Category: Film

Film news from all over

Netflixed: Almost Famous

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Almost Famous” (Cameron Crowe)

Held up better than expected on a second viewing, can this movie really be 10 years old?

Almost Famous is a 2000 comedy-drama film written and directed by Cameron Crowe and telling the fictional story of a teenage journalist writing for Rolling Stone magazine while covering a rock band Stillwater, and his efforts to get his first cover story published. The film is semi-autobiographical, as Crowe himself was a teenage writer for Rolling Stone.

The film is based on Crowe’s experiences touring with rock bands The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. In a Rolling Stone article, he talks about how he lost his virginity, fell in love, and met his heroes, experiences that are shared by William, the main character in the film. Kate Hudson earned an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of band groupie Penny Lane, while Crowe won the Oscar for his original script. Jason Lee and Billy Crudup co-star.

[Click to Netflix Almost Famous]

Speaking of the joys of vinyl records, this film’s poignancy partially based on nostalgia for a different era, an era where a suitcase full of records1 can be a talisman. If the film were set in 2009, you could not hand off a loaded iPod with the same emotional resonance.

Some Cameron Crowe maudlin moments, but nothing that gets in the way of the film’s narrative flow. Helps, probably, if the lead character’s personality (outsider, unusual family life, passionate music lover) resonates with the viewer.

There is a director’s cut, called Untitled,2 which adds some 34 minutes of footage, but as far as I can tell, this is unavailable in the US. Perhaps Dreamworks is working on a re-release?

Ebert raves:

Oh, what a lovely film. I was almost hugging myself while I watched it. “Almost Famous” is funny and touching in so many different ways. It’s the story of a 15-year-old kid, smart and terrifyingly earnest, who through luck and pluck gets assigned by Rolling Stone magazine to do a profile of a rising rock band. The magazine has no idea he’s 15. Clutching his pencil and his notebook like talismans, phoning a veteran critic for advice, he plunges into the experience that will make and shape him. It’s as if Huckleberry Finn came back to life in the 1970s, and instead of taking a raft down the Mississippi, got on the bus with the band.

[Click to continue reading Almost Famous :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews]

as does the anonymous NYT reviewer:

The power of popular music — its ability to give shape, meaning and intensity to the inexpressible emotions of daily life — is something of a motif in Cameron Crowe’s career as a director. Think of John Cusack hoisting his boombox aloft outside Ione Skye’s window in “Say Anything” or Tom Cruise hurtling down the highway in “Jerry Maguire,” spinning the radio dial in search of a song to suit his mood and happening upon Tom Petty’s “Free Falling.” Mr. Crowe has always used rock not merely as soundtrack decoration but also as a window into the souls of his characters.

In “Almost Famous,” a loose, affectionate look back on his earlier career as a teenage music journalist, Mr. Crowe has devoted a whole movie to the love of rock ‘n’ roll. The soul he lays open — a sweet, forgiving and generous one — is his own. The movie follows the adventures of William Miller (Patrick Fugit), a San Diego 15- year-old whose fairy-tale ascendance from nerdy schoolboy to Rolling Stone reporter mirrors Mr. Crowe’s own life story. But Mr. Crowe is less interested in biographical or historical literalism — he freely mixes real and fictional characters and prefers period atmosphere to period detail — than in evoking the joyful, reckless, earnest energy of rock in the years between 60’s idealism and punk nihilism.

[Click to continue reading ´Almost Famous´: With Sympathy for the Devil, a Rock Writer Finds His Way – NYTimes.com]

Footnotes:
  1. IMDb: The old records William looks through at the beginning are actually Cameron Crowe’s, saved from his younger years. [↩]
  2. Cameron Crowe wanted to call the movie this all along, but the studio balked [↩]

Fela Kuti Biopic

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Fela: The Life And Times Of An African Musical Icon” (Michael Veal)

Certainly looking forward to seeing this, whenever it gets released. Any sour mood can be alleviated by playing Fela Kuti1 at high volume and dancing around, shaking one’s hips with abandon.

Focus Features has set Steve McQueen to direct “Fela,” a feature film based on the life of African musician and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti — the subject of the recently opened Broadway musical “Fela!”


“Hunger (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]” (Steve McQueen)

McQueen, the British artist who made his feature directing debut last year on the Irish hunger strike drama “Hunger” will write the script with Biyi Bandele, based on the Michael Veal book “Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon.” Cine Mosaic’s Lydia Pilcher and Leigh Blake are producing. The musical has spurred a resurgence of interest in Fela, who died in 1997, and his Afrobeat musical style, which is a fusion of American jazz, funk and West African drums.

The musical is not connected to the film project: Focus is basing its pic on a rights package consisting of screen rights to Fela’s music and his life story, plus Veal’s book.

Fela lived large — with some 27 wives — and paid a high price for speaking out against oppression in Nigeria. In one attack on his home, Fela’s 78-year-old mother was killed after being thrown from a second-story window. Fela responded by placing her coffin on the steps of the Nigerian leader’s residence.

“Fela might be the most globally influential pop artist outside the Beatles in the last 50 years,” said Focus topper James Schamus.

[Click to continue reading Focus to film ‘Fela’ feature – Entertainment News, Film News, Media – Variety]


“Opposite People/Sorrow Tears and Blood” (Fela Kuti)

I’ve also heard rumors that all of Fela’s albums are going to be remastered and released, soon, but haven’t run across any details about the release schedule yet.

