20 Feet from Stardom 2013
90 minutes I was just finishing
college when rock and roll was taking off and then I went to sea for three
years. Somehow I never bought into it
and I don’t think I appreciated it at all until I saw this film. The film is about backup singers, virtually
all African American and graduates of years of gospel singing in their
churches. I still have no interest in
listening to songs being shouted at me in words that are unintelligible, but I
was fascinated at the richness and inventiveness of the sounds created by the
women who stood behind the stars. Some
eventually made it on their own, but those who didn’t can look back on years of
making beautiful music that enriched what was happening in front of them but
was unappreciated on its own.
.
Afternoon of a Faun:
Tanaquil Le Clercq 2013 91 minutes
This was originally shown on the American
Masters series on PBS. It’s a
documentary of the rise of Tanaquil Le Clercq to being a principal dancer for
the New York City Ballet until she was struck down by polio while on tour in
Germany. She never danced again but she
lived a full life until she died at 71 in 2000.
She was married to George Balanchine from 1952 to 1969. It’s not a pleasant film, but it is an
interesting part of the history of ballet in the 20thC. You can see the whole film or shorts of
LeClercq at:
.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/tanaquil-le-clercq/biography-and-photos-of-tanaquil-le-clercq/3048/
.
Art
Is… The Permanent Revolution 2012
Three contemporary graphic artists, Sigmund Abeles, a painter and
etcher; Ann Chernow, a painter and lithographer; and Paul Marcus, a wood block cutter,
reveal how art has been used to
promulgate social progress throughout history and its role in such change
today. Between discussions of Goya, Picasso, Rembrandt and other painters, the
trio creates three new works, which are then printed by master printer James
Reed. Their themes are pretty grim:
torture, suicide bombers and a cemetery.
Among other things, one can learn a little about printing processes.
.
At Berkeley 2013
244 minutes My vote is to
require all college administrators to watch the whole thing. It’s a documentary that exposes tensions over
rising tuition and slashed budgets. My
own take is that faculty and students should recapture universities from the
administrative staff and turn them back into educational institutions.
.
La Danse – Le Ballet
de l’Opera de Paris 2009 158 minutes This is long and a bit tedious, but it does
give an amazing behind the scenes view of the dedication and hard work it takes
to create the magic of ballet on stage.
One sees the behind-the-scenes view of rehearsals, performances and
ephemeral moments of the dancers, choreographers and others that make up the
creative troupe inside the Palais Garnier.
I was particularly interested in the rather manipulative management
style of Brigitte Lefevre, Director of Dance, and the opportunity in the film
to see the Chagall ceiling at the Opera Bastille. The film contains brief scenes from the
following ballets: Genus, Casse
Noisette, Le Songe de Medee, Paquita, Romeo & Juliette, La Maison de
Bernada, and Orphee et Eurydice
.
Dumbstruck 2010
85 minutes Here in Washington
we’re accustomed to hearing the very rich speak to us through our (their)
politicians, but this film is about old fashioned stage ventriloquism. Ventriloquists from all over the country get
together once a year in Kentucky to perform for each other and swap stories and
information about possibilities for performing.
It looks like a fun party, but it has its sad side because so few performers
can make a living doing what they love to do.
The film is a documentary that follows five performers: a truly gorgeous
young woman who just wants to make it big enough to hit the cruise ship
circuit; a young guy age 13 who hopes for a career; a crabby old New England
lady who performs for people who really need cheering up – she’s amazingly
inventive – but neglects her own finances; a guy in his 40s who made it to the
cruise ship circuit and spent so much time away from home that his wife
divorced him; and Terry Fator who made it BIG. Fator’s story is the happy one. When he first went on stage at American Idol,
you could see the faces of the judges all looking like they were prepared to be
bored. Then his puppet started to sing,
and he blew them away. He won the
contest and then got a gig in Las Vegas that was so successful that he was
signed to a $100 million five year contract and was given his own personal
stage set. The guy can really sing. I wonder if someday he’ll just forget about
the puppet.
.
Frankie & Alice 2014
101 minutes I had a little
trouble following this so I cribbed this quote from Wiki almost verbatim: “
Frankie (Halle Berry) is a black woman with dissociative identity disorder,
caused by a traumatic incident from her childhood, which she has
repressed. She has two alternate
personalities: Genius, a seven-year-old child; and Alice, a Southern white
racist woman, whom Frankie struggles to overcome. With the help of Dr. Oz,her psychiatrist
(Stellan Skarsgard), Frankie strives to live a life close to normal.” Her I.Q.
sometimes measured 151 and sometime much
lower. It’s based on a true story. I don’t claim any credentials as a critic,
but Halle Berry blew me away as she moved among her personalities.
.
The Grand Budapest Hotel 2014
100 minutes From the previews I
had expected to see Bill Murray on screen for more than 30 seconds, or was it a
minute and 30 seconds? Gustave H (Ralph
Fiennes) is the concierge at a prestigious European hotel and the occasional
lover of many of the rich women who stay there from time to time. One of the women leaves him a valuable
painting when she dies, but the family will not acknowledge the bequest, so
with the help of his protégé, a lobby boy named Zero, he steals the
painting. Inside the cover on the back
of the painting is a new will that leaves everything to Gustave. All hell breaks loose. Along the way we learn that the concierges of
the great hotels all know each other and form a network that can do almost
anything. It’s all great fun, but the
producers chose to shoot the movie in a really ugly hotel.
.
Hateship Loveship 2013
102 minutes I was curious to see
if Kristen Wiig, one of my favorite comedians, could act in a drama. She can.
