Five movies with eclipses

So have you heard about this big-deal solar eclipse that's supposed to happen this month? Bibi first told me about it; she and Eric wanna travel to the west coast to see it because the view is better there, or so she says. I don't recall the last time I actually witnessed one - and yes, I know you're not supposed to look at it directly; you know what I mean - but I figure this is noteworthy enough to pay tribute to it here with a list of movie eclipses. There are more of them than you'd think.

- King Solomon's Mines. H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain novel about the search for the legendary African treasure has been brought to the big (and small) screen five times. The first, with Cedric Hardwicke and Paul Robeson, was in 1937. The eclipse happens during the outbreak of a rebellion led by Robeson, the rightful chieftain of his tribe, against the usurper who killed his dad. I'm sure it's a great scene if he's in it.

- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Mark Twain's sci-fi classic has seen numerous interpretations across multiple media. In 1949, Bing Crosby starred in a musical film version (also with Cedric Hardwicke). Here, the eclipse helps der Bingle get out of being burned at the stake. He knows it's going to happen, you see. He tells everyone he caused it, because they missed the Cosmos episode on how eclipses really happen, and he'll stop it if they let him go. Clever, huh? (Thanks to Paddy for assistance on this one.)

- Little Shop of Horrors. Who'da thunk this list would have two musicals? Audrey II, the carnivorous, murderous sentient plant of this bizarre but highly entertaining adaptation of the stage musical (itself an adaptation of the Roger Corman flick), is born of an eclipse. How? Eh, that's not really important. It's an eclipse. They're funny like that.

- Dolores Claiborne. One of the best films based on the work of Stephen King is this Kathy Bates/Jennifer Jason Leigh thriller about a bitter New England woman accused of murder. Why does everyone think she did it? Because she killed her husband years ago during, you guessed it, an eclipse - or did she? You thought Kathy was great in Misery? Her performance here blows that one out of the water. How she wasn't Oscar nominated is a total mystery.

- Pitch Black. You ever have one of those days where you're stuck on a planet with three suns and the darkness from an eclipse releases deadly underground creatures ready to tear you limb from limb? I hate it when that happens... Anyway, this is the scenario of the Vin Diesel action flick, the first in the Riddick series, which also spawned an animated film and some video games.

The real eclipse happens this Monday. If you see it live, let me know how it went.

Rebecca (1940)

The Till Death Us Do Part Blogathon is an event studying murder in movie marriages, hosted by Cinemaven's Essays From the Couch. For a list of participating bloggers, visit the link at the host site.

Rebecca (1940)
from my DVD collection

As a movie about murdering spouses, Rebecca is a bit of a cheat, since the "murder" happens prior to the beginning. We know now that Hitchcock had to change the ending of Daphne du Maurier's book to appease the censors - Laurence Olivier only thought about killing Rebecca for having another man's baby; her death was an accident (yeah, right!) - but most people agree this is still a compelling movie.

According to the Criterion DVD liner notes, Du Maurier was less than thrilled with Hitchcock as the choice of director, because she didn't believe he'd stick with her original story, yet she turned down the opportunity to write the screenplay herself. Producer David O. Selznick was determined to keep the story as is, but the Production Code specifically stated murderers had to pay for their crime - hence the revision.

Hitch wasn't all that satisfied with the finished product, but for different reasons. He wanted Margaret Sullavan as the nameless protagonist; Selznick, after a long tryout, went with the relative newcomer Joan Fontaine. Hitch came to like her eventually, but he had to coach her a lot. Plus, members of the crew were snitching behind his back to Selznick. Hitch also was dissatisfied with what he felt was a lack of humor in the screenplay, although there's certainly a little bit, like in the early scenes with Fontaine's governess. As the director told Francois Truffaut years later,"[Rebecca] has held up quite well over the years. I don't know why."

The day I re-watched the movie was a full and slightly unusual one. I chose to watch it with Vija at her place, but before that, I had spent the day out in Long Island. I had a yen to spend the day someplace I had never been to before; I wanted to go upstate again, but I knew I wouldn't have had as much time. The seaside town of Long Beach was closer. They have a beautiful beach and boardwalk.

I went to a donut shop I had read about, but it was on the opposite end of town, a long walk from where I was. This might not have been so bad, except halfway there, it rained. Hard. I had to rush back to the train station in a downpour under my tiny umbrella, clutching the bag with my box of donuts, my feet soaked in my shoes from all the puddles.