Footnotes:
  1. Sorrow Tears and Blood, for instance [↩]

Netflixed: Gomorrah

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Gomorrah (The Criterion Collection)” (Criterion)

A non-glamourous look at the working class1 of the Naples crime organization. Documentary feel, and based in reality, this isn’t a film celebrating the life of crime.

The intertwining tales of a delivery boy, a tailor, a businessman and two cocky teenagers form the fabric of this gritty and lyrical examination of the influential Neapolitan mob known as the Camorra. Peering into a multitude of social strata within present-day Naples, director Matteo Garrone’s film — a hybrid of melodrama, crime and art-film genres — was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe and a Best Documentary Independent Spirit Award. [Click to Netflix Gomorrah]


“Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System” (Roberto Saviano)

I liked it a lot. I might even pick up a copy of the book, despite not usually veering into best seller territory

From Roger Ebert’s review:

Roberto Saviano, who wrote the best seller that inspired the movie, went undercover, used informants, even (I learn from John Powers on NPR) worked as a waiter at their weddings. His book named names and explained exactly how the Camorra operates. Now he lives under 24-hour guard, although as the Roman poet Juvenal asked, “Who will guard the guards?”

Matteo Garrone, the director, films in the cheerless housing projects around Naples. “See Naples and die” seems to be the inheritance of children born here. We follow five strands of the many that Saviano unraveled in his book, unread by me. There is an illegal business in the disposal of poisonous waste. A fashion industry that knocks off designer lines and works from sweatshops. Drugs, of course. And then we meet teenagers who think they’re tough and dream of taking over locally from the Camorra. And kids who want to be gangsters when they grow up.

None of these characters ever refer to “The Godfather.” The teenagers know De Palma’s “Scarface” by heart. Living a life of luxury, surrounded by drugs and women, is perhaps a bargain they are willing to make even if it costs their lives. The problem is that only death is guaranteed. No one in this movie at any time enjoys any luxury. One of them, who delivers stipends to the families of dead or jailed Camorra members, doesn’t even have a car and uses a bicycle. The families moan that they can’t make ends meet, just like Social Security beneficiaries.

[Click to continue reading Gomorrah :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews]

Terry Gross and John Powers piece on NPR from February, 2009:

“Gomorrah” is based on a powerful book by an ambitious, young Neapolitan journalist named Roberto Saviano who saw his own father badly beaten because he called an ambulance for one of the mob’s victims. Fueled by righteous anger, Saviano did undercover reporting on the docks at an illegal textile factory, and he even waited tables at Camorra weddings. The result was a passionate, highly personal expose whose visibility annoyed the mob’s bosses, who are evidently not avuncular old fellows like Marlon Brando. These dons issued their version of a fatwa back in 2006, and three years later, Saviano, just 29 years old, is still living a life of bodyguards, armored cars and safe houses.

While Saviano’s book burns hot, he’s implicitly his story’s crusading hero. Garrone’s approach is cool, detached and almost anthropological. He knows that in a movie, Saviano’s feverish style would make “Gomorrah” exciting in the wrong way, turn it into operatic melodrama or pulp fiction.

Featuring no heroes, Garrone’s movie is pointedly anti-mythological, never more so than in its treatment of murder. “Gomorrah” is actually far less violent than “The Godfather” or “Goodfellas,” but it seems more brutal for Garrone offers no cinematically cool deaths and nobody softens the blow with catchy lines about killing not being personal, only business.

[Click to continue reading The Gritty Gangsters Of ‘Gomorrah’ : NPR]

Manohla Dargis concludes the NYT review:

I don’t want to overplay the film’s violence — it has a lower body count than the average Hollywood action flick — or underplay Mr. Garrone’s artistry. But part of what’s bracing about “Gomorrah,” and makes it feel different from so many American crime movies, is both its deadly serious take on violence and its global understanding of how far and wide the mob’s tentacles reach, from high fashion to the very dirt. There’s a heaviness to the bloodletting here, which has pressed down on this world and emptied its faces, halls and apartments of life. This is a world in which no one laughs, populated by men who are so busy killing one another that they don’t realize they’re as good as dead already.

Though Mr. Garrone doesn’t point a finger at the audience, he doesn’t let anyone off the hook. Toward the end of the film, the tailor accidentally catches sight of Scarlett Johansson on television as she smilingly promenades on a red carpet in one of the gowns he helped to make. As the announcers chatter about the gown (“an apparent simplicity, but in reality, very elaborate”), and the paparazzi scream for the star, the tailor smiles wistfully at his creation, which he and a roomful of women painstakingly hand-sewed in a gloomy factory for too many hours and too little money. It’s a cream-colored dress with a nice drape and satiny sheen, and while you can’t see the blood that went into every stitch, it’s there.

[Click to continue reading Movie Review – Gomorrah – Lesser-Known Mobsters, as Brutal as the Old Ones – NYTimes.com]

Footnotes:
  1. for lack of a better term [↩]

Reading Around on November 26th through December 1st

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected November 26th through December 1st:

  • Movie Review – Gomorrah – Lesser-Known Mobsters, as Brutal as the Old Ones – NYTimes.com – A snapshot of hell, the film takes its biblically inflected punning title from the Camorra, or Neapolitan Mafia, the largest of Italy’s crime gangs, with 100 barely organized, incessantly warring clans and some 7,000 members. Based in and around Naples, the Camorra (it means gang) smuggles cigarettes, drugs, guns and people, polluting the province with fear and worse. Unlike the better-known Sicilian Mafia, which took root in America in the late 19th century and in Hollywood thereafter, the Camorra has never had a significant presence in this country, pop cultural or otherwise. Until now, its reign of terror has been largely in reality and not on the screen, which explains why the world in this film can feel so alien: the movies haven’t yet imagined it.
  • Gomorrah :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews – The film is a curative for the romanticism of “The Godfather” and “Scarface.” The characters are the foot soldiers of the Camorra, the crime syndicate based in Naples that is larger than the Mafia but less known. Its revenues in one year are said to be as much as $250 billion — five times as much as Bernard Madoff took years to steal. The final shot suggests that the Camorra is invested in the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. The film is based on fact, not fiction.

