No, it's not really live

 

Ever wonder if the National Theatre Live series at Cineplex’s Devonshire Mall is, well, actually live from London, England? That’s how the series, which brings some remarkable world class plays to the local theatre including This House by James Graham May 16 - about the backbiting world of Britain’s Parliament – is billed. But, says Cineplex communications director Mike Langdon, the plays, as you might realistically imagine, are in fact “live to tape.” There is a five hour time difference between Windsor and London, after all, which would mean the “live” aspect would actually have to be performed on staged at 12 midnight London time. That’s not to mention all the other time zones in the world that would also have to be accommodated because the productions are shown in other countries. So, no, Langdon says. “This allows us to account for the time difference between the U.K. and different markets in Canada.” On June 13 Cineplex also shows Peter Morgan’s The Audience, starring Helen Mirren, reprising her Academy Award winning role as Queen Elizabeth II, about the elite audiences that the queen has always held with British prime ministers, the contents of which are never made public. The play will have three encore presentations in late June and early July.

 

One of the best DVD rental deals going is Redbox, available only in the U.S. Redbox is a vending machine and one amazingly easy to use. For $1.27 incl tax you can rent a video overnight by simply inserting your credit card in the machine’s slot. The machines are located conveniently in places like grocery stores. The machine’s on screen ordering directions are easy. And when returning your DVD you just slip it back into the return slot. Quick as can be! The one drawback is the inventory isn’t all that large. But for the last two weekends I was about to rent David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis (2012) and David Frankel’s Hope Springs (2012) starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. Sometimes a lot of the movies are grayed-out depending on their popularity and the time you order. But it’s a cheap home date. Pick up a bottle of (inexpensive) American-priced wine, order from the Redbox, and you have an evening's entertainment for under $5!

 

Speaking of Hope Springs, this is a great acting piece for Streep and Jones. They play a Midwestern couple who long ago lost the spark from their marriage. Streep (Kay) wants to reignite it. Jones (Arnold) is as tight-assed and defensive as you can imagine a 58-year-old stuck-in-his-ways accountant can be. The two have their roles down pat as a mature middle class couple who seem only too typical. And Steve Carell (Dr. Bernie Feld) is convincing as the marriage counsellor. The movie is supposedly set in a picturesque Maine fishing village – where the couple flies for a therapeutic retreat - but is actually filmed in Connecticut. This movie could easily be adapted for the stage.  


Sci-fi that doesn't get the future right

It's always interesting the way filmmakers portray the future. Such was the case when I - finally - got around to watching Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford. The movie is set in 2019. And Los Angeles is portrayed in a way that no one here in 2013 - only six years away - would recognize. It’s like the city had gone through a total transformation and become a brutalized bunker-like forest of skyscrapers with Jetsons-like flying machines shooting between them. But these aren’t just skyscrapers. These are massive blocks of concrete with thousands of slits of windows providing a formidable - indeed fascistic - image, which of course is the point. In fact, it’s become a cliché for filmmakers - and sci-fi book authors for that matter - to predict the (near) future as a totally alien environment from what it’s like when they wrote the novel or made the film. And almost always the future is totalitarian. But in reality the topography of current day Los Angeles has hardly changed since 1982, albeit with a few more office skyscrapers in the core and perhaps a bit cleaner air. Blade Runner’s depiction of the city is almost laughable.....Remember 1984? That year is now almost three decades old, and it came and went almost like every other year – no muss no fuss. Yet for decades prior to it 1984 was considered a foreboding date because it was the title of George Orwell's 1949 dystopian classic about an all-controlling totalitarian state. Sure enough the real 1984 seemed pretty much like the year before and nothing at all like how Orwell depicted it (although there were lots of public discussions in the media and elsewhere about how much the government controlled us, etc. etc.).....But there are aspects of the future that sci-fi authors don’t seem to take into account - for example, personal lifestyles. In Blade Runner we see characters smoking cigarettes just like they did in 1982. Yet it’s only a small minority of people who smoke anymore, and less will in 2019. A cartoon like The Jetsons, set in the future, also made the mistake of thinking the nuclear family and gender roles would be exactly the same as they were in the early 1960s, when the cartoon series was made…..BTW I didn’t finish watching Blade Runner. Despite all the hype surrounding this movie I found it almost insufferably boring. 

