Hill Street and Other Blues

I’ve been watching Hill Street Blues on DVDs. It’s a favorite show of mine that began in 1981 and ran for seven seasons. I went to the iTunes store to buy a copy of the Hill Street Blues theme.

On the way, I discovered a series of podcasts from the Center for Creative Voices in Media, including this half-hour interview from 2006  with Stephen Bochco.  Bochco is the award-winning creator of Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blues, LA Law, Doogie Howser, Hooperman, and many other television dramas.

If you’re a fan of any of these shows, you’ll want to hear this audio podcast with interviewer Jonathan Rintels asking the questions, and Steven Bochco answering them.  You can listen to it on iTunes, as well as the web site; on iTunes, it’s at: Podcasts > TV & Film > Jonathan Rintels.

Bochco has given us some of the finest television there is.  He is worth listening to, articulate, intelligent, and with years of experience dealing with the realities of getting fine television actually broadcast.  He has no axes to grind; he tells it as he finds it.

I think you will want to listen to this glimpse into the world of network television.  Bochco is an excellent guide.

Glee’s Trip: Comeback Journey

I don’t have to tell you to watch the show Glee, do I?  You’re already watching it, right?  And have been for some time?

If not, better start soon. Lots of really fine stuff has already been on, and it’s good enough that you won’t want to miss any of it. In addition to the weekly broadcast times, the first season has been on DVDs for some time (Netflix fans take note), and I’ve just watched the 7th episode of Season 2 on Hulu.

For those holdouts who have decided there can’t be anything for them in a show about a high school glee club, think again. Boring plot?  No way.  Boring songs? Are you kidding?  Not to mention, this is the best dramedy writing, production and performances since Sports Night graced the airwaves, for me the most undeservedly under-watched and overlooked show on television. And in Glee, when rehearsing or presenting glee club numbers, the performers also sing and dance, and do both exceedingly well.

The choice of music is top-notch, too.  In the pilot episode, the song Don’t Stop Believin’, written and originally recorded by Journey, became the episode’s focus song, with a rendition of it near the end of the episode that absolutely wows you.

Not only has Don’t Stop Believin’ become the #1 download on iTunes — but, hands across the sea, the Glee cast version became #6 on the top pop charts in Britain, with the Journey version at #7, as of a January 2010 BBC report after Glee began showing on British TV.

And Journey, the band, has had a resurgence in Britain with the recent repopularization of the song in Glee.

Anything still keeping you from watching?  Whatever it is, get over it.  In this era of TiVo and all kinds of recording devices, web sites devoted to reruns, and DVD sets of shows all available to viewers, there are fewer and fewer excuses, including the infamous “I can’t find the time.”   My advice: find it.  Almost nothing else on television will seem nearly as interesting, once you do.

A Man and a Woman

A Man and a Woman, dir. Claude LeLouch, with Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

In 1966 I was out of the country and missed the chance to see this beautiful film when it first was shown in theaters, and by the time I came back, the psychedelic revolution had taken place, and few people I knew were interested in it.  It, and everything outside the psychedelic revolution, seemed to have disappeared entirely, condemned as mere old-hattery (old hats had ironically come back into fashion, temporarily) and vieux jeu.

And since there was no such thing, back then, as VCRs or DVDs, only a few rerun and artfilm houses showed films that were no longer first-run, so even if you had thought of this film and sought it out you would not easily have found it playing, except, perhaps, now and then in a few of the very largest cities.

Now, coming up on 45 years after its initial release, I finally watched it, for the first time, on DVD.  I was astounded at the beauty and the complex simplicity  — no other way to characterize it — of the film.  It, like many of the French New Wave films, has aged well and still seems fresh — Anouk Aimee’s stunningly simple-seeming precision haircut has even come around into fashion again, not because of the film, but in the ordinary cyclings of fashions — while the 1960s and psychedelia nowadays seem vieux jeu, mere old-hattery.

This award-winning film is shot beautifully — one of the most photographically beautiful of all films — some parts in black and white, even sepia, some in color.  In an interview on the disc, LeLouch tells us that he could not afford color film at first; during the shoot he found a sponsor who wanted color for television, so he shot parts of the film in color.  And of course, you’ll recognize its theme music.

Whether you’ve seen this film before or not, see it now, as soon as you can.  It is moving, poignant, triumphant. It is emotionally satisfying in a way that few films over the years have been.  Even the ‘extras’ on the disc are well worth watching; they include a making-of film shot during principal photography, and an interview with Claude LeLouch decades later.