  • This Progression of What – I’ve been writing
    These poems every day
    For many months now.
    Even though I haven’t been paid
    A single cent, I’d rather be remembered
    For this, these words,
    Over being recalled
    As an efficient
    Account executive
    Any day.


  • “Trouble in Paradise – Criterion Collection” (Criterion)

  • Trouble in Paradise :: rogerebert.com :: Great Movies – The sexual undertones are surprisingly frank in this pre-Code 1932 film, and we understand that none of the three characters is in any danger of mistaking sex for love. Both Lily and Mariette know what they want, and Gaston knows that he has it. His own feelings for them are masked beneath an impenetrable veneer of sophisticated banter.

    Herbert Marshall takes ordinary scenes and fills them with tension because of the way he seems to withhold himself from the obvious emotional scripting. He was 42 when he made the film, handsome in a subdued rather than an absurd way, every dark hair slicked close to his scalp, with a slight stoop to his shoulders that makes him seem to be leaning slightly toward his women, or bowing. His walk is deliberate and noticeably smooth; he lost a leg in World War I, had a wooden one fitted, and practiced so well at concealing his limp that he seems to float through a room.

Netflixed: God Grew Tired of Us

Seth Anderson1 Comment


“God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir” (John Bul Dau, Michael S. Sweeney)

[the book version]


“God Grew Tired of Us” (Christopher Quinn)

[Film]

After raising themselves in the desert along with thousands of other “lost boys,” Sudanese refugees John, Daniel and Panther have found their way to America, where they experience electricity, running water and supermarkets for the first time. Capturing their wonder at things Westerners take for granted, this documentary, an award winner at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, paints an intimate portrait of strangers in a strange land.

[Click to Netflix Netflix: God Grew Tired of Us]

Wow, what a moving film. Not treacle, but still caused us to weep a few times. Don’t expect the film to fill in much of the historical backdrop of the Sudan war, nor the Darfur refugee crisis, that is not contained in the scope of the movie. Instead, just marvel at the resiliency of the human spirit.

Stephen Holden of the New York Times:

“God Grew Tired of Us,” a sober, uplifting documentary that follows the resettlement in the United States of three young men uprooted as children by the civil war in Sudan, is the softer, Hollywood-sanctioned version of an earlier documentary, “The Lost Boys of Sudan.”1 A National Geographic production, directed by Christopher Quinn and narrated by Nicole Kidman in her loftiest A-student elocution, “God” won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. How could it not? Handsomely photographed and inspirational, but not cloyingly so, it is the rare contemporary documentary that doesn’t leave a residue of cynicism and outrage.

As it balances excruciating images of hardship, suffering and starvation with wry observations of newly arrived immigrants learning to use electric appliances and visiting their first supermarket, you are won over by the charm, good manners and nobility of its three subjects, John Bul Dau, Panther Bior and Daniel Abul Pach. Each is a member of the Dinka, the Christian, animist, agricultural people in southern Sudan driven from their land by Islamic government forces from the north. Except for a couple of sentences about the hasty British partition of Sudan, the film offers no historical background.

[Click to continue reading Movie Review – God Grew Tired of Us – After a Struggle to Escape Comes an Effort to Adjust – NYTimes.com]

Andrew O’Hehir of Salon.com:

“Does Santa appear in the Bible?” wonders a recent Sudanese refugee, confronting the bewildering spectacle of Christmas shopping at a mall in Syracuse, N.Y. He knows what Christmas is; it was celebrated with rituals and dancing every December in the Kenyan relief camp where he has lived for the previous 10 years. But what is the connection, he wonders, between this fat man in a red suit and the birth of Jesus Christ?

For American viewers, moments like those may be the most pungent in Christopher Quinn and Tommy Walker’s documentary “God Grew Tired of Us,” which follows a small group of Sudan’s “lost boys” into their new American lives. The young men in the film have never operated an electrical appliance or a water faucet, never been inside a building of more than one story. On their first plane voyage, they clownishly stumble on and off escalators, eat the margarine and salad dressing out of their little plastic pouches, wander through the vast corridors of airports in Nairobi, Brussels and New York in single-file amazement.

But the comedy of their journey from one world to another is not cruel. Instead it is wrenching, pathetic and noble, and along the way the three men at the heart of “God Grew Tired of Us” come to stand for more than themselves. Like all of humanity, they have come out of a pre-industrial age and into a postmodern one rapidly. For most of us in the West, the process began with the birth of our grandparents or even great-grandparents. The lost boys made the journey in two days instead of 100 years or more, but their dislocation in the world of swimming pools, supermarkets and Santa Claus is nonetheless familiar to us.

