I can hardly believe I've made this blog last four years. It hasn't always been easy, but it has been personally rewarding for me in a lot of ways. Thank you for joining me on this little journey.
A quick update on the WSW book: I've picked out which essays to include and I've gone over them forwards and backwards, spell-checking and streamlining them. It's tedious, to say the least, but it must be done. Also, in case I hadn't mentioned it, there will be new material in this volume. What exactly it is will be revealed in due course. The plan is to release this as an e-book first, and depending on how well it does, a print version will hopefully follow, so stay tuned.
Finally, going through my archives has made me realize that it's been two years since I released my "City Mouse, Agent of AMPAS" comic strip and a lot of you haven't seen it, especially you classic film fans who would really appreciate it, so here it is once again.
Split Second
seen on TV @ TCM
8.12.14
I've written before about growing up during the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear war hung over our heads, even if it wasn't something we thought about every day. It wasn't like it was in the 50s; we never had to practice "duck and cover" routines in the classroom or anything like that. For my generation, nuclear war was woven into the culture, but in the background for the most part. Something talked about every now and then, but in the abstract. Something that was the grown-ups' problem.
The first American atomic bomb test was on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico, and though its original intent was to win World War 2 for the Allied powers, it evolved into what was supposed to be the ultimate deterrent against the Soviet Union, who developed their own A-bomb four years later.
Split Second came out in 1953, when bomb testing became a regular thing. By this time, we had moved on to hydrogen bombs (the first test was in 1952 in the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands), and both the US and the Soviets were indeed in a race to see who could build the biggest and baddest arsenal. The movie takes place in Nevada. The Nevada Test Site was 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and the mushroom clouds resulting from the tests could be seen for a hundred miles.
Split Second was the directing debut of singer turned actor Dick Powell. I didn't know much about him other than he started out as a romantic lead who switched to noir films, which, I suppose, would be the equivalent today of what Matthew McConaughey has done with his career. I saw him recently in a film called Footlight Parade, with Jimmy Cagney, which was a lot of fun. His singing wasn't bad, but he struck me as being little different from a lot of 30s movie crooners. Nothing like Crosby or Sinatra.
Give him props, though, for reinventing his career not once, but twice, first as a dramatic actor, then as a director. Murder My Sweet has been on my to-watch list for a long time, and the fact that it's as revered as it is must mean that he did a good job with drama. According to the TCM Database, he tried out for what became Fred MacMurray's role in Double Indemnity, which would've been his dramatic debut instead!
Split Second is an actor's ensemble with a clever premise: an escaped convict and his wounded partner kidnap a group of strangers and hide out in a deserted town near where a nuclear bomb test is about to commence. One of the strangers has an ex-husband who's a doctor, and the con negotiates with him for his help in treating his comrade before the bomb goes off.
Powell does a good job with the actors. It's a big cast for a debut film, one which bounces back and forth against each other in different ways throughout the film, and he gets good performances out of them. Most of the action takes place in a single location, which helped, I'll bet. After this, Powell would go on to do the Genghis Khan biopic The Conqueror, with John Wayne of all people, so even if it may not have been the best choice for a follow-up, at least he felt confident enough to tackle something much bigger.
My interest in seeing this film was actress Alexis Smith. Jacqueline wrote a terrific piece about her a few years ago - it was probably one of the first posts I ever read on her blog - and it made me aware of the actress for the first time. Smith was never a superstar, at least not in Hollywood, but she had a late career comeback on Broadway which led to a Tony Award. She has a great role in Split Second, one that requires her to be vain, shallow and self-centered, and she does it very well.
Get On Up
seen @ Jamaica Multiplex Cinemas, Jamaica, Queens, NY
8.13.14
A few years ago, my friend Paul was in town for a few days and I showed him around Brooklyn. At one point, we walked into a record store. Paul's a huge music fan. His bag is techno music and though he's not a professional, he's DJ'ed in the past. This was one of my favorite record shops (sadly, it no longer exists), and I knew I wanted to show it off to him.
