Half a Century of The Beatles!

Posted on February 8, 2014 at 3:57 pm

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first performances in the United States — and the half century of great music — be sure to watch the CBS Grammy tribute tomorrow night, featuring Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. And you might want to take a look at this special issue of Smithsonian Magazine, produced with the Grammy Museum, with tributes from Smokey Robinson, Pat Benatar, Brian Wilson, Lester Bangs, and many more, plus never-before-seen photos and recollections by Ringo Starr.

Back in 1964, the Beatles looked like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqrauzHPpwE

Their career in music is unmatched. And they made some great movies, too.

By any standard, A Hard Day’s Night is a brilliant film, directed by Richard Lester in an intimate, improvisational style that still seems very fresh today. Because it seems like a documentary, people often forget that it was fully scripted by the talented Alun Owen, who was nominated for an Oscar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIqi9zY4V-A

Their next movie is the silly spoof Help!. It is still fun to watch.

Magical Mystery Tour is an incoherent mess, but the music is still great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjW8Rv5bp7Q

Yellow Submarine is one of the all-time greats of animation, with a charming story and wildly innovative visuals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7lRMw6f3EY

Let It Be is a documentary about what would turn out to be the last days of the Beatles, featuring an exhilarating rooftop concert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhHRaleljHE

Family Movies for the Olympics

Posted on February 7, 2014 at 7:00 am

The First Olympics: Athens 1896, one of my very favorite sports movies ever, is a made-for-TV miniseries about the first modern-day Olympics. We take the Olympics as a given now, but there were 1500 years between the time of the ancient games and the establishment of the modern Olympics with countries from all over the world putting aside their political differences for athletic competition in the spirit of good sportsmanship and teamwork. Showing the origins of everything from the starting position for sprinters to the impulsive selection of the Star Spangled Banner as the U.S. national anthem, the story is filled with drama, wit, and unforgettable characters, sumptuously filmed and beautifully performed by a sensational cast that includes then-unknown David Caruso of “CSI,” one-time Bond Girl Honor Blackman, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, and Louis Jourdan. It was a Writer’s Guild and Casting Society award winner when it was first released. Though the events are summer games, it is a great introduction to the Olympics, a thrilling and inspiring story, and outstanding family entertainment.

The Cutting Edge A spoiled figure skater (named Kate as in “Taming of the Shrew”) and a working class hockey player team up in this romantic comedy on skates starring Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney. This was the first screenplay by “Michael Clayton’s” Tony Gilroy.

Miracle Sportscaster Al Michaels unforgettably called out “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” as the 1980 US Olympic hockey team beat the Russians. They then went on to win the gold medal. And so the team, the last group of amateurs sent by the US to play ice hockey, has been known ever after as the “Miracle on Ice.” Kurt Russell plays coach Herb Brooks and this movie shows us that the real story is better than a miracle because it is about a team that succeeded through heart and hard work and commitment. If it is a miracle, it is in the “God helps those who help themselves” category. Be sure to watch the documentary, “Do You Believe in Miracles?” as well.

Ice Castles A young figure skater on the brink of becoming a champion loses her sight in an accident and has to start all over. Melissa Manchester sings the hit theme song, “Through the Eyes of Love.”

Cool Runnings One of the biggest long shots in history was the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 winter Olympics. Yes, Jamaica is a tropical country and no, Jamaica does not have any snow. But a fast start is important in bobsledding and it does have sprinters. The actual footage of the real team’s crash is featured in the film. And while a lot of it is fictional, the grace and panache of the team is based on the real story. And they will be back for the 2010 games.

Downhill Racer Robert Redford plays an arrogant skiier who clashes with his coach (Gene Hackman) in this film, which captures the focus of the athletes and the exhilaration of the sport, filmed on location in the Alps.

Sonja Henie: Queen Of The Ice and It’s a Pleasure Real-life gold medalist Sonja Henie went on to become the highest-paid performer (we won’t say “actress”) in Hollywood for her very successful series of skating films. No one paid any attention to the plots even then, but the skating scenes hold up well and the documentary about her life as an athlete and performer is worth seeing.