It's worth watching on the big screen

I never quite did – and now I never will – equate the experience of watching a movie on a television screen with that of a movie theatre. Such was the case when I ventured into the Devonshire Mall Cineplex theatre the other night, on a whim, to catch 1957’s Funny Face (Stanley Donen) starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Yes, I’d seen this movie two or three times over the years but only on DVD or video. Wow, what a difference watching on the big screen with sets and costumes just brimming with colour and exuberance! The movie also is about the fashion industry and takeoff on famed Harper's Bazaar editor Diana Vreeland. Think The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel 2006) but with song and dance by some of the greatest actors ever to grace the silver screen (no offence Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway). Funny Face seems the epitome of the Fifties musical. It has it all. Donen – dubbed “the king of the Hollywood musical,” also directed Singin’ in the Rain. George and Ira Gershwin wrote the songs. Moreover, one of America’s greatest still photographers, Richard Avedon, supplied the sets’ fashion photos. This movie has it all, from Astaire and Hepburn’s singing and dancing to some of the greatest songs ever recorded (“How Long Has This Been Going On” or “S Wonderful”). The movie confirms Astaire’s amazing talent as actor, singer and dancer. And Hepburn wasn’t bad in all three roles either. How many actors these days are that versatile? Maybe I’m reading too much into it but beyond the 1950s candy floss the film had a few things to say about the world of fashion versus bohemianism where one, seemingly crass and the other deep, can both be just as artificial. It’s also a great movie about Paris, playing on every Parisian stereotype - and why not? (That’s when the French loved America.)…..Cineplex Odeon has more films over the next month in its classic series, such as The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille 1956), on Easter weekend, and The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939). Take the kids to see The (original) Wizard in mid-April. If any movie should be seen on the silver screen it’s Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion. A bonus: tickets are just $6 adults. 

 

They promised, but I never did manage to get an interview with one of the directors of Burn (post below), the well-made documentary by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez about a beleaguered fire company on Detroit’s east side. But it’s worth a night out to catch this flick in limited engagement March 22 – 28 at Silver City in Windsor. The “embedded” filmmakers with Engine Company 50 spend days and nights with the crew as they eat, sleep and are called to numerous fires – 95 per cent of which are arsons – in one of the Motor City’s most benighted areas. Yet these firefighters exhibit grit, brotherhood and a caring for the citizens in their neighborhoods. Says one: “I’m a product of Detroit, I’m not one of those persons who’s not going to turn my back on Detroit.” The movie also has a terrific rock and roll soundtrack. It’s no dull documentary.

 

And one final thing. Last night I caught the late great Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku’s final film (he died in 2003), Battle Royale (2003). You know the story Lord of the Flies? Well, this is Lord of the Flies on steroids. This class of high school students won the wrong lottery when they were chosen for a diabolical game on a remote island. 


Film notes

It's always great when the mainstream theatres - in Windsor and the county that's all of them - break from the screen routine and show a movie that's just a lttle bit different. That will happen at Silver City on Walker Rd. in Windsor, the week beginning March 22, when a new documentary, Burn (Tom Putnam) opens. Burn follows a fire company in the Detroit Fire Dept., in a city notorious for fires. Having seen it - an interview and more details will be coming - I can vouch this is a film packed with action (how couldn't it be given the subject, but still...) with a great rock and roll score. It should be checked out. Tickets can be ordered from www.detroitfirefilm.org/events

I bumped into Stuart Selby, coordinator of the annual Windsor Jewish Film Festival, at a recent event. He told me the fest will be coming up April 29 - May 2 at Cineplex Devonshire, its usual location. More details coming. This is a great festival with films - often with recognizable stars - that have wide appeal beyond strictly the Jewish community. 

And further in May its Windsor's long running (since 1994) experimental film extravaganza,  Media City Film Festival, May 21 - 25. 

It's Oscar time. What a bore!

Here we go again. It’s Oscar time. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Oscars, or even much of a fan. I usually hate award shows. And even though I love films I can’t tolerate the glitter and glitz – and phony introductions and reception speeches – that go with such high profile events honoring the Hollywood elite, the closest America gets to, uh, royalty. And this year there’s a further reason not to watch. Low life animation creator Seth MacFarlane is MCing the production. Johnny Carson or Billy Crystal, where are you when we need you most!?....I would be a hypocrite to say I’ve never watched the Oscars or have never tried to work up excitement about them, work up being the operable term. But it’s rare. By and large I can’t be bothered.....Woody Allen had it right. He wouldn’t give this phony ceremony the time of day, even when he was a recipient of the golden statue in all its nude unadorned glory. You see, Allen would rather spend “quality time” doing things he loves rather than dressed in a penguin suit and fake gratitude to an Academy he has almost zilch respect for.....So why do the mass of people tune in, the vast majority of whom probably have seen very few of these movies? Of the nine competing for Best Picture - Beasts of the Southern Wild, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Amour, Django Unchained, Argo - how many of your average Oscar night viewers have seen even three, as I (almost embarrassed to say because I've also seen so few though had little desire to see more) have? But that’s not what motivates people to watch. The masses love watching the Oscars because it’s a chance to see the stars and, of course, to judge Hollywood’s female elite’s fashion (non)sense - sorry guys. It’s also, I suppose, to get a glimpse of their personalities. And to anticipate verbal and physical stumblings by presenters and winners alike......As for Oscar buzz, Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell) has been coming up strong, like a racehorse about to move in the homestretch from the middle of the pack to finish first. As I’ve earlier posted I hated (or should is say strongly disliked, “hate” being such a strong word, you know - ha ha) that movie. Yes I walked out on it. The story is ho-hum and the characters grating. Yuck!.....Zero Dark Thirty, which I did like a lot though it wasn’t perfect, is apparently out of major contention because of its depiction of torture. This all has to do with politics of course. Director Kathryn Bigelow is being condemned because she’s depicting a reality (water boarding) that took place in the War on Terror. If Bigelow is to be dropped from major contention then what about dear old Quentin Tarantino for depicting the “reality” of the brutal violence against slaves in pre-Civil war America in Django Unchained? Not a chance he’ll be dropped. This is entirely about political correctness, folks, hardly about good film-making.


