Sizing Up The 2016 Oscar-Nominated Docs
The conversation about next month’s Oscars, the 88th Academy Awards (ABC, Feb. 28), may be deservedly dominated by the whole #OscarsSoWhite thing, but I’d like to bypass that mess for now to take a look at the nominees of a way less controversial category: Best Documentary Feature.
It’s one that you can easily catch up on too, as three of the five nominees are available for streaming on Netflix Instant: Matthew Heineman’s CARTEL LAND, Evgeny Afineevsky’s WINTER ON FIRE: UKRAINE’S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, and Liz Garbus’ WHAT HAPPENED, NINA SIMONE?
The remaining docs, Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE LOOK OF SILENCE, and Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees’s AMY are available on Blu ray and DVD, as well as streaming services such as iTunes and Amazon Video.
As it was the first doc I watched after the nominations were announced earlier this month, I’ll start with Heineman’s CARTEL LAND, about cartel members and vigilante groups on both sides of the Mexico-US border in the Mexican drug war that’s been raging since 2006. It’s at times shocking the access Heineman had as he follows along such subjects as Tim “Nailer” Foley of the paramilitary outfit called “Arizona Border Recon,” and Michoacán-based physician Dr José Mireles, of the Autodefensas, who were founded in 2013.
Much of the film plays like a shaki-cam action thriller, and its startling to hear the stories of the beheadings, and mass murder of innocent citizens by the evil Knights Templar cartel, but the film lost me a bit in its last third as it gets into murkily shot interrogation/torture scenes, and a lengthy bit in which Mireles sleazily hits on a young woman also muddied my takeaway. CARTEL LAND is two thirds of a powerful doc about how power corrupts, especially in the lawless border zones. Its intrigue is great enough for me to see why it was nominated, but I really wouldn’t bet on it to win.
There’s a similar amount of blood on the ground in Afineevsky’s WINTER ON FIRE, about events that happened around the same time, but on the other side of the world in the Ukraine. Through footage and interviews, Russian-Israeli director Afineevsky tells the story of the protests in Ukraine’s Kiev in December 2013 through February 2014, that started out as peaceful student demonstrations but escalated into violence with police and paramilitary forces attacking and killing many of the protesters. It can be pretty tough going as the focus can seem as scattershot as the unwieldy crowds on display, but the film has an impactful passion to its breakdown of the proceedings, and much like CARTEL LAND, the access the filmmakers have is truly eye-opening.
The theme that people have the power to come together to make change is one that many, many docs share, but WINTER ON FIRE through its deep examination of material that I’m guilty of ignoring by not watching news reports or by not clicking on links that better informed folks than me post on Facebook stands out more than just about any other big issue doc I’ve seen in ages. It’s got tough competition in this category, but this Netflix production could well be a wild card.
What has a bigger chance at the win is Oppenheimer’s THE LOOK OF SILENCE, which is a companion piece to Oppenheimer’s previous Oscar nominee, 2012’s THE ACT OF KILLING – both of which are co-directed by somebody credited as “Anonymous.” The reason for that mystery credit is severely apparent when viewing either or both films as they concern the still living, and still in power perpetrators in the Indonesian killings of 1965–66.
While THE ACT OF KILLING, streaming on Netflix Instant in both theatrical and director's cut versions, dealt with members of the death squads chillingly recounting and reenacting their killings, THE LOOK OF SILENCE involves the perspective of the survivors and the victim's families, particularly a 44-year-old optometrist named Adi Rukun, as he confronts the men responible for his brother Ramli's death in he 1965 Indonesian genocide of more than a million alleged Communists.
The reaction that these men have recalls all the Nazi-rationales - i.e. “I was just following orders” - with, of course, nobody taking responsibility for their actions. But it goes further than that, and deeper than ACT, when Rukun gets warnings from relatives that his life may be in danger for going through with this project, but he doesn't shy away from asking one of his interviewees, who's now in the legislature: “How do you do politics surrounded by the families of the people you've killed?”
THE LOOK OF SILENCE is incendiary stuff indeed, and it has a good shot at the gold - that is, unless a certain crowd-pleasing music biodoc has the edge.
That would be AMY, Kapadia and Gay-Rees’s doc depiction of British R&B-soul singer Amy Winehouse, which is the only documentary here that's in the top 10 grossing indie films of 2015 (it's #10 - of course).