She plays a dowdy caretaker who is hired to look after an elderly lawyer
(Nick Nolte looking really old) and his granddaughter. Wiig is attracted to the girl’s father, an
ex-con and junkie, who has just bought a rundown motel in Chicago. He’s not even allowed to stay overnight in
his father’s house. He’s the one who
hired Wiig, and she writes him a note to
thank him. The daughter’s friend Edith
offers to mail it but instead writes an answer herself and suggests they
correspond further on the internet. A
romance blossoms but only in the mind of Wiig.
She leaves her job and goes to the motel in Chicago. The first thing she learns is that the father
has never been on the internet. This is
a movie so you can imagine how it turns out.
.
How Much Does Your
Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? 2010 79 minutes
I thought I knew a bit of art history, but I had never hear of Norman
Foster. The question in the title came
from his friend, Buckminster Fuller.
Foster developed a huge practice with over 3000 employees and built
innovative buildings all over the world.
Google him. The pictures of his
work will blow your mind.
.
The Lego Movie 2014
101 minutes First you have a
computer animated movie about a young guy trying to stop his evil mayor from
ruining the city, and then you are suddenly in a tract house basement with a
huge Lego city. The father, Will
Ferrell, is about to glue everything together to make it permanent. His son persuades him not to on grounds that
that would stifle creativity. If they
took the city apart, they could make all sorts of other interesting
things. It’s a good point, I guess, but
another good point is that you might not want to see every Will Ferrell
movie. Ferrell does speak English
throughout.
.
Monkey Business 1952
96 minutes It doesn’t hurt once
in a while to go back 60 years if it’s to see Cary Grant. He’s a wacky professor who may have invented
a youth serum. It’s fun except for
Ginger Rogers who seems to have been carved out of wood.
.
Never Stand Still:
Dancing at Jacob’s Pillow 2011 Jacob's
Pillow is a dance center, school and performance space founded by Ted
Shawn and located in Becket Massachusetts.
It is known for the oldest internationally acclaimed summer dance
festival in the United States. In the
film there are clips of Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Suzanne Farrell, Mark
Morris, Judith Jamison and Bill Irwin talking about and sometimes demonstrating
their work. A film to see if you are
interested in dance.
.
Noah 2014
137 minutes It just couldn’t
have been any worse. What a waste of
Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly!
.
The Railway Man 2014
118 minutes This film is based
on the story of Eric Lomax, who was captured in Singapore by the Japanese at
the beginning of WW II and taken north to work on the railroad the Japanese
were building across Thailand. It’s the
one that crosses the River Kwai. His
horrible tortures in captivity by the Kempetai included water boarding. He recovered physically but never escaped the
nightmares. On a train he meets Patti, a
recent divorcee played by Nicole Kidman, and soon they become a couple and
marry. Lomax met periodically with other
survivors of the RR and at one meeting he sees a newspaper article that shows
one of his torturers, Takashi Nagase, in Thailand giving tours of the Kempetai
compound and the RR. Patti encourages
Eric to go to Thailand and find Nagase.
Unlike the horrible incident in Unbroken,
where the guard who tortured Louis Zamperini and other Allied prisoners refused
to acknowledge any regret, Nagase finally admits his role and expresses his
regrets. Nagase and Lomax reconciled and
became lifelong friends.
.
Traffic 2000 147 minutes
This centers around a newly appointed federal drug czar, who finds out
his own teenage daughter is an addict.
It won four Oscars, was nominated for best picture and the cast includes
Don Cheadle, Benecio del Toro (Oscar for best supporting actor), Michael
Douglas as the czar, Luis Guzman, Dennis Quaid and Catherine Zeta-Jones. It’s all a little too predictable and kind a
drags through too many minutes.
Transcendence
2014 119 minutes Up until now I would have said that I would
see any film that had either Johnny Depp or Morgan Freeman. From now on I’ll be more careful. Depp and his wife are computer scientists
working to advance artificial intelligence.
They are opposed by an anti-technology organization, R.I.F.T. that is
trying to prevent them from creating a world where computers can transcend the
abilities of the human brain. The
anti-tech people shoot Depp and as he lies dying his wife uploads his brain
into a computer. From there he continues
to run his lab and continue his research.
He begins to reach too far and the powers that be create a virus that
will stop him and also shut down the internet and the whole technological
world. For the rest, read Wiki.
.
We Cause Scenes: The Rise of Improv Everywhere 2013
85 minutes Who knew that New
York City, until recently the stop and frisk capital of the world, could be
such a tolerant place. Yesterday I read
in the Washington Post that buskers here
in Washington are not allowed to play within 15 feet of Metro property and even
if they are outside 15 feet they may not accept tips. In New York the authorities pretty much leave
them alone if they don’t play in places where their music will interfere with
people’s ability to hear loudspeaker announcements. I guess that permissive attitude is why
Improv Everywhere was able to thrive in the City. Charlie Todd, Improv’s creator, narrates this
film. He started with an action on the
subway. He and a number of his friends
got on the train one by one without acknowledging each other. They took off their pants and just stood or
sat there as if nothing unusual had happened and surreptitiously filmed the
whole thing. There was an attractive
girl sitting there who kind of got the idea of what was going on. (She and Charlie are now married). They spent a lot of time figuring out what
else they could do and the group got a lot larger. One of their best was a hypnotism prank that
totally took in the crowd that had gathered to watch in Washington Square. When You-Tube came along and social media
started to metastasize, the group grew to over 3000 and was imitated
worldwide. A lot of what they did was in
the category of flash mobs, but some of their actions were more complex. One of the networks picked them up to do a TV
series, but it never got beyond the pilot stage. You can see the network footage on
You-Tube. It’s just a great story of
someone having fun and making a career out of mocking our uptight society.
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