By and by I spot a CD that I wanted to pick up. I think it was the latest from Tool. I was all set to buy it when I also notice a greatest hits collection from James Brown, and it had no less than fifty songs on two discs. I really wanted this too, but I only had enough for one. I had a quick consultation with Paul, and while I kinda hoped he'd suggest I buy the Tool disc, he admitted that the James Brown collection was awful tough to resist. After some more thought, I agreed and went with that, and I've never regretted it.
I remember when Brown died. By coincidence, it was around the time that the film version of Dreamgirls came out, and I had him on my mind when I went to see that. Strangely, my father never played a great deal of the Godfather's music when I was growing up, at least not that I remember. I'm sure he must have dug Brown's music, but he tended to favor the doo-wop vocal groups more - The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Miracles, etc. In fact, now that I think about it, I probably heard more funk from my sister's disco records. I certainly didn't hear him on the local Top 40 stations I grew up with, nor did I see him on MTV, so I must've picked up on him from somewhere. Rocky IV, perhaps?
Wherever I first heard the music of Soul Brother #1, I never knew a great deal about his past, except in bits and pieces. I knew he had problems with drugs. I knew he was born into poverty. Probably not much more than that. So naturally, when I heard that a film about Brown was in the works, I expected it to be illuminating, to some degree.
I was less than enthused, however, when I discovered the director of The Help was gonna make it. I am normally not the type to play the race card when it comes to who should direct what film, but I really felt like a movie about the Hardest Working Man in Show Business should go to a black director. Unfair? Maybe, but it's how I felt. While Tate Taylor didn't do a terrible job with Get On Up, he just struck me as the safe choice: "Oh, he already did a popular movie about black people; let's give him this one too!"
And Get On Up feels like a safe movie. For all of its non-linear storytelling, a format which Taylor more or less abandons halfway in, it, like many biopics, it tries to tell a lot in a little bit of time, relatively speaking. Funny thing is, having Brown break the fourth wall the way he did made me think this could've been a really gonzo, off-the-wall interpretation of Mr. Excitement's life in a similar fashion to The Wolf of Wall Street, another movie about a charismatic yet potentially volatile individual whose life was often a circus. In fact, I remember thinking that thought while watching Get On Up. But that movie, like Wolf, would've been a hard R and not a PG-13.
You know what movie was also a hard R? What's Love Got to Do With It, the Ike and Tina Turner movie from the early 90s. Like Mr. Please Please Please, Ike Turner was a pioneering black musician from the south who made great music and delivered a funky live show, but also battled inner demons... but that's where the comparisons end. Look at Get On Up and then look at What's Love - also directed by a white guy, Brian Gibson - and you'll see a galaxy of difference. The latter film has a tighter focus, centered as it is on the tumultuous relationship between Ike and Tina, and it is absolutely unflinching in its depiction of the violence he inflicted upon her. I wonder whether such a movie could be made today, especially from a studio.
What saves Get On Up, however, is Chadwick Boseman. He kills it. He has the voice, he has the swagger, and most importantly, he has the dance moves, and that couldn't have been easy to learn. He did it, though, and he did it as good as the genuine article. I think a Best Actor Oscar nomination is a possibility, and if he gets one, hopefully Nelsan Ellis will pick one up, too. As long-suffering pal Bobby Byrd, he provided a wonderful contrast. I just wish these performances were in service of a more daring movie.
(By the way, I did end up getting that Tool CD also, later on.)
...This speaks to a larger issue in moviegoers and TV fans trying to solve everything whether or not it's a puzzle – every ambiguity has to be a clue to something much larger. But that robs so many films of their power. Would "Picnic at Hanging Rock" or "L'Avventura" benefit from solutions to the mysteries that Peter Weir and Michelangelo Antonioni weren't interested in solving? "Room 237" is a fascinating look at movie obsession, but the film doesn't reveal what "The Shining" is about so much as it reveals that the film is practically designed to be a cinematic Rorschach test.
The timing of this article is uncanny, coming as it does at almost the exact same time as I saw a vague and confusing (to me, anyway) movie last Friday night that I ended up walking out on. Understand, I almost never walk out on movies. I make a concerted effort to avoid wasting my money on a movie however I can - which is absolutely not the same thing as resisting a challenge. In the recent past, I've paid to see movies such as The Tree of Life, The Wolf of Wall Street, and 12 Years a Slave knowing that these movies would be difficult, knowing that they were unique, artistic expressions that defied convention, and while I may have found some of them confounding, or difficult to sit through, I do not believe that they were wastes of money. I sat through all of those movies from beginning to end.