Why is it, as one of them wonders aloud, that using Palmolive dishwashing liquid does not turn everything in your kitchen green? Why is it green at all? During a tour of an enormous Pennsylvania grocery store, they commit the phrase “hoagie rolls” to memory as an important element of American culture. One man peers dubiously at a mountainous pile of waxy, green cucumbers and inquires, “Is this edible?” Another comes to understand that Americans prefer potatoes that have been cooked, sliced into fine slivers, heavily salted and stored in a colorful plastic bag.

So much history and geography is covered in “God Grew Tired of Us,” and the human story it conveys is so moving and so charged with ambiguous moral lessons, that it seems almost irresponsible to complain about it on formal or historical grounds. Let’s put it this way: This is an important film. It’s amazing that it exists, and the events it recounts are still more amazing. Everybody should see it.

[Click to continue reading Beyond the Multiplex – Salon.com]

It isn’t relevant, really, but the Chicago Bulls starting small forward, Luol Deng, is also from the Dinka tribe of the Sudan. What a difference of circumstance from the Lost Boys of Sudan.

Wikipedia:

When he was young, his father Aldo, a member of the Sudanese parliament, moved the family to Egypt to escape the Second Sudanese Civil War. In Egypt, they met former NBA center Manute Bol, another Dinka, who taught Deng’s older brother, Ajou Deng, how to play basketball while also serving as a mentor for Luol himself. When they were granted political asylum, his family emigrated to South Norwood in London, England. Deng developed an interest in soccer and basketball, and was invited to join England’s 15-and-under teams in both sports. During this time, he began his career at Brixton Basketball Club. At the age of 13, he played for England’s squad in the European Junior Men’s Qualifying Tournament, averaging 40 points and 14 rebounds. He was named the MVP of the tournament. Next, he led England to the finals of the European Junior National Tournament, where he averaged 34 points and earned another MVP award.

…

Deng is involved in numerous charities. He has been noted for his work on behalf of the Lost Boys of Sudan and other refugees. During the summers of 2006 and 2007, Luol went to Africa, Asia and Europe with the NBA for their Basketball Without Borders Tour. He is also a spokesperson for the World Food Programme. “He really does epitomize everything I had hoped for as a person and a basketball player,” general manager John Paxson said. “I think it’s one of the reasons we’ve gotten to the level we’re at this year. I’m truly proud of him. I think the world of him as a person and as a player.”

[Click to continue reading Luol Deng – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Footnotes:
  1. available at Netflix [↩]

Reading Around on November 22nd

swanksalot0 comment

Some additional reading November 22nd from 19:57 to 20:01:


  • “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” (Peter Yates)

  • The Friends of Eddie Coyle:They Were Expendable – From the Current – Politeness and bonhomie are strictly provisional, and everybody knows it, which is what gives this film its terrible sadness. In the miserable economy of power in Boston’s rumpled gray underworld, Eddie and his “friends” are all expendable, and the ones left standing play every side against the middle, their white-knuckle terror carefully concealed under several layers of nonchalance and resignation. There’s not a punch thrown, and only two fatal shots are fired, but this seemingly artless film leaves a deeper impression of dog-eat-dog brutality than many of the blood-soaked extravaganzas that preceded it and came in its wake.

    The Friends of Eddie Coyle is, in many ways, an inside job. Meaning that there’s not a minute spent orienting the view

  • Movie Review – The Friends of Eddie Coyle – ‘ The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ Is a Good Tough Movie – NYTimes.com – Eddie is not very imaginative, and he’s not a tragic hero, but as played by Mitchum he has wit and a certain dignity. In the end, even the dignity is taken away from him.

    “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” is so beautifully acted and so well set (in and around Boston’s pool halls, parking lots, side-streets, house trailers and barrooms) that it reminds me a good deal of John Huston’s “Fat City.” It also has that film’s ear for the way people talk—for sentences that begin one way and end another, or are stuffed with excess pronouns. “What you don’t know, it don’t bother you,” a friend might say to Eddie

  • The Friends of Eddie Coyle :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews – The movie is as simple as that. It’s not a high-strung gangster film, it doesn’t have a lot of overt excitement in it, and it doesn’t go in for much violence. He gives us a man, invites our sympathy for him, and then watches almost sadly as his time runs out. And “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” works so well because Eddie is played by Robert Mitchum, and Mitchum has perhaps never been better.He has always been one of our best screen actors: sardonic, masculine, quick-witted, but slow to reveal himself.

Reading Around on November 15th through November 18th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected November 15th through November 18th:

  • Apocalypse Now /Redux :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews – In a note released with the film, Coppola emphasizes that this new material was not simply shoehorned into the original version of the film, but that “Redux” is “a new rendition of the movie from scratch.” He and his longtime editor Walter Murch “re-edited the film from the original unedited raw footage — the dailies,” he says, and so possibly even some of the shots that look familiar to us are different takes than the ones we saw before.

  • Smithsonian: Making Sense of Sustainable Seafood | Food & Think – Chilean seabass from Whole Foods, courtesy Flickr user swanksalot

  • Patagonia Toothfish

  • I’m Belle de Jour – Times Online – Revealed: the woman behind the Belle de Jour blog

    She’s real, all right, and I’m sitting on the bed next to her. Her name is Dr Brooke Magnanti. Her specialist areas are developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She is part of a team researching the effects of exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos on foetuses and infants.

    From 2003 to late 2004, Brooke worked as a prostitute via a London escort agency; she started blogging as Belle de Jour — after the Buñuel film starring Catherine Deneuve as a well-to-do housewife who has sex for money because she’s bored — shortly into her career as a call girl, after an incident she thought funny enough to write down.

