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TCM Film Festival

2009-11-19T03:17:58Z

First-ever TCM Classic Film Festival to Feature Newly Restored Versions of A Star is Born (1954) and Metropolis (1927), Plus an Anniversary Screening of Breathless (1960)

What a lovely idea. I only wish it were being held in Atlanta. You know, where TCM is based? Sigh.

Coal Country

2009-11-15T15:02:27Z

Tonight (Sunday), November 15th from 5:00-7:00pm.

Join State Representatives DuBose Porter, Mary Margaret Oliver, Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, Elly Dobbs, Kathy Ashe, and Pat Gardner as they host film screening of new movie, talk about Georgia's energy and economic future.

Meet Leaders and Neighbors in Decatur, at Push-Push Theater on Sunday, November 15, 2009, from 5:00-7:00pm to view the new film entitled Coal Country.

Enjoy a panel discussion to follow the film. Push Push Theater is located at 121 New Street in Decatur, GA 30030-4131. Parking can be found around back, or take MARTA to the Avondale Station, exit towards the South Parking lot, and walk .3 mile West on E. College Avenue. The theater will be on your left.

RSVP HERE: http://bit.ly/32AMET, Contact: (404) 607-1262 x233

Across the country this week thousands of Americans are gathering at more than 850 parties to watch the award-winning documentary, Coal Country. A stunning film that reveals the devastation of mountaintop removal coal mining to the forests, streams, and communities of Appalachia, this movie comes to Decatur for free on November 15th.

Note: This is a family-friendly screening & cookies will be on hand for the kids!
For more information about the film, visit www.sierraclub.org/coalcountry

Invictus

2009-11-02T00:08:16Z

Starts December 11th. Official Invictus movie site here. Notice the typeface? Oh yes, it's Gotham, aka Obama font.

]]> William Ernest Henley. 1849-1903

Invictus

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Decades apart but joined by...

2009-08-08T21:19:41Z

Budd Schulberg and John Hughes.

One was 95 and died of natural causes; the other was 59 and suffered a heart attack while walking in New York.

One was an Oscar winner who worked with the likes of Marlon Brando and Elia Kazan. The other was a social commentator who specialized in suburban high school settings.

What they had in common: both wrote uncommonly good female roles. Schulberg made Patricia O'Neal almost too savvy as one of Andy Griffith's handlers/romances in A Face in the Crowd. Eve Marie Saint was more traditionally ingenue-ish in On the Waterfront, but she was still allowed a brain. And won an Oscar.

]]> Hughes similarly thought that high school students could have hearts and minds whether male or female. Think of Molly Ringwald ("Pretty in Pink"), Mary Stuart Masterson ("Some Kind of Wonderful") and Ally Sheedy ("The Breakfast Club"). It seemed like no big deal then...in the '80s. But look around now and tell me what kind of female roles there are in, oh, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" or "The Ugly Truth" or, to at least pit teen against teen, the utterly distasteful "I Love You Beth Cooper."

Review: Revanche

2009-07-23T14:34:40Z

A nominee for best foreign language film at last winter's Academy Awards, the strangely eloquent Austrian film Revanche (translation: Revenge) is a tale of two couples whose paths cross in a tragically unexpected way.

Alex (Johannes Krisch), a security guard of sorts at a Viennese brothel, falls for one of the working girls, a Ukrainian prostitute named Tamara (Irina Potapenko). She falls back. The problem: the power-brokers who run the operation don't like the, er, staff to date.

]]> So Alex comes up with a scheme to free them both. He'll rob a bank and they'll ride off together into some sunset somewhere.

Robert (Andreas Lust) is a small-town cop who happens to get in the way, almost by
accident. Destiny comes full circle when Alex becomes involved with
Robert's unhappy wife, Susanne (Ursula Strauss).

Tidily directed by Gotz Spielmann, "Revanche" is a cynical contemplation of
the sometimes chaotic nature of fate. Hardly the "feel-good" film of
the summer, it nonetheless casts a potent spell of wary humanism that's
well worth checking out. (In German with subtitles)

Now playing at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema.

A trip to the moon

2009-07-19T15:02:40Z

Charlie Chaplin died Christmas Day.

So it makes an odd kind of sense that Walter Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America," would die during the 40th Anniversary weekend of the moon landing in 1969. After all, his was the voice that guided us through that epic-- though now, almost quaint -- adventure.

One of the earliest films ever made was the Melies brothers, "A Trip to the Moon," in which a rocket socked a pie-like Man in the Moon right in the eye.

