Saturday, February 01, 2014
Maximilian Schell (1930-2014)
Schell received two other Oscar nominations in his film career as best actor: in 1975's The Man in the Glass Booth and as supporting actor in 1977's Julia. He also received two Emmy nominations for the TV films Stalin and Miss Rose White in the early '90s. He appeared on Broadway three times, the first time in 1958 in Interlock, the same year his first English-language film, The Young Lions, came out. His third appearance came in 2001 in a stage production of Judgment at Nuremberg, this time playing the role of Dr. Ernst Janning whom Burt Lancaster played in the 1961 film.
Shortly after his Oscar win, he joined the cast of thieves in Jules Dassin's 1964 Topkapi. The first exposure to Schell's work for many in my generation probably came from silly 1979 sci-fi flick The Black Hole. He also played the erstwhile villain opposite James Coburn in one of the lesser Sam Peckinpah effort, 1977's Cross of Iron. He appeared in many films and roles for television both in the U.S. and abroad, including a six-episode stint on Wiseguy.
He also directed, most notably the remarkable 1984 documentary Marlene, where Marlene Dietrich reflected on her life without ever letting herself be seen in her current state.
Of all Schell's roles though, I always maintain a soft spot in my heart for his role as eccentric chef Larry London in Andrew Bergman's great comedy The Freshman with Marlon Brando doing a pitch-perfect parody of his own Vito Corleone.
RIP Mr. Schell.
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Labels: Awards, Brando, Dassin, Documentary, James Coburn, Lancaster, Marlene, Obituary, Oscars, Peckinpah, Television, Theater
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Saturday, November 30, 2013
Harder to survive on the margins
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This preview of the fourth and final season of Treme contains mild spoilers for the last five episodes, but nothing too serious. If you fear knowing ANYTHING ahead of time, move along. Also, health problems and other interruptions have put timely recaps in jeopardy. At least part of the first episode will be up in time Sunday, but I can't make promises about timeliness going forward.
The headline that I used for this preview of the truncated fourth and final season of HBO's Treme paraphrases something Marvin Frey (Michael Cerveris), manager of Annie Tee aka Talarico (Lucia Micarelli), says to his client in the Sunday season premiere after she finishes a set with her band. Frey advises Annie that her album has peaked and, if she wishes to continue her ascent to stardom, her act requires big changes. While Frey's statement specifically
pertains to Annie, it also applies to the unforgivable final season HBO allowed for this great series created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer. Yes, even in the commercial-free universe of pay cable, where subscribers should matter more than ratings, the various TV ratings systems (which grow more imperfect and outmoded by the day as the methods by which viewers watch TV evolve in ways A.C. Nielsen never could have envisioned) still capture the attention of channels such as HBO and Treme never drew an audience comparable to shows such as The Sopranos, Game of Thrones or even Boardwalk Empire. I suppose I should commend them for sticking with Treme as long as they did, but that doesn't excuse HBO for the scraps that it threw the series' way for a final season. Despite the burdens of a season half the size of a traditional one (and they received an 11-episode order for season 2) and steep cuts to staff and crew, the people remaining at Treme manage to go out well with few signs on the screen of the behind-the-scenes austerity measures imposed upon them in order to complete the story they never intended to run past four seasons. When I first learned of what HBO gave Treme for Season 3.5, my thoughts went to the citizens of New Orleans and the city itself, whose economy benefited from the series' filming there each year. Hasn't that city suffered enough? I digress. Five episodes remain to spend with the great characters we've met over the previous 31 episodes. We'll join the second line after the last episode airs Dec. 29. As the card shown above from Sunday's premiere indicates, the final season of Treme picks up 38 months after Hurricane Katrina and the federal flood that followed and devastated New Orleans and neighboring regions. More specifically, the day on which season 3.5 chooses to begin happens to be Nov. 4, 2008 — that historic day that saw Barack Obama elected the first African-American president of the United States. While the U.S. started the process of transition from one president to another, we learn of changes to most of the characters in the Treme universe in the premiere, “Yes We Can Can” (written by Simon, Overmyer & George Pelecanos, directed by Anthony
Hemingway), in terms of relationships started and ended, both personal and professional. For those forgetting where we left our friends more than a year ago, LaDonna Batiste-Williams (Khandi Alexander) struggled after her bar GiGi’s got torched in a suspicious, presumed revenge fire; Delmond Lambreaux (Rob Brown) found himself more torn than ever between his New York jazz career and his New Orleans roots, especially after his father Albert (Clarke Peters) began treatment for cancer; Janette Desautel (Kim Dickens) continued to butt heads with Tim Feeny (Sam Robards), the moneyman behind her new restaurant, Desautel’s on the Avenue; Sofia Bernette (India Ennenga) headed east for college as her mom Toni (Melissa Leo) continued to fight the good fight and began a relationship with Lt. Terry Colson (David Morse), who attempted to do the same within his police department; Sonny Schilder* (Michiel Huisman) wore down Tran (Lee Nguyen), the father of Linh (Hong Chau), and made her his bride; Nelson Hidalgo (Jon Seda), back in the good graces of C.J. Liguori (Dan Ziskie) and friends after exile for association with Oliver Thomas, worked on various projects, including a New Orleans city jazz center, a project that Del and Albert already decided not to take part in despite a possible lucrative end; Annie’s burgeoning career led to her breakup with Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn), who gave a “final” performance announcing he was quitting the music industry; and Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce) found himself getting into the groove in his job as the assistant band instructor at Theophile Jones Elie Elementary. My return to recapping Treme episodes comes after sitting out Season 3 (and post-episode summaries/reviews of Boardwalk Empire as well) due to worsening aspects of the physical limitations associated with my primary progressive multiple sclerosis. A major impediment to me continuing the recaps stemmed from the fact that my recaps of both series grew so insanely ambitious with research and links supplementing the general summary and assessment of each individual episode. In fact, I got so detailed when referring to neighborhoods and sections of New Orleans that some readers assumed that I either hailed from there or had lived in the city for a sizable portion of my life when I never got the chance to visit the Crescent City back when I was mobile. Thankfully, no one thought I was old enough that I acquired my knowledge of 1920s Atlantic City from first-hand experience. My recaps
for the final five episodes of Treme won't approach the detail or ambition of my season 2 efforts. (Look at my recap of Treme's season two episode "Carnival Time" or my recap of Boardwalk Empire's season 2 episode "To the Lost" to see how overboard I went.) I regret not being able to recap season 3 of Treme because I felt it turned out to be its best season, especially following season two, which contained individual episodes that proved great and contained truly memorable moments, but had too many episodes undermined by an editing style that seemed geared for children with ADD. In season three, the series largely corrected its flow problems and managed even to find use for some of its characters who had been annoying and pointless such as Sonny. It also introduced a new character in young enterprising reporter L.P. Everett (Chris Coy), a writer for ProPublica, who arrived in New Orleans to investigate the possible murder of a man by police following Hurricane Katrina. Everett's work brought him into contact with a natural ally in Toni and paralleled the internal frustration of Terry trying to delve into the culture of cover-up and corruption throughout the city's police department. While the entire ensemble managed to get their moments in season three, in my eyes, the season really belonged to Morse's stellar work as Colson. As a point of personal pride, when in season two Janette toured the kitchens of various New York restaurants, she began at the marvelous fictional creation Brulard’s, named for its owner and chef Enrico Brulard (a magnificent invention of a character by actor Victor Slezak — I still dream of spin-off where Brulard and Dr. John decide to open a restaurant and club together). Janette bonded best in Brulard's kitchen with actor Paul Fitzgerald's character, who never received a name, referred in credit lists simply by job title as Le poissonnier. In my recap of one of season two's best episodes, "Santa Claus, Do You Ever Get the Blues?" (written by Lolis Eric Elie, directed by Alex Zakrzewski), I decided to christen Fitzgerald's character as Paul. To my delight, when he turned up in New Orleans at Janette's new restaurant, he had a name and it happened to be Paul. I'd love to think I had a hand in that, but I'm not deluded enough to assume such a thing. It pleased me nonetheless and I wish I'd been able to note it when it occurred.What makes this final stretch of Treme particularly interesting are how some episodes seem to have an overlying theme in a way that previous installments didn't. While episodes might revolve around a common event or day such as Mardi Gras or Thanksgiving, a couple of these final five delve specifically, though subtly, into overarching topics. As I referred to earlier, few signs on-screen indicate the steep cuts made for the final season. You spot them when some regulars' names only appear in episodes in which they appear and in the relative absence of bigger names such as Elizabeth Ashley's wonderful Aunt Mimi, who appears but once and briefly.