I raved about the film last summer (“Amy Winehouse’s Rise And Decline Makes For A Devastating Doc” 7/10/15), and would love it if it won. It's an up close and personal biodoc, with so much revealing footage of the troubled yet true songstress, that, via a strong home movie vibe, often makes us feel like we're were right there with Ms. Winehouse, whether riding with her in a car between gigs, or hanging with her in Camden flat.
But it's the excerpts from the woman's performances, most of which have individual lyrics in handwritten fonts superimposed, that make this such a stunner and highlight what a tremendous loss Winehouse's death was to the world. So yeah, I'm pulling for this one.
Lastly, there's another music biodoc that's almost as equally deserving - Liz Garbus' WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? about legendary singer, activist, and North Carolina native Nina Simone (1933-2003). It's the only movie on the ballots that actually pays tribute to a black artist, but, yeah, it was made by a white person. Then, hey, it's the only doc in the category that was directed by a woman, so there's that.
Anyway, the footage amassed here in this doc that takes its name from a Maya Angelou quote is stellar. Clips such as Simone performing “Little Liza Jane” at Newport in 1960, appearing on Hugh Hefner's short lived TV show Playboy's Penthouse to play Gershwin's “I Loves You, Porgy,” and her comeback show from her self-imposed 8-year exile at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1976 had me later going to YouTube to see more.
Garbus' exploration of the volatile yet very vulnerable Simone's journey from aspiring classical pianist to '60s civil rights icon is riveting (especially considering that this was a woman who told Martin Luther King, Jr. that she was “not non violent”), as are the tales told about her tumultuous relationship with her husband manager Andrew Stroud (surprisingly an interviewee).
Simone's daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, sums the messiness of her mother's later years best: “People seem to think that when she went out on stage, that was when she became Nina Simone, but my mother was Nina Simone 24/7, that’s where it became a problem.”
But when it gets down to the last ten minutes, even a cursory skim of Simone's wikipedia entry will tell you that this film glosses over a lot of juicy stuff about the lady's demise in its race to conclusion. Despite that flaw, this biodoc is strongly recommended. It would be quite the upset if it won.
At this point, I'm predicting a win for THE LOOK OF SILENCE. Things change a lot in the weeks leading up to the show, so I may change my mind for my official predictions to be posted a few days before the broadcast, but for now, it really feels like its Oppenheimer and Anonymous' year.
* Triangle area folks should take note that the Full Frame Documentary Festival’s Winter Series will be showing CARTEL LAND on February 16th at the Carolina Theatre in Durham.
More later...
Warner Archive: The Tricky Racial Issues of General Spanky (1936)
While Our Gang comedies may not be thought of as onlyappropriate for children's entertainment, we do tend to view them as a family friendly option. Whether that is actually so depends on what you watch and what kinds of conversations you want to have with your kids.
If you want to see the Gang in something lighthearted and uncomplicated, you'll need to do some vetting, and decide which titles you are prepared to show younger children. However, if you want to start a conversation with kids about racism and how it is portrayed in our culture, something like the full-length General Spanky, now available from Warner Archive, could be an interesting part of their social education.
And there's no chance you are going to be able to avoid the issue watching General Spanky. We're not talking about a couple of blackface scenes, or the odd shot of terrified children of color darting away from a skeleton. The whole movie is filled with happy slaves, singing as they toil on the docks, sternly telling the baffled Buckwheat to go find his master, and showing no ill will at all about being a white man's property. Here a child cheerfully agrees to become a slave for the adult protagonist of the film, who is equally cheerful when he admits he owns several other slaves.
It's a confusing experience to watch this movie, because Spanky is one of the most charismatic actors to grace the silver screen. In my mind, among the Gang members he's only second to Stymie, who was also blessed with a highly unusual comic timing. You want to sit back and enjoy Spanky's precocious ways and the confidence with which he faces the world. And he somehow manages to pretty much keep his innocence here.
Sure Spanky volunteers Buckwheat for slavery, but only because he wants his friend to have a warm bed and regular meals. He has no notion of the hateful ways of the men around him. He doesn't know any different.
Against the backdrop of the civil war, the aforementioned jolly slaves, and enough racist comments to twist your insides into bits, the Gang plays at its own war, and engages in familiar high-spirited hijinks. Spanky watches out for the suffering Buckwheat, Alfalfa sings perfectly and hilariously out of tune, and the kids do a better job solving complex issues than the grown ups around them. It's a well-made comedy, with its share of laughs, but you never have a chance to relax. There are vicious, horrid things happening beneath all that mischief.
