Anna Karenina on Film

Posted on November 12, 2012 at 8:00 am

Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina,” with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, opens in limited release this week, with Kiera Knightley in the title role as Tolstoy’s tragic heroine who loves not wisely but too well. The novel has one of the most often-quoted opening lines in literature: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Not every film adaptation of Anna Karenina is alike, and the new version should inspire audiences to take another look at the earlier films.

The best-known Anna is Greta Garbo, but Anna has also been portrayed by Vivian Leigh, Jaqueline Bisset (with a dashing Christopher Reeve as Vronsky), and Sophie Marceau (filmed on location in Russia). There’s also a BBC miniseries starring Victoria Allum. You can also see the story as a ballet or musical or opera. There is a silent film version, thought to be lost, and a Russian movie that is hard to find, and an Egyptian version called “River of Love.” I wish I could hear the radio version with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck and see the 1961 television movie with Sean Connery and Claire Bloom.

The Best of Bond: The Women! The Theme Songs! The Cars! The Chases! The Villains!

Posted on November 8, 2012 at 3:39 pm

As “Skyfall” opens, we look back on 50 years of James Bond on screen, and that means some great assessments of the best of Bond. My favorite Bonds are Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan, but “Skyfall” may be my favorite Bond movie and I love Adele’s theme song. My favorite Bond villain is Goldfinger and my favorite Bond car is the Aston-Martin with the ejector seat.

What about you?

Fandango has a delectable gallery of the best of the Bond girls. My three favorites are:

Michel Dunaway’s definitive ranking of all the Bond themes is a pleasure to read.

1. It’s not about the best song. No list worth anything will merely rank the best songs that happen to have been Bond themes. Otherwise, the producers could just stick “Stairway to Heaven” or “Satisfaction” or “Try a Little Tenderness” into the next installment of the series and assure themselves the new No. 1 spot. No, the songs shouldn’t only (or even primarily) appeal as songs per se, but as icons of Bond. They should exude Bondness. When you hear one of them, you shouldn’t first think “What a great song!” Instead, you should immediately be plunged into visions of a Bond film, preferably with yourself as either the titular hero or as his love interest.

2. What is Bondness? Entire books have been written on the appeal of Bond, but two of the most important aspects of that appeal need to be expressed in the song. First is a sense of momentousness, of earth-shattering urgency. It can be expressed through the arrangement, through the vocal performance, or the lyrics, but we’d better get a sense that big things are at stake. Second, and seemingly paradoxically, there must be an element of offhand elegance, almost a casual air. James Bond makes it look easy. So the song should make it sound easy.

3. Bondness is forever. In the original, instrumental James Bond theme, John Barry gave the franchise a gift of inestimable worth: so many signature moments. Go on the street and ask four people to hum the James Bond theme, and you’re likely to hear four different parts of the same composition. There’s the menacing four-note opening, the wildly discordant second portion, and the full-out orchestral jazzy vamp, all of which lead to the orgasmic “BAH-BAH-bummmmm, BAH-BAH-bummmmm, BAH-BAH!” ending, which then returns to the original sequence. The best Bond songs recognize Barry’s genius by incorporating the iconic instrumental theme into themselves, however subtly.

I’m grateful to Dunaway for reminding me of Tom Jones and “Thunderball.” (And even for reminding me that A-Ha did a Bond theme.)

Critic Richard Corliss makes a list of the best Bond villains.

Here’s a compilation of Bond’s “coldest kills:”

There’s a marvelously entertaining documentary about The Cars Of The Bond Movies, one of which makes a return appearance in “Skyfall.”

And compilations of the best of the car chases:

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

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Celebrate Presidents on Election Day

Posted on November 6, 2012 at 8:00 am

After you vote, take a break from red and blue maps to enjoy some of the portrayals of real US Presidents on screen. This week, the second 2012 movie about our 16th President opens — Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis. And we’ll see another movie about a real President later this month when Bill Murray plays Franklin Roosevelt in “Hyde Park on the Hudson.”

