Lincoln

Lincoln

seen @ Jamaica Multiplex Cinemas, Jamaica, Queens, NY

12.4.12

In Steven Spielberg's twelve-year odyssey

To bring the Lincoln story to the screen,

There must have been moments of great despair

And distractions that led him off the path.

My artistic ideas, they come and go

I tend to flit from one thing to the next.

Therefore I respect Spielberg for his faith

In his opus though fortunes rose and fell

'Cause inspiration is a tricky thing

One's ideas ne'er fully satisfy

How many drafts did Mr. Lincoln make

In his great plan to liberate the slaves?

If roles were switched, could I have persevered?

What, me, a filmmaker? That's pretty weird!

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas
seen @ Cinemart Cinemas, Forest Hills, Queens, NY
11.29.12

Awhile back, when I was still writing my online comics column, I did a piece about a woman named Hilda Terry. I met her late in her life - her career went all the way back to the 40s, when she did a newspaper strip named Teena. She was, in fact, one of the first prominent women cartoonists in America. She went on to other accomplishments in her long life, but one of the most significant aspects of her personality was her belief in past lives.

This was different from the Shirley MacLaine-variety belief. As far as I knew, Hilda herself did not truly believe she lived a previous life. Rather, she was convinced she was in communion with a past life, one outside herself, which inspired her to make her comics. According to her, it was a little girl from colonial times, whom she discovered during the 70s, when she made a concerted effort to discover what she firmly believed was the true source of her artistic inspiration.

The following is from a collection of Teena strips, essays and short stories Hilda co-authored called The Baby Sitter's Magic Mouse Storybook:

In my 65th year I began to realize SOME one was HELPING me [with my cartoons]. And it wasn't God.... In 1979 I was doing the kooky things trying to reach my invisible collaborator. I wound up with a child crying MA-MA for a woman being tried for witchcraft. [When I] asked if she was my guardian angel, the tangled hair shook. Negative. A dirty hand gestured back and forth indicating she and I were one. Hey! A past life? [When I] asked her name, she lifted her tunic and MOONED me. 

[When I] asked how she happened to be me, she said "Rebecca." Actually, we never spoke. She pulled words out of my head and highlighted them. "Rebecca your mother?" I asked. Shaking her head "no" again, she brought up 3 words, Grandmother, Rebecca, Nurse. MY grandmother's name was Rivka, Russian for Rebecca. And I had lived with her through my first years. You could say she nursed me. I assumed she was naming MY grandmother. It didn't make sense. My grandmother was alive in 1914. 

Clearly, my head was playing games with me. Still???

Further research led Hilda to discover a real child from that era that she believed was her mystery spirit: Dorcas Good, an alleged witch from the late 17th century, along with a grandmother named Rebecca Nurse, another alleged witch who, Hilda believed, somehow facilitated their meeting.

Hilda goes on to say that she was convinced Dorcas not only helped her create her Teena strips, but was the unconscious inspiration for a supporting character within the strip. Still, Hilda made it clear that she is distinct from Dorcas:

I have had my OWN life. I have a whole raft of friends of my own in the next world. I don't know if Dorcas Good is my past life, but she HAS been something in my PRESENT life.... Through me, she has had a life that made up for the last one. To the extent that we share one mind, she learns what I learn. And what she knows, I know... so many things I have no way of knowing otherwise.

Having interviewed her and spoken casually with her on several other occasions before her death in 2006, I'm convinced she believed all this stuff, even as she was aware of how crazy it all sounded. Her strips are very good, and they still hold up today, and as a cartoonist, I've certainly used a variety of real-life people as inspiration for my stories (maybe even unconsciously in one or two cases), but I've never heard a story like Hilda's, before or since.

All of which leads me to the movie Cloud Atlas, a story about reincarnation, which made me think of Hilda and wonder what she would've made of it. I think she would've appreciated the overall message about how humanity is connected to each other in ways we can't begin to fully comprehend. Hilda was a very spiritual person, and though the movie is completely secular, I doubt that would've made a difference to her.