Origami

Between the Folds (2008), a documentary by Vanessa Gould.

Go ahead: be impressed by this film.  Be delighted, awed, thunderstruck — by what, did you say? Yes, origami as it is practiced today, around the world.

Wait a minute, hold it.  Isn’t origami that kid stuff where schoolchildren learn to fold paper and make little birds and fish and butterflies?  Isn’t it that thing you do with paper napkins to make little flower-like bowls and candy-dishes for kids’ parties?

Oh, viewer, think again.

Sure, it’s all of that, and it’s much, much more, especially nowadays. If you take origami as the art of folding a square piece of paper (without cutting or tearing it) into some other shape, representational or not, then, as Jimmy Durante nearly said, eveybody’s gotten into the act: sculptors, artists of all stripes, papermakers, mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, educators, and many others.

Origami as a movement now has realists, abstractionists, an avant-garde wing, and even post-modernists who create non-folded (OK, crumpled or bunched) achingly beautiful and imposing works.  There are those who fold only once, then bend the result; or fold flat in many complex ways then cut once. There are those who fold paper wet, those who fold it dry; those who make pieces that fold and unfold themselves before your eyes (and yes, you see this on film) and those who make pieces that pull themselves into one or more specific attractor-shapes by the stresses of their own folds.

Other practitioners create computer programs that can produce diagrams of how to fold and shape the paper into any finished design you can convey to the machine.  Still others use origami as a way to begin to teach kids about geometry — and other things like focus and concentration, and feelings of success and achievement from their own efforts.

Between the Folds is a documentary film, distributed on disc by PBS.  It’s 56 minutes long, doubtless to fit into PBS broadcast schedules. You can watch it instantly here on Netflix, if you’re a member, or you can request the DVD.  Note, please, that on the DVD, they’ve done a great thing: they’ve put in the outtakes.

On many discs, the outtakes are slightly longer takes or variants of scenes in the film, scenes cut from the film, or bloopers and mistakes.  On this disc, they are the superb additional material that would likely have been in the film if the 56-minute limit hadn’t dictated otherwise.  There’s a good deal of this very interesting material, all of it touched on briefly in the film, and shown in more expanded form as part of the DVD extras.

Just make sure you see it, and soon.

Merry Christmas

Joyeux Noel (2005).  On Christmas Eve 1914, shooting in WWI  stopped by general agreement of the troops during a brief spontaneous cease-fire, with German troops on one side and French and Scottish troops on the other.

That it actually happened is a fact; how it may have taken place (questions: in a land of shooting and snipers, which man came out first? and how did he manage it without getting his head blown off?) is a good story, told in this multiple award-winning film written and directed by Christian Carion, and funded jointly by French, Scottish, Belgian, German and Rumanian agencies and filmed on location in several of those countries.

No, “peace did not break out,” nor was it being sought by any of the countries with forces in the trenches at that time; this was a spontaneous and brief time of cease fire of the soldiers themselves, with Christmas songs sung, and soldiers emerging from their trenches to greet and to give some of whatever they had in their packs to soldiers on the other side — just for Christmas eve.

While good fellowship prevails among the men on the ground for just a little while, celebrating Christmas eve, officialdom of all kinds decide, then and later, what to think and how to handle the situation, in accordance with national doctrines and purposes.  The officers in charge in the various forces meet on the spot to nail down details of terms and duration, for the next few hours of what has already begun without them, and somehow find temporary amity.  Higher-ups, hearing of it later, and notably not part of the fighting forces themselves, perceive it as detrimental to their national imperatives to wipe out the foe.

Watch this film, please.  You will be moved, in the best ways a film can move you.

This film sits between two other superb films in French about WWI, The King of Hearts (Le roi de coeur) (1966) and The Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion) (1937), both considered classics. If you haven’t seen these films, do so, and as soon as you can. All are easily available on DVD.

Hamlet — David Tennant, Patrick Stewart

If you love theater, superb performances of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, are a fan of actors David Tennant or Patrick Stewart, or especially if you are all of the above, as I am, then click here to watch the film of the production shown on Great Performances this past April.

Both men are indeed formidable actors, not only as The Doctor or as Captain Picard, but within the rigors and disciplines of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Now the Great Performances site is offering the film to be viewed online.

Some gifted actors, and generally the productions of the RSC itself, have a way of being able to give us Shakespeare’s lines — “talk Shakespeare” — so we understand them as conversationally as if they were penned yesterday, without changing a word or a syllable of Shakespeare’s text to do it.

