Category: Movies

Gone with the Wind

… premiered in Atlanta on this date 67 years ago.

Hattie McDaniel, who won a supporting-actress Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy, was not present in segregated Atlanta.

Martin Luther King, Jr., sang in the “negro boys choir” from his father’s church at the Gone With The Wind Ball the evening before the premiere.

The 2,000 tickets were $10 and up.

When the news of war is announced in the film, the audience in the theater rose to its feet with rebel yells.

Laurence Olivier reportedly proposed to Vivien Leigh on their flight from Atlanta to New York after the premiere. Their marriage lasted 20 years.

The Loew’s Grand Theater, where the premiere was shown, was destroyed by fire in 1978.

The film, however great as a motion picture, forever ruined America’s understanding of what the War of the Rebellion was all about.

The Visitor

I watched the film The Visitor this evening and recommend it wholeheartedly — a very human story told on a very human level. Moving, entertaining, graceful, bittersweet.

If you need more than that, here’s A.O. Scott’s review from last April.

“The curious thing about ‘The Visitor’ is that even as it goes more or less where you think it will, it still manages to surprise you along the way.”

Lonely Are the Brave

Albuquerqueans in particular might enjoy Lonely Are the Brave, a modern-day western filmed largely in the Sandia Mountains. Kirk Douglas is a throw-back cowboy who breaks out of jail and heads for the crest on horseback to escape the sheriff’s posse (in jeeps and helicopters). It’s in black and white and difficult to see anything in the distant shots of Albuquerque — except that there wasn’t anything anywhere close to the mountains in those days (the film was released in 1962).

Walter Matthau is the ambivalent sheriff, George Kennedy a sadistic deputy. Look for future television stars Carroll O’Connor, William Schallert and Bill Bixby.

Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo from a novel by Edward Abbey.

NewMexiKen once read that Douglas thought this was his best performance.

Body of Lies

I’m thinking A.O. Scott isn’t crazy about the new Russell Crowe, Leanardo DiCaprio flick. His review begins:

Ridley Scott’s new movie, “Body of Lies,” raises a potentially disturbing question. If terrorism has become boring, does that mean the terrorists have won? Or, conversely, is the grinding tedium of this film good news for our side, evidence of the awesome might of Western popular culture, which can turn even the most intransigent and bloodthirsty real-world villains into fodder for busy, contrived and lifeless action thrillers?

What a world

Even when the financial news is good, it speaks to the pending doom of the civilized world. Case in point:

Chief Financial Offer Keith Sherin told analysts on a conference call that he film segment saw its profit rise 40%, led by the performance of “Mamma Mia,” a movie adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan. The film has grossed more than $500 million worldwide.

MarketWatch

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

I’ve been meaning to write about Vicky Cristina Barcelona the latest flick from Woody Allen. It stars Oscar-winner Javier Bardem as the bohemian Lothario painter and Penélope Cruz as his loco ex, with Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson as the Americans who fall for his charms.

Anyway, it’s an enjoyable film, better than much of Allen’s work, though not among his very best. Bardem is believable, Cruz wonderful, and everybody else right for the role. Well written, of course, and well directed.

Mostly it’s a commercial for life in Barcelona and along the Spanish coast. By the time the film was over, we were yearning for a sidewalk cafe.

No car chases or explosions; some gun shots. PG-13.

Now that the Olympics are over

. . . you might be looking for some good movies to watch. Until a few years ago, NewMexiKen was unaware there had been a 1997 remake of the 1957 classic 12 Angry Men, a movie which tells the story of jury deliberations in a murder trial. The original is superb. Directed by Sidney Lumet (Network, Serpico, The Pawnbroker) and starring Henry Fonda as the protagonist, it is well written, exceptionally well acted, and a film worth seeing again and again.

Reginald Rose’s screenplay remains remarkably intact 40 years later in the 1997 version. Produced for the cable network Showtime, the film was directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) and stars Academy Award winners Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott. It is a surprisingly fine film in its own right, made even more compelling by comparisons with its predecessor.

 

1957

1997
Juror #1 Martin Balsam Courtney Vance
Juror #2 John Fiedler Ossie Davis
Juror #3 Lee J. Cobb George C. Scott
Juror #4 E.G. Marshall Armin Mueller-Stahl
Juror #5 Jack Klugman Dorian Harewood
Juror #6 Edward Binns James Gandolfini
Juror #7 Jack Warden Tony Danza
Juror #8 Henry Fonda Jack Lemmon
Juror #9 Joseph Sweeney Hume Cronyn
Juror #10 Ed Begley, Sr. Mykelti Williamson
Juror #11 George Voskovec Edward James Olmos
Juror #12 Robert Webber William L. Petersen

Netflix without the mail

Stream movies directly to your TV from Netflix with Netflix Online Movie Rentals.

