Unfortunately, I don't have any interesting stories related to the music of David Bowie. I never saw him in concert, nor did he inspire me to explore my sexuality or anything along those lines. Like many people, I simply dug his music, and I'm really sad to see him departed from this life. As an actor - and he had been one almost as long as he had been a singer - he had an eclectic range of roles, as you would expect from one who took on roles in his musical performances: Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ, Andy Warhol in Basquiat, Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, and this is in addition to his more famous roles in The Hunger, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and of course, Labyrinth. The man was a true original.
I can say a few more words, however, about the Ziegfeld Theater, which finally closed its doors for good last month. I didn't go there that often, but it seemed every time I did was like an event. The Ziegfeld I knew was not, of course, The Ziegfeld; not the original. I like to think, however, it lived up to its namesake. It was a splendid place to watch movies, especially the large ones. I had the privilege of seeing two 70mm films there: The Master and Interstellar. I also remember standing on line around the block with John & Sue to see both Attack of the Clones (sitting in the back, mocking Anakin and Padme) and Return of the King (wondering how many times it would end).
The heyday of the old midtown movie houses had passed by the time I came up. I was too young for the grindhouse-era 70s and I'm certainly too young to have experienced the glamour days of the 30s and 40s. The closing of the Ziegfeld means the severing of the last tie to that era, where a night at the movies in midtown Manhattan was a spectacle, a gala event. The Ziegfeld was a reminder of what that period was like, and there are precious few of them remaining - at least, that still show movies.
Moving on to lighter news: I have Photoshop again, as you can tell from the new banner. A dude in my writing group discovered - quite easily, too - something I should've figured out for myself: the program just needed to be reinstalled! Duh! Oscars are this month, though I don't expect to do well predictions-wise. I have to remind myself that what I want to win and what I think will win are two different things. Still undecided on whether or not to see The Revenant. At this point I could go either way. Your links for this month:
If you only click on one of these links (though naturally I hope you check out all of them), make sure you read what Jacqueline calls her "manifesto" on Donald Trump, classic movies, and education. Ryan eulogizes Bowie way better than I could. Ruth remembers another British thespian who passed last month, Alan Rickman, with her favorite films by him. Two reviews of two absolutely bizarre-sounding movies: Kristina from Speakeasy writes about The Madmen of Mandoras and Angela from The Hollywood Revue talks about The Phynx. Courtney thinks The Hateful Eight has a race problem. Pam bids adieu to a favorite movie theater from her childhood. Aurora talks about the cinematic duo of director Billy Wilder and star Jack Lemmon. Retrospace's excellent podcast, The Horshack Redemption, does an all-sci-fi episode which includes discussion of The Force Awakens.
Interstellar seen @ Bow Tie Cinemas Ziegfeld Theater, New York, NY 11.6.14 Is film - the physical medium - dead? Hollywood studios have endorsed digital photography as the cheaper way to go, and movie theaters have been forced to compensate by installing digital projectors, at great expense for some. A small-but-growing number of filmmakers, however, have asserted that they have every intention of keeping celluloid alive for as long as they can. Many of them have gone on the record about this, and the reasons why have been discussed in detail. Earlier this year, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino took over as programming head of the LA theater he owns, the New Beverly, and he has made it crystal clear that he's going to make every effort to preserve 35mm film there, for both old and new releases. Recent films such as The Master, Django Unchained, Lincoln, and Beasts of the Southern Wild were all shot on celluloid, by directors, old and new, with a strong preference for the medium. And preservation of older films is a cause that has grown in support in recent years thanks to directors like Martin Scorsese.
The Master seen @ Ziegfeld Theater, New York NY 10.6.12 And now, five things I thought about while watching The Master: 1. This doesn't look like how I imagined 70mm would look. Part of the reason I held out so long to see this movie was so I could see it in 70mm at the Ziegfeld (the place could certainly use the business). Vija and I sat in the middle of the cavernous auditorium at my suggestion (maybe favoring the rear a little) because I was expecting, as I told her afterwards, a panoramic, Lawrence of Arabia-type image. What I saw didn't quite feel that... majestic. Maybe it was because it wasn't anywhere near the same kind of movie as Lawrence of Arabia. Vija thought it was because we were sitting as far back as we were, which makes more sense to me. The Ziegfeld is far bigger than that of your average multiplex auditorium, making it easy to throw off your sense of scale - and it's not like I go to the Ziegfeld all the time. I talked to an usher afterwards to make sure that this was indeed, the 70mm print and she said it was...
...so my first 70mm experience turned out to be slightly less than epic. If I ever get to see another one, I'll make sure to sit closer to the front. 2. This really looks like a Stanley Kubrick film. I think I may have mentioned it before, how Paul Thomas Anderson started out making movies that look like Robert Altman and now he's switched to Kubrick. What does a Kubrick movie look like? Definitely panoramic, for one thing, but he also loved to use long takes focused on a face, or maybe two people in conversation, usually centered. Look at The Shining or A Clockwork Orange or 2001 and you'll recognize it immediately - the way he builds up tension within a scene by holding a close-up during a conversation and making few cuts within the overall scene. PTA does that here. Also, like Kubrick, he uses music carefully and judiciously.
