Cabaret

The 31 Days of Oscar Blogathon is an event coinciding with Turner Classic Movies' "31 Days of Oscar" month-long celebration, in observance of the Academy Awards. In both events, the theme is the same: recognition of Oscar-nominated films throughout history. The blogathon is hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken & Freckled, and Paula's Cinema Club. See the links above for a list of participating blogs.

Cabaret
seen on TV @ TCM
2.5.13

I've never been much for nightclubs. I can probably count the number I've been to on one hand. I'm not what you might call a social drinker, for one thing, and the kind of girls I'd be interested in (or more to the point: the kind of girls who might be interested in me) would not be found there. As for dancing, well, I remember going to a nightclub when I spent a summer in Barcelona. I tried to get into the spirit of things, but it didn't work. I just felt awkward and out of place and I ended up leaving early. (And before you say that it's a bad example, let me add that many people in Barcelona speak English and this club played mostly British and American pop music.)

But why make a spectacle of yourself when you can watch other people do so? I have a friend who once worked as a pole dancer. I never had the pleasure of seeing her at work, but I did go to her club once to pick her up, and I got a pretty good look at some of the other girls there. Sure, it's great eye candy at first, but after awhile, it's like, well, what do you really get out of it? Or am I over-analyzing as usual? (Though I suppose it also depends on context. The same kind of dancing at, say, Lincoln Center, would be called "art," would it not?)

I can get behind a striptease. That feels more involving. Like sex, it's a long build-up to a big payoff at the end, and it engages your imagination. (The brain, after all, is the biggest sex organ.) I've seen burlesque shows with stripteases and I've always gotten a big kick out of them. I even wrote a script for a comic about a striptease dancer, which I still hope to get off the ground one day.

Ultimately, though, nothing beats a good song and dance, which brings me to Cabaret. In terms of Oscar history, it's a bit of an odd duck - it took home eight Oscars, including Director, Actress, Supporting Actor and Editing, but lost Best Picture to The Godfather. There aren't many times when Picture and Director split, but when it does happen, it's always notable. This Oscar season, many pundits believe it will happen again, since current frontrunner Argo is shut out in the Director category.

Cabaret seemed like a sure thing to go all the way. In addition to its wins on Oscar night, it had won the Eddie for editing, the BAFTA (British Oscars) for Film and Director, the Golden Globe for Best Musical/Comedy, the National Board of Review awards for Film and Director and the Writers Guild award. Director Bob Fosse was also nominated for the Directors Guild award. 

The Godfather is perhaps the more revered movie of the two now, but it only won two other awards: Actor and Adapted Screenplay, losing head-to-head against Cabaret in two critical categories, Director and Editing. In total nominations, Godfather edged Cabaret 11-10, but three of those eleven nominations were all in one category, Supporting Actor.

The Director loss is especially surprising, since Francis Ford Coppola won the Director's Guild award, as well as the Golden Globe. Ben Affleck won the DGA for Argo, yet the Academy didn't even nominate him for a Director Oscar, which has made prognosticating this year's awards much more difficult than usual.

Still, Cabaret remains a remarkable work that pushed the boundaries in terms of what could be depicted on screen, with devastatingly subversive and memorable songs (that Nazi anthem always gives me chills). When TCM host Robert Osborne presented it, he mentioned that the film version deviates significantly from the original stage production, and yet the result is still compelling. That couldn't have been easy for Fosse and screenwriter Jay Allen - I mean, how do you decide what to cut and what to leave, especially when it's based on a Tony Award-winning musical?

It's impossible to look at Liza Minnelli in this film and not think of her mom. Technically, the character of Sally is not supposed to be this talented or glamorous, but you know what, I can live with that. For what it's worth, I wouldn't call Liza a perfect beauty. If she looked more like, say, Raquel Welch or Brigitte Bardot, it might be more of a distraction in this particular movie. Liza (in my opinion) has slightly odd-shaped lips, a not-quite-perfect nose, and eyes that make her look like an anime character, but in this movie, I find myself grateful for those imperfections. They help sell Sally.

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Previously:
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang

City Mouse Makes a Movie #6

Previously: Mr. Gillis, the investor for City Mouse's movie, insists that CM make his movie in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Gillis' home and the place where CM used to live as well.

