LA FILM FEST 2012 E

You’d be correct in mistaking Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) for a happy couple. All the signs are there – inside jokes, Celeste’s shiny “C & J Forever” pendant, dinners with friends, professions of love, even a special sign language – but, alas, you’d be wrong. Celeste and Jesse are not forever, in fact, they’re getting a divorce. The opening credits of Lee Toland Krieger’s Celeste and Jesse Forever(penned by Jones and co-star Will McCormack) zip us through Celeste and Jesse’s relationship – from shy happiness in high school, to high stakes sexual chemistry in college, to blissful young marriage, to now (and now is exactly when things get messy). When we meet Celeste and Jesse, the pair are still acting as if they are romantically involved – and that’s the problem. Jesse has taken up residence in the couple’s backyard cottage (his studio), but other than that, everything else is status quo – the affection, the bond, the connection – and while the two of them seem content with the situation, it unquestionably needs to change. And fast. Despite the warmth and chemistry between Celeste and Jesse, we quickly come to learn just how a seemingly wonderful relationship has ended in a broken union – Celeste is an ambitious go-getter (she’s a “trend forecaster” who takes her job seriously, and she’s been rewarded with a new book and a partnership in her firm) and illustrator Jesse is happy enough just relaxing in his studio. The cracks formed between them have brought them here – six months into their separation after a six year marriage – and the understanding is that, before they dropped the axe, things were pretty goddamn miserable. But hanging on to old relationships and old affections is just as toxic and dangerous as staying in them, and the one-two punch of an ill-advised evening of backsliding and the news that Jesse has something big going on (very) independent of his relationship with Celeste push them further apart than they’ve ever been. And they also push the always-in-control (and, to listen to her, always correct) Celeste into the sort of downward spiral we’d expect from Jesse. In Celeste and Jesse Forever, Jones exhibits more heart, charm, and chemistry than we’ve previously seen from her, particularly in her supporting television roles in both The Office and Parks and Recreation. She is a real leading lady, and that is partially thanks to the role she’s written for herself (along with McCormack) and partially thanks to her immensely appealing comic timing. Celeste and Jesse Forever might be about an irreparable relationship (the film’s clever tagline bills it as “a loved story”) and all the emotions that come bundled up with that, but it’s also very funny and very easy to get lost inside. The film features a large, recognizable cast supporting and, for all the expected roles (Eric Christian Olsen and Ari Graynor as Celeste and Jesse’s somewhat dippy, but well-meaning best friends, Chris Messina as the one non-Jesse dude who might crack open Celeste’s heart), a number of the talents are playing amusingly against type– including Elijah Wood as Celeste’s prissy partner, Emma Roberts as a Kesha-styled pop star whose career Celeste needs to help resurrect, Rich Sommer as a nice dude on a bad date, McCormack himself as Jesse and Celeste’s dim-witted pot dealer, and Chris Pine as…well, keep your eyes peeled for his very unique virtual cameo. The film adeptly juggles different perspectives and elements of Celeste and Jesse’s lives before giving over to Celeste and her own journey. While things become muddled during the film’s middle portion, these choices don’t appear to be due to equally muddled filmmaking, but seem to have been made to reflect Celeste’s own mental state – jumpy, confused, and prone to wildly vacillating between both good choices and bad experiences. Krieger does take some time to harness his tone – the first fifteen or so minutes of Celeste and Jesse are perhaps too light-hearted, and it’s jarring when things become serious (and swiftly) – but it catches its bearings and sings on beautifully. Krieger and his crew also throw in some effective touches to further their aims – reflecting mood and tone through the film’s color palette; gradually changing Celeste’s mainly black wardrobe; approximating distress through unfocused cameras, skewed angles, and low sound; outfitting the whole thing with a solid soundtrack – and the result is a well-made (and clearly well-loved) final product. The Upside: Rashida Jones turns in a beautiful, multi-faceted performance that (if anything in Hollywood is fair) should push her into a higher level of roles and films; lovingly penned by Jones and Rashida; inventively but not obtrusively directed by Krieger; hits the three h’s (and handily) – heart, humor, and honesty. The Downside: A muddled middle portion frequently reads as confusing; a tighter focus on Celeste’s story pulls us away from Jesse and his own trials; the film has trouble straddling tones in its first half. On the Side: Jones and McCormack are real-life best friends, a bond that is reflected in their singularly envisioned screenplay. On the Side, Part Two: Sony Pictures Classics will release Celeste and Jesse Forever in limited release on August 3. On the Side, Part Three: Our own Allison Loring also reviewed the film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Re-live her review HERE. Go Hollywood with all of our Los Angeles Film Festival coverage