When I was in high school, I had just been introduced to Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, and Hamlet (which became and remains my personal favorite). I could imagine the characters and the action as I read these plays just as I could when reading a novel.

Then I wanted to read Shakespeare’s other plays, and did so at home — and also enjoyed the repertory Shakespeare productions of the Phoenix Theater in New York, with a truly superb and unforgettable Hamlet starring the young Donald Madden; and Henry IV Parts I and II, where I first met the characters Hotspur (Madden again) and the inimitable rascal Falstaff.

One play remained opaque to my best armchair efforts, though: The Merry Wives of Windsor.  I understood the basic idea, with the wives’ hiding Falstaff and carrying him away in the big basket under his enemies’ noses, with many layers of double- and triple-cross and unmasking and excuse-making.  What stopped me was that the language of the play is a thicket of Elizabethan comedic jargon and contemporary references, impenetrable to me. Eventually, I gave up on it.

Then, a little later in life, as part of a group trip to London, I made sure to get tickets for whatever was playing at the Royal Shakespeare Company — which, I was disappointed at first to learn, was The Merry Wives of Windsor.   I felt sure that my time in the audience would be another round of ‘chase the possible meanings.’  To my  happy astonishment, the entire complex farce was not only completely clear and delightfully fast-moving, but howlingly funny.  Not just a smile now and then, or the occasional ha ha, or even a guffaw, but  pound-your-thighs, cry-real-tears and hold-your-aching-sides funny.  It was only after the performance was over that I could really catch my breath.

And if they know how to make you laugh at the RSC, they also know how to make you feel the weight of the country’s fate on the king’s shoulders, or feel the fiery resentment of the wronged, or feel the sadness of life’s bereavements and disappointments, the tragedy of great possibilites unfulfilled or of great characters overborne by fate.

See this Hamlet.  If you’ve already seen it, see it again.  It wears well.

Dreaming It Up

From our recent correspondence:

Many thanks for sending this on to me!  What a great thing, all told: not just the amazing inventor/builder, the instrument itself and the musical and mathematical and instrument-playing and -building knowledge that went into thinking up and building the instrument, all clearly explained, but the video with fine sound at http://vimeo.com/11290879 itself with its awesome photography and visuals (great art choices, overall art direction, and film editing, as well as film-direction and camera skills) make this a great work all around.  A feast for the eye, ear, mind, soul…

Thank you, thank you, for sending this on to me!

Reset Button

Iphigeneia (1977).  Dir. Michael Cacoyannis; with Irene Pappas as Clytemnestra.

If you want your movie-watching reset, back to what makes a film great, and you’re not basing your film ranking on CGI, bazillion dollar budgets, and ultra-high-priced Hollywood stars and directors, take a look — look again, if you’ve seen it before — at Iphigeneia from director Michael Cacoyannis, made in 1977.

It’s not the actual story itself, by itself — although the story is one key to the film’s greatness, literally a classic, based closely on the play by Euripedes; it’s not any elaborate sets or costumes — the thousand Greek ships, wooden cockleshells, getting ready to sail for Troy, are windbound on the coast and cannot sail, and they and the army that will sail in them have been there for far too long;  the shelters are rudimentary (as they would be in such a temporary camp on the beach); and the dress is barely casual, as among men spending too much time waiting around; and it’s not only the brilliant actors, most with names not terribly familiar to us in the U.S. — although Irene Pappas as Clytemnestra will wring your heart, and all the actors with speaking parts in the film are brilliant and compelling.

It is the script and vision of director Kakogiannis showing us the powerful story and bringing the performances, action, and visuals together that make this film overwhelming.

The film makes the people involved come alive, with all their background and motivation, showing us that even kings can be trapped into doing the one thing they wish most not to do — and the consequences of that action, most especially the awakening of the unremitting hatred of Clytemnestra for Agamemnon for this deed above all others.

It’s only by understanding the role and character of Iphigeneia herself, and her relationship to all around her, which in turn illuminates the background and relationships of her entire family, extending to Menelaus and Helen, her uncle and aunt, and of the interplay within the (literally) stranded army, as shown by Achilles and Odysseus as well as the priest Kolkas, that we get to understand the scope and interplay of the whole saga.  It comes alive.

Even if you think you know all there is to know about this story, and even if you’ve read superb translations of various aspects of it until you see this film you will not understand, really, deep down, what the story is all about — and understand what follows.

In Greek, with subtitles.  Don’t let that deter you.

Time Capsule

Miami Vice (2006)  dir. Michael Mann; Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Gong Li, superb cast.