Fast forward to Vija's place in the city. She had opened the occasion up to our movie-going group. Susan came, whom I hadn't seen in awhile. She enjoyed playing with Vija's cat. The DVD player was a second-hand gift from Franz, only he neglected to mention how second-hand it was. While it worked okay when we watched Lust for Life (despite the scratchy disc), here it chose to act up.

Vija had to fiddle with the wires and controls just to get the main menu. The disc played for awhile, but then the player stopped cold at the worst possible moment: right when Olivier was about to tell Fontaine the truth about how Rebecca died! This time, no amount of fiddling worked - and my DVD was stuck inside the player, unable to come out! If Franz had been there, I would've made him pay for my DVD! As for the movie, I had to tell Vija and Susan the ending by reading it off of Wikipedia.

But that's not all! We talked for awhile, and eventually Susan and I left. I walked to nearby Penn Station and bought a LIRR ticket home. Right after I did that, Vija called to tell me she got the player working again! I had about another forty minutes until my train departed, so I rushed back to her place to get my DVD. As I did, I got another call - from Sandi, back from her vacation. We talked for a little bit, made plans to get together on the Fourth, right as I arrived at Vija's place again.

She wanted to watch a little more of the movie, so we did. We got as far as the inquisition scene, in which Olivier is questioned about his marriage to Rebecca and Fontaine faints. Then I had to catch my train. At least I got my DVD back!

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Other movies about homicidal spouses (an abbreviated list):
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Double Indemnity
Gaslight
Mildred Pierce

QWFF 2017 All-purpose mega-post

It has snowed before during the Queens World Film Festival, but this is the first time I can recall the snow canceling a day of programming. Opening Night, no less! The Museum of the Moving Image opted to close last Tuesday, the 14th, meaning no gala first-night show, and I can hardly blame them for it, but I've seen worse blizzards than the one that hit New York last week. The roads in my neighborhood were clear relatively quickly. There was a party at a Jackson Heights restaurant, but I chose not to attend. Getting back home might not have been a problem, but I didn't want to take the risk. Besides, I'd see everyone during the week.

It was good to be back at QWFF after last year's hiatus. I've chosen to consolidate my report on the fest into one big post instead of a day-by-day account, to see if writing about it is any easier.

Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens NY

Math was probably as intimidating to me as it was to most people in high school. I remember taking pre-Calculus in my freshman year because I actually did fairly well in math in junior high. This, however, was entirely different. I don't remember a thing I learned in the class. I struggled with it the entire semester. I don't know how I passed with a 65 but I did, and once I was done, I never wanted to see it again. To this day, I don't know why I had to take that class.

When I was an upperclassman, I had a scheduling snafu one semester and I was stuck in a class called Computer Math. It might have been the first class in which I used a computer (it was probably a Mac), but it was a remedial course. I clearly didn't belong, but as much as I tried, I couldn't get out, so I made the best of it. The teacher knew I didn't belong there, too, and was sympathetic. There was even a cute girl I helped out within the class. All things considered, I didn't have too bad a time there.

Basic math is easy once you grasp it, but the really tough stuff, the material involving square roots and fractions and letters, well, that requires an exceptional level of intelligence. I mean, I have to have a chart taped to the inside of my kitchen cabinet to remind me of measurements and half-measurements. There's no way I could nail down all those fancy algebraic equations.

For a long time, those who can were mocked as nerds. That's changing, though; we're starting to see more stories, across multiple media, in which that kind of intelligence is well-regarded, even glamorized, to an extent.

Hidden Figures is the latest example, and it is particularly noteworthy because it involves black people, black women, to be precise. It's the true story of a trio of mathematicians who were instrumental in helping put the late John Glenn into outer space during the height of the Cold War.

Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson are not presented here as what you might call "nerds." The movie, in fact, goes to great lengths to present them as ordinary women in spite of their great skill with numbers, albeit women who had to live with institutional racism on a daily basis, like all black Americans in the early 60s.

The whole nerd stereotype almost never included black people when I was growing up, except perhaps for Urkel from Family Matters. That never bothered me back then. Nerds were uncool, after all. During my years in the comics industry, I met a number of black creators and fans who probably wouldn't object to the term now, not because they're exceptionally intelligent, but because of a change in the zeitgeist.

As a result, though, I became a little more aware whenever I saw an above-average smart black person in the movies, especially when race wasn't a factor. The Martian had one, for a recent example. Joe Morton in Terminator 2 is another one. The character Theo in Die Hard is yet another. In addition, someone like Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a surprisingly popular real-life figure.