Michael Nolan and his Batman-like plan foiled

Seth Anderson0 comment


“The Dark Knight (Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy)” (Warner Home Video)

Michael Nolan, brother of Dark Knight director, Christopher Nolan, planned escape from the Metropolitan Correctional Center – a downtown Chicago jail – using 31 feet of sheets knotted as rope, a harness, a razor, and a metal clip for picking locks.

Metropolitan Correction Center
[Metropolitan Correctional Center – a Harry Weese joint]

Costa Rican authorities charged Nolan three years ago with murder and kidnapping in the 2005 torture and slaying of Florida accountant Robert Cohen, who allegedly was blamed for losing $7 million of a Florida businessman’s money.

“This is not a movie, it is real, you cannot give this number to anyone or I am dead,” Cohen allegedly told his daughter in a desperate phone call before he died.

Luis Alonso Douglas Mejia, a bellboy seen driving Nolan’s rented car, was convicted in Costa Rica of aggravated homicide.

In charging papers that read like a Hollywood script, Costa Rican authorities alleged Nolan posed as a wealthy Paris jewel dealer named McCall-Oppenheimer to lure Cohen to a meeting in an attempt to recover the $7 million. There was evidence the two men spent time together, attending an Andrea Bocelli concert, and ate breakfast together the day Cohen vanished, but nothing showed Nolan was directly involved in the slaying, a U.S. federal judge found in August.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Mason said Nolan could be extradited to Costa Rica — but only for using a fake British passport.

Nolan’s attorney, Zachary Fardon, called the charges “pure bunk hyperbole” at a June hearing, according to a transcript. Fardon did not return a call or e-mail seeking comment Thursday.

Though charges were never filed, Chicago police were investigating Nolan and a check-kiting scam that allegedly brought in nearly $1 million, a police source said.

The scam allegedly unfolded in 2007 when his brother was in Chicago filming “The Dark Knight,” the source said. Nolan allegedly used the connection to the blockbuster movie to cozy up to Chicago banks, sometimes bringing champagne to meetings about loans, the source said. He also allegedly promised rides or pictures in the Batmobile.

The investigation halted, though, when police learned of the federal inquiry.

A trim man who dressed casually, Nolan sometimes talked about ear and sinus problems that were supposedly the result of underwater and parachute training he said he performed as part of an elite British commando unit, said Tom Sedlacek, a suburban businessman who lent Nolan $600,000. Nolan told Sedlacek he now used his military skills running an international bank collection service and needed the loans to finish a job in Costa Rica.

[Click to continue reading Batman-like plan: Brother of ‘Dark Knight’ director planned escape from a Chicago jail, officials say — chicagotribune.com]

Metropolitan Correction Center Blues
[another view of the Metropolitan Correctional Center]

Related note, Dark Knight is still a lame movie, plotwise. The mise en scène was interesting, especially since so much was filmed in Chicago, but the film itself was a bit boring. Especially considering Memento is such a good film [Netflix], as is The Prestige [Netflix]. Insomnia [Netflix], a remake of a much better 1997 Norwegian film of the same name [Netflix], was ok, but since I had seen the original first, the remake didn’t make much of an impact.

Netflixed: Burn After Reading

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Burn After Reading” (Universal Studios)

Latest from Ethan and Joel Coen

In this darkly comic farce from Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, an ousted CIA official (John Malkovich) loses his penned memoir to a pair of moronic gym employees (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand, in a Golden Globe-nominated role) who use it to try and turn a profit. George Clooney and Tilda Swinton round out the cast of this irreverent tale of poorly executed espionage, which also earned a Golden Globe nod for Best Picture (Comedy). [Click to continue reading Burn After Reading]

Enjoyable, not deep, not their best work, not their worst. Whew, could have just twittered this evaluation of the film. In fact, this isn’t my best review either. Not my worst, not very deep, not encouraging you to stampede to rent the damn thing. I blame the weather.

Roger Ebert concurred

This is not a great Coen brothers’ film. Nor is it one of their bewildering excursions off the deep end. It’s funny, sometimes delightful, sometimes a little sad, with dialogue that sounds perfectly logical until you listen a little more carefully and realize all of these people are mad. The movie is only 96 minutes long. That’s long enough for a movie, but this time, I dunno, I thought the end felt like it arrived a little arbitrarily. I must be wrong, because I can’t figure out what could have followed next. Not even the device in the basement would have been around for another chapter.

[Click to continue reading Burn After Reading :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews]

Alfred Hitchcock – The Masterpiece Collection

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“Alfred Hitchcock – The Masterpiece Collection” (Alfred Hitchcock)

Hmm, Amazon.com is currently selling this boxed set of 14 Alfred Hitchcock films for $54, or $3.85 a disc. Not all of the included films are masterpieces, but there are several which are good enough movies for multiple viewings. Seems like a pretty good deal, actually.

With 14 films, each supplemented with numerous documentaries, commentaries, and other bonus materials, Alfred Hitchcock – The Masterpiece Collection will be the cornerstone for any serious DVD library. Packaged in a beautiful, conversation-starting velvet box, the individual discs inside come four to a case, decorated with original poster art.

No doubt opinionated fans will argue about what should fall under the rubric of “masterpiece” in Hitchcock’s body of work, but with the bona fide classics Vertigo, Psycho, and The Man Who Knew Too Much, there’s plenty of timeless movie magic here. Eye-popping transfers and gorgeous sound make this set one of the must-have releases of the year.

