Posted by std007
Thursday, May 17, 2012
For The Love of Film is an annual blogathon dedicated to raising awareness of film preservation, and to raising money for the cause of restoring old films lost to time, hosted by The Self-Styled Siren, Ferdy on Films, and This Island Rod. This year, the movie up for preservation is The White Shadow (1923), AKA "White Shadows", in which a young Alfred Hitchcock worked as an assistant director. For more information about the film, click here. Proceeds will go to the National Film Preservation Foundation, who will stream the surviving parts of this film on their website. To donate, click here. The blogathon's theme is things associated with Hitchcock, The White Shadow, or film preservation in general. For a complete list of participating blogs, click on the links to all three blogs.
4.20.12
Before Alfred Hitchcock came to America and Hollywood, he had a thriving career in the British film industry. He started out in the London branch of what would become Paramount as a title card designer, after a brief stint writing short stories for a local magazine. From there, he moved on to Islington Studios in 1920, working in the same capacity. He learned the ropes of filmmaking, eventually becoming an assistant director. Influenced by German directors F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, his directorial debut was Number 13 in 1923, which suffered financial difficulty and went unfinished. His first successful film was The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog in 1927, one in which he began to develop his personal tropes that would reverberate throughout his career, such as the "wrong man" premise. His first sound picture was 1929's Blackmail, one of the first British talkies. Among his subsequent British films included the original The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The Lady Vanishes (1938) and 1935's The 39 Steps.
Steps is one of the first Hitchcock films to use what he called a "Macguffin," an object meant to spur the plot along but is ultimately unimportant. The story he always told to explain what it is involves two men on a train. One explains that he's carrying a Macguffin, a device used to catch lions in the Scottish highlands. When informed that there are no lions there, he replies, "Well then, that's no Macguffin." The Macguffin in Steps is a pilfered set of design plans.
There are other familiar Hitchcock tropes in the movie: man get accused of a crime he didn't commit and is forced to go on the run, relying only on his wits; unlikely partnership with blonde chick added at no extra cost. There's quite a bit of humor in this one, though I'd stop short of calling it a comedy. Some of the situations Robert Donat finds himself in - for instance, when he's mistaken for a politician and has to give a speech to a room full of people - are situations I could imagine happening to, say, Cary Grant in a Hitchcock film. Though Hitchcock is revered as the "master of suspense," he also had a lively sense of humor. Watching a movie like Steps, it seems as if Hitchcock knew the improbability of the dilemma he has put his protagonist in and keeps the story light as a consequence.
Steps has some beautiful location shots of the Scottish countryside. In black and white, one doesn't quite get the full majesty of it all, especially with the overcast skies and fog, but it's still thrilling to see Donat running through the rocky terrain with the cops on his tail.
I saw Steps as part of a series at Manhattan's Rubin Museum of Art, in which the theme was the use of memory in movies. Steps begins and ends with a character who entertains audiences with his ability to memorize and recall random facts at will. The way he figures into the plot is a clever one, and indeed, it hinges on Donat's character's memory: the way one bit of information, seemingly unconnected to anything, can actually be an unconscious link in a chain of memory.
This was my first time at the Rubin, a place recommended to me by my new friend Sylvia, whom I met at another one of Vija's fabulous parties (it's amazing how many people I've met this way). The theater at the Rubin is small, but cozy: low ceiling in the back opening up at the front, soft lighting, comfortable chairs, and candle-lit tables too. The host was this British dude who introduced author James Gleick, who spoke about Steps in the context of how memory figures in the plot.
The set-up for admission was a bit unusual. The Rubin stays open later than usual on Friday nights to show movies, and when I got there I was directed to the lounge, where I had to buy something from the over-priced bar so I could get a ticket to the show. I immediately looked for whatever was the cheapest thing on the menu, but they were serving Indian and Nepalese food, in keeping with a current exhibit, and I'm not that familiar with either, especially the latter. I might've been willing to try some, except it was ten minutes to showtime and I didn't want to have to wait for however long it took to make. Then the guy next to me at the bar said all I needed to do was get a beer and that would be enough to get in, so I did. I bought an $8 Heineken, which is about the price of a matinee movie ticket in Queens or Brooklyn, so it worked out somehow, I guess.
Posted by std007
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
seen on TV @ TCM
5.11.12
Wow, where to begin with this one?
