Did you know that YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
utilized the very same laboratory props (we're talking serious beakers and
electrodes) that Universal Studios used in its classic 1931 Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff?
So walk this
way to the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre in Denver and watch on Friday, Sept.
14, as it revives Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder's monstrously funny comedy
that put a side-splitting jolt into the Hollywood horror movie. In the
final film of Elitch's electrifying summer season, Wilder is Dr. Frederick
Frankenstein, reluctant inheritor of his grandfather's ungodly
experiments to bring back life from the dead.
This 1974 classic
also stars Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Gene
Hackman and Elitch acting alumna Cloris Leachman. Young Frankenstein
is one spoof that never gets old! Rated PG. We're "Keeping it Reel" with a
35mm print.
An Elitch Theatre Advisory Board member, Ms. Leachman appeared on the
Elitch stage in both 1983 and 1986 and won an Oscar for her supporting
role in 1971's "The Last Picture Show." She's also won an amazing eight
Emmy Awards for her TV work, more than any other performer. In "Young
Frankenstein," our own last outdoor picture show of the summer, she's
Frau Blucher, the mad-cap doctor's loyal housekeeper whose very name
strikes fear in any nearby horse.
Lawn seating begins at 6:30 pm, with the show at
dusk, preceded by live music (the Denver Soundtrack & Take That!)
and theater tours. Latest Translyvanian weather report for Friday: a
high of 76 and sunny.
Suggested donation $5+, with kids under 14 and members free.
Historic Elitch Theatre's "Film on Fridays" series is curated by Thomas Delapa.
4500 W. 38th Ave (at Utica), Denver, CO 80212.
Phone: 303-623-0216 (messages only)
In The Dark
Knight Rises, the Caped Crusader flies out of retirement, loses all his money
and Alfred, gets the guano beaten out of him, and has to save Gotham City from
a masked madman with an atomic bomb.
Whew, all this
for one superhero with no real super powers. Where are the Avengers when you
need them?
In the final installment
from the dynamic box-office duo of director Christopher Nolan and star
Christian Bale, Batman seriously loses his mojo, again. The operative word here
is ”serious,” as Nolan morphs his brooding comic-book incarnation into a hooded
Hamlet. To agonized alter ego Bruce Wayne, to be Batman or not to be Batman,
that is the lofty question.
Hobbled and a
recluse after his epic battles with the Joker, Bruce Wayne falls to a new low
before he’s roused out of semi-retirement. First his mother’s pearls are stolen
by a crafty cat burglar and then a mysterious, hulking mastermind orchestrates an
uber-hostile takeover of Wayne Enterprises. In these dire and depressing times,
neither Wayne nor Batman is too big to fail.
Zeitgeist
watchers will note that Batman’s capital new bane is Bane (Tom Hardy), whose
new boss may or not be Bain Capital’s Mitt Romney. This Bane is a Humongous-like
thug (see: Road Warrior) who mellifluously speaks through a metal muzzle. When
you can understand what he’s saying, he comes across like a campy Darth Vader
minus the cape and charm. Except for the prospect of Chapter 7 bankruptcy, he’s
Bruce Wayne’s biggest, baddest stress test yet.
For all the
millions (reportedly upwards of 250) squandered on this production, Batman’s
swan song looks and sounds pretty much like a clone of any elephantine action movie. Long
gone are the moody gothic designs and lighter touch of the Tim Burton series,
replaced by a blandly modern Manhattan and cardboard villains. The only new toy
in Batman’s arsenal is a “Bat” fighter
jet that looks like, yes, a big metallic bat. Despite the ultra-modernistic design, its options don't include an auto-pilot, an oversight only flown in as a plot gimmick.
In this B(r)at
Pack entry, Hollywood ageism is the greatest stealth enemy. Not unlike the
Harry Potter series, talented pros like Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are
pushed into the wings while the spotlight switches to minimal millennials like
Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, cast as an idealistic cop who
wants to see Batman flap back into the swing of things. In skin-tight black
leather and leading with her rear end, Hathaway is neither cat nor sexy kitten,
only a kid actress who couldn’t carry Michelle Pfeiffer’s high heels. Reprising
his throwaway role as the super-hapless Commissioner Gordon, Gary Oldman’s
American accent is so forced he always seems to be throwing his voice from
inside the Bat Cave. And if you’re looking for romance from this errant Knight,
the best you’ll get are the bromantic weepy-eyed looks that Caine’s Alfred
shoots at Master Wayne.