3. Joaquin Phoenix' character is difficult to watch. I read somewhere that Phoenix studied the movement of apes for his role of Freddie, and indeed, the way he lopes around, swinging his arms to and fro, leanign forward with his chin jutted out, is reminiscent of some manner of primate. Plus there's his violence (the jail scene in particular is quite disturbing) and his sexual urges - thought they did provide us with a scene with lots of naked women! 4."Processing" is not unlike certain acting techniques. There's a scene early in the movie where Phillip Seymour Hoffman asks Phoenix a long series of personal questions that, I presume, are meant as an initiation to the Cause, the Scientology-like cult that PSH's character Dodd runs.
I've talked before about my experience in studying acting, specifically about learning the Meisner technique, and it's quite similar to how Dodd engages Freddie in this scene: staying completely focused on your partner. Repetition. Reacting to your partner; their face, their body movements, the sound and inflection of their voice, all of it (don't say "ouch" until you get a pinch - that's how they taught it to us). And above all, stay in the moment. Seeing Dodd and Freddie go back and forth in their interrogation felt a lot like that technique, in which the goal - as Dodd makes clear himself - is to get at the truth. For an actor, that means emotional truth, and I'd say both PSH and Phoenix achieved that.
5. Why would anyone choose to follow Dodd in the first place? This is the big problem I had with The Master - I couldn't understand how Dodd got to where he was, because the Cause wasn't explained adequately enough for me. (Why is it even called "The Cause"?) Yes, Dodd is charismatic and has an air of knowledge and authority, but we never see him make the study of "past lives" sound appealing, like something you and I would wanna explore. Never mind the parallels to Scientology - which I think is a hoax and a sham, by the way - I found it difficult to fully invest in the reality of Dodd's cult. The Master wasn't bad by any means, but I feel like there wasn't enough "there" there. It fell too much on the navel-gazing, introspective side and I wasn't as open to the premise as I should have been.
Hugo seen @ Clearview Cinemas Ziegfeld, New York NY 11.20.11
The name Georges Melies may not mean much to even the casual film fan, much less the average person. I admit I myself knew only that he was an early filmmaker from the turn of the century, nothing more. His best-known film, A Trip to the Moon, is often cited as an early sci-fi classic by genre experts. His is a fascinating story for film fans of all kinds, and in the Martin Scorsese film Hugo, his life is reimagined as a means to celebrate not only the man, but the medium of film itself.
I don't wanna get too deeply into the specifics of the film itself - it deserves to be discovered on its own terms, because it starts out one way and ends up another, but you should at least be aware of Hugo as a film that is, at its heart, for film lovers, whether you watch them or make them. Scorsese's love and appreciation for film history is well documented (late last year, just to pick one example, I talked about a documentary he made about Elia Kazan), and I suspect that love was what drew him to this story, based on an award-winning children's book.
Melies' films are characterized by a great sense of whimsy and imagination. They were very often flights of fancy with elaborate costumes and sets, as well as innovative camera tricks, the result of his early career as an illusionist. Moon, for instance, imagines space travel being as simple as shooting people out of a cannon pointed at the moon, while the moon itself is a fantasy land populated by strange creatures. When you consider how much "realism" audiences demand these days in genre films, this stands out as a striking contrast.
It's an attitude that I succumb to as well, more often than not. I mean, we're willing to accept artistic license on certain things - sound in space, superpowers that defy the laws of physics, improbable stunts that would mean certain death in real life - but we're only willing to go so far. Part of it, of course, has to do with our expanded knowledge of the way the universe operates, but if a consequence of that is an unwillingness, or at least a reluctance, to lose ourselves in pure fantasy every once in awhile - to be able to tell a story and just not give a damn whether it adheres to scientific principles or not - then that's unfortunate. A film like Moon would be considered kiddie fare if it were made today, but Melies and his audiences didn't make such distinctions.
Hugo is Scorsese's first 3D film, and while I didn't necessarily think it needed to be in 3D, he handled it well. It's immersive in the same way Avatar is; the opening scene envelops you in the snow falling all over the Paris cityscape. The sets are obviously not as spectacular, though they're impressive in their own right (Scorsese had an entire period-specific train station built for the movie). There are some show-offy moments - a dog barking angrily in your face, the neck of a guitar poking through the screen, but Scorsese never lays it on thick.
As more star directors continue to experiment in 3D - Scorsese, Werner Herzog, Steven Spielberg, Baz Luhrman, Wim Wenders - the more we may start to see 3D films that don't necessarily rely on fantasy or sci-fi elements. Hugo seems like a fantasy movie because of its elaborate sets and sense of bigness, but it's not. Even its Macguffin, the humanoid automaton discovered by Hugo's father, has real-life precedents, such as the infamous chess-playing "Turk." I don't know if the world is ready for romantic comedies or courtroom dramas in 3D, but that does seem to be a direction we're slowly moving towards.