Mary Elizabeth Winstead Talks ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ Lunacy and ‘Scott Pilgrim’ Appreciation Posted: 22 Jun 2012 04:00 PM PDT As many of you might have guessed, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is what one might call a craze-induced summer blockbuster. The United States’ 16th President hunting vampires is actually the least of the film’s bizarro nature; this is a film with a vampire throwing a horse and the weaponization of forks against confederate vampire soldiers. Making all of this a world audiences can buy into isn’t a simple task for an actor, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead and the rest of the cast  go about it as seriously as they can. Timur Bekmambetov made a very specific film, yet Winstead is acting in one of her own since, when 99% of the lunacy is happening onscreen, Mary Todd Lincoln usually isn’t around. When she is onscreen, Winstead faces another kind of challenge with her extensive makeup. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter marks another entry in Winstead’s career with a world-building director at the helm, and, speaking with us at the press day, that seems like the main appeal for projects such as these. Here is what Mary Elizabeth Winstead had to say about Timur Bekmambetov’s “idea machine” method of directing, the specificity in physical & dialog-driven action, and the strong life of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: So, when you read a passage detailing a vampire throwing a horse, is that the sign-me-up moment? Oh my God, that scene is insane [Laughs]. Most of those scenes I had no concept of what they were going to look like, since I wasn’t even there when they were shooting them. I was blown away when I saw that for the first time. You do think, “I have no idea how they’re going to do that and I have no idea how that’s going to look,” but that’s kind of exciting. There’s a mystery factor to it. Not being involved in those broader scenes, in terms of staying tonally grounded, was that helpful? Definitely. It was nice for me, because I was really in my own little movie: a historic period piece, for the most part. I didn’t have the challenge of balancing the two different tones, like the other actors. You do have the makeup challenge, though. To what degree do you have to readjust how you act? You do have to do that a little bit. It’s harder to be expressive, because you got so much stuff on your face it can be hard to make facial expressions. That’s a bit of a challenge. At the same time, it added so much for me, because I didn’t know how I was going to play someone about 20 years older than me. As soon as they put the aging makeup on, it became easier and made more sense. Naturally it just became easier. What about playing period? Was Timur pretty strict about not having modern-feeling performances? That is a challenge. There was kind of a fine line, because we didn’t want it to be too stiff or too stylized in the period dialect or tone. They wanted it to have a slight modern quality to it, so we tried to keep it a bit loose and free. It’s period, but it’s not. You’ve worked with a good amount of directors who have their own style or voice — Tarantino, Timur, or Edgar Wright. Is there a shared connection between directors like that? Definitely. I think they’re all very specific and know exactly what they want, which is wonderful. Admittedly, on a day-to-day basis, it can be be frustrating, especially with action sequences, because every detail has to be perfect. You know, you’re shooting one movement at a time, like, “Punch, cut, now move your body, do it again, and cut.” Everything is so laboriously drawn out. When you see it on screen, it’s so fast-paced and action-packed that it’s so different from your experience of shooting it. You mentioned how laborious it is hitting each beat in an action sequence. Say when you’re working off Tarantino dialogue, is it a similar process? It’s very much the same thing. We rehearsed it over and over again. We knew how every line was going to come in and which beats to hit. There was a certain rhythm to it, like, yeah, fight choreography or dance choreography. Was it the same with Roman Coppola? I just spoke to him and he came off as a bit of a perfectionist. Definitely, yeah. There are a lot of musical sequences in the film, and you can tell it’s singularity his voice, his vision, and everything is exactly the way he had it in his mind. Are you a fan of CQ? Yeah. I’m also a huge fan of his music videos and thought he had a unique voice, which was different. Even in the genre with Wes Anderson, and people like that, he’s still very set a part of that. Is that appeal of all these genre films you do, getting to work with people who create their own worlds? That’s a huge part of the appeal. You know, besides a great script, the director is really the first thing I look at it. I want to work with people who have a voice, a vision, and are standing out from the crowd. I feel like getting to have worked with people like that. When you work off material like this, there probably needs to be more trust involved than usual. What made you trust Timur to make it work? You know, I had seen his other films, and that’s a big part of it. I’m a fan of his work. Knowing his level of talent and knowing what he’s capable of is huge. Also, getting to meet him and getting to know him and seeing how kind and generous he is with actors was really wonderful. That makes you feel more comfortable on set and trying new things, and not feeling closed off and scared. Actors he’s worked with usually refer to him as a one-man idea machine. Was that your experience? Several times a day he’d come over and say, “[giving a perfect Timur impersonation] Okay, I have idea!” [Laughs] It would always be some crazy new idea that no one would think of doing. Sometimes it would mean we would have to change everything that day or deciding a scene belonged earlier in the script. Like, he would decide a scene needed Abraham to be in his early twenties, and not his forties, so all the costumes and sets would have to change. People would be scrambling to try to make the idea work, but it would always be worth it. At the end of the day, he would always be right. It’s nice to know when you’re putting the work in and with all the stress that, at the end of the day, it’s going to be for the benefit of the film. He’s always thinking for what’s new and what’s different. There’s certainly parts of the script that didn’t change, but his ideas on how to approach a scene would be different. He would came up to me before a scene where I’m comforting Abraham and playing the good wife, and he told me, “Play it like you hate him, like you hate the sight of him.” [Laughs] It was great. I loved that. There’s a a little of Mary Todd Lincoln in the book we don’t see the movie. Were the any ideas from Seth’s story or from research that really informed your performance? I mean, everything that was in the book was all true to real life events. After reading the book, I went out and bought some books, to see how it matched up to what really happened. I saw it all did really happen, and I delved further into that. I learned so much about her, what she was like, and what their relationship was like. It was fun to read about, because she’s an incredible woman, and I hadn’t known that before. The more I learned about her, the more I realized the movie was portraying her accurately. Was it a similar experience to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, where you delved into the comics and even used the littlest of details? Definitely. We all referenced the books so much, from the actors to Edgar. We all had the books on set, and we would be look at them from scene to scene. Even our facial expressions and head movements would try to reflect what was drawn on the page. That was really, really specific. Is it gratifying to know that movie’s never not on HBO now? It’s so great! I love it. I love that it plays once a month at the New Beverly, and there’s always a line of people outside before. The audience keeps growing for it, and that’s great. I haven’t revisit it in a while, but usually when it’s on HBO, I’ll watch it for five minutes or so, because it just makes me happy. Even now I just can’t change the channel too quickly. I have to get a little bit of it. I never used to get stopped or recognized for that movie, but now it happens more often. It’s, like, “Wow, how cool is it to have a film people are still discovering and loving two years later?” Especially since the internet now is so focused on the movie of the week now, that must make it cooler. I never really cared about those things, but now I care even less about those weekend numbers. They don’t mean anything in the long run. I think Scott Pilgrim is going to be appreciated for years to come, and nobody’s going to remember how much it made opening weekend. Is there a big change in work ethic from films like Scott Pilgrim and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to Smashed? Oh, it’s a huge difference. [Laughs] It’s almost not even the same job, you know? I love them both, but I need to experience both of them at different times. It’s nice to go from one to the other. They’re different experiences. Doing Smashed after several bigger films was very cathartic, to have a very different energy on set. Roman Coppola made A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III sound pretty surreal. How do you describe that movie? It’s basically about this man going through a bit of a crisis, and it’s shown through his perspective and what’s going on in his head. He’s quite imaginative. It takes place in the 70s, but it’s highly-influenced by 1930s musicals. There’s a lot of musical numbers, fantastical set pieces, and things like that. It’s very whimsical and sweet. Did all that call for a more heightened performance? Well, it’s always different, and it depends on what it is. This one was so heightened that you had to go over the top and have fun with it. I’m in a fantasy sequence where I play this dominatrix military type of office, calling out commands to other women. In his head, that’s what he thinks women are like when men aren’t around. Of course, he’s totally wrong and it’s totally ridiculous. You just have to go with it and chew the scenery. — Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is now in theaters. The “Talk Score to Me: Emerging Filmmakers on Collaborating with Composers” panel at the Los Angeles Film Festival was an interesting concept that brought together up-and-coming filmmakers with the composers who created the original (and affordable) music for their respective short films. ASCAP and Project Involve put together a Composers Workshop that gave these four filmmakers (Erin Li, Mason Richards, Susana Casares, and Aaron Celious) the opportunity to select from eight different composers through a “speed dating session” to decide who they would want to collaborate with on their films. The guideline for their films was “California Stories” that took on the idea of democracy. Each filmmaker took this idea in a different direction with four shorts that each tackled this topic, but in very unique ways. Moderated by composer Art Ford, each director screened their shorts and then took to the stage with their respective composers to explain their different processes and experiences working together. The first short was Chasing Penelope by Casares, which told the story of a young girl hoping to go to the Hollywood Walk of Fame to see her idol Penelope Cruz, but who is deterred when her older brother’s own selfish agenda for the afternoon gets in her way. Composed by Kevin Teasley, the first task on this project was creating an original piece of music to replace the temped in Rihanna track that had been placed in the first scene. Teasley needed to create a song that gave the same fun, young, and hopeful feeling the pop star’s song did and Casares confirmed that the piece Teasley created succeeded in establishing both the tone of the film while also defining the character featured in that scene. Richards worked with composer Robert Allaire on his short Garcia’s Guest that explored the world of a sad and lonely man dealing with the death of his wife and child. Featuring mainly underscore, Allaire and Richards seemed to have a seamless working relationship (having “cheated” and actually met prior to the workshop). Allaire said the two pretty much consistently agreed on where to place music and the only place they differed was in the last scene where Allaire had planned on putting music, but Richards preferred to let it play without (and Allaire admitted it did work better that way.) Teasley quickly jumped in to add that, as composers, they naturally want to put in more music, but it is helpful to work with a director who knows when music sometimes isn’t needed and allows for those equally pivotal moments of silence. Composer Dan Mufson added to this point saying that with Li’s film (To The Bone) he created a cue for a scene that even he later realized was unnecessary, and luckily Li agreed with him. To The Bone featured two young children, a brother and sister, working alongside their father on a farm and the consequences of Valencia (Namoie Feliu) admitting to an inspector that she and her brother were not the legal working age of twelve. A simple story, the short did not require a lot of music and Mufson and Li began the composing process by having Mufson play Li various instruments until they found the right sound for the film (which ended up being a mandolin/guitar combination). The final short was The Grizzly by Celious about a nanny trying to care for her boss’ two children as well as her own son. The juxtaposition between her life and that of her employers’ drives the film and when she comes face-to-face with the decision to be there for her chargers or her own flesh and blood, we see that struggle between these two classes. Composer Sarah Schachner infused this story with unexpected string cues giving The Grizzly its distinct sound and texture. Celious admitted that he basically left the music decisions up to Schachner who went off his temp score that featured a lot of Buena Vista Social Club to come up with the underscore she created. While this opportunity to select from a pool of talented composers is not the norm for most filmmakers, Allaire and Richards proved that if you come across someone you would want to work with, you can reach out to them directly and develop that relationship on your own. Regardless of how they all came together, each pairing proved that the effect of music in a film is paramount and elevated each from static rough cuts to the well-formed shorts that showed on the big screen. Go Hollywood with all of our Los Angeles Film Festival coverage         Obviously: Without a Leading Lady or An Official Green Light, Warner Bros. Reportedly Puts ‘Thin Man’ Remake On Hold Posted: 22 Jun 2012 01:00 PM PDT There hasn’t exactly been a fire under the tails of most fans of W.S. Van Dyke‘s classic take on Dashiell Hammett‘s The Thin Man to see a new version of the film starring Johnny Depp, and apparently that attitude has carried over to the actual production. Deadline Bay Ridge reports that they’ve heard tell that Warner Bros. is “pumping the brakes” on the remake, which is set to star Depp, bedirected by Rob Marshall (raspberry-blowing noise here), and come with a script by David Koepp. The outlet reports that the production is being put on pause for a number of no-duh factors, including their protracted and so far fruitless search to find a Nora Charles to Depp’s Nick Charles, a budget that apparently has gone over $100m, Depp’s preference for taking some time between films, and the big one – the film hasn’t been greenlit yet (the one fact that WB confirmed to the outlet). But Deadline spitballs on another possible reason – that Warner isn’t happy with the box office performance of the Depp-starring Dark Shadows, which seems like a potential black mark against the actor, until you go back and look at the performance of other recent Depp-starrers. Between his Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Alice in Wonderland, Rango, and a few others, Depp’s films have made over $2b since 2005 alone. He’s still box office magic, no matter the missteps of Dark Shadows. In any case, Marshall is reportedly moving on to another passion project in the interim – his Into The Woods - and Depp is likely kicking it on an island somewhere, counting his money. Do you have any interest in this remake? Over the past few years, the idea of the traditional “nuclear family” has changed from a father, a mother, and 2.5 kids to any number of variations from two dads to two moms to a mom and two dads. Televisions shows like Modern Family and next season’s The New Normal have embraced this idea and show audiences on a weekly basis that no matter who makes up a family, at the end of the day, love is love. Gayby tells the story of a woman (“hag since birth” Jenn, played with aplomb by Jenn Harris) and her gay best friend Matt (Matthew Wilkas) who would both like to have a child and decide to do so together. Instead of going the ol’ turkey baster route (at least at first), the two agree to do it the “old fashioned way” to create their gayby. With Matt finding himself recently out of a long-term relationship and (unsuccessfully) getting back into the dating scene, both he and equally-single Jenn decide to try online dating. Things are made only more complicated when Jenn is forced to move in with Matt while her apartment is being painted, by her boss’ brother Louis (Louis Cancelmi) no less. As Jenn and Matt try and find new romantic relationships for themselves, they never stop their quest to have a baby together. After weeks of trying, the pregnancy test comes back positive, but thanks to their accelerated dating lives (and a box of expired condoms), things become even more complicated. Filled with colorful and hilarious characters (including writer/director Jonathan Lisecki himself as sassy Nelson) there is no shortage of laughs here as Jenn and Matt deliver (ha!) the heart. Girls fans will be excited to see Adam Driver (as one of Matt’s friends, Neil) and Alex Karpovsky(as one of Jenn’s failed dates, Peter) acting as near versions of their Girls’ characters with Neil a starry-eyed romantic and Peter as an up-front realist. While some of the more over-the-top characters could be considered caricatures, Lisecki keeps things balanced by making both Jenn and Matt level-headed (if slightly lost) individuals who each have a sassy gay side kick to play off of (and the moment those two side-kicks encounter one another is one of the best scenes in the film.) Lisecki smartly makes the film about more than just having a baby as Jenn and Matt both work to fulfill their career and relationship aspirations at the same time rather than unrealistically (and misguidedly) putting their lives on hold for the singular hope of creating a new one. While some of their decisions may seem naïve and short-sighted, both Jenn and Matt are always honest with themselves and each other and prove that is what it truly takes to be a family. Life is complicated, but so are relationships, and Gayby proves that with good friends, laughter, and being honest about what you really want, anything is possible. And there is no harm (at least not too much) in having a little fun along the way. The Upside: An incredibly funny look at modern relationships and families from a distinct voice that proves you do not need to follow “the rules” or other people’s preconceived notions to find love, happiness, and fulfillment. The Downside: The scenes with Jenn’s sister Kelly (Anna Margaret Hollyman) seemed a bit out of place and ended up slowing down the narrative rather than helping to move it along. While it is Kelly who provides the catalyst that forces Jenn to get her life back on track, even that pivotal moment felt out of step from the tone and pacing of the rest of the film. On the Side: Harris was not the original choice to play Jenn, but when the original actress had to drop out of the project, Lisecki cast her since she and Wilkas are actually best friends in real life making their chemistry together on screen all the more natural and honest.