Personally, I found the film breathtaking in its scope. As with many of the great stories, love lies at the heart of it all, and even if you don't quite grok everything that goes on in the story, I think that much is clear. It's certainly a movie that invites repeat viewing, if for no other reason than to see it knowing who played what. I imagine this was an actor's dream, to play not only multiple roles in the same film, but different races and genders in some cases.

The multiple timeline-jumping was disorienting, no doubt, and not easy to get used to. What it reminded me most of was channel surfing. You know how it is, going from watching, say, A Game of Thrones on HBO to a college basketball game on ESPN to Spongebob Squarepants on Nickelodeon to some reality show on E! to a Bogart movie on TCM and back again. Do it long enough and a pattern may emerge, or at least you may think you perceive one.

I remember seeing the book Cloud Atlas several times at my favorite bookstore and being tempted to try it, but the format was very off-putting. Now that I've seen the movie, I may try the book at some point, though my understanding is that the movie takes a few liberties, format-wise.

The Cinemart is a neighborhood theater on a commercial stretch of Metropolitan Avenue in Forest Hills. It probably wasn't always a second-run theater, but it is now, and as such, it's relatively simple and no-frills. It's hung on for a long time in the face of digital screens and 3D movies and other such changes. I can't ever remember seeing it attracting large audiences, not that I've gone there all that often, but it fills a need for me, and when it finally goes to that great multiplex in the sky, I'll miss it, if for no other reason than it's local.

Metropolitan Avenue runs from southern Queens all the way to Williamsburg in Brooklyn. This section is nice and cozy, with lots of different restaurants that stay open long after the rest of the area closes for the day. There's an awesome ice cream and candy shop across the street from the Cinemart that's straight out of the 1950s; one step inside and you'll be eight years old all over again. Further down the street, there's a comics and collectibles shop - not as good as the ones in Manhattan; I've only been in there once - and a Trader Joe's, right before you hit a major cross street and a cemetery beyond that. I like coming to this part of town a lot.

Hitchcock

Hitchcock
seen @ Regal Union Square Stadium 14, New York, NY
11.25.12

Alfred Hitchcock has been a recurring theme this year. I've been involved in two different blogathons devoted to him - one to raise awareness of a found silent film he worked on, and the other devoted to films that attempted to capture his spirit.

How would Hitchcock fare today? One likes to believe that even amidst a market dominated by superheroes, sci-fi and animated kiddie fare, he would still have an active and thriving audience. The closest analogous modern filmmaker to Hitchcock might be David Fincher, and he does alright for himself, all things considered. 

However, part of what made Hitchcock unique was the fact that few other Hollywood directors of his era made the kind of films he did, a point that the movie Hitchcock makes clear, as it delves into the making of arguably his most popular film, Psycho. I always liked Psycho, though the final ten minutes strike me as anti-climactic. Once Norman Bates has been caught, there's not much more to say, in my opinion. 

Early in Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins, as the master of suspense (unrecognizable in all that makeup!), ponders working in horror, a long-scorned genre, and says something like, "What if someone good made a horror movie?" What if, indeed? I know there are many fans who like their horror cheap and campy and silly, and that can be fun sometimes, but it seems that horror, like sci-fi, rarely attracts A-list directors. 

Often, sci-fi/horror directors become A-listers through their body of work within that material, like James Cameron or Sam Raimi. Still, back in the late 50s/early 60s, genre work was nowhere near as popular as it is now, so for someone like Hitchcock, it really could be considered "slumming."

Getting back to the question of how Hitch would fare in today's Hollywood, I think he would also have to contend with the problem of smaller budgets (relatively speaking) for the kind of material he does. I think cable television would absolutely appeal to him; he did have his own TV show for many years, after all. If he only gets $25 million to make a movie that should be made for $40 million, that's a problem - but it might not be if he went to HBO with it, especially if he didn't have to worry about things like appealing to foreign markets.

