Life After Divorce: The Movie Version

Posted on August 14, 2010 at 8:02 am

As “Eat Pray Love’s” saga of Elizabeth Gilbert finding herself after a devastating divorce comes to theaters, Slate has a terrific gallery of classic post-divorce movie moments, with women signaling their liberation through dancing, revenge, substance abuse — and of course a new love in films like “An Unmarried Woman,” “Learning to Exhale,” “Living Out Loud,” and “The First Wive’s Club.” (My recollection, though, is that the ballet in the underwear dance sequence in “An Unmarried Woman” comes before she gets dumped, right?)
Certainly, themes of second chances and renewal are important in movies and life after heartbreak is something everyone can relate to. There’s an entire genre of “movies of re-marriage” with classic romantic comedies about divorced or almost-divorced couple re-uniting in movies like “The Philadelphia Story,” “His Girl Friday,” “Adam’s Rib,” and “The Lady Eve.” The lesser-known “Perfect Strangers” is a favorite of mine, about a dull married couple (Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr) who come alive when they separate to fight in WWII. They do not know how they will be able to stand their old life and are afraid of getting back together. But they are overjoyed when they meet to find that separately they have come to the same realization that they wanted to feel more vitally engaged with the world and with each other.
There are many, many movies about people who feel as though they are on automatic pilot in their lives and marriages until they discover love again, sometimes with the spouse but more often with someone new. The under-appreciated “Twice in a Lifetime” has Gene Hackman in a comfortable but dull relationship until he meets Ann-Margret on his 50th birthday. In “The April Fools,” Jack Lemmon falls for the wife of his arrogant boss. In my favorite scene, Myrna Loy and Charles Boyer show them the beauty of a deep, long-lasting love. Cary Grant is married to social-climbing hypocrite Kay Francis and then he meets warm-hearted Carole Lombard in “In Name Only.” And Walter Houston does his best to be loyal to his selfish wife in “Dodsworth” in spite of his attraction for the lovely Mary Astor. In classics like “Casablanca,” “Bringing Up Baby,” “An Affair to Remember,” “Doctor Zhivago,” “Out of Africa,” “Now Voyager,” “Back Street,” “It Happened One Night,” “Titanic,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” “Brief Encounter,” and “Moonstruck,” married or engaged characters find love elsewhere. Watching them, we experience again the tremulous thrill of falling in love. If we’re lucky, we bring those feelings back to enlarge our own relationships.

Why Does Every Trailer Use the Same Songs?

Posted on August 13, 2010 at 3:59 pm

Ranker has a great list of the most over-used songs in movie trailers. I’d add “Bad to the Bone” and “Carmina Burana.” If you ever get stuck trying to identify a naggingly familiar song in a movie trailer, check Soundtrack.net, which has a terrific list of the 100 most frequently used music cues, where you can see how music associated with one popular movie is used to sell as many as 19 others.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Movie Blogs: Best of the 80’s and You Pick the Classics

Posted on August 12, 2010 at 8:41 am

On The 80’s Movie Project you can weigh in with your thoughts on the best, the worst, and the most outrageous from the decade that included “American Gigolo,” “Anaimalymics,” and “Every Which Way You Can.”
And Baltimore Examiner movie critic Tom Clocker, who is kind enough to comment here from time to time, has undertaken his own version of the “Julie & Julia” experiment. He’s going to watch 365 days of classic films based on suggestions from his readers, and blog about what he sees. Check out his blog and let him know what you think he should watch.

What’s a Gaffer and Who’s the Best Boy?

Posted on August 7, 2010 at 3:59 pm

Do you read the end credits when you watch movies? Ever wanted to know what the gaffer and best boy do? Mental Floss has a great diagram of a movie set with definitions of all of the different jobs.

Protest of MPAA Rating for New Holocaust Film

Posted on August 2, 2010 at 4:10 pm

“A Film Unfinished” is a new Holocaust documentary featuring never-before-shown footage from the Warsaw Ghetto. The MPAA has given it an “R” rating for “disturbing images of holocaust atrocities including graphic nudity.” This means that no one under 17 can see the film without a parent or guardian and restricts its availability to educational venues. Oscilloscope, which is distributing the film, has set the appeal with the MPAA for Thursday, August 5th. If you want to comment, get in touch with:
Joan Graves
MPAA Ratings Board
Los Angeles
15301 Ventura Blvd., Building E
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
(818) 995-6600 (main)
(818) 285-4403 (fax)
The film, which will be released August 18th in New York and August 20th in Los Angeles followed by a national rollout, documents an unfinished Nazi propaganda film shot in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. (The Warsaw Ghetto, part of the Third Reich’s Final Solution, was the largest and most notorious of the unlivable urban ghettos and a last transit point before deportation to the extermination camps.) Discovered in East German archives after World War II and labeled simply “Ghetto”, the footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, the later discovery of long-missing film reel complicated earlier readings of the footage and revealed many of the shots to be staged. A FILM UNFINISHED presents the raw footage in its entirety, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a staged dinner party) falsely showing “the good life” enjoyed by Jewish urbanites and probes deep into the making of a now-infamous Nazi propaganda film.
A FILM UNFINISHED had its US Premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival where it won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award, and has gone on to win the top award at Hot Docs Film Festival and the WGA Screenplay Award at AFI’s Silverdocs Film Festival.
Producer (and Beastie Boy) Adam Yauch says, “This is too important of a historical document to ban from classrooms. While there’s no doubt that Holocaust atrocities are displayed, if teachers feel their students are ready to understand what happened, it’s essential that young people are giving the opportunity to see this film. Why deny them the chance to learn about this critical part of our human history? I understand that the MPAA wants to protect children’s eyes from things that are too overwhelming, but they’ve really gone too far this time..”
Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust survivor says, “The further away we get from the years of Holocaust the more necessary it is that our current and future generations understand it. What a shame for today’s teenagers who study world history to be denied viewing A Film Unfinished and seeing first hand the Nazi treatment of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. It’s depiction of the lengths to which the Nazis would go to dehumanize Jews is an important teaching tool, not only for its historic content, but for its relevance to today’s world.”
As we lose those whose first-hand experience has been essential in bringing this story to the world, it is even more important to make use of the few recordings that can document what happened during the Holocaust to rebut the deniers and carry the lessons of history to future generations. It is absurd that the MPAA will allow “comic” and “action” violence in a PG-13 film, but not the sober portrayal of historical events.
Oscilloscope co-founder David Fenkel said, “This clearly needs to be rectified. The rating is inconsistent with cultural norms and the film does not use the footage in any exploitative way. The rating will tragically would hinder the exhibition of the film to those who most need to see the film: namely students.”