LA FILM FEST 2012 D

LAFF 2012: Inside ‘The Newsroom’ With Aaron Sorkin

Please read this article with caution as it does contain plot details that some may consider spoilers for the first episode of HBO’s The Newsroom.

After screening the pilot episode (“We Just Decided To”) of Aaron Sorkin’s new show The Newsroom, the Los Angeles Film Festival audience was treated to a Q&A session which featured Sorkin himself along with executive producer Alan Poul, director Greg Mottola, and moderated byMadeleine Brand (The Madeleine Brand Show.) Anyone who has attended a Sorkin Q&A (or seen the man speak) knows that it is the equivalent of being shot out of a cannon. Sorkin’s signature fast-talk does not just live on the pages he writes, it is also how Sorkin speaks himself.

It was clear that whatever Sorkin and Brand had spoken about prior to coming into the theater had left them both riled up. Brand (much like the Northwestern professor does to Jeff Daniels’ character, Will McAvoy, in the first scene of the premiere episode) refused to let Sorkin get away with non-answers or quips. Brand continuously pushed him until Sorkin, the man of a million words, let out an exasperated breath… and then jumped right back in.

The Newsroom’s first episode takes many twists and turns as Sorkin establishes these characters (who all embody his signature mile-a-minute speak), but the news itself focuses on the Louisiana oil spill back on April 20, 2010. While there are certainly moments of walk (or even run) and talk, the first scene (a portion of which can be seen in the show’s promos) has Will ripping into a female co-ed at a rapid fire pace without ever leaving his seat. While the staff are constantly running around to compile the news (sometimes hilariously caught doing so in the background of the broadcast), it is Will who sits stationary to report it, giving The Newsroom that combination of movement and stillness that proved to be both captivating and invigorating.

Here are the 19 things we learned during “Developing Story: Inside the Newsroom” conversation and panel.

1. Sorkin likes to write romantic and idealistic shows, not gritty ones. Sorkin said that he knows The Newsroom will get compared toNetwork, but he pointed out that Network was a cynical look at television whereas The Newsroom is an optimistic look at news television.

2. Sorkin wishes we could go back to the “golden age” of news reporting when the most trusted man in America was an anchorman. In this case, Sorkin was referring to Walter Cronkite. He went on to say that we used to have a firewall between entertainment and the news, but now with ratings driving everything, that firewall no longer exists.

3. Mottola (who directed this first episode) said his main goal was to “do with picture what Sorkin does with words.” Mottola approached Sorkin’s long, dialogue heavy scenes as acts to be broken up through various cuts and camera angles (all with a degree of experimentation when filming this first episode to see what worked best.) He said he wanted that energy and the surprising turns that appear in Sorkin’s writing to also be reflected in his direction as well.

4. The two pundits featured in the first scene were originally going to be played by real people from the left and right, but the dialogue overlapped so much, Sorkin knew they would need actors not “stunt casting.” In that moment, Sorkin decided that no one would play themselves on the show outside those featured in the real news footage. He said the idea of putting real pundits into that first scene would be like “sticking myself into a Lakers game.”

5. The opening scene was the last one written.

6. Sorkin writes every episode himself, but does so with a staff made up of experts to give him “crash courses” on topics he may not know about. Sorkin laughed that he is almost always writing about things he knows nothing about.

7. Sorkin relies on Poul and Mottola as script editors. He joked that if the first episode were left in only his hands he would have written a “long speech” in that first scene.

8. Mottola said it is helpful to have that singular voice. Many have compared Sorkin’s words to music and Mottola repeats that idea here saying he would approach Sorkin’s scripts like you would score. There is room for creative input, but at the end of the day, “score is score” and any changes would mess up the tempo Sorkin had created.

9. When Sorkin asked if Daniels would feel more comfortable delivering his extensive dialogue during the news scene via cue cards, Daniels responded by reading the news stats to him backwards. Mottola credits Daniels with setting the bar high as his character has the most dialogue, but he is always on top of it, forcing the rest of the cast to “keep up with Jeff” until everyone knew their lines backwards and forwards as well.

10. Sorkin credits his actors for making his long speeches and verbose dialogue bearable. He said that while he can put it on the page, it is up to the actors to deliver and perform the lines with an appealing and interesting style that keeps audiences entertained.

11. Mottola confirmed that the sets are real with a working newsroom and control room. Sorkin did not want the actors performing to playback so everything you see on screen from Mackenzie (Emily Mortimer) producing Will to Maggie (Alison Pill) giving him stats is filmed in real time with the actors actually reacting to each other.

12. There will be ten episodes this season and they are all locked. The first episode will seem a bit long and that’s because it is, clocking in at a total of one hour and fifteen minutes. Sorkin said he gave much more thought to the full scope of this show’s arch this time around and the season resembles the three acts of a movie. After this first episode, we are in the first third of the three acts. Since the show is completed, Sorkin said it allows him to avoid “writing for change” where one finds themselves writing in response to audience reactions to episodes.

13. The show will cover eighteen months in its first season.

14. Sorkin knows people will dislike the show because of its politics (much like they did with The West Wing), but he views the show as a “swashbuckling fantasy against a real backdrop.” Sorkin wanted to make the show balanced since is something he thinks should be a priority of a news program. On The Newsroom, if someone says something bad about the Democrats, something bad must also be said about the Republicans.

15. There is a Don Quixote reference made in the premiere episode and Sorkin admitted he reads that book “like other people read the Bible.” He went on to joke that he would be honored if people even considered him the donkey of the show, continuing to use the Don Quixote metaphor.

16. Just before giving up on the idea of a newsroom drama, Sorkin came up with the idea to make the show a “period piece.” Sorkin had been spending time in newsrooms, hoping something would happen to inspire him, and just as he was about to write the project off, he noticed that he had been staring at the spill cam for the 2010 oil spill. It was in that moment he decided to make the show a “period piece” and set it through past news events. Sorkin never wanted to make up fake news, but he also knew he would not know the news six months before it happened so the idea of setting the show back a few years would allow for the news to be real while the fictional characters could be “that corner of Camelot.” This also allows the audience that added fun of knowing things the characters do not.

17. The Newsroom starts out like a normal show, but with the reveal of the breaking news story, you suddenly realize that the show is actually set two years in the past. Using real news stories also allowed Sorkin to show the behind-the-scenes process of how people who give us the news get it themselves.

18. Jesse Eisenberg has a guest-starring role in the first episode. As the voice of Eric Neal (real life Minerals Management Services inspector) and Sorkin noted that this would be the only instance on the show that an actor would play real person. Sorkin added that everything Eisenberg said as Neal in the interview was real and was pulled from the actual interview Neal did (only Neal’s interview was conducted weeks after the spill, not moments after the news broke.)

19. Sorkin’s main goal for The Newsroom is to entertain audiences. He noted that there is a plaque on the studio they film in commemorating The Monkees (who also filmed there) and Sorkin claims their goals are “exactly the same” as The Monkees – they simply want to entertain.

While it is no question that he can talk, Sorkin is also a master at taking any question (whether from Brand or an audience member) and giving answers that are incredibly interesting and layered, elevating the questions themselves through his responses.

