Surplus population

Scrooge

(1951)

So a guy who has lived his whole life (well, mostly) thinking of nothing but the bottom line and of how to advance himself suddenly has a chance at redemption and learns to love and care for his fellow humans.

I'd vote for that.

The way and the truth and the light

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

(1982)

I'm editing a biography by Molly Haskell of Spielberg, and what with its being Easter weekend, this seemed like a good time to screen this story of the death, resurrection, and ascension into the heavens of a miracle-working figure of virtue from afar.

It still works, but yes, the ending is forever. Where was the editor?

What are you giving him a balm for?

Monty Python's Life of Brian

(1979)

OK, there were no Islamists then--in fact, there was no Islam then--but there was plenty of uncompromising religious and political fanaticism. So this year, a study question: what can this film teach us about ISIS and global theopolitical strife? Discuss.

The music man

Orfeu negro (Black Orpheus)

(1959)

Really? You still haven't seen this, even though I've told you repeatedly that it's the most beautiful film I know? Did I mention that it had cute animals in it?

Well, watch/listen to this, at least. And this, while you're at it.

Ahead of the weather

Groundhog Day

(1993)

With the long weekend of shorts, I forgot about this last week, but I really didn't have time for it anyway. When I remembered, I gave serious consideration to giving it a miss this year, but really, why would I do that?

How do we simulate love, how do we really love, and how do we know the difference?

And is it really Carnaval time already? And did I really skip Orfeu negro last year?

Birth of a notion

Dear White People

(2014)

My favorite film of its year, and I was tickled to see that not only does it hold up on second viewing, but the rough edges didn't bother me at all this time. The one downer is going to writer-director Justin Simien's IMDb page and finding no second feature even in production.

Had the pleasure of showing introducing my bud April to this, and lazy reviewer that I am, I'm going to ask her to check in with a comment.

We bombed in New Haven

All About Eve

(1950)

Imagine my surprise to discover that my buddy April, in town for interviews with the Yale and Brown drama schools, thus obviously a devotee of the thay-a-tr, had never seen this film. Long story short, I bullied her into watching it, with an opt-out clause after 15 minutes. She loved it, we watched the first hour, then retired in anticipation of a blizzard adventure next day, got home next day from said b.a., and watched the rest (ahead of the Illini game).

So regaling my thay-a-tr devotee daughter with the stunning news that her protégée had never seen this classic, I was gobsmacked to discover that . . . oh, anyone who's ever seen a third-rate comedy of errors can guess how this sentence ends.

Anyway, I have nothing to say about the film, but I'm hoping April will check in with a comment. And Jen too, once she's actually seen it.

'Tis a ponderous chain

Scrooge

(1951)

This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased

This is Dickens straight, and the film paraphrases a bit, but just a bit. Excellent advice, that, but it seems that we are, as a nation, seemingly as a majority opinion, taking an "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" stance. Certainly, one of our traditionally major parties, the party that gave us Lincoln and abolition and the Fifteenth Amendment, has embraced those rhetorical questions as a virtual platform.

I don't believe there is a god, but if there is, how will she or he judge us? And if there's not, how can we judge ourselves?

The gift

It's a Wonderful Life

(1946)

How strange that I've never quite gotten this before. All the 1946 signals are present: the tweed jacket, the fuck-off spectacles, the mannish hat, running to the bar girls for protection: "old maid" + librarian = . . . if George's window-smashing cock had never existed, Mary would have become . . . A LESBIAN!!!!

Another thing I thought this year: Sheldon Leonard (Nick the bartender), who later became a producer, is perhaps best known as the guy who discovered Bill Cosby, an honor that should not be diminished by recent revelations. In fact, on an early comedy album, Cosby does an impression of Leonard that anyone who has ever seen this film will recognize as spot-on.

Everybody comes to Rick's

Casablanca

(1942)

Vacation and the women's World Cup final and introducing my kids to Orphan Black and (on Bastille Day itself!) tattooing and the All-Star Game pushed back my annual screening past its usual target week, and then an 18-inning Mets game (a rare victory!) knocked it off last Sunday's agenda. But hey, know what? Even in late July, it works.

Since last year's screening, a good friend got hold of the long-hard-to-find play on which Julius and Philip Epstein based one of the best screenplays ever. In reading it, I discovered, unsurprisingly, that the screenplay improved in significant ways on the play: an infinitely more satisfying ending, for example, and a critical demotion of the subplot involving the Bulgarian couple, which in the play nearly overwhelms the main plot; most significant, in the play Ilsa [Lois] is selfishly amoral and sexually promiscuous, making the stakes for her decision--and thus the stakes of the whole damn story--much lower. There are also sacrifices to the Hays Office--especially details of the sexual predations of Rinaldo (right: the Vichy officer who will be Renault in the film has an inexplicably Italian name), who lacks any trace of Claude Rains charm.

Most surprising, however, was to find that many of my favorite lines and elements were introduced not by the brothers Epstein but by the playwrights, Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. E.g.:

• For a price, Ugarte, for a price.
• Gestapo spank, eh?
• I don't have time to spend what I make here. [though rendered in unfortunate "Negro dialect"--the play is far less interested in Sam {the Rabbit}'s dignity and humanity. Well, hell, let's just say the treatment of the Rabbit is appallingly racist throughout.]
• the Marseillaise-drowning-out-the-German-patriotic-song (though a different German song) scene 
• and yes, the iconic value of "As Time Goes By"

One of the few unfortunate changes: the suggestion that DeGaulle's signature on the letters of transit would carry any weight with Vichy has always struck me as one of the film's few false notes. Presumably the Epsteins were just looking for a name Americans would recognize; the signature in the play is Marshall Weygand, whom I'd never heard of but who makes a lot more sense.