Hitchcock wasn't bad, although some of the dialogue is a little on-the-nose sometimes: for instance, towards the end, Helen Mirren, who play Hitch's wife and collaborator Alma Reville, says after Psycho becomes a hit, "This could be your biggest movie ever!" I had never known Hitch's wife was such a big part of his career, so it was cool to see how she played a part in Hitch's filmography, and of course, Mirren was marvelous.

I saw this with Vija at the Union Square, a theater I used to frequent a lot more back when it first opened. Then it got way too expensive (Hitchcock is my first $14 non-3D film, ladies and germs), not that it deters anybody from going there. Our screening was a near-sellout. We ended up sitting in the third or fourth row, which Vija wasn't crazy about, but we managed fine. The funniest moment was during the trailer for the new version of The Great Gatsby: there were a few young women sitting behind me, and when Leonardo DiCaprio first appears in the trailer, about half a minute in or so, they all gasped "OH MY GOD!" That got quite a few laughs, actually.

Pi-in-the-sky links

Not much to say this week except that I'm not sure I'll be able to see as many new movies this season as I'd like to, for the simple reason that there's soooooooo much to see! There's a second-run theater not too far from me that I suspect I may employ in the coming weeks in an effort to play catch-up. Plus, TCM's Star of the Month next month is Barbara Stanwyck, and you know I'm gonna write a few posts for that. At this rate, I may not have a Top 10 list ready until next February...

Dorian serves up a twin bill of Bob Hope/Paulette Goddard movies.

I liked Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a kid, but probably wouldn't watch it now. John's friend Jeff explains why, hilariously.

Pam talks about an old Italian WWII movie that, from the sound of it, makes Life is Beautiful look like Schindler's List. 

Andrew analyzes the Hollywood Reporter actress roundtable discussion.

From the UK, The Guardian writes about Silver Linings Playbook and Oscar's long, uncomfortable history with comedies.

A Dallas fan remembers the late Larry Hagman.

King Kong (1976)

King Kong (1976)
seen on TV @ AMC
11.16.12

I only visited the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once. It was during college, and I'm fairly certain it was before the first time terrorists attacked it, in 1993. It was nothing particularly noteworthy. I was with friends, and I remember getting a touch of vertigo from looking down on Manhattan from the observation deck.

That first attack scared the crap out of my friend Becky at the time. Becky's from a tiny little town upstate, going to college in the city. While she doesn't project the image of a tough girl, neither is she a shrinking violet, but I remember that attack genuinely unnerving her, and this was before you-know-when. After she graduated, she went back upstate, and as far as I know, stayed there. I'd visit her several times, but I haven't seen her in a long time now. I think about her every now and then, though.

The Twin Towers, to me, used to be nothing more than another part of the New York landscape, like the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. I certainly never hung out in that part of Manhattan much. I remember occasionally, during high school, visiting South Ferry, where the Staten Island Ferry runs - part and parcel of exploring the city on my own for the first time - mainly to watch the boats. Still, I never had much interest in seeing the WTC.

It took me many months to see the former site of the Twin Towers after they were destroyed. I was with Vija; I forget what we were doing that afternoon or why we were near Ground Zero, but she was the one who convinced me we should pay our respects, as it were, and as it turned out, it wasn't as painful as I was half-convinced it might be. Having her with me certainly helped. Not that I knew anyone who died that day, but, well, you understand.

I suppose substituting the Towers in place of the Empire State in the first King Kong remake must've seemed daring at the time. The Towers opened in 1973, and were the tallest buildings in the world at the time. The WTC site was home to a dense neighborhood of small businesses and residents, some of whom filed an injunction to oppose construction. They got as far as the US Supreme Court, but the Court refused to hear the case.

I first saw this version of King Kong on TV, before the original, and as I recall, it would play fairly frequently (NBC? I think it was NBC), which means I must've recorded it on our old Betamax VCR. (Go ahead, laugh, but we got a lotta mileage out of it!) It scared me! True, I was a kid, so this was easy to do, but I vividly recall being frightened by it. The scene that always stood out to me was the one where Kong stops the elevated train with his hand. The camera angle puts you right at the front of the moving train as you see Kong's hand reaching out! At the same time, even as a kid, I could hardly miss the sexual undertones of Kong's relationship with Jessica Lange (the waterfall scene is an especially salient example).

