tony Award.
Unfortunately, if perhaps inevitably, this constitutes a conspicuous, ultimately insurmountable liability for
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This is an especially sad turn of events given how very, very good Ms. LuPone’s co-stars are — and the extent to which their efforts are undercut by the production’s flaws.
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As fine as they are, all three actors are hampered by the fact that their relationships with Rose aren’t particularly convincing. That’s because Ms. LuPone herself isn’t particularly convincing, at least when it comes to connecting with the emotions that fuel the character’s actions and define her motives. There’s an inescapable impression that what we’re seeing is the ambition and neediness of Patti LuPone, the star, as to opposed to that of Rose Hovick, the woman. Judging by the enthusiastic response of the audience on the night I attended Gypsy, this may not matter very much; the performance Ms. Lupone is giving is undoubtedly the one her fans have been clamoring for, and the one they’re only too happy to receive. There is no denying her power as a vocalist — Styne and Sondheim’s show-stopping compositions fall right in her wheelhouse, and she delivers them with the razzle-dazzle showmanship of the sort that send diva-cultists into fits of swoony delight. Nor can it be said that her interpretation lacks anything in the way of personality; she puts her own, brash stamp on the part, and never creates the impression of being anything less than the star that she is. Personally, I’d have been just as happy if she’d been a bit more sparing with the star quality, if it meant clearing a path for a performance with greater emotional resonance. Ms. LuPone is well-cast, well-suited and eminently well-equipped to knock this baby out of the park; even if her dramatic skills are not to all tastes, she’s where she is for a reason. Old-school Broadway stars are a dying breed; that the actress has maintained her status as one for nearly 30 years says volumes about her determination and power of endurance, to say nothing of her talent. Rose Hovick was a tough out. So is Patti LuPone. Strange then, that what ought to have been a home run feels more like a swing and a miss.
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Labels: Lansbury, Liz, Merman, Musicals, Shakespeare, Sondheim, Theater
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Monday, April 07, 2008
Made it, Ann. Top of the world!
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By Edward Copeland
Seventy five years ago today, King Kong stomped onto movie screens for the first time. He's been back many times since in sequels and in two remakes, but the Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack original remains the best.
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It's a well-worn cliché that the journey trumps the destination in importance and that certainly proved to be the case with King Kong. If you went into the film blind, you might have no idea as to the story's direction. There's the one and only filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) with his "reputation for recklessness" setting out to film some sort of adventure on the fly on a mysterious, unchartered island. The only problem: He needs a female lead. Denham would be happy to ditch the romantic element, but you know those damn critics and audiences: You have to have a woman. The film drops hints here and there that the island may offer something bigger than just an exotic location. Denham acknowledges that he knows that something is "holding that island in the grip of fear. Something no white man has ever seen." Of course, because of Denham's reputation, no reputable agent will sacrifice a client to him, but thankfully (for Denham anyway) he stumbles upon the struggling Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and talks her into enlisting in his voyage. He even gives her screen tests for gowns and shrieks while they sail and we get a preview of that scream, that delicious scream.
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Of course, the all-male crew on the ship resent having a dame aboard as only men in a 1930s film could, but that doesn't stop Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) from falling for Ann in a way only Hollywood's Golden Age would allow: Basically, give them one scene together of friction, then have them declare their love for each other. When Jack pours out his feelings for Ann, she says, "But Jack, you hate women!" "But you ain't women," he replies. When you really get deep into it, in many ways the later relationship that blooms between Kong and Ann might be more realistic and better developed. One thing I noticed this time (thanks to a DVD commentary by special effects legend Ray Harryhausen and visual effects wizard Ken Rolston) that never caught my attention before: Aside from the opening credits, Max Steiner's memorable score doesn't even begin until the ship arrives in the fog outside Skull Island.
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Harryhausen makes a couple of other cogent points that should have occurred to me before: 1) If the natives built a wall big enough to keep Kong out, why did they add a gate big enough for him to come through? and 2) What happened to all the native women that had been sacrificed to Kong prior to Ann? Did he eat them? When Kong makes his first appearance, the stop-action movements bear a bit of a resemblance to the first shots of the Abominable Snowman coming over the mountain in the TV classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Sure, sometimes the scale misses the mark a bit in the effects (such as when the Loch Ness-type dinosaur flings bodies around), but I'd trade these primitive effects over bloated CGI anyday. In their running commentary (which really ranks as one of the best DVD commentaries I've heard and includes bits of archival interviews with Cooper and Wray), Harryhausen and Rolston express wonder at the magic conjured with the limited abilities of 1933 Hollywood. Rolston goes so far as to call King Kong the Jurassic Park of that generation (though I'd come up with a better movie example than that). "Everything today is reinventing the wheel," Harryhausen says. "And they are making it worse," Rolston replies. He's right.