Whenever I try to describe Treme to nonviewers, a pat description defies me. No television antecedent that's not really dependent on plot springs to mind as a comparison. Treme proves to be neither about the journey nor the destination while telling its tale of a community and its culture in the aftermath of a disaster, but, in the end, Katrina really isn't its point either. Miraculously, Treme works and, this late in the game, I finally realized the closest comparison to its type of storytelling. It came not from television, but a movie: Robert Altman's Nashville. It also focused on a musical community with a large cast of characters, some of whom met, some who didn't, and didn't contain what anyone could call a conventional plot, yet it's one of Altman's masterpieces. Of course, Nashville comes to a climax of sorts and covers a very specific period of time. That thought prompted memories of another essentially plotless, though quite different, great film that by coincidence took place in our bicentennial year: Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, only it contained no big finish. As for television, I still can't think of a Treme antecedent and that's probably a good thing. I expect someone to correct me in comments and come up with a similar TV example and I'll be suitably red-faced for that series not occurring to me, but until then I welcome that in my mind Treme stands as one-of-a-kind.
Treme premieres on Sunday night on HBO at 9 p.m. Eastern/8 p.m. Central.
*As far as I recall, Sonny's last name never was mentioned or seen on the show itself, but a book solved that mystery. Treme: Stories and Recipes from the Heart of New Orleans by Lolis Eric Elie, former story editor for the series, presents recipes belonging to various characters from Treme and it reveals Sonny's last name as Schilder when providing his dishes.
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Labels: Altman, Boardwalk Empire, Clarke Peters, D. Morse, David Simon, E. Ashley, HBO, Kim Dickens, Linklater, M. Cerveris, Melissa Leo, Overmyer, Television, The Sopranos, Treme, TV Recap, Wendell Pierce, Zahn
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Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Bouncing to a TV near you (plus a personal announcement)
At 11 tonight Eastern time on a network I didn't realize even existed, let alone that I had until recently, a new series
Jazz hardly stands as the sole musical genre born in the Crescent City, but as Treme's Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn) declared once, New Orleans' music scene tastes and has a recipe much like its gumbo: Lots of ingredients end up in the mix. One of the newer forms to spring forth from its club scene (and a particular favorite of Davis) goes by the name of bounce. Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce (which I haven't seen) promises to take viewers deeper into the culture and origins of that sound with one of its giants, Big Freedia, as our guide. The specific connection to Treme stems from Big Freedia's appearances in two of the second season's best episodes — "Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky" (written by Simon, directed by Tim Robbins) and "Santa Claus, Do You Ever Get the Blues?" (story by Overmyer and Lolis Eric Elie, written by Elie, directed by Alex Zakrzewski). Big Freedia took part in the constant attempts by Davis to enter the music industry, in this case by trying to recruit local artists to contribute tracks for a compilation CD so Davis can showcase his own work. Big Freedia got to take part in the priceless scene where Davis reluctantly takes his delightful Aunt Mimi (Elizabeth Ashley — even more priceless and delightful herself) to a club because she insists on seeing this bounce music for herself before agreeing to help finance her nephew's plan.
Speaking of Treme, my announcement. Provided that my fingers and hands hold up, I'm planning to recap the final episodes of Treme. Don't expect them to be as detailed as they were for season 2, but I'm going to try. I feel I owe it to the show, especially since my health problems prevented me from recapping season three, which turned out to be the series' best season. Keep your fingers crossed for me and hopefully my Treme recaps shall return for five more times in December.
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Labels: David Simon, E. Ashley, HBO, Music, Overmyer, Television, Tim Robbins, Treme, TV Recap, Zahn
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Thursday, August 08, 2013
Karen Black (1939-2013)
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Karen Black occupied a singular place in movies, hovering in that rarefied atmosphere that placed her somewhere between character actress and star. It landed her roles in many of the decade's classics as well as some of its silliness (such as Airport 1975) As the '80s came along, more of her work came on television and in low-budget horror films, but her early work kept her a recognizable name. Black died today at 74 after a battle with ampullary cancer diagnosed in 2010.
Born Karen Ziegler in Park Ridge, Ill., the actress attended Northwestern University before heading east and attending The Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg. She appeared in several off-Broadway plays and as an understudy in the 1961 comedy Take Her, She's Mine starring Art Carney before making her starring debut in 1965's The Playroom whose cast also included Bonnie Bedelia and Richard Thomas. Her second feature film made a mark for many people when she joined the cast of Francis Ford Coppola's 1966 comedy You're a Big Boy Now starring Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn and Tony Bill, among others. She made lots of episodic television appearances until she gained noticed in the small role of a hooker named Karen who drops acid in a cemetery with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in 1969's Easy Rider. Her counterculture journey continued the following year when she played the role of Rayette, the country-music loving waitress who becomes crazy in love with the alienated Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson) in Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces. The part earned Black her sole Oscar nomination as supporting actress.
Black teamed with Nicholson again the following year, only Nicholson sat in the director's chair as she starred opposite Bruce Dern in Drive, He Said. She soon followed that by assuming the part of the Claire Bloom surrogate Mary Jo Reid or The Monkey opposite Richard Benjamin in Ernest Lehman's adaptation of Philip Roth's comic novel Portnoy's Complaint. In 1974, she joined Zero Mostel when he brought his Tony-winning role from Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros to the big screen co-starring Gene Wilder. That same year she assumed the role of Tom Buchanan's mistress, Myrtle Wilson, in Jack Clayton's version of The Great Gatsby starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow and the film won Black a Golden Globe for best supporting actress — and she did it in two dimensions! Finally, she completed 1974 by playing the scrappy stewardess trying to fly a crippled jumbo jet whose flight crew got taken out when a small plane crashed into its side in the funniest of the Airport movies, Airport 1975 (which I'll always love for having Gloria Swanson playing herself dictating her memoirs into a tape recorder as the plane is going down).