2012 Top 10

Before we begin, some old business: I made last year's top ten before I saw two outstanding movies: We Need to Talk About Kevin and A Separation. Had I made my list after seeing them, they would've made my list for sure - in fact, A Separation would've been my number one instead of Take Shelter. So from now on, I'm not gonna even begin preparing my top ten before February.

2012 was an awesome year for movies. I wish I had seen more films than I did, but seeing everything is not possible for me, and to be honest, I don't really feel the need to. I recently saw an article about a dude who saw a movie a day for the past four years, and frankly, for that amount of dedication to cinema, you'd have to pay me. 

Besides, some movies should take some time to linger in the brain, so that they can be reflected upon. I often do that, if for no other reason than to attempt to figure out what I want to say about a given movie and how. Framing the context for my post is obviously very important to me, since I don't always write traditional reviews.

I also wanna re-acknowledge a film that I saw for the first time in 2012: Adam Rose's Queen, an absolutely beautiful and powerful short film I saw twice at the Queens World Film Festival that would've made this list except it was actually made in 2011. It has stayed with me all year long and I cannot possibly recommend it enough. There's not a whole lot I can report on it in terms of news. It continued to play film festivals in 2012, which is good, and you can see the whole thing here. I guess I was hoping some big studio would notice it and get Rose to do a feature film version, but it hasn't happened yet. Still, it's a great movie and I didn't want it to be forgotten in this best-of list of mine.

And here it is:

10. Flight. In a year in which truly adult movies have made a bit of a comeback at the box office, here's a great example of one. Thank god Robert Zemeckis has returned to live-action movies, because it meant he made this gem of a film. With a powerful original screenplay (Oscar-nominated, thank you very much), Denzel Washington dives deep into a story not just about the struggle with addiction, but the nature of heroism as well. Hollywood, please give us more stories like this, that examine the human condition. Nurture talent like screenwriter John Gatins. And keep Denzel working, okay?

9. Searching For Sugar Man. I've given a lot of thought about the "Sugar Man doesn't present the whole story" issue. A lot of it stems from the bigger question of "What do we expect out of documentaries?" Let's be honest, though, this is far from the first doc to present a biased point of view. Even if the narrative is skewed to favor the filmmakers' agenda, the bottom line is that I now know who Rodriguez is because of this movie, and I'm glad about that. Plus, the film itself is well made: the startling landscape shots of South Africa, the stark street scenes of Detroit, the animated segments, the way Rodriguez is introduced; I found it all quite entertaining. I think docs should provide a starting point, a basis for which people can choose to follow up on the information presented to whatever degree they choose, and Sugar Man achieves that much, if nothing else.

8. Moonrise Kingdom. Wes Anderson sometimes gets mocked for his visual filmmaking style, but the truth is, he's not that much more idiosyncratic than say, David Lynch, or Stanley Kubrick, or Orson Welles. And here his craft serves the story well in what amounts to a simple, timeless love story in which he gets two great performances from his teenage protagonists, surrounded and supported by some of Hollywood's biggest name actors.

7. Lincoln. I didn't say much about the film itself the first time around, so I'll rectify that here. The craft behind this movie amazes me more than anything else, though the story is certainly compelling in and of itself. The lengths Steven Spielberg went to in order to recreate this period in American history are staggering, and yes, I'll say it again: this was a twelve-year labor of love for him. What impressed me most about Lincoln is how he was able to get out of his own way and let Tony Kushner's great script, and that all-star cast, centered around Daniel Day-Lewis, tell the story. The usual trademark Spielbergisms, like the "Spielberg face," feel more under control here and as a result this has a more complete feel than many of his recent films. Who woulda thought that it would make $170 million dollars? That might be its greatest accomplishment.

6. Argo. Will it win Best Picture? The odds are looking better and better each day. Six weeks ago I was convinced that nothing could stop Lincoln, but oh, how fortunes change. And this is a film that deserves every accolade it has gotten, regardless of whether it's the result of an anti-Lincoln backlash or not. Is it the best picture? Well, obviously, I think there were five movies better than it, but you know the Oscars; it's not about Best Picture, it's about Best Campaign. Doesn't take anything away from this film though, and I couldn't be happier for Ben Affleck because of it.