Movies for the Year of the Horse

Posted on January 30, 2014 at 2:15 pm

Many thanks to Jana Monji and rogerebert.com for including me in this wonderful round-up (especially apt term) of movies inspired by the Chinese New Year. This year it is the Year of the Horse, so Jana and some of the other @ebertvoices critics chimed in with our favorite horse movies. My two favorites both star Mickey Rooney.

Nextflix Micro-Genres Are Amazing

Posted on January 6, 2014 at 8:00 am

The closing of the last Blockbuster stores has led to some “end of an era” pontificating and even some meta “end of the era of end of the eras” commentary from Monica Hesse in the Washington Post. For me, it is a chance to think about the moment that got me started as The Movie Mom — watching parents at Blockbuster ask the teenaged clerks if an Adam Sandler movie was appropriate for kids.

I usually had a good idea of what I was looking for, but most of the patrons would stand glassy-eyed in front of the “new releases” shelf or possibly go straight to “action/adventure” or “comedy.” The five or six categories were not very helpful. There are lessons to learn from Blockbuster about the risks of disruptive new technologies. Why didn’t Blockbuster invent Netflix? The ease of ordering by mail and then, even easier, just hitting a button on the computer for immediate streaming could have kept Blockbuster expanding, possibly even into creating its own content, as Neftlix has. They could also have developed the extraordinarily precise and granular “micro-genres” that are a large part of what makes Netflix so user-friendly. Instead of “action/adventure” they have an almost Dewy Decimal-level of specificity, with hundreds of sub-categories so you can find action-classics, action-comedies, action-African American or action-Blaxplotation, action-superheroes, action-thrillers, action-disasters, action-military, etc. The Atlantic has a great story by Alexis C. Madrigal about how the algorithms for defining these micro-genres were developed.

If you use Netflix, you’ve probably wondered about the specific genres that it suggests to you. Some of them just seem so specific that it’s absurd. Emotional Fight-the-System Documentaries? Period Pieces About Royalty Based on Real Life? Foreign Satanic Stories from the 1980s?

If Netflix can show such tiny slices of cinema to any given user, and they have 40 million users, how vast did their set of “personalized genres” need to be to describe the entire Hollywood universe?

This idle wonder turned to rabid fascination when I realized that I could capture each and every microgenre that Netflix’s algorithm has ever created.

Through a combination of elbow grease and spam-level repetition, we discovered that Netflix possesses not several hundred genres, or even several thousand, but 76,897 unique ways to describe types of movies.

I love the list Madrigal provides of some of the best categories:

Emotional Independent Sports Movies
Spy Action & Adventure from the 1930s
Cult Evil Kid Horror Movies
Cult Sports Movies
Sentimental set in Europe Dramas from the 1970s
Visually-striking Foreign Nostalgic Dramas
Japanese Sports Movies
Gritty Discovery Channel Reality TV
Romantic Chinese Crime Movies
Mind-bending Cult Horror Movies from the 1980s
Dark Suspenseful Sci-Fi Horror Movies
Gritty Suspenseful Revenge Westerns
Violent Suspenseful Action & Adventure from the 1980s
Time Travel Movies starring William Hartnell
Romantic Indian Crime Dramas
Evil Kid Horror Movies
Visually-striking Goofy Action & Adventure
British set in Europe Sci-Fi & Fantasy from the 1960s
Dark Suspenseful Gangster Dramas
Critically-acclaimed Emotional Underdog Movies

NSA’s invasion of our privacy is minor compared to the information we cheerfully provide to corporations. This kind of customer-guided big data is just the tip of the iceberg from the kind of individually-tailored marketing we can expect — for good and for bad — in the coming years.

Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Crossword Puzzle with Google

Posted on December 20, 2013 at 8:14 pm

Crossword puzzles began just 100 years ago today! And Google has a wonderful interactive puzzle on its home page. Give it a try, and then watch the wonderful documentary, Wordplay.

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