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As Harryhausen points out, the more they strive for realism, the more mundane movies become. They should strive to take us to another world such as the strange universe of Skull Island with its giant apes and still-living dinosaurs. The horrible 1976 remake and
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Labels: 30s, Grodin, J. Lange, Movie Tributes, Peter Jackson, Remakes
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Sunday, April 06, 2008
What a long, strange trip it's been
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By Edward Copeland
"It's puzzling. I've never seen anything quite like this before," HAL 9000 says at one point in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which opened 40 years ago today. I used that quote to open the first movie review I ever wrote: a writeup in my high school newspaper of the 2001 sequel 2010 . At the time, I suggested that in many ways, 2010 made for a superior film because, as far as I was concerned, 2001 was overrated and boring for a lot of its length. I haven't seen 2010 in a long time, so I doubt I'd stand by that assertion, but my opinions of 2001 have evolved over time. I still believe it's overrated, but there is a lot within it to admire. Just not enough to love.
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Granted, my first exposure to 2001 came in the wake of Star Wars and my subsequent childhood obsession with it, so its more cerebral sci-fi take was off-putting to a youngster to say the least. This was a space odyssey! Why was I watching people in ape suits running around? As I aged of course, I grew to appreciate the meaning of the Dawn of Man sequence, though I still think Kubrick could have accomplished it in less time. It's 25 minutes before a single word is spoken in the film. Though my favorite Kubrick films are his works in black-and-white, I do have to say that watching 2001 again, his color compositions in his post-Dr. Strangelove films were quite stunning, even if the films themselves were too often chilly.
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Proof of the low temperature reading of 2001 is that the most interesting character in the movie doesn't arrive for an hour and it's a computer. Voiced in monotone by actor Douglas Rain, HAL 9000 is very much the main attraction in 2001. When HAL sings "Daisy" and vanishes while Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) goes on the final 25-minute acid trip, the computer is sorely missed. When you get down to it, no attempt is made to develop any character in the film the way HAL is. What do we know about Dave, his fellow astronaut (Gary Lockwood) or Heywood Floyd (to be played by the late Roy Scheider in the sequel)? They have families on earth. That's about it. HAL is the first one to question the "extremely odd things" about their mission to Jupiter.
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HAL also reveals more layers in terms of what motivations the machine has within him and where his loyalties lie, not to mention the chill when you realize that HAL can read lips. In many ways, HAL is the viewer's conduit into the film's murky depths. When Dave proceeds to disconnect him and HAL says he can feel his mind going, you can feel your mind going at the same time. When 2010 came out in 1984, a lot of 2001 fans were critical at the attempt to provide answers for what was going on in the earlier film. However, even in retrospect, the trippy ending to 2001 really doesn't add up at all to what the supposed "answer" is as given by 2010. Granted, when the late Arthur C. Clarke wrote the book of 2010 and Peter Hyams made the 1984 film, they really could have no idea that the Soviet Union would cease to exist in less than a decade and the Cold War aspect of their story would be obsolete in their 21st century setting.
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Putting that aside though, how does Dave Bowman traveling through lights, seeing himself as an old man eating and then even older lying in bed staring at another monolith square with the idea that everything that happened (basically aliens killing humans getting too close and taking over computers) was to engineer the creation of a second sun in the universe which the planet Earth was to use in the name of peace? As I said at the outset, I've grown to have a lot of admiration for 2001, but not a lot of fondness. It's worth marking its 40th birthday, but I believe it's yet another case of a movie that drowns in fans singing praise not from actual love but for fear that if they admit they have problems with it, they might be exposed. Kubrick was a truly iconoclastic filmmaker and I think he'd hate that kind of worship. He'd rather you be true to yourself than to pat him on the back because you think that's what you are supposed to do.
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Labels: 60s, Books, Fiction, Kubrick, Movie Tributes, Roy Scheider, Sequels, Star Wars
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Friday, April 04, 2008
Life after the strike
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By Edward Copeland
New episodes of various series that screeched to a halt are pretty much back in full force following the writers' strike, with My Name Is Earl finally returning last night (though I wrote and posted this before I saw the finished product). South Park has been back for a few weeks now and this week's episode was particularly good, choosing to mock the strike itself.