Last Friday was different. I saw THX-1138, the debut film from George Lucas, from 1971. I saw it under very special conditions: it was playing at the Celebrate Brooklyn arts festival in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the same place where I saw He Who Gets Slapped last month, and it was accompanied by a live score from an avant-garde band called the Asian Dub Foundation, who combined traditional instruments with electronic beats and samples and other digital sounds for a score that fits the dystopic, austere future envisioned in Lucas' film. This was a performance commissioned by CB's parent organization, Bric Arts Media, specifically for CB. I was eager to see this screening. I vaguely recalled seeing THX once, long ago during my video store days, but remembered next to nothing about the plot, so this would be as if I were seeing it for the first time again.
I was lost almost from the beginning. ADF wasn't bad, but I remember peering out over the audience into the pit where they performed and wondering how much of what I was hearing was live, because it didn't look like they were doing a whole lot. (I freely admit not knowing for sure either way; I had never heard of these guys prior to this show.) One of the band members played a flute, and at one point, almost before I walked out, he did a short sequence that sounded like he combined the flute-playing with beat-boxing, and that was impressive. That was lively. Much of ADF's score, however, was so synthetic by contrast, that they could've pre-recorded the whole thing and I wouldn't have noticed the difference. They didn't move me the way the Alloy Orchestra did for Slapped.
That might have been okay, though, if the movie was worth sitting through. THX struck me as a 1984/Brave New World ripoff: future society of ultra-surveillance by a nebulous authority; citizens controlled by drugs; sex outlawed, or at least rendered taboo. I tried, I really tried, to stick with this movie because I was interested in finding the roots of Star Wars within it. They're certainly present: Lucas' propensity for alpha-numeric names, a sharp technology fetish - and how refreshing it was to see actual, physical, mechanical objects interacting with the human actors. Coming as this did in the wake of sci-fi game-changers like 2001 and Planet of the Apes, I imagine that movies like that were the template that Lucas worked from.
With THX, though, I didn't feel anything, in large part because I understood so little as to what was going on. Why was Robert Duvall's character condemned for having sex with his wife? (I assume that was his wife.) Who was Donald Pleasance's character supposed to be? I thought he was an authority figure at first, but then we see him in Duvall's "cell," if you can call it that, ranting and raving about something to the other "prisoners," if you can call them that. See, I'm not even sure who's supposed to be what in this movie. I got that it was some sort of one-man-versus-the-system kind of tale, but it was cold and inscrutable and opaque and never drew me deeper into this world beyond the surface. This was the point in which I left. It might have been around the halfway mark.
Bringing it back to the article quoted at the top, however: I get that some story elements shouldn't be explained, and I agree that there is a tendency these days for every plot thread to connect in some way and point to one overarching Big Bad behind it all, or one event that rationalizes everything. In THX's case, though, I needed something concrete to wrap my head around, to make sense of this bizarre, alien dystopia, something directly related to Duvall's character. I didn't get it, and I don't feel that I should have to struggle for it, either. A little ambiguity can go a long way, but it's all in the way that you use it.
The screening/performance wasn't pleasant in other ways. The cell phone users were more annoying than usual, and at least one person was smoking somewhere to the left of where I sat. I've been to CB a number of times over the past several years, for concerts as well as for screenings, and this was the first time I honestly didn't enjoy myself. It certainly won't keep me from returning - CB still has an excellent track record, and for three bucks, it's an outstanding bargain - but I guess I'm disappointed because I've come to expect better, and this was the first time I didn't get it. Eh. It happens. The worst part is that I could've gone to a show in which my jazz musician friend Dave was performing, and I didn't!
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Related:
The big sleep: do 'boring' movies have value?
...What if we subject ourselves to a piece of art and see something we’ve never seen before. What if it leaves us uncertain of its meaning and it effect on everything else we’ve ever seen? What if it moves us deeply, delights us immensely, or inspires us in the very best ways? What then? Are we supposed to stand cheer and be content to say “that was wonderful?”…or are we as audiences and critics supposed to be able to recognize artistic genius when we are in its presence? Shouldn’t we be able to recognize merit, meaning, craft, creativity, and execution at the moment of its occurrence? There is much to be feared for giving in to fandom…should we not equally fear giving into our own skepticism?