I'm glad I saw General Spanky: for the chance to get some historical perspective, for the opportunity to think about the various racial issues of the past and how they fit into our overall history, and for a few moments, to laugh at the clever ways of the child actors, but it was an incredibly uncomfortable experience. I'm not ready to show it with my own kids, but I think it is a personal decision whether or not this film is appropriate to share with younger audiences. From a educational viewpoint, and especially given the conversations our society is currently having about race, it is definitely worthy of viewing and discussion.
Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. This is a Manufacture on Demand (MOD) DVD. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.
Book Review--Hollywood Cafe: Coffee with the Stars
Hollywood Café: Coffee With the Stars
Stephen Rea
Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2016
Publish date: January 28
Once I recovered from a dorky burst of giggles inspired by the idea of a coffee table book about coffee, I found that I enjoyed the breezy and surprisingly informative Hollywood Café: Coffee With the Stars. When it comes to classic movies, I've found cocktails to be the most mesmerizing onscreen beverage, but now that I think of it, coffee has also had a significant presence in cinema. In this collection of over 150 images, stars of film, television and radio are seen enjoying the drink behind the scenes and on camera.
The opening photo is of java aficionado Preston Sturges drinking from a quart-sized cup. Apparently he has told columnist Rosalind Shaffer that, "he believes coffee drinkers are the real originators of ideas." From there you get Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster getting his caffeine fix and Robert Taylor in knightly garb having some joe with the also lavishly-costumed Ava Gardner.
There are shots of glamorous stars at humble craft services tables, publicity photos, and stills of key coffee scenes in the movies. Ingrid Bergman is menaced by a line of poisoned coffee cups in a promotional image for the Hitchcock thriller Notorious (1946), Eddie Cantor shills for his radio show sponsor's brand, and it seems every actress from classic Hollywood has been snapped at home in an apron, proving to all that she can brew a great pot of Joe and be just as domestic as the ladies in her audience.
While there is no real background here of the history of coffee in Hollywood or the movies, there perhaps isn't much to tell. A cup of java was, and continues to be, an easy way to socialize and revive sagging energy. The drink was simply a fact of life, and here it is shown in galleries organized into categories like the more obvious Silver Service and Waitressing and more intriguing sections like Counter Espionage.
Each photo is captioned with a bit of history about the movie and stars in the shot. Some also include the text from the original archival label on the back. I found lots of interesting tidbits in these descriptions.
It's all good fun; an excuse to see gorgeous stars in beautiful costumes, reminisce about favorite movies and pick up new titles for the must-see list. There's unabashed fetishism for elegant coffee pots with long, curvy spouts and groundbreaking brewing methods like the Chemex pot and the French press. After looking at your twentieth shot of trim stars noshing on cookies and doughnuts, you wonder how they got away with eating all that sugar. Did they even swallow a bite, or was it all for the cameras?
Many thanks to Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. for providing a copy of the book for review.
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Watch Gotta Kick It Up! (2002) Online For Free Full Movie English Stream
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Warner Archive: Anne of Green Gables and a Pair of Clever Canines
I recently had the opportunity to view a trio of family-friendly films from Warner Archive. Anne of Green Gables (1934), My Pal, Wolf (1944) and The Littlest Hobo (1958), each have their distinct charms and were fun to watch.
In a smoothly-executed, if jam-packed, RKO production the first novel in Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series gets a brisk treatment. Abandoning her remarkable previous stage name Dawn O'Day, Anne Shirley stars as Anne Shirley. Inspired by her role in the film, the actress would keep this more easily digestible name for the rest of her career.
Shirley is suitably dreamy and determined as Anne, the girl who is adopted by brother and sister Marilla (Helen Westly) and Matthew Cuthbert (O.P. Heggie). Though the pair had hoped for a boy to help maintain their Prince Edward Island property, Anne tugs at them and they agree to let her stay. She goes to school and falls in love with Gilbert (Tom Brown), the one boy who is absolutely forbidden to her by her new family.
This was the second Hollywood treatment of the book, following a 1919 version starring Mary Miles Minter. Shirley would return to the role again with a completely different cast in Anne of Windy Poplars (1940)
In trying to cram the action of an entire book into 78 minutes, the movie often has feel of an assembly line of plot points whizzing by. Years pass in moments. While the film doesn't accomplish the impossible task of translating all the charm of the books to the screen, it does slow down enough so that you can get to know the makeshift family at its heart. Heggie is particularly magnetic as Matthew, providing ample proof that a man doesn't need words to be a brilliant communicator.
