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Posts from the ‘film’ Category

Apr 7

Could filmmaking possibly get more commercial? Um, yes.

Harold Meyerson has a great/depressing piece in the Washington Post today on how product placement, or “brand integration,” (it’s a serious business these days) has become more important than ever to the funding of film. Now, he says, it’s not enough for one of the main characters to just be drinking a Pepsi. No, now a lawyer Company X has hired sits in on story conferences and suggests ways to integrate the products into scenes, action and dialogue. Sometimes these decisions can even affect casting and plot.

We used to have the studio system, and when it dissolved it was generally considered a good thing. And it was, for a while. But now that movies are more expensive and funding more difficult than ever to secure, the studio system’s starting to look not-so-bad. Most of our greatest movies (IMHO) were produced under it, after all. It doesn’t seem to have stifled creativity in the same way ridiculous amounts of money can.

But as Meyerson points out, no system designed solely to make money works all that well in the arts.

Every system has its own logic, but none of those systems — be they theocratic, feudal, capitalist or communist — has a logic that’s ultimately compatible with that of the artist.

It’s the age old problem, whatever the art, whatever the medium. How to make money and get audience without sacrificing integrity. The push and pull of business vs. creativity. We need both. But do we really need “brand integration?”

Mar 24

A Documentary about Bill Cunningham??!! Sweet.

The most kickass street photographer in all NYC, Bill Cunningham, is the subject of a new documentary, Bill Cunningham New York, that’s playing at MoMA.
I was shocked the notoriously camera-shy cameraman actually agreed to be in the film. Apparently it took some doing.  From the Times item:
The film, which is to open the New Directors/New Films series on Wednesday at the Museum of Modern Art, took 10 years to make. The first eight were spent trying to get Mr. Cunningham to cooperate. “It started in 2000,” said Richard Press, who directed the film. Philip Gefter, to whom Mr. Press is married, produced it. “Philip and I approached Bill. He just pooh-poohed the idea. He couldn’t entertain it. He said, ‘Why me? There’s no subject here.’”
Wish I could get up there to see it. See it for me, okay?

Mar 12

Spock Talks Art, Oscars, Acting, etc.

How can you not love Leonard Nimoy? From the interview:

A: I have an exhibition opening this summer at … the Massachusetts Museum of Arts … of some portraits of people … as their secret selves.

Q: Their secret selves?

A: The idea of a secret self goes back thousands of years. Greek philosopher and playwright Aristophanes had the idea that humans at one time had two heads and four arms and four legs, and became very powerful and arrogant. The gods were upset about it so they sent Zeus to solve the problem, which he did by taking a big sword and splitting everybody in two, leaving everybody the way we are, but leaving us feeling somehow incomplete. Everybody is looking for the lost part of themselves to make themselves feel whole again. So I began to explore this idea of a secret — but I have some issues with identity, don’t I?

Nerd out here.

Mar 1

Alice, 1933

Why have I never heard of this? A 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland? One that includes Through the Looking Glass? Designed by William Cameron Menzies? Endorsed by Alice Liddell herself?
I mean, check this out:

The transformation of the howling baby (played by the dwarf actor Billy Barty) into a squealing, squirming flesh-and-blood pig could be an outtake from Tod Browning’s 1932 “Freaks.” And the croquet party hosted by the Red Queen (Edna May Oliver) turns into an Ubuesque scramble of authority run amok, in which the terrorized participants (“Off with their heads!”) flail around in violent desperation using actual flamingoes as mallets. (The end credits bring no comforting reassurances from the ASPCA.)

Although the project originated with McLeod (an unobtrusive studio functionary best remembered for his Marx Brothers vehicles, “Monkey Business” and “Horse Feathers”), the dominant creative force appears to have been the brilliant, unclassifiable art director, William Cameron Menzies.

Want.

Jan 11

4 Comments

This is the reason I have zero interest in seeing Avatar.

See? The white man is IN FRONT OF the Native American. 'Cuz he's going to, like, lead them to victory and stuff.

I hated Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and Fern Gully. Then tell me why, why should I go see yet another “it-takes-a-white-man-to-save-the -natives” movie? Doesn’t anyone else think this storyline is just a wee bit racist at worst and horribly paternalistic at best? Just because it’s in 3-D and looks amazing doesn’t mean I need to watch a movie with a terrible and James Fennimore Cooper-esqueplot for three hours.

I admittedly haven’t seen the movie, but I still think Lincoln Michel’s review is dead-on. This says it all:

If this was a screen saver, you’d have to say James Cameron did one heck of a job. Unfortunately, it is a film and all the other aspects feel glossed over.

I felt the same way about Titanic. Sure it looked great, but I go to see a movie for the story, and where was it? I wish I could have that two plus hours of my life back, but at least I won’t be wasting another two plus hours on another crappy Cameron tech achievement.

Nov 12

A Fair Trial

Last night I watched the classic film 12 Angry Men. I’d never seen it before for some crazy reason.  A terrific, riveting movie, tightly shot and edited, and every single performance a reminder of what it was like when actors had faces. Not just pretty, symmetrical faces, but craggy faces, hard faces, soft, pudgy, big-nosed, squint-eyed, wrinkled up, sweaty, smirking faces. 12 angry men

Anyway. The movie is wonderful not just because of the acting, or the directing, but because of the point it makes about our judicial system. At first, eleven of the men are ready to say “guilty” and go home, because the accused fits a certain type–and the crime he’s accused of is so dreadful that the jurors are ready to assume his guilt as a forgone conclusion. It takes Henry Fonda’s gentle persistence and logic to gradually change the men’s mind, and to remind them that no matter what the crime, no matter who the accused, in our legal system guilt is never a forgone conclusion, and that we all have the right to a fair trial where we are innocent until proven guilty.

Someone should remind Wolf Blitzer of this.

Nov 4

Robert Ryan Marathon on TCM

robert-ryanRobert Ryan is one of my favorite actors. He’s fantastic in every part I’ve ever seen him play, and this made him a director’s favorite–no doubt why he was cast, steadily, in so many great films. He was particularly terrific as a menacing noir figure who’s terribly flawed, cruel, vicious, violent–and yet somehow, sympathetic because of the depth of humanity Ryan brought to every role.

In real life, Ryan was an exact opposite of the flawed, bigoted characters he so often played. He was  a lifelong Democrat committed to his family (married to the same woman for forty years, until his death) and to liberal causes. He and his wife fought for civil rights and against HUAC’s activities and the Communist witch-hunts of the forties and fifties. In short, Ryan was one of those rare actors whose art and whose life were equally deserving of admiration.

So I was thrilled to hear that in honor of what would have been Ryan’s 100th birthday, Turner Classic Movies is running a marathon of his movies on November 10th and 11th, including several of my favorites like The Set Up, Crossfire, On Dangerous Ground, and Bad Day at Black Rock.

Ryan died of lung cancer in 1972, but before he did he was able to play Larry Slade in 1973 film version of The Iceman Cometh. From a Chicago Reader piece on Ryan, which I highly recommend reading:

Larry Slade, the barroom philosopher and disillusioned anarchist of The Iceman Cometh, may have cut even closer to the bone: suffering from a terminal illness, he confesses to one of his fellow drunks, “What’s before me is the fact that death is a fine, long sleep. And I’m damn tired.” Directed by John Frankenheimer for the American Film Theater series of the early 70s, the movie shows Ryan at his most honest and vulnerable. Few actors have so openly contemplated their own mortality on-screen, or ended their career with such an unqualified triumph.

If you’re not familiar with Ryan’s work, check out some of the films playing on TCM. You won’t regret it.

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