Monthly Archive for August, 2008

John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 31, 2008
in Music
. 2 Comments

Very few film composers ever find their way into the public consciousness, but John Williams is a living legend - and at age 76, he’s still going strong.

Nevertheless, he is 76, so I decided it was time to see him in concert, and grabbed a couple of tickets for his performance this year.

It’s a real pleasure to hear his classic film scores played live. Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Close Encounters… all films I grew up with, and still love, largely because of the brilliant music that accompanies them.

And I became acquainted with a few films I did not grow up with - after the intermission, there was a tribute to director Stanley Donen, who came out on stage at age 84 (!) and reminisced about some of his classic films - Funny Face, Singing In The Rain, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, and so on. Clips were played on the four giant monitors in the Bowl, and the orchestra played in synch with them.

To cap off the evening, Williams performed a medley of themes from the various George Lucas / Steven Spielberg films he has scored, then emerged for an encore. He gave a mischievous (if deliberate) look over his shoulder as he took to the podium again, and launched into The Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back.

Two more encores followed - a performance of Marion’s Theme from Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, then the immortal Superman theme.

Yes, the place smells like food and beer. Yes, every piece of music was accompanied by the insistent, maddening chirping of crickets. Even worse, an unforgivably corpulent man was obstructing our view. And those wood benches can be damn painful on the backside after a while.

But overall, the entire experience was a pleasant reminder that while I have been disappointed by crappy sequels and remakes over the years - John Williams has never disappointed me.

Escape From Fort Bravo (1953)

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 30, 2008
in Movies
. 4 Comments

I love me a good Western. Add William Holden into the mix with Eleanor Parker, one of the most underrated actresses from the golden age of movies, and you’ve got my money. To top it all off, Escape From Fort Bravo was directed by John Sturges, who would later go on to direct The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape - so this one was a slam dunk for me.

The title says it all. Fort Bravo is a Union prison camp in Arizona for confederate soldiers. It’s surrounded by miles of desert and roving bands of Mescalero Indians, making escape virtually impossible. Our protagonist, Captain Roper (William Holden) is a ruthless Union soldier who falls for a beautiful visitor named Carla Forester (Eleanor Parker) only to learn that she has come to the camp to help four confederate soldiers escape, including her lover, Captain John Marsh (John Forsythe).

The escaped prisoners only get so far before Roper catches up with them - then soldiers and prisoners alike are forced to work together when they are pinned down by Mescalero Indians.

This is where director Sturges really shines - this sequence is nearly twenty minutes long, and works beautifully - ending with a strong dramatic moment between Holden and Parker where he tells her to play dead in the hope that if the Indians kill him, they’ll leave the area and she can escape. The look on Holden’s face as he gently pushes her down to the sand, and the look on hers as she reluctantly obeys, is the kind of old-fashioned melodrama I love.

It’s a simple film, but like most of the old MGM Westerns, the actors are terrific, the locales are beautiful, and the technical credits are top notch. Overall, it’s a solid piece of entertainment.

Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 30, 2008
in Movies
. 4 Comments

Ridley Scott’s films have a chronic problem - he tends to be less interested in the protagonist than in everything going on around him. This problem dates back to Blade Runner, where the replicants are far more sympathetic than Harrison Ford, and can be charted all the way through to Gladiator, where Scott was clearly more interested in Joaquin Phoenix than in Russell Crowe.

This problem is also evident in Kingdom of Heaven. Orlando Bloom plays Balian, a blacksmith who learns that the father he never knew (Liam Neeson) is not only a knight, but a baron in Jerusalem. Following his father’s untimely demise, Balian ends up in Jerusalem, romances a princess named Sybilla (Eva Green) and ends up right in the middle of a battle with Muslim leader Saladin for control of Jerusalem.

Sounds straightforward enough, right? But writer William Monahan and director Ridley Scott are far more interested in Sybilla, her son, her leprous brother King Baldwin (played by an uncredited Edward Norton), and the struggle for power in Jerusalem. Through no fault of his own, Orlando Bloom is marginalized for over an hour of the film - and when he re-enters the film, our connection with him has been lost.

It’s my understanding that at the behest of the studio, the theatrical cut actually lopped out most of Sybilla’s story, to the extent that the character of her son was completely removed, in order to center the film more around Balian. For once, the studio was right - a protagonist should be actively involved in pushing the story forward, not off sulking in a corner. But this problem should have been solved at the script stage, not in editing.