Black found herself busy again in 1975, beginning with the cult classic horror film Trilogy of Terror where she starred in three shorts all based on stories by the recent passed Richard Matheson. She also co-starred in John Schlesinger's film of the Nathanael West classic novella Day of the Locust. Her epic piece for that year though involved her first collaboration with Robert Altman in his masterpiece Nashville. Black played country superstar Connie White, filling the bill for another ailing star Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakeley), during events surrounding the political campaign of Replacement Party candidate Hal Philip Walker. In 1976, Black worked again with Nashville co-star Barbara Harris and frequent co-star Bruce Dern as well as William Devane to appear in what would be the final film of the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's darkly funny tale of crooks, con men and kidnapping, Family Plot. In 1982, she returned to Broadway under Altman's direction as part of the ensemble of Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Altman's impossible-to-see film version featuring Black came out later that same year. Aside from some notable television appearances, most of her post-1982 career has been in horror and science fiction, but Karen Black delivered so much great work when her career was hot, she won't soon be forgotten. RIP Ms. Black.
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Labels: Altman, Awards, Coppola, Geraldine Page, Gloria Swanson, Hitchcock, Hopper, Mia Farrow, Nicholson, Obituary, Oscars, Redford, Rip Torn, Roth, Television, Theater
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Monday, July 22, 2013
Dennis Farina (1944-2013)
Dennis Farina tended to be typecast as a cop or a crook — and having served 18 years on Chicago's police force before turning to acting had a lot to do with that, but like so many who come to performing from other lines of work, you'd hardly notice the difference. By the premature end of his 31-year acting career, just seeing his name brought a smile to my face because I knew that he'd provide some good moments in the movie or TV show I was about to watch, even if the production itself didn't turn out to be that great. He garnered two acting nominations in his film career, both for Get Shorty. The American Comedy Awards nominated him as Funniest Supporting Actor in Motion Picture and he joined the other members of the ensemble up for the 1995 Screen Actors Guild Cast Award, including James Gandolfini.
Farina made his film debut in 1981 in Michael Mann's often overlooked gem Thief. He did many guest shots and small roles in movies until he teamed with Mann again as the original screen incarnation of the FBI's Jack Crawford in Manhunter, based on Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon, which introduced the world to Hannibal Lecter. That same year, Mann gave Farina the short-lived starring role in the 43-episode run of the period TV series Crime Story as Lt. Mike Torello. Atmospheric, vibrant and wonderfully scored — Crime Story couldn't last back then, but imagine if it had premiered a decade or so later on cable. The year Crime Story ended its run, Farina played memorable comic bad guy Jimmy Serrano in the great buddy movie Midnight Run, which just marked its 25th anniversary. Other comic bad guys would follow such as Ray Barboni in the film adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty and the hit man Henry De Salvo in the underrated Big Trouble, based on the novel by Dave Barry.
On the good guy side of things he played Marshal Sisco, father of Jennifer Lopez's Karen Sisco in Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of Leonard's Out of Sight. He turned up briefly as one of the recognizable faces fighting World War II, in this case as Lt. Col. Anderson, in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. He also
put in two seasons as Detective Joe Fontana on Law & Order following Jerry Orbach's departure. His other television work includes the short-lived, quirky detective series Buddy Faro created by Mark Frost, which I enjoyed but ended quickly. Farina also put in a nice turn as an annoying fitness center owner in HBO's adaptation of Richard Russo's novel Empire Falls. Finally, in another case of a series that ended prematurely (and unnecessarily) he landed the great role of Gus Demetriou, right-hand man and aging strong arm for horse racing-obsessed prison parolee Chester "Ace" Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) in HBO's Luck, an ill-conceived partnership between Mann and David Milch whose cancellation got blamed on the unfortunate deaths of three racing horses in the same sort of incidents that happen at real race tracks across the U.S. daily. It's a shame, because the nine episodes of Luck that aired were excellent. HBO should have had the guts to buy either Mann or Milch out and let the series proceed. (My vote would have been to keep Milch).RIP Mr. Farina. Another gone too soon.
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Labels: Dustin Hoffman, Farina, Gandolfini, Hannibal Lecter, HBO, Michael Mann, Milch, Obituary, Soderbergh, Spielberg, Television
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Different ways of playing 'Cards'
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post contains spoilers for the three segment British miniseries House of Cards from the 1990s starring Ian Richardson and this year's 13-episode U.S. version made for Netflix, produced by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey. If you plan to watch either version and haven't yet, read no further.
By Edward Copeland
After giving people time to watch the American version of House of Cards and with its availability on DVD and Blu-ray for those without access to Netflix Instant, I thought enough time had transpired to discuss both the new version as well as the original BBC miniseries, whose first part premiered in 1990. Prior to watching the David Fincher-produced D.C.-set House of Cards with Kevin Spacey playing the wily lead, I felt I needed to see the British version to see how well the differences translated. (Obviously, Britain's parliamentary system of government works quite differently from our legislative branch — which, in its current state, doesn't work at all, but House of Cards exists in the land of make-believe. I lacked either the time or the energy given personal matters to attempt to read the novel by Michael Dobbs that spawned the BBC miniseries.)
Though the new version pads out its story to 13 roughly one-hour episodes while the first of the three British House of Cards miniseries told mostly the same story in four episodes of approximately the same length, the U.S. take does hit many of the same plot points except when it comes to the ending, but the makers of the U.S. House of Cards envision it as a continuing series. (I needn't have watched the second and third BBC miniseries, To Play the King and The Final Cut, since the stories in those sequels aren't covered in the first season of the U.S. House of Cards.) Both versions of the political chicanery, whether set here or across the pond, offer solid entertainment and mostly solid performances, though the U.S. House of Cards wins out in terms of production values. Unfortunately, when it comes to the battle of FUs (Francis Urquhart in the U.K., Francis Underwood in the U.S.), the late Ian Richardson wins hands down. Spacey proves capable as usual for the most part, but he burdens himself with an off-and-on Southern drawl that's wholly unnecessary and, at times, a major distraction. When Richardson's Urquhart speaks to the viewer in his well-mannered, upper-crust tone, it always works. When Spacey's Underwood attempts to pull it off while simultaneously putting on a generic son of the South voice for his South Carolina representative, at times it comes off as too cutesy by half.
Despite the differences in forms of government, both House of Cards begin with essentially the same kernel of a motivation for our two Francises. In the 1990 BBC version, Urquhart has served faithfully as an MP of the Conservative Party, functioning as their Chief Whip under Margaret Thatcher's reign as prime minister. In its fictionalized view of history, Thatcher's loss of support has led to her resignation and while the Conservatives look bound to keep a weakened majority hold of the British government, Urquhart expects
the new prime minister, Hal Collinridge (David Lyon, whose death at 72 was announced today), to appoint him to a long-sought Cabinet position and remove him from his duties as whip. Instead, with the slimmer majority, Collinridge decides not to shake up the Cabinet and an angry Urquhart starts maneuvering many people to get his revenge and build his own rise to power. In the 2013 U.S. take on the tale, Underwood long has held the title of Democratic Whip in the House, now the Majority Whip as a new Democratic president (not Barack Obama), Garrett Walker (Michael Gill), takes office. but Walker reneges on a promise to pick Underwood as his secretary of state. This begins Underwood's convoluted maneuvering. One problem that separates the two versions comes down to logic. You see why Urquhart longs to become the prime minister himself, but if you know U.S. history, it seems downright silly for Underwood to leap through all the hoops and commit all the deeds he does just to end up as vice president. When George H.W. Bush won the presidency, he was the first sitting vice president to manage the victory in his own right since Martin Van Buren. Unless Underwood plans to kill off Walker in a subsequent season of the U.S. House of Cards, why does he see that as a plausible path to the Oval Office?