As a movie, Figures was pretty conventional and by-the-numbers. It was easy to figure out what would happen and how, and once again this was a movie in which the editor had way too much of a free hand. That doesn't matter as much, though, as the subject. Knowing these super-smart black women existed, and made a difference, is more important. Now they, too, are part of the cultural zeitgeist.

Vija came out to Kew Gardens in the snow to see this with me, although we had gotten all the white stuff the previous day, a Saturday. By Sunday, the roads had been cleared pretty good and the trains had no abnormal delays (relatively speaking, of course). The Kew wasn't nearly as crowded as it was the last time I went there for a Sunday matinee, to see Manchester by the Sea, but by the time Figures ended, the lobby was much busier, so I guess the weather wasn't much of a deterrent.

QWFF 2015 Day 4: And then it snowed

It snowed. On the first day of spring, it snowed. Actually, it wasn't as terrible as it sounds; it's more the timing, I think, that has bothered everybody. And can you blame us? This winter wasn't as brutal as last winter, but it felt almost as bad, and for a brief moment, it looked as if we had finally put it behind us. It's like the killers in horror movies - never count 'em out until you're absolutely sure they're out! (Sometimes not even then.)

I came to P.S. 69, the third venue for the Queens World Film Festival, all the way from Bayside, which is far to the north and east. I thought the weather might impede traffic somehow, and indeed I had to wait awhile for a bus, but once it came, the ride was fairly quick. The weather didn't stop the great big crowd from coming - lotsa friends and family of the filmmakers who were in the house last night.

P.S. 69 in the snow

- Comic Book Heaven. The last days of a neighborhood comic book shop and its cantankerous octogenarian owner. Speaking as someone who used to work in a comic book shop a lot like the one depicted in this short documentary, I have to say that it's not surprising at all that it's out of business. It looked like little more than a hole in the wall, and I counted a grand total of one female customer and zero kids. It appeared as if the merchandise was mostly of the long underwear variety, and I couldn't tell if there were any trade paperbacks (collected editions of monthly issues).

Folks, comics were my life for a long time, so believe me when I say that that character on The Simpsons may be an exaggeration, but he is heavily based on reality, and he should not be any kind of role model when it comes to running an actual comic shop. I can only go by what I saw in the doc, and I concede that I may not have gotten the complete picture (it was only 12 minutes long), but what I saw was an owner who wasn't making any concerted effort to bring in more than just adult white men as customers, and for too many years, guys like him were not rare at all.

As a film, however, this was good. I can see why director EJ McLeavey-Fisher chose his subject. Joe Leisner makes for good sound bites, and his crankiness played very well to the crowd I saw this with. Hell, I laughed a few times, too. The film was shot and edited well, made nice use of the score. As a film, this works... but I only wish that the subject matter was someone who didn't perpetuate the worst stereotypes involved with comic book retail.

- Old Days. Aging rock band The Atomik Age Project reminisces about its glory days. They sound like a good band, in that Eddie and the Cruisers, nostalgia-rock vein, but the entirety of this short consisted of a couple of very brief talking head interviews and a music video. That's it. I learned more about them from this webpage than from this short.

Some of the filmmakers (and subjects) at P.S. 69 last night

- As You Pass By. Doc about a florist in an unusual part of town: next to a cemetery and under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The location of the business is as much an element in this short as the business itself: there are a number of shots of the oppressive-looking ceiling of the BQE covering the wide street, people on the tiny sidewalk, car traffic, etc., and this is apparently part of what will become a bigger piece about the BQE and its effect on those who live and work in its vicinity. If this film is any indication, that's something I'd like to see.

- The Walk. Boy whose father recently died befriends an old man who just wants to go for walks. I expected some kind of M. Night Shyamalan-type twist to this story, but it was exactly what it was on the surface - and I'm grateful for that.

- Gasper & Son. A father-and-son neon-making business. Neon lights have been a huge part of the visual iconography of New York for generations, but according to this doc, it's a dying art, and seeing how neon is made was pretty cool, as was the family dynamic at the heart of this story.

More pics at the Tumblr page.

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Previously:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams
seen on TV @ TCM
2.15.14

All this snow is slowly driving me insane. And I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. I mean, living in the northeast, we expect heavy winters, but when you see people tweeting about snow in places like Alabama, something is seriously wrong with the universe. I wanted to go out last Saturday, but it was snowing, and I was in a glum mood to begin with. I needed some kind of reminder of spring - y'know, that it still exists, and that it will actually come sometime this year, once all this snow stops piling up all over the streets and all the slush stops gathering in my boots and all the cold makes walking around dreary and uncomfortable. (Actually, February has been marginally warmer compared to the single-digit days of January.) And what better way to be reminded of spring than baseball?