If one of the things we got from TV, as from films, was to go outside ourselves, find stories that took us into them, with characters we grew to know a little and (sometimes) like a lot, we certainly got that from the Miami Vice TV show from the mid-80s (for a while, a lot of men in this country and elsewhere dressed like Sonny Crockett or Ricardo Tubbs).  From this film, we get Crockett and Tubbs updated by Michael Mann to the world of 2005-6, when the film was shot, with the style, look, color and music of today’s world, with great authenticity in plots and activities and settings, weapons, even the business models of today.  It wasn’t until, after the film, I went back and watched the Miami Vice TV pilot and a few favorite episodes, that I saw what a very different world we live in now, and what a very different city Miami is today than it was then.

The film pulls you in right away, the action is fast, the dialog is spare: no rehashing or explaining (these people know who they are, what’s going on and what’s at stake, and don’t have to stand around telling each other all about it), and Michael Mann makes sure you know, too, if you’re paying attention — and he makes you want to pay attention.

Mann uses colors like the master he is, and his visuals to go beyond background and mood and tell a large part of the story. The entire film is basically shot on locations, with almost no sets; some of those few interior sets are replicas of actual interiors found during location-scouting.  He’s not afraid to take his time with a scene, to show you what he wants you to see, stunning or subtle.  His action scenes are coherent and understandable while staying fast-moving and thrilling.  And his shots of nature, drenched in pure, saturated color, are unforgettable in this film.

Nature herself, according to Mann’s commentary, gets into the act.  The film was shot during the summer of 2005, a particularly busy season of tropical storms and hurricanes either approaching or leaving the Miami area during shooting: lightning effects in more than one scene, sunny days with piled-up clouds for planes to fly through, just the right amount of chop and swell for fast boats: major effects were supplied by Mother Nature.  In a scene where Sonny Crockett moves his weaponry and equipment from one car to another, getting ready for the next stage of the operation, lightning and some distant growling thunder provide a portentous background, courtesy of the skies themselves, beyond the possibility of cuing but eerily timely; then his phone rings….

Some things don’t change about humans and human motivations, even when details of stories, places and things do: people still love, hate, suffer greed and desire, may be morally ambiguous in one direction while completely dedicated in another; and tough, smart criminals have to be outthought and outfought if they are to be taken down.  Mann shows us these things, often without any words, or with only a few.  The message is in the character’s eyes and expression, or in a few pithy words or a phrase.  Or in Crockett’s dance in a club with Isabella.

After you’ve watched the film — and make sure you watch the unrated director’s edition — Michael Mann’s commentary track is well worth listening to as he takes us through his film.  It’s a great follow-up to the making of a great film.  Whether or not you think Miami Vice has set a new film standard — listen to Mann’s commentary before you decide — it’s certainly set a high one, and he has made an intelligent and tense film, one well worth watching.

Two Half-Lives

1.   Pu-239 also titled The Half Life of Timofey Berezin (2006).

Viewers of The Wire will understand at once what inevitably happens to a quiet, honorable husband and father when he travels to Moscow to try to sell something on the street and get a lot of money for it.

This is the only way left to him to get enough money to provide for his family’s future once he is dead — a matter of a few days.  How has such a good family man and steady worker, whose main care is his wife and child, gotten himself into such a terrible situation?

He worked for 12 years in the plant that developed the weapons-grade plutonium, and, seeing a leak and trying to stop it, was fatally poisoned by radiation.  The company lies to him, telling him he got only a low dose and will recover, but, finding his contaminated dose card, he verifies that he’s had a lethal dose.  They try to get him to sign a paper saying the leak was his fault, refuse to offer him compensation for his wife and small son to live on despite his years of service, and tell him he’s lucky they don’t prosecute.

In desperation, with no other alternatives open to him, and knowing he needs to raise a large sum of money to take care of his family after he dies in just a few days, he steals a canister of weapons-grade plutonium — Pu239 — and travels to Moscow to try to sell it on the street, knowing no one there.

Between the bureaucratic attempt to pin the tail on the sacrificial lamb and the street thugs in Moscow — even more quickly than from the lethal radiation dose itself — his life is over, the result of stupidity, greed, violence, and above all, ignorance.

At the beginning of the film, a joke is quoted.  One Russian asks another about how life has changed since Perestroika.  The answer: “The chain is still too short, and the food bowl is still out of reach, but now we are allowed to bark all we want.”

This is a moving film, not just in its tragedy, but in the love story between the husband and wife and their love for their son, and in its entirety tells what they both do to take care of him and his future.  Because the boy is fortunate to have two strong parents, who between them find their way through the maze.