In the ups and downs of Batman’s last flight, not only must he battle the baddies
and his own demons, but also Manhattan’s nasty 99%, who are unleashed as part
of Bane’s suspiciously pinko plan of mass destruction. Once the urban masses
take over the city, they set up kangaroo courts that send the rich and powerful
hopping to their deaths across a frozen river. During the anarchy, Batman finds himself hurled into a
prison hell-hole—literally—where his Herculean task involves an extreme
messianic ascent that might go over big at the X Games.
It’s all batty
and super-pretentious, and any snickers that may arise will be muffled by the
noise and Bale’s obliviously earnest performance, equal parts Dirty Harry and Jane
Eyre’s Rochester. If this movie is a tragedy of sorts, as it so wants to be,
it’s only because of the horrific real-life events that will forever shadow it.
Otherwise, the joke is on the audience. Seriously.
Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre’s “Film On Fridays” Lights Up the
Summer Skies
Step to the front tomorrow night, July 20, as the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre's outdoor film series proudly presents Alfred
Hitchcock's brilliant REAR WINDOW (1954), featuring a remarkable three Elitch
acting alumnus: Grace Kelly and Raymond Burr, along with
Wendell Corey.
Only 21 and
a relatively unknown Broadway and TV actress, Kelly was reportedly paid
$125/per week for the summer as an ingenue, appearing in eight 1951
productions, including The Man Who Came to Dinner. She lived for the
summer in a basement apartment with her mother at 4020 Raleigh St, often
riding a bike to rehearsals. Backstage on Aug. 10, Kelly received the
famous telegram from producer Stanley Kramer asking her if she could
come to Hollywood to co-star opposite Gary Cooper in High Noon. This
and other roles led to her three-film association with the celebrated
director Alfred Hitchcock, beginning with Dial M for Murder in 1954.
She would famously marry Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956 and become
Princess Grace Grimaldi of Monaco, retiring from acting.
Raymond Burr, of course, would go on to great fame after several
Hollywood films as TV's Perry Mason in 1957 and, later Ironsides. Burr
was a terrific friend to Denver, filming several episodes of his Perry
Mason TV movies here (at the former Bonfils/Lowenstein Theater) in the
1980s and 1990s. He also raised millions of dollars for Denver
educational and medical facilities.
Tickets: $5 suggested donation, with Elitch Theatre Members and kids under 14 free. Lawn seating begins at 7 pm,
with the film at dusk, preceded by live music and tours. Grab your lawn chairs and
blankets, but you won't need your binoculars!
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Projected in
authentic 35mm prints whenever possible, Elitch's Film on Fridays is "Keeping it Reel," offering
a diverse lineup for young and old ranging from director Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning Sunset Boulevard to Mel Brooks’ ageless
comedy Young Frankenstein. Curated by Thomas Delapa, Film on Friday's includes rare prints from the UCLA Film & TV Archive, NBC Universal, Criterion Pictures and Swank Motion Pictures. All proceeds go to the theater’s renovation campaign as a landmark performance-arts
center. The Elitch Theatre is located at 4500 W. 38th Ave (at Utica), Denver, CO
80212. More information at http://www.historicelitchtheatre.org and on Facebook.
Remaining Schedule:
Aug. 3 – Sunset Boulevard (1950), directed by Billy Wilder and starring
Gloria Swanson (Elitch’s, 1967) and William Holden, with Cecil B. DeMille
(Elitch’s, 1905)
Aug. 17 – Beetlejuice (1988),
directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton and Sylvia Sidney (Elitch’s,
1928)
Sept. 7 – Stay tuned for surprise sci-fi classic!
Sept. 14 – Young Frankenstein (1974), directed by Mel Brooks and starring
Gene Wilder and Cloris Leachman (Elitch’s, 1983, 1986)
About the
Historic Elitch Theatre
The Historic Elitch
Theatre’s mission is to create a vibrant, multidisciplinary cultural arts
center in Northwest Denver that strengthens
and engages the community through innovative live arts programming accessible
to a diverse public.
The Elitch Theatre has been an important part of Colorado’s
cultural landscape since its inception in 1891. It was the first cultural
center in Colorado, and is the oldest summer stock theater in the nation. In 1896, it was also the site of one of the West's first showings of Thomas Edison's "Vitascope" motion pictures. Many
pioneers and famous faces such as Grace Kelly, Douglas Fairbanks, Edward G.
