Posted on March 15, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Today is March 15, the day Julius Caesar was famously told to beware. Here is a scene from the Joseph Mankiewicz movie, starring Marlon Brando, James Mason, Sir John Gielgud, and Louis Calhern.
Posted on February 12, 2013 at 8:00 am
Celebrate the birthday of our 16th President with some of the classic movies about his life. Reportedly, he has been portrayed more on screen than any other real-life character.
Coming soon to theaters: Saving Lincoln.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-J3LhG46ZYStill in theaters, you can see the Oscar-nominated Steven Spielberg epic, based on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
And on the National Geographic Channel, based on Bill O’Reilly’s book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxiu2JtnZBwOn DVD:
Young Mr. Lincoln
Abe Lincoln in Illinois
Gore Vidal’s Lincoln
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxrbIcXBYyY
Sandburg’s Lincoln
Posted on December 24, 2012 at 6:00 pm
Fair warning: I seem to be impervious to the appeal of “Les Misérables.” I was not a fan of the stage show or the songs, but I understand that it is the most popular musical of all time, and I approached this movie version with an open mind. My take is that it will make the fans happy, but I am still unpersuaded.
The musical is based on Victor Hugo’s vast novel about Jean Valjean (a magnificent Hugh Jackman), who served 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family and spends the rest of his life trying to do good and to avoid the relentless pursuit of Police Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), who is trying to put him back in prison for violating his parole.
When Valjean is first set free, he is bitter and angry. He repays the kindness of a priest who tries to help him by stealing valuable silver treasures from the church. Immediately captured, he is returned to the priest (played by Colm Wilkinson, the foremost Valjean in the stage version). But the priest insists that the items were gifts, and with the police watching, he encourages Valjean to take more. Valjean is transformed by this compassion and generosity, and he vows to be as good, loving, and devoted to helping others as the man who cared for him.
Years later, Valjean, under another name, is prosperous and public-spirited. He owns a factory and he is mayor of his town. Fantine (a heart-breaking Anne Hathaway) works in his factory to support a daughter she boards with an innkeeper and his wife. She loses her job because she refuses to sleep with a foreman and is forced into prostitution. Valjean is horrified and feels responsible. As she lies dying, he promises to care for her daughter, Cosette.
Valjean rescues Cosette from the corrupt innkeeper (Sasha Baron Cohen) and his wife (Helena Bonham-Carter). But he has attracted the attention of Javert, and so he and Cosette must hide. Ten years later, with Paris in the upheaval of a revolution, an idealistic young man named Marius (“My Week with Marilyn’s” Eddie Redmayne) sees Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and instantly falls in love with her. In the midst of uprisings and violent reprisals, Valjean tries to keep his promise to Fantine and keep Cosette safe and happy.
Production designer Eve Stewart has done a masterful job, making the setting as vibrant and as essential to the story-telling as any of the characters. Director Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”) made a critical contribution by having the actors sing their parts while they were filming, instead of pre-recording them to be played back when the movie was being shot. Since the movie is “sung-through” (all dialogue is sung rather than alternating speaking and singing), this gives the music a welcome organic quality and immediacy. Hathaway’s character is on screen for only a brief time, but her big number, the “I Dreamed a Dream” song memorably sung by Susan Boyle, is wrenching. Hooper keeps the camera on her beautiful face, like the “Nothing Compares 2 U” Sinead O’Connor video, the better to feel her anguish, and it is a stunning moment. Elsewhere, he over-does the artsy angles and sometimes assumes too much familiarity with the storyline. Crowe’s voice is not up to the task and Seyfried’s is stretched beyond its capacity. Newcomer to film Samantha Barks (from the London cast) as Eponine, the daughter of the innkeepers who also loves Marius, sings like an angel and lights up the screen.
It’s a long slog at nearly three hours, for a non-Miz-head. But I came away with more understanding of those who are.
Parents should know that this is an epic story of struggle against oppression with disturbing and graphic abuse of prisoners and others, many characters injured and killed, sad deaths (including death of a child), and a woman accused of sexual misconduct and forced into prostitution.
Family discussion: How does the priest change Jean Valjean’s notion of what he should do? Why was Javert so conflicted? Why were the rebels willing to risk their lives?
If you like this, try: the PBS concert specials saluting the 10th and 25th anniversaries of the musical and the non-musical film versions
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 6:00 pm
Her curiosity overcoming her shyness, a girl with big eyes and a gamine haircut (Erica Linz) walks through the gate for the “Circus Marvelous.” She sees “The Aerialist” (Igor Zaripov), first smiling a welcome as he helps install the tent, then on a flier given to her by a clown, and then high above, performing with breathtaking ease and grace. Suddenly he falls, hitting the sandy ground below, which collapses beneath him like quicksand. The girl goes after him through an enchanted world of fantasy, splendor and feats of artistry, acrobatics, dance, music, and very firm, lithe bodies jumping, swirling, twisting, and bending, all in very tight costumes. Plus there is an adorable tricycle powered only by a pair of small yellow galoshes, and a man on fire reading a newspaper. He is not at all flustered when the flames creep up his body and onto his hat. The fire is almost a dance partner.