2. The Secret Life of Words (2005), dir/written Isabel Coixet, with Tim Robbins and Sarah Polley.

It is not the future but the past that is toxic for nurse Hanna (Sarah Polley).  We hear her story winkled out of her — not easily — by her patient Josef (Tim Robbins), who has been blinded and partially burned in an oil rig fire, trying to save another man.

The patient, Joe, is a friendly man and a talker, telling stories, asking questions, guessing at the answers himself when, at first, she doesn’t talk about herself at all.  She is friendly enough to her patient, and takes excellent care of him, but she does not reveal anything about herself at first.

It is only after they get to know each other better — after he tells her about something he did, probably the very events leading to his burns — that she begins to share a few things about herself.  Eventually, she tells him her story.

Her story is never portrayed on the screen.  We don’t see it at all, except, searingly, in our mind’s eye, and that is more than enough.  Hanna is what we call today collateral damage, in this case of the Balkan war, 10 years of war that devastated the entire area of the former Yugoslavia.

In this film, what you see is life on a marine oil rig, and in a factory elsewhere which makes huge rolls of plastic twine.  And you will hear what life was like for Hanna during the Balkan War.

Why should you watch the film, if it is so searing?  Because the story of Hanna and Joe is a tender love story, never saccharine or false.  How can it be?  Isabel Coixet, who wrote and directed, has done a masterly and award-winning job of bringing this story to the screen.

A Crystal-Clear View

61* (2001) Dir: Billy Crystal.

The film chronicles the 1961 attempt to best the record of 60 home runs in a single season, a record set by Babe Ruth in 1927 and still considered, in 1961, unreachable by contemporary players.  But that year two players, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, on the same team and in the same year, had hitting streaks  that brought the story of a race for a record and a rivalry that played well in the sports pages, but had little to do with the two men, who were and remained good friends — not feuding rivals — throughout.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a sports fan, baseball fan or even a Yankee fan; this is a story about two men, very different men, each doing something extraordinary, who were on the same team in the same year, and what they faced because of it.

It’s very hard to talk about this film, once you say It’s a great film.  It IS a great film, but if I’m going to persuade you to watch it, that’s not going to be enough.  So, let’s look at some things that make it great:

1.  It was directed by Billy Crystal.  Yes, THAT Billy Crystal, comic, actor, director, and Yankees expert.  Also, one of the finest, most thorough and nuanced directors we have.  In a Billy Crystal film you get drama, comedy, action — but most importantly, great acting, fine scripts, authenticity, great photography, design, music, and all the rest of the movie arts and crafts, but a real look at real people, not merely at images or myths.

2.  It’s not merely a sports film.  Sure, baseball yes, Yankees yes, but it’s about the two men, and Crystal gives us the two men as they really were, difficulties and problems as well as great moments on the field, as closely as anyone can.  The Maris and the Mantle families, in the ‘making of’ featurette, praise the film’s portrayals of the men, not as myth and icon, but as men, two men as they actually were.

3.  It’s extremely accurate, sticks strictly to the historical record, down to the smallest detail.  Not in a poky, dry way, but in a way that brings the 1961 Yankee Stadium and team and society at large to life, brilliant sparkling life.  Not larger than life, not lesser than life, not life as usually portrayed in movies, not a ‘biopic,’ but really, truly, presents it to us as, I believe, no other medium possibly can.  No collection of archival footage (used heavily as a resource, but not used heavily in the film) can bring the games and action to life.  But this movie, based in reality, in history, and in the encyclopedic baseball memory of Billy Crystal, can and does.

Full disclosure: I do remember the Yankee Stadium of those years, as my father took me to games there while I was growing up, and I can say that Billy Crystal got it absolutely right (not that I doubted him).  And, yes, like the Devil — and like Billy Crystal — I am a Yankee fan.

Star Trek (2009)

Star Trek (2009) Dir. JJ Abrams.

I love this movie.  I’ve had more pleasure and more sheer fun and excitement from this movie than from any movie in a long time.

Now read again the subtitle of this blog.  Yes, here I am, Wilm, praising a popular, even blockbuster film, as a fine entertainment for the thinking grownup, regardless of your taste in films.

Take note: it’s the first Star Trek movie that didn’t make me wince as I watched it.

The film managed perfectly (and I hadn’t thought it could be done at all) to work both for those who are hardcore Star Trek fans (people who can answer any trivia question about any episode in any of the series or films, and, as the filmmakers themselves understood, would focus their beady eyes on every frame of this film for possible violations of the canon) and also for those who had never watched Star Trek, weren’t interested in Star Trek, and who wished quite often that Star Trek fans would just pipe down and give it a rest.