What delineates our two Francises (the U.S. version only uses the FU joke once as its expected, vulgar stand-in by some of Underwood's opponents while the BBC call Urquhart FU frequently and affectionately by both friends and foes to his face without a hit of a double meaning) most distinctly comes from the difference in the way Spacey acts the words by Beau Willmon and his writing staff and Richardson's delivery of Andrew Davies' dialogue. Almost everyone appears to be on to what Frank Underwood conspires to do at all times, even if his machinations win in the end since Spacey doesn't take much of an effort to hide his moves from those he attempts to manipulate. In contrast, it takes some time for people to catch on to the lengths that Francis Urquhart will go to to accomplish his means thanks to Richardson's performance, which he keeps close to his vest. Both versions rely on the conceit that the Francises speak in asides to the television viewer about what they think and plan, only Spacey talks to audiences in the same basic tone as most of the other characters. Richardson confides to us, letting us in on secrets that others aren't aware of and it makes his performance much richer and, given the late actor's training, provides Francis Urquhart with an almost Shakespearean air. Urquhart picks off opponents with a variety of means and accomplishes most of this without leaving any fingerprints. The game plan in the U.S. House of Cards differs slightly as no list of vice presidential contenders stand in Underwood's way, but they do match in terms of subject matter. Urquhart must sink health and education ministers while those two issues become legislative hurdles that play a part in Underwood's climb.
Both House of Cards include two main women in the lives of their protagonists: their wives and young reporters who become the pols' lovers as well as their tool to help advance their plots. The idea of the female journalist follows fairly closely in both versions (except where they end up in the first installment and the level of their naïveté). In the BBC, the young reporter Mattie Storin (Susannah Harker) takes a long time (too long for her sake) to catch on to Urquhart's true nature and their illicit romance takes on a somewhat twisted father figure complex where the young Mattie tends to call the much older Francis "Daddy" during their dalliances. In the U.S. version, the young woman journalist Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) contains a much more ambitious nature and she uses Underwood as much as he uses her. Both Mattie and Zoe do make colleagues jealous with their scoops and end up booted from their newspapers, only the U.S. version updates for technological changes and makes Zoe's success come via instant blog posts and finds her gaining new employment with an online political publication. Probably due to the way Mattie is written, Harker comes off as a weaker actress than Mara, who has a more fully developed character. The bigger difference presents itself in the portrayal
of the political wives. Elizabeth Urquhart (Diane Fletcher) truly serves as her husband's partner-in-crime. She knows of his affair with Mattie (and other women in the later installments) but approves wholeheartedly because she knows that letting him have his extracurricular activity with Mattie only serves the couple's ultimate goal and doesn't pose a threat to her position. Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) begins that way early in the U.S. House of Cards, but as the series develops she exhibits jealousy. showing up at Zoe's apartment, interfering with part of Underwood's legislative agenda and even leaving D.C. to renew an affair with a former lover, a famous photographer (Ben Daniels). Presumably, the part required beefing up in order to get someone of Wright's caliber to agree to accept it in the first place. Claire also gets her own sideline with story strands involving the charitable foundation that she runs whereas Elizabeth Urquhart basically serves as Francis' adornment at party and sounding board at home but little else.Both versions equip our FUs with henchmen named Stamper to help him carry out the more unseemly parts of his schemes, though the portrayals as well as the job titles come off quite differently in each country. In England, Urquhart's underling, Tim Stamper, comes across as quite a weasel in the hands of actor Colin
Jeavons. Tim Stamper functions as the Assistant Whip for the Conservatives in the House of Commons until Urquhart succeeds at ascending to the position of prime minister and Stamper moves up to Chief Whip. Later, unhappily, Urquhart moves him to the post party chairman. The British Stamper not only gets his hands dirty with delight, he also overflows with ambition himself and it costs him in the end (part of which may have been necessitated by Jeavons' decision to retire from acting after completing the second installment, To Play the King). The American Stamper gets a new first name — Doug — and does show signs of conscience even while he performs Underwood's errands. Doug Stamper serves as the House Majority Whip's chief of staff and holds no elected position. Michael Kelly, who most people will recognize him from many roles on television and in film, doesn't get down and dirty with the same glee that Jeavons does, but Kelly creates a different persona and plays him well. Odds are, depending how many seasons House of Cards continues, Doug Stamper either will turn on his boss or become a liability to him.
The one area besides production design where the U.S. House of Cards bests the British original comes from the actor who portrays Underwood's actual victim and how the U.S. version fleshes out his character in the first place. Before I began this piece, I issued a spoiler warning, but the U.S. House of Cards doesn't make it a secret that Underwood's deviousness takes a lethal turn, thanks to some of its promotional posters, and the very first sequence of the series gives viewers that impression by showing Underwood putting an injured dog out of its misery with his bare hands but making it clear that he isn't doing it to be merciful. In the British take, even though the first installment only consists of four 1-hour installments, it doesn't
let the audience know that Urquhart's manipulations include murder. In the BBC version, the first life that Urquhart literally takes with his own hand belongs to Roger O'Neill (Miles Anderson), the P.R. consultant for the Conservative Party whom Urquhart gets to use his girlfriend, Penny Guy (Alphonsia Emmanuel), to seduce Foreign Secretary Patrick Woolton (Malcolm Tierney), one of Urquhart's competitors for the prime minister post. Unfortunately, O'Neill loves Penny as much as he loves cocaine and when she dumps him when she realizes O'Neill used her, O'Neill becomes a wild card that Urquhart can't trust. To make sure nothing comes out that damages FU's plan and reveals his role in the Woolton revelation, Urquhart spikes O'Neill's coke supply with rat poison, assuring Mattie who figures out he did it that he was just putting O'Neill out of his misery.