Let's start with the simple stuff. Folks, most people who choose to become a professional cartoonist do it for love, not money. It is not a career that puts its practitioners on Easy Street, and never has been, at least not without ancillary merchandise. There's a scene in How to Murder Your Wife where Jack Lemmon's character Stanley (Stan Lee?) talks to either his editor or his lawyer (I forget which) about merchandising, but this is long after the movie has established him - from the opening scene, no less! - as a jet-setting celebrity with a Manhattan town house, fancy clothes, and a friggin' butler. All of that was the result of his work on the strip alone? Are you kidding me?The hell of it is, Stanley didn't even need to be ridiculously wealthy for this story to work. Charles (as in Schulz?), the butler, could've easily been a next-door neighbor, or a brother. Stanley could still be a successful cartoonist while living in a comfortable apartment or even a small house in the suburbs and it wouldn't affect the story's premise. To suggest that a cartoonist in 1965 could be as affluent as Stanley without the benefit of ancillary merchandise really strains credulity - but let's accept it for now.
Stanley's commitment to fidelity in his "Bash Brannigan" strip is certainly commendable. I'm not certain how common it was for cartoonists in the mid 60s to use photo reference in their work, much less to shoot their own, costumes, props and all, but as someone who has studied commercial illustration, I can vouch for its importance. It's not cheating if you use it the right way; as a supplement, an aid, not as a substitute. (Here's Exhibit A on how not to use it.) Stanley takes his own pictures, so charges of plagiarism wouldn't apply in any case.Stanley marries off Bash after he himself gets married (accidentally), and the strip radically changes from an action-adventure piece into a semi-autobiographical domestic comedy. This sort of change isn't too far removed from what happened to Blondie (which gets briefly name-checked). Long before she became the prototypical suburban housewife in a domestic family strip, Blondie was a single 20's-style flapper girl, and Dagwood was a rich kid whose parents gave him crap for dating a "lower-class" girl. She used to be the funny one and Dagwood the straight man. After they got married, the strip changed into something closer to the version we know today.
As an artist, you have to be careful how much of your life you put into your work. I've done comics that were either completely or partially autobiographical, and once it came back to bite me - hard. With this blog, I make conscious choices about what to reveal about myself and what not to reveal. It's a fine line to walk.
I don't think Bash Brannigan started out as an avatar for Stanley, but he eventually becomes one. When I created City Mouse while living in Columbus, the reverse happened: he started out as a cartoon version of myself and evolved slightly apart from that into something seperate. He was still grounded in my experiences, however, my perspective as a big-city East Coast dude transplanted into a smaller, Midwestern town. And now, of course, he's crossed over into the film world as a result of this blog. He has a flexibility that Bash seems to have as well, and like City Mouse, Bash's experiences reflect that of his creator. I'm perhaps more willing than Stanley to let my character have more of his own life.
The remarkable thing about this shift in the Bash strip is that not only does it work, it's purely the result of the artist's whim, not subject to audience demands or editorial demands for anything different (e.g., giving a popular supporting character a bigger role). Editorially, Stanley has a great deal of creative control. To exercise such a change without much resistance from his syndicate is unusual. I mean, if you look at the older strips in your newspaper, you'll see that they tend to rely on predictable patterns, and have for years. It takes an outside perspective, like the "Garfield Minus Garfield" meme, to shake things up. But Stanley initiated the shake-up himself and it worked.
Also, it's unclear how much lead time Stanley provides himself. Usually, strips are made weeks in advance so that the artist has a "cushion" that he can lean on if he gets sick and can't draw for whatever reason. Stanley's Bash strips seem to go to print within days of their creation, which would make him a drawing machine - and that's in addition to shooting his own photo reference AND developing it himself AND still finding time to go to bachelor parties and meeting girls who pop out of cakes!
Now about that marriage. The movie goes out of its way to sell us the idea that marriage in general is not all it's cracked up to be, framing this notion within the context of the eternal battle of the sexes. Well, if marriage ain't so great, then why do we as a society place so much value on it? Can it really be as simple as women hoodwinking men into it? God knows we men go to absurd lengths to impress women, but Murder would have you believe that we men value our freedom even more. Nothing in the film addresses this paradox head-on; it prefers to dance around the issue, or side-step it altogether. We never see Stanley struggle with his feelings for the Italian girl he marries. We never see him doubt his commitment to the bachelor life, which he upholds so stridently.
The misogynism gets packed on in such big heaping doses (funny doses, it must be said) that it's easy to write it all off as satire, a wild exaggeration of reality. But look at this: it's a recent article from the humor site Cracked called "5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women." Does this movie still seem like an exaggeration?
The Italian girl is never named. She conveniently starts off speaking only Italian. We never get inside her head. She leaves Stanley after she thinks he wants to kill her (he only did a storyline in the strip about it), but then mysteriously returns to him for no stated reason. And the one assertive female character gets publicly humiliated by her own husband in the film's climax. Non-PC humor is fine, but this is really pushing it!
