Lists: The Funniest Movies and the All-Time Best

Posted on April 7, 2012 at 4:10 pm

I always quote Mrs. Miniver when the subject of making “best of” lists of movies. She wasn’t talking about movies but her comment is applicable in many contexts: “Indefensible but irresistible.” And they’re a great way of finding some good movies for your Neflix queue? Yahoo has a new list of the 100 funniest movies of all time. And Roger Ebert, who often says how much he dislikes being asked to make lists, admits that there is one list, or really two, that he thinks is worthwhile. Once a decade, the distinguished film journal Sight and Sound publishes all-time best lists, most recently one from critics, one from directors. Ebert’s 2002 ballot:

Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
Dekalog (Kieslowski)
La dolce vita (Fellini)
The General (Keaton)
Raging Bull (Scorsese)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
Tokyo Story (Ozu)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)

Will he change it this year? What would you include?

Peter Dinklage of “Game of Thrones” — by Dan Kois

Posted on April 5, 2012 at 3:56 pm

My friend Dan Kois has a terrific profile of one of my favorite actors, Peter Dinklage, in the New York Times, who plays Tyrion in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

e couldn’t book commercial jobs, because he wasn’t interested in the kinds of roles that paid well for dwarves. Specifically, he wouldn’t play elves or leprechauns. Even after Dinklage’s memorable first film role in the 1995 Steve Buscemi indie comedy Living in Oblivion — Dinklage played an actor who’s annoyed to be cast in a dream sequence, demanding, “Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it?” — he still couldn’t get an agent. “Word got out,” he says. “I started to build up a resentment. And that fueled my desire to live in a cold apartment and be like: ‘I don’t need you! I’m gonna write poetry. Why would I want to be a member of your club if you don’t want me?’ ”

After a recommendation from Buscemi, the New York-based film director Alexandre Rockwell cast Dinklage in his shaggy-dog ensemble comedy “13 Moons.” When Rockwell met Dinklage just before his first day of shooting, they were instantly simpatico. “You might come in with some luggage about Peter’s physicality,” Rockwell says. “Right away he cuts right through that. You’re thinking, He’s a dwarf, he’s a dwarf, but Peter comes shining through as a personality beyond any kind of diminutive-size issue.”

“Alex attracts Steve Buscemi and Seymour Cassell and all those actors that are in his movies,” Dinklage said, then added with pride, “I’m one of them.” By the end of the ’90s, Dinklage was managing to make a meager living. “What I really want,” he told a theater Web site in an interview, “is to play the romantic lead and get the girl.”

Then Tom McCarthy, a recent Yale grad, met Dinklage when the actor portrayed Tom Thumb in a vaudevillian play McCarthy directed and co-wrote. The two became friends, and McCarthy was soon convinced that, indeed, Dinklage was leading-man material. “It was crystal clear,” McCarthy says. “There are qualities that leading men possess, this kind of self-assuredness and this vulnerability. Pete had both.” One day McCarthy and Dinklage ran into each other on a Manhattan street corner — “Peter was temping, and I was just scraping by as an actor” — and McCarthy later thought that Dinklage might be perfect for a script he was working on, The Station Agent, about an introverted train aficionado who inherits a tiny depot building in rural New Jersey. “We never imagined,” McCarthy says, “that conversation would alter both of our careers.”

For a treat, be sure to see “The Station Agent” and his wonderful performance as a wedding planner in The Baxter.

“The Best Man” and My Dad’s Un-Conventional Idea

Posted on March 29, 2012 at 2:51 pm

I’m very proud of my dad’s piece in Politico today about the advantages of a brokered convention.

I’ve been at a brokered convention and worked for a candidate who came out of it. Even though my candidate lost the general election, it was still a far more robust and constructive process than the primary-caucus marathon of the past half-century.

My dad, who has been involved in national, state, and local campaigns since 1948, says that

primary voters push GOP candidates to the right, and Democratic candidates left. Independent voters, who occupy the center, wonder why the parties nominate candidates who don’t represent their views. The nominees then spend the general election recanting what they said in the primaries, to persuade the independents, who decide elections.

We thought getting rid of the brokered conventions would do away with smoke-filled rooms and backroom deals. We just substituted one set of bosses for another.

I also read today that a new production of Gore Vidal’s play, “The Best Man” is about to open on Broadway with an all-star cast that includes “Will and Grace” star Eric McCormack, Candace Bergan, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, and, in a small role, Donna Hanover, who knows something about politics as the former wife of the mayor of New York City. Vidal, whose political expertise was in part based on his being related to Jaqueline Kennedy, penned a sharp story about two Presidential candidates at a brokered convention along the lines of the ones my dad wrote about. The movie version, starring Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson, is one of my all-time favorite political dramas and as timely as the day it was written.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbJoI6yToc4

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List: Women’s History Month Documentaries

Posted on March 12, 2012 at 3:45 pm

For Women’s History Month, check out this documentaries about extraordinary American women:

1. Ahead of Time: The Extraordinary Journey of Ruth Gruber She was the youngest PhD in the world, assistant to a member of FDR’s Cabinet, went on a secret mission to rescue 1000 Jewish refugees and American military personnel, and worked as a journalist.

2. Life of Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman? The eloquent spokeswoman for freedom and equality set an example that continues to inspire those who fight for justice.

3. Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony The story of the leaders of the movement to give voting rights to the disenfranchised half of the American population.

4. Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team The stirring story of Mia Hamm, Brandy Chastain, and the women’s soccer team.

5. Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg Aviva Kempner’s documentary about Gertrude Berg shows that she was more than the star of one of television’s first hit series, she was a pioneering producer and businesswoman as well.

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“Passion of Mind” — Like Tonight’s Premiere TV Show, “Awake”

Posted on February 29, 2012 at 9:31 am

Jason Isaacs (“Harry Potter’s” Lucius Malfoy) stars in “Awake,” a new drama series premiering tonight on NBC. He plays a man who survived an automobile accident that split his life in two. In one, his wife was killed in the crash but his son survived. In the other, it is his son who was killed, but his wife survived. In each, he sees a different therapist (Broadway stars Cherry Jones and BD Wong). He knows that one must be a dream and one must be real, but he cannot tell which is which.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDbF8b9wkMs

There’s a Demi Moore film with the same theme called Passion of Mind, and I consider it a guilty pleasure. The plot is “Sliding Doors” crossed with the fairy tale of the dancing princesses with a touch of “Truly Madly Deeply.” Demi Moore plays a woman with two lives: Marty, a successful New York career woman and Marie, an American widow living in the French countryside with her two daughters. Every night, when Marty goes to sleep, she dreams of Maria’s life in France, and when Marie goes to sleep, she becomes Marty in New York. Both wonder which is real, and each is afraid to find out. The two lives echo each other, and each seems to provide something missing in the other. But one thing is missing in both – love. Marty meets Aaron (William Fitchner) and Marie meets William (Stellan Skarsgård). At first, the two storylines provide counterpoint. One relationship becomes physically intimate. The other becomes emotionally intimate because she tells him of her double life. Then both relationships deepen and the two lives begin to provide some resolution for one another. Items from one life begin turning up in the other. She begins to understand that she can take what she needs from her dreams and make it work in real life. It is very schmaltzy. But I found myself beguiled by its unabashed romanticism. There are some nice subtle touches – the clusters of hats, Marty’s relationship with her therapist, Marie’s relationships with her daughters and her confidant – and the resolution has some psychological validity, at least in movie terms. I’m glad to see those themes being explored in this new show.