Should the Hitchcock fan have the energy for more after imbibing on the movies themselves, a bonus disc provides additional documentaries. These include a revealing interview in which the master of suspense discusses, among other things, how much he dislikes working with method actors, going so far as to name names (we’re talking about you, Jimmy Stewart and Montgomery Clift). In an American Film Institute lifetime achievement ceremony, the master of suspense is praised by the likes of Stewart and Ingrid Bergman, and seems to be suffering from severe boredom as celebrities pile on the flattery. Then Hitchcock opens his mouth to accept the award, delivering an endlessly witty stream of perfect bon mots that prove once again that he was a master of high comedy as well. Revealing documentaries about the making of Psycho and The Birds round out the feast of extras. The 36-page booklet, filled mostly with stills and poster art, provides little new information about the films

These are the included films

Saboteur
Robert Cummings stars as Barry Kane, a patriotic munitions worker who is falsely accused of sabotage, in this wartime thriller from Alfred Hitchcock. Plastered across the front page of every newspaper and hated by the nation, Kane’s only hope of clearing his name is to find the real villain. The script as a whole is a clever one–Algonquin wit Dorothy Parker shares a screenwriting credit, and her trademark zingers make for a terrific mix of humor and suspense. Saboteur is a pleasure whether you’re a die-hard Hitchcock fan or just someone who likes a good nail-biter. –Ali Davis

Shadow of a Doubt
 Alfred Hitchcock considered this 1943 thriller to be his personal favorite among his own films, and although it’s not as popular as some of Hitchcock’s later work, it’s certainly worthy of the master’s admiration. Scripted by playwright Thornton Wilder and inspired by the actual case of a 1920’s serial killer known as “The Merry Widow Murderer,” the movie sets a tone of menace and fear by introducing a psychotic killer into the small-town comforts of Santa Rosa, California. Through narrow escapes and a climactic scene aboard a speeding train, this witty thriller strips away the façade of small-town tranquility to reveal evil where it’s least expected. And, of course, it’s all done in pure Hitchcockian style. –Jeff Shannon

Rope
An experimental film masquerading as a standard Hollywood thriller, Rope is simple and based on a successful stage play: two young men (John Dall and Farley Granger) commit murder, more or less as an intellectual exercise. They hide the body in their large apartment, then throw a dinner party. Will the body be discovered? Director Alfred Hitchcock, fascinated by the possibilities of the long-take style, decided to shoot this story as though it were happening in one long, uninterrupted shot. Since the camera can only hold one 10-minute reel at a time, Hitchcock had to be creative when it came time to change reels, disguising the switches as the camera passed behind someone’s back or moved behind a lamp. James Stewart, as a suspicious professor, marks his first starring role for Hitchcock, a collaboration that would lead to the masterpieces Rear Window and Vertigo. –Robert Horton

Rear Window
Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist’s imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder. At deeper levels, Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director’s brilliance as a visual storyteller. –Sam Sutherland

The Trouble with Harry
A busman’s holiday for Alfred Hitchcock, this 1955 black comedy concerns a pesky corpse that becomes a problem for a quiet, Vermont neighborhood. Shirley MacLaine makes her film debut as one of several characters who keep burying the body and finding it unburied again. Hitchcock clearly enjoys conjuring the autumnal look and feel of the story, and he establishes an important, first-time alliance with composer Bernard Herrmann, whose music proved vital to the director’s next half-dozen or so films. But for now, The Trouble with Harry is a lark, the mischievous side of Hitchcock given free reign. –Tom Keogh

The Man Who Knew Too Much
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 remake of his own 1934 spy thriller is an exciting event in its own right, with several justifiably famous sequences. James Stewart and Doris Day play American tourists who discover more than they wanted to know about an assassination plot. When their son is kidnapped to keep them quiet, they are caught between concern for him and the terrible secret they hold. When asked about the difference between this version of the story and the one he made 22 years earlier, Hitchcock always said the first was the work of a talented amateur while the second was the act of a seasoned professional. Indeed, several extraordinary moments in this update represent consummate filmmaking, particularly a relentlessly exciting Albert Hall scene, with a blaring symphony, an assassin’s gun, and Doris Day’s scream. The Man Who Knew Too Muchis the work of a master in his prime. –Tom Keogh

Vertigo
Although it wasn’t a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. Shot around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, Vertigo is as lovely as it is haunting. –Jim Emerson

Psycho
For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off Psycho (and particularly its classic set piece, the “shower scene”), nothing has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, Psycho is also an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main characters–then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama’s boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman’s roadside inn for one fateful night. –Jim Emerson

The Birds
Vacationing in northern California, Alfred Hitchcock was struck by a story in a Santa Cruz newspaper: “Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Homes.” From this peculiar incident, and his memory of a short story by Daphne du Maurier, the master of suspense created one of his strangest and most terrifying films. The Birds follows a chic blonde, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), as she travels to the coastal town of Bodega Bay to hook up with a rugged fellow (Rod Taylor) she’s only just met. Before long the town is attacked by marauding birds, and Hitchcock’s skill at staging action is brought to the fore. Beyond the superb effects, however, The Birds is also one of Hitchcock’s most psychologically complicated scenarios, a tense study of violence, loneliness, and complacency. What really gets under your skin are not the bird skirmishes but the anxiety and the eerie quiet between attacks. Treated with scant attention by serious critics in 1963, The Birds has grown into a classic and–despite the sci-fi trappings–one of Hitchcock’s most serious films. –Robert Horton

