Roman Holiday (1953)

 

Audrey Hepburn became a star with this film, in which she played Princess Anne, weary of protocol and anxious to have some fun before she is mummified by "affairs of state." On a diplomatic visit to Rome, Anne escapes her royal retainers and scampers incognito through the Eternal City. She happens to meet American journalist Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck), who, recognizing a hot news story, pretends that he doesn't recognize her and offers to give her a guided tour of Rome. Naturally, Joe hopes to get an exclusive interview, while his photographer pal Irving (Eddie Albert) attempts to sneak a photo. And just as naturally, Joe falls in love with her. Filmed on location in Rome, Roman Holiday garnered an Academy Award for the 24-year-old Hepburn; another Oscar went to the screenplay, credited to Ian McLellan Hunter and John Dighton but actually co-written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. The 1987 TV movie remake with Catherine Oxenberg is best forgotten. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Somewhat, no more than somewhat dated, rather corny, yet fun. Audrey Hepburn's charisma shines through the ages. I am not quite sure why it was shot in black and white.

Maggie Smith

One of my very favourite actors. A couple of weekends ago I was in the mood to watch an old favorite of mine, in which she stars, so I got My house in Umbria. Still delightful. I've watched so often, I know much of the dialogue — even some in Italian.

Last weekend, Saturday, specifically, I needed a film to watch. Looked through TCM's list, and picked out a couple. Watched Travels with my aunt — after five minutes, zzzz! Awoke an hour later, and turned it off. Oh, well.

Glory

From my writing the story of Blanco Gregor, the history teacher, I thought of this film. Watched it. Remains, in my mind, a magnificent film. The acting is superb: Morgan Freeman, Matthew Broderickl, Cary Elwes, Andre Braugher, Jihmi Kennedy, and, of course, Denzel, are superb. What a fine film. Ebert gave it 3.5 out of a possible 4 stars.

Your Sister's Sister (2011)

A.O. Scott in the Times pretty well gets to the crux of it, in his Movie Review: Solitary Retreat to a Remote Island Leads to Many Mix-Ups: Lynn Shelton’s ‘Your Sister’s Sister’. I liked it. Far more cursing than I thought necesary to capture the conversational style of the characters.

Roger Ebert liked it, writing about Mark Duplass, who plays Jack:  He's tall, comfortably built, shaggy, genial. He wears his testosterone lightly. He helps this film succeed because he doesn't push too hard in a tense situation.

I had this entry in my calendar on 12 November 2012: reviewed by Joe Morgernsten in WSJ.com on 6/15/12 - Lynn Shelton's lovely tale of swirling feelings was shot in a mere 12 days, on a budget that must have been minuscule. A couple of minutes after it's started, though, you know you're in the presence of people who will surprise and delight you.

Ten little Indians

Saw last 45 minutes of this film, on TCM. {Is that a politically correct expression these days?}It is an adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None. One of the characters was played by Hugh O'Brian was a favorite of mine, years ago.

Time is not kind to anyone's looks, except those who choose to try and defy time and its effects. To those time is cruel, and deservedly so.

2007

Voice lessons

In a side column in a recent issue of the New Yorker, David Denby wrote: Those who were charmed by The Artist should see the real thing: "Singin' in the Rain," the great American movie musical about the transition from talkies to sound...The movie chronicles Hollywood's misadventures with early recording techniques, but does so with carefree gaiety and confidence — confidence in music and dance and in a specifically American style of impudent wit."

Yes, the American film is still  robust, fun to watch —despite shortcomings such as the mismatches in age between Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor, his two costars, who are supposed to be about the same age. The singing and the dancing is contagious, energizing, and plain fun. Jean Hagen's character, Lina Lamont, still holds up, she with her screechy little voice and street pronunciation (cain't stend it).

The Artist I found difficult to enjoy. It dragged. Contemporary taste is highly favorable for it. Then again, in Rotten Tomatoes Singin' in the rain gets even higher numbers: 100-91 v. 98-90. In the end, I did enjoy it, but Singin' is better. O, and Cyd Charisse.

Moneyball

On 4 January 2011 I made a calendar entry to be on the lookout for the eponymous film version of Michael Lewis's book. The book was grand reading fun, for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative style, the language and its expert use, and the story. I felt as if it was unnecessary to know baseball to enjoy the story (though, of course, it added a dimension to know the sport). Thus, when I read about the film, I looked forward to seeing it.