Hugo played at the Ziegfeld as a special SAG screening which I went to with Reid, he being a SAG member. After the show, there was a special Q-and-A with cast members Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Emily Mortimer, and Ben Kingsley, along with screenwriter John Logan, hosted by film critic Glenn Kenny. They each talked about their experiences on set, working with Scorsese, that sort of thing. One observation I remember Kingsley saying was about how working in 3D means the camera captures everything the actors do more readily. He said something about being able to see Butterfield's emotions even before they surfaced, which I thought was interesting.
A word or two about the Ziegfeld: it's actually the namesake of the original Ziegfeld, located in the heart of midtown Manhattan. Named for Broadway mogul Florenz Ziegfeld, it has been a venue for theater, film and television over the years. It was torn down in 1966 to make way for a skyscraper, but the second one opened three years later, for movies only. Throughout the lobby there are sculptures, photos and other memorabilia celebrating the history of the original Ziegfeld, surrounded by lush red carpeting and ornate chandeliers. The last time I was there was, I think, for one of the Lord of the Rings films (probably Return of the King), and before that, for Attack of the Clones. Every time I've gone to the Ziegfeld, there has always been lines wrapped twice around the block. It's a single screen theater that seats a large amount of people, so perhaps that's not too surprising.
Look for photos of the Ziegfeld and of the Hugo Q-and-A on the WSW Facebook page.
Another Year seen @ Angelika Film Center, New York NY 1.2.11
The Angelika Film Center can be an exciting place to see a movie, but the thing is, you gotta plan in advance when you go there - especially if it's on a weekend, and especially especially if a hot movie or two is playing. I bought my ticket for Another Year an hour and a half ahead of time and then I wandered around the East Village for a bit. I bought some pizza, because I knew I wasn't gonna buy food there (and not just because it's expensive, as you'll see). The lobby, which includes the cafe, was sparsely populated when I left. It was well into the afternoon, though not late in the day.
When I came back, it was about twenty minutes before my showtime, and the lobby was PACKED. The Angelika's not very big, as movie theaters go. With the cafe to the side as you enter, it's about the size of your average Starbucks. Now imagine that same space with all the tables full, and a huge line snaking around the perimeter, from the rear entrance leading to the lower level, where the ticket takers stand, to the front entrance and around the side to the cafe counter and back towards the bathrooms - a mass of people standing around, waiting to go downstairs to the auditoriums. Granted, you see long lines on opening weekends at multiplexes all the time, but your local multiplex usually has a lot more room to accommodate so many people. When they're in a smaller space, like the Angelika, the feeling is a bit more tense and... chaotic.
I had no idea where the line ended, nor did I know which movie the line was for. Eventually the usher announced over the PA system that the line was for Blue Valentine, which was screening at the same time as Another Year, and that the line for the latter was forming to the side. I found that line and followed it... out the front door and down the front steps into the street. Well, it wasn't snowing, nor was it raining beyond an occasional drop or two, and it was relatively warmer than it had been recently, so waiting outside wasn't so bad. Now you see why getting food at the theater would've been a bad idea - if I had been with someone, I could've sent them inside to get something for both of us while I held our spot in line, but I wasn't, so I couldn't.
I've written before about how I've seen the occasional celebrity at the Angelika, attending as just another filmgoer. I had no such luck yesterday, though it wouldn't have been too surprising if I had. Blue Valentine was clearly the movie most people were talking about, including the couple in front of me. They had already seen it and were describing it to this elderly lady whom they must have met in line.
I'm normally not the type who gets off on being in a crowd, but when it comes to movies, there is a kind of thrill to the aspect of waiting on line for an eagerly-anticipated movie. To give an example for a less sublime film, I remember going to see Attack of the Clones with John at the Ziegfield in midtown Manhattan, an opulent, gorgeous movie house, and the line for that weaved around two corners of the block. While I've never been that big of a Star Wars fan, I could feel the excitement as much as anyone else, and the simple fact of being part of such a huge line seemed to confirm the importance of such an event as this. (Too bad the film itself didn't live up to the anticipation...) There was a similar feeling at the Angelika yesterday, for Blue Valentine. You could feel the excitement for it building in the air (although there was some buzz for Another Year as well). It goes without saying, perhaps, that both shows were sellouts.
I had to sit towards the front again. If you ever go to the Angelika, always get a seat next to the wall. The auditoriums are small enough that you'll still have a perfect view, and the rows are small enough that you won't have to make your way past two dozen people just so you can go to the bathroom. If you get a seat next to a lamp, you can read your book while you're waiting. I lucked out in that Another Year was playing in the room where you can't feel the rumble of the subway beneath your feet (some people don't like that).
The movie itself was good. Some people are calling this Mike Leigh's best; I wouldn't go that far. All the talk is around Lesley Manville's performance, but Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen were what really did it for me. They made such a warm and loving couple; you wanted to be around them and to follow their lives.
So does anyone have any stories about being on line for a movie? I had briefly considered trying to make an ongoing feature of some sort based on this, but I'm not sure how I would do it. I probably won't, but it's a nice idea to kick around.
