Category: Movies

Department of Fame

This takedown of Matt Dillon at Fametracker is pretty funny. It begins:

You know how behavioral scientists do studies on animals raised in captivity, and how if the first thing a newborn gerbil (or whatever) sees is a ball of twine, it’ll think that twine ball is its mother? We sometimes wish there were a Department of Fame that could bankroll a study of child pop-culture consumers, and how the stars a child watches in her formative years can imprint themselves on the child forever — make her not just feel nostalgic affection for those actors once she’s reached adulthood, but believe in their talent and defend their career missteps in the present day by making arguments that rest heavily on the work she may have watched when she was a kid. And God help that now-adult’s friends if one of those disproportionately beloved actors somehow falls ass-backward into an Oscar nomination. “See? You see?” that now-adult will say. “He is not washed up and flabby!” And the now-adult’s friends are all like, “Thanks a lot, The Academy. She’ll be dining out on this one for years.”

We know there are some of you reading this who are like, “Yeah, it’s just like my friend Betty with John Travolta. She loved him so much from Grease that she owned all the Look Who’s Talking movies, and we were all like, ‘He sucks, Betty, and he’s a Scientologist,’ and then he got nominated for Pulp Fiction and we were like, ‘Shit.’ But what does any of this have to do with Matt Dillon — whose Oscar nomination for Crash may finally get him the respect he deserves and make people take his more challenging work in the current Factotum more seriously?”

Oh, some of you. Don’t you see? Matt Dillon is John Travolta. And you are Betty.

Thanks to Jill for the link.

Taking the train to the movies

Rail Runner

NewMexiKen finally got around to seeing An Inconvenient Truth today. It’s very good and very important; go see it. Fittingly, we commuted to the downtown theater where the film is playing in a different way.

New Mexico’s new commuter rail is running this weekend for the New Mexico Wine Festival at Bernalillo. What if, we thought, we rode the train downtown, went to the theater (just across the street), then rode back to our cars near home?

It worked like a charm. Though filled to standing-room-only for the festival, the train was still comfortable and efficient — and free (until October 13). We probably saved no more than a gallon of gas, but — as we learned from Al Gore — it all helps.

And it was fun.

Go see the film even if you can’t take a train!

Update: New Mexico’s train is called Rail Runner — that’s supposedly a roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) painted on the engine (photo above). But you know, it looks a little like a fighting cock to me. Do you suppose that’s why Governor Richardson hasn’t come out in opposition to cock fighting in New Mexico?

Birthday folks

Seven-time Oscar nominee for best actress, Ingrid Bergman was born on this date in 1915. She won the award three times: Gaslight, Anastasia, Murder on the Orient Express. No, she was not nominated for Casablanca. Ms. Bergman’s last role was as Golda Meir in 1982. She died that same year on her birthday, August 29.

Charlie Parker was born on this date in 1920.

Charlie Parker was one of the most influential improvising soloists in jazz, and a central figure in the development of bop in the 1940s. A legendary figure in his own lifetime, he was idolized by those who worked with him, and he inspired a generation of jazz performers and composers. (PBS – JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns)

Parker died in 1955.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ruth Jones was born on this date in 1924.

Dinah Washington skirted the boundaries of blues, jazz and popular music, becoming the most popular black female recording artist of the ’50s.

She changed her name from Ruth Jones upon joining jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton’s band in 1943. After leaving Hampton in 1946, she began her own recording career, leading to Top 10 R&B hits in “Baby Get Lost” (No. 1, 1949), “Trouble in Mind” (No. 4, 1952), “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” (No. 4 R&B, No. 8 pop, 1959), and “This Bitter Earth” (No. 1 R&B, No. 24 pop, 1960).

In 1960, Washington also sang two No. 1 R&B duets with Brook Benton, “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes)” (No. 5 pop) and “A Rockin’ Good Way” (No. 7 pop).

Washington died in 1963 after mixing alcohol and pills. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum)

Two-time Oscar nominee for director, William Friedkin is 71 today. He won for The French Connection; he was nominated for The Exorcist.