  • Movies you watch instantly are included in a Netflix membership – no additional costs.
  • The Netflix Player by Roku is the first in a series of Netflix ready devices.
  • Choices in your instant Queue will be available to watch instantly on your TV via the Netflix ready device.
  • This device communicates with Netflix directly via the internet, allowing us to stream movies instantly to your TV.
  • $99.99 one time for the Roku.

NewMexiKen’s neighbor told me about it. He certainly seemed enthusiastic.

It is just a subset of Netflix DVDs, about 12,000 titles they say.

Bambi

. . . premiered on this date 66 years ago. Is there a sadder movie ever than this Disney classic?

Roger Ebert wrote an excellent review when Bambi was released yet again in 1988. He starts generally positive:

In the annals of the great heartbreaking moments in the movies, the death of Bambi’s mother ranks right up there with the chaining of Dumbo’s mother and the moment when E. T. seems certainly dead. These are movie moments that provide a rite of passage for children of a certain age: You send them in as kids, and they come out as sadder and wiser preteenagers.

And there are other moments in the movie almost as momentous. “Bambi” exists alone in the Disney canon. It is not an adventure and not a “cartoon,” but an animated feature that describes with surprising seriousness the birth and growth of a young deer. Everybody remembers the cute early moments when Bambi can’t find his footing and keeps tripping over his own shadow. Those scenes are among the most charming the Disney animators ever drew.

But then he questions the whole effort:

Hey, I don’t want to sound like an alarmist here, but if you really stop to think about it, “Bambi” is a parable of sexism, nihilism and despair, portraying absentee fathers and passive mothers in a world of death and violence. I know the movie’s a perennial clasic, seen by every generation, remembered long after other movies have been forgotten. But I am not sure it’s a good experience for children – especially young and impressionable ones.

Past Shock

Speaking of movie reviews, here’s an excerpt from David Denby:

Yet “The Dark Knight” is hardly routine—it has a kicky sadism in scene after scene, which keeps you on edge and sends you out onto the street with post-movie stress disorder. And it has one startling and artful element: the sinister and frightening performance of the late Heath Ledger as the psychopathic murderer the Joker. That part of the movie is upsetting to watch, and, in retrospect, both painful and stirring to think about.
. . .

The thunderous violence and the music jack the audience up. But all that screw-tightening tension isn’t necessarily fun. “The Dark Knight” has been made in a time of terror, but it’s not fighting terror; it’s embracing and unleashing it— ….

Best movie review in one-line of the day

“The legal definition of torture has been much aired in recent years, and I take “Mamma Mia!” to be a useful contribution to that debate.”

Anthony Lane

It took Leno a few more words:

“Here’s an amazing story of survival. Did you hear about this? This guy cut off his own arm using just a pocket-knife. What happened was — he had it around his girlfriend at a theater showing ‘Mamma Mia’ and he couldn’t take it anymore. He left the arm there. The arm is still there.”

Paper Clips

Below is a link to the award-winning 2004 documentary Paper Clips, the story of a middle school in a small town in Tennessee that began a project to teach its homogenous student body about diversity and the Holocaust. It’s really quite interesting, in the documentary way.

I recommend you take the time to view it, though it is 82 minutes.

The video is made possible through a new web service called SnagFilms that features documentaries in full for free, though with some annoying but quite brief advertisements. It looks promising.

July 16th

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger was published on this date in 1951. It’s sold about 60 million copies since. The following is excerpted from a longer piece today at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.

Salinger’s division hit the beach in the fifth hour of the invasion, and for the next several months Salinger saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the war, including the Battle of the Bulge. Between 50 and 200 soldiers in his division were killed or wounded every day. At the end of the war, Salinger checked into an Army general hospital in Nuremberg, suffering from a nervous breakdown. He spent several months recuperating.

It was after Salinger’s release from the hospital that he sent out for publication the first Holden Caulfield story narrated by Holden Caulfield himself, a story called “I’m Crazy.” It was published in Collier‘s in December of 1945. One year later, in 1946, The New Yorker finally published “Slight Rebellion Off Madison,” which they had been holding onto since before the war began. J.D. Salinger had finally become a New Yorker writer, something he’d been dreaming of for more than a decade.

Major John Glenn, USMC, set a transcontinental (Los Angeles to New York) speed record of 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds on this date in 1957. Average speed: 723 mph.

Will Ferrell is 41 today; Barry Sanders is 40.

Two Hollywood greats, Ruby Catherine Stevens and Virginia Katherine McMath were born on July 16th.

We know Stevens better as Barbara Stanwyck, born in 1907, she was a four time best actress Oscar nominee. Anthony Lane wrote an excellent review of Stanwyck’s work last year for The New Yorker.

And we know McMath better as Ginger Rogers, born in 1911, and an Oscar winner for best actress for Kitty Foyle. This from the abstract of a 1995 New Yorker item by Arlene Croce about Rogers.

Ginger Rogers was a star because she was unique and representative at the same time; she was complicatedly iconographic. Her very name tells us all we need to know. First of all, it’s euphonious (those three soft “g”s), and then what the first name specifies–something delicious–the last name, a half rhyme, pluralizes.