Robinson, Sylvia Sidney, Raymond Burr, Patricia Neal, Cecil B. DeMille, and Robert Redford, to name a few, passed through this iconic American theater at one
point in their careers. One early star at Elitch’s was only 15 years old when she
first appeared on the Elitch Theatre stage and was called “Tony” for short.
This Denver girl grew up to be the famous Broadway producer, Antoinette Perry,
for whom the Tony Awards are named. The Elitch Theatre delighted Denver
audiences for 100 years, with the last production occurring in 1991. In 1931, DeMille called it "one of the greatest cradles of the drama in American history.''
“This summer’s sleeper
hit” proclaimed Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post of director Wes Anderson’s Moonrise
Kingdom.
As an aside from the
popcorn gallery, I’ll just say, “My kingdom for a No-Doz.”
An arid heir to recent Anderson
live-action films like The Darjeeling Limited and The Life Aquatic with Steve
Zissou, this Kingdom is anything but wild. Set in 1965 (for no apparent reason)
on a mythical New England island (for no apparent reason), it’s the soporific
study of an runaway boy scout who teams up with a misfit girl. Imagine a
kiddie Badlands or a washed-out Blue Lagoon. However you picture it, it’s no
good.
After showing such sparkling
promise in his 1996 Bottle Rocket debut and reaching the heights in The
Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson’s
talent and imagination have fizzled. Sure, he’s still crafting his meticulously
composed vignettes of wry Americana, but his story sense—never much more than
plebian—has lately been a dud. When you’re watching a Wes Anderson movie, you
keep looking around wondering if anyone else (besides his actors) is in on the
joke.
Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola (scion of the Francis Coppola
house) dream up “New Penzance Island,” a bucolic backwater where adults act
like kids and kids act like adults. At Camp Ivanhoe, upright, uptight
Scoutmaster Ward (Edward Norton) is in charge, browbeating his boys with quaint
threats and exclamations like “Jiminy Cricket!” All of them get in line except one: Sam Shakusky
(Jared Gilman), a precocious bespectacled boy in a coonskin cap who goes AWOL
from his pup tent and embarks on an oddball odyssey into the wild.
But this movie deserves no merit badges, except for Pretension and
Quirkiness. It’s dressed up with nowhere to go, accessorized with Anderson’s
typically overstuffed tableaux, photographed in long, gratuitous dolly shots. Abetted
by bloated budgets for art design, Anderson fills his frame with trinkets,
doodads, graphics and decor that refer back to nothing in particular, except
maybe his own airy, flea-market imagination. His and Coppola’s dialogue is
equally arch, composed of non sequiturs fit for only a king of smug indie
obscurity.
Sam’s journey leads to a romantic rendezvous with Suzy (Kara Hayward), his sulky, eye-shadowed
queen in this L.L. Bean-flavored land of plaid and khaki. While adults in the
fairy tale are sappy and tree-thick, at least Sam and Suzy are accorded a
royal treatment.
Don’t be blinded by the glittery star court that Anderson has
assembled—Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Norton, as well
as frequent star Bill Murray—as they are all overshadowed by the aimless and lackluster story.
While Anderson wants to give us a preppie, pipsqueak riff on Adam and Eve, his
career now looks like a fool’s paradise.
For those filmgoers who believe that world cinema is in desperate need of a renaissance, if not revolution, there's no better antidote than the re-release of Contempt, director Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 modernist masterwork now playing at Denver's Esquire Theatre for a limited run.
Godard, a key figure in the French New Wave that also gave us Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais, made Contempt (Le Mepris) four years after his breathtaking debut in Breathless. A freewheeling homage to the American gangster movie, Breathless made a star of Jean-Paul Belmondo and heralded Godard as a Picasso-like destroyer of the staid conventions of movie-making.
Relatively speaking, Contempt was Godard's first big-budget production. Based on a novel (A Ghost at Noon) by Italian author Alberto Moravia, it was financed by Carlo Ponti (Sophia Loren's husband) and shot on location in Rome and Capri. But what made it a cause celebre was the casting of Brigitte Bardot, then Europe's reigning sex goddess. "B.B." had burst (literally) upon the scene in 1956 in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman, virtually redefining sexuality in the commercial film. With Bardot aboard, Godard hired Hollywood heavy Jack Palance, an unknown Michel Piccoli and legendary German director Fritz Lang to play himself.
