I am delighted to have five copies of one of my favorite family movies of the year to give away. Flipped, directed by Rob Reiner has wonderful performances by Madeline Carroll and Callan McAuliffe in a story set in the 1960’s about two kids who meet as second graders and go through a range of feelings about each other and their families as they reach their teens.
Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com and tell me the name of your 8th grade crush (first name only!). Don’t forget your address. I will pick five names at random on December 16. Good luck!
Congrats to Phil Hall on the 350th in his “Bootleg Files” series on the Film Threat website. His tributes to the off-beat and off-the-beaten track gems is a pleasure to read and a great source of ideas for not-on-Netflix treasures that are worth tracking down.
Created in the summer of 2003 and appearing every Friday on Film Threat, The Bootleg Files has spanned the full history of motion pictures, from an 1894 Thomas Edison-produced “souvenir strip” of legendary strongman Eugen Sandow to the recently released viral video “Right Wing Radio Duck.” The 350th entry in the series, to be published on November 19, will be a review of Joseph Losey’s rarely seen 1951 drama “M.”
“While it is against the law to bootleg films, it is not against the law to purchase these items on DVD or to watch them on YouTube,” explains Hall. “There is also the fuzzy world of public domain films, where copyrights have expired but movies are duped in second-, third- or even fourth-generation versions and sold to the unsuspecting public.
And the amazing thing is that so many of theses films represent the finest works in global cinema. To date, we’ve had works by Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, D.W. Griffith, John Huston, William Wellman, Satyajit Ray, Oscar Micheaux, Walt Disney, Vittorio De Sica, Andy Warhol, Stanley Kubrick, Leni Riefenstahl, Robert Altman and Chris Marker in The Bootleg Files.”
Thanks to Phil Hall, and here’s to the next seven years of the Bootleg Files.
1. “The Four Seasons” Alan Alda’s story of three middle-aged couples over the course of a year includes an autumn parents’ weekend at a New England college. The title composition by Vivaldi perfectly compliments the burnished colors as the characters struggle to hold onto their marriages and their friendships.
2. “Rudy” Fall means football and this true story of the inspirational dedication of a young man who had the heart, if not the talent, to play football at Notre Dame. The brilliant score mingles longing and triumph and Sean Astin shines in the title role. Watch for director Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) as Rudy’s friend.
3. “Meet Me in St. Louis” Writer Sally Benson’s own childhood inspired this classic story of a year in the life of a turn-of-the-century family. In one evocative scene the youngest members celebrate Halloween in the custom of the day — by throwing flour at the neighbors for the honor of being the “most horrible.” The eerie thrill of their adventure is unforgettable.
4. “Picnic” It’s the end of summer and fall is in the air as the small town selects their Queen of Neewollah (that’s Halloween backwards). Kim Novak and William Holden play two people who are in the late summer of their own lives and who must decide whether they can take the risk of finding true happiness.
5. “The World of Henry Orient” Many movies use the autumn season to convey a sober, reflective mood. But in this, one of the best movies ever in conveying that moment when young girls are on the brink of womanhood, it is a time of opening up to the larger world as one of them develops a crush on a womanizing pianist. There is transformation and danger, but joy and growth and still time for some childish games.
I love catching up with old films on Turner Classic Movies, so when I saw one called “Third Finger Left Hand” starring two of my favorites, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas, released in 1940, I set my DVR. It turned out to be a delightful romantic comedy characteristic of the era. Loy plays a very successful woman executive who made up a fake husband to avoid distracting questions about her romantic life. She tells everyone he is traveling in South America. Douglas finds out what she has done and pretends to be the husband, back from his travels. The expected complications ensue.
But what is not expected is a scene near the end as Loy, Douglas, and the lawyer who hopes to marry Loy are on a train where what at first appear to be typical black porter is waiting on them. And then it turns out that Sam (played by Ernest Whitman) is not a typical porter; he has a law degree, and he knows more about the law than the lawyer he is waiting on. For 1940, in an era where movies often cut out the scenes featuring African-American performers for distribution in the South, this was remarkably progressive. Even though there was never a suggestion that perhaps Sam might want to leave his job as a porter and go to work in the firm of the white lawyer he outsmarted.
Whitman didn’t make many other films. In those he was listed in the final credits as “Nubian Slave” or “Black Man on Train” or not listed at all. In “Gone With the Wind,” he is listed on the Internet Movie Database as “Carpetbagger’s friend (uncredited). In this movie, even with a significant speaking part, he was not listed in the credits at all, which says more about the racial attitudes at the time than the character he played. In the 1930’s and 40’s, black characters were often the ones in the movie who told the truth or otherwise explained what was going on. This was not a political statement; it was a narrative convenience to put the writer’s voice in a marginalized character who could freely be ignored by the white characters. In a sense, Sam is such a narrative convenience; he shows up to help bring the couple together. But still, Sam and the man who portrayed him, Ernest Whitman, deserve some credit for a brief movie moment where a black man got to show a little bit of what he was capable of.
The Online Film Critics Society has published our list of the 100 best FIRST films. Number one is, of course, “Citizen Kane,” which usually tops the list of best films in any category. The list includes some neglected gems by directors who went on to make more widely lauded films as well as “L’Atlante by Jean Vigo, who made only one full-length feature before he died at 29, and “Night of the the Hunter,” the only film directed by distinguished actor Charles Laughton. The Pixar stars are there, with John Lasseter of “Toy Story” and Pete Docter of “Monsters, Inc.” And there are critic’s favorites like Terrence Malick (“Badlands”) and audience favorites like Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker (“Airplane!”). Steven Spielberg is remembered for his low-budget TV film “Duel,” still a spine-tingler, about an ordinary man inexplicably hounded by a mysterious truck driver. The list includes classics from the earliest days of cinema (Charlie Chaplin for “The Kid”) and up-to-the-minute stars like Rian Johnson (“Brick”) and Neill Blomkamp (“District 9”). It has documentarians (Errol Morris of “Gates of Heaven”) and mockumentarians (Rob Reiner for “This is Spinal Tap”). Like all “best” lists, it will provoke arguments, but like just about all best movie lists, everything on it is worth a look.