The World Canadian Bureau (acronym WGA, in case you were too slow to get the analogy) decides that everyone is making too much money and goes on strike until the rest of the world starts forking over some of all that "Internet money." However, the episode gets even funnier when it turns away from the more specific writers' strike mocking and turns its satiric sites on YouTube, mocking just about every strange celebrity the site has created and underlining the point of how money from the Web is theoretical more often than spendable.
Though Earl returned last night and Scrubs had new episodes in the can when the strike started, NBC
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One series that has been back with three new episodes already and have more to come (with frequent updates as to where it will air when it switches time slots) is the CW's underrated Reaper. Seeing it again, I forgot
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During the long draught, my channel surfing became more frequent than usual. It wasn't helped by the continued programming malfeasance by the executives at Nick at Nite and TVLand which continues to ruin their lineups. TVLand is bordering on unwatchable with the addition of cut-up feature films (If they were made for TV movies, at least they'd go with the perceived theme of their channel) and even worse, a slate of awful new reality shows which they air and promote relentlessly. Their High School Class Reunion is always promoted on the right side of every show they air and frequently during the same time, a bigger promo for it appears on the left side at the same time. Can you say overkill? After a brief period where the finally removed the quaint Andy Griffith Show from their late night lineup for the mediocre but passable Just Shoot Me, it has returned again. Shows I'd much rather watch such as Cheers still remain relegated to early morning for some reason.
My channel flipping also has caught glimpses of Ultimate Fighting shows. Is it just me or do these matches really bear an uncanny resemblance to soft gay porn? Also, since I have no other place for crazy thoughts like these: Have you all seen the Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich commercials with the Sun portrayed as a suburban father of two who works in an office? I know I shouldn't think about things like this, but if the Sun really had a wife, wouldn't she be incinerated upon any physical contact, let alone be able to give birth to his children? Shouldn't they bear part of his chemical DNA?
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Labels: Ray Wise, South Park, Television
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Thursday, April 03, 2008
Stairway to Heaven
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By Josh R
Somewhere, Alfred Hitchcock is smiling. Contrary to what his grave countenance and magisterial manner of speech might suggest, The Master of Suspense was never without
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If the Master were around today, I imagine he’d be tickled to death by the marvelously silly trifle that British playwright Patrick Barlow has whipped up from the ingredients of his 1935 film, The 39 Steps. At once a loving homage to the black-and-white classic and deliciously tongue-in-cheek takeoff, Maria Aiken’s brilliantly conceived, ingeniously staged production — accomplished with a cast of four and a bare minimum of scenery — proves once and for all that spectacular feats of theatrical sorcery can be achieved without the benefit of advanced technology.
The human imagination, when applied correctly, is capable of even greater special effects. The 39 Steps, which transfers from the American Airlines Theatre to the Cort at the end of April, has magic to spare — and more than enough tricks up its sleeve to keep audiences in stitches for many months to come.
The prototype for Hitchcock’s later, more celebrated effort, North by Northwest, the 1935 classic follows an innocent man mistaken for a criminal, and subsequently plunged headlong into a web of international intrigue involving espionage, murder and other contingencies of smoke-infused cloak-and-dagger. In the film, the admirably unruffled victim of circumstance was played by the great Robert Donat, whose cool, patrician charm lent an element of sophistication to what was, essentially, a primitive form of action film (in terms of its structure, it’s one long chase sequence, pausing only for the occasional bout of sexual flirtation). As portrayed in the Roundabout Theatre production by Charles Edwards — an actor whose fortune is in his quizzically cocked eyebrows — the character of Robert Hannay has become a pipe-smoking, sherry-sipping monument to stiff-upper-lip foppishness, at once both dapper and absurd. As the three women he encounters in his travels — a sinuous femme fatale with an unidentifiable accent, a simpering Scottish farm wife, and a demure, nonplussed blonde who bats her eyelashes with the incredulous sincerity of a tyke sitting on Santa’s lap — Jennifer Ferrin has a pout made for comedy, and sexy, daffy charm in keeping with the spirit of 30’s screwball heroines. Rounding out the cast are two rubber-faced clowns with limbs made of Silly Putty, Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders, each of whom plays about two dozen characters. One of the chief delights of the production is the manner in which these two great shape-shifters execute their rapid-fire transformations with such dexterity — their energy is so unflagging that it borders on the supernatural. In one particularly dizzying sequence, using only a pair of bound trunks and a succession of hats, the three male ensemble members bring the celebrated train sequence to life with dazzling acrobatics worthy of Chaplin and Keaton.