Oscar nominee Elliott Gould is 68 today. He was nominated for a supporting role in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

And today is the birthday of Michael Jackson. He’s 48. Jackson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Looking for a job?

Maybe you could work for Netflix. How’s your manual dexterity?

Stuffing styles vary. One associate’s hands move so quickly that she seems to be a fan operating at highest speed. She is among the fastest workers, with a stuffing rate of about a thousand per hour. In fifty-seven seconds, she stuffed “Oyster Farmer,” “Elizabethtown,” “Where the Buffalo Roam,” two copies of “Brokeback Mountain,” “Hill Street Blues: Season 2: Disc 6,” “Picture Perfect,” “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” two copies of “Firewall,” “The Ice Harvest,” “Elfen Lied: Volume 1: Vector One,” “Best Motoring: Rotary Reborn,” two copies of “16 Blocks,” “Rumor Has It,” “24: Season 3: Disc 2,” and “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.”

Jobs start at $9 an hour according to an interesting “Talk of the Town” piece in The New Yorker, which also includes this detail regarding one of 41 Netflix processing centers.

After the warehouse closes, a truck returns to the post office, which accepts first-class pre-sorted mail for next-day delivery until 8 P.M. A hundred and twenty-six thousand DVDs came out of the post office in the morning, a hundred and twenty-six thousand went back that evening. Netflix is one of the ten largest users of first-class mail in America.

Acting their age

Maureen O’Hara is 86 today. Once voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world, Miss O’Hara is proabably best known now as Natalie Wood’s unbelieving mother in the classic Miracle on 34th Street; or perhaps as Esmeralda to Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Robert De Niro is 63 today. De Niro has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Raging Bull in 1981. He also won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role as the young Vito Corleone in Godfather II. De Niro’s nominations were for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings and Cape Fear.

Sean Penn is 46 today. Penn has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar four times, winning last year for Mystic River. Penn’s other nominations were for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown and I Am Sam.

After seeing Mae’s jewelry the coat check girl exclaims, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds!”
Mae replies, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.”

That’s Screen Legend Mae West in Night After Night. Ms. West was born on this date in 1893.

Bruno Kirby

Actor Bruno Kirby has died of leukemia at age 57.

Kirby was an actor we’ve often seen but seldom remember by name; he appeared in more than 60 films and TV shows. He played the young Peter Clemenza in Godfather II, Tommy Pischedda in This Is Spinal Tap, 2nd Lt. Steven Hauk (the not funny deejay) in Good Morning, Vietnam, Mouse in Tin Men, Jess in When Harry Met Sally and Ed Furillo in City Slickers.

Kirby’s real name is Bruno Giovanni Quidaciolu Jr.

Marilyn Monroe

… was found dead on this date in 1962. She was 36.

According to Joe DiMaggio biographer Richard Ben Cramer, after Monroe’s marriage to Arthur Miller had ended, she and DiMaggio had reconciled — the Kennedys notwithstanding. By 1962 they planned to re-marry. The wedding was set for Wednesday, August 8, 1962. Very private, very hush-hush.

Five days before the wedding date, on Saturday night, August 3, Marilyn died, a presumed suicide. (According to Cramer, no coroner’s inquest was held.) Marilyn Monroe’s funeral was August 8, 1962.

NewMexiKen posted an entry on the cause of Marilyn and Joe’s initial break in January 2004.

Of course, Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles at the time of Marilyn’s death, so maybe …

Ron Howard’s brother

NewMexiKen happened upon this entry in The Film Snob*s Dictionary for our favorite, Ron Howard’s brother Clint.

Cult actor with squeaky voice and enormous cranium, best known for his brief appearances in the movies of A-list older brother Ron, though more regularly employed in TV shows and B pictures, often as a Deliverance-esque hillbilly threat. Like Ron, Clint acted as a child, notoriously starring, at age seven, in one of the oddest Star Trek episodes ever, “The Corbomite Maneuver,” in which he played a babylike alien, mouthing words spoken by an adult actor.