]]>

If you're feeling truly looney over our moon program, your best bet would be For All Mankind, a newly-released DVD of a 1989 documentary about all things lunar, including interviews with the astronauts.

Or you could go looney the other way and rent "Capricorn One," about a faked space mission that lists among its stars a pre-trial O.J. Simpson.

Karl Malden

2009-07-02T22:24:00Z

The death of Karl Malden may not amount to a hill of beans....

Wait. wrong classic movie.

THE classic movie, with which Malden would forever be associated with throughout his long career was "A Streetcar named Desire," for which he won an Academy Award (for best supporting actor) for recreating the role of Mitch, Blanche's unsuitable gentleman suitor in the original Broadway production.

]]> Otherwise mostly known for his distinctively bulbous nose and role as Michael Douglas's partner in the TV series, "The Streets of San Francisco," Malden had the sort of rich and varied character-actor career that seems almost impossible today. His many movie credits range from "On the Waterfront" (another Oscar nomination) and "Baby Doll" (in which he was inappropriately hitched to the title character) to "Patton" (as Gen. Omar Bradley) and "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" (don't worry about it). The important thing is, he was stalwart and talented and managed to stay employed throughout a long and occasionally distinguished career, including a stint as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar people) from 1989-1993.

Gene Wilder

2009-07-01T14:14:46Z

I recently had the great honor to interview Gene Wilder. He was in Atlanta to visit his wife, Karen Webb's, grown up children who had moved South to work for Turner.

Wilder is an original---quite possibly the most unique comic actor of his time. He was pummeled by Zero Mostel in "The Producers," kidnapped by Warren Beatty in "Bonnie and Clyde," rode West (in Rabbinical whiskers) with Harrison For in "The Frisco Kid," played Donald Sutherland's mismatched twin in "Start the Revolution Without Me" (a great 4th of July choice even if it is about the French Revolution) and brought Peter Boyle to life in "Young Frankenstein.

]]>

A gentle man with a quiet (and decidedly quirky) sense of humor, Wilder is also a born story-teller. On of his favorites is how he agreed to play the title role in "Wily Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."

Wilder insisted he make his entrance hobbling on a cane. Then he seems to lose control of it, falls forward and executes a perfect somersault. "After that," he explained to the aghast fillmakers," No one will ever know if I'm telling the truth or not."

Now in his mid-'70s, Wilder has turned his attention to writing and has produced an exquisite pair of novels, almost Chekovian in their astutlely humourous observation of human nature. One is My French Whore, set during World War I; the other is The Woman Who Wouldn't, which takes place at a turn-of-the-century sanitarium where one of the other patients is...Anton Chekov.

Both read like screenplays for a Gene Wilder movie. Which is to say, they are very good reads.

Woody Allen thoughts

2009-06-21T16:14:01Z

While I was in a traffic jam yesterday, coming home from Maysville on I-85 (All Lanes Blocked....dreaded words), I happened to catch a replay of a recent interview with Woody Allen on NPR. He's doing press to plug his new movie, WHATEVER WORKS, which opens in Atlanta in early July. ]]> Evan Rachel Wood as the inevitable younger (much) woman.... THIS TIME a Southern beauty queen with more dimples than brains. Anyway, I have a soft spot for Allen since he's created more enduring works than failures...though the masterpieces, like, say ANNIE HALL or HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, are getting to be distant memories.

But listening to his interview, it struck me how time-warped he (and, sadly, his genius) is. The comments are what we could have heard 30 years ago, except for hems and hahs about his child bride/stepdaughter. There are artists who've committed far more heinous crimes than that of a horny old man needing his youth re-affirmed by a younger woman (especially a supposedly forbidden younger woman). But for some reason, this transgression has stuck to Allen like...add your own metaphor.

It made me sad---though not as sad as being stuck in traffic with All Lanes Closed. Perhaps it's wrong to demand our artists stay creative and, well, personally acceptable for as long as they live. John Huston pulled stuff Allen probably never dreamed of and we just shook our collective heads.

Maybe it's just that you, the artist, create your own bed (so to speak) and then we, your acolytes, force you to lie in it.

Fathers on film

2009-06-15T13:07:09Z

Mother's Day can get complicated. Movie Mommies run the gamut from a saintly Greer Garson in "Mrs. Miniver" to Faye Dunaway as a crackpot Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest." And let's not forget Tony Perkins' "mom" in "Psycho."