Does the slapstick spin Barlow and Aiken have applied to The 39 Steps violate the integrity of the original film? Believe it or not, it has the opposite effect. The production is guided as much by a spirit of giddy exultation — of both the source material and its director — as it is by its impudent sense of fun. The creators aren’t so much making fun of The Master as they are paying him a loving, loopy sort of tribute. Mr. Hitchcock was inclined to make cameo appearances in most of films; here, he appears the form of a tiny shadow puppet on a Scottish hillside watching his hero escape with the aid of an accommodating camel (don’t ask). Look very closely, and you can see the slightest glimmer of a smile forming around the edges of his centimeters-long, cigar-chomping mouth. On certain nights, and when no one is looking, I imagine it broadens into an ear-to-ear grin worthy of a Cheshire Cat.
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Labels: Chaplin, Hitchcock, Keaton, Theater
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008
From the Vault: Cliffhanger
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Money can't buy everything. It can purchase Sylvester Stallone's services or it can acquire a good screenplay. Stallone stars in Cliffhanger, so guess what the movie lacks.
Stallone plays Gabe Walker, an employee of the Rocky Mountain Rescue Team. They scale the rugged terrain to aid hikers and climbers when nature gets the better of them. At the film's outset, Walker comes to the aid of his co-worker Tucker (Michael Rooker), who has scaled a tall peak with his inexperienced girlfriend.
Of course, don't stop to think logically. It has no value in a film like Cliffhanger so don't even bother asking yourself how a woman with no climbing skills got that high up the mountain in the first place. In fact, implausibilities stack up to a height that might rival Mount Everest.
Needless to say, it comes as no surprise when the rescue goes awry, the woman plunges to her death and Stallone blames himself. Given the film's formula nature, the script, the genre and Stallone, you know that he'll leave the mountain, wracked with guilt, only to return in a situation that requires him to conquer his fears.
Except that's not quite what happens — Walker shows no qualms about returning to the mountain (aside from when it's convenient for the plot) and Tucker's animosity only comes to the surface in a single scene before they again band together to fight the film's personification of evil. The evil in this case turns out to be a band of (surprise again) international thieves led by John Lithgow, who appears as bored being in this film as the audience is watching it. He looks as if he could steal the film at any time, but why on earth would he want to?
With the help of a crooked Treasury agent (Rex Linn), Lithgow and his gang have attempted to hijack a shipment of government cash, only the theft gets bungled the three suitcases full of greenbacks plummet to the mountain range, followed by the plane itself. Having no tracking skills of their own or climbing equipment, the crooks trick the Rescue Team into helping them find the money and put in place the film's interminable cat-and-mouse chase between Stallone and the bad guys.
Along the way, the usual elements rear their ugly heads: lame quips at inappropriate moments, slow motion yells, explosions and poetically justified deaths. Directed by Renny Harlin, who somehow gained a reputation as a good action director though he's only made three bad movies (Die Hard 2, Nightmare on Elm Street IV and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane), the film does manage some nice set pieces, particularly the hijacking sequence. Aside from those few touches, even the action leaves much to be desired. When they get around to the requisite mano-a-mano between Stallone and Lithgow, the stunt looks neat but it plays out so predictably — down to when the bite occurs and how Lithgow dies — it just induces yawns.
It puzzles me why they even tried to add emotional weight to this film because the filmmakers discard it as soon as they've finished wheeling out a couple of poorly written melodramatic scenes. The characters — and I use that term loosely — are so poorly developed that only ones who seem well drawn are two twentysomething thrill seekers in a brief cameo. If the producers had brains or daring — and this film shows no evidence that they possess either — they might have tried to re-create the trailer for Cliffhanger as the film.
Dump the dialogue entirely and just present a nonstop chain of action sequences set to classical music. The result would be the same, the film would be mercifully shorter and we wouldn't be forced to listen to Stallone's anguished battle cries.
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Labels: 90s, Lithgow, Stallone
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Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Jules Dassin (1911-2008)
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By Edward Copeland
Of the list of prospective honorary Oscar recipients I sent to the Academy several years ago, Richard Widmark, who died last week, was the second oldest. Now, my oldest suggestion, director Jules Dassin, the man who directed Widmark in one of is best roles, 1950's Night and the City, has died as well at the age of 96.
Until his blacklisting forced him into exile in Europe,
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RIP Mr. Dassin.
To read, The New York Times obit, click here.
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Labels: blacklist, Cronyn, Dassin, Lancaster, Obituary, Widmark
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Games people don't play
This post is part of the White Elephant Blog-a-Thon being coordinated at Lucid Screening.
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By Edward Copeland
When I received my assignment for this year's White
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Labels: 00s, Blog-a-thons, K. Douglas, Rodriguez, Stallone
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