Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!

Posted on April 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm

It’s Shakespeare’s birthday! Try to talk like Shakespeare. Or check out Turner Classic Movie Channel’s list of their favorite Shakespeare adaptations. Can you name three movies inspired by Shakespeare set in high school? Two that became Broadway musicals? Or one set in outer space?

All of Shakespeare’s plays have been filmed, many more than once. Some of my favorites are:

1. Twelfth Night A shipwreck survivor disguises herself as a man and gets involved in many mix-ups as she finds herself falling for her boss and being fallen for by the woman he has asked her to woo on his behalf.

2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream An all-star cast appears in Shakespeare’s merriest romantic comedy, with the entanglements of three romantic couples and a little fairy dust.

3. The Taming of the Shrew Famously bombastic couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor play famously bombastic couple Petruchio and Kate in this raucous battle of the sexes. It is not only the shrew who is tamed.

4. Henry V Kenneth Branaugh’s fierce version of one of Shakespeare’s most thrillingly heroic stories is brilliantly done — and a lot of fun to compare with Laurence Olivier’s very different WWII-era version.

4. Hamlet Mel Gibson stars in one of several great versions of the play about the conflicted Danish prince.

5. Romeo & Juliet and Romeo + Juliet are two sensational takes on Shakespeare’s most famous love story.

6. The Merchant of Venice Al Pacino plays Shylock in the story of a money-lender driven to revenge by the defection of his daughter. Lynn Collins is luminous as the heroine Portia.

7. As You Like It Another woman-disguised-as-a-man story and another lovers-in-the-forest story — but this time transplanted by the film-makers to Japan in a very colorful production with a radiant Bryce Dallas Howard as Rosalind.

8. Macbeth Orson Welles’ version of the Scottish play is arresting and provocative.

9. The Tempest I’m still waiting for a worthy version of my favorite Shakespeare play, but until that happens, this version of the story of the shipwreck survivors on an island with a sorcerer and his daughter is worth seeing.

10. Shakespeare in Love This multi-award winner makes no pretense of historical accuracy but it is wise, exciting, and ravishingly romantic.

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Based on a play Classic For Your Netflix Queue Lists

List: Movies About Corporate Governance

Posted on April 19, 2009 at 8:39 am

The New York Times interviewed me for its “Corner Office” section and asked me for a list of my favorite movies about corporate governance.

“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” (2005). Must viewing for an almost operatic rise-and-fall story of greed and hubris.

“The Solid Gold Cadillac” (1956). Add a couple of zeros to the numbers and this classic comedy about a small shareholder who takes on a big conglomerate could have been filmed this year. Ripe for a remake!

“The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994). The Coen Brothers’ take on corporations is both spoof and satire, making some shrewd points about success and corruption.

“Roger & Me” (1989). Must viewing in the era of the bailout. Watch for the many indicators of poor business judgment, including a “Me and My Buddy” exhibit with a mechanized worker singing to the machine that put him out of a job.

“Startup.com” (2001). The go-go madness of the dot-com era amplifies the challenge of finding that fine line between vision and hubris. Unforgettable characters.

“Boiler Room” (2000). Set in an illegal pump-and-dump brokerage, this movie perfectly captures the adrenaline rush of money-making.

“Executive Suite” (1954). A rare movie that focuses on the boardroom with a post-World War II C.E.O. succession struggle between the green-eyeshade C.F.O. Fredric March and the stakeholder proponent William Holden. See also the terrific animated movie “Robots” (2005) for a similar struggle.

“Owning Mahowny” (2003). This fact-based film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a Canadian bank executive who embezzled millions of dollars and lost every penny in gambling casinos. What is fascinating is the way that every single person in the film, from the bank loan officers to the auditors and investigators and casino managers to the embezzler himself, are constantly assessing risk.

“The Corporation” (2003). A provocative documentary that measures corporate behavior against the standard diagnostics for human behavior and concludes that it fits the profile of a sociopath.

“How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (1967). This outrageous musical comedy about a mail clerk’s rise to the top of a corporation is less of an exaggeration than it appears.

“Office Space” (1999). A cult classic about a Dilbert-ized world of workers oppressed by an endless series of management fads.

“Tucker: The Man and His Dream” (1988). A fact-based cautionary tale about corporations subverting the market. See also the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” (2006) for an updated version.

“Sabrina” (1954). This elegant confection of a love triangle, with Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, also includes one of the most stirring defenses of the public corporation as a force for opportunity and creativity that has ever been put on film.

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For Your Netflix Queue Lists Media Appearances Rediscovered Classic

List: Body-Switching Movies

Posted on April 13, 2009 at 10:00 am

This week’s release of “17 Again,” starring Zac Efron and Matthew Perry, about a middle-aged man who finds himself turned back into a teenager, reminded me of some of my favorite “body-switching” movies.