That meant, of necessity, and with careful forethought, that there would need to be some basic similarities of casting, character, and action to the original series — and also some striking and interesting differences, and some huge improvements.  Chris Pine is absolutely right as the young Kirk, as is Zachary Quinto as Spock, and, really, the rest of the cast as well.

Authentic accents from Chekov (played here by Anton Yelchin) and from Scott (Simon Pegg) were long overdue and make a huge difference to my ability to suspend disbelief and avoid winces.  Sulu’s fencing is now a genuine combat skill, not a hobby.  And, my favorite of all favorites, there is the incredibly incandescent and unexpected love affair which, never reaching anywhere near the limits of PG-13, is still much more convincing than those in way too many R-rated films.  Yikes!  Talk about less is more!

This film has suspense, danger, action, romance, tragedy, poignancy, wit, humor, bellylaughs, an involved and involving story with setups, payoffs, reversals, effects both practical where possible as well as computer-generated, and all of the first quality, a fast pace that allowed the audience to do a little work, enough fine material to reward multiple viewings, superb acting, directing, writing, production, sound track and music.  It’s very rare to see a popular movie not only succeed but excel on every level, not least with an excellent script.

This balance between the former and the current, with a believable explanation of why there should be deviations from the original canon, is well-kept throughout all aspects of the production. Michael Giacchino, who composed the film’s score, uses motifs, figures, and themes from the original Star Trek series and films, weaves them anew into a moving score, and adds new material that fits this film perfectly.

Here’s another film franchise that has been brilliantly renewed.  Thank you, JJ Abrams, cast, crew, screenwriters, and all!

The Time Has Come Today

One of the problems we have in this country is trying to find things out, about situations that affect us all, to find out in sufficient detail, untwisted and unspun, so as to have any kind of coherent national conversation about them.  In recent years, it’s become utterly impossible to depend on commercial media to do that… which means we have abandoned the Jeffersonian idea of an informed electorate and, alas, made the idea of a free press (there isn’t one in print, on TV, or the internet, it seems) moot.

One of these pressing topics about which we know less than we should, and hear about in a limited fashion only from those who wish to sell us their own points of view, is the whole issue of climate change and the meeting in Copenhagen intended to get the nations of the whole world figuring out and getting behind ways to save the environment — that is, the earth as a place able to support human life — primarily by cutting carbon emissions.

That’s why it’s important to watch this 10-minute video, The Story of Cap & Trade.  Saying you understand the theory of cap & trade is like saying you understand the theory of the four-stroke engine: it doesn’t get your car’s oil changed.

Go ahead, watch this short but vital film, that adds the political and profit-making aspects to the rest of the story.  For once in your life, get ALL the facts and the details — there are some devils in the details that you should be aware of — that are going to make a big difference to you and your family, your children and grandchildren.  Not just to their comfort, but to their very survival.

And when you’re done, consider spreading the word about the film in any way you can: posting about it on a blog, as I’ve done here, using Facebook, Twitter or any other means (links to all such media are available on the page), or just by turning to your neighbor and (gasp!) discussing it.

The Story of Stuff, who made the film, are not asking for money (but of course, contributions are always welcome if you choose to give — there is a link on the page).  Much more important is your spreading the word, and getting others to see and understand.   I think if you watch the film, you will want to do so.  A friend of mine forwarded this link to me, and here we are today on this blog.

Watch and learn: The Story of Cap & Trade.

Phantom of the Opera

Phantom of the Opera (2004)  dir. Joel Schumacher.   Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Miranda Richardson, Minnie Driver, Ciaran Hinds, Simon Callow, and a large, fine cast and a superb production.

Regardless how you feel about musical theater, and whether or not you’ve seen Phantom of the Opera on the stage …  Andrew Lloyd Webber’s film version of his great musical production is intended to thrill audiences, and if you’re not getting that thrill — lots of gooseflesh — you might want to have someone check to see if you have a pulse. 

My goosebumps had goosebumps, just the way it should be.  In addition to the story with its twists and turns, and suspense, mystification, and unexpected resolution, it has great acting at every level, as well as great singing, dancing, production design, costumes, and imagination and creativity everywhere. Not least, hommage to Cocteau’s classic film Beauty and the Beast, where the torches are held on human arms that move as the Phantom passes into his own domain.  Spectacle and intimacy both, on the screen, large or small. 