Father's Day is somehow simpler. Sure there are Monster Dads--Robert De Niro's bullying stepdad in "This Boy's Life." Jim Backus' Weakling Dad in "Rebel Without a Cause." Philandering Dads too numerous to mention. But here are five fine celluloid patriarchs:

]]> Gregory Peck in "To Kill a Mickingbird."

Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life."

Larry Fishburne in "Boyz n the Hood."

Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness."

Dustin Hoffman in "Kramer Vs. Kramer."

Check 'em out this Sunday with your own father or father-figure.

Donald Duck

2009-06-10T17:22:59Z

Lord love a duck.

Donald Duck turned 75 years old yesterday.

Geez, that makes me feel old.

He debuted on June 9, 1934, in "The Wise Little Hen," Walt Disney's adaptation of an old Aesop fable about a hen who wants help with planting and harvesting corn for the lean winter months to come. Donald, along with several other barnyard animals, comes up with an excuse. His first line, hardly immortal, was: "Who -- me? I got a belly ache!"

]]> The temper is there (so is the sailor suit), but the true character of Donald Duck became more memorably ill-tempered over the years, -- not only as a foil to Disney star-in-residence, Mickey Mouse, but as a star in his own right. Perhaps his greatest moment came as the lead in "Der Fuehrer's Face," an anti-Nazi cartoon released in 1943 which went on to win an Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short.

Ironically, when Clarence "Ducky" Nash, who was Donald's, well, spokesperson for over 50 years, first told his wife he'd landed a job as the voice of a duck, his wife replied, "That's great, but it probably won't last."

Nash, a modest man who passed away in the mid-'80s, later told interviewers, "I guess it lasted a heck of a lot longer than we thought."

Guess so.

The Tonys Go Hollywood (Again)

2009-06-08T12:56:01Z

As last night's Tony Awards reminded us, the Great White Way is still under the sway of the Silver Screen.

"Billy Elliot," a musical about a coal miner's son who wants to dance, won 10 Tony's, including the big prize, best musical. It's based on a 2000 movie of the same name that starred Jamie Bell (who now can be seen all grown up in "Defiance") as the gotta' dance kid.

The movie was directed by Stephen Daldry , who snagged an Oscar nomination for his work; he then snagged two more for "The Hours" and "The Reader."

However, he WON the Tony last night as did, in a unique turn of events, the three boys who share the title role.

The best play, "God of Carnage," wasn't based on a movie, but it's entire cast was made up of actors who are more known for their film work than their theatrical turns. Marcia Gay Harden, an Oscar winner for "Pollock," was named best actress. She had solid support from Hope Davis ("Infamous," "About Schmidt"), Jeff Daniels ("Terms of Endearment," "The Squid and the Whale") and James Gandolfini, who may be best know as the lead in TV's "The Sopranos," but will be seen on screen this Friday as the mayor of New York in "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3."

Add in a Tony for "Blithe Spirit's" Angela Lansbury and you're talking about a movie lineage that goes back to "National Velvet" in which she played Elizabeth Taylor's older sister.

Related video: Bret Michaels of the band Poison gets smashed on stage at Tonys.

David Carradine

2009-06-05T19:14:26Z

The death of David Carradine comes as a special shock to those of us of a certain generation.

He was, in many ways, the ultimate hippie star. though he came from Hollywood Old School (his father was the celebrated character actor, John Carradine), The younger Carradine seemed made of dope smoke and bare feet and Zen philosophy. A lot of this, of course, was due to his immense success in the early '70s TV series, "Kung Fu" in which he played a half-Asian, half-Caucasian man who wandered the Old West beating gun-bearing bad guys to a pulp with his feet and hands. (and then there were those flash-backs to when he was a mere Grasshopper, learning from his marital arts master).

But Carradine was more than "Kung-Fu." He played Woody Guthrie in "Bound For Glory" and one of the Younger brothers in Walter Hill's brother act Western, "The Long Riders." And, the legend always had it, he actually made love with Barbara Hershey (then calling herself Barbara Seagull) in a scene from "Boxcar Bertha." It just doesn't come any more anti-Establishment than that.

Carradine faded into a string of B-movies that were beneath him, then managed a minor comeback as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's pair of "Kill Bill" movies.

That he should have died, as has been reported, by his own hand (possibly), alone (probably) in a hotel room in Bangkok (certainly) is a sad coda for a once-promising career and a truly unique actor.

Related link: David Carradine death photos published in Thailand to family's horror.