I’ve already written about some of the many other movie versions of Lincoln’s life. “Wilson” stars Oscar nominee Alexander Knox in a dignified tribute to the 29th President. Gary Sinese gave a powerful performance in the HBO movie, Truman. Rough Riders has Tom Berenger as Theodore Roosevelt, leading Cuban rebels against Spain.

Perhaps the most fanciful portrayal of a real US President is “The Remarkable Andrew,” with William Holden as an honorable accountant who discovers a discrepancy in the town books and is visited by the ghost of his favorite President, Andrew Jackson (Brian Donlevy), who provides guidance and support. According to TIME Magazine, Lincoln has been portrayed most frequently on screen but perhaps the President most memorable on film is Franklin Roosevelt, the only man to be elected four times, with Sunrise At Campobello, Eleanor and Franklin and its sequel, Warm Springs, and, of course, Annie! (TIME notes that the only US President never to show up as a character in a movie is Warren G. Harding.)

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List: Movies About Pilots

Posted on November 4, 2012 at 8:00 am

Denzel Washington’s magnificent performance in Flight made me think of some of my other favorite movies about airplane pilots. These are all worth a look:

The Spirit of St. Louis James Stewart was a couple of decades older than Charles Lindburgh was when he made his historic flight across the Atlantic. But he was a decorated pilot himself, and that helps lends authenticity and dedication to this moving portrayal.

The High and the Mighty John Wayne has to save a disabled plane full of passengers in this exciting drama with a haunting musical theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm6gRWbYU2k

Red Tails George Lucas produced this story of the Tuskegee Airmen. The on-earth scenes drag a bit but the airplane battles are exciting.

Top Gun This Tom Cruise classic about fighter pilots will make you feel “the need for speed.”

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines A 1910 airplane race takes us back to the days when airplanes were little more than kites with a place to sit in this very funny, exciting, and romantic story.

Always Richard Dreyfuss plays a daring Forest Service pilot in this Steven Spielberg remake of the WII classic, “A Guy Named Joe.”

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100 Years of Tarzan

Posted on October 28, 2012 at 3:25 pm

The Washington Post has a wonderful tribute to Tarzan in honor of the 100th anniversary of first Tarzan story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with a fascinating gallery of portrayals of this now-iconic character. Burroughs had no special calling to be a writer. According to Neely Tucker’s story in the Post, after a series of unsuccessful jobs,

Burroughs was suddenly in his mid-30s and pawning his wife’s jewelry for cash.

And then — there’s always a “and then” in these kinds of stories — he was reading a pulp magazine, checking to see whether his company’s ads were correctly placed. He thought the magazine’s stories were so lousy that even he could write better.

So he sat down and wrote a science-fiction piece, “Under the Moons of Mars,” and sold it to All-Story. (Today, you know this tale as “John Carter,” the Disney film from earlier this year.)

He sold it for $400, roughly the modern equivalent of $9,300. This got his attention.

“I was not writing because of any urge to write nor for any particular love of writing. I was writing because I had a wife and two babies,” he later told an interviewer. “I loathed poverty and I would have liked to put my hands on the party who said that poverty is an honorable estate.”

The character of Tarzan was an instant sensation, and Burroughs was a good enough businessman that he not only copyrighted his stories, but he trademarked the character. Copyrights expire, but trademarks do not. Burroughs wrote two dozen Tarzan books but the character is best known for its many popular movie and television versions, from Elmo Lincoln’s portrayal in the silent era to an animated Disney feature film with music by Phil Collins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6BlkuifHi0

My favorite is still the classic with swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan.

Burroughs’ version of Tarzan was highly educated (he had the books left behind by his late parents and was able to speak many languages). But what makes the character so enduringly appealing over a century is the idea of him as completely isolated from civilization, raised in the jungle, and giving us a chance to consider the deepest questions about what makes us human at the same time as we have the pleasure of imaging ourselves, like Tarzan, Jane, Boy, and Cheetah, swinging through the trees.

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