I never had anything against Kevin Costner. He always struck me as being a decent actor, Gary Cooper-like looks and all. I don't think I've ever sat all the way through Dances With Wolves - I probably wrote it off as boring back when it came out - but you better believe I've seen his sports movies. I never saw For Love of the Game, though; that one was actually recommended to me by a guy I met during NaNoWriMo last November, since I was writing a baseball story. And now Costner's making another sports movie, Draft Day, but I can't talk about that yet.

I remember all the hubbub about Waterworld and how much it cost and all the behind-the-scenes drama, and honestly, I didn't think the end product was all that terrible. Hell, compared to most of the superhero movies today, I imagine it might even look better. (It definitely deserves a reappraisal of some sort.) The Postman, on the other hand... well, I can't defend that one. Maybe Costner did get a little big-headed after the success of Wolves, and maybe he did need to come back down to Earth for awhile, but it would've been wrong if he had stayed in Hollywood jail forever.

Field of Dreams was made during his glory years, and it was a bit of a shock to see him look young again, but that's time for you. It's a purely American movie, the kind that wears its heart on its sleeve, and while baseball is the vehicle for this story, at its heart, it's about fathers and sons. 

I had forgotten that; I had come into this thinking about just the baseball aspects, and as a result, I found myself thinking a whole lot about my father. This was the first time I had seen it since his death, and while he's never very far from my thoughts, watching this sorta made him come alive for me again, for a moment. 

I've written here before about how I learned about the game from him, how he took me to ballgames and all that stuff, and without going too deep into it again, the point is that I see this movie in a different context now. For all of the good things I remember about my father, there were things on which we strongly disagreed as well, and I understand, to a certain extent, why Costner's character would be afraid of becoming his father, and why he would want to do something as crazy as build a ballpark in the middle of his cornfield.

Maybe it's a baby boomer anxiety, but I don't think it is. At some point, every generation measures itself against the one that came before it. They may find it lacking at first, but things that seemed incomprehensible once can seem more understandable over time. I know that much, at least. And while I'm grateful for the positive things he contributed to my life, I'd still like to see my father as a younger man and try to figure out why he believed the things he did, made the choices he made. Who wouldn't, given the opportunity?

So yeah, I cried at the end of the movie... which I never did before, and I've seen this a bunch of times. It was cathartic, I suppose. I've learned to live without my father, but every now and then, something comes along that reminds me of him - the bad stuff as well as the good. It'll be a long time before I can watch this movie again, that's for sure.

On a different note: I watched Field with my mother, and wouldn't you know it, after it ended, she said she didn't get it! Apparently she was confused by who was alive and who was dead and why. I tried explaining it to her, but it didn't help. Sometimes, I fear for my mother's sense of imagination. 

We had had a conversation earlier that day about movies and television and she said she prefers watching History Channel/Learning Channel-type programs these days because most movies and shows clash with her sense of morality and taste. The word "wholesome" was used. And while I don't expect shows like Mad Men or Breaking Bad would ever appeal to her, a movie like Field is much more accessible than, say, your average Christopher Nolan movie. I'd think she'd be able to make the creative leap necessary to understand the Twilight Zone-type premise. 

Maybe I give her too much credit. I'm not sure. I'd like to be able to talk movies with her the way I used to talk about them with my father, but the level of interest isn't the same, to say the least. Even when I try and sit down with her for an older movie, a movie closer to her generation than mine, she'll still say things like, oh, the ending was too depressing. She said that once after we watched A Streetcar Named Desire, which kinda misses the point of that movie completely. But maybe I shouldn't judge.

The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street
seen @ AMC Fresh Meadows 7, Fresh Meadows, Queens, NY
1.7.14

So. Martin Scorsese. A quick search through WSW makes me realize I haven't talked about him a great deal here. I haven't written about any of his classic films yet, partially because there's not much more I can say about them that hasn't already been said. As you're aware by now, I'm not about deep critical film analysis. There are better places you can go to for that. But I ought to say a few words about him while I have the opportunity.

His status as America's Greatest Living Director has been cemented by now. At this point, I think it's safe to say that he's one of the few directors that the average American can name off the top of his or her head. Immersed within film culture as people like us are, it's easy to forget sometimes that not everyone can name the world's top filmmakers, but Scorsese has become a household name at this point, partially because of the quality of his films, and partially because of his longevity.