Finally, last night I watched it, and I was disappointed. Critics liked it. Manohla Dargis of the NY Times praised it: The hungry heart of “Moneyball,” a movie about baseball in the digital age, is a beautiful hard case named Billy Beane. Coiled yet cool, Billy has the liquid physical grace and bright eyes of a predator. He was built to win. Even his name, with its short syllabic bursts, sounds ready for ESPN exultations. That he’s played by Brad Pittgiving the quintessential Brad Pitt performance just seals the deal.. The LA Times critic also liked it, Pitt and Seymour Hoffman (who returns here, letter-perfect as Oakland Manager Art Howe - I thought he was completely miscast), and Ebert does, too (I walked in knowing what the movie was about, but unprepared for its intelligence and depth.) I wasn't too impressed.

Behind the Camera, but Still the Star

Once the red carpet follies were over, the war correspondent Christiane Amanpour introduced the film, calling it “remarkable and courageous” while warning that there was “no way to sugarcoat” the atrocities it portrays. The afterparty, at a nightclub high atop a hip New York hotel in the meatpacking district, complete with the usual supercilious doormen, rotating disco ball and thumping music, was co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the human rights group Women for Women International. That was the atmosphere on Monday night at the New York premiere of “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” a harrowing look at the fratricidal Bosnian war of the 1990s: an unusual convergence of foreign policy seriousness and Hollywood glamour. But that is the way that Angelina Jolie, who wrote, directed and co-produced the film, operates these days.

Even as big as cynic as I am has to concede that a Hollywood star shining some of her light on important issues is a good thing, but I can not get past the exploitation. Jolie makes a movie about ethnic cleansing, and then they have a fancy party guarded by supercilious doorkeepers. She does the same thing elsewhere: she traveled to Cambodia, I think, for humanitarian reasons (as the catchphrase goes), then has a picture of her in a canoe in a commercial for Louis Vuitton. I mean, c'mon.


As she views it, her celebrity is both blessing and burden. She is on the cover of Newsweek this week and is scheduled to appear on “Charlie Rose” this month, trying in every appearance to get the public interested in her film and the issues it raises, including rape as a war crime and the ethics of international intervention.

Granted, her celebrity lets her get things done that others could not.

But she also noted that “with certain outlets and certain reporters it is an uphill battle” to deflect focus away from her and onto her film and its cast. Indeed, on the red carpet on Monday night, cast members had to field questions about what it was like to work with Ms. Jolie and how much time her children spent on the set. And then there was this: “Angelina has a lot of tattoos. Did you see them?” 

Life by fame, suffer by fame.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Holds up, mostly, but it could have been edited to be fifteen minutes shorter. Lana Turner was 25, John Garfield 33, and both were believable in their roles. Based on a book by James M. Cain, the same author who wrote Double Indemnity (also made into a film).

Trivia: John O'Hara wrote a poem entitled Lana Turner has collapsed!

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Band Wagon

Great dancing, nice singing, thin plot, and Oscar Levant all in one film. A classic

Man in the middle

Not quite sure why I picked out this film, but I have always liked Robert Mitchum. Here he plays an army lifer who gets called to a joint American-British theater during the Second World War (keeping with the theme of my currently reading H.W. Brands's biography of FDR, Traitor to his class), and is asked to provide a credible defense for a GI who has murdered a Brit in cold blood in front of numerous witnesses. Mitchum pays Lt. Col. Barney Adams; he has been summoned by General Kempton (played by another favorite, Barry Sullivan), a friend's of his father (an off-screen senior Adams). Col. Adams reluctantly accepts the assignment, and then pursues all leads, in order to provide a vigorous defense.

Adams refuses to accept what is obviously a coverup. Along the way he meets a nurse, Kate Davray (played by France Nuyen), who provides him with evidence he is, at first, reluctant to accept. What he is not reluctant to do is pursue Nurse Davray, in a 1963 sort of way.

There is much cigarette smoking, much alcohol drinking. Adams defiantly pursues a vigorous defense that even his client, played with a slightly too-heavy hand that almost descends to schtick by Keenan Wynn. Mitchum does a deft job of acting, and fully extends the role. Trevor Howard underplays a British psychiatrist who has been shunted to dispensing medicines, exiled from his true work. Cynical, Major Kensington comes to the rescue of Adams, whose every attempt to get at the truth is frustrated by roadblocks thrown in his way even by his sponsor, General Kempton.