Photographed on luscious widescreen color by Godard ace Raoul Coutard, Contempt is an exemplar introduction to a director who once signed his name, Jean-Luc "Cinema" Godard. It's a difficult, exhilarating film, crammed with allusions to painting, drama, music and other movies. In fact, the finished product was so upsetting to U.S. distributor Joseph E. Levine that Godard was forced to add a nude scene with Bardot, though even that was subverted by Godard the trickster.
From Moravia's novel, Godard extracted, in his words, the "story of a misunderstanding between a man and a woman." Paul (Piccoli) is French writer who's come to Rome's famed Cinecitta studios with his wife Camille (Bardot) at the request of an egomanical American producer, Prokosch (Palance). Prokosch is unhappy with the movie version of Homer's Odyssey being directed by Lang. Then in his seventies, Lang had behind him such landmarks as Metropolis and M and Hollywood hits The Big Heat and You Only Live Once. Art constantly intersects with life in Contempt; to wit, Godard himself appears as the Odyssey's assistant director.
Like his New Wave brethren--most former film critics--Godard was infatuated with the cinema's power and traditions. In the memorable opening, a camera approaches the screen as it follows an actress reading a book. At the end of the shot, the camera leaves her and turns in close-up to us. Godard never wants us to forget that camera, nor of the world it creates, "a world that responds to our desires," says the narrator, quoting the seminal French film critic Andre Bazin.
Film has given us our popular mythology, our equivalent to the Greek epics, but then Homer didn't have to deal with producers, agents and stars. To Godard, Lang acts as the conscience of film, a cultured man who labors with Sisyphean endurance to bring a faithful version of Homer to the screen. But off the set, it's Prokosch who has usurped the role of the gods. Though evidently he despised working for Godard, Palance is marvelous as a titan of venal vulgarity. "I like gods, I know how they feel," he pontificates, reading aphorisms out of a little red book.
Godard's allusions give Contempt a cultural density that's no so far from Joyce's own Ulysses or Eliot in The Waste Land. Homer's work, of course, is an epic of Ulysses' treacherous journey back to Greece after years away fighting in the Trojan War. While Homer's hero battles sea monsters and sirens on the way home, his loyal wife Penelope fends off a gaggle of suitors until his return.
In this tale of demi-gods and men, rarely can Godard's "shipwrecked victims of the modern world" live up to such noble deeds. They speak different languages and must use a translator (Giorgia Moll) in conversations. Paul is passive and cowardly, testing his wife's fidelity by allowing her to be alone with Prokosch. Bardot's Camille has the beauty of Helen, but is impulsive and enigmatic. For Godard, men and women are indeed ruled by different planets, embodied in the primal reds Bardot wears versus the cool blues of Piccoli.
A seer about contemporary gender relations, Godard pessimistically finds little common ground between the sexes. In a scene that lasts a full 30 minutes, Paul and Camille have a meandering, banal--but realistic--argument in their empty new apartment, literally going around in circles as studied by Coutard's fluid camera. Unlike the women of old, Camille isn't content to be merely an appendage to her husband's life, and this change for Paul has turned his love for her into an Achilles' heel.
But Contempt isn't merely talk. It's a gorgeous film, from the crystal blue waters off the island of Capri to Godard's meticulous compositions and Georges Delerue's ominous yet tender romantic score [which Martin Scorsese cribbed in 1995's Casino]. Godard's zeal for cinema is so intense that he visually "quotes" from a number of his favorites, such as Roberto Rossellini's Voyage in Italy and Lang's own silent Siegfried saga, thus adding complex layers of meaning to the story. When Lang tells his crew to prepare to shoot the "Cyclops scene," there's a cut to the camera, a modern one-eyed monster that's devoured many a mortal.
For a time in the heady 1960s, Godard and his daring and smart compatriots opened up the eyes and ears of a generation of hungry filmgoers. They blazed a trail into a new type of cinema that was challenging, literate and passionate. Today that trail is overgrown, ignored or trampled on by profiteers, contemptible celebrity seekers and a conspicuously less demanding public.
Ulysses made it home, but as a near 50-year-old Contempt sorely reminds us, world film today is adrift at sea.
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Originally published in Boulder Weekly 12/11/97; minor additions 4/23/12. Contempt was released as two-disc DVD set by Criterion in 2002.