What sort of fan would have walked away from Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire at Monterrey only to say “ask me again about it in five years”?
I confess, I used the m-word when I tweeted my post about Boyhood yesterday. Not that I expect this to come across in a tweet, but I meant it not within the context of cinematic history, but within Richard Linklater's career. It's his masterpiece, not a masterpiece - at least, I think so. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that belief, either way, but regardless, using the word was just a tiny piece of hyperbole to get people to read my post (as if I was the first person to write about the movie).
I fully stand behind my assessment of Boyhood, and it has nothing to do with what we laughingly call the critical "groupthink" as presented on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. I've gone against the grain in the past. I thought Black Swan was a laughable and embarrassing piece of tripe, for instance, so I have some idea of what it's like to not get what everyone else seems to get.
Which leads us to this article by one of the few critics to not love Boyhood, the LA Times' Kenneth Turan. This section in particular stands out for me:
...what thinking about "Boyhood" brought home, and not for the first time, is how intensely personal a profession criticism is. Whether we like it or not, even if expressing it makes us feel clueless and out of touch in our own eyes as well as the world's, we cannot escape who we are and what does or does not move us. As I've said before and likely will have cause to say again, in the final analysis, as a critic either you're a gang of one or you're nothing at all.
As I make clear at the top of the sidebar of WSW, I don't consider myself a film critic, nor what I do, film criticism. That may sound like a cop out to some, but all it means is that I have aims for this blog that go beyond simply handing out a yay or a nay vote to a movie, and I don't want people to think that that's all I do. (That's not intended as a slight to bloggers who do exactly that, either.) Most of the time, I try not to get caught up in all that stuff anyway. I don't always succeed. I can, however, relate to the thought that criticism is personal, much more so than a yay or a nay vote can convey.
The question Ryan poses at the top of this post, therefore, has, perhaps, less meaning for me than it would for a Kenneth Turan. I'm not as interested in what history's judgment on Boyhood will be, nor do I care on which side I'll fall, but I do believe there's merit in asking whether or not we, critics and fans alike, should feel comfortable praising great artistic achievement when we see it. The problem, however, is that everyone on the internet not only has the opportunity, but the will, to express hyperbolic snap judgments (like my tweet, perhaps!).
Maybe the solution involves paying less attention to the groupthink. I know that I could stand to rely less on RT and Metacritic. One of the things I learned with my Spoiler Experiment from earlier this year is that criticism, even from someone you trust, only tells you so much. In the end, you have to decide for yourself whether a film is not only worth seeing or not, but whether it's any good or not.
The groupthink can get in the way of that, but it's become so ingrained in our online film culture now that it's difficult to shake. I could remove RT and Metacritic from my bookmarks and uninstall the RT app from my smart phone and that wouldn't erase its influence. So I guess all one can do is to soldier on and try not to let the groupthink get in the way.
Boyhood
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
8.1.14
You hear parents talk all the time about how time flies by so fast when they're watching their kids grow up. Not being a parent, I wouldn't know what that's like, but I suppose it's analogous to watching a child actor on a long-running TV show grow up. You have a fixed image in your mind of what they look like based on time spent with them, and then suddenly that image changes. Maybe you liked them better when they were younger, maybe not, but these changes are happening and you can't stop it. All you can do is adjust.
Richard Linklater has accomplished a minor miracle in his film Boyhood by charting, within a single fictional narrative, the course of an adolescent life (two lives, actually) as time has its way with it. We've seen plenty of movie series in which the characters age from one film to the next, but by compressing the aging process into one movie after filming it piecemeal for twelve years provides a truly unique viewing experience.
By now, you're probably aware of the story: young Ellar Coltrane began the movie at age six back in 2001, and little by little, Linklater shot sections of the movie a year at a time as Ellar aged. Linklater's daughter, Lorelei, a few years older than Ellar, also stars in the movie and we see her grow up as well. Given that, this probably should've been called "Childhood" instead, but the focus of the story does rest primarily with Ellar.