5. Beasts of the Southern Wild. In my Oscar nominations post, I may have made it seem as if Benh Zeitlin wasn't deserving of a Best Director nod because Kathryn Bigelow got snubbed. Not true. While I still believe Bigelow was robbed, the fact that the Academy gave this first-time independent director major props is quite significant, because he made a beautiful film, on a relatively low budget, with a bunch of unknown and untried actors, including a little kid barely out of kindergarten, on whom the entire film rests. It's always a good thing to see a low-budget indy film go all the way, and even if Beasts goes home empty-handed Oscar night, that won't change  its great feat.

4. Cloud Atlas. The critics missed the boat on this one. I'm reminded of when I first saw The Fountain, another deep-meaning sci-fi movie that was underappreciated during its release. I believed then that it would be rediscovered one day (hasn't happened yet), and I feel the same way about this. This gives you so much to chew on, coupled with some of the most jaw-dropping visual effects, costumes, set designs and makeup anywhere. It's not for everyone, but if you give it a chance, and submit yourself to it, I think you'll find watching it a rewarding experience.

3. Django Unchained. I have got to stop underestimating Quentin Tarantino. With both this and Inglourious Basterds, I admit, I wasn't entirely certain if these film-geeky, revisionist-history, genre mash-ups would catch on with a wide audience the way his earlier films did, but they totally did, especially Django, which was way more entertaining than I suspected. Tarantino is a true American original in the film world. No one makes films anywhere near like him; few people understand movies the way he does, and I would argue that his passion for the medium is second to none. It's evident in every frame of his films.

2. Life of Pi. This has everything Cloud Atlas has, plus it's in 3D - the best 3D I've seen since Avatar. It's not like I've seen many of the post-Avatar 3D films, granted, but seeing established filmmakers like Ang Lee (and Martin Scorsese) explore this new aspect of filmmaking in such an imaginative and immersive manner gives me hope that this new technology will actually be worth something someday.

1. Zero Dark Thirty. This should come as no surprise if you've been following my Facebook page. I've posted a lot of ZDT and Kathryn Bigelow-related material there, and with good reason. This movie held my attention from start to finish. Regardless of whether you think it endorses torture or not (it doesn't), whether you think writer Mark Boal is the power behind the throne or not, whether you're a Republican or not, one cannot deny that it is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking from a director who has elevated her game significantly in recent years to become a legitimate A-lister with a vision and the skill to see it realized. I can't wait to see what she does next.

Agree? Disagree? Let's talk about it.

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Previously:
2011 Top 10

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang

The 31 Days of Oscar Blogathon is an event coinciding with Turner Classic Movies' "31 Days of Oscar" month-long celebration, in observance of the Academy Awards. In both events, the theme is the same: recognition of Oscar-nominated films throughout history. The blogathon is hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken & Freckled, and Paula's Cinema Club. See the links above for a list of participating blogs.

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
seen on TV @ TCM

2.2.13

The only other Paul Muni film I had seen prior to I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang was Scarface, and while he was good in that, I wasn't inspired to see anything else of his. Then I read a little bit more about Fugitive and how good a movie it was, so I knew I had to put it on my "must see" list.

Muni isn't as well-remembered these days as guys like Gary Cooper or Cary Grant, but it turns out he was Oscar-nominated for Best Actor six times, five of them during the 1930s (including once as a write-in candidate, back when the Academy still did that sort of thing). Fugitive was his second nomination, and he only had two other contenders that year: Leslie Howard for Berkeley Square, and winner Charles Laughton for The Private Life of Henry VIII. His sole Best Actor win was for 1936's The Story of Louis Pasteur. Fugitive was also up for Best Picture, but lost to Cavalcade. (Page has a summary of that longer-than-usual Oscar season here.) In addition, Muni is one of six Best Actor nominees who received their nomination in their screen debut. Muni accomplished it with his role in The Valiant, from 1929.

In Fugitive, Muni is a war veteran who has the misfortune to get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up going to prison, working on a Southern chain gang. The conditions are excessively brutal, however, and he manages to escape - and that's when his adventures really begin. It's inspired by a true story, and it was a crucial factor in the eventual abolition of the chain gang system in the state of Georgia.

Muni is dynamite in this film. I completely believed his character from start to finish and wasn't sure what his ultimate fate would be. Seeing him actually break rocks in the hot sun (as opposed to inside a studio somewhere) certainly added to the level of veracity. I'm used to seeing chain gangs depicted in cartoons, or comedies like O Brother Where Art Thou, and as a result I had never taken them as seriously as I had here.