Inside Llewyn Davis

Inside Llewyn Davis
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
12.22.13

When I was in high school, I had this mild aspiration to be a musician. Part of it was my sister's influence. She's a singer, who performs in a band with her husband. They're good, too - they play semi-frequently around the New York area, playing R&B and pop cover songs. When I was in high school, she went with me to Sam Ash to help pick out a keyboard for me. I had taken lessons on the organ when I was younger and whaddya know, it took - for a little while, anyway. The songs I wrote were much closer to 80s cheese than anything else, and none of it was worth a great deal, but I was making music.

This was during the period where I had discovered classic rock for the first time and got deeply into not just the music, but the history and the culture behind it as well. I was dating a girl who was also into classic rock, and was learning how to play guitar. She had friends who were the same. We all thought the 60s were the coolest time to be a musician and couldn't get enough of that music.

One day I was coming from a summer art class in Greenwich Village and wandering around the neighborhood, which was still quite new to me, when I encountered a street musician. Her name was Ann Marie. I'd say she was in her mid-to-late 30s when I met her. She played outside the Christopher Street subway station, less than a block away. I wouldn't call her a folkie - her music was closer to Melissa Etheridge than Suzanne Vega - but personality-wise, she came across kinda like a former hippie. She was very friendly and more than willing to indulge this starstruck black kid who she didn't know from Adam. Looking back on it now, I feel grateful for that.

I couldn't tell you for certain what exactly it was about her that made me decide to talk to her and get to know her (in a non-romantic way; I wasn't in love with her), as opposed to simply listening to and enjoying her music. If anything, I think it may have had something to do with the... mystique, or lore, of what it meant to be a musician in general and to be a musician in the Village in particular. At the time, my head was filled with romantic notions of the 60s and the "purity" of rock music: playing your own instruments, writing meaningful songs that touched people's hearts as well as their libidos, basically music as capital-A Art... and I suppose in Ann Marie I saw some aspect of that ideal. 

Not that I could've told you that at the time. I just acted on impulse, without thinking too much about it. It never occurred to me to not try to reach out to her and get to know her, because being a musician and living some sort of Bohemian lifestyle associated with that appealed to me at the time, even though I had absolutely no idea how far off the mark about it I was.

Which brings us to Inside Llewyn Davis, a Coen Brothers movie about the reality behind that Bohemian fantasy of being a 60s musician. Folk music never thrilled me as much as rock, though of course, I learned about Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary and the Mamas and the Papas at the same time as I learned about the Beatles and the Stones, and I liked them as much. My girlfriend in particular had a jones for songs like "Like a Rolling Stone" and tried playing them on her guitar all the time. (She even had a harmonica, which she cherished like a lucky charm.)

I saw Llewyn with Vija, and I knew I wanted to see it with her because she had lived through the 60s, even if only as a Midwestern teenager somewhat removed from the extremes of the culture, as embodied in places like New York and San Francisco. As a result, she liked the movie more than I did. We both agreed the music was very good, though not quite on the same level as that of O Brother Where Art Thou (which she loves), but I thought it was just mining familiar Coen Brother territory again: let's laugh at the Jewish sad-sack guy who can't catch a break in life. I did appreciate how the location shots were done up to match the era - subway stations, street signs, etc. And Oscar Isaac was very good as Llewyn.

Over dinner afterwards, Vija told me a little more about the 60s from her perspective, like the first times she went to New York and San Francisco. She said that growing up in the Midwest made it harder for her to get the full cultural experience of the times, but she still knew a lot of characters like those in Llewyn. 

She was never a musician, but she did catch what stood out as musical allusions in the plot which would've flown over my head. For example, there's a scene where Llewyn gets offered the chance to join the group which we know now as Peter, Paul & Mary, but he turns it down because he didn't like harmonizing in his music. The reference is an indirect one, but she recognized it right away and I didn't.

This was the first time I had seen a movie with Vija at the Kew Gardens. I had to provide instructions to get there from the subway, because it's not exactly a direct distance, but she found it on her own - in fact, she actually snuck up on me as I was sitting on a bench reading some Internet article on my cellphone. I totally didn't see her coming! 

It was unusually warm on Sunday, but she was worried that it would get colder by the time the movie let out, so she wanted to find a clothing shop where she could find a little something to wear. We ended up going into a tiny boutique owned by some Japanese dude where she tried on a few coats (I thought she just wanted a shawl). Vija's smallish; for the longest time, I used to have this mental image of her as being taller and skinnier than she actually is. She's not tiny, though, nor is she fat; I'd say she's between 5'4" and 5'6". 