Overall, the American ensemble beats the British one. Granted, the U.S. version provides nine extra hours to fill with juicy parts for actors to the BBC's mere four, so the original lacks the room to develop many characters in depth so it's easy to see how Ian Richardson steals the show. Kevin Spacey, in addition to his aforementioned accent problem, shares time with a lot of great performers in parts large and small. On top of those mentioned already, Sebastian Arcelus, Reg E. Cathey, Kathleen Chalfant, Nathan Darrow, Sandrine Holt, Boris McGiver, Larry Pine, Al Sapienza, Constance Zimmer and Gerald McRaney all put in appearances. We also get three actors familiar to Treme fans in parts of various scope: Mahershala Ali, Lance E. Nichols and Dan Ziskie. The M.V.P. of the entire cast though turns out to be Corey Stoll, so great as Hemingway in
Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, as the U.S. equivalent of Roger O'Neill. Instead of a P.R. guy, Stoll plays Pennsylvania Rep. Peter Russo, a divorced father of two with a penchant for drugs, booze and sex, despite his deep feelings for and relationship with his chief of staff Christina Gallagher (Kristen Connolly). For those who only know Stoll from Midnight in Paris, he'll be unrecognizable. In the short number of episodes though, he takes Russo through the largest journey of any character in the series, battling to sobriety and attempting to believe in himself, unaware of his status as a pawn in Underwood's game (both Underwoods, actually), until it's too late. Stoll makes Russo the only character that the audience develops any sympathy for at all. Though Russo behaves badly, his mistakes all flow from his personal weaknesses. He doesn't do things maliciously the way that Underwood and other characters do. When he commits wrongs, it's because he can't control himself. Underwood always stays in control, even if unexpected events force him to improvise. You feel bad for Russo when he can't
stand up for himself and acts against his own interests and those of his constituents, just to be Underwood's toady and pay him back for covering up an incident when he got caught drunk with a prostitute. You get a sense of where this comes from a in a couple of brief scenes involving Russo and his hospitalized mother (a great Phyllis Somerville) that gives you insight into Russo and makes you feel sorry for the man at the same time it provides some wickedly dark humor. When he begins to turn himself around, you develop a rooting interest for him to succeed (even though having seen the U.K. version first, I figured what fate awaited Russo, though the U.S. changes the manner of his inevitable death at Underwood's hands slightly differently). Though the U.S. House of Cards contains a lot of great acting, no one comes close to turning in a performance as wonderful as Stoll's and no character gets as much development and detail as Rep. Peter Russo.Since the British House of Cards only ran four hours, it had a sole director, Paul Seed, and writer, Andrew Davies. Davies and Seed returned to the same roles on the second installment, To Play the King, but Seed's directing work consists almost entirely of British television. Davies wrote the third and final part, The Final Cut, but Mike Vardy took over helming duties. Similarly, his directing work stayed restricted to British TV. Davies' writing extends to film including the screenplays for Circle of Friends, Emma, The Tailor of Panama, Bridget Jones's Diary, the 2008 feature of Brideshead Revisited and the 2011 version of The Three Musketeers directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
While Beau Willmon had a hand in writing most of the U.S. episodes, he also had a staff of writers who either contributed or turned in their own episodes. On the directing side, Fincher started the series off by directing the first two episodes while James Foley directed the most at 4 episodes and Allen Coulter, Carl Franklin, Charles McDougall and Joel Schumacher helmed two each.
In the final assessment, the U.S. House of Cards moves fairly well except at times when it feels as if it stuffed itself with too many character and plot strands and an episode set at Underwood's reunion at The Citadel that, while OK, feels and plays like filler. The U.K. House of Cards comes off as far more efficient, even if most of the characters aside from Richardson's Urquhart prove far less compelling. In the second and third parts, they do at least give him actual adversaries, which make things slightly more interesting, but in the end all the British House of Cards episodes always belong to the great Richardson and his rich and delicious
performance. One really bizarre viewing experience for me came from the miniseries — which aired in 1990, 1995 and 1996 — incorporating Margaret Thatcher's fictional death. She died in the miniseries as I watched it before she died in real life earlier this year. Part of the subtext is that Francis Urquhart wants to break Thatcher's record for serving as prime minister longer in the post-WW2 era. One other thing that makes the British version slightly better than the American take is that the first installment ends with a great cliffhanger mystery that plays out over the course of the next two parts. The new House of Cards leaves us with reporters hot on Underwood's trail about Russo's "suicide," but it doesn't come off nearly as intriguing as the British version. I'm also curious where the U.S. version goes next. It obviously can't follow the storyline of the British To Play the King since we don't have a constitutional monarch and a newly sworn in Vice President Underwood wouldn't run into conflict with a recently crowned king. Presumably, that tension will present itself with his new boss, President Walker. It's a shame that Ian Richardson isn't with us anymore and that the third British House of Cards installment resolved the Francis Urquhart character. It might have been fun to see U.S. President Francis Underwood face off against British Prime Minister Francis Urquhart. I'd probably root for Urquhart, if only because he doesn't have that corny and awful Southern accent.Tweet
Labels: 10s, 90s, Books, Fiction, Fincher, Hemingway, Netflix, Robin Wright, Shakespeare, Spacey, Television, Treme, Woody
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Wednesday, June 19, 2013
James Gandolfini (1961-2013)
Sometimes, when the greatest of our artists mark the upper reaches of their golden years or they've announced an ominous health prognosis, I plan in advance what type of appreciation to write. However, when an unexpected death such as James Gandolfini's occurs at the age of 51, the task proves harder — I expected a lot more to come from this gifted actor, not this sudden, cruel punctuation mark of finality stamped on a career that promised us so much more.
Some of the films Gandolfini made during his time on the show weren't always the best, but he seldom failed to deliver whether it was his military prison warden in The Last Castle, his philandering husband in the Coens' The Man Who Wasn't There or, most especially, his gay hit man in The Mexican. Perhaps his finest screen work came in In the Loop, the satire about an attempt by D.C. insiders to stop hawks from starting a war. He also did a fine turn in the HBO movie Cinema Verite about the making of the landmark TV documentary on the Loud family in the 1970s that could be called the first reality show. His voice also proved perfect in Spike Jonze's film of Where the Wild Things Are. Among recent films, he and David Chase reunited in Chase's feature directing debut Not Fade Away, and he appeared in Zero Dark Thirty.
I wish I could have seen Gandolfini's Tony-nominated performance in Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage. Gandolfini also didn't limit himself to acting, serving as producer and interviewer for two great HBO documentaries related to war: Alive Day Memories and Wartorn: 1861-2010.
Several works lay in various stages of production, so I expect we have some more James Gandolfini performances to anticipate, but not remotely as many as we should. RIP Mr. Gandolfini.
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Labels: Alec Baldwin, Coens, David Chase, Gandolfini, Geena Davis, HBO, J. Lange, Obituary, T. Scott, Television, The Sopranos, Travolta
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Monday, May 20, 2013
Prison of My Dreams
By Edward Copeland
As I snap the cuffs on Will Smith's wrists, I try to look stern and sympathetic simultaneously. "I take no pleasure in having to do this, Mr. Smith, but it's for your own good as well as the good of the public. Hopefully, your stay will be a short one." I'm taking Smith to serve his sentence in the Copeland Penitentiary for Bad Film Ideas. The actor received a summary conviction with the recent announcement of his interest of remaking Sam Peckinpah's classic Western The Wild Bunch. We had no choice. Trying to do a new version of such a revered film would be bad enough, but when you read the details that explain it would be a modern version involving the DEA and drug cartels, it sounds as if it's only stealing the title. We couldn't risk this debacle-in-development from getting to pre-production. Smith needed to be jailed until he regained his senses.
Now, if Smith breaks quickly, his sentence should be short since this idea didn't originate with him. Warner Bros. has toyed with the idea of a remake for more than a decade with various names such as the late director Tony Scott and stars such as Tom Cruise mentioned. If it were possible to put an entire studio into permanent solitary confinement, I would do it. Johnny Depp, pictured above being taken the prison to serve his time, had a longer time behind bars when he announced his intention to make a new version of The Thin Man and to take on William Powell's trademark role of Nick Charles. Thankfully, that talk disappeared once we locked up Depp for awhile and he hasn't mentioned it since. It's great that Depp loves The Thin Man — but the original remains and people should watch it. (If only the prison existed before Gus Van Sant got his cuckoo idea of doing a shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho in color.)