Adams finally accepts Nurse Davray's evidence, and, along with Kensington's corroborating evidence, wins the case. Nicely done.

I make a living

After watching To Kill a Mockingbird, produced by Alan J. Pakula, I decided to look for other films in which he was involved. One was Up the down staircase. Searching on that title led me to this wonder of humanity: When Bel Kaufman sits you down on her sofa and asks, “Are you comfortable?” the right answer, she reminds you, requires a Yiddish inflection, a shrug and the words, “I make a living.” Kevin Kline's character in Definitely Maybe  (Professor Hampton Roth) uses the same line.

Ms. Kaufman’s hard work and the watchful eye of a demanding father led to a master’s degree in literature from Columbia and teaching jobs at a series of public high schools. Her 20-year odyssey became the springboard out of her grandfather’s shadow. In 1965, she published “Up the Down Staircase,” a novel about a new teacher very much like Ms. Kaufman who struggles to keep up her spirits in a school crowded with more than a few hopeful but ornery students and where memo-happy principals issue rules like not walking “up the down staircase.”

Groovy, man

Groovy? I don't know. Nothing that I have seen quite captures what I remember as the spirit of the 60s. Maybe it is my memory that is at fault. These days, it would be no surprise.

The movie seems kinda hokey and cliché-ridden, but the actor who played Michael Lang was spot-on. Fun, anyway.

White hunter black heart

powerful, intelligent, and subtly moving, a fascinating meditation on masculinity and the insecurities ... is the blurb accompanying a Rotten Tomtoes entry; critics on the site gave it an 88% favorable rating, while th epublic gave it 54%. I am not sure I'd give it 54, but, perhaps yes. The story is interesting: the making of The African Queen, or, perhaps the alomost-not making; the story focuses on John Ford and his poreoccupation with hunting. Marisa Berrenson portrays Katherine Hepburn quite nicely; the actors who portray Bogart and Bacall are terrible. Eastwood's acting is wooden; the script is terrible. 2 stars.

Matinee

Fun movie to watch, many familiar faces. Ebert gave it three and a half stars. "Matinee," a delightful comedy and one of the most charming movies in a long time, takes place exactly at a moment when that innocence may have ended.

For what?

What an unadulterated piece of mierda. I hate myself in the morning for having watched it.

Sherlock Holmes

A modern take on an all-time great. Overdone. Downey did a great accent, but it seemed, somehow, off. McAdams was expendable, her acting mediocre. Critics in Rotten Tomatoes gave it 70%, the public 81%, which makes sense: it is aimed at the popular palette.

'Tis autumn

In 1991 filmmaker Raymond De Felitta heard a singer named Jackie Paris on a Los Angeles radio station and began a search that first yielded the fact that Paris had died in 1977. In 2004 De Felitta discovered Paris was alive and making a comeback in a New York City nightclub. This film explores the life of the jazz singer along with an exploration into what it is to live the life of an artist in its least glamorous aspects. Includes interviews with jazz legends including Billy Taylor, James Moody, Anne Marie Moss, Mark Murphy, George Wein, and others.

Outsider Pictures

Paris had a distinctive voice. A tenor, it was pleasant, yet, for me, it lacked something, some quality. One person in the film said that once someone explained Paris's lack of success by saying he doesn't sound like anyone. A valid point. We are so inclined to say that a writer, a musician, a singer, resembles another, as a way of qualifying (and, often, pigeonholing) the talent, that someone who can not be so qualified can suffer thereby.

He also played guitar and tap-danced. Of the latter, there is no recording extant; there was a recording of Paris playing guitar in a trio, and singing: he reminded me a lot of Tiny Grimes (see above).

That he didn't make fame is strange. The film explored and tried to answer that. Perhaps his temper and his ego got in the way, though he would hardly be the first musician to have an outsize ego and temper. Peggy Lee tried to propel his career. Ella liked him. But, clearly, someone didn't.

Australia

(2008). Fair. Rotten Tomatoes ratings are 55% and 69%, and that about covers it.

I am David

On the other hand, I found this film easier to watch than Pajamas. And Ebert panned it. I agree with his assessment that He has awfully good luck: Along the way, he meets mostly nice people who do what they can to help him, and there's an enormous coincidence just when it's most needed. Benji encounters more hazards on his travels than this kid. Yet, I liked it. Joan Lowright has a small but significant role (and I was astounded at how similar some of her lines and gestures were to those in Mrs. Palfrey).