For once, the strengths of the stage are meshed with the strengths of film, giving us the best of both. Then there is a moment toward the end when the Phantom realizes that Christine is lying to him to save her lover, and we see him realize it, and reach inside himself, and make his decision.  Not overdone, not dragged out too long, not passed by too quickly.  Brilliant. We see him see it… more than we could see from the audience to a stage — and then he does what he needs to do…

I have always admired Gerard Butler’s voice, but I hadn’t realized how well he could use it to sing. And Minnie Driver’s acting is superb as the Italian diva, La Carlotta, as temperamental and tempestuous as all get out.  Ciaran Hinds and Simon Callow give us the new owners of the opera house, and Miranda Richardson gives us Madame Giry, who has held the situation at the Opera House together so far.

And the well-told framing story, giving us form and conclusion to it all –the acts structure, as well as ‘how it all turned out.’  This whole production gets a huge A+.  

So see this, see this, on DVD, even if you’ve seen it on the stage.  I’ve seen it on the stage and, fine as it was, this disc won by a length.

I may just go make some tea — I need fortification after watching this superb production — and put the disc back in and watch it again!

Accounting

Sydney Pollack 1934-2008

A few days ago, I saw the news that Sydney Pollack had died.  I’m so sorry to hear this, that he had cancer, that he died.  He was one of the great voices, telling truth in his films, expoloring human life… he would say things in his films others wouldn’t and do it urbanely, usually wittily.  He was the man behind Tootsie, producing, acting (small part), directing…

You could do worse than order up and watch a slew of Pollack films: the recent Recount for HBO, soon (I hope) to be out on DVD, The Interpreter, the superb Tootsie, and so many more.  

If Sydney Pollack had anything to do with it, it’s great. 

I wish he had lived longer — much longer, and of course without the cancer.  We needed him to help keep us sane and tell the truth about the rest of the voting story… 2004, 6, 8 — his name alone (along with the intelligence and wit he brought to all his efforts) would have gotten his material out to the public.

Meantime, watch his films and rejoice and learn and laugh.  Pay attention. Watch them all — they’re timeless.

Tautly Tart

America’s Sweethearts (2001)

Despite its (purposely) saccharine title — which kept me from watching it for a long time; I wasn’t interested, I thought, even in takeoffs on such a theme, given the abysmal history of the usual brainless ‘takeoffs’ in US movies — America’s Sweethearts is a brilliant, taut, and tartly witty film.  It succeeds on every level: Script (Billy Crystal and co-writer Peter Tolan, of Rescue Me fame), production (Billy Crystal and excellent production crew), acting (Billy Crystal and a great comedic ensemble with not a false note among them).

Getting the picture?  Of, by and with Billy Crystal, who gives us wit rather than pratfalls, an intelligent script with real yet comedic characters, and laughter from the head and heart, rather than the belly — well, mostly: I can’t deny a few belly laughs here and there.  The whole film is brilliantly character-based.

Amazingly fine — five stars out of five — with Julia Roberts, John Cusack, Hank Azaria, Stanley Tucci, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alan Arkin, Christopher Walken, Seth Green, and many more.  My goodness!

Look What We Can Do

I just watched Straight No Chaser‘s hip, funny, superb version of The 12 Days of Christmas yet again on YouTube, a must-see for all jazzbos, all rock fans, and all those who know what a drehdl is. The count of watchings is now over 1 million; no surprise there.

 

And here’s what I thought:  Do you remember the scene in Sports Night one winter’s night in which  Dan, hungry and remembering that he has half a turkey sandwich in his office, discovers a homeless man there, who is trying to get out of the cold.  Dan tries to give the half sandwich to the man: clearly, the man’s need is greater than his.  But the man insists on sharing and cuts the half sandwich in half again, so Dan and the man sit on office chairs in front of a monitor, eating their pieces of sandwich, and watch the live feature being broadcast over the network: a team of climbers making it, the very last steps, to the top of Everest.  “Look what we can do,” says Dan, a remark with a certain resonance for all of humanity, as well as his own compassionate heart.

 

Well, go watch that Straight No Chaser video again, with the wit, the musical ability, the hard work arranging and rehearsing, the humor, and the tremendous fun ten men are having doing something very very skilled and hugely enjoyable for us, the audience.  And remind yourself: Look what we can do.

Cool Heat

Quick: who are the two highly popular series characters, in very different series but each notably single, who get to answer questions about a mystery woman by saying: “That’s my wife”?

One is Mr. Spock in the episode “Amok Time” in the original Star Trek series. And the other is Lt. Castillo in “The Golden Triangle,” in the first season of the now-classic series Miami Vice.