Look at the case of something that happened before the Copeland Penitentiary opened when Russell Brand remade Arthur with Brand in the Dudley Moore role and Helen Mirren taking over for John Gielgud. It sounded like a bad idea on paper, looked more horrendous when commercials and trailers appeared and received mostly bad reviews. (I did enjoy that the original in 1981 grossed more than the remake's budget which flopped badly.) What disturbed me was that the original Arthur never received a DVD release in the proper ratio and when the remake came out, they released a Blu-ray that forced you to get it with its awful sequel Arthur 2: On the Rocks.
Therein lies the dangers of remakes of great films. With technology constantly changing and money always an issue, at some point they'll start leaving us with the fresher versions, assuming that younger audiences won't know or care to see the classics. I'd try to talk them into how much money they'd save if they just re-released older films to theaters without having to spend all that money on new movies, but they won't go for it. Besides, making movies cost WAY too much to make and see today and the best stuff gets made on television anyway.
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Labels: 10s, Cruise, Depp, Gielgud, Hitchcock, Mirren, Peckinpah, Remakes, T. Scott, Television, Van Sant, W. Smith, William Powell
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Thursday, April 04, 2013
Roger Ebert (1942-2013)
By Edward Copeland
If there ever were a reason to brush the cobwebs off my long-dormant blog, today provided it. I wasn't going to waste my thoughts on the passing of Roger Ebert on a note on Facebook or try to squeeze them into multiple 140-word tweets on Twitter. He deserves much more than that and so do I. I'm still forced to use a limited technology, but I'll try to make the best of it.
I debated whether or not to use a photo or Roger solo or Siskel & Ebert together again, but I felt I had to acknowledge them both. It would be nice to say that my interest in film criticism began pouring over the works of Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Manny Farber and the like, but that wouldn't be true. I'm a child of television and those two men up there and their PBS television show Sneak Previews, which I first saw in fourth grade, was my first exposure to movie criticism. I already was a budding film buff, but this was new to me.
During the many years that Roger and Gene worked together on their various shows — going from Sneak Previews to At the Movies to Siskel & Ebert & the Movies before simplifying to plain Siskel & Ebert — I attempted to watch faithfully, not an easy task given the constant switch in TV stations and time periods that come with syndicated fare. I also developed my own voice and did begin reading those other critics, as well as the many books Roger put out himself. I can't remember how many editions of his Movie Home Companion I had.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I wrote both men, seeking advice about the path to film criticism. Siskel never responded, but Roger returned a great form letter that apologized for being a form letter and mentioned how when he was young he had written a letter to Betty Furness, having a crush on the actress turned TV fixture. He received a form letter along with what supposedly was one of Ms. Furness' hairpins and that inspired him try to personalize his necessary form letters for the piles of mail he got just a bit. During senior year of high school, members of our newspaper and yearbook staffs went to a national journalism convention in Chicago and we toured the Sun-Times. I noticed a staff phone directory on a desk and jotted down Roger's extension, but I never worked up the guts to call it.
The only time I actually was in the same room with Roger was at the 1995 junket for Casino in New York. I wish I'd stopped to say hi, but it was a news conference setup with Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Martin Scorsese seated at a long table. When the Q&A was over, I had to make a beeline to Scorsese.
Roger truly entered my life in the past couple of years when, much to my surprise, he wrote a piece about online criticism for The Wall Street Journal and listed this blog as one of his must-reads. I had no idea that he even knew who I was. Later, with details much too complicated to explain, he saved my bacon when I had started work on a 20th anniversary piece on The Larry Sanders Show — including interviews with many people in front of and behind the cameras — and despite it not being movie-related, he gave me a home. I also got to give him a funny story about Gene that he didn't know, thanks to Joshua Malina.
Roger Ebert adapted to the Internet amazingly well, especially Twitter. Small compensation for losing the ability to speak, but it kept him vibrant. He was a champion fighting against the perils put upon him over the past several years, yet it only sharpened his already great writing ability. I miss my friend, even if we never met. Good night, you generous talented man. The balcony will be closed in your honor.
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Labels: Books, Criticism, De Niro, Ebert, Kael, Larry Sanders, Pesci, Scorsese, Sharon Stone, Television
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Saturday, June 02, 2012
Kathryn Joosten (1939-2012)
After an 11-year battle against lung cancer, character actress Kathryn Joosten died Saturday at 72. Joosten became one of the most recognizable faces on television following her two-season role as the president's secretary, Mrs. Landingham, on The West Wing. Eventually, she won two of her three Emmy nominations as guest actress in a comedy for her recurring role on Desperate Housewives. The amount of work and identification she garnered truly was remarkable given that she didn't pursue acting until she was 42 and didn't arrive in Hollywood until 1983 and did so without an agent.
Joosten relocated to the West Coast from Illinois where she worked with the acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Her first television appearance came on the short-lived cop drama Lady Blue in 1985. The shows she landed small roles on in the early days of her career included Family Matters, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, Grace Under Fire, 3rd Rock From the Sun, ER, Roseanne, Murphy Brown, Seinfeld, Frasier, NYPD Blue, Just Shoot Me, The Nanny, Tracey Takes On, Home Improvement, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Becker, Ally McBeal, Spin City, The X-Files and a recurring role on Dharma and Greg. Then she landed Mrs. Landingham on The West Wing and if her name wasn't immediately a household one, her face certainly was. Unfortunately, it was soon after Mrs. Landingham reached her untimely end in a car accident at 10th and Potommac, Joosten received her cancer diagnosis. If anything, that increased her workload instead of lightening it. She did a few episodes of General Hospital then she began popping up all over prime time in series such as Judging Amy, The Drew Carey Show, Charmed, The King of Queens, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Will & Grace, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, Malcolm in the Middle, The Closer, Monk, The Mentalist and a recurring role on Joan of Arcardia as "Old Lady God."
Two of my favorite Joosten appearances came in NBC comedies. The first, in the first season Scrubs episode "My Old Lady" as Mrs. Tanner, J.D.'s patient with the failing kidneys who chooses death over dialysis and whom Dorian (Zach Braff) tries to talk out of her decision only she ends up having to comfort him. She even appeared two more times, once when J.D. envisioned patients who died and wondered if any of the deaths were his fault, and in the show's finale as one of the many past character and guest stars who appear in the hallway to bid farewell to J.D. as he leaves Sacred Heart for the last time. The other series was an episode of My Name Is Earl when Earl makes it up to a former friend who went to jail for a crime he committed. Earl thinks his list item has been completed but the friend's mother (Joosten) knocks Earl out, demanding the years with her son back that Earl stole from her. I never watched Desperate Housewives, so I can't attest to her work there, but given all the other examples I've seen, I'm certain she delivered stellar work. Be it comedy or drama, Joosten demonstrated a modern example of the kind of old-style pro that you could plug into any character situation and end up with a better result.
RIP Ms. Joosten.
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Labels: Awards, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Obituary, Seinfeld, Television, Theater
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Monday, May 21, 2012
"Tests take time. Treatment's quicker."