Point is, none of the coats in the store fit her, and the guy said it was because they were originally made for Asian women! She got a good laugh out of that. (Apparently they were okay for the Orthodox Jewish women in the neighborhood as well, hence his being in Kew Gardens in the first place.) As it turned out, the weather was comfortably cool by the time the film let out and she didn't need anything heavier than what she had on, a long wooly sweater.

It was nice to see a big crowd at the Kew Gardens - I'm used to going in the late afternoons during the week - though the bigger crowd meant bigger distractions. At the beginning of the movie there were some cellphone users who had to have them on, but they subsided after the first ten minutes or so. More annoying was a woman a couple of rows in front of us who was eating something while crinkling what sounded like cellophane. Repeatedly. This lasted longer, and while I wanted to say something, I didn't want to embarrass Vija by saying or doing something I'd regret, so I put up with it. She stopped as well, eventually, so it worked out fine.

Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte
seen @ Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, Bryant Park, New York NY
7.15.13

I don't go see movies at Bryant Park as much as I used to. That's likely because things have changed. For one thing, entrance to the lawn area is more regimented; park security checks all bags before you go in. The bigger reason, I think, though, is the general unpleasantness of people. In general, the smaller an outdoor movie crowd in New York is, the easier it is to tolerate, and the Bryant Park crowd is huge.

I remember going there a year or two ago with Reid to see High Sierra, a movie I had never seen and was looking forward to, but it was spoiled by assholes around us (I forget exactly how). We ended up leaving early. This year, there are two films that I had my eye on, and last night's film, Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte was the first. I figured it was worth giving Bryant Park a try again.

As it turned out, the worst part about last night was the weather. It was hot like you wouldn't believe! I got to the park sometime between seven and seven-thirty. I was walking east from Eighth Avenue, just a few blocks, but by the time I got to the park, I was sweaty and tired and uncomfortable in my clothes. Free ice cream bars were being given away at the south entrance, so I happily grabbed one, and that helped for a little while. I sat down in a lounge area just outside the east end of the lawn, with chairs and tables with beach umbrellas, so I was in the shade, but the shade didn't help. It was sweltering hot, and it stayed that way all night. 

The heat made me sleepy and unwilling to move, and it didn't help that I was losing interest in the movie. The sound system was plenty loud, even way in the back where I was, but bits of dialogue still sounded slightly muffled, so while I was just barely able to follow the story, it didn't strike me as anything more than three old harpies - Bette Davis, Olivia DeHavilland and Agnes Moorehead - shrieking at each other in Southern accents. In fact, I was prepared to leave at one point. But then bodies started dropping. And Bette has a weird dream sequence... and Olivia started slapping Bette around... and that flower pot...

Still, there were other problems. Early in the film, a bunch of Eurotrash teens gathered at the ramp underneath my position and chattered for awhile, not loudly, but loud enough to be a distraction... and some of them were smoking. So I had to chase them off. They looked at me like I was the crazy one. Maybe it was the language barrier.

The ubiquitous glow of cellphones lit up across the lawn here and there, and some people stood on the ramp taking pictures of the screen with their cells. They didn't block my view, but they were an irritating distraction. Last week when I saw Dracula in Prospect Park, I saw people taking pictures, but they were mostly interested in shots of Philip Glass and his orchestra performing alongside the film, and I was willing to cut them some slack for that. Hell, I was tempted to take a few quick shots myself. Here, it was different. It felt more like a tourist-y thing.

There was one old-timer near me who was eagerly talking old movies with his friend, but beyond that, I didn't feel like I was watching this with a crowd that appreciates movies in general, much less old movies. True, the crowd did applaud when Bette does something important in the climax, but it was an almost perfunctory bit of applause and not a HELL YEAH kind, which is what it should have been. Maybe I imagined all of this though. I dunno. Perhaps I'll be able to tell the next time I come to Bryant Park.

As for the movie itself, well, I'd probably need to see it again to get a better feel of it, but for all the horror movie-style imagery and campy diva duels, there's something to this. It's well shot, for one thing - not just Bette's dream sequence, but the long prologue in the beginning where we see young Charlotte at the party, deep in shadow, dominated by the large figure of her father.  Plus, the language pushes the barriers, for 1964, anyway: it's a bit of a shock to see Bette Davis use the word bitch. Grade this one incomplete for now, I guess.