Marnie
Sean Connery, fresh from the second Bond picture, From Russia with Love, is a Philadelphia playboy who begins to fall for Tippi Hedren’s blonde ice goddess only when he realizes that she’s a professional thief; she’s come to work in his upper-crust insurance office in order to embezzle mass quantities. His patient program of investigation and surveillance has a creepy, voyeuristic quality that’s pure Hitchcock, but all’s lost when it emerges that the root of Marnie’s problem is phobic sexual frigidity, induced by a childhood trauma. Luckily, Sean is up to the challenge. As it were. Not even D.H. Lawrence believed as fervently as Hitchcock in the curative properties of sexual release. –David Chute

Torn Curtain
Paul Newman and Julie Andrews star in what must unfortunately be called one of Alfred Hitchcock’s lesser efforts. Still, sub-par Hitchcock is better than a lot of what’s out there, and this one is well worth a look. Newman plays cold war physicist Michael Armstrong, while Andrews plays his lovely assistant-and-fiancée, Sarah Sherman. Armstrong has been working on a missile defense system that will “make nuclear defense obsolete,” and naturally both sides are very interested. All Sarah cares about is the fact that Michael has been acting awfully fishy lately. The suspense of Torn Curtain is by nature not as thrilling as that in the average Hitchcock film–much of it involves sitting still and wondering if the bad guys are getting closer. Still, Hitchcock manages to amuse himself: there is some beautifully clever camera work and an excruciating sequence that illustrates the frequent Hitchcock point that death is not a tidy business. –Ali Davis

Topaz
Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t made a spy thriller since the 1930s, so his 1969 adaptation of Leon Uris’s bestseller seemed like a curious choice for the director. But Hitchcock makes Uris’s story of the West’s investigation into the Soviet Union’s dealings with Cuba his own. Frederick Stafford plays a French intelligence agent who works with his American counterpart (John Forsythe) to break up a Soviet spy ring. The film is a bit flat dramatically and visually, and there are sequences that seem to occupy Hitchcock’s attention more than others. A minor work all around, with at least two alternative endings shot by Hitchcock. –Tom Keogh

Frenzy
Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film, written by Anthony Shaffer (who also wrote Sleuth), this delightfully grisly little tale features an all-British cast minus star wattage, which may have accounted for its relatively slim showing in the States. Jon Finch plays a down-on-his-luck Londoner who is offered some help by an old pal (Barry Foster). In fact, Foster is a serial killer the police have been chasing–and he’s framing Finch. Which leads to a classic Hitchcock situation: a guiltless man is forced to prove his innocence while eluding Scotland Yard at the same time. Spiked with Hitchcock’s trademark dark humor, Frenzy also features a very funny subplot about the Scotland Yard investigator (Alec McCowen) in charge of the case, who must endure meals by a wife (Vivien Merchant) who is taking a gourmet-cooking class. –Marshall Fine

Family Plot
Alfred Hitchcock’s final film is understated comic fun that mixes suspense with deft humor, thanks to a solid cast. The plot centers on the kidnapping of an heir and a diamond theft by a pair of bad guys led by Karen Black and William Devane. The cops seem befuddled, but that doesn’t stop a questionable psychic (Barbara Harris) and her not overly bright boyfriend (Bruce Dern, in a rare good-guy role) from picking up the trail and actually solving the crime. Did she do it with actual psychic powers? That’s part of the fun of Harris’s enjoyably ditsy performance.

[Click to continue reading Amazon.com: Alfred Hitchcock – The Masterpiece Collection: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane, Grace Kelly, John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, Edmund Gwenn, Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Alfred Hitchcock, Alec Coppel, Alma Reville, Anthony Shaffer, Arthur La Bern, Arthur Laurents, Ben Hecht: Movies & TV]

A good edition to any film-lovers library, in other words, with a few throw-aways included.

Reading Around on October 14th through October 15th

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A few interesting links collected October 14th through October 15th:

  • Today’s Weather: Dreary – Chicagoist – Another dark, damp, dank, dreary day for Chicago. Off and on rain showers coupled with highs in the mid 40s will give us an unseasonable chill for mid-October. If there’s any glimmer of hope, it’s that by Monday we could crack 70 degrees once more. Still, those warmer summer days are a distant memory far too soon. We dig the autumn, but were hoping for a gentler transition

  • Slightly Beyond the Shore

  • My First Look At Radio Free Albemuth – The Movie –

    About a month ago I had the opportunity to drive down to LA to see a screening of Radio Free Albemuth with director John Alan Simon. Pretty cool, I know. John wanted me to take a look at the current cut of the film before any further changes are ‘locked out’ and they begin the painstaking work of mixing and cleaning up the sound, correcting the color-timing, tweaking the special effects, and putting on the final polish.

    I really enjoyed the movie and think most Dick-heads are also going to like this film 1) it’s an independent release, so it’s free of dodgy chairs, high-speed chases, fight scenes, gun battles or Keanu, Tom, Nick, Arnold, or any other Scientologist; 2) and best of all, it’s very true to the book. While writer/director John Alan Simon was forced to cut some of the material from the novel, I think he did so in a very effective and sensitive way.

  • Mad About Mad Men – The Atlantic(November 2009) – The cognoscenti, though, have largely ignored this quiet virtue while extolling what are really the show’s considerable flaws. Ah, the media juggernaut. If Mad Men were half as good as the hype would have it, the show would be one of the best ever produced for American television. It’s both.