By Edward Copeland
Sigh…if only Gregory House were my doctor. I think we'd get along well. We're actually very much alike, minus the Vicodin addiction, but I am willing to learn. (In truth, most every pill and patch I've been prescribed over the years to deal with my various pains, anything that works on the excruciating torture my nonworking legs inflict on me I eventually build up a tolerance t0, so I've wondered why that hasn't happened to House at some point. As you all know, very shortly (about 90 minutes), we'll be getting our last new visit with him. First, an hour-long retrospective then the last episode titled "Everybody Dies," a play on one of his favorite truisms "Everybody lies." I haven't seen it. I've heard rumors that many former cast members will pop up somehow, perhaps even Kal Penn as the late Dr. Kutner.
I didn't watch House, M.D. from the beginning. (Does anyone really use the M.D. in the title? We know what show we're talking about.) In fact, I became addicted to the show, or more accurately Hugh Laurie's character, while stuck in two hospitals for a total of three-and-a-half-months in 2008 when USA seemed to show House marathons most days and at least one day of the weekend. I didn't get to see the show in order so it took a long time before I ever saw the episode that even explained what happened to his leg. Whenever anyone describes Gregory House as a jerk, I feel like Larry David does on Curb Your Enthusiasm whenever anyone tells him that the George character on Seinfeld was a loser and Larry gets all defensive. At least when it comes to how he treats the medical side of things, he's being a jerk for the right reasons. As I lay in my hospital bed watching him defy the Princeton-Plainsboro's evil new corporate owner Edward Vogler (Chi McBride) while I endured the cost-cutting tactics of real-life hospital administrators for whom patient care ranks low on their priority list, how could I not cheer House? If only more doctors valued their patients above their portfolios the way Gregory House does.
Admittedly, House the show hasn't lived up to the quality of its early seasons for quite some time, but I've stayed with it because of Laurie. He's created a character too great not to watch. It isn't the same as it was with Homicide: Life on the Street, a series I watched past its prime solely because of Andre Braugher's Frank Pembleton. However, when Braugher decided to leave the show, I followed him right out the door. If Laurie left House, no conceivable scenario would allow the show to carry on without him — especially since, as of a couple weeks ago, Omar Epps' Foreman and Robert Sean Leonard's Wilson serve as the only other original cast members standing.
I wanted to write a bigger advance piece before the finale aired but, as you can tell, I ran out of time. Hopefully, after I see how it ends I can comment on the ending itself as well as talking a bit more in detail about the show as a whole and picking my favorite episodes. Until then, a fun YouTube package I found that built a montage of some of the best House clinic moments.
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Labels: Braugher, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Homicide, House, Larry David, Seinfeld, Television
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
How many kids look overweight in this photo?
By Edward Copeland
One of my favorite memories involving the late, great Mike Wallace on 50 Minutes occurred when he interviewed people about the possibility the tobacco companies had the capability for lit cigarettes to stop burning if it sensed that the smoker had ceased to actively puff on it, the idea being that it would prevent people from falling asleep with a lit cigarette and starting a blaze as they slumbered. Activists accused the tobacco companies of refusing to do this because of the costs and Wallace asked the activist, "What about personal responsibility?" The outraged man replied, "We must protect the stupid consumer." I get the sense that could be the attitude of the makers of The Weight of the Nation as well. (My attitude always has asked, "Why should we protect the stupid consumer?" We should set more traps. That's evolution at work. Thin the herd.) On the official web site for The Weight of the Nation project, a new "fact" appears about every six seconds or so (including ones I questioned and/or debunked in Monday's review of the series' first two parts). Surrounding these informational nuggets of type include rectangular buttons above that lead you to either watch the films or take action, the familiar Twitter, Facebook and Google+ icons to the
right, four photos and graphics below describing related activities and, finally, to the left a blood-red arrow emblazoned with the word FACT pointing at the constantly changing message in the middle of the page. Now, if I had a full-time staff of investigators and unlimited time, I could have all these assertions, none of which come with a source, checked and verified as to their accuracy. Unfortunately, it's just me, my computer and my very limited stamina doing its best to fight my M.S. fatigue. Since Part Three of The Weight of the Nation concentrates on "Children in Crisis," I thought I grabbed one of those "facts" relating to that subject. Remember, we don't have any sources — we're supposed to take their word for it when they say, "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese." I'm going to dig further since my first response relies solely on anecdotal evidence. Asking a dozen or so acquaintances with children in that age range who attend schools in all parts of the country and in different economic circles as well, not one reported an uptick of heavyset kids in their child's school with the exception of one parent in Tulsa, Okla., who said that in her child's grade, she didn't see it, but she'd noticed heavier kids starting about third grade. That's it. Otherwise, parents would report one kid with a weight problem here or there, but certainly not a third of the students. Part Three, "Children in Crisis," debuts tonight on HBO at 8 Eastern/Pacific and 7 Central followed by Part Four, "Challenges," at 9:10 Eastern/Pacific and 8:10 Central. As with the first two parts of The Weight of the Nation, the films will play on all HBO platforms and stream free on HBO.com. One curiousity before I start. For some reason, "Children in Crisis" happens to be the only segment that doesn't list Kaiser Permanente as a partner in the opening credits. I wonder why. Get to work, media.
Doing a Google search for the phrase "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese" directed me quickly to the site that provided some of the other "facts" that rotated on and off The Weight of the Nation web page. It turns out to be the Childhood Obesity Facts page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's online section on Adolescent and School Health, which lists a variety of subjects under its Health Topics index including the next immediate page, Nutrition, Physical Activity, & Obesity. Like well-trained journalists (and unlike documentarians — or at least the ones responsible for The Weight of the Nation), scientists tend to cite sources when they make declarations and each of the assertions they make in the graphic below come with numbers that refer you to footnotes that explain where they got their information. Now, not only did the makers of The Weight of the Nation decide that saying something with authority negated the need for verification, they also had no qualms about dropping or changing words that didn't suit their purposes.
CHILDHOOD OBESITY FACTS GRAPHIC FOOTNOTES
1. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, Lamb MM, Flegal KM. Prevalence of high body mass index in US children and adolescents, 2007–2008. Journal of the American Medical Association 2010;303(3):242–249.
2. National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United States, 2010: With Special Features on Death and Dying. Hyattsville, MD; HHS; 2011.
3. National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Disease and Conditions Index: What Are Overweight and Obesity? Bethesda, MD: NIH; 2010.
4.K rebs NF, Himes JH, Jacobson D, Nicklas TA, Guilday P, Styne D. Assessment of child and adolescent overweight and obesity. Pediatrics 2007;120:S193–S228.
5.Daniels SR, Arnett DK, Eckel RH, et al. Overweight in children and adolescents: pathophysiology, consequences, prevention, and treatment. Circulation 2005; 111; 1999–2002.
6. Office of the Surgeon General. The Surgeon General's Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation. Rockville, MD, HHS; 2010.
The complete phrase "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese" actually reads beneath Childhood Obesity Facts on the CDC page, "In 2008, more than one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese." Of course, government health entities can't agree. As I reported yesterday, The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health which itself falls beneath the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, while agreeing with the CDC's findings that "Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years," also commented that, "Children have become heavier as well. In the past 30 years, the prevalence of childhood obesity has more than doubled among children ages 2-5, has tripled among youth ages 6-11, and has more than tripled among adolescents ages 12-19. However, recent data suggest that the rate of overweight in children did not increase significantly between 1999 and 2008, except in the heaviest boys (BMI for age greater than or equal to the 97th percentile).