Gold Diggers of 1933

Gold Diggers of 1933
seen @ "Summer On the Hudson Movies Under the Stars," Pier 1, Riverside Park, New York, NY
7.10.13

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the Great Depression wasn't a lot of fun to live through. We've all seen pictures, read stories, about American life in the 1930s; how the federal government, led by President Franklin Roosevelt, went to extraordinary lengths to revive the nation's economy after the stock market crash of 1929. It doesn't look all that appealing. Small wonder, then, that Hollywood sought to lift people's spirits through movies, especially now that they had sound to go with images.

Spectacle - whether it's glitzy, glamorous musicals then or computer-generated action flicks today - has always been a strong palliative in Hollywood movies to get us through hard times. For example, I've written before about how I saw Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back the first weekend after 9/11 and how good it felt to laugh again.

On the other hand, I lived in Columbus, Ohio in 2008 when the recession settled in, and while I felt its effects, it didn't necessarily change my choices in entertainment much. I remember seeing films like Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight, but I also saw much more serious fare like Frozen River and Milk because I knew they were exceptionally good movies. Spectacle didn't really play a factor in those cases. I wasn't looking for a escape from reality so much as I was looking for... if I had to give a name to it... a way to make sense of reality. To better understand why the world was in the shape it was, although this isn't something I would've been able to articulate at the time, I don't think.

Also, things didn't seem quite so hopeless for me in 2008. Barack Obama's presidential campaign was all about restoring hope to the American people, and it's what led to his euphoric victory after eight dreary and devastating years under George W. Bush. I had a skill, my cartooning, which led to a regular gig, and even if it was a poorly-paid one, it kept my spirits up. And I had good friends to lean on, beginning with my roommate. Therefore, I never felt the need to lose myself in the spectacle that the movies provided. Maybe I would've felt differently about them if I had lived through the 1930s, which, after all, was a more extreme state of affairs.

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Which brings us to Gold Diggers of 1933. (They couldn't have just called this "Gold Diggers"? The 1933 part makes me think this was part of a franchise.) What must it have been like to see a movie this gaudy, this lavish, this off-the-wall silly in 1933, especially sitting within an old-school movie palace on a 50-foot screen? Given the times, how spellbinding was it to see beautiful women scantily dressed in outfits made to resemble coins singing a song called "We're In the Money"? What did they make of future superstar Ginger Rogers singing a few verses in friggin' Pig Latin? (I wish I hadn't been spoiled by that scene. Months ago, someone - maybe on the TCM Message Boards, I don't recall - posted a YouTube link to that clip and I watched it, jaw plummeted due south.) Did they notice that those Busby Berkeley-choreographed numbers could never possibly be recreated on any stage, even though it's supposed to be part of a Broadway show within the film's context?

I mean, this is spectacle taken to ludicrous lengths, even by today's standards. One has to admire the audacity that drove director Mervyn LeRoy and choreographer Berkeley to just plain not give a damn and create visuals like these, but I suspect it was the Depression that must have spurred them to be this over-the-top - and yet the movie doesn't completely ignore reality; the final number, a song called "My Forgotten Man," is clearly an acknowledgment of all the forgotten men in society who were victims of the times, yet even this is presented on as grand a scale as the other numbers.

I'm not sure whether Gold Diggers was meant to be hopeful or simple escapist entertainment. I guess it comes across as a little bit of both. I mean, I doubt that I would've walked away from this in 1933 thinking, "Oh boy! If I can trick a rich woman into a loving marriage, all my problems will be solved!" but I definitely would've felt better about life for a little while. Seeing it in 2013, I liked it a lot, as a relic from a long-ago era in American history. I just wish I could better put myself in the mindframe of a 1933 moviegoer. I think it would better help me understand what forces went into making a film like this, which is so distinctive, so unusual, and so very unlike anything made today.

It felt so good seeing this at Riverside Park. When it hasn't been raining (I had been rained out of two other outdoor movies prior to this), it's been sweltering hot here in the big city, and those Hudson River breezes were a welcome relief. It was so breezy, in fact, that the movie organizers had a hard time keeping the inflatable screen up at first. Throughout the film, the wind rippled over the screen, and as a result, it gave the image an almost dream-like quality. You know how sometimes, in old movies, whenever they go into a flashback or a dream, there'll be this effect where the image ripples and shimmers? Watching the film last night was reminiscent of that - and given the subject matter, it wasn't exactly inappropriate.

The film was almost ruined for me by a chattering older couple behind me. They seemed excited to see Gold Diggers, to their credit, and during the opening credits they merrily oohed and aahed at the names of the stars, but once the film began in earnest, I had to ask them to keep it down, and they did. However, towards the end, the woman got on her cell phone to call someone, and she was no longer making an effort to be quiet. The dude next to me shushed them once, and just as I was about to do the same, the two of them got up and left. For all their excitement about seeing the movie, they still ended up leaving early. Still, in all fairness, Riverside Park is far removed from the street, never mind the nearest subway station, and it was getting late.

