The Muppets Take Manhattan

The Muppets Take Manhattan
last seen @ High Line Movies @ The High Line, New York NY
9.6.12

The next time you visit New York, make sure you spend an afternoon on the High Line. The High Line is a totally unique reappropriation of public space that's unlike anything you've ever seen. Located on the far west side of Manhattan, running up Chelsea and into Midtown, it used to be a set of elevated train tracks for freight usage. It fell out of use in 1980 and laid fallow for many years until 1999, when the idea to convert it into a park first gained traction. It went through city channels, designs were made, and construction began in 2006. Three years later, the first section of the new park opened to the public, and slowly but surely, the park expanded further north.

The park, accessible by both stairs and elevators, has a narrow walkway surrounded by a combination of wild-growing flora and cultivated foliage in a wide variety of patterns. Some of it grows so high that it engulfs the walkway, hanging low over it like an natural archway. The way the walkway is built, however, there are areas where one can still see the original train tracks underneath. 

There are benches, including a section with large wooden reclining benches, where you can lie down and spread out. There are areas where the former train tracks run underneath entire buildings, providing shelter from any precipitation. Mostly, though, the surrounding offices and apartment complexes look down on the High Line from above. Original art is often installed in spots. There are food carts all around the park, offering all types of fancy snacks. (Only one set of bathrooms, though. They could really use a second set.)

The view from the High Line is wonderful. To the west, one can look out over the West Side Highway into the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond that. Closer inland, one can see art studios along the streets below. To the east, there are the fashionable restaurants amidst the cobblestone streets of the West Village, and the Empire State Building and similar landmark buildings beyond that.

What makes this place so special is that it's all above street level. It twists and turns through buildings on either side of it, making you see New York in an unusual manner, yet all this concrete and steel mingles with the flowers and grass growing up from the park. The combination seems jarring at first, yet the longer you hang around the more enthralling the mixture becomes. I've only offered you the roughest of outlines; it's something that really needs to be seen to be believed. (If you ever come visit it though, be careful; it can get very crowded on the weekends and evenings during the warmer months.)

Given all this, when I saw that they show movies here too, I was curious as to how it would work. This month they started up a new series of films, beginning with The Muppets Take Manhattan, so I went down there for a look.

What they did was to get one of those giant air-filled projection screens and set it up underneath one of the larger overhangs - a part of the park underneath a building. (I was kinda hoping they might project the film on a wall.) Seats were set up in front of the screen, about 100 at least, and most of them were filled last night. This being a kiddie movie, there were kids, and I ended up next to one who wouldn't shut up. He looked like he was about two or three. He didn't seem to have much interest in the movie at all, even though his mom kept changing his seat. Plus there were a few kids seated on the floor in the front, and one of them kept sticking his hand in front of the projector at one point.

Regardless, I loved seeing this movie again. The songs aren't quite as good as in the original '79 movie, but as a kid, I never made that distinction. And seeing this definitely takes me back to childhood in a big way. I've said it before, but it's true: the Muppets are as real to me as any flesh and blood people, and I'll always cherish them.

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Related:
The Muppets
The frog prince: The legacy of Jim Henson

Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia
last seen on TV @ E!
9.2.12

Julie & Julia should've been the very first movie I blogged about here. I remember seeing it in the summer of 2010 at Hudson River Park for the first time. I passed on seeing it during its theatrical run because everyone kept saying it was only half of a good movie - the Meryl Streep-as-Julia Child half. But I wanna talk about the Amy Adams-as-Julie Powell half because I'm about to admit something that I was kinda embarrassed about for awhile: this movie is the reason WSW exists.

A little history, first of all: as I've mentioned before, my previous blog was about comics. It started here on Blogger and was picked up by a bigger website, and I became part of their writing staff. What this meant, which I didn't think much of back then, was that they would do all the promotion and most of the heavy lifting in terms of making my blog look good. All I had to do was provide the talent, such as it was. They treated me well and I'm grateful to them for it, but I never got a true sense of what it meant to be a blogger, over a sustained period of time.