Looking at it again last week, on AMC, there were, naturally, some things I thought about that I never did before. For instance: where exactly in New York is the Kong show supposed to take place? A reporter states that they're east of Manhattan, so I figure they're either on RooseveIt Island or Randalls Island. I doubt it's the former, since that's a densely populated area (which also rules out the western edges of Queens and Brooklyn), so it should be the latter, which has a small stadium and more open space.

But here's the thing: after Kong busts loose and Jeff Bridges grabs Jessica Lange and runs, they get on an elevated train. Now, in Queens, there is an elevated train in that area, near the East River, but if they were able to reach it, they'd have to cross the Triborough Bridge first - unless they were already in Queens to begin with, which doesn't seem likely at all.

So it's gotta be Randalls Island. But if it is, why would Bridges and Lange go to Queens only to take a train back into Manhattan, when they can go directly there from Randalls? That's why it's called the Triborough bridge, after all. Nerdy? Yeah, but I hate it when they get the geography of New York wrong in the movies.

While watching Kong, it also occurred to me how much of its time it is. Bridges is rocking the beard, like many men were; Lange's character is into horoscopes, and most significantly, Grodin's bad guy character is an oil magnate. Kong was three years removed from the so-called "Yom Kippur War" in the Middle East, which led to the Arab oil embargo and a recession here in America. Cheesy as this movie is, making this change was a smart one. I have no doubt that the energy crisis was on many moviegoers' minds at the time.

While Peter Jackson's version is superior in many ways, I still have a soft spot for this one, mostly because I saw it as a kid and I remember how it made me feel.

Wings

Wings
seen @ Landmark Loews Jersey Theater, Jersey City, NJ
11.17.12

When I was in college, I made a comic book set during World War I. You could say it was my first graphic novel. It was for a class, and as part of my research on the era, I used for reference a photo book on WWI that I found in a used bookstore. (Still have it too.) 

I couldn't tell you exactly why I chose to do a war story. I suspect I simply wanted to try something different, something challenging. The story centered around the travails of two friends, an English pilot and a French soldier, during the war. I put myself and a bunch of my friends in it as different characters. At the time I was proud of the book, but looking back on it now, I can see that it's total crap. Still, it would lead me to making more comics.

While some of the actual history of the war interested me here and there, I remember approaching my story more like a romantic adventure than a gritty, brutal look at the realities of combat. Operation Desert Storm was in full swing at the time, and while I didn't write this as some kind of commentary on current events, it's possible I may have been subtly influenced in some way by the conflict in the Persian Gulf. Still, I was very nieve about war when I wrote it. Julie, my teacher, was encouraging, but god only knows what she must've made of the finished product. At least I passed the class.

I should've thought of Charles Schulz and Snoopy. It seems silly - a dog imagining himself as a WWI flying ace, using his doghouse as a Sopwith Camel - but whenever Schulz had Snoopy doing that in Peanuts, it had an earnestness that made you want to go along with it. Snoopy always had a vivid imagination, but the specificity of something like this - fighting the Red Baron, huddling down behind enemy lines, even his costume (did Charlie Brown get him those goggles?) - gave it a kind of reality independent of the rest of the events within the strip. That's what made it so memorable. Songs have been written about it!

I spared a thought or two for Snoopy while watching the glorious silent film Wings Saturday night. I had read about the recent restoration of this Oscar-winning film, of course, but I was unprepared for how entertaining the film itself is. Set during WWI, it's about two rival pilots and their adventures in the war, one of the first films directed by former WWI pilot William Wellman. It was a big hit during its release, and it's easy to see why: the flying sequences are stunning, not just for a silent film, but for any film! And of course, one must remember that the airplane itself was still relatively new technology at the time. It had been a little over twenty years since Orville and Wilbur Wright made their historic first flight.