Miami Waste

Operating budget for Miami Police Department for one year: $100 million

Production cost for the film Miami Vice: $150 million

For Some Netflix Users, Red Envelopes Gather Dust

With three Netflix envelopes sitting here for at least a week, NewMexiKen found this article at The Wall Street Journal interesting. It includes this:

Netflix Inc., which boasts nearly five million members, often trumpets how its all-you-can-eat rental model is changing the way people are watching movies. But Netflix may also be changing the way people don’t watch them. Through its Web site, Netflix makes it easy to comb through a massive catalog of 60,000 films. It offers access to everything from Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 silent tramp movie “The Kid” to recent Academy Award-winners like “Crash.” And some members admit that when browsing the Netflix backlog, they overestimate their appetite for off-the-beaten-track films. The result: Sometimes DVDs languish for months without being watched.

The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada is a fine, entertaining, amusing film, well-written and well-acted. NewMexiKen thought it was formulaic (surprise!) — girl gets job, girl succeeds at job, girl quits job — but so well done, who cares. Meryl Streep was magnicent (surprise!) and the rest of the cast does her no harm (Anne Hathaway and Stanley Tucci especially). By herself, Ms. Streep justifies the $9.25.

I did think the one real element of mystery/tension in the plot — what’s going to happen? — came and went too quickly. But it’s a comedy more than a drama, so I’m probably mistaken.

Enjoyable film.

Best line of the day about a pirate movie, so far

“Mr. [Orlando] Bloom, as is his custom, leaps about, trying to overcome his incurable blandness, and is upstaged by special effects, musical cues, octopus tentacles and pieces of wood.”

A.O. Scott in a a generally positive, more-or-less, kind of, but qualified, review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

Transamerica

It seems somehow incomplete for a blogger to view a film, enjoy it, marvel at the star’s performance, and then not mention it. Yet, I feel at a loss for what to say.

Transamerica, starring Felicity Huffman (Oscar nomination) as Stanley/Sabrina/Bree, is a movie that grows on you while you watch, perhaps because Bree grows on you — as a person, not a type. Days before a final sex change operation, Bree discovers she fathered a now 17-year-old son in New York. The road trip back to Los Angeles follows (of course, on two-lane back country roads — no one in road movies ever takes the interstates) with the boy (Kevin Zegers) assuming, implausibly, that Bree is a do-gooder church lady, and not, of course, his parent, least of all his father. Ultimately, according to the formula, the secret comes out, but by then the movie has us. We realize the film is about people and families and life and not about sexuality at all.

One-time supporting-actor Oscar nominees Graham Greene and Burt Young both succeed in small roles and Fionnula Flanagan is terrific.

The World’s Fastest Indian

NewMexiKen watched the DVD of the Anthony Hopkins film The World’s Fastest Indian last evening and found it totally enjoyable. The film tells the true story of Burt Munro, a sixty-something grandfather from New Zealand, who set speed records in the 1960s with a rebuilt 1920 Indian motorcycle — or, as he says, “motorsicle.” Hopkins is terrific as a nitro-pill taking, eccentric, hard-of-hearing, muddled, but obsessed and endearing codger. Most of the people he meets between Invercargill (“we sometimes spell it with just one l to save ink”) and Bonneville are endearing too.

Tom: Aren’t you scared you’ll kill yourself if you crash?
Burt Munro: No … You live more in five minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in a lifetime.

He must have been early

Jane Russell

Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, the wife and husband on the TV sitcom Family Ties, are both 59 today. Alex, their son on the show, was played by Michael J. Fox, who was 45 on June 9th.

Jane Russell is 85 today. She was 36D when she made The Outlaw for Howard Hughes. He discovered her at his dentist, where she was a receptionist.

Juliette Lewis is 33 today. She was 18 when she played the daughter in Cape Fear, and received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.

Most inspiring films

AFI has named the 100 most inspiring films of all time. The top ten:

  1. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE 1946
  2. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 1962
  3. SCHINDLER’S LIST 1993
  4. ROCKY 1976
  5. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON 1939
  6. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL 1982
  7. THE GRAPES OF WRATH 1940
  8. BREAKING AWAY 1979
  9. MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET 1947
  10. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN 1998