Then came the City Mouse blog, which was a different animal altogether. I knew I had to take a different approach with that one because I was living in a strange city and I felt that this could be a way for me to make my mark, as it were. My roommate Max, a fellow cartoonist, was instrumental in helping me with this. I couldn't have gotten as much accomplished as I did without him. He had a how-to book on making online comics, and I studied it front to back. I started hanging out on a popular local website and established an identity as an artist there, which led to opportunities I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Still, when I came back to New York, I put the blog back on the shelf and didn't do much with it for awhile. In the meantime, I was getting unsatisfied with blogging about comics, though that had more to do with my general dissatisfaction with the comics industry than anything else.

This is where J&J entered the picture. I had already begun kicking around the idea of starting a film blog. Working in video retail for so many years had turned me into a bit of a film nerd, and to this point I was already reading sites like Awards Daily (nee Oscarwatch) and In Contention because I knew whichever films were Oscar contenders were almost always the good ones. Streep, of course, had gotten nominated for J&J but lost to Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side, and there was a lot of grumbling about that controversial decision. So I guess I wanted to see J&J because of that.

I liked J&J (and I agree that Streep was robbed), but the more I watched the "Julie" part of the film, the more I felt gears turning in my head. Seeing how Julie Powell took off as a blogger in such a relatively short time made me think that a film blog might not be a bad idea after all, and yeah, I suppose I started having visions of overnight success - something I didn't experience with the City Mouse blog. Maybe living in a new city humbled me.

Of course, I've since learned that "success" is purely relative. To my knowledge there have been very few movies made about blogging (Charlie Kaufman is/was working on one), which is not too surprising, as it's not the sexiest of topics to make into a movie. J&J is two movies in one, so it's also unsurprising that we only see so much of Powell's blogging process. 

What I've learned since seeing J&J the first time is that writing about a specific topic, with honesty, on a consistent basis, is so not enough. The movie shows some of the potential pitfalls, like talking about your family and friends to strangers (you'll note that when I do this, I never use last names and sometimes I don't even use first names) as well as some of the potential rewards, like the thrill of getting lots of comments for the first time. On an (approximately) day-to-day basis, though, building an audience takes a great deal of hobnobing with like-minded blogs and, these days, maintaining a presence of some sort on social networks - which I've been glad to do because I've made some new friends this way.

So yeah, J&J skewed my dreams of blogging stardom somewhat... but after two years of this, I have no regrets.

Robot & Frank

Robot & Frank
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
8.28.12

My father did not suffer a significant loss of his faculties in his final years. My mother, I'm also happy to say, is the same way. She'll complain about forgetting things every now and then, but it  can be chalked up to what one would normally expect with age (though who knows what kind of effect watching Dancing With the Stars may have). Since neither of my parents contracted Alzheimer's Disease, I doubt that I or my sister will either, but ever since I reached a significant plateau, age-wise, earlier this year, I can no longer fool myself into thinking I'm still a spring chicken.

My father spent most of his final years in his bed watching TV all day, rarely going out, and even though he remained sociable with his friends and certainly wasn't what you'd call a recluse, it wasn't, and isn't, the way I want to spend my twilight years. Part of me hopes, in the immortal words of The Who, that I die before I get old - I mean really old, as in unable to see to my most basic needs.

Certainly losing my memory would suck, although there are certainly many things I'd love to forget. In keeping this blog, I've found myself repeatedly reaching back into my past for bits of memory that I can recreate; wondering whether an event went one way or another, whether I met someone at this time or that. If worst comes to worst, I'll just guess at the facts, but I do strive for accuracy whenever possible. The point is, this blog keeps my memory active.

All of which brings us to Robot & Frank, a film set in the "near future," about an aging cat burglar whose son gets him a robotic home attendant to see to his needs. The robot, however, ends up becoming an accomplice to the old man's crimes. I didn't expect this to be as funny as it is. A lot of the humor is the odd-couple type: grouchy old man unfamiliar with modern technology versus artificial intelligence programmed to keep him healthy. Frank Langella totally makes you believe it, though, in a performance that evokes both dark humor and deep compassion. Naturally, I was reminded of last year's outstanding film A Separation, only the emphasis is on the patient instead of the caregiver.