The Newsroom will premiere on HBO this Sunday, June 24th, at 10pm.

SCREEN RANT - THE WALKING DEAD

Along with the enormous fan base enjoyed by The Walking Dead – in both television and comic book formats – comes a vocal group of detractors looking to air their displeasure at aspects of the show they may find annoying or incomprehensible. One facet that constantly earned the derision of zombie fans everywhere was the characterization of Carl (Chandler Riggs), and his increased irresponsibility – even while facing mortal danger.

Carl’s inability to remain in one place (like the house) or under the less-than-watchful eye of his mother, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), became such a constant in the show that it – along with many other facets – led to the creation of a number of Internet memes. While most fans were laughing, many called for the removal of Carl and Lori from the show based on the characters’ flagrant ineptitude at surviving in a fictional zombie apocalypse.

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Well, fans, executive producer Glen Mazzarra has heard the complaints, and in a recent interview with TV Guide, says the days of Carl wandering in and out of dangerous situations, or inadvertently contributing to the deaths of righteously indignant characters, are at an end. What exactly brings about this change in character is unknown; perhaps Carl has learned from his blunders on Hershel’s farm, or perhaps he comes to realize that in a world where the dead roam the streets and people like The Governor (David Morrissey) exist, it’s simply time to do away with childish behavior.

Mazzara stated:

“We’re interested in exploring Carl as a child soldier in this war against the walkers. He becomes a very, very effective, strong part of the group. He’s no longer the young child who needs to be cared for and who needs to be minded. That Carl is gone.”

While many might cringe at the term “child soldier,” the intent is clear: Carl’s season 3 story arc will revolve around him being a productive member of the group that his father Rick (Andrew Lincoln) is trying so hard to keep alive. Whether or not that will do anything to quiet critics of the character is another question entirely, but Mazzara would like to offer some explanation for Carl’s actions.

That's some good work, Carl

In a separate interview with The Los Angeles Times, Mazzara pointed out that the writers took a risk portraying Carl the way that they did, and at the end of the day, the littlest Grimes is just a boy, prone to do foolish boy things. Mazzara said:

“Everyone wants to know why Carl’s not in the house. Well, it’s boring to sit in a house. And he’s a little boy and he wants to mix it up and stuff. And he’s walking through the woods and finds a zombie trapped in the mud and he starts doing what any Huck Finn would do and starts throwing rocks at the monster. And then later that is the same zombie that pulls itself free and kills Dale. And the writers were very nervous about that, you know? It feels earned, but it’s a risk. Because Dale is a beloved character and if this other character is involved and responsible for that death, is the audience going to now hate Carl? But I thought the story was worth the chance.”

Season 2 wasn’t without its faults, but it did noticeably pick up in later episodes – which should be credited to Mazzara’s steering of the ship. Also, the showrunner’s willingness to address the concerns/complaints of fans without simply kowtowing to the masses is a sign that season 3 of The Walking Dead is likely in the right hands.

-

PLANET FURY - BRAVE

Brave (2012)

Directed by: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, Steve Purcell
Written by: Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman, Irene Mecchi
Cast: Kelly Macdonald, Julie Walters, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane, John Ratzenberger

It isn't easy to learn what it is to be Brave.

Such it is with Merida (Kelly Macdonald), a young princess living in the Scottish highlands somewhere in the 10th century. Her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), has spent a lot of energy training the girl to be a proper princess. From oratory lessons, to etiquette and cleanliness, to being demure "perfection", Elinor has strove to give her daughter what she sees as the necessary skills for the young girl to thrive.

As can be expected, Merida doesn't really want the future planned for her by her mother. The girl loves nothing more than thundering about on her horse and shooting arrows at various targets; a practice not really in line with Elinor's vision of approved princess behavior.

This conflict comes to a peak when Elinor calls together the clans, so that their sons may compete for the honor of winning Merida's hand in marriage. This is according to custom. Merida is outraged, and so a mother/daughter battle ensues, with Merida pushing towards revolt at every turn. This culminates when Merida realizes the rules of the competition are that the "first born" from each clan are allowed to attempt to win her hand, and thus finds a loophole which allows her to join the contest herself to win her own freedom.

However, this theme I've describe - a young girl battling to choose her own path instead of following her mother's wishes - is not what Brave is really about. Sure, it is a subtheme, but it is not the theme. Midway, Brave takes a marvelous turn that moves it towards something much more moving and powerful.

Merida stumbles upon a witch in the woods. This is a nice, bumbling sort of witch that doesn't necessarily seem to be trouble. Merida manages to strike a deal to win a spell from the witch that will supposedly "change her mother". She hopes this means "change her mind", but she doesn't realize that the spell is a bit more literal than that (as spells often are). What the spell does is transform her royal mother into a lumbering bear; a fact that is extremely complicating considering her father, King Fergus (Billy Connolly), lost his foot in a fight with a bear and now attacks the animals on sight. Merida must somehow hide her mother and discover the secret to removing the spell before two days time pass and she is a bear forever - or at least until the king discovers her and kills her.

This - marvelously, wonderfully, unexpectedly - is what Brave is about. It is a mother/daughter film, and it finds its heart in exploring the conflicts and love that exist in such a bonding relationship. The issues of a young girl choosing her own path are touched upon, but are really done with a winking and dismissive touch which acknowledges the well trodden nature of that subject. What is really at stake here is something more fundamental; the love and loyalty between child and parent that can be rent asunder by stubborn pride.

This is a deeply emotional and family oriented theme; however, it is handled with all of the joy and humor that can be expected from a Disney and Pixar film. The Scots themselves are an uproarious lot, particularly in the scenes of the various clans competing with - and beating the crap out of - one another. The humor is all done with exuberant style, and dabbles with Scottish stereotypes (such as one young man whose accent is so thick that no one can understand him) as well as good old-fashioned slapstick. While certainly for all ages, Brave does have humor for everyone, including one moment involving a small bear diving into a woman's cleavage that admittedly set me to laughing out loud.

While Brave can certainly be enjoyed by all members of attending family, it does have a special place for mothers and daughters. I honestly cannot recall any other Disney film that specifically related itself to this very special family bond. Brave is filled with great style, humor, beauty, and heart; go see this movie.

CLASSIC FILMS SHOWCASE 5

CRACK IN THE WORLD (1965)

Scientists at the Inner Space Project (headquarters for which seem to be located somewhere in West Africa) have plans to shoot a nuclear missile into the earth's core to tap its magma as a new power source. The head honcho (Dana Andrews) is gung-ho, but his younger protege (Kieron Moore) has serious doubts, worried that the earth's crust has been weakened too much by nuclear testing. Stuck between these two is the lovely Janette Scott, currently married to Andrews, but the former lover of Moore. Andrews wins the day when the project is given the go-ahead by the British government; the missile firing is successful, but soon a series of strong earthquakes are triggered in the vicinity and it's discovered that a deep fissure has opened in the ocean floor which could rip the planet apart. Like many a sci-fi film of the 50s and 60s, a romantic triangle serves as the primary subplot; this one has a shade more meat on it than most. Andrews is older but still looks like a realistic mate choice for the much younger Scott; her main concern is that she wants a child; his main concern, which he hides from her, is that he's dying of cancer. Moore (relatively hunky for a British B-actor of the era) is bland but young, healthy, and proven right in his concerns over the project. This had a decent budget for the time, back in the pre-Star Wars days when sci-fi films never had lots of money to play with, and it looks good with fine sets and good cinematography. It skimps on the special effects until the end when we get some good miniature work. The uncertainty about where the film is set is irritating--people keep jumping into helicopters and heading off to talk to a government minister (Alexander Knox, good as always) and zipping right back to the project. I first thought the project was in Australia, but when we see a map of the quakes, it seems clear that the missile must have been set off in Africa. The ending was a good idea that could not be well realized on screen back then, though with today's digital effects, it would be easy to pull off now. Extra points for having two leads mentioned in the opening song of Rocky Horror. [Streaming]

Saturday, October 08, 2011

FRANKENSTEIN 1970 (1958)

In order to raise money to buy some nuclear power equipment, Baron Victor Frankenstein (Boris Karloff) has allowed a team of filmmakers onto his estate in Germany to film a horror movie. The director (Don Barry) flirts with the leading lady, which pisses off the script girl, who happens to be his ex-wife. Gottfried (Rudolph Anders), the estate overseer, knows the Baron's background—he was tortured during the war, resulting in the scarring of his face, and was forced to take part in terrible Nazi experiments; now Gottfried is worried that Frankenstein is secretly using his new equipment to continue his ancestor's experiment with creating life. (Well, of course he is; his name is Frankenstein.) The Baron seems to be generally friendly and agrees to do a cameo in the film, and even agrees to a live TV feed from the castle, but when folks start disappearing—first Shuter the butler, then the script girl, then a photographer—Gottfreid fears the worst. Yes, the Baron has reanimated the monster, and needs body parts (brains, eyes, etc.) to complete it. When the leading lady goes missing, the director calls in the police and it's not long before the Baron gets his punishment for tampering in God’s domain.