Seeing criminals brutalized while under incarceration naturally makes one think of the torture controversy that has arisen over Zero Dark Thirty. Strange how little has changed in eighty years when it comes to the question of what constitutes humane treatment of prisoners. I suspect - and this is something that I didn't mention before, but watching Fugitive has crystallized the point for me - that most of the time, some people simply like wielding power over others, and that the matter of torture has nothing to do with justice. 

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Look for more entries in this series later this month.

My Brooklyn

My Brooklyn
seen @ reRun @ reBar, DUMBO, Brooklyn
2.2.13

The first time I worked in Brooklyn was in 2004. It was in Park Slope. For those of you who are unaware, this is one of the most popular, and heavily coveted, neighborhoods in all of Brooklyn, in large measure because of the beautiful brownstone buildings lying amidst tree-lined streets, next to Prospect Park. I had passed through it before when I was younger, but only fleetingly. Now, I would work there and experience everyday life there.

Eventually I learned that Park Slope underwent a gradual process of gentrification that began in the 80s. Because I didn't recall what the neighborhood looked like back then, however, I had no basis for comparison. I only saw it as it was in the present, in 2004, and I liked the results: quality bookstores (new and used), record shops, bagel shops (to a New Yorker, a good bagel shop means everything), coffee shops, etc. Some of it was, and is, corporate businesses, but many more were and are independently owned.

The entrance to the Fulton Street Mall. Note the dedicated lane
for buses only, as well as the reduced speed limit.

Much of this stands in marked contrast to my neighborhood in Queens - a black neighborhood, which, while it doesn't lack for shopping options by any means, often doesn't have what I want or prefer. At this stage, I should make something plain: ever since junior high school, I've been exposed to diverse crowds of people. My friends were from all walks of life, all kinds of backgrounds, and as a result, I've come to crave that kind of atmosphere. When it's all-white or all-black, I tend to feel less at ease. I need to be in a mixture. That's the way it's been for me for almost all my life and I make no apologies for it.

My neighborhood, a black one, has been going down the tubes lately because of the increased violence, some of which has made front-page newspaper headlines. Police regularly patrol the streets and even the buses now, and while I am no fan of the cops in this city by any stretch, I kind of have to admit that they've become necessary here because, to put it bluntly, niggas don't know how ta act!

So yeah, I prefer hanging out in Park Slope and Fort Greene and Prospect Heights (and Astoria and Long Island City and Jackson Heights in Queens). If that's a result of gentrification, well then, so be it - though Queens, to its credit, still has lots of areas that continue to hang on to its distinct character and ethnicity. (This blog does a great job of showcasing that character.) Still, those fast-food restaurants, 99-cent shops, barber shops, hair salons, and hip-hop boutiques in my neighborhood (and similar ones across the city) cater to most black folks, and that counts for something - or it should.

A sampling of the types of small businesses
found on Fulton Street, as well as their clientele.

So when I see places in Brooklyn deal with issues of gentrification, as in the documentary My Brooklyn, it does make me wonder how Queens will deal with it. Indeed, it's already happening in LIC and Astoria. Every time the 7 train passes into Queens Plaza, one can see the mammoth high-rise office buildings that have radically altered the landscape of the neighborhood.

My Brooklyn deals primarily with downtown Brooklyn in general and the bustling Fulton Street Mall shopping district in particular. Director Kelly Anderson moved to Park Slope in the 80s and considers herself a gentrifier, but as she saw the people of color in her neighborhood get replaced by more and more white people, she decided to ask some hard questions about the nature of gentrification. Her doc examines the history of neighborhood rezoning and city planning in NYC from the Depression onward, and in interviews with city officials, scholars, activists and ordinary people, we see how the gentrification process is a very deliberate one, putting small businesses at risk and upsetting the balance of the people who live and work in these affected areas.

The shape of things to come: one of the forthcoming
big-box department stores coming to the Fulton Mall.