Wellman's son, William Jr., was at the screening at the Loews Jersey City and he spoke at length afterwards about the movie. Cameras were mounted onto the planes and had to be used by the actors, Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen, while they were flying. Oh yeah, did I mention that that's really them flying those planes? They had to take lessons for the movie. Because Wellman Sr. was a veteran (and suffered a variety of injuries during combat), he was committed to giving Wings the verisimilitude it needed to be a success, even if it meant butting heads with the studio from time to time.

Fun fact: the flames from the fallen planes were hand-painted in post-production.

I can't say I cared much about the romantic subplot with Clara Bow, but simply seeing her was a treat in itself. According to Wellman Jr., many of the cast and crew were smitten with her. Indeed, her role was expanded as a result of her presence, since she was a superstar at the time.

The pipe organ music was provided by one Bernie Anderson, who received a rightly deserved standing ovation afterwards. (You try playing a pipe organ non-stop for two and a half hours!) I've not talked about the organ at the Loews before: its full title is the Bob Balfour Memorial Wonder Morton Theater Pipe Organ. It has no less than four keyboards, or manuals, and a pedalboard with special pedals called "swell shoes," which control volume. There used to be five organs like these in the NYC area. This one, which used to be at the Bronx Loews, was brought to Jersey City from the Midwest by Bob Belfour in 1997 and it has been rebuilt and refurbished ever since. (I got all of this information from the program.)

This, obviously, was my first trip to Jersey City since Hurricane Sandy, and wouldn't you know it, the PATH train still isn't 100 percent yet. It stopped at ten PM, so I ended up paying for a shuttle bus that went to midtown Manhattan. I had a brief moment of panic at the thought of being stranded in New Jersey overnight, but fortunately the shuttle buses were frequent and easy to catch.

The Sessions

The Sessions
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
11.13.12

I didn't expect to relate as much to John Hawkes' character Mark in The Sessions as much as I did... but I did. I'm well aware of my own un-sexiness. The way I see myself in my head never quite lines up with the way I look in reality, but at the same time, I like to believe that my looks are not a great impediment when it comes to attracting a woman. 

I'm fat, yes, but not disgustingly so. I've worn glasses most of my life, but I've always avoided the super-nerdy kind. In recent years, I've taken to shaving my head, and I think I look better bald than with hair. I do my best to try to keep up an inner image of myself as, if not totally handsome, then at least passable. But then I see a picture of myself and that image gets shot to hell. It's an ongoing process, what can I say... but at least it's one I haven't given up on. Maybe it's the stubborn romantic in me.

Still, it could be worse. At least I'm not immobilized within an iron lung. I think what can be taken away from The Sessions, more than anything else, is that no matter who you are or what you look like, everyone wants love, and to be loved. It's so easy to forget that, though, because most of us rarely look deeper than the surface when dealing with someone. (That said, I still found Helen Hunt's Botoxed face to be a great distraction. It's really unfortunate that she felt the need to do that.)

I expected this to be a bit more of a comedy than it actually is (though not necessarily in the 40-Year-Old Virgin territory). It's serious, yet it stops short of being really heavy. Like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, another movie about a severely disabled man, it ultimately feels hopeful, and in this case, that's due to Mark's sense of humor. We see him freaking out about finally having sex for the first time, and while there's an element of shame at his inability to get it done perfectly, he's still able to laugh about it to a degree.

I definitely related to Mark's ability to fall in love so easily. It doesn't take much for me to find a woman who's witty, smart and fun to be around attractive regardless of looks - and that's the gospel truth. (My problem has always been that in addition to all of those things, the woman in question is either married, dating someone, or gay! If it weren't for bad luck...) 

Maybe he reaches out too far too soon, and puts all his eggs in one basket when it comes to love, but given his situation, can you blame him? I tend to be the opposite; I play my cards close to the vest, as it were. It's less risky, but I guess I've always found it simpler. Maybe I should rethink that. I dunno.