Now that many TV series are available on DVD, they can be seen as a whole. Miami Vice was the first in which each episode was shot as though it was a movie, and ushered in the era of high production-value television series, according to the ‘making of’ featurette on the first-season set of discs.

Miami Vice had a strong cast and featured fine guest actors, some established, and some near the beginning of their careers. This was a powerful and heady mix in a show that could draw viewers almost as powerfully as the illegal substances the Miami Vice detectives were attempting to keep from reaching the streets.

Miami Vice has intoxicating visuals — not only vistas of water, sky, beaches and citiscapes by day and by night, but settings and locations, and indeed the entire production design, including lighting and costumes which purposely include and coordinate every color but earth tones. Magentas, purples, greens, blues, reds, grays, pinks and lavenders, and not least highly emphatic whites and blacks play, in all kinds of combinations, against the area’s art deco architecture and many ethnic neighborhoods. Even scrapyards and dingy boatyards filled with rusting ships fit in as backgrounds for the action. Whether in old green surveillance vans or Ferrari Testarossas, small boat or huge yacht, waterplane or helicopter, in the heat of the action the visuals are cool.

The series was (to understate wildly) highly popular during its original broadcast, drawing in and keeping viewers hooked. It also ushered in an era of Sonny Crockett look-alike fashions for men. Crockett usually wore white unconstructed jackets or white trousers with knitted shirts, but always along with one or another pastel color including pinks and lavenders, and often wore deck shoes without socks. His hair became longer and longer over the course of the series. I like long hair on men, and hope it will become fashionable again soon. Check out Sonny Crockett’s appearance for pointers when that finally happens. Ricardo Tubbs, by contrast, usually wore beautifully tailored silk suits with coordinating shirts and ties. For one season, he also wore a beard. Heady stuff for the onlookers — and high times for the men’s fashion industry.

And the series itself is highly addictive viewing. Its continuing characters have stories and backgrounds that are shown to us over five seasons, as they pursue their various dangerous and often undercover activities. There is a mix of stories of tragedy and comedy, drama and action, romance and retribution that keeps the series going. If one episode doesn’t appeal to you so much, just wait a minute — the next one will. And when Miami Vice is over, you’ll wish there was more, and wish it for a good long while.

Must Have Disc

Must Love Dogs. John Cusack, Diane Lane, Christopher Plummer, Stockard Channing — and guess what: everyone else, from the Deli Guy (Kirk Trutner) to Mother Teresa, a Labrador Retriever played by two different Labradors, is superb too, along with writer/director Gary David Goldberg to the entire cast and crew, making, for once, a pitch-perfect romantic comedy: funny, sad, tender, lots of the unexpected, and never ever sloppy, sentimental, or trying for cheap laughs. I watched this movie and I felt great! Try it, you’ll like it.

By the way, have you ever noticed how John Cusack hugs? Your definite friendly bear-type hug. One arm often over the shoulder of the woman. He’s not just near her, or pressing on her; somehow he’s bringing her in, gently but firmly, as part of him. Great stuff.

Getting Home

Apollo 13. In the ‘making of’ featurette on the disc, Tom Hanks refers to one of the seven great plots of literature: how do you get home? We hear a lot of people saying of all kinds of things “because we can,” but what if you can’t — or your circumstances are genuinely bad, getting worse, and almost any one of hundreds of little things can kill you, some overt or sudden, some hidden and building, so that it looks like you can’t? In books about writing, wannabes are told to put the protagonist in a bad situation, and as he struggles, have things get worse for a while, sometimes because of the very things he’s had to do earlier to save himself and get as far as he has. But this was not the plot of a book or a movie, this time: this was Apollo 13. And, because of a fault in one of the oxygen tanks, latent, unseen and unknown until actually used in this mission, the tank exploded and severely damaged the ship.

According to Ron Howard, the director and a producer of the film, one of the reasons the film was made was not only because it had such exciting and suspenseful material, but also to provide a record. While copious archival footage from NASA existed and was used to study the mission and provide detailed information, it could not merely be edited together to make a coherent narrative film telling the story. It hadn’t been shot for that purpose, and it didn’t ‘fit’ from shot to shot in a way a feature film needed.

So with the information in the footage and the archives and with on-the-spot advice from astronauts themselves, and with Ron Howard and Tom Hanks as the “accuracy police,” they made a film that was very accurate down to the last switch in either module, to the events in the film, to the events on the ground at Houston, and to the events in the astronauts’ homes.