Because there are no clear breaks from one time period to the next, Ellar seems to age literally in the blink of an eye, and the effect is jarring. It's not obvious at first, but suddenly, over the course of the movie, we see him get taller, we hear his voice get deeper, we see hair growing on his face, and he's grown up before we know it. Lorelei ages as well, of course: she dyes her hair at one point, she gets taller, her chest develops - although unlike her cinematic brother, she retains a very youthful appearance even in adulthood. Mom Patricia Arquette and dad Ethan Hawke change their hairstyles. Especially Arquette. (She also gains weight.)
There's a universality in Boyhood that's easy to identify if one knows where to look. Like Ellar's character, I grew up with an older sister, and we, too, had to share a room (and that was about as fun as you can imagine). I also developed an artistic eye and worked at developing it, and I had my own romantic relationship as a teen that didn't end well. If you're worried about spoilers, well, I don't think this is the kind of movie that can be spoiled the way other movies can. The value is less in following the plot than in watching the passage of time and seeing its effects.
Richard Linklater has said that Boyhood doesn't necessarily focus on the big dramatic moments that one would expect in a family drama, but there are certainly dramatic highlights. I was expecting something resembling isolated vignettes, with the common thread being Ellar's progression through adolescence, but there is a loose narrative at play here - the kids coping with their parents' divorce, Mom continually getting into bad relationships, Dad desperately overcompensating by trying to be the "fun" parent even in absentia, Ellar's growing independence coupled with his love of photography, etc.
Such plot lines don't follow the usual narrative arcs, and maybe by not doing so, we can learn a thing or two. Because Boyhood snatches pieces of a life, some bits of information get left out, and we have to fill in the gaps because sometimes, we just don't know what happens after certain people leave our lives. Circumstances don't allow for it, or we lose interest, or we simply forget. In its way, not knowing how certain threads resolve can be as dramatic as knowing, and I think Linklater was aware of this when he wrote this story.
Arquette carries a hefty chunk of this movie, and she does it well. A single mother raising two kids, going back to school, and getting involved in one bad relationship after another, her character's juggling a lot of balls at once and struggles mightily to retain her sanity. I think she's got a legitimate shot at a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.
As a matter of fact, I like Boyhood's Oscar chances, even though, by the producers' own admission, it'll be a steep uphill climb. This will play very well on home video, it's an easily accessible story, and most importantly, the director is a respected veteran who can be considered due for Oscar glory... but that's months from now. Boyhood is a marvel that has to be seen to be believed. And if Linklater ever gets it into his head to do a sequel, he could do a lot worse than this.
I already announced this on the Facebook page, but part of the reason why I missed a big chunk of July is because I've begun work on a WSW compilation book. It'll collect select posts from the first two years of the blog and also include some new material. It's early yet, so I don't say too much more than that right now, but I believe that the combination of my movie posts and my City Mouse cartoons will make this a unique and highly personal book that you're gonna want for yourself. More to follow.
So this hasn't been the best season for outdoor movies so far. I've only written about three; the rest of the ones I've had scheduled for June and July were either rained out, canceled or were shows I blew off for other reasons (for instance, I saw Life Itself after deciding not to see an outdoor movie). Certain individuals on Twitter who fancy themselves comedians have taken the opportunity to treat my nighttime excursions as if I were sneaking out of the house past my bedtime or something, but despite such tomfoolery, I expect the rest of my schedule to go well.
Your links for this month:
Jennifer ponders how much truth there is to the belief that classic film actresses were considered washed up after age 40.
Maureen O'Hara and The Quiet Man mean a great deal to Kellee.
The Lady Eve goes on a ramble about dessert food and champagne and manages to tie it to movies.
Monstergirl is in her element with a truly wacky horror B-movie featuring a truly bizarre-looking monster.
Aurora returns to upstate New York for Capitolfest, and here she interviews one of its heads.
The analysis on Boyhood's Oscar chances has begun.
An oral history on the flawed but adorable Galaxy Quest.
Who to turn to in order to make your R-rated movie into a PG-13.
And finally, I wanna wish a happy 25th wedding anniversary to fellow film blogger Dorian and her husband, Vinnie.