Though similarly brief, My Pal, Wolf (1944) approaches its story with a more leisurely pace. It is the screen debut of the delightfully unmannered Sharyn Moffett, a child actress who had an unfortunately brief film career. She stars as Gretchen, the daughter of a pair of workaholic parents, who spends her time at the family's country estate, cared for by a gaggle of servants and entertained by sympathetic local family of much more modest means.
Known for telling tales, no one believes the girl when she claims she has found a wolf and is caring for the animal. It is actually a highly-trained army dog that has gone AWOL. Despite the interventions of her strict new governess (Jill Esmond, more famous as the first Mrs. Laurence Olivier), she insists on visiting the dog and bringing him food. While this seems generous in theory, it's a little scary to see her face-to-face with such an enormous animal. Highly-trained or not, he's got gigantic teeth.
Moffett has become one of my favorite child actresses. I reviewed her later film Banjo (1947) last year and in both roles I was impressed with her naturalness in front of the camera. Here she seems completely unaware of her movements, letting her body fall into the familiar slouches and sprawling of a restless eight-year-old. She's lovable because rather than trying to play up to her audience, she seems completely absorbed in her own activities.
While a pair of child actors have a prominent place in the plot of The Littlest Hobo (1958), the stars of this addictively charming movie are a brilliant German Shepherd and the lamb he has saved from the slaughterhouse. While that might sound like a cutesy plot for a movie, the result is much breezier and briskly entertaining than you'd think.
The dog is a restless soul, traveling the rails and charming itself into the odd free meal. One day he hops off the train in Los Angeles and jogs around town looking for action. He sees a distraught boy (Chester Anderson) selling his pet to a meat company; the orphanage where he lives can't house the animal.
Coming to the lamb's rescue, the dog chews through the rope tying him to the loading dock at the slaughterhouse, body slams the man who bought the animal to the ground and drags the confused sheep away. For most of the rest of the movie, the German Shepherd drags his new friend around as they evade the cops, missionaries, hungry homeless men and anyone else who tries to capture them.
I can think of so many ways this movie could be corny, overly sentimental or too broad, but it rarely is. There's a cheerful naturalness to it, which is helped along by a jaunty, jazzy score and theme song. The mid-century LA locations are interesting from a historical standpoint, and they give the action just the right amount of grit.
It's also so much fun to see this clever dog trotting along, flirting with poodles and trying to do good. He's actually a much better actor than most of the people in the film. While I did feel sorry for the lamb, who looked a bit miserable being dragged along in some of the scenes, the pair look so funny running around together. I never got tired of watching them.
This pleasant, airy film was popular enough to inspire two long-running Canadian television series about Hobo. I can see why; watching him at work is strangely fascinating. In fact, I've already watched it again and I don't mind that the theme song is still running through my head.
Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copies of the films for review. These are Manufacture on Demand (MOD) DVDs. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.
Book Review--Helen Twelvetrees Perfect Ingenue: Rediscovering a 1930s Movie Star and Her 32 Films
Helen Twelvetrees Perfect Ingénue: Rediscovering a 1930s Movie Star and Her 32 Films
Cliff Aliperti
2015
Though I've only seen two Helen Twelvetrees films, I was fascinated by Cliff Aliperti's biography of her life. There wasn't anything in her work in Millie (1931) and State's Attorney (1932) that made me particularly curious to learn more about her, though I liked her well enough. Still, I was eager to read Cliff's book, because he is a respected friend of A Classic Movie Blog and I have enjoyed his posts on Immortal Ephemera for several years. In addition to being a fine writer, he is a stickler for good research, a pursuit that dovetails nicely with his film memorabilia business. This is a man who is immersed in the world of classic Hollywood, and that gives him an interesting point of view.
I didn't know much about Helen Twelvetrees before I read her biography. Aside from an article in Films of the Golden Age by Dan Van Neste and Cliff's profile of the actress on his site, detailed information about her life and career has not been readily available. Very few of Twelvetrees' thirty-two films are available for purchase, and some are believed to be lost.
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| Helen was famous for her sad eyes |
Twelvetrees fell into work easily enough. She was confident and determined, and moved fairly gracefully from the New York stage to Hollywood stardom. In fact, the actress would always be able to find some kind of employment in the entertainment industry, when film and Broadway failed her, she could turn to summer stock, radio and even performed in one of the first television productions.
She was also intelligent in many ways about her own affairs. The actress wouldn't overspend, stay too long in a damaging relationship or even abuse alcohol until life truly beat her down. There was never any worry about poverty or providing for her son.