This film is set in 1970 only because the filmmakers thought that personal nuclear reactors would be readily available by then; otherwise, there is no attempt made at futurizing things, though this might be the first Frankenstein movie that does have a relatively modern-looking lab. The screenplay has potential (the Nazi background, the romantic triangle tension) but the characters are flat, and even the usually reliable Karloff doesn't seem happy here, going through his paces slowly and with little spark. The opening, a creepy monster chase through a dark woods, is nice but it turns out to be just the crew shooting their film. Another good scene involving Karloff delivering what seems to be a madman’s soliloquy is another fake-out. The monster is disappointing, basically a big mummy with a boxy head and no eyes, though the last shot of the film, when the dead monster's face is unwrapped, provides one glimmer of what might have been with a bigger budget and more enthusiasm from the filmmakers. The film does look good in widescreen format. [DVD]

Thursday, October 06, 2011

THE LEOPARD MAN (1943)

In a small New Mexico town, nightclub singer Jean Brooks and her manager/boyfriend Dennis O'Keefe concoct a publicity stunt: in the middle of an act by dancer Margo at an outdoor cafe, Brooks comes strutting out with a leopard on a leash and sits down at a table. Margo, not easily rattled, dances toward the leopard and (literally) shakes her maracas at it. That spooks the beast which runs off into the night. The leopard was on loan from Abner Biberman and O'Keefe feels bad about the incident, but he feels worse when later that night, the animal kills a young girl just outside her family's home. A strolling fortune teller (Isabel Jewell) keeps foreseeing doom for Margo, who just laughs at her. Soon, however, the leopard has struck again, attacking a girl who was accidentally locked in a graveyard. O'Keefe and Brooks feel guiltier, but when Margo finally does meet her death in a third brutal attack, O'Keefe tells the local sheriff that he thinks a human being is behind it all; sure enough, Biberman finds the leopard which had been shot dead days ago and could not have caused the last two deaths. Brooks volunteers to be the bait in a plan to bring the killer out in the open.

This is generally considered one of the weaker of the Val Lewton B-horror movie classics of the 40's, though it has a famous shock scene in the killing of the first girl which rivals the famous pool scene in CAT PEOPLE. Young Teresa (Margaret Landry) is sent out at night by her mother to get some cornmeal. She is scared of the dark, but nevertheless goes across town to get the food, and after a couple of false scares, comes upon the leopard. She races home, but when she gets to her door, it's locked and her mother, assuming the girl's screams are out of baseless fear, takes her time letting her in. Before the mother can get the lock undone, Teresa's screams have stopped and a thick pool of blood begins seeping in under the door. The sequence is magnificently done, though I find the mother's struggle with the door at the end an unconvincing way to draw the scene out. The graveyard sequence, though not as famous, is just as tense: On her birthday, Consuelo (Tula Parma) goes there to put flowers on her father's grave and to have a secret rendezvous with her lover (the handsome Richard Martin). She dawdles on her way and he's gone when she arrives. She stays, lost in thought, and is left when the caretaker locks up. A passerby hears her screams, but to no avail.

I think the problem with the film is that it is too ambitious. For starters, there are several potentially interesting characters, but none of them, not even the leads, are fleshed out very well. There are also thematic threads which are left floating. The role of random fate is mentioned several times (and the camera frequently seems to follow characters at random) but goes nowhere. The killer's motivation is nebulous, to say the least--he just couldn't help it! The climax, occurring during a gloomy parade ceremony filled with slowly marching men in cowls, is rushed. The pluses include great sets (mostly stagy but effective), solid building of tension in all the stalking scenes, and Margo (pictured above) who, despite having little dialogue, is memorable--and those castanets make a nice visual and aural touch. The screenplay is based on a novel by noir author Cornell Woolrich, and the film does have a good noir look. It's certainly worth an hour of your time. [DVD]

Monday, October 03, 2011

ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN (1958)

Alison Hayes is rich, has a devoted butler, owns the world's most fabulous diamond (the Star of India), and for some reason is married to a passive, conniving lout and lives in a small house on the outskirts of a nowhere little town out West. Her husband (William Hudson) is keeping a floozy (Yvette Vickers) at the hotel in town, and doesn’t care who knows. Hayes has developed a drinking problem, or more to the point, re-developed it after a spell in a sanitarium, thanks to Hudson's fooling around. One night, when sightings of a giant fireball in the sky are being reported around the world, Hayes is out driving in the desert and sees a giant glowing sphere land on the road, and a space giant comes out of it and tries to snatch her diamond from around her neck. She heads to town in hysterics and no one believes her. Vickers decides this might be a good time for Hudson to do a little gaslighting, drive Hayes crazy, get her committed, and thereby get his hands on her fortune. But when the space giant returns, he snatches Hayes along with her diamond, and when she is returned, she begins growing to become the 50-foot woman of the title, and is out for revenge against Hudson and Vickers.

Despite this film's reputation as a B-classic, it's pretty bad; it could almost pass for an Ed Wood production except the acting is fairly solid. Critics love to claim this as a feminist take on the traditional man-into-monster movie, and there is potential for a fruitful reading that way, but the weak screenplay and low budget don't allow for the fleshing out of any characters or subplots. This is the kind of movie in which not much really happens on screen; most events occur off-screen (or in the past) and we're told about them in long stultifying dialogue scenes. Hayes and Vickers do the best they can with what little they're given, and though it's Hayes you’ll remember as she strides through town in her toga, ready to wreck havoc, Vickers is the more interesting character—and the better actress. Hudson (pictured with Hayes) works up some good, slimy anti-charm, though as with the lead females, he'd be more fun if he had more to work with. Frank Chase makes his role as the obnoxious comic-relief sidekick deputy bearable. This all could have still worked nicely if the special effects had been good, but they are terrible. The giants are mostly transparent double-exposures, and despite the cool poster picture of Hayes ripping cars off of a freeway, her rampage scene looks like it was shot by high-school kids in someone's back yard. Had Hayes thrown herself completely into the role, this might have been a high camp classic, but it’s not even that good/bad. [DVD]

Saturday, October 01, 2011

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (1980)

I'll start October's horror movie reviews off with this archetypal trashy-fun B-monster movie. It's JAWS meets CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, with a little bit of ALIEN thrown in for good measure. In a small fishing town, tension is whipped up when the owner of a cannery (Vic Morrow) wants to expand against the wishes of a Native American group, led by Anthony Penya, concerned about the ecology. Morrow has hired a scientist (Ann Turkel) to come up with ways to accelerate the breeding of salmon, but her experiments have gone awry (umm, duh, she's tampering in God's domain) and, unknown to her, produced dozens of humanoid sea creatures who begin rising from the depths to kill human men and mate with human women. The first cool thing that happens is that some of the horror movie rules are violated: children and animals do get killed. On a very JAWS-like fishing trip, a young boy becomes the first victim of the monsters when he falls from the boat and is snatched underwater (in a nifty backwards-motion shot). Then a big old friendly dog is killed and left on the beach in a hideous mess, rather like the first swimming victim in JAWS. Then a bunch of the fishermen's dogs are slaughtered, except for Penya's which leads to suspicions that the Indians are behind the deaths. Two young lovers are attacked on the beach: the boys gets half his face ripped off and dies, and the girl gets raped and survives. The climax occurs during the annual Salmon Festival when a horde of beasts attack everyone and everything in sight. Just when you think all the creatures have been killed, there's a shock twist ending that, despite being shamelessly ripped off from ALIEN, is quite effective.

Gore and nudity are the drawing cards here, with heaping doses of both. The best "Eeek!... Yuck!" moment is when a monster rips a man's head off his body. The beach rape is quite graphic--it has to be for the ending to make sense. With a low budget, the filmmakers have been clever and made most of the "money shot" scenes very short so the cheapness of the effects is not terribly noticeable, with the ripped-up dog being the best example. The festival finale is non-stop screaming and killing and is quite fun. The acting is terrible all around: the hero is a pudgy, going-to-seed Doug McClure, far from his days as a blond hunk in the 60s and early 70s. The female lead, Ann Turkel, is terrible, and everyone else seems like an amateur except Morrow who is OK but doesn't really get to chew the scenery like you expect him to. The monster outfits are best when just glimpsed, and look rather shoddy when dwelt upon, but that didn't stop me from having a generally good time with this as a beer-and-pizza flick. The production was overseen by the unbilled Roger Corman. [DVD]

Thursday, September 29, 2011

I KILLED THAT MAN (1941)

Cheapie Monogram mystery with a few good supporting performances and a moderately clever plotline to recommend it. As convicted murderer Ralf Harolde is led to his death, he tells a roomful of men gathered to witness the execution that he's going to name the man who paid him to commit the murder, but a poison dart kills him first. DA Ricardo Cortez makes the men submit to a strip search but finds nothing. The field of suspects is quickly narrowed down: is it Gavin Gordon, a representative of an anti-death penalty group (which consists solely of himself)?; is it Harry Holman, a candy-store owner who knew Harolde when he was a kid and who had in his possession a cigarette holder that could have been used to shoot the dart?; maybe it's George Pembroke, a laid-back (maybe a little too much so) businessman who has just recently been appointed to the parole board. Cortez enlists a reporter he's sweet on (Joan Woodbury) to help him crack the case, and together they do. I usually like Cortez, but he comes off as bland and colorless here. At least Woodbury has some energy. Both Gordon and Pembroke are good, as is Iris Adrian as the dead man's ex-girlfriend who knows a little too much for her own good. George Breakston, who had a modest career in the 30s as a child actor, has a couple of nice comic relief scenes as Cortez's switchboard operator who has all kinds of theories about the case, based on true crime books he's reading. A point of interest for librarians: the clue that cracks the case open involves a library book call number. If you overlook the bare-bones production values and style (except for a nifty use of triple-split screen during a phone conversation), it's diverting enough. [TCM]

Sunday, September 25, 2011

PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1948)

A colorful, moody, romantic fairy tale which is too long for its own good. On the Spanish coast, an exotic woman named Pandora (Ava Gardner) drives a drunkard to suicide when she spurns him. She then goads Stephen, a race car driver and her current paramour, to push his car, named Pandora, off a cliff for her. He does, she just about has an orgasm, and then agrees to marry him. However, soon Pandora becomes fascinated with Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason), a Dutch artist whose schooner is anchored in the bay. She likes to think he might be the incarnation of the mythic Flying Dutchman, a figure who is doomed to roam the earth eternally. Impulsively, she strips naked and swims out to his boat; coincidentally (or is it?) he is in the middle of painting a portrait of the mythic Pandora in her likeness when she arrives. She's a little freaked out, but soon he has become a member of her band of pals, one of whom is the academic Geoff (Harold Warrender) who has an ancient Dutch manuscript about the Flying Dutchman. [At this point, the story of the Dutchman is told: a 17th century sailor (played by Mason) returns home from his travels, assumes his wife to have been unfaithful, kills her, and is charged with murder. In court, he rails against women (generally) and God (specifically) and is sentenced to death, but on the morning of his execution, he has a vision in which he sees that his wife had actually been faithful to him. He walks out of his cell, is led onto a ship, and is cursed to sail alone unless he can find a woman who loves him and is willing to die for him. Every seven years, he can land for six months in an attempt to find this woman.] No sooner have Pandora and Stephen set the date for their wedding then a celebrated matador named Mario comes to town and woos Pandora. (If you're keeping track, that's three men Pandora is juggling, though Hendrik seems to be the only one she's not sleeping with.) Melodramatics occur, and Mario kills Hendrik one night at his villa. Imagine Mario's surprise when Hendrik shows up at the bullfight the next day. This unbalances him in the ring and he is gored to death by the bull. Finally, on the very eve of Pandora's wedding to Stephen, Mason says he has to leave. She finds out that Mason is indeed the Flying Dutchman; will she venture out to the ship or stay on land and marry Stephen?

Except for the fantasy element, much of this feels like a Fitzgerald narrative about the rootless aimless rich and their careless behavior. Some of the things critics don't like about this movie are the things I like. The film is often faulted for its somber tone, but I think if the proceedings were taken any less seriously, it would all fall apart or become cartoonish. James Mason is very good; the beautiful and sexy Gardner is often faulted as being wooden here, but that's nearly beside the point: it's her face and body that drive these men around the bend, and her sometimes affectless performance is spot on. At a full two hours, the movie is too long, and it seems like when a scene isn't working dramatically, the director just cuts to a close-up of Gardner and all is forgiven. Nigel Patrick is fine as the racer and Marius Goring is good in what amounts to a cameo as the suicidal drunkard. This Technicolor movie always looks good, though on the Kino DVD, the colors occasionally come and go in pulses. If you don't mind the length and the moodiness, I recommend this. [DVD]

Thursday, September 22, 2011

REGISTERED NURSE (1934)

Bebe Daniels is married to a boorish alcoholic (Gordon Westcott) who gets seriously hurt in a drunk driving accident, forcing her to go back to work as a nurse. She becomes a popular employee but hides her past, so two doctors thinking she’s at liberty pursue her: the playboyish Lyle Talbot (pictured with Daniels) and the more stable John Halliday. When an insane patient is operated on, Daniels freaks out; it turns out that her husband is in an asylum. With her secret out, Halliday agrees to operate on the husband to try and restore him to sanity, but a meddling patient (Sidney Toler), thinking he's doing Daniels a favor, plants the idea of suicide in Westcott's head, leading to disaster. This pre-Code melodrama moves along nicely, if predictably, and has some diverting characters, including Beulah Bondi as the older head nurse, Minna Gombell as a hard boiled nurse who's engaged to marry a policeman, Renee Whitney as a flirt, and a couple of wrestlers known as Sonovitch the Terrible Bulgarian and El Humid the Bone-Crushing Turk—real-life wrestler Tor Johnson, who found B-movie fame in the 50s as a member of Ed Wood's repertory company, plays the Bulgarian. A couple of amusing lines: Talbot is referred to at one point as having "muffed the op," and someone asks Bondi if she'd like a "bosom caresser"—that is, a drink that warms you "all the way down." [TCM]

Monday, September 19, 2011

THIS ENGLAND (1941)

This episodic look at the history of one English village was intended to be a morale-boosting propaganda piece in the early dark days of WWII. It begins with an American reporter (Constance Cummings) arriving at the village of Claverly collecting information for a morale-boosting propaganda piece of her own. She doesn’t think she’ll find much—she asks if one of the "yokels" can show her around—but when farm owner John Rookby (John Clements) agrees to share the village’s history, she gets a story of the resilience of the English in the face of invasion and hard times. She and Rookby and his farmhand Appleyard (Emyln Williams) make it through a bombing raid in a tavern, and later as they look out over Beacon Hill, we're told four episodes from the past, all involving Rookbys and Appleyards, all with the same actors (including Cummings) from the modern segment. In 1086, the villagers rouse themselves against an occupying Norman invader who has threatened to disturb their livelihood by forcing all the village men to stop their own work in order to build him a road. In 1588, during the attack of the Spanish Armada, a beautiful shipwreck survivor is accused of witchcraft and treachery by Appleyard. In 1804, the Industrial Revolution upsets things, with older folks lamenting that young people won’t stay on the farm anymore. Rookby becomes rich and loses touch with the villagers, and is blamed when Appleyard’s infant son dies of malnutrition. The final sequence is set during WWI with Armistice Day celebrated as the last of its kind since the World War must clearly be the war to end all wars. A final shot in the present day confirms the heartiness of the English people and the continuity of their way of life.

Like most movies in which propaganda concerns are placed first, or even most anthology movies, this is not totally successful as art. The first segment is the most interesting, partly due to the coherent story, and partly because it features 13-year-old Roddy McDowell in his last film in Great Britain before he came to Hollywood (pictured above with Cummings and Williams). The 1588 episode lost me along the way; I wasn't sure how the hounding of a woman to suicide tied in to the overall theme of overcoming adversity, though it does end with news of the Spanish retreat. The WWI story is the shortest and least compelling—though the print I saw was almost 10 minutes shorter than the length that IMDb reports for the film, so some material may have been missing. The acting is OK, with Emlyn Williams (at left), also a well-known playwright (he wrote dialogue for this movie), stealing all his scenes, except from McDowell. Williams was also quite good in MAJOR BARBARA the same year. [Streaming]

Saturday, September 17, 2011

THE AFFAIRS OF ANATOL (1921)

Anatol and Vivian are on their honeymoon (with her flirty behavior, Vivian is, as a title card tells us, "putting too much honey in 'honeymoon'"). At a nightclub called the Green Fan, Anatol runs into an old grade school pal, Emilie, who has become a gold-digging jazz baby, and is being kept by Gordon, a much older man. Deciding he needs to save her from herself, Anatol takes her under his wing, much to Vivian's dismay. Gordon tells Anatol to go ahead and perform his "noble rescue work" and he'll be back in a few weeks to "pick up the pieces." At first, Emilie seems ready to change, claiming she was dazzled by "the Fairyland of Wealth" into which Gordon placed her, but soon she's taken up with Gordon again; Anatol smashes her room up good, after which Gordon proposes to her. However, this experience doesn’t cure Anatol of his need to be a white knight, and when he and Vivian decide to spend some time out in the country to repair their relationship, he falls into the same trap with Annie, the wife of a farmer who is also a church treasurer; she has spent church money on nice clothes and now needs to pay it back or her husband will be in trouble. She throws herself into the river but Anatol saves her—there is a comic scene of Vivian watching as Annie, who is pretending to be unconscious, primps in a mirror. Once again, Anatol gets taken in by a supposed innocent. The film wraps up with a third segment involving sexy dancer Satan Synne who is actually the most innocent of all of Anatol’s "affairs": she's desperate for money to pay for operations on her critically ill husband, a wounded soldier.

This episodic comic melodrama was directed by Cecil B. DeMille; it was of interest to me for its two main stars: Gloria Swanson, who plays Vivian, the wife; and Wallace Reid as Anatol, both pictured above. Reid, who was a popular silent star, was in an accident a couple of years before this film was made and became a morphine addict; he died in 1923 at the age of 31. This is the only Reid film I've seen so far, but he seems to have been far from his peak—his looks and build were declining by this time; still, he is adequate for the part. Swanson has little to do except be insulted by her husband's behavior, though she does get to indulge in a little side fling of her own near the end of the film. Agnes Ayres as Annie looks surprisingly modern, like she might pop up in a movie tomorrow. There are some color-tinted scenes and title cards, and a couple of elaborate scenes set at nightclubs. Basically fun for silent-movie fans, though at two hours, it does drag a bit in the middle. [DVD]

Thursday, September 15, 2011

CALL OF THE FLESH (1930)

Maria (Dorothy Jordan) lives in a convent in Seville; her older brother Enrique (Russell Hopton) visits to wish her well as she is soon to take her vows, but a little like Maria von Trapp, she's not absolutely sure this is the life for her. One night, she hears singing and cavorting over the convent wall and sees the dashing Juan (Ramon Novarro) performing at a café and she immediately loses her heart to him. Juan lives with his musical mentor Esteban (who thinks Juan is wasting his vocal gifts) and toys around with Lola, his singing partner. The next day, while out with some street kids indulging in some whimsical thievery in the marketplace, Juan meets Maria. They spend the day together and that night, when Juan discovers her story, he puts her to bed alone, determined to be more a brother than a lover to her. However, when her real brother finds out Maria has left the convent, Juan, Maria, and Esteban flee to Madrid where Juan tries for a career in opera. Eventually, he and Maria get engaged, but Esteban shows up, accuses Juan of making a harlot out of her, and takes her back to the convent. Maria and Juan are both miserable; she wastes away while Juan finally has an emotional breakthrough and gets a standing ovation one night when he is called upon to step into the starring role in a opera, though he faints offstage. Will these kids get back together before one or both of them die of heartbreak?

This romantic melodrama has little going for it except for a bravura performance by Ramon Novarro, who acts with depth and does a grand job of singing. Unfortunately, Jordan (pictured with Novarro) comes off like a rank amateur (particularly bad is her over-the-top melodramatic fit as she listens to Novarro's singing for the first time) and she and Novarro have little chemistry. Renée Adorée, who died of TB just a couple of years later, is slightly better as Lola, and Hopton makes the most of his two scenes as the brother. The film feels a bit long, but it's a must for Novarro fans. [TCM]

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

THE V.I.P.s (1963)

GRAND HOTEL in an airport (and later, a hotel).  Over a period of 12 hours or so, a number of celebrities, businessmen and rich people wait in a V.I.P lounge at Heathrow Airport for flights out which are all delayed due to fog.  Industrialist Richard Burton, there to see his wife (Elizabeth Taylor) off for a Jamaican holiday, discovers that she's leaving him for a suave gigolo (Louis Jourdan) who shows her more affection than the workaholic Burton.  Film director Orson Welles needs to leave the country by midnight or risk losing a lot of money to the British taxman.  Australian Rod Taylor, scrappy owner of a tractor factory, needs to get to New York to fend off a takeover by a big corporation; when he wires a check that he can't cover, he and his faithful secretary (Maggie Smith, pictured with Rod Taylor) try to figure out a way to get out of trouble.  A duchess (Margaret Rutherford) who has fallen on hard times is off to Florida to act as a social manager for a resort to raise money.  Phone calls are made, plans are changed, flights are canceled, spats are weathered, and finally relatively happy endings are in store for all.  This glossy, soapy film is mostly for Taylor/Burton fans, and both actors are in fine form—and as usual, Burton is the better actor, though Taylor is attractive and carries her part well enough.  Welles seems to have fun spoofing his own persona as an art-film director who cares more about finances that he’s supposed to.  Taylor and Smith work well together, though Smith's best scene is near the end, with Burton.  Rutherford, doing her usual blustery, doddering act, is amusing and won an Oscar for Supporting Actress.  Predictable plotlines, and directed with little style by Anthony Asquith, but fun for fans of the actors.  [DVD]

Sunday, September 11, 2011

TORCH SONG (1953)

Joan Crawford is a Broadway musical star in the middle of rehearsals for a new show; she's a flinty egomaniac who thinks that only she knows what is good for her and her show. She berates a male dancer (a cameo by the director of the film, Charles Walters), insists that she knows more about music than her pianist, and generally abuses her director (Harry Morgan), her agent (Paul Guilfoyle), and her languid boy toy (Gig Young, pictured with Crawford). When the pianist quits, the blind Michael Wilding replaces him, complete with a seeing-eye dog who frequently snarls at Crawford. At first Crawford tries to get him fired for speaking his mind about her musical arrangements, but soon she begins to respect him and even feel affection for him. We learn that Wilding has had a thing for her for some time, and that he saw her perform not long before he went off to war and was blinded. Eventually, he manages to humanize her a bit, and they fall into each other's arms in the last moments of the film.

This odd campy mess reminded me of ALL ABOUT EVE set in the musical theater, except the fact that Crawford is aging is never commented on. She's in fine shape at nearly 50, but she's no singer (her songs are dubbed) and not an especially strong dancer, so the fact that she's still considered the toast of the Broadway musical is hard to swallow—it might have played better to highlight her concern for her age, which would have given her frequent bitchy outbursts more motivation. Wilding is OK, but it's difficult to see what about the milquetoast pianist would attract her on a romantic level, especially when Crawford pretty much plays every scene at a fever pitch, wiping everyone else off the screen. There is an odd scene in which Crawford throws an all-male party; it reads pretty much right on the surface as a gay gathering, even down to her gigolo friend Young. One number, "Two Faced Woman," has become a camp classic with Crawford in brownface, radioactive red lipstick, and a dark wig which she rips off to show her glowing orange hair. The almost amateurishly choreographed number must be seen to be believed. Marjorie Rambeau, who has a totally unmemorable part as Crawford's mother, was inexplicably nominated for an Oscar. I'm not sorry I watched this, but if you're not a fan of campy soap opera or Crawford, you can skip it. [DVD]

Thursday, September 08, 2011

GAMES (1967)

James Caan and Katharine Ross are a mod, swinging, totally 60s Manhattan couple, living a life of playful decadence, collecting pop art (such as pinball machines) and playing games and practical jokes. We see a party of theirs in full swing, with the two performing an elaborate magic trick, much to everyone’s world-weary delight—imagine a less kinky group of Rocky Horror "unconventional conventionists." One day, a door-to-door cosmetic saleswoman (Simone Signoret) faints at their door and they take her in. She, too, has a taste for the mildly eccentric (she carries tarot cards and a gun) and soon, Ross and Caan have more or less adopted her. The three play little games and tricks on other people (including hunky delivery boy Don Stroud, pictured) and each other, with Signoret upping the ante along the way, so that eventually, when Caan seems to catch Ross and Stroud having sex, we don't know if it's real or another game. Things quickly take a more sinister, deadly, and perhaps supernatural turn, but to reveal more would spoil the fun. Actually, with the twisty/mind-fuck plotline practically its own genre now, most viewers will probably figure out what's what long before the ending, but the proceedings are still fun. Caan looks impossibly young, Ross is lovely, Signoret, past her prime, still creates an interesting character, and Stroud makes for some nice eye candy. Fans of character actors will enjoy seeing Kent Smith, Estelle Winwood, and Ian Wolfe. We see a pinball game called Turnpike Pinball which predicts today's violent video games: the game involves traffic fatalities, and the winner "dies" as a death skull lights up. Slight spoiler: If you know Signoret's previous acting credits, you may figure out where this is going the moment she shows up. [Cable]

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

SECRETS (1933)

One of only a handful of talkies starring Mary Pickford. Her name is still well known among film buffs, if only because of her role in establishing United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and her husband Douglas Fairbanks, but her films are hard to come by. I’ve only seen one, LITTLE ANNIE ROONEY, in which, at the age of 33, she played a teenage street waif, and none too convincingly. But apparently the public loved her in those roles. By the sound era, she was finally playing adults, but in this, her last film before retiring, she plays a character from youth to old age. The film breaks neatly into three parts. In the first half-hour, set in what appears to be post-Civil War New England, Pickford is a debutante, heading for a boring arranged marriage. She and the relatively dashing Leslie Howard meet cute during a buggy ride, fall quickly in love, and run off together to the Wild West as a pioneer couple. The second part of the film shows them establishing a home on the range (with handyman/sidekick Ned Sparks, a grouchy fellow incongruously nicknamed Sunshine, the best laugh in the movie). They've got a cattle business going, but when rustlers break in while Howard is out, threaten Pickford and her baby, and steal their cattle, Howard and others take the law into their own hands and lynch some of the thieves. Unfortunately, the survivors return for a shootout, resulting in the death of the child (a bloodless but startling scene). In the final section, set several years later, Howard, who has become a wealthy and important citizen, runs for governor, but his dreams are almost dashed when an affair he's been having with a saucy Mexican woman becomes public knowledge.

This fits snugly into the family saga genre, or a subgenre I have dubbed the "abridged family saga," in which a family story which covers many years is told in too short a time to have much narrative impact. Each individual section could probably have been expanded into a film of its own, but as it stands, the parts don’t cohere into an effective whole. Pickford, at 40, is too old to pull off the cutesy ingénue of the opening section, but she handles the rest of the film fairly well, looking a bit like Helen Hayes by the end. Howard is fine as the essentially good man who strays, though because of the "abridgement" of the narrative, we mostly have to take his goodness on faith. Mona Maris is the rather unlikely mistress (we are informed that she is not the first), the reliably gruff C. Aubrey Smith is good as Pickford's father, and Sparks is fun as always. No one else makes an impression (though of course I would notice the attractive Huntley Gordon in a small role as the couple's grown son in the last section). Not a bad film, but mostly of interest to fans of Pickford. [TCM]

Friday, September 02, 2011

THE GARDEN MURDER CASE (1936)

Jockey Raymond Walton acts like he's in a trance before a big race in which he's riding a horse belonging to rich businessman Gene Lockhart; he seems convinced he's going to die, and he does, in an accident on the racetrack. Walton's father blames Lockhart for his son's death and he's not the only one who doesn’t like Lockhart; his mistress, a nurse, is about to sue him for breach of promise, and his niece (Virginia Bruce) is pissed because Lockhart is about to send her boyfriend (Kent Smith) to Paraguay so she can't marry him. Also in Lockhart's inner circle is a retired British soldier whose wife (Frieda Inescort) was having an affair with the jockey. When Lockhart is found dead in his study, apparently a suicide, Philo Vance (Edmund Lowe) works on the case with the police. There's another suicide before Vance figures out that folks are being hypnotized into killing themselves; will Vance be the next victim? I've noted before that Philo Vance seems to be the least "marked" of the big 30s movie detectives. He's a man of independent means, and that's all we know about him. The character was played by a variety of actors, and therefore never strongly identified with any one star. Lowe, a drab, middle-range actor with no discernible personality, is OK in the part, though not as good as William Powell was in THE KENNEL MURDER CASE. But Lowe's part is relatively small compared to most leading detective men, and the supporting cast is strong, especially Bruce, H.B. Warner as the old Brit, Jessie Ralph as Lockhart's seriously nasty bitch of a mother, and Nat Pendleton as a comic relief cop. The hypnosis angle is obvious from the start, but the plot is blessedly coherent and easy to follow, and I was surprised by the identity of the culprit. [TCM]

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

DOUBTING THOMAS (1935)

When a "talent scout" comes to a small Midwestern town to take screen tests (for anyone with the $75 fee), many of the town's citizens line up, including young beautician Peggy. She tries to get the money from her boyfriend Jimmy but he's leery about the whole thing, and his father, Thomas Brown (Will Rogers), thinks rightfully so; he worries that the whole town will go crazy hoping to be discovered. Brown leaves town for a convention and while he's gone, his wife winds up as part of the craze when she takes a lead role in a community theater production. When a disapproving Brown returns, he spreads the rumor that a big Hollywood director named Von Blitzen will be in town to see the tests. The opening night of the play is a disaster and Von Blitzen thinks all the screen tests were terrible—except for a little comedy routine that Brown did. Of course, Von Blitzen is just an actor hired to play a part to teach the townsfolk a lesson, and after Brown smoothes some ruffled feathers, all's quiet in town again.

This mild comedy doesn’t feel like a typical Will Rogers vehicle and it isn't: it's based on a popular play of the day called The Torch Bearers. Rogers gets to do a little of his trademark wise and dry drawling, but this is really an ensemble piece that's been adjusted to focus on Rogers. The actor to watch here is Billie Burke as his wife; in the play-within-the-movie, she gives a hysterically bad performance in a mummified Mae West fashion. The entire play sequence is great fun; it feels like Noises Off, the amusing 90s farce that features the onstage and backstage antics of an acting troupe. Other cast members worth seeing include Sterling Holloway as a prompter who keeps forgetting to give the actors their cues, Alison Skipworth as the pompous director, John Qualen as Von Blitzen, and Frank Albertson as Rogers' son. At times the whole thing feels almost modern, especially the thirst for fame theme (though today the plot would involve casting for a reality TV show), except for Rogers—he's not bad, but with his slower pacing, it feels like he walked in from a whole different movie. [DVD]

Sunday, August 28, 2011

TARZAN AND THE SLAVE GIRL (1950)

Lex Barker's second turn as Tarzan begins much like his first one, with Tarzan and Jane (Vanessa Brown) enjoying a casual day riding elephants in the jungle. They pass some women of the Nagasi tribe out doing chores by the river when one of them screams and vanishes. The leader of the tribe thinks that an evil spirit snatched her away, but when Jane is snatched, Tarzan goes into action, saving Jane and capturing one of the abductors. When the Nagasi try to question him, he falls deathly ill. A doctor from a nearby village diagnoses the illness as highly contagious and makes up a serum. Tarzan, Jane, the doc, his busty nurse Lola, and her lazy boyfriend Neil go to the Nagasi village to administer the antidote, then decide to head further into the jungle to find the source of the disease. It turns out that the kidnapper's village has been overrun by this plague and they're taking women from nearby villages in hopes of repopulating. The prince has his hands full: his father, the king, has just died of the disease and is about to be buried, his young son is mortally sick, and he is about to execute his high priest, who has been no help. Tarzan tries to save Jane and Lola, who have been placed in the majestic and soon-to-be-sealed tomb of the king, but winds up trapped with them; the doctor tries to save the Prince's son but finds he has lost the serum somewhere on the journey. Can Cheetah save the day?

This is less interesting than TARZAN'S MAGIC FOUNTAIN, but Barker's energetic heroics and a moderately interesting cast help make this watchable. Irish actor Arthur Shields is fine as the doctor, Denise Darcel (pictured) is an enticing Lola--she and Jane have a hair-pulling, furniture-crushing fistfight--and Robert Alda and Hurd Hatfield do what they can in the underwritten roles of the boyfriend and the prince. There's a nice action scene involving an attack by camouflaged natives, and in the climax involves a pit with hungry lions. Vanessa Brown is a rather lackluster Jane, though her bullet-bra look will have its admirers. [TCM]

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

TANGLED DESTINIES (1932)

A small passenger plane heading from Albuquerque to Los Angeles is forced to land in the middle of nowhere because of an approaching storm. All thirteen people find refuge in a large abandoned house and settle in for the night. Among the characters: Randy, the unflappable pilot; Tommy, the prone-to-anger co-pilot; Ruth, the stewardess who is the object of both their affections; Miss Dagget, a elderly knitter; a math professor; a lawyer; an ex-prizefighter; a minister; a man and his rich fiancée; and a Chinese art collector. They pass the time by playing cards, chatting, and fixing some soup until the lights go out. When they come back on, one of the men, a Mr. Forbes, is found dead; it turns out that Forbes was carrying a small fortune in jewels and his friend MacGinnis was actually a special agent who was supposed to protect him. The old lady finds the gems stashed in her knitting bag, but they're fakes, so someone in the group not only is a murderer but also has the real gems. Other people are unmasked as not quite what they seem to be, and after the lights go out one more time, the pilots solve the case. This is a B-film from the "Forgotten Horrors" DVD set that is certainly not a horror film, but instead a cracking good mystery, if you can get past the cheap sets. The plot is interesting, though the character backstories are occasionally more complex then needed. There are virtually no actors in this film I had ever heard of but they acquit themselves nicely, especially Glenn Tryon (pictured) and Gene Morgan as the pilots and Ethel Wales as the knitting lady. [DVD]

THE CRIMSON KIMONO (1959)

In the striking opening shots of this cop/buddy movie, downtown Los Angeles looks like the nightmarish Pottersville vision of Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life. Stripper Sugar Torch is chased out of her dressing room and shot down in the street. Cops Glenn Corbett and James Shigeta, Korean War buddies and current-day roommates, investigate and discover that she had been working on a new production number in which she would have played a geisha who was murdered by a brick-crushing karate expert. Shigeta, who has contacts in LA's Little Tokyo, questions a judo instructor who was going to participate in the act. Meanwhile, Corbett talks to Victoria Shaw, an artist who had done a painting of Sugar in her kimono. Both men stir up some trouble, leading Corbett's old friend Anna Lee, herself an artist, to keep an eye on Shaw who has been ID'd in the press as a possible witness. Corbett falls for Shaw, but Shaw soon finds herself more interested in Shigeta, leading to tensions between the two friends, exacerbated by the racial element in the romantic triangle. During what is supposed to be a friendly kendo tournament between Caucasians and Nisei (first-generation Japanese-Americans), Shigeta beats the hell out of Corbett, venting over what he thinks is Corbett's racist belief that Shigeta isn't good enough for Shaw. In a climax set during a Japanese New Year parade, the killer is caught and the friendship seems to be repaired.

One is tempted to treat this Samuel Fuller film as a B-crime film, but it's really more a forerunner of the later "buddy movie" genre; even though Sugar Torch's murder is the starting point, we almost cease to care about the solution to the crime because the cops' relationship and the evolving love triangle take center stage. Corbett (pictured at left, perhaps best known for replacing George Maharis in the 60's TV show Route 66) and Shigeta (star of Flower Drum Song who went on to a long character actor career in TV) work well together, and Shaw pulls off the difficult task of genuinely liking both men but only loving one of them. Lee does a nice job against type as a tough old gal with a heart of gold--though for a while, I was sure she was the killer. This black and white film was shot in widescreen and its many notably striking compositions give it the look of a higher-budget movie. Rarely shown on cable, but worth searching for on DVD as part of the Samuel Fuller Collection from Sony. [DVD]