Sunday, March 17, 2024

Binging on John Ford: Part 3: St. Patrick's Day Irish Movies

Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne in
The Quiet Man.
In honor of St. Patrick's Day, here's a continuation of my consideration of John Ford's cinematic oeuvre, focusing on his Gaelic efforts. The director had an affinity for his ancestral home and two of his Oscars were for pix set in the Emerald Isle. The Quiet Man (1952) is lushly beautiful, gorgeously capturing the colorful scenery. Winton Hoch rightfully also won an Oscar for his cinematography. However, it lost Best Picture to Cecil B. DeMille's extravagant and schmaltzy The Greatest Show on Earth, probably for CB's model train wreck (Steven Speilberg pays tribute to this sequence in his autobiographical pic The Fabelmans). But Ford was no slouch when it came to schmaltz. The New Yorker's critic Philip Hamburger sneered,  "If am to believe what I saw in John Ford's sentimental new film, The Quiet Man, practically everybody in Ireland is just as cute as a button....Mr. Ford's scenes of the Irish countryside are often breathtaking ... but the master who made The Informer appears to have fallen into a vat of treacle."

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Return to 2022 Oscar Nominees

Ana de Armas in Blonde
Credit: Netflix
Now that the 2024 Oscars are over, I can return to catching up on nominated films from previous years. Recently viewed on Netflix were Blonde, the bizarre adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' massive novel based on the turbulent life and career of Marilyn Monroe which earned Ana de Armas a Best Actress nomination and Animated Featured nominee Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Ironically, Blonde also won Worst Picture and Screenplay from the Golden Raspberry Awards. It was also nominated for Worst Director and Worst Supporting Actor for  Evan Williams and Xavier Samuels who played Charlie Chaplin Jr. and Edward G. Robinson Jr. The film switched from black and white to color. The cinematography was beautiful, creating the look of black and white photography of the 1950s and the super saturated color of the era. de Armas gives a heartfelt performance, but the film is exploitative while condemning the exploitation of Marilyn. There are numerous gratuitous topless scenes.

Marcel was cute as the dickens and very sweet. Mixing animation and live action, Marcel depicts the relationship between a documentary filmmaker and a one-inch shell whose family has disappeared. Sentimental without being cloying.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes on
Credit: A24

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Book Review: Thank You, Mr. Nixon

(Downloaded from my Kindle for $5.95. Read mostly on my I-phone) I was intrigued by the first story in this collection where a Chinese girl writes a letter to the late president who opened up relations between her country and the US. In the first line she says she's sorry he's in hell while she's in heaven. That's a grabber. What follows is a series of interconnected tales of Chinese people in China, America, and Hong Kong and how they deal with cultural displacement. "No politics, just make money," says Tina Ko whose three daughters each react differently to China's authoritarian regime. That advice reverberates through the stories as the characters' choices have great impact. "Rothko, Rothko" was probably my favorite. As a side hustle, an English Literature professor in NYC commissions an artist to create an imitation Rothko for Tina and her husband Johnson. Meanwhile he has to report a favorite student for using AI on her paper on Middlemarch. When is it best to be totally honest? He tries to help the artist whose mother is sick in China and relies on her daughter for financial help but must report the student who will certainly be suspended. The conflict are fascinating.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Book Review: My Name Is Barbra

(A Christmas present. Finally finished two and a half months later) As I was reading this door-stopper of an autobiography on the subway, a woman said to me as she was exiting, "I admire you, sir." I was startled and said, "Why, because I'm reading this huge book?" She laughed and nodded her head. The sheer size of Streisand's enormous tome is not surprising when you start reading it and how she relies every detail of every experience she's every had. Some would call her obsessed or controlling. If she were a man, she would be labelled commanding and thorough. But despite the meticulousness, My Name Is Barbra is an engrossing account of one of the most unique and talented entertainers of her time, certainly the best singer and among the best actresses. 