The problem was that she never had quite enough of what she needed. More often or not she would lose a plum role to another actress and her romances would begin with a bang and wither into abuse. She had something, and even critics recognized that she wasn't getting the material she deserved, but there was never a classic role, or an interested producer or director, to help her reach the next level. It's admirable that she had the strength to keep striving for the next opportunity as many years as she did, given all those disappointments.
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| The first talkie version of The Cat Creeps (1930), thought to be a lost film |
Aliperti has arranged the book into two parts. The first is straight biography, the second a more detailed analysis of each of her films. This arrangement worked for me, because so many of Twelvetrees' films are not available that I was interested in learning as much about them as I could, but sharing those details separately gave her biographical profile a smoother narrative flow. I think this is a good format for performers with short lives and brief careers.
While there is some repetition between these two sections, it doesn't tend to be tedious because each part is written in a different tone. The biography is essentially straight-ahead storytelling, while the reviews are more personal. Aliperti shares more of his opinions and research process when he discusses the films, though most of the text focuses on critical reception and the production history.
This was an enjoyable read. I went into it with only mild curiosity about Twelvetrees and now I find my self pining for copies of unavailable, but intriguing films like the pre-code gangster drama Bad Company (1931) and the actress' final film Unmarried (1939), which sounds like a worthy effort that proved she had much more to offer Hollywood. It makes you realize how many lost gems remain to be discovered. I also found her to be an interesting person, someone with untapped potential who nevertheless was savvy enough to make something of herself.
Many thanks to Cliff Aliperti for providing a copy of the book for review.
Watch Return to Oz (1985) Online For Free Full Movie English Stream
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Film Babble Blog's Top 10 Movies Of 2015 (With Spillover)
As the Academy Award nominations are going to be announced tomorrow, I thought it was finally time to unveil my top 10 movies of the last year. I saw over a hundred movies on the big screen in 2015, and I found it to be a good, not great, year for film.
There are a number of notable films I haven’t seen yet, but, of course, you can never see ‘em all. So let’s get right to my favorite motion picture picks of '15, in descending order:
10. ROOM (Dir.
Like I said in my review last fall, if Brie Larson doesn't get a Oscar nomination for her harrowing role as a woman who’s been held captive in a backyard shed for five years taking care of her five-year old son (the result of a rape by her abductor), I'll be very offended. The kid (Jason Tremblay) was pretty “on” too.
9. THE MARTIAN (Dir. Ridley Scott) Astronaut and can-do acheiver Matt Damon sciences the shit out of his predicament of being stuck on Mars, and it makes for an inspirational epic of cerebral sci-fi. Read my review here.
It's been five years since a Pixar film made my top 10, and this one definitely wins a placing because, as I wrote last summer, it pulls every heartstring there is.
7. THE HATEFUL EIGHT
(Dir. Quentin Tarantino)
The “Eighth Film by Quentin Tarantino,” as it's identified in its opening credits (who else does that?), is his most divisive work for sure, but its bloody Western mix of THE THING with RESERVOIR DOGS, with a splash of Agatha Christie, really entertained the bejesus out of me. Here's why.
6. ANOMALISA (Dir. Duke Johnson & Charlie Kaufman)
A stop-motion emotional masterpiece from the guy who brought you BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION, and SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK. And it's the second film on my top 10 that has Jennifer Jason Leigh in it! My review of this delightful yet unnerving piece of high art will be posted when it opens in my area later this month.
5. CAROL (Dir. Todd Haynes)
Todd Haynes' film follow-up to one of my favorites of 2007 (I'M NOT THERE) is a sophisticated, complicated, and immaculately artful look at a lesbian love affair in the oppressive era of 1950s New York City. The performances by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are as pitch perfect as their setting. Read my review.
4. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
(Dir. George Miller)
As I wrote in my review last May, George Miller's fourth entry in the MAD MAX series is a “brutally brilliant blast”; “an orgy of fire-breathing cars, pole-swingers, chainsaws, steampunk thugs, and gas fire explosions all given a heavy metal soundtrack by a masked musician with a flame-throwing electric guitar atop a vehicle piled with amplifiers.” And it's even more awesome than that sounds.
As modern action movies go, as much as I loved MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, this superbly dark cartel counterinsurgency thriller got to me more. The terrifically intense turns by Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro have a lot to do with that. My review.