But to give credit where credit is due, I can’t imagine the film without those subplots. Those characters and scenes are compelling. In fact, I’d say that Scott’s work here is some of his best. There’s a lot to recommend here - I just wish they’d found a way to make our protagonist an active participant in the proceedings.

Sicko

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 28, 2008
in Movies
. 2 Comments

Michael Moore is a troublesome figure for me - I find his act as an average joe exasperating, seeing as how he’s become unfathomably wealthy off of his films, and he tends to overstates his case to such an extreme that even when I agree with him, I feel uncomfortable siding with someone so smug and self-righteous.

But… as with his previous films, Sicko encourages discussion and debate, which is always healthy.

Indeed, sometimes there is no debate - he’s simply right. Our health care system is inarguably corrupt, and people are dying as a result. When a man loses the tips of two fingers in a wood shop accident, he shouldn’t be forced to choose which one will be reattached because of the expense. When a man is dying, and a procedure exists that might save him, his doctor shouldn’t be battling with insurance companies over the expense, who claim the procedure is ‘experimental’.

Moore loses a bit of ground when he praises socialized medicine in other countries - namely France, England, Canada, and finally Cuba. These countries don’t have ideal systems, as Moore would lead us to believe, but nor are they as bad as the U.S. government would have us believe, either.

The one issue I wish he’d confronted head-on is the issue of taxes. People in foreign countries pay 50% or more for the privileges they receive. Unfortunately, Moore skims past this issue, even making light of it. Had he investigated how a system of universal health care could be implemented in the U.S. without halving people’s incomes, his other arguments would have been bolstered considerably.

And the final half hour, in which he takes many of the sick, disenfranchised people we’ve met throughout the film into Cuba for health care, is simply preposterous. Americans simply cannot go to Cuba, get off a boat and receive free health care, but this is what Moore would have us believe happened. This is where, as I said earlier, he overstates his case to the point of absurdity.

So take it all with a grain of salt - but I definitely recommend you take it. Buried beneath that layer of hype and self-aggrandizing nonsense are a lot of unpleasant facts, and I applaud Moore for having the courage to state them so openly.

Control

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 27, 2008
in Movies
. 1 Comment

Even though I gestated in the 1980’s, the band Joy Division was a little before my time. I was familiar with a few of their tunes, but knew nothing of the band itself - so I came to Control with few preconceived notions.

Control focuses primarily on the story of Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division - portrayed in the film by Sam Riley. Afflicted with increasingly frequent seizures, overwhelmed by the pressures of fame and unable to choose between his wife & child or his lover, Curtis killed himself at age 23.

To the film’s credit, it neither condemns nor approves of Curtis’ wildly inconsistent behavior - it simply depicts it. As a result, Curtis comes across as a imperfect, three-dimensional human being.

The film’s biggest problem is pacing. At two hours, it lingers too long on the angst of its protagonist, and could have profited from heightening or perhaps verbalizing the drama a bit more. Intellectually, I understood Curtis’ confusion and desperation - but I needed to feel it more.

All that aside, it’s a beautiful-looking movie, and I applaud the filmmakers for shooting it in black and white. It creates a bleak tone, and immediately sets the story in the past without relying on the usual garish 70’s/80’s costumes and trappings.

In summation… it’s a sad story, but well worth exploring.

Lonesome Dove

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 25, 2008
in Television
. 0 Comments

For years, I’ve been saying that Lonesome Dove needs to be remastered. It was shot on film, finished on film, and with today’s technology could look infinitely better than the original transfer done in 1989.

Well, now it does - a new DVD of Lonesome Dove has been released with a pristine new transfer. Some people are carping that it has been letterboxed for 16×9, but they don’t seem to grasp that the film negative had enough image to accommodate letterboxing. True, you lose a bit of image at the top and bottom, but you gain the pictoral widescreen scope of a theatrical film.

Beyond the technical issues, Lonesome Dove is inarguably one of the best miniseries ever produced for television. Director Simon Wincer gathered an amazing cast - Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Diane Lane, Angelica Huston, Robert Urich, Danny Glover, Rick Schroeder… all absolutely perfect.

Especially Duvall. He seizes the role of Gus McCrae and runs with it. You can put his performance in Lonesome Dove up alongside the very best of his feature work.

And my favorite film composer - the late, great Basil Poledouris - turns in a beautiful, melodic, rousing score that elevates the miniseries immeasurably, and won him a well-deserved Emmy.

Yes, it’s six hours. But it’s six of the best hours of television you’ll ever see.