1. Freaky Friday Both feature film versions of the classic book about a mother and daughter who switch bodies are delightful and it is fun to see them both and talk about the way each one reflects its era. Be sure to read the book by Mary Rodgers (daughter of Richard Rodgers of Rodgers and Hammerstein).

2. Vice Versa Judge Reinhold and “Wonder Years'” Fred Savage play the body-switching father and son in this 1988 comedy.

3. All of Me This very funny story about a wealthy lifelong invalid who wants her spirit to find a healthy body has lawyer Steve Martin is inhabited by the spirit of Lily Tomlin (some mature material).

4. Face/Off It’s actually not the bodies but the faces that switch in this fantasy-thriller that has cop Nicolas Cage swapping his face and voice with criminal John Travolta (very mature material).

5. Dating the Enemy A pair switches not just bodies but genders in this story about an estranged couple about to break up find themselves in each other’s bodies in this Australian film starring Guy Pearce.

6. Big One of the most beloved films in this category has Tom Hanks as a boy in a grown-up body. It includes the “Chopsticks” scene, with Hanks and Robert Loggia jumping over an enormous keyboard to play the song. (Some mature material)

7. Turnabout This odd little 1940 comedy has a married couple switching bodies thanks to a magical statue in their bedroom.

8. Prelude to a Kiss Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan fall in love and then on their wedding day an old man gives her a kiss and what began as a fairly standard romance becomes a meditation on identity and intimacy.

9. Being John Malkovich A brilliant screenplay by Charlie Kauffman explores the nature of identity, art, gender, the wish for immortality, and a lot more in this story of a portal to the mind of actor Malkovich (who appears as himself, sort of). (Very mature material)

10. 18 Again! and Seventeen Again Body-switching skips a generation as grandparents find themselves teenagers again in these two movies, one starring George Burns and the other starring Tia and Tamera Mowry.

Others in this category include Goodbye Charlie and Switch (both about lotharios whose spirits come back as women) and A Saintly Switch, a Disney film with Viveca A. Fox and David Allen Grier as a quarreling pregnant woman and her football player husband who switch bodies thanks to a magical potion.

 

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Fantasy For Your Netflix Queue Lists

List: Inspiring Quotes from the Movies

Posted on March 23, 2009 at 8:00 am

Movies have enormous power to inspire us and some of their best lines stay with us long after we leave the theater. Here are some of the lines that always make me try a little harder, risk a little more, and hold on a little longer. And I’d love to hear some of yours.
braveheart.jpg“Every man dies, but not every man really lives.” Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart
“A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.” Maude in Harold and Maude
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.
The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers
“Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin.” Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption
“Life is not the amount of breaths you take. It’s the moments that take your breath away.” Will Smith in Hitch
“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” The Emperor in Mulan
“There is a story in the Talmud about a king who had a son who went astray. The son was told, ‘Return to your father.’ The son replied that he could not. The king then sent a messenger to the son with the message… ‘Come back to me as far as you can, and I will meet you the rest of the way.'” Reuven in The Chosen
“I believe a man is as big as what’ll make him mad.” Reno Smith in Bad Day at Black Rock
“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” Truvy in Steel Magnolias
clarence.jpg“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” Clarence the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life

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For Your Netflix Queue Lists

More Comfort Films: LA Times List

Posted on March 11, 2009 at 8:00 am

I’ve already provided some of my favorite comfort movies, one from Cinematical, and a list from Idol Chatter’s Kris Rasmussen. Want some more ideas? Take a look at this list of comfort movies from Betsy Sharkey of the LA Times. She says:

Comfort films rarely have a pedigree. But then cinematic greatness is not what you’re in search of. These are back-room movies, behind closed doors along with other necessary vices — that box of Kraft mac and cheese, the pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey — while the best movies of all time, those loved and judged for their soaring artistic, cinematic and intellectual feats, live in an entirely different space in your psyche.

But need a laugh right now? A cry? To escape? Or just to feel better? Comfort films are there to fit, and fill, whatever the emotional need of the moment, able to lift the shade on even the darkest of moods (or deepest of recessions). You don’t even have to consume the whole film to enjoy the benefits; they’re like munchable movie snacks for the mind, and catching a scene or two as you’re channel surfing can usually satisfy the cravings.

There are rules, of course, but not many. The films can be comedies or dramas, weepies or creepies, but they should forever go unpunished for any indiscretion, whether it’s cheesy dialogue, plots filled with potholes or actors who might drop this particular work of art off their résumé if it weren’t for the ruthless memory of IMDB.

She has some great choices like “Best in Show” and “Finding Nemo,” both movies I have watched countless times, and one from my list, “Galaxy Quest.” Look for one of her other choices on my upcoming list of some of my favorite movie inspirational quotes.

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