2. THE REVENANT
(Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Leonardo DiCaprio deserves (and will probably get) the Oscar for what he went through in the punishing wild here, but I predictTom Hardy will at least get a nomination too for his supporting part. The film itself, as well as Iñárritu, may also get nods, but coming after last year's win for BIRDMAN, I wouldn't bet on it. My review.
1. SPOTLIGHT (Dir. Tom McCarthy)
Tom McCarthy's fifth film, his follow-up to last year's infamous Adam Sandler flop THE COBBLER (WTF?), which focuses on the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team into the scandal of child molestation and systematic cover-up within the Catholic Church, is a clean, precise procedural about a extremely messy, and unsettling subject.
The perfect storm of an excellent cast including Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, and Liev Schreiber; a sharp, involving screenplay, along with its top notch editing, score, and Masanobu Takayanagi's cinematography all collide together to make this my #1 movie of 2015. I'll be shocked if the Academy doesn't reward multiple categories for this one. My review.
Spillover: In no particular order, here's a bunch of other 2015 favorites:
LOVE & MERCY (Dir. Bill Pohlad)
THE BIG SHORT (Dir. Adam McKay)
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (F. Gary Gray)
AMY (Dir. Asif Kapadia)
THE END OF THE TOUR (Dir. James Ponsoldt)
Legacyquel Tie: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (Dir. J.J. Abrams) / CREED (Dir. Ryan Coogler)
STEVE JOBS (Dir. Danny Boyle)
THE WALK (Dir. Robert Zemeckis)
EX MACHINA (Dir. Alex Garland)
THE SALT OF THE EARTH
(Dirs. Juliano Ribeiro Salgado & Wim Wenders)
WHILE WE’RE YOUNG (Dir. Noah Baumbach)
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION (Dir. Christopher McQuarrie) - Hey, it's a lot better than SPECTRE!
So, those are my picks for 2015. Let's see what Oscar has to say about it tomorrow morning.
More later...
Book Review--Ziegfeld and His Follies
Ziegfeld and His Follies: A Biography of Broadway's Greatest Producer
Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson
University Press of Kentucky, 2015
Though he only produced two films himself, movies would have been much different without the influence of legendary Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.. The high class, but unpretentious style, songs and stars of his shows would all have an immeasurable effect on Hollywood, adding to the glimmer, excitement and timeless feel of many classic productions. Twin authors Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson draw out many rich details from the life of this unparalleled showman in their substantial biography of the producer.
Florenz Ziegfeld was a reserved, shy man who would only fully reveal his charm and sense of humor to those closest to him, like his second wife Billie Burke, daughter Patricia and his stars and best friends Will Rogers and Eddie Cantor. He saved most of the show for the stage. Perhaps for this reason, the Bridesons wisely focus much of their attentions on the colorful people in the producer's life.
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| Ziegfeld in 1920 |
Ziegfeld stars like Anna Held, Marilyn Miller, and to a lesser extent Lillian Lorraine set the template for glamour and stardom on the American stage. Comedians Fanny Brice, Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor and W.C. Fields made their names in the great producer's follies and would go on to achieve immortality in the movies. The book is as much their biography as it is his, and it makes sense. Their stories are so tightly intertwined that they must be told in tandem. These characters give the book its endless sparkle. It is never dull.
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| Ziegfeld's first wife (common law) and star Anna Held |
I was surprised to find that Ziegfeld was such a devoted family man. While he had his share of affairs and obsessions with show girls, once the producer became a father, he settled admirably into family life. While he was often absorbed by work, and his excessive gambling troubled Burke, his wife and daughter were the most important women in his life. He made up for his absences, at least enough to build an enduring partnership with Burke, who was equally devoted to family, and raise a surprisingly well-adjusted daughter given the luxury and chaos of her early life.
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| Ziegfeld star and friend Eddie Cantor and the producer's second wife Billie Burke in a 1948 promo photo for a radio show |
More significant, though less profitable for Ziegfeld, was the producer's influence on film. He sold the rights to several of his stage productions, which were then made into popular films like Sally, Rio Rita and Show Boat (all 1929, the latter was filmed again in 1936 and 1951). He also debuted many songs in his Follies that would become standards via films, from Me and My Gal and Look for the Silver Lining to My Man and Blue Skies. Songwriting legends like Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin who found fame with the producer would make their mark in films as well. The style of his productions would also influence movies, from his stately, elaborately-costumed showgirls to the opulent look of his sets.
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| Ziegfeld star Marilyn Miller |
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| A dancer performing on a glass platform above the audience of Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic of 1915 |
The authors are most adept at creating a sense of the times in which Ziegfeld lived and exploring how he adapted at the different stages in his career. Their descriptions of the many shows he produced, accompanied by several photographs of his shows and stars, are also excellent and highly evocative, giving a strong sense of what it must have felt like to be in the audience.