C.L. Moore

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 24, 2008
in Books
. 3 Comments

The fine people at Paizo Publishing are reprinting the works of lesser-known fantasy writers both old and new. For me, this is a treasure trove - after all, the man who inspired me to start writing was none other than Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian.

I bought both C.L. Moore volumes without really knowing anything about her. My intention was to simply take a shot in the dark and see what happened. Fortunately, both volumes proved to be worthwhile purchases.

C.L. Moore - Catherine Lucille Moore, to be precise - was one of the first women (if not the first) to break into the sci-fi fantasy market by selling short stories to the pulp magazines in the 1930’s.

She used her initials to disguise her sex, which led to a humorous incident. A fellow pulp writer named Henry Kuttner - thinking she was a man - wrote her an admiring letter. When he learned the truth, they began to correspond regularly, eventually got married, and became collaborators, working together under a number of pseudonyms.

Moore’s most famous creations are a raven-haired female warrior named Jirel of Joiry, whose adventures are set in medieval France - and Northwest Smith, a Han Solo-ish rogue who roams the depths of space.

Moore’s strength is description, mood, and conjuring strong visuals. Her weakness is plot. Her stories are almost always variations on the same idea.

Jirel usually must travel to an otherworldly realm to bring back a weapon which will help her defeat an enemy she faces in France - Northwest Smith usually encounters a seductive female alien who nearly destroys him. Moore even uses the Jirel formula for Northwest Smith sometimes!

Thus the first stories in both series - “Black God’s Kiss” and “Shambleau” - are the strongest, and the following stories diminish in interest as they repeat the same ideas.

That being said, I was surprised at how adult and sensual her writing is, especially when you consider that she was writing this stuff in the 1930’s and 1940’s. I’ll admit it - I don’t think women make the best sci-fi / fantasy writers. But Moore brings something special to the table. You may not get a cleverly constructed plot, but you will feel something when you read her work.

The Private Life Of Henry VIII (1933)

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 24, 2008
in Movies
. 2 Comments

1. Charles Laughton = Absolutely brilliant. He elucidates this engorged child of a man perfectly - and even manages to make us feel a little bit sorry for him.
2. Robert Donat = Earnest and sympathetic. A perfect counter-balance to Henry.
3. Elsa Lanchester = Almost steals the show from hubby Laughton with her conniving, hilarious portrayal of Anne of Cleves.
4. Merle Oberon = She’s only in the film for a few minutes as Anne Boleyn, but has the most haunting scenes as she prepares for her beheading.
5. Direction = Alexander Korda keeps things hopping, depicts the tension and stress of dealing with an irrational, unpredictable king nicely.
6. Script = Crisp dialogue, rich insight into Henry’s character. Deliberately ignores the political side of things, but hey, that’s why it’s called The Private Life Of Henry VIII.
7. Cinematography = Black and white Academy format. There’s a proscenium-like staging to several scenes, but when an actor like Laughton is chewing up the scenery, that’s just fine.
8. Production Design = The film is limited to only a few sets, but they make the most of them. The royal dining hall is especially opulent.
9. Costume Design = Top notch, especially for the women - they all look fantastic.
10. Conclusion = A compact little masterpiece.

Centennial nostalgia

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 23, 2008
in Television
. 3 Comments

The instant I saw that Centennial was coming to DVD, I added it to my Netflix list and eagerly awaited its arrival. Why, you ask?

Nostalgia.

“But you were only seven years old when it originally aired,” you say with righteous indignation!

True - but I’ve remembered bits and pieces of it through the fog of memory for years.

When a stage actor / con man named Mervin Wendell (Anthony Zerbe) arrives in Centennial with wife (Lois Nettleton) and young son (Doug McKeon), Sheriff Axel Dumire (David Keith) remembers them from the last town he worked in and keeps a close eye on them.

When the family falls on hard times, they start to play the “badger game” with the local priest - the wife seduces him, the husband breaks in on them, and they demand payment to remain silent.

They successfully fleece the priest and drive him out of town, but Dumire is watching their every move. He starts gently pressuring their young son, Phillip - who wants to tell the truth but feels he must protect his parents.

Things take a turn when the Wendells pull the “badger game” on a traveling businessman. He recognizes the con, fights back, and they are forced to kill him. Having witnessed the murder, Phillip helps his parents hide the body in a nearby lake - in a beaver cave beneath the water, where it will never be found.

This is the part I remembered for so many years…

As a child of seven, the seduction and murder of the businessman was heady stuff - undoubtedly my first glimpses of sex and violence. Watching it thirty years later, it was eerie to see certain images which had been obscured in my memory for years - now crystal clear.