The robot is an amalgam of familiar sci-fi automatons, from C3PO to HAL 9000 to Twiki. Watching their relationship evolve is fun to watch, especially since it never crosses over into maudlin sentimentality. (At most, it skirts the edge.) The robot isn't programmed with a sense of morality, but exposure to Frank means it slowly develops a conscience of sorts, which is ironic since it repeatedly claims that it's not a sentient being.

There was a hint of what may have been a subplot having to do with Liv Tyler's character (whom I did not like) being part of an anti-robot movement of some sort. In this future, robots are part of everyday society (there's also a library robot in the film) and it sounded as if her character's stance against them was part of a wider philosophy. I would've liked to have seen a bit more of that, though not if it meant seeing more of Tyler. I liked this a lot. I hope Langella gets a Best Actor Oscar nod.

Animal House

National Lampoon's Animal House
last seen @ Central Park Conservancy Film Festival, New York, NY
8.24.12

I went to college here in New York, but I almost went away. There was a school in Rhode Island that I was accepted to, and if not for the costly tuition, I would've gone. Naturally, I liked the idea of spending four years in another part of the country. Still, I'm glad I ended up where I did. School of Visual Arts was good for me; I had some excellent teachers and I made some good friends.

Still, I wonder sometimes what it would've been like to have gone to a school out of the city, where I would've had to have lived on campus. I don't know if I would've joined a fraternity or not. I see it as one of those things that I would've done and regretted later for some reason. Besides, I did my share of partying without belonging to a fraternity.

Animal House is, of course, more than a movie about college hijinks. Like American Graffiti before it, it's a tribute to what we laughingly think of as a "simpler" time. It's still funny, though maybe not quite as funny as I remember it. Mostly I like it, as I'm sure many people do, for John Belushi, and for the amazing comic talent that he had on display. (Apropos of nothing: the site College Humor recently ranked the best college movies and Animal House finished second to Will Ferrell's Old School. Not sure I like that!)

Central Park has been in the news lately on account of reports that bikers have been going too fast on the roads inside the park. A blind marathon runner was hit by a cyclist, which made the front pages of the tabloids. The Daily News in particular has gone to great lengths to present bikers as a menace to society. It's not that they're wrong to report about this, it's more the extreme measures the tabloids (and certain websites) take in order to paint bikers in general in the worst light while routinely ignoring the damage cars do every week. It's frustrating...

...but it had no bearing on the screening last Friday. I ran into my friend Terry while heading to the subway afterwards, and while we were talking she brought up a point about outdoor movies in general that I don't think I've mentioned here: the propensity of some moviegoers to bring a plethora of "fancy" snacks - basically, the kind of stuff you'd get from Whole Foods, like fancy cheese, grapes, crackers made someplace in Europe with different kinds of dip, etc. Maybe it's a New York thing. I don't necessarily think ill of it, but it is kinda funny.

SUTS 2012: Jeanette MacDonald

The TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon is a month-long event corresponding with the Turner Classic Movies annual presentation, in which each day in August is devoted to the films of a different classic film star. The blogathon is hosted by Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and ScribeHard on Film. For a complete list of participating blogs, visit the links at either site.

Since SUTS lasts all month long, and there are so many stars to choose from, I decided I should probably pick at least one star I knew nothing about for this blogathon. I picked Jeanette MacDonald only because (a) she fit into my schedule and (b) I hadn't done an actress yet, so there you go. And I lucked out when I saw that she was a singer, because it gave me an opportunity to do something different yet again.

So let's see: MacDonald was born in Philly and went to New York to appear on Broadway with her older sister. Ernst Lubitsch took a chance on her in 1929 with The Love Parade, his first sound film, with Maurice Chevalier. From there, she went on to star in a number of mostly musical films, mostly at Paramount and MGM, spanning close to twenty years. Concurrently, she made a lot of records and did a lot of concerts, including opera, and she even did some radio and TV in her later years.

I've picked five songs that she sung in five different movies and reviewed them. I've tried to be as objective as possible, given that these songs come from a very different era; I don't expect her to sound like Adele or anybody like that.