There's a point in the climax where I thought Stanley would tear down the concept of marriage altogether and say that it's not and should not be for everyone, but it never happens. Too bad, because it's a message worth saying. Still, the question remains: is marriage worth all the trouble we go through for it?
There's an acquaintance of mine who's about to get married, but if her Twitter feed is any indication, the preparation for the wedding itself seems to be driving her nuts. I wonder: if she could choose to live with her man (whom she absolutely loves and adores) forever, without going through the motions of the marriage ceremony and the wedding and all that, would she? I suspect I already know the answer.
I think about the gay civil rights movement and the struggle for marriage equality (which President Obama has proudly shown his support for). There are legal benefits that come from marriage that are a vital part of this fight, but more than that, gays want the right to marry because they see that straight society places a high value on it and it's one that they're being systematically denied due to discrimination - and that makes them feel like second-class citizens. Again, we ascribed marriage with such a value, yet if Murder is any indication, it's almost as if we don't really believe in it ourselves.
And the movie doesn't even have the courage of its own convictions. In the end, Stanley gives in to married life right after making a big public speech denouncing it. I'd rather he remained unrepentant in his attitude than cop out so meekly, him and Charles both. (I looked for some sign of Ho Yay between the two of them - it would explain SOOOOO much - but didn't quite find any.) What would Will Ferrell or Zack Galifianakis do with this material, I wonder?
Posted by std007
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Roaring Twentiesseen on TV @ TCM5.7.12
I've never thought of the drinking of alcohol as a vice. I remember my father letting me have a sip of his beer as a kid, every once in awhile. I thought it made me feel grown-up. (I think he drank Michelob, but I don't recall for sure.) My beer of choice is Heineken (sorry, Frank Booth), but I usually only drink on special occasions. I'm not a prude, I'm just not that into beer, which also means I'm not a regular bar-goer. Hand me a beer, though, I won't turn it down (especially after spending twenty hours on a train).
Same goes for wine and other spirits. When I traveled to Barcelona for a summer, I was only 21 and still learning about the rest of the world, so it took me a bit by surprise when I saw how commonly people over there drink wine. Either my first or my second night there, I tried some of the local vino. I can't say with any authority whether it was good or not because I was unused to the taste of wine in general. Suffice it to say it wasn't to my liking. I stuck to Coke and bottled water for the remainder of the vacation. And of course, I've had champagne on New Year's Eve, but that tastes even weirder.
I'm certain I've never been falling down drunk - and no, it's not a matter of "if I have been, I wouldn't remember," either. It takes longer for someone as big and tall as I am to get drunk. I have a few friends who are recovering alcoholics. Once, I was at a comics convention and I was crashing with one of those friends. We had come from a party in the hotel and were walking across the parking lot to her car. I was finishing off a beer. As we got into her car, she said to me, "Please don't drink that in my place," and I was quickly reminded that she was, indeed, still clean and sober. I hurriedly drained the bottle dry and stuffed it into my backpack, out of sight.
In thinking about Prohibition, I can't help but be reminded of the so-called "war" on drugs. Without getting into a big political debate, let me just say that curtailing vice through legislation seems to create more problems than it solves. I think the most you can do is make it harder for people to engage in, as opposed to eliminating it altogether. Here in New York, laws have recently been passed banning smoking not only from bars, but also from parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas. I still see people lighting up, though - and cigarettes haven't gotten any cheaper either.
The Roaring Twenties plays kinda like a documentary in that the narrative is sprinkled with voice-over montages describing what Prohibition was like in the 1920s, how people profited from the liquor bootlegging business, and how the law combated it. I'm sure this movie was meant to be as much cautionary tale as entertainment; after all, Prohibition was still within recent memory. It's unsubtle, yet interesting to watch, and doesn't detract much from the main narrative.
Jimmy Cagney's in fine form, as always. I really felt for his character as he goes through his rise and fall. It was odd at first to see Humphrey Bogart in a supporting role, but there's no mistaking his presence - and he shares some great scenes with Cagney.
Posted by std007
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Bells Are Ringingseen on TV @ TCM5.3.12
I can't believe I'v gone over a year and a half on this blog without talking about a Judy Holliday movie. I've already expressed my undying love for her in this space, but that's not the same as talking about one of her films. Let's rectify that - but first, I must take a moment to reaffirm my love for this adorable woman.