Though Ziegfeld often did not have faith in the success of his productions, the showman had an undeniable knack for picking talent and could lend his shows an aura of class that eluded his competitors. While he spent most of his career struggling to stay ahead of debts, he had the common touch and knew how to please an audience. Ziegfeld and His Follies uncovers a bit of this magic and vividly describes the sweat required to bring the fruits of his intuition to the stage.
Many thanks to University Press of Kentucky for providing a copy of the book for review.
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Quote of the Week: Jerry Lewis on Comedy
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| Image Source |
My philosophy of comedy is a man in trouble. There but for the grace of God go I.
-Jerry Lewis
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Todd Haynes’ CAROL: Cate Blanchett & Rooney Mara Find Forbidden Love
Now playing at an indie art house, and maybe a multiplex or two, near you:
CAROL (Dir. Todd Haynes, 2015)
Todd Haynes sixth film, CAROL, his follow-up to his masterful 2007 Dylan deconstruction I’M NOT THERE, has been drawing comparisons to John Crowley’s BROOKLYN, which was released earlier in the prestige picture/Oscar bait season of fall 2015.
Both are New York City-set period pieces concerning young women who work in Macy’s-style department stores, both illustrate the coming-of-age experiences of these women in the restrictive society of the early 1950s, and both are based on bestselling, award-winning novels.
And there’s the fact that BROOKLYN director Crowley was once even attached to direct CAROL.
But while BROOKLYN is a well made, and very good looking drama, Haynes’ CAROL is something else entirely – a much more sophisticated, complicated, and immaculately artful work, which is stunningly gorgeous while BROOKLYN is merely pretty.
An adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 book “The Price of Salt” (later re-named “Carol”), the film is told through the eyes of Rooney Mara as 20-something aged shopgirl Therese Belivet, who becomes intrigued by Cate Blanchett as the much older (40-something) Carol Aird, a wealthy New Jersey housewife, when they meet over a counter at Frankenberg's department store.
Carol is Christmas shopping and asks for Therese’s help looking for a doll for her daughter. The two converse pleasantly, then Carol forgets her gloves on the counter when she leaves. Therese arranges for the gloves to be sent to Carol’s home. Carol calls Therese at work to thank her for sending the gloves, and invites her out to lunch where they hit it off further.
In the meantime, we learn that Carol is going through what could become a messy divorce from her angry husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler), while Therese, who dreams of being a photographer, has a boyfriend, Richard (Jake Lacy), who wants to marry her, and live together in France. We also meet Sarah Paulson as Carol’s bestfriend/former lover, who’s relationship is a source of Harge’s chargrin.
Carol invites Therese over for dinner, but the night, and their budding romance, is interrupted by Harge, who demands that his wife go with him and their daughter Rindy (Kk Heim) to Florida for Christmas, but she refuses.
Later, Harge’s lawyer cites a “morality clause” against Carol that would grant him sole custody of Rindy.
Despite this situation, or because of it, Carol and Therese embark on a road trip out west, before which Therese breaks up with the increasingly frustrated Richard.
On the road, the pair gets closer but things go askew when they find out that a P.I. (Cory Michael Smith) that Harge hired to get incriminating evidence on Carol, has been recording their lovemaking (tastefully shot, of course) through their hotel wall.
To fight for custody of Rindy, Carol departs back to New York, leaving Therese behind and their relationship up in the air.
Of all of Haynes’ fine films, CAROL most resembles his 2002 Douglas Sirkian-inspired drama FAR FROM HEAVEN, which also dealt with the taboo of homosexuality in the McCarthy era. But while HEAVEN had a high gloss to its look, CAROL, shot by the same cinematographer, Edward Lachman, has more of a subtle, darker grain. Many shots echo Life Magazine photography in their muted yet still vivid colors.
The always reliable composer (and long-time Coen brothers collaborator) Carter Burwell’s score is a beautiful embellishment to the proceedings. It swoons and swells effectively throughout, never calling too much attention to itself. Mixed into the soundtrack are a well picked batch of ‘40s and ‘50s songs, mostly Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks tracks).
But it’s the performances by Blanchett (yes, there will be an Oscar nomination) and Mara (maybe) that stand out the strongest. Both women bring to nervous life the dialogue in the sharp screenplay by Phyllis Nagy (another nomination, I bet), with Mara’s story arc of a woman blooming finding confidence after years of shadowy confliction, nicely blending with Blanchett’s worried perseverance.