From the decoration of her dressing rooms to the sound mixing of her albums to directorial decisions, Streisand leaves nothing out. If you want to know how to launch a career, put together a TV special, mount a concert tour, deal with difficult studio heads, furnish a home, or process an insanely jealous mother--Babs will let you know how. We learn so much about Broadway, Hollywood, political activism and the music biz, it's like a college seminar. The personal side is not neglected with honest appraisals of her two marriages (to Elliot Gould--they were both too young--and James Brolin--he arrived in her life at exactly the right time) as well her many extended relationships and dalliances. There are also the tragic might-have-been projects such as The Normal Heart, a remake of Gypsy and a sequel to The Way We Were. A fat, juicy lovefest for Streisand fans--of which I am one.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Final Oscar Predictions

Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Lily Gladstone,
Cillian Murphy
With the viewing of The Color Purple on Max, I've seen all the Oscar acting nominees, plus the Best Picture candidates and almost all those in the running for the major categories. (I tried to watch Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning on Paramount +, but I was bored out of my mind after 30 minutes. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of these people.) Here are my predictions for the winners which will be handed out tomorrow night.

Best Picture: Oppenheimer
Best Actor: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Best Actress: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer
Best Supporting Actress: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Best Original Screenplay: Anatomy of a Fall (Though I would vote for Past Lives)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Barbie (a consolation prize from Greta Gerwig being snubbed in the Director Category)
Best International Feature: The Zone of Interest
Best Documentary Feature: 20 Days in Mariupol
Best Animated Feature: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (I would go with The Boy and the Heron, but Spidey is getting more buzz including winning at the Annie Awards)
Best Editing, Sound, Cinematography, Original Score: Oppenheimer
Best Costume Design, Production Design: Barbie
Best Original Song: "What Was I Made For?" from Barbie
Best Make-up and Hairstyling: Maestro
Best Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One (This is the only one in the category I haven't seen yet--apart from the remaining two hours and ten mins. of Mission Impossible. But everyone seems to be predicting the Japanese monster to roll over the competition.)
Best Live-Action Short: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Best Animated Short: War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko (My preference is Ninety-Five Senses but this cloying pacifist message short won at the Annie Awards.) 
Best Documentary Short: The ABCs of Book Banning (This one sends the proper liberal message, but it's kinda dull. If I were voting, I'd go with The Last Repair Shop or Nai Nai and Wai Po)

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

B'way Update: Washington and Gyllenhaal to Star in Othello

Denzel Washington
Get ready for the highest-profile star casting in several years, if not decades. Oscar and Tony winner Denzel Washington (Training Day, Fences) and Tony and Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal (Sea Wall/A Life, Brokeback Mountain) will co-star in a revival of Shakespeare's Othello, set to open in Spring 2025. To add to the marquee value, the play will be directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun) who will also be staging a new production of Our Town during the same 2024-25 season. Leon directed Washington in The Iceman Cometh, Raisin, and Fences. Further casting is to be announced.

This will be the 22nd production of Othello on Broadway. The most recent was in 1982 with James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer. The most famous was probably in 1943 with Paul Robeson, Jose Ferrer and Uta Hagen. Recent Off-Broadway productions have starred Raul Julia and Christopher Walken, David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig, John Ortiz and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier have played the jealousy-ridden Moor on screen.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Estelle Parsons' Weird Semi-Exit from The Conners

Laurie Metcalf and Estelle Parsons 
in The Conners
Episode 3 of Season 6 of The Conners (aired Feb. 21) featured a weird semi-exit from the series for 96-year-old Estelle Parsons. Her character Bev (mother of the late Roseanne and her sister Jackie) was on an experimental drug trial that improved her cognitive functions, lessened her dementia and brightened her mood. In this new state of being, Bev proposes she and Jackie (the brilliant Laurie Metcalf) spend a day together in Chicago for some long overdue mother-daughter bonding. 

At Union Station in the Windy City, Bev reveals she plans to go on a "great adventure" while she still has her wits about her and to board a train headed eastwards. She has no specific destination in mind and only one small bag of her belongings. She hugs Jackie and apologizes for her belittling behavior. (She wanted to have one perfect day with her daughter before losing her mind.) Jackie protests but lets her go. If only real life could be this simple--letting your nearly century-old mother on a train with no clear plan or means of support. You say goodbye and go on about your life.