"San Francisco" from San Francisco. Well, she's certainly having a good time in this scene - or sequence of scenes, actually. MacDonald had a very trilling, operatic voice, and it's certainly used to full effect here, though I wonder how the song would sound with a more earthier voice; Mae West's, for example. High marks for stage presence; I could easily imagine her voice carrying in such a small, intimate theater - and it's a nice, rousing number too. 9.0


"Wanting You" (with Nelson Eddy) from New Moon (no, not that one). Here's a romantic little ditty - and whoa, how about that glass-shattering high note towards the end? Sopranos going for those stratospheric notes is impressive and all, I guess, but to me, musical range is more important than whether your singing will make dogs bark in response. (IMDB says MacDonald had a three-octave range.) Not to knock MacDonald; she and Eddy sound very good together in what is - I'm sorry - a typical sappy love song. From the rolling of her R's, I imagine MacDonald's character has an accent of some sort as well. 7.0

"Will You Remember, Sweetheart?" (with Nelson Eddy) from Maytime. Okay, it looks like they start out as young lovers and later on we see her when she's older (dying?) but their souls, I guess, are reunited? That's what this looked like. I dunno. This song is boring. Again, not knocking MacDonald or Eddy's talent, but it is just such a super-sappy number, and I realize this film was made during the Depression and people wanted something uplifting and romantic but oh my god gag me already. 6.0

"Springtide" (with Jane Powell) from Three Daring Daughters. Older MacDonald, and with another female singer this time, this one's shorter, which may be why I like it. Seems very melancholy and wistful, and the way the two voices compliment each other towards the end is very pleasing. This one actually makes me wonder what the rest of the story is about - like, for instance, what the other two daring daughters were thinking when they walked in on Mom and big sis singing. 7.5

"Italian Street Song" from Naughty Marietta. Another upbeat song. This is from an operetta, so I expect her to hit high notes here - and boy, does she ever! I guess high notes impress me more in operas (or operettas) than anyplace else. You win, Jeanette MacDonald. Well played. (This song only hit #2 on the Billboard Classical chart? What song possibly beat it?) 10.0

So yeah, that's Jeanette MacDonald. Phenomenal singing voice, though I don't know if most of her movies interest me all that much, at least not the ones with Eddy. Still, since I'm writing about her, I guess I should watch one of her movies today.

UPDATE: I watched Three Daring Daughters this morning. It was alright.

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Previously:
Sidney Poitier
James Cagney

Mister Roberts/Anchors Aweigh

Mister Roberts

Anchors Aweigh

seen on TV @ TCM

8.22-8.23.12

I never had a hankering to join the Navy, or any of the armed forces, for that matter, but for a long time I had a fascination for ships and water. Chalk up the latter to a love of swimming as a kid, though my skills have gotten mighty rusty since. Oh, I can tread water in the deep end of a pool just fine, but you'll not see me go much farther than my waist at the beach. I suppose that's due to the unrestrained nature of a beach: waves that come and go at will, no (visible) boundaries, not being able to see the bottom - it can be a little scary if you're not careful.

As for ships, well, one of the highlights of my trip to San Diego five years ago was going down by the waterfront and taking guided tours on the sailing ships, military vessels, and even a submarine. Every so often (though not as much as I used to), I like to go down to South Street Seaport or Battery Park to watch the ships. And of course, I got to visit the Intrepid for the first time last year. I've read some of the Horatio Hornblower books, and I started, but never finished, a Jack Aubrey book, and I read Moby Dick when I was in college.

It's amazing how much mileage Hollywood has gotten, and continues to get, out of World War 2 movies, regardless of which branch of the armed forces (or civilians), regardless of genre. For someone who was born during the height of Vietnam, grew up with the Cold War, and has lived to see two conflicts in Iraq, it's harder for me to imagine a time when war was seen as not only a necessity, but as The Right Thing To Do - at least, not through the mythology of pop culture, but as something real.