Anyway, if you love this film a tenth as much and know it a tenth as well as I do, you'll get a kick out of clicking on that link above and comparing a promising but deficient source with the masterpiece it became. In writing and staging, as in love, the fundamental things apply.

Everything you always wanted to know about sects

Monty Python's Life of Brian

(1979)

Not altogether by coincidence, yesterday I started watching the USA network series Dig, which is set in modern-day Jerusalem but involves some sort of cosmic plot by Essenes, who were a group of Jewish political activists at the time of Brian (and Jesus), not altogether unlike the Judean People's Front.

Another connection is that, through 2 episodes anyway, Dig seems almost as silly as Brian, without even trying.

The fundamental ontological riddles of our time

Bull Durham

(1988)

God I love this game; god, I love this film. And I really needed both (while posting this, I'm actually listening to Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez call today's Nationals-Mets game in Florida), as it freakin' snowed a-freakin'-gain today. Mets' opener in 9 days, home opener (at which I will of course be) in 16 days. A lot of snow to melt before then; rose goes in the front, big guy.

The first day of the rest of your life

Groundhog Day

(1993)

I feel as if I've just seen this.

I feel as if I've just made that joke.

Monday will be our first Groundhog Day since Harold Ramis left us, and though the scale says I'm not allowed to have a drink, I'm raising a toast to the man who made this wonderfulness happen.

$59.60

It Happened One Night

(1934)

I was inspired to watch this tonight by a grad school friend's report that he showed it for the first time to his teenage son, who pronounced it probably his favorite movie, even while pointing out its continuity flaws. I was impressed by David's powers of observation, and I still am, even after discovering that I'd noticed one of the errors the last time I'd watched (click on title link).

Presumably, David, being young and having killed few of his brain cells, will remember having noticed the error even if he doesn't watch the film again for almost 5 years.

Upload

Her

(2013)

Often when I've loved a film enough at first sight to preorder the DVD asap, I return to it after the one-year recommended rest period eager to see whether I disagree at all with my initial impression (if you're new here or you've not heard me mention this before, a previous review, when one exists, can be accessed via the title link).

Answer: not a whit. However, one addition: in marveling a year ago at the performances of the lead actors (including the unseen one, regardless of her billing), I neglected to mention what an extraordinary treatment Amy Adams gives to Amy, the quietly pining friend whose relatively thankless function is to give Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) a flesh-and-blood sounding board and shoulder to cry on.

You are now in Bedford Falls

It's a Wonderful Life

(1946)

Decided I'd make no special effort to watch this, that if I missed a year for it, it was probably due for a rest. But damn, I'm glad I watched it: even with my attention distracted my email and Facebook, it was an extraordinarily rewarding screening. Damn, it's depressing; damn, it's inspiring.

Is the pudding still singing in the copper, Peter?

Scrooge

(1951)

First Dickens I ever read, in my high school library, was a dramatization of this, done, I believe, by the man himself. Between then (1969 at the latest) and this year, the only other Dickens I read was Bleak House. This year, though, I declared Dickens year and read a shitload of Dickens, including, in the pat 48 hours, the short story/novella that was adapted for this film. So now I know . . .

Well, first, I've never seen an earlier film adaptation of this, so I don't know whether the makers of this film deserve all the credit, but there are lots and lots of changes in the Ghost of Christmas Past segment, and all of them for the better:

• in the novella, Fan is explicitly younger than Ebeneezer; in the film, he is the younger, and his mother died giving him life, which makes a neat parallel with Fan and her son Fred--and her deathbed scene, the most sentimental scene in the film, is also missing in the text;
• Ebenezer's betrothed, Alice, marries and has a daughter in the novella, but no moviegoer wants to know that the protagonist has no chance at love, so here she becomes an unmarried do-gooder; we also have a scene with her before Scrooge becomes a dick, which makes his initial love more credible;
• all of the business stuff is new: Fezziwig's business failure; Scrooge's meeting Marley; Scrooge and Marley's power play to seize the business; Marley's deathbed scene--none of it is in the source text, all of it is critical to the film's depiction of who, exactly, Scrooge is.

Except for Scrooge declaring himself "too old" for redemption, the interaction with the ghosts of Christmas Present and Future are essentially as in Dickens's text--the film's main contribution being the addition of the tearjerking "Barbara Allen" to the soundtrack--but the filmmakers recognized better than the master that the key to redemption is the past.

God, what a grand film!

People are jerks

Inside Llewyn Davis

(2013)

Guest blogger Laura Burrone:

Full disclosure, I’m an unashamed, full-on, complete fan(atic) of the Coen brothers and incapable of an unbiased opinion. Now that that’s out the way, what the heck was that? I want to like this movie, but about midway through the story it was clear that there wasn’t a likable character among them. Even the cat is not himself. It’s a dreary story, with music that makes you want to jump off of the Verrazano Bridge (a nod to John Goodman’s character), but only just so. You can’t take your eyes off this movie, and you can’t wait for the next song. How did they do that?

Maynard Ferguson, not Ulysses

Maybe they Coens have the perfect formula for movie-making. Take various parts of amusing, horrifying, and bewildering but always leave a delicious taste in the mouth and you have the secret to their success.

Preserve, protect, defend

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Haunted

El espinazo del Diablo (The devil's backbone)

(2001)

Ah, a good old-fashioned ghost story with a Spanish Civil War background; early Guillermo del Toro.