Side Effects: Soderbergh channels Hitch

Side Effects (Steven Soderbergh) has an intricate plot and all the twists and turns of Hitchcock’s best, not that I’m necessarily comparing it with Hitch’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Vertico (1958). But the comparisons are there for all to see. Even the opening and closing scenes have a Hitch quality, in this case to Rear Window (1954). The movie opens with a very slow pan on to a Manhattan apartment house, and closes with the camera moving in the opposite direction from an equally imposing building, a psychiatric hospital on New York’s Wards Island. The first scene is especially memorable for a kind of haunting serenity. Instead of James Stewart being set up as in those earlier Hitchcock classics we have Jude Law as Dr. Jonathan Banks, a court-appointed psychiatrist to work with a very troubled woman, Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), who apparently has attempted to kill herself. Without giving too much away – and the plot weaves tightly innumerable times over the next hour and a half – Banks becomes a patsy, is disgraced, assumes the role of investigator, and ultimately is vindicated (I fear I’ve given away too much already) – in a story about perception, fakery, high finance, and – you’ve surely heard by now – the effect of psychiatric drugs as per, duh, the film's title. Law is terrific as an intelligent but not pretentious physician who remains clear of vision throughout his predicament. Rooney Mara (Lisbeth in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is a convincing enough deceiver (I was deceived) and Catherine Zeta-Jones as fellow shrink Dr. Victoria Siebert is a cool customer. One might conclude the movie is a slam at the big moneyed drug industry. We all know the pharmaceutical industry is powerful and for Soderbergh to pursue that line would have been a cliché. Instead, this film is about evil, pure evil, just as Hitchcock’s were.


Film notes

Five Oscar animated shorts, five live action flicks, which I saw at the DFT over the weekend. Normally not a great fan of animation, of this crop of 10 films I thought the cartoons were better than the real life shorts. My favourite was Fresh Guacamole (picture left), about the – who knows – quagmire of gambling, or nothing at all. This film has some hilarious fast cuts – technically and literally. It’s by a guy named PES, Adam Pesapane, a renowned maker of short films – many available online including this - who takes everyday objects and transforms them into entirely new somethings, and mesmerizingly so.....Next best was Paperman, John Kahrs’s charming black and white romantic take on  the 1950ish world of two Manhattan office workers. It's appropriately produced by Disney.....On the live action side my favourite was Curfew (Shawn Christensen) about a suicidal druggie whose forced out of his misery to take care of his haranguing young niece. That was followed by Henry, the Quebec film directed by Yan England, about the cruelties of Alzheimer’s disease.....The DFT repeats the screenings four times this coming weekend and the price is more than worth it - 10 Oscar-nominated short films for under $10 – all in one sitting.

Dustin Hoffman has done respectably enough  in his directorial debut Quartet (at Devonshire Cineplex and the Uptown Birmingham). In this film he’s amassed all the senior standouts of British stage and movies (of course they got to meet the great Hoffman as well!). These actors include Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Pauline Collins and Tom Courtenay. Quartet is a comedy about aging musicians tucked away in a seniors home for, well, aging musicians. Old is no place for sissies, quoth the august Bette Davis. But if you have a wicked sense of humour – as the characters in this film do – it helps out a lot.

The horror film Mama has been in the top 10 at the box office and is turning excellent revenue. It’s directed by Andres Muchietti, and filmed extensively in Canada, and the executive producer is Guillermo del Toro, who directed the critically acclaimed 2006 dark fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth. Jessica Chastain stars. There are a lot of good things about this movie – the acting of the two very young children, the special effects, the mood, the cinematography. I wish I could give it more credit. The problem: it’s a horror film that doesn’t frighten enough.