By contrast, there was an old woman directly behind me who was much nicer. She was clearly dispirited when I returned to my seat as the hostess began to introduce the film, me being so much taller, so I asked her if she could see. She said she could, it was no big deal, but as it turned out, I could barely see from behind the dude in front of me, so I moved to the left into the aisle a little bit. This pleased the old woman behind me, and she thanked me, even though technically I did it more for myself. Afterwards, she thanked me again. Nice way to end the night.

Look for pictures of Riverside Park to go up on my WSW Facebook page.

QWFF 2013 Day 3: Snow business

The Queens World Film Festival is a six-day event which showcases films from around the world at venues within the New York City borough of Queens. Throughout this week, I'll write about select films from the show. For more information about the festival, visit the website.

And now the snow has arrived, in full force. All afternoon yesterday, the snow kept coming off and on, as if it wasn't entirely sure if it wanted to commit to being a full-blown blizzard, but by the time I arrived at the Renaissance Charter School for last night's QWFF block of films, Mother Nature went all in. I don't think it'll make too much of a difference for tonight except I'm going to a location I've never been to before. However, I've been reassured that it's not too hard to find.

The Renaissance Charter School

I'm feeling better. I've opted to take my cough syrup with me because I wanna be at my best when I'm watching all these movies. Last night wasn't too bad, but my throat was still kinda scratchy.

Throughout the two hours or so of the block of films, there were intermittent "blue-outs" where the image blinked out, or tracking problems in which the image went all wavy and shaky. There was a feature length film and two shorts; the first short, Splash, played okay, but the second short, Baby I Love You, and the feature, In Montauk, both experienced these problems. They were eventually corrected with a change of disc, though it was believed to be the Blu-Ray player for awhile.

"Baby I Love You"

Baby is an animated short directed by Faiyaz Jafri, who also did Planet Utero from opening night. I had the opportunity to chat with him for a few minutes prior to his film. Originally from Holland, he's lived in the US for fifteen years and has worked in animation for over twenty years, exclusively with computers. Baby was originally meant to be part of a Beatles tribute album as a "video" for the song "Little Child," but rights issues got in the way. The short features a little girl in a nightmarish vignette with surreal, horrific imagery, not unlike that of Utero. Cat (who worked the door at RCS last night and introduced me to Jafri) thinks there's more of a narrative at work in both films, and maybe that's true, but they both struck me as being much more abstract and more considerate of the imagery than anything else. Jafri stated in a brief Q-and-A afterward that some of the imagery in Baby was inspired by other sci-fi and horror films.

"In Montauk"

In Montauk is a drama written and directed by Queens native Kim Cummings, about an extra-marital affair between a photographer and a musician over a winter out on the easternmost edge of Long Island, which doesn't leave either all that satisfied. Shot on location in both Montauk and Queens over ten days, Cummings said in her Q-and-A that it took over two years to edit. In casting, she opted for actors that she said instinctively got her characters. Indeed, they only had time for two rehearsals, but it proved to be enough.

The performances are good, and there are lots of nice shots of the Montauk seaside community, including shots of deer and seals. The motivations of the principal characters aren't obvious, and Cummings admitted that she was going for a subtle approach in her writing. At one point, Julie, the lead female, mentions how she doesn't feel she could balance both a career and a family, and I was disappointed that more lip service wasn't devoted to this idea, as it's certainly a relevant one for many women today.

There's nothing worth saying about the Spanish short Splash; it's a seduction scene between a woman in a pool and a reluctant man that's neither sexy nor interesting.

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Previously:
Day 1: The old neighborhood
Day 2: The Jackson Five

Persepolis

The Cinematic World Tour Blogathon is an event in which participants use the movies to take virtual trips around the world, using settings and moments in movies to inform their writing approach, hosted by All Good Things. This blogathon lasts from Memorial Day to Labor Day, so check back periodically at the host site for posts from participating blogs.

Persepolis
seen @ Films on the Green Festival @ Pier 1, Riverside Park, New York, NY
7.14.11

Greetings from Tehran!

An unusual vacation choice? Perhaps, but as an artist, I can't help but be attracted to Iranian architecture and religious iconography and paintings. It's quite beautiful. Unfortunately...

...I had a bit of a problem with my camera. All my photos came out looking similar to this. I hope you'll bear with me.