CAROL is another late year addition to my top 10 of 2015 (coming soon!). From the absorbing aura of its near perfect period design and visuals, to its tense yet tender handling of its love story, along, of course, with the terrific turns by Blanchett and Mara – it all made a very poignant impression on me.
More later...
THE REVENANT: The Film Babble Blog Review
THE REVENANT
(Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015)
There are a couple of things that people are talking about pertaining to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s sixth film, the follow-up to his brilliant, Academy Award-winning BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE), releasing today in the Triangle.
First, the notion that Leonardo DiCaprio will likely win a Best Actor Academy Award for his powerfully pained performance as the pelt hunting, Indian killing, bear fighting, death defying 19th-century American frontiersman Hugh Glass.
Second, there’s the bear itself – an incredibly convincing CGI creation of a ginormous grizzly that attacks, mauls, and severely injures DiCaprio’s Glass. The scary scene in which this happens has some folks even crying “rape!,” but while it does look like the character is getting violated, it’s a female bear who’s protecting her cubs.
A friend joked, “I bet the bear will win the Oscar!”
But beyond the bullet points of the Leo buzz and the bear lies an epic, uncompromising tale of survival that has just earned a prominent slot on my soon to be posted top 10 films of 2015.
DiCaprio dominates as the title character (the title, THE REVENANT, means a person who has returned as if from the dead), but on the sidelines we’ve got a gruff, angry Tom Hardy as Glass's biggest adversary besides the bear (he's the guy who decides to leave Glass’ ailing ass behind after all), Domhnall Gleeson (EX MACHINA, BROOKLYN, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - yep, he's been getting around lately) as the hunting party leader, Captain Andrew Henry; Will Poulter as the young mountain man Jim Bridger, and, even younger, Forrest Goodluck as Glass’ half-Native American son, Hawk.
That last bit, about Glass’s son, is fictional as the real life fur trapper/explorer didn’t have a son or the wife that we see getting killed in his tortured flashbacks throughout the film, but when a film is this riveting and driven, I’m not complaining about such embellishments.
Set in treacherous, snowy Montana and South Dakota in the early 1820s, this adaptation of Michael Punke’s “The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge” follows the infamous hunting expedition led by Gleeson’s Captain Henry into the uncharted post-Louisiana Purchase territory.
In the film’s stunningly shot opening sequence, the hunters and trappers get ambushed by a tribe of Arikara Indians, and the survivors along with what they could save of their pelts, escape on a boat down river. Glass voices that, to avoid further attacks, they should ditch the boat and continue on foot – a plan that Fitzgerald doesn’t favor.
This is where the bear comes in. While deep in the woods away from the others, Glass comes across the mother grizzly and her cubs and gets the mother of all maulings.
Afterwards, the crew carries him on a makeshift stretcher, but Fitzgerald, as always voicing displeasure, wants to kill or abandon him so they can complete the damn mission and get the hell home. In a struggle over Glass, Fitzgerald kills Hawk.
So Glass finds himself literally left for dead, but despite the dangerous odds he crawls, climbs, and swims through hundreds of miles of wilderness to exact revenge on Fitzgerald.
While it doesn’t have the single take illusion that BIRDMAN beautifully built up (and that Emmanuel Lubezki won an Oscar for), THE REVENANT does traffic in sweeping unbroken tracking shots with the same mastery. Returning cinematographer Lubezki’s camera glides through the scenery intoxicatingly, beginning many scenes at ground level and ending them trailing off into the campfire smoke in the sky.
This gets us immersed in the open spaces, making us feel like we’re right there with DiCaprio in his suffering, wounded state. The man definitely deserves to get the gold for his no holds barred commitment to the character. The guy’s patented boyish charm is nowhere to be found here; what we’ve got here in his portrayal of Glass is a weathered 41-year old who’s been through hell and back and looks it.
Hardy, who along with Gleeson has been working a lot this last year, may get a nomination for this as well. Between this and his work in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and LEGEND, it feels like Academy voters will surely take notice.
THE REVENANT may be more grueling than a good time for some moviegoers, but I found it to be more rewarding than punishing. It’s a towering testament to the emotional and physical strength that one finds in themselves when bracing the overwhelming wild of the American west.
When it comes to lengthy, brutal Westerns set in icy terrain this season, maybe this is the one that should’ve been shot in 70mm.
More later...