This rate, though, remains alarmingly high. Statistics show about 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19, or 1 in 6, are obese. Further, the latest data continue to suggest that overweight and obesity are having a greater effect on minorities, including blacks and Hispanics.". Sadly, while I've been so kind about researchers citing sources, neither the CDC nor the NIH comes up with one for the 30-year statistic. I decided to take the 30-year question to Google and I found the answer in a posting on an HHS site on childhood obesity by the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. Obviously, whoever penned this did not begin his or her professional life as a writer. I didn't attempt to clean it up. It reads, "Overweight and obesity in children are significant public health problems in the United States. The number of adolescents who are overweight has tripled since 1980 and the prevalence among younger children has more than doubled. According to the 1999-2002 NHANES survey, 16 percent of children age 6-19 years are overweight (see Figure 1). [1], [2],[3] Not only have the rates of overweight increased, but the heaviest children in a recent NHANES survey were markedly heavier than those in previous surveys." Hallelujah, we've come back to our good friends at NHANES and this link goes to their report. though this assistant secretary needs some help with adjectives, at least he or she included footnotes.HHS CHILDHOOD OBESITY FOOTNOTES
1. Childhood is defined for the purposes of this paper as 6-19 years of age
2. Overweight and obesity are used interchangeably and are defined as a BMI on or above the 95th percentile for gender and age (BMI-for-age). Downloaded from here. Accessed: February 2005. These terms have different connotations for adults.
3. National Center for Health Statistics. “Prevalence of Overweight Among Children and Adolescents: United States, 1999-2002” Downloaded from here. Accessed: February 2005.
Aside from my anecdotal evidence, which admittedly doesn't account for much, I keep coming back to several questions. First, why do the same organizations conduct and release studies that contradict other studies they've conducted? While the press material says that this project took four years to assemble, that doesn't mean they couldn't make last-minute changes if needed. What if one of the interview subjects or experts passed away in the interim? I bet that they would have been able to note that sort of thing. However, they go with
this 30-year figure, provided by the CDC's NHANES group covering 1999-2002 and released in 2005. Then, in a New York Times article by Tara Parker Pope published May 28, 2008, that same NHANES group from the CDC, which conducts its surveys continuously and revises results accordingly, releases findings that cover a wider sample — 1999-2006 — to the Journal of the American Medical Association that The Times said, "Childhood obesity, rising for more than two decades, appears to have hit a plateau, a potentially significant milestone in the battle against excessive weight gain among children.…The most recent data is based on two surveys — one in 2003 to 2004 and one in 2005 to 2006 — that included 8,165 children ages 2 to 19. In that group, about 16 percent of children and teenagers were obese, which is defined as having a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile on United States growth charts.…(T)he good news is that from a statistical standpoint, obesity rates have not increased since 1999. Estimates for the number of children who fall into the overweight or obese category also have remained stable at about 32 percent since 1999.…In fact, the number of children who fall into the obese category decreased from 17.1 percent to 15.5 percent between the 2003 and 2006 surveys, but the decline was not statistically significant. So the researchers combined data from both surveys to enhance the statistical strength of the numbers." Good news makes lousy scare tactics, so the documentary hung on to the older, more pessimistic numbers. The other thing that bugged me about that 30-year number
is that it covers my adolescence. I've been honest about myself — I wasn’t remotely in shape. There were people heavier than I was, but there were a lot more who weighed less. More importantly, the big concern at the time wasn't that teens could be eating their way to an early grave — the major worry was the possibility of teenage girls puking their way to an early grave. How is it that in the same era where eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia dominated the spotlight, supposedly adolescents grew obese? Those images of the pencil-thin models still permeate the media. Do adolescent girls today ignore them? Are they packing on pounds out of spite? Something just doesn't make logical sense, especially since you still hear cases about it and in another New York Times article, this one from 2008, again by Tara Parker Pope, she reported on normal-weight teens who "feel fat." Her first three paragraphs read as follows: "At a time when much of the Western world is focusing on obesity problems, even teens who are at a healthy weight may develop a distorted body image. That’s what German researchers found after surveying nearly 7,000 11- to 17-year-olds, asking them to describe their bodies. Options included far too thin, a bit too thin, just the right weight, a bit too fat and far too fat. About 75 percent of the kids fell into the normal-weight category. However, half the normal-weight girls and a quarter of the normal-weight boys still described themselves as being too fat." When I read that, do you know what, of all images, popped into my head? Greg Kinnear's overbearing father trying to guilt his young daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) out of ordering ice cream when they stop at a restaurant along the highway in Little Miss Sunshine. Sometimes, the well-meaning concern for people's health does seem to cross the line into bullying behavior.Before I move on to some segments of "Children in Crisis" that most people will agree presents ridiculous situations, I need to backtrack to an issue that I didn't get a chance to cover Monday (but which gets mentioned so often throughout The Weight of the Nation that I bet some stressed-out college students already employ the word for use in a drinking game. Before I piss people off with my conspiracy theory on that subject though, I feel compelled to raise two more of the unsourced "facts: that appear on the series as well as its web page. Let's start with this doozy of an uncredited bit of information.I think I'll bring back their little arrow.
Some experts project that by 2030, between 32% and 52% of American adults may be obese.
Well, if the authoritative "some experts" employed the tried-and-true scientific method of prediction, this undoubtedly must be a fact, right? I've seen the slimiest political campaigns offer up more solid attribution for a claim than that. I attempted the Google trick again, inserting the exact phrase but all that came back was The Weight of the Nation site, Going vaguer, I typed, "U.S. adult obesity rate in 2030." That hit the mother lode as a seemingly endless array of recent news stories, blogs and marketers covered the announced result, though each place had a slightly different take and not one that I read mentioned a range between 32% and 52%, though I might hazard a guess as to where they came up with that. The Los Angeles Times used this headline on its May 8 story: 42% of American adults will be obese by 2030, study says with a lead-in below it that read, "Though the rate of the last 30 years has slowed, it's far from leveling off, and it's going to get expensive, say experts at the Weight of the Nation conference in Washington." Now that's intriguing. The conference from which the documentary series took its name admitted a slowing a week before The Weight of the Nation aired. The makers of the documentary did have time to add this fresh statistic, but not to acknowledge the slowing rate in the growth of obesity that has been occurring since prior to the start of production on the series. The body of the L.A. Times story by Melissa Healy said, "The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030, experts
said (May 7).…The sobering projections also contained some good news, the researchers said: Obesity's growth has slowed from the record pace of most of the last 30 years. If those trends were to continue, 51% of American adults would qualify as obese in 2030. Study leader Eric Finkelstein, a health economist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said…(t)he forecast took into account a host of factors thought to influence Americans' eating and exercise habits, including the cost of groceries, the prevalence of restaurants, the unemployment rate, Internet access and the price of gas. Most important was the aging of the population, which tends to nudge many overweight adults into the obese category — and to push many of those who are already obese into "severely obese" territory. The number of severely obese Americans is expected to grow from about 5% today to 11% in 2030, the study said. The findings are based on data collected from 1990 through 2008 as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a survey by the CDC and health departments in the states." We now know someone from Duke University led the study using CDC numbers, but incorporating lots of factors the usual NHANES doesn't take into account. Where the documentary concocted the 32$ to 52% range remains a mystery, especially the 32%. The 52% could at least be a typo.Tweet
Labels: 10s, Documentary, HBO, Television
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