When Dumire finds out that a businessman carrying five thousand dollars has disappeared in his town, he doggedly pursues the Wendells - dragging the lake, pressuring Phillip to confess while he methodically puts the pieces together. Unfortunately, Dumire is shot and killed by a gang of criminals, and dies without truly solving the murder.

Decades later, in the 1970’s, the grandson (Robert Vaughn) of the Wendells - who is wealthy from land and business deals made with that five thousand dollars - discovers the skeleton when the lake is drained to build a bridge. Terrified that his family will be scandalized if the old rumors are proven true, he wraps the bones in his overcoat and carries them away to destroy them.

I remembered this scene - Robert Vaughn jumping down into the cave, wearing big blocky 1970’s sunglasses, and the camera panning over to reveal the skeleton - exactly.

Funny how certain things from childhood remain with you forever. I can’t remember what I watched a week ago, but those first impressions of adult concepts - greed, sex, murder, death and decay - have stayed with me for thirty years.

I even remember my father in a black leather reclining chair - feet up, sound asleep and snoring loudly - while I sat on the floor of our home in Columbia, South Carolina watching these ghoulish events unfold.

Centennial clearly didn’t make that big an impression on him.

Centennial (1978)

Published
by
Pseudo
on August 23, 2008
in Television
. 5 Comments

Centennial is not something you undertake lightly…

Adapted from James Michener’s 928-page novel, it was the longest (26-1/2 hours, 21 minus commercials), most expensive ($25 million) and most complicated project (four directors, five producers, five cinematographers, almost 100 speaking parts, several hundred extras) made for television at the time. It was shown in two- and three-hour installments over a period of four months.

The cast is a who’s-who of film and television actors from that era: Robert Conrad, Richard Chamberlain, Barbara Carrera, Richard Crenna, Timothy Dalton (!), Lynn Redgrave(!!), Chad Everett, Andy Griffith, Brian Keith, Sally Kellerman, Donald Pleasence, Robert Vaughn, David Janssen… the list goes on.

The story begins in the 1700’s with two trappers, Pasquinel (Robert Conrad) and McKeag (Richard Chamberlain). Love triangles, betrayals and all kinds of good stuff develop when a young Indian woman (Barbara Carrera) and the daughter (Sally Kellerman) of a blacksmith (Raymond Burr) enter their lives (whew!).

The following generation introduces us to a trader named Levi Zendt (Gregory Harrison) and a soldier, Major Maxwell Mercy (Chad Everett!), both of whom are trying to help preserve the peace between the rapidly diminishing Indian nations and the U.S. Army. Into this plot comes Richard Crenna as Colonel Frank Skimmerhorn, a deeply disturbed religious zealot who has put together his own militia to eliminate the Indians entirely.

The plot progresses through the 1800’s, through the establishment of Centennial as a town. We see the first farmers (Alex Carras) tame the land, we see the first cattle ranchers (Timothy Dalton, William Atherton) bring cattle out from Texas with the help of stalwart cowboys like R.J. Poteet (Dennis Weaver). Eventually, the law comes to Centennial in the form of Sheriff Axel Dumire (the sublime David Keith). As the town grows and prospers, we follow succeeding generations into the 1900’s.

Basically, Centennial has everything. It’s got cowboys, Indians, romance, action - it’s got cavalry charges, cattle drives, shoot-outs, fist fights - even a murder mystery. And my personal favorite - a saber duel between Chad Everett and Richard Crenna!

Then, for the final segment, we arrive in the 1970’s…

This, unfortunately, is where Centennial falls apart. It’s impossible to expect a 21-hr. long miniseries to hold your interest all the way, but when Centennial jumps into the 1970’s, it falls apart. Andy Griffith is wasted as a historian researching the birth of Centennial, and David Janssen is given the thankless role of a virtuous rancher who loves and respects the land.

Here we get speeches about protecting the environment ad nauseum. Throughout the miniseries, there are numerous statements of such themes - protecting the land, the animals, respecting the ways of the Indians - but in this final segment, they’re stated at such length and with such relentless fervor one simply becomes bored.

All in all, Centennial is an astonishing piece of television - the kind of epic, truly ambitious miniseries that doesn’t even exist anymore. The fact that it limps to a conclusion is unfortunate, but when you consider that it holds your attention for most of its 21-hr. length, that’s a minor complaint. Most movies nowadays can’t hold my attention for a mere two hours.