Reading Around on October 6th through October 13th

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A few interesting links collected October 6th through October 13th:

  • Army of Shadows :: rogerebert.com :: Great Movies – “The members of this group move between safe houses, often in the countryside. When they determine they have a traitor among them, they take him to a rented house, only to learn that new neighbors have moved in. They would hear a gunshot. A knife? There is no knife. “There is a towel in the kitchen,” Gerbier says. We see the man strangled, and rarely has an onscreen death seemed more straightforward, and final.”
  • 1000 Constellations » Blog Archive » Together In Transit – I realized yesterday While riding on a train Crammed full of people That we never really get Second chances. What we truly get Are first chances Over and over Again.
  • The Footnotes of Mad Men. Betty’s Euro Look was based on Brigette Bardot – RESOLVED: Betty’s Euro look was based on Brigette Bardot: the 26 year old ‘sex siren’ of France. Here’s my favorite work from the Bardot cannon. The movie — by Godard, set in Italy, released in 1963 — is not only super slick but it also spawned, I believe, the greatest trailer of all time. I’ve been aching to link to this.

Ian Brown and Johnny Marr and Their Soundtrack Supergroup

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Ian Brown1 and Johnny Marr2 are teaming up to create a soundtrack creating supergroup

The Guardian UK reports:

Ian Brown and Johnny Marr are to team up, recording music for three television dramas. The former Stone Roses frontman and the Smiths guitarist hope to assemble a soundtrack supergroup, possibly including Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder or even Brown’s former bandmate, Mani.

“The idea is that Johnny writes the music and I write the words and the melodies,” Brown told BBC News. Though the Mancunian legends live conveniently close together in Lymm, Cheshire, Brown admitted they will “have to bring a drummer or a bass player in”.

[Click to continue reading Ian Brown and Johnny Marr to record music for TV series |Music |guardian.co.uk]

Daniel Pemberton notes:

pop stars often produce excellent one-off soundtracks.

There’s a number of reasons for this. The first is power. As a composer, unless you have an enlightened director or producer, people rarely care what you think (when I was working on a film about drunks I suggested that I should write the score while totally legless. They didn’t go for it. But I reckon they would if, say, Shane McGowan suggested it). You’re usually hired after they’ve already cut most of the film with a “temp track”, which is basically a score cobbled together from old soundtracks. If you’re lucky, it’s just there to give a guide to the mood; if you’re not, you’ve got to copy it as closely as possible without getting sued. The reason a lot of scores sound exactly the same these days is because, half the time, they almost are. If you’re a real soundtrack nerd (like, er, me) this can ruin a halfway decent movie like Michael Mann’s Public Enemies because you’ve spotted a rip-off of the theme to The Thin Red Line (which generally gets copied mercilessly) within the first five minutes. It happens far too frequently and drives me, and whoever has the misfortune to put up with my accompanying huffing noises, nuts.

However, this isn’t going to happen when you watch something scored by a pop star. Firstly no one is going to ask them to copy the incidental music from American Beauty for the millionth time, as they’ll no doubt tell them where to stick it. Although composers will protest this as much as they can they’re also aware where their next job will come from. Pop stars don’t care – for them it’s an amusing sideline to the day job.

[Click to continue reading Ian Brown and Johnny Marr know the score |Music |guardian.co.uk]

One of these days I need to watch The Thin Red Line in its entirety. I’ve seen some of it, but not all.

Mr. Pemberton’s point is spot-on, if you hire Jimmy Page to write your Satanic film soundtrack, you’ll get what you get, and if you don’t like it, well, piss off.

Footnotes:
  1. who? oh, the Stone Roses dude [↩]
  2. The Smiths guitarist, Modest Mouse, et al [↩]

Reading Around on September 30th

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Some additional reading September 30th from 10:40 to 12:32:

  • Roger Ebert’s Journal: My Life and Times Archives – Roger Ebert is becoming more and more endearing to me1. A 21st CE man of the people… “One of my favoring pastimes, especially when I should be doing something else, is moseying around the blogs of my readers”

    I’ve never left a comment there, by the way, and probably wouldn’t – I tend to write responses to other’s posts in this space instead.

    MN King Corn.jpg

  • Total Dick-Head: The Church of Latter Day Dicks – “Why then, is the only going science-fiction author cult of personality devoted to — of all people — L Ron Hubbard?! If Scientology were pretty much exactly the same but centered around Philip K Dick, my god — I’d want in, for his secret scriptures! The lectures on cosmogony! The resonant gnostic insights that made PKD’s work so mythic!”
  • http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4509&print=1 – Specifically, the Global Cities Index ranks cities’ metro areas according to 24 metrics across five dimensions. The first is business activity: including the value of its capital markets, the number of Fortune Global 500 firms headquartered there, and the volume of the goods that pass through the city. The second dimension measures human capital, or how well the city acts as a magnet for diverse groups of people and talent. This includes the size of a city’s immigrant population, the number of international schools, and the percentage of residents with university degrees. The third dimension is information exchange—how well news and information is dispersed about and to the rest of the world. The number of international news bureaus, the amount of international news in the leading local papers, and the number of broadband subscribers round out that dimension.
  • skinless weiners.jpg
Footnotes:
  1. if that’s the right word to use [↩]

Reading Around on September 29th

swanksalot0 comment

Some additional reading September 29th from 11:32 to 20:54: