tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22114893022305494252024-03-13T12:17:34.895-06:00Deeper Into Movies -- The Current (and Classic) CinemaFilm truth not quite 24 times a second. Reviews, musings, and dissent, with apologies to Pauline Kael.Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.comBlogger186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-352723611929420652016-08-07T09:20:00.002-06:002016-08-07T16:38:18.661-06:00DVD Review | Women He's Undressed<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">After a Fashion</span></b></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">by Thomas Delapa</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In today’s
dressed-down, flip-flops and <i>uber</i>-casual
world, we seldom hear that “clothes make the man” anymore. But in classic
Hollywood, fashion not only made the man—and the woman—but it made the movies
too.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PFirVR-34UM/V6dU-UYPC9I/AAAAAAAAAjw/rOFzkXsAUJgyc26IHSL3MoStC2AKSISLACLcB/s1600/WHU-poster-Lo-Res.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PFirVR-34UM/V6dU-UYPC9I/AAAAAAAAAjw/rOFzkXsAUJgyc26IHSL3MoStC2AKSISLACLcB/s200/WHU-poster-Lo-Res.jpg" width="140" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Where would <i>The
Wizard of Oz</i>’s Dorothy Gale be without her ruby slippers, Joan Crawford <i>sans</i> her shoulder pads, Marilyn Monroe
less (ahem) her skin-tight gowns or Cary Grant minus those impeccably tailored
suits? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Like other
low-profile collaborators, especially in our grandiose age of the director as <i>auteur</i>,
motion-picture costume directors rarely grab the spotlight and even less the
microphone. Classic film fans may be familiar with the celebrated career of
Edith Head, but otherwise public knowledge of Hollywood’s leading costume
designers is skimpy if not threadbare.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Despite its
odd-fitting title, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/womenhesundressed/"><b>Women He’s Undressed</b></a> means to makeover that legacy,
taking the measure of Australian-born Orry-Kelly, who for three decades was one
of Hollywood’s larger-than-life, A-list designers. His career included a long,
tempestuous stint at the Warner Bros. studio, dressing such stars as Bette
Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Olivia <span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">d</span>e Havilland, and was crowned by three Oscars
for costume design, the last for <i>Some
Like It Hot</i> in 1959.</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RvRQG31fy7s/V6dXusvNm8I/AAAAAAAAAj8/GFLGQqi8We0gZXo1gRpaZAHWzgVnHoz2wCLcB/s1600/CurtisOrry-Kelly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RvRQG31fy7s/V6dXusvNm8I/AAAAAAAAAj8/GFLGQqi8We0gZXo1gRpaZAHWzgVnHoz2wCLcB/s320/CurtisOrry-Kelly.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">An
Australian-made documentary directed by the veteran Gillian Armstrong (<i>Little Women, My Brilliant Career</i>), <i>Undressed</i> won’t win ribbons for
opulence, but it does stitch together the life and times of Orry-Kelly, born Orry
George Kelly in New South Wales. Armstrong’s style clashes in spots, starting
with the fanciful inclusion of her subject (Darren Gilshenan) addressing the
camera while paddling in a rowboat. As an allegory of his roiling ups and downs
it is, well, a bit out to sea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As a gay man in
Hollywood who rarely hid in the closet—at least among his friends— "Jack" Orry-Kelly was
renowned for his talents, tart tongue and artistic tantrums. He could be
difficult and demanding, but he managed to navigate the treacherous shores of
the studio-system fiefdoms. While most found his boss Jack Warner a
tight-fisted, crass (and macho) tyrant, Orry-Kelly formed an uneasy alliance,
smoothed over by his long friendship with Warner’s wife, Ann. Undoubtedly his
most famous work was with the notoriously prickly Bette Davis, including the
brazen “red” ball dress her character flitted about in the 1938’s
black-and-white <i>Jezebel</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Except for that
foundering rowboat, <i>Undressed</i> is outfitted in a conventional style,
embroidered with interviews (among them, Jane Fonda and Angela Lansbury),
newsreel footage and photos. But it’s also spangled with fascinating tidbits
about fashion design in Hollywood’s bygone Golden Age. Especially revealing are
the sleight-of-hand tricks Orry-Kelly used to transform diva Davis (she of a
large but “limp” bosom) that showed off the positive while cloaking the
negative.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Glamour,
illusion and fantasy were Orry-Kelly’s stock in trade, but his private life was
bold as brass, despite begin hemmed in by a homophobic culture that threatened
exposure for anyone—especially men—daring to tip-toe out of the closet. Armstrong
and her writer Katherine Thomson sew the villain badge on Englishman Cary Grant
(né Archibald Leach), who turned his back on Orry-Kelly once he became a
matinee idol. While it is now well-known that Grant and Western star Randolph
Scott lived together as roommates and more, the film speciously suggests that
Grant’s subsequent marriages were strictly a cover for his homosexuality.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">What’s most
durable in Armstrong’s material is the flamboyant character of Orry-Kelly as
both artist and survivor. Fired from Warners in 1944, he hit the bottle hard,
successfully chased by rehab (“sanatoriums” back then) and surfacing in a wave
of comebacks in the 1950s, culminating in the sparkling triumph of <i>Some Like
It Hot</i>. Not only did he outfit Marilyn Monroe in those diaphanous,
barely-there gowns that seared the screen, but he also dragged cross-dressing
Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis into hilarious movie history.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Orry-Kelly
was
also a brash and oft-catty wit who was loath to keep his mouth zipped—he
famously quipped that “Hell must be filled with beautiful women and no
mirrors.” In old Hollywood’s bright firmament, you can still see
Orry-Kelly’s
twinkling reflection in the timelessly elegant fashions he created. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -----------------------------<wbr></wbr>----</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">8/5/16</span></div>
Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-85077834318836000912016-05-17T14:55:00.000-06:002016-05-17T14:55:19.470-06:00Film Review | Money Monster<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Write it off </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">by Thomas Delapa</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-odxuoz85fmA/VzuCsDAEPrI/AAAAAAAAAjY/AF__k7wLsXwqB5r4tE---OhsSGA-PduwwCLcB/s1600/DF02563_r.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-odxuoz85fmA/VzuCsDAEPrI/AAAAAAAAAjY/AF__k7wLsXwqB5r4tE---OhsSGA-PduwwCLcB/s320/DF02563_r.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Looking for a
hot insider tip on <b><i>Money Monster</i></b>? </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then save your
eight bucks. This George Clooney/Julia Roberts Wall Street suspense satire is
flat, warmed-over road kill. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While two-time
Best Actress Oscar winner Jodie Foster uneasily returns to the director’s chair
for her fourth feature, she strands her under-performing stars in what adds up
(or down) to a low-caliber shotgun merger between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dog Day Afternoon</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Network </i>and
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The China Syndrome</i>. Unless Foster has
her own hedge fund, she shouldn’t look for career dividends any time soon. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nobody yells
“Attica! Attica!” or “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this
anymore!” out the window, but Foster’s scriptwriters borrow from so many
topical 1970s dramas that they must be paying a monster interest rate.
For starters, he-e-e-re’s Lee Gates (Clooney) the slick, smarmy host of a
cable-TV financials show, a man so vacuously fatuous that you know he’s a sure
bet for a coast-to-coast comeuppance. Next up is uninvited surprise guest Kyle
Budwell (Jack O’Connell), a Queens palooka who’s, yes, mad as hell at the damn
rich since he lost his life savings on one of Gates’ bum stock tips. Standing
tall, very tall, behind them is Roberts’ Patty Fenn, the show’s sharp, super-cool,
alpha-female producer and Foster’s moral conscience in the vast wasteland of
24-7 tabloid TV. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Reunited from
their cash-cow <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ocean’s Eleven</i> reboots,
Clooney and Roberts slowly sink carrying the star ballast, though they can
hardly shoulder all the blame. If Clooney once had promise as a cheeky Hollywood throwback to the likes of Clark Gable, he’s now so annoyingly mannered (cocking
his head for every emphatic line), that by now his performances are all
reruns. If Foster got a bum tip from her agent before buying into this project,
she doesn’t do her leads any favors either, inflating the story with
overwrought acting and a manic shooting style that papers over the yawning
holes in the story’s junk-bond rated logic.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The net result
is a cheap, remote-controlled financial thriller that chews up and spits out
every populist cliché this side of Oliver Stone and Bernie Sanders. Not a few
minutes into Gates’ “Money Monster” daily show, Budwell crashes the set, armed
with handgun, made-for-TV hysteria, and an explosive vest designed with the
now-cowering host in mind. With the whole world watching—absurdly, even in distant
Iceland and Korea—Budwell shouts his million-dollar hostage demands, profanely
punctuated with slogans (“The system is rigged!”) that could be coming from
both the left and right in today’s angry, un-moneyed U.S. electorate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Foster is too
busy tossing mud and her camera around to seriously ask why (or even if) a
blue-collar bud like Budwell would foolishly blow everything he has on a
stock-market whim. Those are the sort of questions she simply runs over, content
to feed us clichéd lines like those printed on Gates’ cue cards or whispered in
his earpiece by his all-knowing, all-seeing producer. No, it’s enough for us to
get that Gates is a boorish show-biz charlatan and behind him lurks an even
bigger, villainous one—the uber-greedy CEO (Dominic West) of a shadowy finance
company that suspiciously lost $800 million in stock value overnight. This guy
isn’t just a capitalist pig but a chauvinist one to boot, treating his leggy
staffer and mistress (Caitriona Balfe) with oily “That’s my girl” patriarchal condescension.
</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Foster wears her
gender politics on her rolled-up left sleeve, bluntly separating not the men
from the boys, but her sharp, ultra-capable females from their obvious lessers—their
clueless, often-monstrous male counterparts. Not only does Roberts serve as
Foster’s quietly heroic center, she’s the real power behind Gates’
chintzy Dow Jones throne, feeding him lines and keeping him and everyone else
cool under crisis pressure. Her partner in distaff kickass-ness is that
model-thin staffer, who instantly evolves from corporate mouthpiece and concubine
into crusading detective faster you can say Erin Brockovich, digging up the
dirt on her boss’ shady globe-trotting missions in his private jet. Back at the
studio, the New York City SWAT cops called to the scene recklessly reach for
their guns and insults first; it’s no surprise the only exception is a lowly
(black) policewoman whom Foster calls to duty only to blow the whistle on her
trigger-happy blue crew. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hollywood
insiders might think that with Foster, Clooney & Roberts in charge, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Money Monster </i>would be too big to fail.
But that’s what they said about Enron, AIG , Lehman Brothers and Johnny Depp’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lone Ranger</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In other words,
don’t bet on a box-office bail-out. My money is on audiences bailing out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">5/14/16</span></div>
Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-17556538618987673752015-04-08T07:38:00.000-06:002015-04-08T07:38:15.079-06:00From the Archives: Ken Burns on How He Handled the Holocaust in his World War II Documentary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HrJmv588CKw/VSUvEHZMdXI/AAAAAAAAAi8/UdkXTi70P3U/s1600/art_thewar2_092107_448_360_c1-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HrJmv588CKw/VSUvEHZMdXI/AAAAAAAAAi8/UdkXTi70P3U/s1600/art_thewar2_092107_448_360_c1-2.jpg" height="257" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">By Steven Rosen</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">9-20-2007</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Jewish Journal of Los Angeles</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Ken Burns knew from the start that he didn't want his seven-episode, 14 1/2-hour documentary on World War II to be associated with any notion of "The Good War." And yet in its final episode, as now elderly ex-GIs recount the lessons learned from liberating German concentration camps, it illustrates exactly why wars sometimes can be noble causes.</span><br />
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<div style="font-family: 'Droid Serif', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;">
But Burns wanted to get to that point without cloaking his documentary in the feel-good heritage of "The Good War" -- a term originating with Studs Terkel's 1984 oral history -- or Tom Brokaw's 1998 "The Greatest Generation," about the GIs who fought in that war.</div>
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"It was being smothered in this bloodless myth called 'The Good War,' when in fact it was the bloodiest of all wars," Burns said by telephone, en route to an advance screening in Minnesota. He said the war cost 60 million lives -- a fact too easily forgotten by history buffs coldly studying the various armies involved and their military campaigns.</div>
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"The War," as his resultant documentary is simply titled, will begin airing on PBS stations on Sept. 23. It will be on for four nights the first week and three nights the second. Burns' previous PBS films about the American experience include "The Civil War," "Baseball" and "Jazz."</div>
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"We used the words 'bearing witness' for what we wanted to do," he said of his initial proposal for the documentary. "We wanted to use four [American] towns as examples to get to know people -- those who fought and those who stayed at home -- and to get to their experiences as it happened."</div>
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The result is Burns and co-director Lynn Novick seeing the war as it was unfolding through the eyes of soldiers from Mobile, Ala.; Sacramento; Waterbury, Conn., and Luverne, Minn., to show, in so many ways, the ongoing hellishness of even a necessary war. </div>
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Since World War II unfolds the way American soldiers -- and friends and family at home -- experienced it, the Holocaust is only cursorily brought up before the final episode, "A World Without War," when the soldiers enter the camps. But it then becomes the center -- "the beating heart," in Burns' words -- of that episode.</div>
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That episode covers immense ground, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, the battle for Okinawa, the final collapse of Germany, the atomic bomb, Japan's surrender and the end of the war. But its solemn, powerful concentration camp scenes, which involve his soldiers bearing witness against Nazi atrocities, are the ones with deepest impact. </div>
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Three of the hometown soldiers recall entering different concentration camps during the fall of Germany in 1945. And, as they still vividly remember, they saw something worse than war: the Holocaust. </div>
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In fact, they came to realize war could be good, if it could stop or punish those willing to commit such evil, organized mass murder. The episode pairs their recollections with often horrifyingly graphic footage from the actual camps they entered.</div>
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Also during this passage in the episode, war historian Paul Fussell, who fought in World War II when he was just 19, begins to quiver and cry when explaining how discovering those camps made it clear to the American soldiers the war "was conducted in defense of some noble idea."</div>
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Burns called that a "searing, incredible emotional comment. I assumed Fussell would be an avuncular commentator. But the questions put him back in the moment."</div>
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The episode begins with a black-and-white photo of a German SS soldier about to execute a Polish Jew at the edge of an open mass grave in Ukraine in 1942. Then one of the "The War's" ongoing witnesses, former Marine pilot Sam Hynes, makes a comment that indirectly addresses the meaning of religion in a world where the Holocaust can happen. </div>
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If there were no evil, he says, people wouldn't need to "construct" religions. </div>
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"No evil, no God," he says. "Of course, no evil, no war. But there will always be evil. Human beings are aggressive animals."</div>
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Burnett Miller from Sacramento recalls how starving survivors at Mauthausen in Austria, in their hunger for the GIs' concentrated food, died from "overwhelming their systems." He also describes, and accompanying footage shows, bodies in rigor mortis awaiting cremation in the furnaces. Miller's comments also touch upon a key Holocaust theme -- the complicity of nearby civilians and the church. </div>
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"They could smell the camp in town," he says. "The villagers said they knew nothing about the camp; the priest said he knew nothing about the camp. I knew that was a lie." </div>
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In another scene, Dwain Luce of Mobile, Ala., recalls forcing the presumably complicit German townspeople of Ludwigslust, near a liberated camp, to collect the bodies and give them proper Christian and Jewish burials in the park. "So they would never forget," he says.</div>
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He also has this to say to Holocaust deniers: "These people in this country who say it didn't happen, it did happen; I saw it."</div>
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The third of the hometown soldiers who helped liberate the camps is Jewish, Ray Leopold of Waterbury, Conn. He was at Hadamar in Germany, where he found not only camp victims but also survivors of Nazi medical experiments inside an insane asylum. </div>
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"No apology will ever atone for what I saw," he says.</div>
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"At the end of the day, nothing is more powerful in our film than Ray fixing the camera with a 92-year-old's fury when he says that," Burns said. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Droid Serif', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;">
A narrator in the film provides voice-over context, as images of the bones and skulls of victims are shown, of the Holocaust's scope. Some two-thirds of Europe's 9 million Jews were murdered, along with 4 million Soviet prisoners of war, 2 million Poles and hundreds of thousands of homosexuals, Gypsies, political opponents, handicapped persons, slave laborers and Jehovah's Witnesses. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Droid Serif', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;">
In this final episode, with death and destruction unfolding on a global scale virtually every minute, there is the question of how much time the Holocaust can command. After all, when the Americans enter the camps in 1945, there is still a long, difficult battle ahead in the Pacific. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Droid Serif', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;">
In the end, it doesn't get that much time -- about 10 minutes. But it makes a long-lasting impact. "It sought its own length," Burns said. "I always say the greatest speech ever made was the Gettysburg Address. That was two minutes long."</div>
</div>
Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-4279879441117700882015-04-04T07:16:00.000-06:002015-04-04T07:16:25.659-06:00Forgotten Films: The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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By Steven Rosen<o:p></o:p></div>
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(2004; previously published)</div>
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LOS ANGELES – When people saw the weird and hilarious
trailer for “The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra,” they assumed it was a joke. There
was no such movie, they thought – which could have been one reason this strange
movie did so poorly in theaters earlier this year.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After all, how can clips from what looks like a forgotten
low-low-budget black-and-white sci-fi movie from the early 1950s be promoting
an alleged new movie? And one “from the company that brought you ‘Lawrence of
Arabia?’” This has got to be a put-on, right?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now that “The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra” is being released on
DVD on June 22 in a special edition, people will see it is a joke. The movie is
a loving spoof of clumsy but inadvertently inspired sci-fi movies of the 1950s
like “Robot Monster” and Ed Wood’s “Plan Nine From Outer Space.” The kind of
movies kids used to spend Sunday afternoons seeing at neighborhood-theater
triple-bills.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The plot, according to the production notes, features
“foil-covered aliens, space toys and a Fay Wray-esque heroine who actually
feels for the misunderstood mutant.” And that’s just the start – there’s also
an evil skeleton and a woman who is actually a human incarnation of several
wild animals. (And she eats dinner like a wild animal.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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The trailer takes the overall spoof one step beyond. Michael
Schlesinger, a Dayton native who as vice president of repertory sales for Sony
Pictures discovered the independently made film, is responsible for that. And
he’s proud of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He licensed music from 1940s-era Universal Pictures horror
movies to give the trailer a sense of nostalgic gravity. And he wrote a
self-consciously portentous voice-over script that promises “a cast of
thousands” and “cost of millions’’ even as the trailer itself pictures four
actors in a plywood space ship. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The trailer also says the film was shot in the non-existent
camera process known as Skeletorama. And, since Sony is releasing the film
under its Tristar banner, Schlesinger felt free to promote “Skeleton” as coming
from the same company that brought audiences “Lawrence of Arabia.” (That was
from Columbia Pictures, now part of Sony.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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The result? “Some people aren’t sure from the trailer if the
movie is real,” Schlesinger said. “I went to see ‘Triplets of Belleville,’ and
four people in front of me were watching the trailer and a woman asked that.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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He helpfully leaned over and told her “Skeleton” was indeed
a real movie. “I told her the rights to Skeletorama alone cost a fortune,” he
said, laughing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But others get the goof and consider it a riotous exception
in a field – movie trailers – that usually seeks to portray its product as a
virtual shoo-in for Oscars. Even if the film is a dead-on-arrival stinker.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Matt Groening said the trailer was the funniest thing he
had ever seen, which is now officially the best compliment I’ve ever had,”
Schlesinger said.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Schlesinger, a 53-year-old film buff, is the chief studio
backer of “Lost Skeleton.” The movie was made independently by
writer/director/star Larry Blamire, producer F. Miguel Valenti and a game if
small cast in various Los Angeles locations. Schlesinger saw it at a
Thursday-night independent-film screening at Hollywood’s American Cinematheque
at the Egyptian Theater, where he is a board member. “I get in free,” he said.</div>
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He found the movie amusing. “One thing I like is that it’s
good-natured, not mean-spirited in the way so many spoofs are these days,”
Schlesinger said. He also liked the way the premise is played straight-faced,
like a Christopher Guest movie.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The crowd at that screening also loved the film, and the
discussion that followed was enthusiastic. And when Schlesinger learned during
the question-and-answer period that “Skeleton” had been made for about
$100,000, he really flipped. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“That’s when I said to myself, I’ve got to have this movie,”
he said. “It’s guaranteed to be a cult classic, and maybe it could be something
more. And since it only cost $100,000, how could it lose? I went to Sony, and
they said, ‘Sure,’ but I’d have to do all the work on it myself.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Schlesinger was ready. He had moved to Los Angeles in 1981,
having previously booked in the mid-1970s an experimental Cincinnati
repertory-cinema program while working in Dayton for the theater’s owner. That
earned him a job with a Cincinnati film-booking agency – eventually he became a
part-owned of The Movies art houses in Cincinnati and Dayton. Since arriving
here, he has handled theatrical bookings of classic films for several studios.
(For the past 10 years, he has been at Sony Pictures.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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He was involved in the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary
re-release of Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane,” and the subsequent green-lighting
of “It’s All True,” a documentary about Welles’ aborted film project in Brazil.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That documentary filled in a crucial missing episode in film
history. Welles was in Brazil, working on a never-finished project also called
“It’s All True,” when his studio butchered his follow-up to “Citizen Kane,”
“The Magnificent Ambersons.” Many say Welles never regained his standing in
Hollywood, or his confidence in his work, after that experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Lost Skeleton” is hardly Wellesian in its ambitions or
accomplishments. But it is a lot of fun – and Schlesinger is having a lot of
fun trying to market it. “So far, everybody who sees it seems to love it,” he
said. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And he’s talking about the film, not just his trailer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Steven Rosen’s E-mail
address is <a href="mailto:srosenone@aol.com">srosenone@aol.com</a>.)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-60896011203982790282015-03-24T08:58:00.000-06:002015-03-24T08:58:10.994-06:00Is It the Best or Worst of Times for Film Restoration?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Is It the Best or the Worst Time for Film Restoration?</h1>
<article data-module-id="0000014c-0556-da14-a9dc-c5ff15900000" id="main-article" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; border: 0px; color: black; display: block; font-family: Vollkorn, serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 12px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="clearfix" id="article-byline" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="extra-bold" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 800; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By Steven Rosen | Indiewire</span><span style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">March 11, 2015 at 11:05AM</span></div>
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Some good news on the film restoration front: Satyajit Ray's "Apu Trilogy" is getting a 4K restoration and Janus Films is planning a theatrical release.</div>
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<img alt="Satyajit Ray" data-size="article-large" height="478" src="http://cdn.indiewire.com/dims4/INDIEWIRE/1b79051/2147483647/thumbnail/680x478/quality/75/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fd1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net%2F2c%2F21%2Fffe10caf4a88a31ce49ef8f73536%2Fsatyajit-ray.jpg" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 600px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="680" /></div>
<div class="caption" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="credit" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; display: block; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 9px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: baseline;">image courtesy of Janus Films</span><span class="text" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Satyajit Ray</span></div>
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Charles Dickens could have been referring to the current state of film restoration when he wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."</div>
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For, as was made clear – literally – at the recent Cinema Revival: A Festival of Film Restoration at Columbus, Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts, proponents of digital restoration believe the high quality and clarity of 4K (4,000 pixels per horizontal scan line) resolution is making it the new aesthetic standard. </div>
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<a class="" href="http://www.indiewire.com/article/heres-how-they-brought-a-hard-days-night-back-to-life-20140703" style="border: 0px; color: #005da6; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="Link: http://www.indiewire.com/article/heres-how-they-brought-a-hard-days-night-back-to-life-20140703">READ MORE: 'A Hard Day's Night' Hits Hulu Plus. Here's Why You Need to Watch It</a></div>
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Its rise has been recent. But it comes at a time of falling sales for DVDs, and also when many people are more interested in the convenience of watching movies anywhere – on their smart phones and in cars – than in seeing them in optimum conditions. </div>
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Lee Kline, technical director for The Criterion Collection, told festival attendees that with the growing adoption of the 4K standard, "We can finally call these (true) restorations." </div>
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That's because 4K digital scanning of source material, preferably but not always old film negatives, comes close to the same image quality as traditional 35-millimeter film prints. And it is twice that of the previous (and still prevalent) high standard for digital restorations, 2K. Criterion's first 4K release, "A Hard Day’s Night," came just last year.</div>
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"If you're trying to preserve something with the highest quality restoration, you have to be working with 4K," Kline said.</div>
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<img alt=""Pather Panchali"" data-size="article-large" height="478" src="http://cdn.indiewire.com/dims4/INDIEWIRE/695b94b/2147483647/thumbnail/680x478/quality/75/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fd1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net%2F10%2F18%2Fa49ad1434a5aac7e54d9be695753%2Fpather-panchali.jpg" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 600px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="680" /></div>
<div class="caption" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="credit" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; display: block; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 9px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: baseline;">Image courtesy of Janus Films</span><span class="text" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">"Pather Panchali"</span></div>
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One point made at the festival was that the term "film" is becoming a misnomer – new film negatives of digitally restored titles are not always made now.</div>
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Kline had arrived in Columbus via a 16-hour flight from Mumbai, the latest international trip in his current project to supervise a 4K restoration of the three films comprising the late Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s classic "Apu Trilogy"– 1955's "Pather Panchali," (1955) "Aparajito" (1956) and "Apur Sansar" (1959), also known as "The World of Apu."</div>
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Kline screened brief clips showing how the ongoing restoration is helping save Ray's films, since parts of the source material had been damaged or lost. The odyssey to restore the film began with Ray's lifetime achievement Academy Award in 1992. The following year, the films, en route from India to Los Angeles to be preserved, were ironically damaged in a fire at Hendersons Film Laboratories in South London. Despite being damaged, the films were shipped to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, where they were stored in vaults for the next 20 years (Read Kline's essay on how he pulled off the restoration <a class="" href="http://scroll.in/article/709091/The-long-road-to-restoration-for-Satyajit-Ray%E2%80%99s-Apu-trilogy" style="border: 0px; color: #005da6; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a>).</div>
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Janus Films is planning a theatrical release of "Apu Trilogy,” presumably using many theaters (like the Wexner’s) with 4K digital projectors. Criterion will follow with consumer discs.</div>
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But if all this is positive news for restoration, there's a downside. The time and money increases with 4K scanning – as does the "writing" of information to hard drives. Yet while regular DVD/Blu-ray players and high-definition TVs can play 4K discs, it's only at their standard resolution (although the quality of what they’re showing is much better). There is a growing market for 4K ultra-high definition televisions, especially for home theaters, but they are still expensive.</div>
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"The plan is to have people see things and buy things – so there are marketing concerns," said Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures’ executive vice president in charge of film restoration and digital mastering, during his festival presentation. "And the market for DVD and Blu-ray has gone [down] in recent years, so they're not putting out so many titles." </div>
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Still, Crisp expressed hope that the existing cinematheques equipped with 4K projectors – such as the Wexner and Indiana University's Cinema in the Midwest – will help build a growing theatrical circuit for such restorations.</div>
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<a class="" href="http://www.indiewire.com/article/why-the-history-of-16mm-film-matters-20141110" style="border: 0px; color: #005da6; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="Link: null">READ MORE: Why the History of 16mm Film Matters</a></div>
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<img alt=""Days of Heaven"" data-size="article-large" src="http://cdn.indiewire.com/dims4/INDIEWIRE/92f5548/2147483647/thumbnail/680x478/quality/75/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fimage.tmdb.org%2Ft%2Fp%2Foriginal%2F78OfWVXVDkh8QW4ASEF66oRVA54.jpg" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 600px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></div>
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At the festival, Sony provided two recent 4K restorations of black-and-white classics – Luchino Visconti's "Sandra," which stars Claudia Cardinale and debuted at the 2013 Venice Film Festival, where the then-new film won the Golden Lion in 1965; and Howard Hawks' classic 1939 "Only Angels Have Wings," with Cary Grant, Rita Hayworth and Jean Arthur. </div>
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The former, Crisp said, was restored photochemically about 12 years ago, but all the prints were unsteady – the originals were made on unsteady printers and couldn't be corrected. Now, with digital restoration, "We were able to stabilize these images," he said. </div>
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And "Angels" partly needed to await digital restoration to repair damage to its negative, since Crisp could recreate missing frames by "stealing" information from the surrounding ones.</div>
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Kline shared some fascinating "war stories" about working with the creators of films that Criterion had restored. He recalled that Terrence Malick insisted on reducing the color saturation of "Days of Heaven" during a digital restoration. </div>
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Because the film had been hailed on its 1979 release for its brilliant color, Kline questioned him. Malick refused to reconsider. "I realized he was right – the film has a better look without it," Kline said.</div>
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And on last year’s 2K restoration of Liliana Cavani’s 1974 "The Night Porter," Kline said he wanted to remove a production mistake – a hair that got on a lens during a key shot. "I said we probably have the technology to remove it. She said, 'You know what? It's part of the movie,'" he said.</div>
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Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-2952035517617336522015-03-09T15:21:00.000-06:002015-03-09T15:41:45.176-06:00Film Review | Fifty Shades of Grey <span style="color: grey;"><b>Entertainment Voice </b></span><br />
<h2>
I Am Curious--Grey</h2>
<h3 class="article__author">
<a href="http://entertainmentvoice.com/authors/thomasdelapa/">
by Thomas Delapa
</a>
</h3>
<br />
How’s this for a red-hot color scheme? Start with a kinky romance
plot as your base, daub in “9 1/2 Weeks”, and a streak of “Secretary,”
add on a tony veneer of “Jane Eyre,” and you’ll likely churn out “<a href="http://www.fiftyshadesmovie.com/">Fifty Shades of Grey</a>,” a bastardized S&M stew pot that’s equal parts icky, drippy, and sticky.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Birthed from the runaway 2012 erotic best-seller by British author <a href="http://www.eljamesauthor.com/">E.L. James</a>
(actually 40-something mom Erika Mitchell)“Fifty Shades” was slyly
delivered into theaters on Valentine’s Day. It should have been stamped
Return to Sender, borne out by the U.S. box-office jilting since its
opening week. “Girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, boy ties up girl,”
isn’t exactly the old-fashioned formula for screen romance, but then you
must bear in mind that we live in a luridly blue world in which
Internet-delivered porn has metastasized into the mainstream.<br />
<br />
Whereas James’ sensationally steamy novel—now trilogy—had readers
bound up tightly in all-in-your-head erotic fantasy, this turgid screen
version is hung up firstly by a casting palate that’s strikingly bland,
if not totally vapid. In light of the controversial sex, nudity, and
raunchy talk, it’s no surprise that name actors were shrinking violets
when it came time to signing on. Perhaps they haven’t forgotten the case
of one Elizabeth Berkeley, whose short-lived “Showgirls” notoriety
quickly dropped a curtain on her film career.<br />
<br />
From a self-published book hatched from the vampire-fiction
“Twilight” saga, it’s no earthly surprise that James’ erotica follows
the footsteps of a virginal (but hot) girl who’s romantically captivated
by a mysterious, even sinister (but hot) outsider with a terribly big
secret. This particular U.S. Northwest lady in waiting is Anastasia
(Dakota Johnson), a graduate English student whose small world is
instantly lit up with bodice-bursting fireworks upon meeting Christian
Grey (Jamie Dornan), the inscrutable young tycoon behind Seattle’s Grey
Enterprises.<br />
<br />
If Ana is searching for love and romance a la any bookish
Jane Austen heroine, the enigmatic Mr. Grey harbors desires that merge
the Marquis de Sade with Howard Hughes. Christian has not only created a
Telecom empire, he’s also set up a high-rise headquarters staffed with
so many curvaceous females that even Mad Men would be green with envy.<br />
<br />
Despite the supposed Seattle-area settings, Ana’s torridly
up-and-down romantic adventures have almost nothing to do with the known
world—except perhaps for the sort of folks who fancy “Game of Thrones”
as realistically medieval. This is paint-by-numbers hack erotica,
crudely drawn with crayons and mascara.<br />
<br />
It’s telling then when the gentlemanly Christian escorts Ana to his
pulpy-red S&M dungeon he calls it his “playroom.” Though coyishly
reluctant and naive, Anna enters and quickly warms to her role as
submissive girl-toy because, hey, the sex is awesome. With Mr. Grey in
executive control of his armoires of whips, ropes and silk ties, Anna
lets herself go. Naturally, this liberates her from the ties that bind
her to her fuddy-duddy sexual morals. No longer the mousy grad student
in plaids and ponytail, Ana is transformed into a walking G spot.<br />
<br />
Ana’s orgasmic liberation is echoed in her high-flying trips aboard
Mr. Grey’s fleet of helicopters and gliders, as well as in his
chauffeur-driven luxury cars. There’s nothing like being seduced by a
hunky, filthy-rich and single CEO to make a girl want to get down and
dirty. Jose (Victor Rasuk), Ana’s earthbound classmate and suitor, pales
in comparison to the splendidly expensive hues of Christian’s phallic
hi-rise world.<br />
<br />
James, director Samantha Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel
want their fantasy both ways, serving up kink and ample horizontal
nudity—almost all Johnson—on a plate while at the same granting their
heroine a girlish willfulness that rebels against Christian cocksure
dictates. The burning question is whether Ana will sign his ridiculously
explicit, X-rated contract laying out, as it were, their binding
relationship in black and white. As she dithers, she toys with him
outside the playroom, leaving him on pins and needles. James’
pseudo-feminist ruse is designed strictly to lend a patina of
independence to her heroine’s regression into a living, heavy-breathing
sex doll.<br />
<br />
Will these two live happily ever after, bound together by lust,
transgression, and Italian ties? Shades of the interminable “Twilight”
and “Hunger Games” series, captive audiences may have to slog through 49
more colorless shades of Grey before they’re let out of this dungeon.<br />
------------------ <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.fiftyshadesmovie.com/"><i>Fifty Shades of Grey </i></a><i>opens nationally Feb. 13</i><br />
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Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-35399753660788585362015-02-26T09:34:00.000-07:002015-02-26T09:35:27.941-07:00Film Review | Unbroken<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">To Hell and Back</span><br />
<br />
by Thomas Delapa, <a href="http://entertainmentvoice.com/authors/thomasdelapa/">Entertainment Voice</a><br />
<br />
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<br />
While film crowds across the U.S. have practically given “<a href="http://www.americansnipermovie.com/">American Sniper</a> ” a ticket-tape parade, the producers of “<a href="http://www.unbrokenfilm.com/">Unbroken</a>”
must be asking themselves why audiences for their valorous World War II
drama are in retreat. Cynics might say that trigger-happy screen
violence is always a sure shot, while a simple, disarming story of
wartime heroism and endurance is likely to miss the box-office bull’s
eye. Both pictures recoil from the non-fiction world, but it’s<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001401/"> Angelina Jolie</a>‘s directorial breakthrough that merits the longer salute.<br />
<br />
What informs Jolie’s deft direction is her obvious passion and
empathy for the subject matter—one of the great, if still largely
unfamiliar, wartime U.S. survival sagas. Not only did the 26-year-old
U.S. track star <a href="http://www.louiszamperini.net/">Louie Zamperini</a>
live through 47 dire, shark-infested days clinging to a tiny raft in
the Pacific, but his “rescuers” were the Japanese navy, who promptly
sailed him off to a succession of some of the most horrific POW camps in
the Pacific War. Commendations for bringing Zamperini’s incredible
exploits to a new generation’s attention first went to acclaimed author <a href="http://laurahillenbrandbooks.com/">Laura Hillenbrand</a> (“Seabiscuit”) with the 2010 publication of her best-selling biography.<br />
<br />
Over the years, a squad of screenwriters made a run at Hillenbrand’s
500-plus page book, the baton ending up with the unlikely team of Oscar
winners Joel and Ethan Coen. Serving their source with honor, the Coens
zero in on the human drama and jettison their characteristic ironic
ballast. Universal also joined up to the tune of a reported $60 million,
certainly one of the biggest budgets ever commanded by a female
director.<br />
<br />
“Unbroken” has taken on some fair flak for echoing a volley of inspirational POW dramas—from “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050212/">Bridge on the River Kwai</a>” spanning to the uncelebrated “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085933/">Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence</a>.”
However, it rises above the potshots, primarily because Jolie keeps her
hand steady as she goes towards the truth. She’s also brave in her
casting, ditching Hollywood brass in favor of talented unknowns.<br />
<br />
Of course, the critical role is Army Lt. Zamperini himself, and the young Brit<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1925239/"> Jack O’Connell</a>
valiantly executes the arduous physical scenes demanded of him.
However, there’s an intangible weapon that Jolie brings in, and that’s a
wrenching sense of empathy that Louie displays for his battered
brother-in-arms. “Lucky” Louie is no beefy John Wayne—or Clint
Eastwood—packing a Spartan detachment from the pain of others. He winces
when he sees (and hears) his comrades suffering their injuries and
imprisonment, even more so than when his own scrawny body is on the
line.<br />
<br />
Jolie and company can be forgiven for humanely limiting the
atrocities they actually portray, and surely worse were meted out in the
camps. However, further turns of the screws might have been warranted
to counterattack our own superhuman penchant for burying the atrocious
shrapnel of the past. As Louie’s whispering Grand Inquisitor camp
commander, the Japanese musician <a href="http://miyavimusic.com/">Miyavi</a>
strikes a memorably savage note (his sadism has a sexual charge) that
ranks with the Oscar-winning Sessue Hayakawa in “River Kwai.”<br />
<br />
Broken up by flashbacks to Louie’s checkered past as both
Italian-American delinquent and 1936 Olympic star, structurally
“Unbroken” is nothing to write home about, and might have been sturdier
had the supporting characters been built up. There’s no doubt that this
is Louie’s epic story, to a fault, while his band of brothers generally
stand at attention in the background.<br />
<br />
In a Hollywood so incestuously devoted to over-the-top action and the
girls-not-allowed club of blockbuster digital effects, Jolie charts her
own course, delivering a heady sense of both realism and humanity, ably
served by the veteran <a href="http://www.rogerdeakins.com/">Roger Deakins</a>’
pristine photography. That “Unbroken” was only decorated with a few
minor Oscar nominations is at least a little heartbreaking.<br />
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Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-24402739374259292142015-01-09T14:01:00.002-07:002015-01-09T14:01:51.980-07:00For Rod Taylor: Zabriskie Point: A Fever Dream of a Movie<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015</h2>
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<a href="http://www.stevenrosenwriter.com/2015/01/zabriskie-point-fever-dream-of-movie.html" style="color: #cc6600; display: block; text-decoration: none;">Zabriskie Point: A Fever Dream of a Movie </a></h3>
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<i>(I am reposting this 2009 story in memory of Rod Taylor, who died this week. While he did much fine work, his participation in this movie stands as a highlight to me. -- SR; 1-9-15)</i></h3>
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Zabriskie Point: A Fever Dream of a Movie</h3>
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Zabriskie Point: A Fever Dream of a Movie<br />Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni<br />Warner Home Video<br />By Steven Rosen<br /><br />(Published 7-31-09 in SonicBoomers.com)<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001TK80CA?ie=UTF8&tag=soniboom-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B001TK80CA" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"></a><br />During what most people consider Hollywood’s last golden era -- the early to mid-1970s -- so many good movies true to their times came out they couldn’t all be assimilated by the culture at the time.<br /><br />Like America, they were hip, sexy, druggy and rebellious, but also downbeat, violent, soul-searching and (fitting for the Watergate era) political.For every celebrated All the President’s Men, Five Easy Pieces and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, the New Hollywood also gave us an unjustly overlooked Cisco Pike, Blume in Love or Friends of Eddie Coyle.<br /><br />In today’s active retroculture, we’ve been kept busy with rediscoveries, restorations and revivals of films of that era that got missed the first time around.But Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, which has just been released by Warner Bros. Pictures on DVD, is a different case. It got plenty of attention upon its 1970 release -- and was so roundly rejected by audiences and critics alike that it has become one of the New Hollywood’s most celebrated turkeys, like Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie or William Friedkin’s Sorcerer.<br /><br />The movie went into hiding.Yet seeing it today, one realizes Zabriskie Point’s bad rep is largely a bad rap. Cinematographically, it is a visionary, hallucinatory interpretation of the fever dreams of the era’s counterculture. It finds poetry in the California of desert road-trip lore, while also finding ugliness in the Los Angeles (any city, really) of industrial clutter and sprawl. Seeing it now, with America struggling with a recession so deep many doubt the possibility of a return to normalcy as we know it, one realizes what the film is: a requiem for our lifestyle, ahead of its time.<br /><br />One with great music, by the way -- as an expanded soundtrack put out by Rhino in 1997 already proved.<br /><br />Today, Antonioni’s ideas of the America of that time seem artfully sharp if intellectually dispassionate. He saw the country locked in a war of ideas and values, maybe a shooting war. But he was more interested in looking at it as in creating a polemic about it. The resultant film is fascinatingly original yet mysterious, like a David Lynch movie.<br /><br />It would be dishonest, however, to call it a masterpiece -- Antonioni wanted unknowns for his leads, and their lack of acting experience shows in their stilted line deliveries. This was the first American movie for Antonioni, the Italian director whose films had a sexy, existential flair and who in his 50s had discovered youth culture, rock ‘n’ roll, swinging London and full-frontal nudity in his previous film, 1966’s classic Blowup. Like Blowup, Zabriskie was an MGM release, and the company had high hopes for it.<br /><br />The principals are an alienated college student, enamored of revolutionary ideas, named Mark (Mark Frechette), and the cheerfully beatific hippie Daria (Daria Halprin), who works among “straights” as a secretary at a development firm. They meet in the desert and make love at Zabriskie Point, which overlooks an ancient lakebed in Death Valley National Park.<br /><br />The symbolism seems evident -- however empty America had become, youth could still find beauty in its “death” throes. Kids may have thought Zabriskie would be Antonioni’s Easy Rider, but they had never seen his earlier Italian films, especially Red Desert and L’Avventura. So they were confused by the enigmatic way he let his camera, rather than his characters or his story, be the film’s star.<br /><br />There was also a political problem. The film begins with protests at “California State College” in L.A. in which a policeman gets shot and killed by a student. It appears that Mark is the student who shoots the cop, although it’s not absolutely clear. Antonioni doesn’t seem to care much about it, one way or another -- it’s just a way to get Mark out of L.A. and toward Daria. It gives the film (and Mark) a coldness the hot desert just can’t melt.<br /><br />Antonioni got credit for the spare, minimalist screenplay along with fellow Italians Franco Rossetti (aka Fred Gardner) and Tonino Guerra. American playwright Sam Shepard and Clare Peploe, Antonioni’s assistant who later married Bernardo Bertolucci, also contributed.<br /><br />Some of the dialogue is pithy. For instance, when police book college activists after a violent confrontation, one arrestee identifies himself as an associate professor of history. “That’s too long,” a cop says. “I’ll just put down ‘clerk.’”<br /><br />Plenty of movies that have been set in Los Angeles see the city’s beauty: the beaches, the hillside homes that overlook the glittering lights below, the Hollywood neon and the glamorous people it attracts. Antonioni and cinematographer Alfio Contini see, however, the mundane clutter and detritus. There’s a revealing montage of industrial-related signage and junkyards. The film does feature a lovely view of the Richfield Tower, a black-and-gold downtown L.A. Art Deco treasure demolished at about the same time as the film was made. Seeing it makes one bemoan all that has been lost in L.A. -- or any American city where “progress” trumps preservation.<br /><br />Zabriskie Point follows two parallel stories for awhile. Daria, on a mission to deliver material for a conference at the desert retreat of her boss (Rod Taylor), gets waylaid en route. The sun is bright and the people and buildings are both colorful, folkloric relics -- an old-timer in a roadhouse smokes as “Tennessee Waltz” plays on the jukebox.<br /><br />Mark, meanwhile, flees the campus shooting by hijacking a pink airplane, lifting off over the traffic-clogged, smoggy sprawl as a snippet of the Dead’s “Dark Star” jubilantly plays. In the desert, he sees Daria driving and goes down low to buzz her, again and again. The widescreen cinematography turns this into a maniacal mating ritual, plane over car, that provides a rush both scary and erotic.<br /><br />But it’s nothing compared to the Zabriskie Point lovemaking. The dusty, dry landscape suddenly sprouts a mirage of young people, in various couplings and stages of undress. The fight, claw, laugh, and have sex to a dreamy guitar piece by Jerry Garcia. (The Open Theatre of Joe Chaikin provides the bodies for this site-specific “performance.”) It’s a poetic way of externalizing the internal -- when in love; Daria and Mark feel as if the whole world is, too. Even in the desert.<br /><br />It’s a pretty radical scene for a movie that appears, up to that point, to be naturalistic. But there’s more to come. Mark flies back and is promptly, matter-of-factly shot to death by police. Antonioni films it as fait accompli, not worth romanticizing. Daria learns of it while driving in the desert; the radio interrupts John Fahey’s “Dance of Death” to announce it.<br /><br />She then arrives at the company retreat, a modernist home nestled into rocks on the side of a cliff, while executives are planning a new subdivision. She goes outside, looks back and -- boom -- the house explodes. Not once, but repeatedly, from different vantage points. As the camera studies in slow motion the “dance of death” of all the material inside it -- a newspaper, lawn chairs, even a loaf of Wonder bread -- Pink Floyd’s screaming “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up” (also known as “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”) plays.<br /><br />The explosions are apocalyptic and mesmerizing, mournful and beautiful. They leave you stunned and weirded-out. And then the movie is over with a long gaze into the Western sunset.<br /><br />Incidentally, MGM tacked on a kitschy romantic ballad, “So Young,” sung with soaring heartache by Roy Orbison. His career was stone cold at the time, and MGM -- his label -- may have wanted to give him a hit. According to the liner notes of the Rhino soundtrack, Antonioni hated it.<br /><br />Today, even given its faults, Zabriskie Point is invigorating. And it leaves you wondering, after all these years, if Antonioni looked at America at that time and found hope…or hopelessness. Whichever, was he right?<br />— 07/31/2009<div style="clear: both;">
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Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-72398440125182139222014-11-30T07:42:00.000-07:002014-11-30T07:42:02.672-07:00Forgotten Bob Dylan Film Projects from 1966: From the Archives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">By Steven Rosen</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Denver Post, 10-17-98</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>(When I first wrote this story, the angle was that the newly released Bob Dylan Live 1966: The 'Royal Albert Hall' Concert album might prompt some of this long-unreleased film footage to get out there. It didn't, but maybe now the new Basement Tapes packages will prompt the same thing -- even if the Basement Tapes period is a little later, it's still Dylan in the 60s and demand is great. -- SR)</b></span><br />
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's 1966 all over again in the world of pop music - and the<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Denver International Film Festival, which just concluded, was in<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>the center of it.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's because the record "Bob Dylan Live 1966: The ‘Royal<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Albert Hall' Concert'' was just released this week - some 32<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>years after the performance.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was instantly hailed as one of rock's great live<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>recordings. And the publicity surrounding the long-delayed<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>release has interested old and young music lovers in the story<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>of how folk singer Dylan switched to amplified rock 'n' roll in<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>1965 and 1966. He changed pop culture forever.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually taped at the Manchester, England, Free Trade Hall on<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>May 17, 1966, the new album reveals Dylan and his band playing<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>majestically loud in response to hecklers who wanted to hear him<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>solo, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and harmonica. In<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>July, after the European tour was over, Dylan was seriously<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>injured in a New York motorcycle accident and for many years<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>retreated from touring.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story of "Dylan goes electric'' has become contemporary<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>myth on the order of Arthur finding Excalibur and becoming king.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Now, after all these years during which bootleg tapes circulated<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>among collectors, a wide audience can hear a concert recording<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>from that time.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But few people know there are still two never-released films<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>of Dylan's 1966 European tour, where he and his band members -<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>including Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Manuel of the Hawks - played blistering rock 'n' roll to a<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>sometimes-resistant audience. (Dylan opened shows with an<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>acoustic set.)<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But two people who do know about the movies were at this<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>year's Denver film festival - directors D.A. <b>Pennebaker</b> and<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Harry Rasky. Both were involved, to varying degrees, in trying<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>to make a movie of the tour.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"It is rather strange,'' <b>Pennebaker</b> said. "You go for a<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>long period of time and there's not much interest in it and you<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>think, ‘Well, it's not as great as I thought it was.' And then<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>suddenly something starts it back up.''<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>Pennebaker</b> is one of the pioneers of cinema-verite<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>documentaries. He was in Denver with his wife and filmmaking<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>partner of some 20 years, Chris Hegedus, to show their latest<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>work, "Moon Over Broadway.'' They also received the festival's<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>John Cassavetes Award.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1965, <b>Pennebaker</b> filmed Dylan's solo tour of England,<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>which occurred just before the musician's shift to rock. That<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>movie became the now-classic "Don't Look Back.'' Dylan called<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>him in early 1966 to help film his upcoming European concerts.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Dylan had contracted with ABC to produce a television special<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>about his tour.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"We had a meeting in Los Angeles and Bob said, ‘You got your<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>movie and now I want you to help me make mine.' And I said<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>‘sure,''' <b>Pennebaker</b> said.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dylan's plan, apparently, was to create a film that was both<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>structurally and emotionally confrontational and radical - just<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>like his music of the period. (A spokesman at Dylan's record<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>company said he was unavailable for comment.) But ABC had other<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>ideas, and hired Harry Rasky to be the director.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rasky, who now produces documentaries for the Canadian<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Broadcasting Corp., was in Denver to show his new "Christopher<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Plummer: King of Players.'' He recalled his Dylan '66 experience as<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>"one of the great traumas of my life.'' He had just completed a<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>program on Fidel Castro's Cuba, including a rare Che Guevara<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>interview, when ABC called him.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"It seemed to me they chose me as a free-minded guy,'' Rasky<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>said. "But the minute Dylan found out I had been asked by ABC<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>to do the film, he thought I was the voice of authority.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"He said, ‘OK, you can make the film but I won't listen to<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>direction.' I thought I could ingratiate myself to him. So we<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>all went to London and stayed at the Mayfair Hotel. Dylan said,<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>‘We're going to do things my way.'''<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a week, Dylan's manager paid him a full salary to<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>leave. But he did have one unusual experience - attending a<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>private late-night screening of "Don't Look Back'' with Dylan<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>and the Beatles. When it was over, he said, he discovered the<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Beatles asleep.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once the tour began and filming started, <b>Pennebaker</b> recalled,<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Dylan intentionally tried to keep people around him on edge.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"He was getting a big pot boiling, with everybody kind of at<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>odds and uncertain and confused and even a little ... (annoyed)<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>and then film that condition in various ways,'' <b>Pennebaker</b> said.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"It's a way for people who aren't filmmakers but are<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>consummate dramatists in one way or another to create a kind of<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>scene for a film,'' he said. "They're not writing; writing<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>scenes is an art in itself. So Bob just simply said, ‘I'll get a<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>lot of people together and we'll see what happens.'''<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>Pennebaker</b>, who, along with Howard Alk, was filming selected<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>concert dates, doesn't recall crowd response because he was<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>watching the musicians. "The music was wonderful,'' he said.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>"They were some of the best concerts I ever shot. It was<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>wondrous. And I was taken up with how to film them.''<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In particular, he wanted to get close - right on stage, if<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>necessary - to film the musicians. "Dylan and Robbie (guitarist<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Robertson) really were into it, and cut themselves off from<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>everything else, as if they weren't even aware there was an<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>audience there. It was an amazing thing to watch.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Always up to that point, when Dylan would go out acoustic,<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>he was completely aware of the audience - he dominated that<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>audience,'' he said. "He almost dared them to make a noise or<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>get out of line. And in this case, it was as if he didn't ...<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>(care) what they were doing or thinking. And in order to get<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>that, I began to think we couldn't film that with long lenses.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I had to get out on stage, put a wide angle lens on the<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>camera and get into it, myself. That was a big decision. It<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>meant the first time Dylan came out on stage and I was standing<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>there with a camera, he almost flipped. He laughed because he<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>hadn't expected it, but it made it possible to get the kind of<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>performance we couldn't otherwise get.''<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In June, after the tour concluded, <b>Pennebaker</b> said, Dylan's<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>management found itself with no movie and facing an ABC<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>deadline. So at management's request, <b>Pennebaker</b> edited his<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>footage into a 45-50 minute "rough sketch'' called "You Know<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Something Is Happening.'' (The title comes from a phrase in a<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Dylan song.)<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"It would be like a continuation of ‘Don't Look Back,'''<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><b>Pennebaker</b> said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"‘Don't Look Back 2' - what happened when the<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>electricity was turned on.''<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Dylan didn't like it and, with Alk, used different tour<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>footage to construct his own anti-documentary called ""Eat the<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Document.'' ABC rejected it, and both movies have been more or<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>less forgotten.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But with the release of the new record, there has also been a<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>revival of interest in "Eat the Document.'' The Museum of<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Television & Radio branches in New York and Los Angeles are holding<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>special screenings of the film. There are no plans, however, to<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>make "Something Is Happening'' available.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rasky meanwhile said he still regrets not having the chance<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>to help Dylan make the kind of film he wanted - one that<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>explores a highly regarded, singer-songwriter's personality and<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>relationship to his audience while also featuring music.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"But I made it up a few years later by making that film with<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Leonard Cohen – ‘The Song of Leonard Cohen,''' he said.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, too, has remained virtually unseen seen since its<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Canadian TV broadcast.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
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<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>Steven</b> <b>Rosen</b>'s e-mail address is srosenone@aol.com.<o:p></o:p></pre>
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Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-46965493133691128772014-11-26T14:32:00.000-07:002014-11-26T14:32:44.115-07:00Film Review | Food Chains<span class="white"></span>
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<span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://alternet.org/">AlterNet</a></span></span></span> / <em>By</em> <em><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-delapa">Thomas Delapa</a></em>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">No justice, no
peas ... or tomatoes?</span></h1>
<h1 class="node-title">
'Food Chains' Documents the Shameful Exploitation of Migrant Workers</h1>
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<em><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-11-25T08:24:00-08:00">November 25, 2014</span></span></span></span>
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In H.G. Wells' prescient <em>The Time Machine</em> (1895), the
seminal British science-fiction author foretold of a dystopian future in
which the indolent, lotus-eating Eloi live off the toils of a race of
devolved humans—the Morlocks—who barbarically survive running incessant
machines in underground caves.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Wells’ gloomy
future was set in the unfathomably far-off year of 802,701, but don’t tell that
to Bangladesh sweatshop workers, Chinese smartphone assemblers—or Florida
tomato pickers. His dismal vision of humanity is nearer than you may think. And
like the Eloi, we above-ground 2014 dwellers may be the ones running out of
time.</span><br />
<br />
Today is no great present
for the legions of migrant workers who toil in our fields for what often
amounts to a few dollars an hour for backbreaking labor. A new
documentary on their plight, <b><a href="http://www.foodchainsfilm.com/" target="_blank">Food Chains</a>,</b>
plucks out the unsavory links between American agribusiness, grocery
behemoths and the voracious U.S. consumer, who continues to labor under
the illusion that cheap products don’t come with an insidious hidden
cost.<br />
<br />
Produced in part by Eric Schlosser (<em>Fast Food Nation</em>) and actress/advocate Eva Longoria, <em>Food Chains</em>
serves up bitter facts and figures about how farm workers have become
fodder for corporate food giants like the Florida-based Publix stores.
Touched off by the entrance of Walmart into the grocery business in the
1980s, the industry has distilled into a Darwinian handful of
top-feeding corporations, including Kroger and Safeway. These
multi-billion-dollar chains now have the unprecedented power to drive
the hardest of bargains with suppliers, forcing prices way, way down for
their products. That may be good for penny-pinching consumers, but
inevitably bad for the producers and their workers, especially
small-potatoes farmers.<br />
<br />
To that witches’ brew, add and stir in
NAFTA, the seismic 1992 agreement that mowed down trade barriers between
the U.S., Mexico and Canada. One of the main unintended byproducts of
the Clinton-engineered pact was that <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-great-migration" target="_blank">scores of south-of-the-border farms</a>
went under, driven out of business by competition from lower-priced
American foodstuffs. And here’s the bitter frosting on the funnel cake:
As a result, thousands of unemployed and displaced Mexican nationals
fled to El Norte—the vast majority undocumented, to find menial work in
American fields and factories.<br />
<br />
Director Sanjay Rawal’s tract doesn’t always go down easy, and no one will mistake it for such delectable documentary fare as <em>Food, Inc.</em> or <em>Super-Size Me</em>.
His 82-minute film is more of a rallying flag, boosting the crusade of a
coalition of Immokalee, Florida tomato pickers and sympathizers in
their decades-long fight to squeeze out a pittance more in wages
(through their “<a href="http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/10/24/fair-food-program-label" target="_blank">Fair Food Program</a>”) from the highly profitable, employee-owned <a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2014-03-11/news/os-publix-immokaloee-tomatoes-scott-maxwell-20140311_1_greenwise-publix-bogo" target="_blank">Publix chain</a>.<br />
<br />
Rawal
and his producers grasp for, but barely touch the bigger picture of the
long history of worker exploitation in U.S. fields and farms. We hear
of the seeds of labor agitation planted in the 1960s by Cesar Chavez and
his United Farm Workers, but Rawal could have better forged the
deep-rooted connections between the grocery giants, the restaurant
industry and the omnivorous American consumer.<br />
<br />
To broaden his
scope, Rawal ventures far afield from Florida, planting his cameras in
California’s lush Napa Valley. Here migrant grape harvesters are priced
out of the ritzy housing market and many are forced to live in
shantytowns many miles away from the fields. Like so much of post-Reagan
America, this is a land of two classes, two divided cultures, existing
side by side yet certainly not seen in Alexander Payne’s boisterous
wine-country tour <em>Sideways</em>. As for the Napa growers, they
surely must feel some sour grapes at Rawal’s claims, since narrator
Forest Whitaker omits mention of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27bcjames.html?_r=0" target="_blank">public housing</a> the county specifically built for seasonal workers starting in 2002.<br />
<br />
<div id="bookmark">
<em>Food Chains</em>
is most sobering when it doesn’t pick and choose its facts. It takes us
back in time to Thanksgiving 1960, when the CBS-TV landmark <em><a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/05/31/317364146/in-confronting-poverty-harvest-of-shame-reaped-praise-and-criticism" target="_blank">Harvest of Shame</a></em>
plowed up the pervasive poverty among America’s farm laborers. Back
then a Southern farm owner admitted, “We used to own our slaves, and now
we just rent them.”</div>
<div id="bookmark">
<br /></div>
In an American agribusiness dependent on
cheap, exploitable labor from newer generations of huddled masses, it’s
not only grapes that may ripen with wrath.<br />
<br />
------------------- </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-43171182317645264172014-11-10T16:58:00.000-07:002014-11-10T17:06:40.734-07:00Film Review | Interstellar<h1 class="smallh1">
</h1>
<div id="description">
The Observer's culture blog</div>
<a href="http://annarborobserver.com/blogs/movieblog/"><b><i>Ann Arbor Observer</i></b></a><br />
<b><i>Monday, November 10, 2014</i></b>
<br />
<h3>
2014: SPACE ODDITY</h3>
<h3>
by Tomas David </h3>
<table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="padding: 0px 8px 8px 0px; width: 200px;">
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<tr>
<td><img align="left" alt="poster for the movie Intersteller" src="http://AnnArborObserver.com/blogs/photos/145.2.jpeg" height="112" width="200" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
Earth to Christopher Nolan: "There's no crying in outer space!"<br />
<br />
Roger that. Houston would have a real problem with the British director's latest magnum opus, <i>Interstellar,</i> which shoots high to put the science--and big ideas--back into the science-fiction movie.<br />
<br />
Unpleasantly earthbound after his Oscar-earning turn in <i>Dallas Buyers Club,</i>
Matthew McConaughey dimly stars as an astronaut given the lofty mission
of saving humanity from imminent doom. Yes, In a World ... choked by
killer sandstorms and dying agriculture, humanity has no hope but to
seek out another home in the cosmos. As a corn farmer and former space
pilot, McConaughey's Cooper fatefully lands in the driver's seat,
prodded on by his feisty young daughter (Mackenzie Foy).<br />
<br />
The helmsman behind a galaxy of pop-corn blockbusters including <i>Inception</i>
and the Christian Bale Batman reboots, Nolan and co-writer and brother
Christopher Nolan launch their multi-stage, multi-hour vehicle designed
to reach the rarefied atmosphere of Kubrick's <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>
and other sci-fi classics. The dramatic payload is heavy, often
crushing, and the payoff will leave many gasping for air, and not in a
good, Space Mountain way. You might say that Interstellar is the anti-<i>Gravity</i>, if it didn't implode soon after lift-off.<br />
<br />
Sketchily
post-apocalyptic, Nolan's star-crossed epic theorizes that the truth is
out there--or at least a new Earth potentially is on the far side of a
mysterious wormhole spinning off Saturn. A brain trust of stealthy NASA
scientists drafts Cooper for the mission, along with a small crew that
includes a young scientist (the anti-Sally Ride, Anne Hathaway) who's
the daughter of the project's weary mission controller (a weary Michael
Caine).<br />
<br />
A weightless hero, McConaughey delivers his lines in a
mumbled, over-naturalistic monotone that's the wrong stuff in a spacey
movie that comes equipped with the pace of suspended animation. Nolan
overloads the script with so many clunky scientific terms
("singularity," "time-shift," ad infinitum.) that they might even make
Stephen Hawking's head spin. When Nolan needs a melodramatic booster, he
has his actors jettison Kubrickian coolness and lurch into
hyper-crying, including Hathaway, the Les Miz Oscar winner who's
miserably cast in a retro female role beamed back from 1950s B-grade
sci-fi. Where have you gone, Sigourney Weaver?<br />
<br />
For all its modern trappings, yawning length and astronomical pretensions, <i>Interstellar</i> is a dismal, fizzling blast from the past--George Pal's <i>When Worlds Collide</i> bogged down with cornball philosophy and an extra hour of unfunny outtakes and overwrought suspense. Rather than <i>2001,</i> Nolan should have explored the grim fate of Disney's 1979 <i>The Black Hole,</i> which charted nebulously similar territory and quickly vanished into box-office hell.<br />
<br />
--------------------- Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-14589931713901153252014-08-14T08:18:00.000-06:002014-08-14T08:30:24.327-06:00TV Review | Big Men <div class="headline">
<div class="byline environment">
<span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://alternet.org/">AlterNet</a></span></span></span> / <i>By</i> <i><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-delapa">Thomas Delapa, </a></i><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-delapa"><br /></a><i><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-08-08T08:52:00-07:00">August 8, 2014</span></span></span></span>
</i> | </div>
<h1 class="node-title">
They Might Be Giants</h1>
</div>
<div class="teaser">
<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">
The PBS documentary 'Big Men' is a refined, methodical probe into wildcatting capitalism and corporate neo-colonialism.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="article_insert_separator">
</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="insert_border_bottom">
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</div>
If there was gold in them thar hills, there must be black gold in them thar oceans.<br />
<br />
That
might have been the operating motto powering Texas-based Kosmos Energy
when it went drilling for petroleum off the coast of Ghana a decade ago.
In 2007, they hit a gusher, tapping into a huge oil reserve—now the
aptly named <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703734204576019492595000376" target="_blank">Jubilee field</a>—leaving Kosmos-nauts as well as Ghanaians with visions of barrels of petro-dollars dancing in their heads.<br />
<br />
But
before Ghanaians and their government fantasize about their own
colorized remake of the Beverly Hillbillies in the Sahel, they only need
look next door to Nigeria to see what happens when a poor, undeveloped
African nation strikes it big in oil: There will be blood... as well as
greed, corruption and war.<br />
<br />
In the new season of PBS’ award-winning POV documentary series, filmmaker Rachel Boynton’s <b><a href="http://www.pbs.org/pov/bigmen/" target="_blank">Big Men</a></b> (Monday,
Aug. 25) stands lean and tall, digging into a cautionary tale that
merges Fortune magazine with Joseph Conrad at his grimiest. The end
product is a refined, methodical probe into wildcatting capitalism and
corporate neo-colonialism, but one that nonetheless runs a little dry in
bedrock analysis.<br />
<br />
Boynton takes her cameras and crew from the
streets of Ghana and the deltas of Nigeria to the slick boardrooms of
New York City; from America’s entrepreneurial one-percenters to Africa’s
wretched of the earth. Shot over five years, her 95-minute chronicle is
a hefty accomplishment, giving viewers a multifaceted, fly-on-the-wall
probe into how the gears of 21st-century Third World turbo-capitalism
work—and the grease that keeps it all running.<br />
<br />
If Boynton has a
protagonist, besides Ghana itself, it’s Bill Musselman, a
straight-shooting, old-school oilman who spearheaded Kosmos’ African
explorations as CEO. The upside to Boynton’s considerable access to
Musselman and other Kosmos execs is their chatty, off-the-cuff comments;
the downside is the relative rarity of provocative questions or
research that dig deeper than her objective style permits. Yet for all
of Musselman’s amiability— even when Wall Street bears begin biting in
Great Recession 2009—he revealingly spouts off when a Norwegian official
argues that the best way to prevent Ghana from being exploited is to
heavily tax the multinational drillers. Like any good free-marketer in
our regressively Ayn Randian era, Musselman views taxes as bad business,
if not sludge.<br />
<br />
At the beginning of <i>Big Men</i>, Boynton
quotes U.S. capitalism high priest (or witchdoctor) Milton Friedman, who
sermonized that the “world runs on individuals pursuing their separate
interests.” The Chicago School economist scarcely qualified his “I got
mine” mantra, but Boynton pours out examples of the destructive
absurdities of such a crude individualist credo. We’re taken to oil-rich
Nigeria, where greedy and corrupt elites have so wildly pursued their
interests at the expense of their country that they’ve created a
brutally stratified, stagnant land of haves and have-nots. This is a
place where the destitute villagers secretly sabotage pipelines just to
be hired back to repair them, and where armed militants in ski masks set
hellish fires to oil refineries. (It’s also worth mentioning that
Nigeria is where poverty and despair ignited the barbaric Islamic
backlash of Boco Haram.)<br />
<br />
<i>Big Men</i>’s title comes from an
observation of a Ghanaian tribal leader who says that “everybody wants
to become a big man" and get fat from a diet of oil money. The ultimate
question that Boynton poses is if Ghana can break the Nigerian (and
Mideast) mold by democratically sharing the wealth from its share of
that oil money—some $444 million in 2011 alone.<br />
<br />
<div id="bookmark">
But
the deeper question, and not only for Ghanaians, is who exactly owns the
Earth’s diminishing natural resources, and how much they should profit
by them. Musselman and venture capitalist Jeffrey Harris claim that the
great risks involved in exploring for oil justifies their enormous takes
on the back end. But what’s the bottom line and who really pays when a
corporation (BP, anyone?) recklessly befouls our precious waterways and
coasts for generations to come? And don’t the Jubilee field and
discoveries like it just keep gasoline relatively cheap, prolonging our
bottomless addiction to fossil fuels and the amoral corporate pushers
that pump them?</div>
<div id="bookmark">
<br /></div>
The answers from <i>Big Men</i> are sizeable but
they don’t always measure up to the well of questions Boynton
implicitly raises. To wit, how’s this for a toxic gusher: Kosmos Energy
CEO Brian Maxted was a monstrously big man in 2011, fueled by <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20120615-average-pay-of-a-ceo-in-d-fw-jumped-19.5-percent-in-2011.ece" target="_blank">$58 million </a>in salary and stock options.<br />
-------- Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-31685329208761367802014-08-02T09:55:00.000-06:002014-08-02T09:55:36.643-06:00Film Review | The Kill Team<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Improvised
Explosive Devices</span></span>
</b><br />
<div class="byline media-culture">
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<div class="byline media-culture">
Documentary 'The Kill Team' Captures Nightmare of War</div>
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<a href="http://www.alternet.org/culture/documentary-kill-team-captures-nightmare-war?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even">AlterNet</span></span></span></a> /<em><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-07-30T07:15:00-07:00">July 30, 2014</span></span></span></span>
</em> <em>By</em> <em><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-delapa">Thomas Delapa</a></em></div>
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<em> </em><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></span></div>
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<br />
In 2009, when Army PFC Andrew Holmes saw his first combat action in
Afghanistan, his immediate thought was of the over-the-top, gung-ho
heroics of <em>Top Gun</em>, capped with the strains of “Danger Zone” ricocheting in his head.<br />
<br />
Dizzying
jump cut to six years later: Holmes has no medals, no trophies and not
even a kiss from Kelly McGillis. Found guilty in a military court, along
with other members of his notorious “<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2011%2F05%2F01%2Fmagazine%2Fmag-01KillTeam-t.html%3Fpagewanted%3Dall&ei=JBa4U7-YN8qPyAT454LACg&usg=AFQjCNGD4sItJ68Q4yd8bxxAtslaSVf-Hw" target="_blank">Kill Team</a>” platoon in the murders of unarmed Afghan civilians, Holmes is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Leavenworth prison.<br />
<br />
How
Holmes, Adam Winfield and Jeremy Morlock spiraled down from front-line
U.S. warriors to disgraced war criminals is the main mission behind <b><a href="http://killteammovie.com/see-the-film" target="_blank">The Kill Team</a></b>,
a brief, choppy but incendiary documentary that registers yet another
tragic beat in the American heart of darkness during the post-9/11 era.<br />
<br />
With director Dan Krauss doing triple duty as producer and cinematographer (as well as editor and co-writer), <em>The Kill Team</em>
is nearly a one-man operation, and the stitches in this postmortem
sometimes show. Krauss trains his sights primarily on Specialist Adam
Winfield, once a proud member of the Fifth Stryker Brigade, Bravo
Company, stationed in Kandahar province from 2009 to 2010. You won’t get
the big picture of the decade-long U.S. counter-terrorism war in
Afghanistan; rather, Krauss’ closeup cinema-verité campaign is to embed
himself into the lives of Winfield and his distraught parents, Chris and
Emma, as the military begins its murder trial against their son in Fort
Lewis, WA. For background ammunition, Krauss drops in footage captured
from the soldiers’ camcorders while on patrol as well as from Winfield’s
actual 2010 Army interrogation.<br />
<br />
Baby-faced, soft-spoken and
slight of frame, Winfield hardly fits the profile of a macho,
battle-tested veteran. A patriotic idealist when he joined the Army at
age 17 (“I loved being in the military”), while echoing his father’s
Marine footsteps he soon discovered that the Army wasn’t at all like
those glorified Be All You Can Be commercial come-ons. Winfield and his
fellow soldiers experienced firsthand the damning disconnect between the
military’s historic search-and-destroy raison d’être and the ambitious,
yet perhaps impossible mission of nation-building— this in a desolate
tribal country mired in the Middle Ages. Faced with the collateral foes
of boredom and frustration, Bravo Company went medieval itself in short
order. “This sucks... a lot,” we hear a disgusted Winfield say on
patrol.<br />
<br />
In a déjà vu flashback to the U.S. quagmire in Vietnam,
Bravo Company had to contend with elusive Taliban guerrillas nearly
impossible to pin down, nerve-racking daily threats from roadside bombs,
as well as indifferent and suspicious, if not outright
hostile, villagers. But what really lit the fuse in the squad was the
entrance of Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, a burly Iraq veteran <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">who
was, by most accounts, a Rambo-esque psycho.</span> In only one of
Gibbs’ kick-ass pathologies, his idea of R&R was fashioning a
ghastly bone necklace made from the fingers of enemy dead. <br />
<br />
You don’t need to be a military (or movie) historian to flashback to Oliver Stone’s 1986 Oscar-winning Vietnam War film <em>Platoon</em>,
in which young Army recruit Charlie Sheen is divided in his loyalties
to his two sergeants—a ruthless Tom Berenger and the altruistic,
Christ-like Willem Dafoe. But in Krauss’ grimly un-Hollywood war story,
there was no casting call for Gibbs’ counterpart. Bravo Company’s soul
was lost to the sergeant’s savage scheme and conspiracy to rack up
kills, even if it meant planting evidence (using “drop weapons”) on
innocent civilians, and then claiming self-defense.<br />
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A
classic sociopathic bully, Gibbs uniformly cowed his squad into going
along and falling in place with his savage schemes. Most got a rush out
of the blood lust, especially back at the base, where they were greeted
as “heroes” and "made men." But at least one soldier initially disobeyed
orders and couldn’t stomach the Kool-Aid. That was SPC Winfield, who in
early 2010 began e-mailing his father in distress, pleading, “I want to
do something about it.”</div>
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<br /></div>
The rest of Winfield’s nightmare war
story is a long gray line of military screw-ups, treachery and
scapegoating. Of all the images in <em>The Kill Team</em>, perhaps none
is as tragic or ironic as that of the manacled Winfield in his
camouflage fatigues, ruefully telling his account to Krauss’ camera.
There are other voices equally as expressive—like that of Morlock,
serving a 24-year sentence—but Winfield commands attention, if only
because he sounds so earnest, even heartbreaking.<br />
<br />
In the
interminable war on terrorism filled with such blowback disasters as Abu
Ghraib, “enhanced interrogation,” and the Iraq invasion <em>in toto</em>,
how can the U.S. government even think about winning the hearts and
minds of the Afghan people when it can’t even win those of its own
soldiers?<br />
<br />
------------- Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-5795219157418465942014-06-28T06:36:00.001-06:002014-06-28T06:36:05.014-06:00I'm Not There: Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan Movie: From the Archives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qXzC8gqe2zo/U662PA_jeAI/AAAAAAAAAa4/K98_oArFu80/s1600/cateblan1SCOPE_468x680.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qXzC8gqe2zo/U662PA_jeAI/AAAAAAAAAa4/K98_oArFu80/s1600/cateblan1SCOPE_468x680.jpg" height="320" width="220" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>I’m Not There<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Directed by Todd Haynes<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>W/ Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Cincinnati CityBeat; 2007</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Grade: A-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">By Steven Rosen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Music biopics tend to be prosaic in form – a chronological recounting of a pop star’s life, highlighting the push-and-pull between personal tragedies and artistic triumphs. Usually, such films get their energy and achieve their success through the acting and music – Ray and Walk the Line being the most notable recent examples. Their narratives are clichéd.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I’m Not There is only loosely modeled on, yet nevertheless profoundly about, Bob Dylan’s life. It is different. Director and co-writer (with Oren Moverman) Todd Haynes has structured a freewheelin’ film (with Dylan’s permission) based on the associative imagery and mystique that a great Dylan song creates when heard by a fan. You’ll like this film if you ever craned toward a radio trying to decipher and construe lyrics to “Like a Rolling Stone,” or wonder about the man behind that drawling, seductive, alluring – and radically singular – voice. And who hasn’t?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Six very different actors – including Cate Blanchett (photo above) in a turn worthy of an Oscar nomination – play Dylan-inspired characters (the name “Bob Dylan” is never mentioned). Although there is ample crosscutting to keep each one’s story moving forward simultaneously, their worlds are presented like different movies with different moods. Sometimes those separate stories are shot by cinematographer Edward Lachman with different film stock, or in black-and-white rather than color.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Haynes, who also made Velvet Goldmine and Far From Heaven, has a degree in art and semiotics – perfect for a filmmaker steeped in the resonance and historic meaning of metaphor and symbolism. But he’s not an overly intellectualized cineaste trapped inside his own head. He likes to have fun; he can be an incredibly provocative “jokerman,” to quote from a Dylan song. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In Dylan, he has a perfect subject, too – an artist who has manipulated and controlled his own mystique-cloaked persona to the point his “periods” are almost as important to us as the solstice and equinox were to the ancients.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’m Not There is encoded with references to Dylan’s life and art, as well as to the filmmakers whose avant-garde approach to commercial movies – Jean-Luc Godard, Fellini, Richard Lester, D.A. Pennebaker, Robert Altman – did so much in Haynes’ view to free pop culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Just like Dylan. In one incredible short span, Haynes references Fellini’s 8 ½, Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night and, delightfully, the Teletubbies! In one of his boldest moves, inspired by a close reading of Greil Marcus’ writings on Dylan, Haynes connects the rifle shot-like opening of “Like a Rolling Stone” to the way Godard used rifle shot-like editing to shake up devotees of the French New Wave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Blanchett plays the doomed Jude, closely based on the Dylan of D.A. Pennebaker’s black-and-white Don’t Look Back – a folk singer transforming into a blissed-out electric rock star during a mid-1960s London tour. Here, her Jude is alternately amused by and outraged by a British press that believes he has sold out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Richard Gere is Billy, an aging outlaw who confronts the sheriff Pat Garrett in a circus town on the Western frontier. (Dylan had a small but influential, to him, role in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.) Christian Bale is Jack, the folk/protest singer who took Greenwich Village by storm in the early 1960s and then dropped out to become Pastor John, a leader of a small evangelical church.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ben Whishaw is Arthur Rimbaud, the mysterious French poet who inspired Dylan. Heath Ledger is Robbie, a Hollywood actor who once played Jack in a movie and is now breaking up with artist wife Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And in a remarkable performance, African-American child actor Marcus Carl Franklin plays young Woody in late-1950s America, who runs away from home and hops a train trying to relive the adventures and lifestyle of idol Woody Guthrie. Gregarious and outspoken, he wins friends among hobos and – after he falls into a river and escapes a shark – a wealthy, middle-class family right out of Haynes’ Far From Heaven. Franklin’s joyous duet with Richie Havens on “Tombstone Blues” is a highlight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Of these stories, only Robbie and Claire’s feels flat. It’s hard to take the time to authentically depict romantic heartbreak in a film moving as fast as this one. And Robbie seems pretty far removed from Dylan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What unifies everything, ultimately, is the thrilling use of Dylan’s songs by music supervisors Randall Poster and Jim Dunbar both on the soundtrack and as performed on screen. That begins with “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” during an opening montage of 1960s life in Greenwich Village, and ends with Antony and the Johnsons’ tender reading of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” during the closing credits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The title, itself, comes from a haunting, simmering Basement Tape outtake previously unreleased but made legendary by Marcus in his book Invisible Republic. The film contains two versions – Dylan’s original and a new one by Sonic Youth.</span></div>
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Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-6370738381198774122014-06-22T09:14:00.001-06:002014-06-22T09:14:46.878-06:00Overlooked Performances: Royale Watkins in 'My Dinner With Jimi'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>(Deeper Into Movies begins an occasional feature singling out overlooked fine performances in movies you may or may not know about, but are worth seeing if you savor the art of acting.)</i></h1>
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My Dinner With Jimi</h1>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;">(Rhino; 90 minutes)</span></h1>
<h1 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 1.571428571rem; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://www.rhino.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #9f9f9f; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">www.rhino.com</a></h1>
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<span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">BY STEVEN ROSEN</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">(First published at www.blurtonline.com</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Open Sans, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;">Royale Watkins gives a charismatic, sexy and endearing </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;">performance as Jimi Hendrix in this wryly comic, sweet-natured reverse-</span><em style="border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t</em><em style="border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Look Back</em><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Open Sans, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;">remembrance of a trip to Swinging London by California </span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px;">posters</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;">the Turtles in 1967, at the height of their “Happy Together”/”She’d Rather Be </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714;">With Me" fame.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin-bottom: 1.714285714rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">On their arrival, the night before</span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sgt. Pepper</em><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">is </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">released, wide-eyed Turtles singer Howard Kaylan (a very effective Justin </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">Henry, child star of</span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kramer vs. Kramer)</em><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">meets the Beatles, Graham Nash, </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">Donovan, Brian Jones and Hendrix at a nightclub. More fan than rock star, </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">chubby and poorly dressed and not especially hip, Kaylan is both an outsider </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">and – because he has a pop hit – an insider in this rarified world. </span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin-bottom: 1.714285714rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">John Lennon </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">(Brian Groh) is drunk and cruel, Jones (Jay Michael Ferguson) proves a </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">gentlemanly fan of Southern California pop, Hendrix – not yet known in the U.S. – imparts </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">wisdom during an alcohol-fueled dinner.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin-bottom: 1.714285714rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">Made in 2003 on a restrictive budget by Bill Fishman</span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(Tapeheads), </em><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">with a screenplay by Kaylan that relies too heavily on narration, it </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">transcends its limitations and feels real because of superb casting and acting.</span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">It casts a spell.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin-bottom: 1.714285714rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Special features:</strong><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">Commentary by Kaylan and producer Harold Bronson, short film about the Turtles’ </span><span style="line-height: 1.714285714;">British trip.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-44142281596418362852014-06-21T21:27:00.001-06:002014-06-21T21:27:21.642-06:00The Merits of Movies That Mess With Your Head: From the Archives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4jMNUg9VsLk/U6ZMqiyvLZI/AAAAAAAAAaI/OYNe1_1wyxQ/s1600/02David-Lynch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4jMNUg9VsLk/U6ZMqiyvLZI/AAAAAAAAAaI/OYNe1_1wyxQ/s1600/02David-Lynch.jpg" height="320" width="258" /></a></div>
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By Steven Rosen<o:p></o:p></div>
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(This story first ran in 2006, but I'm not sure where -- SR)</div>
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Robert McKee, the screenwriting lecturer and author of
“Story,” believes that three distinct styles of movie narrative occupy a
pyramid of importance – classical design, minimalism and anti-structure.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first is by far the most popular, with its single
protagonist, external conflict and closed, tightly wrapped-up endings. Minimalist
comes next – challenging narratives with multiple protagonists, inner conflicts
and sometimes-ambiguous open endings. And then there’s anti-structure – films
not afraid to call attention to themselves as films first, stories second.
David Lynch, for instance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“When you go down the triangle, you’re eliminating the
audience,” McKee said during a Los Angeles seminar this year. “Absolute forms
of minimalism and anti-structure just don’t seem like life to them. What you’re
left with are cineaste intellectuals who like to have their worlds twisted
every now and then.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Well, maybe. But there sure seem to be a lot of movies out
this fall – big-budget, high-profile Hollywood productions as well as smaller
art films – that toy with or completely embrace these “audience-eliminating”
styles. A few examples:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Babel:
Making abrupt, unannounced switches in chronological order, this film from
director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga very loosely
connects three downbeat stories set in Morocco, Mexico and Japan, each
featuring characters with much inner angst.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Bobby:
Writer-director Emilio Estevez interweaves and in some cases leaves unresolved
the stories of 22 characters staying at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel when
presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was fatally assassinated there in 1968.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Déjà
Vu: This Jerry Bruckheimer/Tony Scott drama starts as a conventionally plotted
thriller about a terrorist, but veers off into complicated layers of parallel
construction as the hero – and the film – travels through space and time to
save a dead woman’s life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Happy
Feet: This animated feature from “Mad Max” director George Miller – already
unusual in featuring penguins who sing and dance yet otherwise live in the
Antarctic like actual penguins – breaks a Fourth Wall when they come into
contact with realistically rendered humans who are amazed that penguins can tap
dance. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The
Fountain: Darren Aronofsky moves between three time periods – the 16<sup>th</sup>
Century world of a Spanish conquistador, the present world of a novelist, and
the future world of a space traveler.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Fur:
An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus: Rather than a conventional biopic about
the photographer attracted to outsiders, Steven Shainberg’s film turns into a
weird “Alice-in-Wonderlandish” blending of realism and fantasy in which Arbus
(played by Nicole Kidman) is attracted to a semi-mythical hair-covered “freak”
living upstairs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Inland
Empire: David Lynch’s three-hour opus is beyond description, as it moves
randomly between an L.A. actress (Laura Dern) losing control of her identity to
hookers dancing to Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion” to rabbits in clothes, living
in an apartment, whose every word is accompanied by a sitcom laugh track.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stranger
than Fiction: Writer Zach Helm’s film, directed by Marc Forster, stars Will
Ferrell as an IRS agent who discovers he is actually the character in a novel
being written by Emma Thompson. Worse, he thinks the film’s voice-over narration
is coming from inside his head.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So what gives? It seems to be the
impact of several outside external sources: Heralded self-referencing screenwriter
Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”); the Oscar-winning
success Paul Haggis’ ensemble drama “Crash”; the impact of hit television
dramas influenced by “Hill Street Blues;” and the ongoing pressure for auteurist
directors and writers to establish credentials by offering something new.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“We’ve run out of new content,”
says Howard Suber, a longtime professor of story structure at UCLA’s School of
Theater, Film and Television and author of “The Power of Film.” “It’s hard to
think of any subject, any kind of story, where somebody could say, ‘No film has
ever talked about what this film talks about.’ That leaves, if there are
aspirations to be an artistic filmmaker, experiments with style.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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This seems to have been a
motivation for Shainberg and his writing partner, Erin Cressida Wilson, on
“Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus.” In a way, it’s stylistically an
anti-biopic – similar in inspiration to the way writer Kaufman in 2002’s
“Adaptation” turned Susan Orlean’s book “The Orchid Thief,” about an orchid
collector, into a weird meta-struggle between Kaufman and his twin brother
(both played by Nicolas Cage) to adopt Orlean’s book. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Another such “anti-biopic” may
appear in 2007 – Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning
Dylan” – in which seven actors, including Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere, play
Bob Dylan at different career stages.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Why is this happening? I could
give you a meta-answer,” Shainberg says. “It’s about how much media there is. It’s
about how much information we get about everyone and how just portraying it
straight really isn’t interesting anymore.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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That explains the motivation. But
why is the audience receptive – or, at least, not in open revolt – to such experimentation?
Because film is a very good medium for it. It’s especially good for directors
who want to visually play with the logical order of time and space. “One of the
things film does better than any other medium is cut back and forth between
time and space,” Suber says. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Filmmakers historically have been
more conservative about narrative experiments. Directors and writers felt they
inherited a tradition going back to Greek theater of basic stories around a
major problem of a central character, with all else secondary. Successful
variations were few, like Robert Altman’s “Nashville,” because audiences tended
to view open-ended multi-character stories as dramatically flat or too
complicated to follow. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Now the approach is hot. It is
identified with directors like Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”) Wes Anderson
(“The Royal Tenenbaums”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights”). Coming up
is Karen Moncrieff’s “The Dead Girl,” featuring Toni Collette, Marcia Gay
Harden, Mary Beth Hurt and Brittany Murphy as women affected in different ways
by a serial killer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Suber says ensemble-cast
television dramas with ongoing “multithreaded” plots, especially the
groundbreaking “Hill Street Blues” of the 1980s and later “ER,” changed the
audience. “It took the audience a long time to deal with what was initially
confusing,” he says. “But once they learned, they had learned storytelling that
was infinitely more complicated.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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And films are eager to take
advantage of that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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(Photo is of David Lynch)</div>
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Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-14020279793153933692014-06-19T18:48:00.000-06:002014-06-19T18:48:04.618-06:00Tom Snyder Interviews Punk and New Wave Stars on DVD<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VRgzGlVLeTQ/U6OEm7D8gKI/AAAAAAAAAZo/8m9POTIM_Yw/s1600/up-tom_snyder_2_lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VRgzGlVLeTQ/U6OEm7D8gKI/AAAAAAAAAZo/8m9POTIM_Yw/s1600/up-tom_snyder_2_lg.jpg" height="183" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">DVD Review</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">“The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder: Punk & New Wave”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">(Shout Factory)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>$29.98<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Grade: B-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">By Steven Rosen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">(This first ran in 2006)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Tom Snyder was one heck of a strange television talk-show
host. His questions to guests frequently turned into long-winded monologues and
he loved nothing more than to try to crack up his (off-camera) crew with adlibs
and in-jokes. Today, he comes across as preening – especially when his dark
eyebrows and longish hair are framed in tight close-up. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">But on his NBC
late-night show, broadcast from 1973-1982, he did often let punks and New
Wavers play and then talk freely. This two-disc set makes you fast-forward
through entire programs just to get to the musicians, but it’s worth it. Elvis
Costello is a delightful charmer, Iggy Pop proves to be both an intellectual
and a crazed wild man – simultaneously. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">The late Wendy O. Williams of the
Plasmatics makes terrible music but is sexy and funny. Patti Smith, who talks
but doesn’t sing, poignantly, shyly discusses her vulnerabilities and views
on life and death. One can watch Snyder falling in love with her on-screen. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Only
a sneering, insulting John Lydon promoting his P.I.L. is a jerk – but then,
you’d expect that of him.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-77293572327880835402014-06-14T15:33:00.001-06:002014-06-14T15:33:17.375-06:00Classic Movies Enliven a Historic Theater in Lexington, Ky. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 id="title_Trans" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #1b1b1b; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 25px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">
Big Screen Summer Classics</h1>
<h2 id="subtitle_Trans" style="background-color: white; color: #1b1b1b; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
Lexington’s historic Kentucky Theatre keeps classic movies alive</h2>
<span class="dateCreated" id="Date_Trans" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9px; margin-top: 5px; text-transform: uppercase;">BY <a href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/by-author-14-1.html" style="color: #58585a; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">STEVEN ROSEN</a> · JUNE 4TH, 2014 · SUMMER GUIDE Cincinnati citybeat. www.citybeat.com</span><span class="author" id="author_Trans" style="background-color: white; color: rgb(238, 40, 36) !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
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<img alt="screen shot 2014-06-04 at 10.10.54 am copy" src="http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/imgs/media.images/13733/screen%20shot%202014-06-04%20at%2010.10.54%20am%20copy.widea.jpg" style="clear: both; display: block; margin: 5px auto 3px; padding: 0px;" title="screen shot 2014-06-04 at 10.10.54 am copy - Caption: To Catch a Thief - Credit: Paramount Pictures" /><span class="imageCredit" style="clear: both; display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px auto 5px; padding: 5px; width: 650px;">To Catch a Thief - Paramount Pictures</span><div class="bottomTools" id="bottomTools" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; clear: both; height: 22px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<a class="twiter" data-count="none" href="http://twitter.com/share" style="background-image: url(http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/css/design/santafe/tool.bar.bottom.jpg); background-position: -52px 1px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #ee2824; display: block; float: left; height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: none; text-decoration: none; width: 19px;" target="_blank"> </a><a class="facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-30395-big_screen_summer_classics.html&t=Big%20Screen%20Summer%20Classics" style="background-image: url(http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/css/design/santafe/tool.bar.bottom.jpg); background-position: -25px 1px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #ee2824; display: block; float: left; height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: none; text-decoration: none; width: 19px;" target="_blank"> </a><a class="share" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/share.toolbox.php?theLink2Share=http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-30395-big_screen_summer_classics.html&theTitle2Share=Big%20Screen%20Summer%20Classics" style="background-image: url(http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/css/design/santafe/tool.bar.bottom.jpg); background-position: -79px 1px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: none; color: #ee2824; display: block; float: left; height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: 19px;"> </a><a class="email" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/engines/share.toolbox/ajax/send.by.email.php?theLink=http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-30395-big_screen_summer_classics.html&theTitle=Big%20Screen%20Summer%20Classics&theContentType=article" style="background-image: url(http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/css/design/santafe/tool.bar.bottom.jpg); background-position: 2px 1px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #ee2824; display: block; float: left; height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: none; text-decoration: none; width: 19px;"> </a><a class="print" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/print-article-30395-print.html" style="background-image: url(http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/css/design/santafe/tool.bar.bottom.jpg); background-position: -105px 1px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: none; color: #ee2824; display: block; float: left; height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: 19px;" target="_blank"> </a><a class="comment" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-30395-big_screen_summer_classics.html#dComments" style="background-image: url(http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/css/design/santafe/tool.bar.bottom.jpg); background-position: -132px 1px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: none; color: #ee2824; display: block; float: left; height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: 19px;"> </a><div class="tagsTools" style="color: #58585a; float: left; font-family: HelveticaNeue75Bold, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; height: 20px; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 10px; overflow: hidden; width: 400px;">
Tags: <a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-summer%20guide.html" style="color: #ee2824; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">summer guide</a>, <a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-kentucky%20theatre.html" style="color: #ee2824; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">kentucky theatre</a>, <a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-lexington.html" style="color: #ee2824; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">lexington</a>, <a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-summer%20classics.html" style="color: #ee2824; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">summer classics</a>, <a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-film.html" style="color: #ee2824; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">film</a></div>
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<span class="s2">L</span><span class="s3">arry Thomas, a longtime local film buff and lover of great old movie theaters, speaks for many Cincinnatians when he says, “I try at least once a week to consciously think to curse the names of all those who had a hand in murdering the Albee. What a waste!”</span></div>
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<span class="s3"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s3">It’s indeed hard to believe Cincinnati didn’t save even one of its many downtown movie palaces built early in the 20th century, especially the showcase 3,500-seat Albee Theatre on Fountain Square. It was demolished in 1977. </span></div>
<div class="p7">
<span class="s3">However, many other cities moved to protect, restore and revitalize their classic theaters, seeing them as quintessential parts of the big-city experience. Luckily, today we can still get that experience by going some 100 miles south to Lexington, Ky. Thomas has played an important role in that.</span></div>
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<span class="s3"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s3">The grand, 800-seat downtown Kentucky Theatre — built in 1922 and now owned by Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government — recently underwent an interior renovation. A nonprofit group raised $800,000 for digital projection and a refurbished auditorium with new seats and lighting. (The theater closed as a private business in 1987 after a fire; it reopened in 1992 as a government-owned facility.)</span></div>
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<span class="s3"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s3">The Kentucky today can be appreciated just for its architecture — the lovely domed, stained-glass windows, the original marble floor in the lobby, the 1940s-era neon-accented marquee. But it also lures because of its inventive, informed programming supervised by Thomas. </span></div>
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<span class="s3"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s3">Thomas owned downtown Cincinnati’s The Movies repertory cinema in the 1980s and now works for WVXU as an editorial consultant but also books the Kentucky for its management team. It’s his favorite of the cluster of theaters he books, and the best part of the job for him occurs in summer when he arranges the Summer Classics series. The classic films he chooses screen Wednesdays at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. now through Sept. 3. </span></div>
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<span class="s3"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s3">On June 4, the Kentucky presents a new, digitally restored version of 1965’s <i>Doctor Zhivago,</i> David Lean’s sweepingly romantic three-hour-plus adaptation of the Russian novel by Boris Pasternak, starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie.</span></div>
<div class="p7">
<span class="s3">Subsequent classics set for the Kentucky’s big screen are: Orson Welles’ 1947 <i>The Lady From Shanghai</i> (June 11); Stanley Kubrick’s <i>Dr. </i></span><span class="s2">Strangelove</span> (June 18); Alfred Hitchcock’s <i>To Catch a Thief</i> (June 25); Sergio Leone’s <i>Once Upon a Time in the West</i> (July 2); <i>Mary Poppins</i> (July 9); the Beatles in <i>A Hard Day’s Night</i> (July 16); Billy Wilder’s film noir classic <i>Double Indemnity</i> (July 23); Dustin Hoffman in <i>Tootsie</i> (July 30); the Talking Heads concert film <i>Stop Making Sense</i> (Aug. 6); Preston Sturges’ screwball-comedy classic <i>The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek</i> (Aug. 13); James Stewart in <i>Harvey</i> (Aug. 20); <i>This Is Spinal Tap</i> (Aug. 27); and Fellini’s masterful <i>8½</i> (Sept. 3). All seats are $6.</div>
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<span class="s3"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<strong style="clear: both; color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; display: block; font-family: HelveticaNeue75Bold, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1px;">Related to:</strong><a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-summer%20guide.html" style="background-image: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: none; color: #ee2824; display: compact; float: left; font-family: HelveticaNeue75Bold, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; height: 18px; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: auto;">summer guide</a><a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-kentucky%20theatre.html" style="background-image: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: none; color: #ee2824; display: compact; float: left; font-family: HelveticaNeue75Bold, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; height: 18px; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: auto;">kentucky theatre</a><a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-lexington.html" style="background-image: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: none; color: #ee2824; display: compact; float: left; font-family: HelveticaNeue75Bold, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; height: 18px; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: auto;">lexington</a><a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-summer%20classics.html" style="background-image: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: none; color: #ee2824; display: compact; float: left; font-family: HelveticaNeue75Bold, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; height: 18px; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: auto;">summer classics</a><a class="lnkRelated" href="http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/tag-0-1-film.html" style="background-image: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: none; color: #ee2824; display: compact; float: left; font-family: HelveticaNeue75Bold, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; height: 18px; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: auto;">film<span class="s2" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Strangelove</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(June 18); Alfred Hitchcock’s</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">To Catch a Thief</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(June 25); Sergio Leone’s</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Once Upon a Time in the West</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(July 2);</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Mary Poppins</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(July 9); the Beatles in</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">A Hard Day’s Night</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(July 16); Billy Wilder’s film noir classic</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Double Indemnity</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(July 23); Dustin Hoffman in</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Tootsie</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(July 30); the Talking Heads concert film</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Stop Making Sense</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Aug. 6); Preston Sturges’ screwball-comedy classic</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Aug. 13); James Stewart in</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Harvey</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Aug. 20);</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">This Is Spinal Tap</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Aug. 27); and Fellini’s masterful</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">8½</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Sept. 3). All seats are $6.</span></a></div>
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<span class="s3">This is the 11th year for Summer Classics, and the series has a large, devoted following. </span></div>
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<span class="s3"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s3">“I don’t remember who had the original idea, but that first year was beyond my wildest imaginations for getting people in,” Thomas says. “I thought, ‘Holy Cow, we must have struck a nerve,’ because people were coming by the bucketful.”</span></div>
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<span class="s3"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s3">Thomas believes Summer Classics has developed its keen following by convincing an audience that new, digitally restored (and digitally projected) prints — shown on a giant screen — make the theatrical presentations genuine cultural events. </span></div>
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<span class="s3"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s3">That’s especially true when such new prints get issued for a classic film’s anniversary — as is happening this year for the 50th anniversary of the black-pitched antiwar comedy <i>Dr. Strangelove</i> and The Beatles’ ebullient <i>A Hard Day’s Night</i>; and for the 30th of <i>Stop Making Sense,</i> among others.</span></div>
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<span class="s3">Thomas also believes this is a golden era for seeing classics in a preserved movie palace ... if a city was wise enough to save one.</span></div>
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<span class="s3">“The audience at the Kentucky is definitely more hip than a multiplex audience,” Thomas says. “They know the directors, they know the classics and they know about digital restoration.”</span></div>
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<span class="s3">“For so many years all you could get were worn prints — spliced, scratched and with defective soundtracks,” he says. “Any time you could get hold of a new 35-millimeter [film] print of something, it was a big deal. Now with digital prints, they’re stunning.”</span></div>
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<span class="s3">(The historic Victoria Theatre in Dayton, primarily a live-event venue, still uses 35-mm prints for its summer Cool Films series.)</span></div>
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<span class="s3">There are other reasons to visit the Kentucky this summer. There is a lovely 350-seat second auditorium that was once a separate, adjacent theater called the State, where first-run art/indie/upscale movies are normally presented.</span></div>
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<span class="s3">And since 2011, Lexington has had a Harry Dean Stanton Festival honoring the Kentucky-born character actor. This year, Stanton is coming with Michelle Phillips for a closing-night screening of their 1973 gangster-film <i>Dillinger</i> at the Kentucky Theatre 7 p.m. June 15. Tickets are $7. The Kentucky also is screening <i>Repo Man</i> at midnight June 13 as part of the fest (<a href="http://harrydeanstantonfest.org/" style="color: #ee2824; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">harrydeanstantonfest.org</a>).</span></div>
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<span class="s3">Also, for three Wednesday nights in September, a nonprofit group called sQecial media presents the Rosa Goddard Film Festival for foreign films at the Kentucky. The films are Alain Resnais’ 1961 <i>Last Year at Marienbad</i> (Sept. 10); Czech director Jaromil Jires’ 1970<i>Valerie & Her Week of Wonders</i> (Sept. 17); and French director Agnes Varda’s 1970 <i>Cleo From 5 to 7</i> (Sept. 24).</span></div>
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<span class="s3"><b>The KENTUCKY THEATRE</b> is located at 214 Main St. in downtown Lexington. For more information, call 859-231-6997 or visit<a href="http://kentuckytheater.com./" style="color: #ee2824; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">kentuckytheater.com.</a></span></div>
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Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-76110102305140116832014-06-07T11:39:00.000-06:002014-06-07T11:42:26.232-06:00Film Review | Night Moves (2013)<br />
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<span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://alternet.org/">AlterNet</a></span></span></span> <i><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-06-02T08:02:00-07:00"> </span></span></span></span></i><i><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-06-02T08:02:00-07:00">June</span></span></span></span></i><i><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-06-02T08:02:00-07:00">2, 2014</span></span></span></span>
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<i>By</i> <i><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-delapa">Thomas Delapa</a></i>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Leave it to Beavers </span></h1>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">New Film 'Night Moves' Delivers Dangerous Paranoia About Environmentalists </span></span></h1>
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What do you call a drama about three misfit environmentalists who float a plot to blow up an Oregon dam? According to director <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/01/night-moves-venice-film-festival_n_3852959.html" target="_blank">Kelly Reichardt</a>, her nocturnally somber <i>Night Moves </i>is not a movie about “eco-terrorism.” Rather, she innocuously—and unsustainably—labels it a “character film.</div>
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<br />
That slippery semantic move is a little like calling <i>Gone With the Wind</i> a weather report instead of a Civil War drama.<br />
<br />
I doubt many will need a weatherman to tell which way the box-office winds will blow on <i>Night Moves</i>, which wheezes and gasps for two hours until it finally runs out of hot air.<br />
<br />
In a drab, gray Pacific Northwest shaded with sickly green themes,
Reichardt and her co-writer Jon Raymond sketch in their scruffy,
disgruntled trio: the brooding, tree-hugging farmer Josh (Jesse
Eisenberg) growing his anger on a family co-op; his eco-fatalistic teen
friend Dena (Dakota Fanning), middle-class drop-out; and Harmon (Peter
Sarsgaard), resentful ex-Marine, ex-con and budding Unabomber. For the
insufferably laconic Josh, destroying the dam will make people, um,
“start thinking,” ranting on about how it’s killing “all the salmon just
to run your fucking iPads.”<br />
<br />
But none of these characters does much thinking at all, except in a
soggy, simple-minded way. That their weapon of choice is a massive
fertilizer bomb recoils back to Timothy McVeigh’s horrifically rank
right-wing terrorism more than anything sprouting from the Greenpeace
playbook.<br />
<br />
Blanketed with a foggy indie sensibility, <i>Night Moves</i> barely
moves, especially after the prelude, creeping along at a pace that
would make maple syrup envious. Long, lingering close-ups of the
taciturn yet opaque Josh alternate with agonizingly slow pans across
empty landscapes that portentously shout out (“Timber!”) the trio’s
rootlessness and alienation. In a movie nearly devoid of political or
social acuity regarding the global environmental dilemma, Reichardt
instead takes potshots at Josh’s co-op kooks, who spend their down time
reading each other’s auras.<br />
<br />
For all the cascades of natural vistas, Reichardt seems to see
neither the forest nor the trees, just this parched, sensationalized
plot. In the clearer light of day, we do witness an otherworldly burial
ground of barren tree trunks, marooned by the dam’s reservoir, and
there’s also a roundhouse jab at tourists watching <i>The Price is Right </i>on
TV in their gas-guzzling Winnebago, totally tuning out the glorious
nature outside. But despite these sharp barbs, it’s these misguided
malcontents the film tosses head-first into the wood chipper.<br />
<br />
With story turns that inch from recklessness to paranoia and betrayal, <i>Night Moves</i>
itself betrays a shoddy sense of plot and character. It’s a
redwood-long stretch to believe that the eco-savvy millennial Josh lives
so off the grid he must schlep down to his local library to tap the
Internet. Critically, the trio’s neo-Luddite thinking is so muddled that
they fail to fathom any collateral damage from their blow against the
hydroelectric empire, a clueless blunder that sucks them into a noirish
whirlpool of mistrust and isolation.<br />
<br />
No, Josh, Dena and Harmon are emotionally and geographically closer
to the Unabomber and Patty Hearst than Johnny Appleseed, murderously
putting Earth first over their fellow man. Instead of illuminating their
psychology or relationships, Reichardt hovers relentlessly on the
outside, grafting in long, banal scenes detailing their sinister
procedures. Like the old saw says, the audience for <i>Night Moves</i> is treated like mushrooms—fed manure and kept largely in the dark.<br />
<br />
----------------------- Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-59345610931105427942014-05-29T06:50:00.001-06:002014-05-29T06:50:30.062-06:00From the Archives: Andrew Horn's documentary 'The Nomi Song'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Remembering Klaus Nomi on Film</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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By Steven Rosen<o:p></o:p></div>
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From Los Angeles Times</div>
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Feb. 3, 2005</div>
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The artist Kenny Scharf was listening to “Jonesy’s Jukebox” on
Indie 103.1 FM recently when he heard a Klaus Nomi song – a version of Elvis’ “Can’t
Help Falling in Love.” He was startled.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That was the first
time I ever heard Klaus Nomi on the radio,” he says during a phone call.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And it took him back. East Village – late 1970s, during New
York’s celebrated New Wave era of creative activity. Scharf was attracting
attention as a fashionable young painter; Nomi was applying his ethereal falsetto-based
countertenor voice to both arias and old pop hits. When he performed in clubs,
he dressed like a high-fashion space alien who had fallen to earth to study
Kabuki. Their apartments shared a courtyard and Scharf could hear Nomi practice.
They became friends.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“His voice was otherworldly – you couldn’t believe the
sound,” recalls Scharf, now living in L.A., his hometown. “And in combination
with the way he looked, he was captivating. In our circle, he was a superstar. And
we all wanted him to have mass success, but I guess he was too bizarre for the
masses. But maybe if he hadn’t gotten sick and died, he would have crossed
over.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The short, strange career of this unusual singer is the
subject of Andrew Horn’s new documentary, “The Nomi Song,” opening Feb. 4 at
the NuArt Theatre. It primarily covers the years between his startling 1978 New
York club debut – which was captured on film – and his death from AIDS in 1983 at
age 39. <o:p></o:p></div>
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During that time, he had fallings-out with old friends and
collaborators as he tried for mainstream success. He never had an album officially
released in the U.S., but became popular in France, his native Germany and
among New York club goers. (There have been posthumous U.S. releases of his European-released
discs.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nomi’s high-concept stage show and theatrical look were
striking. Among his favorite costumes was a triangular vinyl tuxedo that
conjured images of an Expressionist penguin. His sharply angular hair seemed
designed by a landscape architect. Combined with wide lost-child eyes and
decorous facial makeup, he had a hypnotic effect on his audiences. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And his voice was siren-like when tackling the art songs he
loved like Saint-Saens’ “Mon Coeur” aria from<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> "Samson and Delilah” and </span>Henry
Purcell’s solemn “The Cold Song.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
music director Kristian Hoffman wrote some rock <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>songs for him, too, as well as helping him and
his band choose melodramatic oldies like Lou Christie’s “Lightnin’ Strikes.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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As the Berlin-based Horn explains during a recent Los
Angeles visit, Nomi’s show was meant not as camp but as a legitimate part of
New York’s varied pop/rock scene of the time. While the Ramones chose punk, for
instance, he chose opera. “He was against the anti-professionalism of punk,”
Horn says. “He was a guy with a superbly trained voice not trying to be raw. He
was trying to make an operatic spectacle within the means he had.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Born Klaus Sperber in Germany to a single mother during
World War II, Nomi studied music as a teen, idolized Maria Callas, and worked
as an usher at Berlin’s Deutsche Opera. He moved to New York in the early 1970s,
first finding work as a pastry chef.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“The Nomi Song’s” two German producers, Thomas Mertens and
Annette Pisacane, had made “Nico Icon” about another German-born singer who
became a tragic cult figure in New York rock circles. They approached Horn, a
Manhattanite who had been living in Berlin since 1989. In 1997, he had
co-directed “East Side Story,” on the history of Soviet and Eastern European movie
musicals. <o:p></o:p></div>
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By chance, Horn had known Sperber in New York before he adopted
his “Klaus Nomi” persona. (The name is an anagram of his favorite magazine,
Omni.) “I’d see him around the East Village and my impression was he was an
opera singer, or wanted to be one,” Horn says. “And one day I met him and he
said he wanted to become a rock ‘n’ roll singer and have a band and work with
synthesizers. I found that really bizarre – like Pavarotti doing the Beatles.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“The Nomi Song’s” footage of the performer’s debut at New
Wave Vaudeville Night at the Irving Plaza nightclub still packs a wallop. After
smoke bombs and light flashes, he slowly emerges on stage in exotic costume and
amid robotic movements sings “Mon Coeur.” A career was launched – or so it
seemed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ann Magnuson, now a Los Angeles-based actress and
performance artist, was the director of that variety show and still gets a
shiver describing the scene. “At first, there was a lot of cheering because
there were smoke bombs going off,” she says in a phone interview. “And then
when he started singing the aria, people became silent. The beauty of it
transcended everything. It was completely out of nowhere, as if the mothership
had landed. There was stillness – shock.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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While Nomi’s act was based on being a make-believe alien, he
became an all-too-real societal outsider once he became sick with AIDS. The
film reveals that many of his acquaintances were afraid to visit. Hoffman, now an
L.A.-based singer-songwriter, was one of those who avoided Nomi at the end. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“The movie made me feel better about the guilt I’ve carried
around for 30 years,” he says via phone. “I remember he called me from the
hospital and said, ‘I have that AIDS.’ He wasn’t even sure what it was. There
was a climate of fear at the time. We didn’t know if it was airborne, so it was
self-preservation. For years I didn’t know how to relate to myself for being so
fearful. Now I know I wasn’t alone.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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(www.stevenrosenwriter.com)</div>
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Steven Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348887870750575010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-1579759635028700912014-05-23T20:34:00.000-06:002014-05-23T20:39:00.441-06:00Film Review | Fed Up<div class="headline">
<h1 class="node-title">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/inside-worlds-child-obesity-epidemic">AlterNet</a> 5/20/14</span></span></span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The Kids Are Not
All Right</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Inside the World's Child Obesity Epidemic</span></span></h1>
<h1 class="node-title">
<span style="font-size: small;">by Thomas Delapa<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></span></h1>
<h1 class="node-title">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></span></h1>
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When the curtain came down on Clifford Odets’ legendary 1935 New York opening of his agit-prop broadside <i>Waiting for Lefty</i>,
audience members rose from their seats and stormed out of the theater,
shouting “Strike!” in solidarity with the taxi-cab drivers and the
Depression-era working class portrayed in the play.<br />
<br />
Once the lights go up in theaters following <b><a href="http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home" target="_blank">Fed Up</a></b>,
audiences may have the urge to race down to their grocery stores,
fast-food outlets and school cafeterias, yelling, “We’re as mad as hell
and we’re not going to eat it anymore!”<br />
<br />
An appetizing, bite-sized brand of advocacy documentary, <i>Fed Up</i> is an alarming yet tardy wakeup call on the crisis of U.S. childhood obesity. This is not a syrupy, feel-good story à la <i>My Big Fat Greek Wedding</i>. It is the sad, stomach-churning saga of my big fat American child.<br />
<br />
Filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig <i>(</i><a href="http://www.tappedthemovie.com/" target="_blank"><i>Tapped</i></a>)<i>, </i>narrator/co-producer Katie Couric, and author <a href="http://lauriedavid.com/" target="_blank">Laurie David</a> team up for
a 90-minute serving of facts, figures and interviews on how American
kids have been increasingly super-sized over the past 30 years, largely
the result of a sugar- and fat-heavy diet that is literally to die for.<br />
<br />
<i>Fed Up</i> might go down as the <i>Inconvenient Truth</i> of
the pediatric health crisis, a plus-size omnivore's dilemma not limited
to expanding U.S. waistlines, but globally too. Over the course of two
years, Soechtig and her cameras check up on the misfortunes of a small
group of corpulent kids, each struggling to battle the bulge with the
help of their parents. This is not some cheesy, sensationalized <i>Biggest Loser</i> reality
show, but the real story of children who can’t seem to win against a
powerful, hydra-headed foe made up of food and beverage industry giants,
commercial media and U.S. government policies that have sucker-punched
kids square in the gut.<br />
<br />
Of course, the plight of overweight kids
(and adults) has been on the plate of U.S. news reporting for years, but
Soechtig and company slice it up into easily digestible, fact-driven
portions. To name a few:<br />
<ul>
<li>Over 80% of the products in a typical grocery contain added sugar.</li>
<li>Two
out of three Americans are overweight or obese, costing billions of
dollars each year in rising healthcare costs, not to mention the
psychological price paid in depression and poor self-esteem, especially
in teens.</li>
<li>A generic 12-ounce can of soda is loaded with a
shocking 10 spoonfuls of sugar, which takes an hour or more of brisk
bike-riding to burn off.</li>
</ul>
In one big gulp of not-so-fun
facts, we learn that sugar is sugar, metabolically speaking, whether
it’s called sucrose, dextrose, cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.
The skinny on sugar is that it is fiendishly addictive, and when
digested without the fiber normally associated with good diets, simply
leaves us hungry and craving more. In one study, sugar was found to be
eight times more addictive than cocaine.<br />
<br />
It’s bad enough that kids
today are targeted by a caloric cornucopia of TV commercials, marketing
schemes and insidious product placements, all formulated to prod them
into stuffing their faces with junk food. School cafeterias were once a
haven for healthy (if bland) balanced lunches. But since the
infiltration of the fast-food industry into cash-hungry public schools,
they’ve been made over into “7-11s with books.” Pizza, hamburgers, hot
dogs, fries, fried chicken, cookies, and those nasty nachos are high on
the daily McMenu. Now kids have it their way every day, enabled by soda
machines they can’t just say no to.<br />
<br />
Soechtig persuasively offers
that the U.S. government—and specifically the Department of
Agriculture— have a place at the table of nutritional shame. On one hand,
the government is tasked to protect children through lunch programs and
“food pyramid” guidelines; yet it is also asked to serve the food and
dairy industries, doling out regulations as well as billion-dollar
yearly farm subsidies and loans. And any time politicians place an order
for tougher dietary demands (like Sen. George McGovern did in 1977),
armed-to-the-teeth agribusiness lobbyists go into a feeding frenzy.
Beware, you may gag when a McDonald's spokeswoman earnestly shills,
“Ronald McDonald never sells to children...he inspires through magic and
fun.”<br />
<br />
<div id="bookmark">
Even Michelle Obama, first mom and initiator
of the ballyhooed “Let’s Move” campaign aimed to push kids into
exercise, has had to take the “demonizing” of junk food off the front
burner. To experts such as Michael Pollan (<i>Food Rules</i>) and Gary Taubes (<i>Why We Get Fat</i>),
dietary ditties such as “energy balance” and “eat less, exercise more”
cooked up by industry apologists are empty panaceas, essentially laying
all the blame on the overweight and obese. Soechtig shows the kids
trying their best to run and swim to shed pounds, but her cameras also
catch one slouched in an easy chair, gobbling down chips while eating
up a TV show. A lower grade for her failure to note that gym classes
have also been victims of crash budgetary diets; meanwhile, back at home
suburban parents drive their kids everywhere, making walking to
school—and play—as old-school as saddle shoes. </div>
<div id="bookmark">
<br /></div>
Are soda and other
junk foods the “cigarettes of the 21st century,” as one expert warns?
Other countries have begun banning junk-food ads expressly aimed at
children. In the U.S. those ubiquitous “nutrition facts” labels
fatuously omit recommended daily allowances for sugars.<br />
<br />
Let’s not
sugarcoat it: American children are hugely at risk, and if parents and
teachers aren’t sick to their stomachs yet, they’ll never be.<br />
----------------------------------- <br />
<div class="bio-new body_living">
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Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-16721678591863608582014-04-30T16:11:00.000-06:002014-04-30T16:11:39.980-06:00TV Review | A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at the New York Times<div class="headline">
<div class="coverage_header_bar coverage_header_bar_news-politics">
<span class="white"></span><em><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-04-29T12:33:00-07:00">April 29, 2014</span></span></span></span>
</em> |
</div>
<div class="byline news-politics">
<span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dont-stop-presses-jayson-blair-lied?page=0%2C1&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark">AlterNet</a></span></span></span> / <em>By</em> <em><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-delapa">Thomas Delapa</a></em>
</div>
<div class="story_comments">
<span class="small">
<br /><span class="news-politics comments_link"></span>
</span>
</div>
<h1 class="node-title">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Don’t
Stop the Presses: Jayson Blair Lied!</span></b></span></h1>
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden">
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A
new documentary examines the plagiarizing journalist who smeared the <i>New York Times</i> and made up an Iraq War soldier's interview.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DTBlVPKVFsY/U2FxAEitYcI/AAAAAAAAAeY/wYDPbrEl_Kk/s1600/jayson-blairPBS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DTBlVPKVFsY/U2FxAEitYcI/AAAAAAAAAeY/wYDPbrEl_Kk/s1600/jayson-blairPBS.jpg" height="320" width="203" /></a></div>
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<em><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-04-29T12:33:00-07:00"></span></span></span></span></em>
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There once was a sign that hung on the wall at the legendary Chicago
City News Bureau, training ground for such famed scribes as Ben Hecht,
Mike Royko and Seymour Hersh: “If your mother says she love you, check
it out.”<br />
<br />
Those were the bygone, dog-eared days when even lesser U.S.
cities were awash with thriving dailies, and most delivered “extra”
editions noon and night so we could read all about the latest news.<br />
<br />
The
ink has dried up on the banner days of traditional journalism. Revenue
streams in the Internet age have slowed to a trickle, as have readers
willing to cough up a dime for their daily news, weather and sports.