My love for Judy is different than my love for, say, Barbara Stanwyck. Stany was a different kind of actress, and projected a different kind of demeanor: brassy and colorful, like Judy, but also tough as nails, with a sensuality that she could use to make men do anything. Stany had fire to her - she'd keep you warm, but she'd burn you if you weren't careful.
Judy seemed like the stereotypical dumb blonde that could be taken advantage of, at least on the surface, but her characters had a sincerity, a vulnerability, an earnestness that couldn't be hidden. Her characters never knew the meaning of duplicity; it wasn't in their natures, and something about the way she played them makes me believe they weren't far removed from the real her (though of course, I have no way of knowing for certain, but still).
Judy, like Stany to a degree, didn't resemble your typical movie star. She didn't look like Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy or Betty Grable, nor did she talk like Irene Dunne or Audrey Hepburn. And she was a little bit curvier by comparison, though in a very pleasing way, the way a woman should look (not that I'd kick Betty Grable out of my bed, mind you). But she had comic timing and skill like few actresses before or since. She was goofy and playful. When she had to be nervous and self-conscious, she elicited tenderness as well as laughs. Unlike Marilyn Monroe, who used coyness as a kind of seduction, Judy rarely came across as coy. She didn't need to.
You never felt like she was capital-A Acting. John Wayne always asserted that he never acted, he reacted, and I believe it was very much the same with Judy. I think she knew her strengths as an actress well (she was on Broadway before she came to Hollywood, after all) and played to them, and no matter how silly the situations she'd get into, when you watch her, you're willing to go along with it because of her openness. She became a star around the same time that Lucille Ball was dominating television, and one can't help but wonder if they influenced each other in any way.
Also, as we can see in Bells Are Ringing, she had a lovely singing voice. Watching this, I was reminded of another gifted comedienne who left us far, far too soon: Madeline Kahn. Judy gets to do accents and impressions in this, though one gets the sense that she's hamming more than anything else, whereas Madeline was really good at adopting funny accents.
Still, Judy gets to be glamorous as well as sassy, and in color (that red dress...), and I was smiling contentedly throughout the whole thing. Dean Martin was just the right singing partner for her, especially in the film's hit "Just In Time," a love song for the ages. I liked most of the songs in this as well.
If you've never seen any of Judy's films, this is a good place to start. She's one of those old-time stars that few people remember today, but there's no doubt in my mind that she still shines as brightly as she ever did.
Posted by std007
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Pride of the Yankeesseen on TV @ TCM4.18.12
Did you know there's a Y-nk--s fragrance? I've been seeing subway ads for it lately and every time I do, I wonder who thought it was a good idea and why would anyone choose to wear it? I imagine it smelling of sweatsocks, tobacco, and whatever else the inside of a professional baseball player's locker smells like. Call it Eau de Jock Strap.
There was a time, still within living memory, when the Team From the Bronx was the only team in town. And while I'm grateful that this period ended, since the Mets came along in 1962 to fill the void left by the Dodgers and Giants (50th anniversary this year, by the way - just sayin'), sometimes I wonder what it would've been like growing up with only one ball club. Indeed, when it comes to sports, New York is greedy; we have to have two of everything (the Nets will return to this side of the Hudson this fall in a new arena in Brooklyn). I never questioned the need for this until I spent a year in Columbus, a smaller town where everyone - and I do mean everyone - gets behind one team: the football Buckeyes of Ohio State U.
It was a very different feeling. Having a single team in a single sport unites the town in a manner unlike here in New York, where there are always gonna be divided loyalties. Let's face it, anyone who says they like both the Team From the Bronx and the Mets equally are not real New York baseball fans. (I suppose a similar argument could be made for the Giants/Jets and Rangers/Islanders, but I wouldn't know for sure.)
More than any other sport, baseball has been a hugely integral part of New York's identity, and yes, the Team From the Bronx is largely responsible for that, but the Mets, Giants and Dodgers were and are also part of that identity too (I've touched before on what makes the Mets distinct from their crosstown rivals). But what if New York remained a one-team town after the Giants and Dodgers left?
Would it have been so bad to eventually get behind one team, the team with more championships than anyone else? Sure, it would've been wrenching at first to be forced to shift loyalties after rooting against them for so long - I know how it would make me feel - but once the reality set in, I imagine that eventually I'd have to concede that any team is better than no team. (Actually, now that we've got minor league teams within the five boroughs as well, that'd be a compromise I could live with...)
These days, however, sports teams change cities at an alarming rate, as greedy owners stick up their host cities for money to build ultra-modern arenas. The Team From the Bronx held up Y-nk-- Stadium for ransom too, demanding the capital necessary to make a new ballpark, and because no one can conceive New York without the Team From the Bronx, they got it, though not without a drawback or two (for instance, parking space that no one uses).