Apollo 11 left Florida for the moon on this date in 1969.

Moonlight Graham

Those who have seen Field of Dreams or read the book on which it was based, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, will remember the character “Moonlight” Graham, played by Burt Lancaster in the film.

Archibald Wright Graham (1876-1965) was an actual player, and a doctor. Graham played in one game for the New York Giants on June 29, 1905 (in the movie it was the last game of the season in 1929). Graham played two innings in the field but never batted in the major leagues; he was on deck when his one game ended.

William Randolph Hearst

… was born on this date in 1863. Was Hearst the model for Charles Foster Kane? Here is what Orson Welles had to say in 1975 (written to promote a book about Hearst and actress Marion Davies).

When Frederick Remington was dispatched to the Cuban front to provide the Hearst newspapers with sketches of our first small step into American imperialism, the noted artist complained by telegram that there wasn’t really enough shooting to keep him busy. “You make the pictures,” Hearst wired back, “I’ll make the war.” This can be recognized not only as the true voice of power but also as a line of dialogue from a movie. In fact, it is the only purely Hearstian element in Citizen Kane.

There are parallels, but these can be just as misleading as comparisons. If San Simeon hadn’t existed, it would have been necessary for the authors of the movie to invent it. Except for the telegram already noted and the crazy art collection (much too good to resist), In Kane everything was invented.

Let the incredulous take note of the facts.

William Randolph Hearst was born rich. He was the pampered son of an adoring mother. That is the decisive fact about him. Charles Foster Kane was born poor and was raised by a bank. There is no room here for details, but the differences between the real man and the character in the film are far greater than those between the shipowner and the newspaper tycoon.

And what of Susan Alexander? What indeed.

It was a real man who built an opera house for the soprano of his choice, and much in the movie was borrowed from that story, but the man was not Hearst. Susan, Kane’s second wife, is not even based on the real-life soprano. Like most fictional characters, Susan’s resemblance to other fictional characters is quite startling. To Marion Davies she bears no resemblance at all.

Kane picked up Susan on a street corner—from nowhere—where the poor girl herself thought she belonged. Marion Davies was no dim shop-girl; she was a famous beauty who had her choice of rich, powerful and attractive beaux before Hearst sent his first bouquet to her stage door. That Susan was Kane’s wife and Marion was Hearst’s mistress is a difference more important than might be guessed in today’s changed climate of opinion. The wife was a puppet and a prisoner; the mistress was never less than a princess. Hearst built more than one castle, and Marion was the hostess in all of them: they were pleasure domes indeed, and the Beautiful People of the day fought for invitations. Xanadu was a lonely fortress, and Susan was quite right to escape from it. The mistress was never one of Hearst’s possessions: he was always her suitor, and she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than thirty years, until his last breath of life. Theirs is truly a love story. Love is not the subject of Citizen Kane.

Susan was forced into a singing career because Kane had been forced out of politics. She was pushed from one public disaster to another by the bitter frustration of the man who believed that because he had married her and raised her up out of obscurity she was his to use as he might will. There is hatred in that.

Hearst put up the money for many of the movies in which Marion Davies was starred and, more importantly, backed her with publicity. But this was less of a favor than might appear. That vast publicity machine was all too visible; and finally, instead of helping, it cast a shadow—a shadow of doubt. Could the star have existed without the machine? The question darkened an otherwise brilliant career.

As one who shares much of the blame for casting another shadow—the shadow of Susan Alexander Kane—I rejoice in this opportunity to record something which today is all but forgotten except for those lucky enough to have seen a few of her pictures: Marion Davies was one of the most delightfully accomplished comediennes in the whole history of the screen. She would have been a star if Hearst had never happened. She was also a delightful and very considerable person.

The other Walter

Walter Lantz was born on this date in 1899. Lantz was the creator of such animated characters as Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, Wally Walrus and the greatest cartoon character of them all, Woody Woodpecker. Lantz was nominated for the Academy Award 10 times. He received the Academy’s Life-Time Achievement Award in 1979.

Lantz.jpg

Click on the image above to visit lantz.toonzone.net for audio and video clips and lots of other goodies.

Horton Hears a Misogynist

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar takes exception to the sexism in Horton Hears a Who (the film).

What’s especially insidious here isn’t just that the subplot was written and approved and filmed, but that since the movie has come out, there hasn’t been a popular outcry about it. That we don’t even ask why, in the years it took to make the movie, no one along the line said, “This isn’t a good message to send to our kids.” Is it because sexism is so ingrained in our society that we don’t even flinch at it when it’s shoved in our faces?

Go read what he has to say.

And click here to see a mighty big rocking chair!

Lucky 13th?

Henry Aaron began his Major League career on April 13th in 1954.

Sidney Poitier won his Academy Award on April 13th in 1964.

Tiger Woods won his first Masters on Sunday, April 13th, in 1997.

What will this April 13th bring?