Even fewer today will pay for classified advertising, happy to sell
their used stuff on Craigslist and eBay. Longtime print institutions
from the <i>New York Times</i> to <i>Time</i> magazine have struggled to stay afloat,
many going under, while gimcrack websites have sprung up on the new
media horizon as often as obnoxious pop-up ads, making the very concept
of newspapers feel old. Amateur “citizen journalists,” many with an ax
to grind, have hacked into journalism’s turf, and if you can break the
story of the latest celebrity uncoupling you just might scoop yourself
up a job at TMZ or Fox News. Facts? We don’t need no stinking facts.<br />
<br />
It
was in this panicky, writing-on-the-wall media cauldron that Jayson
Blair smeared the great name of the<i> New York Times</i>, that august,
160-year-old institution and flagship of U.S. journalistic excellence. A
documentary of the scandal that turned the <i>Times</i> into a really stinky
edition of the Onion titled <a href="http://www.itvs.org/films/fragile-trust">A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at the New York Times</a>, will be telecast nationally on Monday, May 5 as part of PBS’ Independent Lens series.<br />
<br />
Getting
the disgraced Blair to tell the truth now may sound a little like
asking Clifford Irving to tell us about the real Howard Hughes, but
filmmaker Samantha Grant steams ahead, indulging him as he answers (sort
of) her pointed questions and reading excerpts from his widely unread
memoir, <em>Burning Down My Masters’ House</em>. Once a wonder-boy
intern at the <i>Times</i>, Blair was brought on board as part of a program
designed to promote multicultural editorial voices. Along with past and
present members of the paper’s staff, Grant talks to journalists such as
Seth Mnookin, author of <em>Hard News</em> and a blunt foil to Blair’s sometimes papered-over excuses.<br />
<br />
In
this seismic scandal and coverup, Grant doesn’t need to follow the
money, only the string of lies (and lines of cocaine) Blair spun in
hundreds of stories he filed in five years of reporting. They all
furiously began to unravel in 2003 with his first-person article on the
plight of a Texas mother whose Army son had gone missing during the Iraq
war. As the fiasco unfolded, it was Blair who was discovered missing in
action: Not only did he not even speak to the soldier’s mother, he
brazenly plagiarized an article by the <i>San Antonio Express-News</i>’
Macarena Hernandez.<br />
<br />
It’s dicey to read between the lines in
Grant’s brief, 75-minute chronicle on exactly why Blair wasn’t fired
long before the scandal hit the headlines. His editors had long known
that his articles were fact-challenged and fraught with error, and they
were also aware that his drug and alcohol problems were proving toxic to
his work. Former executive editor Howell Raines passes the buck,
blaming middle-management staff, while those mid-managers contend that
Raines never bothered to read the memo strongly urging a ditch-Blair
project.<br />
<br />
<div id="bookmark">
Was Blair a unique case? Raines now calls
his former star reporter a “sociopath and disturbed individual.” Yet
another observer says the debacle was a “tragedy of the electronic age,”
with broader implications. After all, Blair’s e-plagiarism was just a
quick click away, since he could easily cut and paste stories from other
websites, slyly juggling them to cover up his trail. Any teacher today
can unhappily report how many students similarly sample and patch
together their class papers, starting with that bottomless virtual
inkwell of secondhand information, Wikipedia, while writing off bona
fide source material, e.g., books. </div>
<div id="bookmark">
<br /></div>
For his part, Blair is
apologetic and chastened in one sentence, evasive and equivocating in
the next. In his resignation letter to the <i>Times</i>, he confessed that he
“was not ready for prime-time,” but then adds, incredibly, “despite my
enormous talent.” He also blames his bad behavior on drug and alcohol
abuse, his way of medicating a manic-depressive illness. Ten years
after, Blair has since taken his talents to a job as a Virginia “life
coach.” Bruised and battered, the <i>Times</i> keeps marching on, but the clock
may be ticking.<br />
<br />
-------------- <br />
<div class="bio-new body_news-politics">
<div class="author-bio">
Thomas Delapa is a film
critic who has written for the Chicago Tribune and AlterNet. He teaches
film at the University of Denver.<br />
</div>
</div>
</div>
Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-26697628583202485672014-04-06T10:33:00.000-06:002014-04-06T10:33:54.689-06:00Film Review | The Unknown Known<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">
<span style="font-size: large;">The Madness of King Don</span></div>
<div class="field-item even">
<span style="font-size: small;">by Thomas Delapa</span></div>
<div class="field-item even">
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="story-date">
<a href="http://and%20so%20it%20goes%20in%20rummy-speak,%20as%20morris%20sends%20his%20cameras%20down%20the%20rabbit%20hole%20into%20an%20upside-down%20universe%20where%20government%20morality%20and%20mea%20culpas%20have%20no%20standing,%20yet%20mad%20tautologies%20like%20%e2%80%9cthe%20absence%20of%20evidence%20is%20not%20the%20evidence%20of%20absence%e2%80%9d%20do.%20in%20the%20question%20of%20those%20well-known%20phantom%20wmds,%20such%20inane%20statements%20can%20justify%20anything,%20including%20interminable%20wars%20in%20which%20bodies%20are%20still%20piling%20up,%20peace%20is%20not%20won,%20and%20mass%20mideast%20destruction%20marches%20on.%20/">AlterNet</a>, <em><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-04-05T09:38:00-07:00">April 5, 2014</span></span></span></span>
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<div class="article_insert_container">
So what do we know now that we didn’t after documentarian Errol
Morris’ 100-minute Q&A with Donald “I Don’t Do Quagmires” Rumsfeld
in “ <b><a href="http://radiustwc.com/releases/the-unknown-known/" target="_blank">The Unknown Known</a></b>”?
Only that the former U.S. secretary of defense is still a master
strategist of evasion, contradiction, misdirection and malapropism. </div>
<br />
As a footnote, here’s what we do know to date about that dirty little
Iraq War that “Rummy,” the George W. Bush White House and their
nincompoop Pentagon neo-cons cooked up and spoon fed to the omnivorous
American public: more than <a href="http://www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf" target="_blank">4400 U.S. military deaths and 32,000 wounded</a>, at least <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24547256" target="_blank">100,000 to as many as 500,000 Iraqi fatalities</a>, millions more displaced, and an estimated price tag of <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/18/17326297-ten-years-after-iraq-invasion-us-troops-ask-was-it-worth-it" target="_blank">$3 trillion</a>, give or take a few hundred billion. <br />
<br />
Yet like most of the questions that Morris tosses—gently—at his
subject, any such factual horrors are sidestepped, parried and danced
around by a fitfully nimble Rumsfeld. Relaxed, nattily dressed and
imperiously self-assured as ever, Morris’ hollow yet overstuffed man
does his imitation of “Hogan’s Heroes” Sgt. Schultz (“I know nothing,
nothing”) while implausibly denying personal culpability for any stink
that blew back from the Iraq War, whether the phony Weapons of Mass
Destruction raison d’être, prisoner torture or the fictitious links
between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. <br />
<br />
In his Oscar-winning “ <a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar/" target="_blank">The Fog of War</a>,”
Morris at least got Lyndon Johnson-era Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara to shoulder some of the blame for the Vietnam War quagmire. But
Rumsfeld is impishly unapologetic, even as his own words are shot down
by Morris’ juxtapositions with TV news footage culled from the run-up
and catastrophic letdown to the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent U.S.
occupation. Yet it’s clear that Morris’ mission isn’t to catch his
subject in a Captain Queeg-style meltdown that would cause Rummy to
shout “Good gracious” or “Henny-penny” and storm off the set. <br />
<br />
Rather, Morris is chiefly interested in the infernal meta-narrative
of how those in the pinnacles of power can delude themselves for so long
and so often that—perhaps—they don’t even know what the truth is
anymore. This is a man seemingly without an ounce of introspection and
one who surely sleeps well at night, confident he did all the right
things, from his time as the youngest (44) secretary of defense, during
the Gerald Ford presidency, to his Freddy Krueger-like return to the
Pentagon as prime architect of the shock-and-awe Iraq and Afghanistan
U.S.-led invasions.<br />
<br />
Morris goes out of his way to humanize Rumsfeld, including humdrum
details of his marriage while tracing his long career as Republican
White House insider and go-to warhorse who trumpeted “peace through
strength” and other hawkish mantras. We hear Morris’ off-camera
questions, but the slippery answers are challenged only indirectly via
news footage and period headlines, not by contrary interviews that would
offer known arguments to Rumsfeld’s self-serving explanations. <br />
<br />
The film’s title is a quote from one of the enormous number of
official memos Rumsfeld generated over the decades. In one wacky
rumination from 2004 (Subject: What You Know), he writes of the “things
that you think you know that it turns out you do not.” For Morris, this
is a four-star analogy for his subject, a polarizing public figure who
indeed is a riddle wrapped in an enigma—and cloaked in an impenetrable
armor of Orwellian double-talk. As running metaphor, Morris cuts back
and forth to images of a deep blue sea, significantly more fathomable
than Rumsfeld himself. <br />
<br />
As to any possible policy misfires during his Washington tenures,
Rumsfeld blithely chalks them up to the unintended consequences of war,
executive decision-making and the inevitable inability for leaders like
him to anticipate everything, for Pete’s sake: i.e., heck, Stuff
Happens. This expedient philosophy can rationalize pretty much any
horrors stretching from Abu Ghraib to Gitmo. If only Emily Littella were
still on active duty, I know she’d just say, “Never mind.” <br />
<br />
And so it goes in Rummy-speak, as Morris sends his cameras down the
rabbit hole into an upside-down universe where government morality and
mea culpas have no standing, yet mad tautologies like “the absence of
evidence is not the evidence of absence” do. In the question of those
well-known phantom WMDs, such inane statements can justify anything,
including interminable wars in which bodies are still piling up, peace
is not won, and mass Mideast destruction marches on.<br />
<br />
------------ Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-63909602179819786752014-03-30T12:20:00.000-06:002014-03-30T12:43:28.770-06:00Film Review | Anita: Speaking Truth to Power <div class="headline">
<h1 class="node-title">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/anita-speaking-truth-power-reignites-fury-over-sexual">AlterNet</a></span></span></span>, <i>| </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><i><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2014-03-29T13:30:00-07:00">March 29, 2014</span></span></span></span>
</i>| By</i> <i><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-delapa">Thomas Delapa</a></i>
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<h1 class="node-title">
<span style="font-size: small;">'Anita: Speaking Truth to Power' Reignites Fury Over Sexual Harassment and Political Might </span></h1>
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Two
decades after Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Freida Mock documents the confirmation of Clarence Thomas. </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">There she was, polite and poised in her smart, turquoise dress suit,</span>
facing off against a murderers' row of aging, not entirely august, white
men, an ebony Joan of Arc versus a court of incredulous grand
inquisitors. To a bitterly divided 1991 America, University of Oklahoma
law professor Anita Hill was either witch, scorned woman, martyr or
feminist heroine. In any case, when the smoke cleared it was Hill who
was burned at the Senate stake.</span></span><br />
<br />
Twenty-plus years after the most incendiary and indecent Supreme
Court confirmation hearings in U.S. history, filmmaker Freida Mock flips
through the sensationally lurid pages of <i>Anita Hill v. Clarence Thomas</i> in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/anitahillmovie" target="_blank">Anita: Speaking Truth to Power</a>,
a documentary sure to re-fan the flames of righteous indignation among
anyone, man or woman, sitting to the left of Strom Thurmond.<br />
<br />
If, as legendary attorney Clarence Darrow argued, “almost every case
has been won and lost when the jury is sworn,” Anita Hill was toast as
soon as she sat down to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee
that steamy October weekend in 1991. Chaired by now-Veep Joe Biden of
Delaware, the all-white, all-male committee wasn’t quite a kangaroo
court, but it resembled something from Down Under the Mason-Dixon Line,
circa 1930. Rather than hostile witnesses, this was an open-and-shut
case of hostile politicos, aghast and appalled that a Supreme Court
nominee and “pornography,” “pubic hair” and “penis size” could be
publicly uttered in the same sentence. </div>
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For investigative reporter Jane Mayer (then with the Wall Street
Journal), the televised hearings—“Judge Judy” crossed with the Playboy
Channel—were just a smokescreen for Democratic and Republican senators
alike: “It wasn’t about the truth ... it was about winning.” Despite a
majority of Democrats on the committee, Hill was largely led to the dogs
alone. Ted Kennedy sat mostly sullen and stone-faced as a bit player.<br />
<br />
An Oscar winner for the superior documentary, <i>Maya Lin: A Strong Vision</i>,
Mock may not win votes from the pro-Thomas minority, but she pointedly
sets out to give Hill back her voice, free of the clumsy, tedious and
badgering questions posed by Biden and company. Between long,
still-shocking reruns from that R-rated C-SPAN sur-reality show watched
by millions in 1991, we are presented with evidence that Hill has moved
on, literally, leaving her beloved small-town Oklahoma life for the
greener (and far bluer) pastures of Massachusetts and Brandeis
University after years of death threats, hate mail, vicious phone calls,
and public confrontations.<br />
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As for Thomas himself, not surprisingly he’s nolo contendre except
for his infamous, scenery-chewing costarring role as self-professed
victim of a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” Through all his
indignant denials to the committee and the nation regarding any hint of
sexual harassment toward Hill (Coke? Never touch the stuff) while she
was his assistant at the EEOC and the U.S. Department of Education in
the 1980s, Thomas didn’t just play the race card, he dealt the whole
deck to the committee members, who promptly folded under pressure. Only
Sen. Paul Simon from the Land of Lincoln objected to Thomas’ nomination,
while a few days later the uber-conservative Thomas eked out a win in
the full senate 50-48. In one of American history’s most unjust ironies,
Thomas replaced the revered Thurgood Marshall, the first
African-American Supreme Court justice and the victorious voice behind
the landmark 1954 <i>Brown vs. Board of Education </i>Civil Rights decision.<br />
<br />
But from the ashes of Hill’s public humiliation, a new wave of female
empowerment rose up from Phoenix to Washington, D.C., and beyond:
witness the 1992 “Year of the Woman” at the ballot box, renewed
political vigor by females of all parties and races, and a new awareness
of sexual harassment in the workplace. Today Anita Hill lives on as
both a woman and a symbol. For her legions of admirers, she’ll always be
standing on the mountaintop.<br />
<br />
--------------- Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2211489302230549425.post-18503016901398600982014-02-05T09:32:00.000-07:002014-02-05T09:32:07.898-07:00DVD Review | Stories We Tell <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Capturing the
Polleys</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">by Thomas Delapa</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">For critics and
serious filmgoers who’ve given up on the Academy Awards, especially after last year's Seth MacFarlane fatuous hosting fiasco, here’s another reason
to shrug and say "I told you so": Despite being one of the best and most
talked-about documentaries of 2013, Sarah Polley’s <b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stories We Tell</i></b> was shockingly shut out of the Oscar nominations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Canadian
actress/director may take cold comfort in the fact that the Oscars have
regularly been on the wrong side of cinema history. Leading the nominations for worst Oscar snubs: Alfred Hitchcock (nil directing awards), Francis Ford
Coppola for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Godfather</i> (loser to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cabaret</i>’s Bob Fosse), and the snub of
all snubs, Orson Welles’ nonpareil <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Citizen
Kane</i> bested by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How Green Was My
Valley</i>. Vice versa, does anyone outside of Robert Osborne remember the
lachrymose Luise Rainer, winner of back-to-back best actress Oscars in the
1930s? And post Y2K, let’s just <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">fugetabout
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Departed</i>, the noxious 2006
best picture winner that should be left to sleep with the fishes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Almost as myopic in Oscar oversights have been the erratic, often obscure choices
over the decades in the Best Foreign Film category. Since the Academy only allows one entry per country each year, voters are forced to dole out the nominations in globally “let’s
all share” fashion, not so unlike ribbons handed out to all the kiddies on
Field Day. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While
films from major directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson and Japan's Yasujiro Ozu have never been nominated, most of the nominees</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">—</span>and more than a few winners</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">—</span> have faded out
in
movie memory. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Polley can also
take some solace in her own award for Best Canadian Film (and the $100,000
prize that went with it), while U.S. audiences can now see her extraordinary narrative recounted on DVD. In our era of one-sided, deceptively manipulated
“docu-fictions,” Polley lyrically reconstructs (and deconstructs) an extremely
personal story, generously bringing in a kaleidoscope of disparate, sometimes
contradictory viewpoints.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In a near oedipal
odyssey, Polley documents her search to uncover a maternal secret that lay
hidden in her family's closet for 28 years. The main character in the mystery is
Polley’s mother Diane, a onetime Toronto casting director and actress. While
not literally present to tell her own story, Polley <i>mere</i> nostalgically appears in a series of glowing home movies (some actually recreated). At the
other end of the Freudian spectrum is Polley’s dad Michael, a British-born
actor who settled in Toronto in the 1950s to marry and raise a family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A la Charles
Foster Kane, the life of Diane Polley is reconstructed, in jigsaw-puzzle
fashion, by those who knew her best as well as by those only on the family’s
borders. Vivacious and rebellious, Diane was a woman before her time,
unhappy with the rigid roles of middle-class marriage and family, yet also, by
most accounts, a loving if mercurial wife and mother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A clever
raconteur, Polley reveals key facts of her chronicle in measured doses, never
letting us know too much of this remarkable, often touching saga at once. A 3-D
puzzle of sorts (without those silly glasses), the film is skillfully glued
together with a complex array of stylistic devices, from competing voice-overs
(one from a prepared script read by Michael Polley) and disjunctive dubbed
dialogue to standard talking-heads interviews, punctuated with lingering
close-ups that speak volumes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Polley is also
smart enough to realize that “truth” is often, um, relative, particularly when
people have something to gain or hide—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rashomon</i>
told us that. But in this meta-home movie that continually examines its own
assumptions (sometimes to a fault), Polley unveils not simply the small story of
one woman’s family secret, but by extension poignantly leads us to bigger, roomier
stories about marriage, motherhood, love and life itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">---------------------- </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">2/4/14</span>
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Thomas Delapahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06478250926292351599noreply@blogger.com0