I bring this up because in both Mister Roberts and Anchors Aweigh, we see the desire to serve, to get involved in the conflict despite the risks, because the war and/or the Navy have an allure to them. In the latter, there's a subplot involving a little kid who wants to join the Navy, but of course, Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra don't have the heart to tell him he's too young. In the former, Henry Fonda's title character believed he'd get involved in the fighting at sea, but at the time the film begins, he hasn't - and he wants to. Nobody questions this desire in either case.

Regardless of whether it's in times of war or peace, with either a Republican or a Democrat in the White House, we're always gonna need fighting men and women, and I have nothing but respect for those that do serve or have served. But I think entering the armed forces, and wanting to go where the fighting is, is not something that should be done lightly. It's a decision that needs to be made with eyes wide open to all of its realities and all of its possibilities. We have a tendency to glamorize war, to give it an allure it probably doesn't deserve, and that's awful dangerous.

Yes, this is the one where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry.

This, however, is probably thinking too much about two otherwise enjoyable, delightful movies about the Navy. With every movie of his I see, my admiration for Fonda grows. He never made it look like acting, and he always seemed to project such a morally upright character. One not only believes him, one believes in him. As for Kelly & Sinatra, you'd be hard-pressed to find two better song-and-dance men. And did you know that the 23rd would've been Kelly's 100th birthday?

Sparkle (2012)

Sparkle (2012)
seen @ Jamaica Multiplex Cinemas, Jamaica, Queens, NY
8.21.12

I may have mentioned before that one of the first records I ever owned was Whitney Houston's debut LP. My father bought it for me; as a music geek going way back, he knew from good music and he knew, like the whole world would soon know, that this new singer was something special.

Time passed, however, and Whitney, like Etta James and Billie Holliday before her, struggled with personal demons. By the time her problems with her marriage and with drugs started becoming public knowledge, I had moved on from Top 40 music, and to be honest, while I sympathized with her situation, it didn't surprise me a great deal. I think we've reached a point in the evolution of American pop culture where we come to expect our pop stars to have some kind of drama in their lives...

...which is why her role in the remake of Sparkle is rife with subtext. There are moments throughout the film where, when Whitney's character Emma talks about her past as a singer, one gets the feeling she's really talking about herself. The line between fact and fiction gets blurred a bit, and it's reasonable to believe that Whitney was well aware of this.

At one time or another, we all dream of fame, but we never ponder what happens after we achieve it. These days, pop stars are younger and more expendable than ever, it seems, whether in movies or music or sports or what have you, and one wonders what, if any, kind of guidance they receive while millions follow their every move. Becoming famous is far, far too easy - it's holding on to that fame that's the real challenge.

I feel fairly certain that Whitney had positive role models that helped her on her meteoric rise to success, but somewhere along the way - maybe when she married Bobby Brown, maybe not - something went seriously wrong, something not too different, perhaps, from what went wrong with Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and (currently) Lindsay Lohan, among others, not to mention the character Sister in Sparkle. I believe part of the reason might have to do with achieving fame so relatively early in their lives. To be fair, though, this doesn't happen to every young pop star, and Sparkle ends with the hope that Sparkle herself will not turn out like Sister, but it's an idea worth pondering, given Whitney's role in this, her last film.

Sparkle was what I expected it to be: pleasant, safe, entertaining. I had expected it to resemble Dreamgirls in some fashion, even though the original film Sparkle predates the original Broadway musical Dreamgirls, but the similarities are purely superficial. I had also anticipated it being more of a showcase for Jordin Sparks, but though this is an ensemble, like Dreamgirls, Sparks doesn't get many "showy" moments, at least not like Jennifer Hudson did. Indeed, this is as much Sister's story as it is Sparkle's.

Sparks (anybody else getting a little confused between Sparks and Sparkle?), from what I could see, doesn't go for the vocal pyrotechnics as much as Hudson, but her role doesn't require her to. I guess I was under the impression that most, if not all, American Idol winners tend to go for the Aretha-like, up-and-down-the-vocal-register ooh's and aah's in order to impress the judges, and maybe Sparks did the same when she was on the show. Don't know. I sampled some of her songs on YouTube afterward. She's good. If she had come up in the 80s, I would've been a big fan of hers.

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Related:
What was it about that song?