It's pointless to speculate on what a one-team-per-sport New York would be like, I know, but with the imminent return of the Nets this fall, it's been on my mind a bit lately, and I've wanted to get it off my chest.
So: about that Lou Gehrig biopic from the 40s. You know the one. I used to see this on TV every so often around the start of baseball season, and of course, because I knew my baseball history, I knew who Gehrig was. Watching it the other day, I was gratified that I now know who Teresa Wright, Walter Brennan and Dan Duryea were in addition to, of course, Gary Cooper, and could better appreciate their performances as well (especially Brennan).
Still, the movie doesn't hold up as well for me anymore. For instance, there are places where the action stops dead (why did we need to see that dance number?). The narrative is not as dramatic as it could be. The drama should come from Gehrig's slow realization that he can't perform as well as he used to because of his neurological condition, but in my opinion this gets the short shrift because the movie is so eager to show you the whole of Gehrig's life, which, prior to his illness, is less dramatic.
The worst part, though, is how they can't even be bothered to explicitly tell you why Gehrig can't play ball anymore, never naming amyotrophic lateral sclerosis even once, which I find a little offensive, actually. It minimizes the disease and keeps it at a safe distance for no good reason and makes it less real, and by so doing cheapens Gehrig's life a little bit. I realize a lot of people love this movie, but that's just how I see it.
Posted by std007
Thursday, April 12, 2012
The Searchersseen on TV @ TCM4.10.12Back in the 90s, there was a popular comic book series called Preacher, which Hollywood has been trying to turn into a movie for awhile now, without success. The plot is... rather complicated. What's relevant here, though, is that Jesse, the main character, is a huge John Wayne fan; has been since he was a child. Periodically, throughout the story, what appears to be Wayne's ghost appears to Jesse to offer advice and inspiration when he needs it, a relationship not unlike that of Clarence and Elvis Presley in True Romance. It could be a ghost, but it could also be the protagonist's imagination. As in that movie, we never quite see Wayne's face; it's always in shadow, but there's never any question that it's him. Wayne in Preacher represents a certain idea of America in general and American manliness in particular (which is ironic, since it was written by an Irishman). Jesse has always tried to live his life according to the principles represented by Wayne in his movies, handed down through Jesse's father, but over the course of the story, Jesse learns how to grow beyond those basic, black-and-white, might-makes-right ideals in order to be with the woman he loves. In the story's context, it's not that they're inherently wrong. They're simply not enough.
Some have lamented that the male movie stars of the 21st century lack a certain ruggedness found in their forebears, and to a certain extent, it's hard to argue that. Shia LaBeouf or Taylor Kitsch can't hold a candle to the Duke and I think it's safe to say that they never will. Still, there ought to be some sort of middle ground, where Wayne's machismo is wedded to a more modern sensitivity. George Clooney probably comes closest to embodying that middle ground, though he's more Cary Grant than John Wayne.On screen, Wayne was like a force of nature. His physical size was a factor, naturally, but it was also his bearing, the way he interacted with the rest of his cast, the way his most memorable characters lived by their own code - their own sense of right and wrong - that was evocative of less complex times. And I suspect that's why he remains appealing to those who believe life would be a lot simpler if it were more like a John Wayne movie (in spirit, I would hope, not in fact).
But then there's The Searchers, a movie with all the grandeur and scope of Wayne's greatest films, but one in which Wayne's character Ethan is problematic, to say the least. There's no delicate way to put it - Ethan is straight-up racist. The first time he meets Jeffrey Hunter's character, he calls him a half-breed. He spends all these years looking for his young niece, who was kidnapped by Indians, and when he finds her, he's ready to shoot her because she's been assimilated into their culture. What the hell is that about?
Perhaps it's about the reality behind the legends of the Wild West: that if you were anything other than a white male, you had it a hell of a lot rougher. That's not something people usually choose to dwell on, but it's impossible to avoid when looking at The Searchers today. The movie remains compelling to watch, though, partly because of all those breathtaking Monument Valley landscapes, and partly because of Wayne himself. One gets the impression that Ethan knows that the things he's seen and done sets himself apart from everyone else, an idea expressed in the famous final shot of Ethan, having returned his niece to their family, standing on the threshold of the frontier house, but not quite able to cross it. He loves her and goes to great extremes to rescue her, but he hates what she has become and won't be part of it. Not exactly a black-and-white, might-makes-right situation, and yet Wayne fits into it well.
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