One aspect of city planning that has always irked me, and is addressed in the doc, is the need to replace older buildings with newer, bigger ones that alter a neighborhood's feel, like what I mentioned about LIC and also like what has happened to Williamsburg. In her remarkable and still-very-relevant book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs proposes that reusing older buildings is one of the best things a city can do to maintain its vitality:

... Even the enterprises that can support new construction in cities need old construction in their immediate vicinity. Otherwise they are part of a total attraction and total environment that is economically too limited - and therefore functionally too limited to be lively, interesting and convenient. Flourishing diversity anywhere in a city means the mingling of high-yield, middling-yield, low-yield and no-yield enterprises.

One of the doc's co-producers, a black woman, appeared at the reBar screening on Saturday and in her post-show comments, said that although she doesn't shop on Fulton Street, an area that caters strongly to black and Latino shoppers and was a popular spot for up-and-coming rappers in the 80s, she would not want to see it succumb to a wave of corporate big-box shops. 

At this point, I should mention that among the new developments coming to the Fulton Mall area is a new Alamo Drafthouse theater, and this is obviously something that I, as a film blogger, can't help but be excited about. This article, by noted online film journalist Devin Faraci, actually pays lip service to the development taking place, though he dismisses the businesses currently there. In fact, My Brooklyn cites that the Fulton Mall is the third most profitable shopping district in NYC, which is what attracted this new wave of development in the first place. Perhaps Faraci has never bought a beeper there?

Shake Shack is one of the new, thriving businesses already in
the Fulton Mall area, and in this blogger's opinion, is one of the most overrated.

My Brooklyn obviously has much in common with Battle for Brooklyn, which focuses on the Atlantic Yards development that brought us, for better or for worse, the Barclays Center. The focus is different here, however, because as we see in the film, the small businesses being displaced in the wake of city rezoning plans are not getting compensated by the city. 

And here is where I should also mention, in the interests of full disclosure, that I have benefited from the new businesses popping up. This post is being written from a new Potbelly restaurant just off of the Fulton Mall that has wi-fi. On the same street, there's a new Panera Bread restaurant which I've also gone to for their wi-fi as well as their food. Maybe that makes me part of the problem. I'm not sure. I patronize small and big businesses alike and I try to support the little guys whenever I can. I figure that by seeing films like My Brooklyn and writing about it, I can at least help make more people aware of what's going on.

The former Albee Square Mall, which has gotten plenty of shout-outs
in rap songs from a variety of rappers from the area.

I got to reBar late - I had lunch before coming there and by the time I arrived, the small screening room was packed with people. reBar had had a ton of screenings of My Brooklyn throughout the past couple of months and apparently they've all been like this. The dude at the front door had to get an extra chair for me, which was great because I thought I would've had to wait for a later show. One of the interviewees from the film, an MIT scholar and Brooklyn native (I'm afraid I'm blanking on his name right now), appeared afterward with the co-producer and had a big Q-and-A session in which they continued the discussion begun in the film.

City Mouse Makes a Movie #5

Previously: Collie has found a mystery investor willing to fund City Mouse's film.

Guild-ed links

The Directors Guild award is one of the most important awards on the road to the Oscars, but this year, because of the large disparity between those nominees and the Oscar nominees for Best Director, it had become even more difficult to predict. Then Ben Affleck and Argo started winning everything, and now it looks like that streak could continue this weekend when the DGA winner is announced. Whoever wins here could have the inside track on Best Director at the Oscars, and even Best Picture, but even if Affleck wins, he can't win Best Director because he's not nominated. And that's only part of the strangeness of this very competitive Oscar season.

I suspect Affleck will win the DGA this weekend and I'm currently picking Ang Lee to take Best Director at the Oscars, though one obviously cannot count out Steven Spielberg. I had picked Lincoln to take Best Picture, but because of the recent Argo surge, that's no longer a sure thing. Argo would have to overcome extremely long odds to win Best Picture, but this is a year in which anything can happen, because of the competitiveness of the films involved. I wish I could call it.

Your links, ladles and germs:

Did you know that the Irving Berlin-penned ditty "Puttin' on the Ritz," a song featured in several movies over the years, was originally about seeing black entertainers perform in Harlem? Becky knew.

Jacqueline talks about an old film set on location in her little corner of New England.

Brandie watched a Western... and she liked it...

Ruth talks about five up-and-coming actors that may have a little something going for them.

A vintage film theater here in New York is getting a massive revival.

Here's a brief yet comprehensive analysis of race in the early years of television.

And finally, former NYC mayor-turned-film critic Ed Koch dies on the eve of the release of a documentary about his life.