Cirque du Soleil is an international phenomenon with shows on every continent but Antarctica. Its founding principle is the immediacy and drama of live performance, the exact opposite of a movie. Anything that can be imagined can be put on film; its very appearance of truth makes us marvel at the technology for fooling us so effectively. We value Cirque for its old-school reality. When we sit in the tent, we see performances in real time, with real peril, never to be seen exactly the same way again. Producer James Cameron (“Avatar”) and director Andrew Adamson (“Shrek”) understand that they cannot replicate that experience and instead give us the chance to marvel by taking us up close and inside the action with immersive 3D. The seamlessness and grace of the acrobatics adds to the dreamy quality. In real life, we expect a sense of exertion and anxiety to underscore the sense of risk. In the movie, the balletic movement adds to the fantasy that we are in a frictionless world unlimited by the laws of physics.
The girl and the aerialist wander, fall, fly, and are chased through dreamlike — and occasionally nightmarish — scenes from seven of Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas shows: O, KÀ, Mystère, Viva ELVIS, CHRIS ANGEL Believe, Zumanity, and in one of the film’s highlights, the Beatles tribute show, LOVE. An almost mythic inclusion of the four classical elements: fire, water, earth, and air, provide the settings for movement that flows seamlessly between dance, athletics, and stunts that do more than defy the laws of gravity; they transcend them. In one stunning sequence, an enormous board studded with pins is tilted, distorting our perspective so that the performers swing as though they are weightless.
The costumes and make-up are dazzling, witty, and wildly inventive. In one scene, a pair of girls are connected by a single Dr. Seuess-style hairdo. In another, humans shaped like crustaceans skitter across the stage. Many of the trippy visuals are accompanied by the kind of music they play in spas to relax people getting facials, but things pick up with an Elvis song and a medley of Beatles classics, including “Octopus’ Garden,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” that unmistakeable first chord from “Hard Day’s Night,” and a resounding “All You Need is Love.”
Zaripov has a striking purity when he performs. It is beyond ease; it is serenity. There is no sign of stress or exertion, even when he seems to be holding himself parallel to the ground with just one hand on a rope. He juggles a giant cube as though he is balancing a prima ballerina. And when Linz finally catches up, their exquisite aerial ballet is one of the most eloquently romantic moments on screen this year.
Parents should know that there are some mildly scary moments including a snake and a kidnapping.
Family discussion: How is Cirque du Soleil different from traditional circuses? Which of the settings was your favorite and why?
If you like this, try: See Cirque du Soleil in person or watch the dance videos by LXD online
Posted on July 5, 2012 at 6:00 pm
A prize-winner at Cannes and Sundance, this near post-apocalyptic story of a father and daughter in a condemned part of Southern Louisiana is a stunningly assured debut by first-time feature director and co-writer Benh Zeitlen and extraordinary performances by a cast of non-professionals.
Six-year-old Hushpuppy (the mesmerizing Quvenzhané Wallis) and her father Wink (Dwight Henry, who owns a bakery in New Orleans) live in homes made from trash in a fictional community called The Bathtub. They do not have electricity, running water, or telephones, but Hushpuppy is happy and feels lucky to be there.
Zeitlen, the 29-year-old son of folklorists, makes this story exquisitely lyrical. It is poetic in tone and epic in scope. Seeing through Hushpuppy’s eyes makes it feel like a fairy tale because of the freshness of her conception of what is real and what is fantasy, what is strange and what is ordinary, what is scary and what is comfortable. Like Margaret O’Brien in the beginning of “Meet Me in St. Louis,” she introduces us to the community she loves. Like Alice, she brings us into a strange and enchanted world.
‘The Bathtub has more holidays than the whole rest of the world,” she tells us; while ordinary people in other places only have one or two holidays, they celebrate all the time. She is a part of a fiercely devoted community. We hear her repeat what she has been told and we see the contrast between what she is telling us and what we are able to understand. Her father’s hospital gown and the precariousness of their shelter signify nothing special to her, but we can tell it means that her father is very sick and the next big storm will flood The Bathtub. What we see as peril and deprivation, she sees as a place of myth and plenty. And she sees it as her home. For her, it is “the prettiest place on earth.” That is what she has been told and that is how it seems.
Later, when they are taken to a shelter, we see that through her eyes, too. For Hushpuppy, it is not a place of rescue and protection but a place of strangeness and sterility. Buses parked outside, ready to take displaced people from the exotic but familiar world of The Bathtub to strange-sounding far-away places like Des Moines seem institutional and predatory. Later, another possible rescue takes her to a part of the “civilized” world that again, we understand when Hushpuppy does not see how very dangerous it is.
Hushpuppy’s teacher points to the tattoo on her thigh to illustrate her stories about the aurochs, boar-like prehistoric beasts. The fable-like timelessness of the setting makes the era of the aurochs feel very close. When they appear, in a scene of breathtaking synthesis of myth and metaphor, Hushpuppy’s spirit seems to expand to fill all of the courage, resolve, and vision of the human spirit.
Zeitlen achieves a naturalness and state of wonder that is breathtaking to experience and one of the most impressive films of the year.
