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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 6:15 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Having finally seen Life Itself, the superb Steve James documentary about Roger Ebert, I am more convinced than ever that the Oscars are a sham and a travesty, Even if I had liked (and I most decidedly did NOT) Citizenfour, the Edward Snowden doc that won the award this year, I would have been stunned when the announcement came that Life Itself was not even nominated in the category. After all, the movie got great reviews and its subject was a major player in the film industry. So what happened?
Well, that's not my job to figure out, but it's pretty incredible. Anyway, I've now--finally--seen the movie (streaming on Netflix) and the conundrum is more unfathomable than ever, since Life Itself is extremely entertaining--not only vivid and moving but also very, very funny. Full disclosure: I was more than a little ready to like this film since I knew Ebert, not intimately but fairly well. We weren't bosom buddies but we were more than acquaintances.
So, yes, I was part of the preferred demographic for this film. But I was not prepared for just how well-directed and balanced it was. Far from a worshipful trip to the Ebert shrine, this movie is determined to show the man warts and all. There were a few warts, to be sure. Ebert had a pretty pronounced ego. But where in some individuals this need to hold court and be the perpetual center of the vortex can be obnoxious or overbearing, when you were with Roger you were riveted and delighted 100 percent of the time. In addition to being charismatic, hilarious, and possessed of a preternatural gift of gab, Ebert was all-but-inarguably the most brilliant person I have ever known. And this movie shows it all.
That Roger's cancer resulted in a graphic change in his appearance is at first shocking, but as the movie progresses you get used to it and it just becomes another transition in his amazing life. His wife Chaz (who I never met) is a force to be reckoned with and she memorably holds the center of the story.
The movie must be seen. And the Oscars must be dismissed. Birdman and Citizenfour instead of Boyhood and Life Itself? Insane. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2015 9:32 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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billyweeds wrote: bartist wrote: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lZMzf-SDWP8
Honest trailer - those who endured Interstellar may enjoy this.
Pretty hilarious, and so right on. Thanks!
Apparently a whole "Honest" series of trailers...may investigate.
My dad knew Ebert, when they were both workng for newspapers in Illinois - wish Bart pere were still
around to see this doc. Will see when I get home next week. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2015 3:33 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: billyweeds wrote: bartist wrote: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lZMzf-SDWP8
Honest trailer - those who endured Interstellar may enjoy this.
Pretty hilarious, and so right on. Thanks!
Apparently a whole "Honest" series of trailers...may investigate.
My dad knew Ebert, when they were both workng for newspapers in Illinois - wish Bart pere were still
around to see this doc. Will see when I get home next week.
Checked out Honest trailers. Funny. Saw Boyhood and Disney Cinderella. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 3:09 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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Elevator to the Gallows ,1953, with the libido-inducing Jeanne Moreau. She and her lover plot the murder of her husband. The first thing to go wrong after the kill is a stuck elevator. From there things fly apart with great energy.
This is a muted thriller. The murder takes place just off-camera, and there is no blood anywhere throughout.
There is a perfectly suited score by Miles Davis, who, of course, was living in Paris at the time. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 3:23 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| TCM has stopped showing the Carry On movies on Saturday mornings, and today had "The Party" instead. I got through the first fifteen minutes before giving up on it. I couldn't believe Blake Edwards was the director (and a co-writer)--it was more like Mel Brooks on a bad day. Has anyone seen the whole thing, and was there anything in it worth one's time? (Besides maybe the Mancini soundtrack.) |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 4:26 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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The Party is goddawful.
Unbelievably bad.
I don't think there's one good second in the film. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 10:18 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| Life Itself is everything Weeds promises above....and yes, its snub by the Academy is surely evidence of mass dementia. So much to like in this film...impossible to even start when I'm thumbtyping. We've put the kibosh on "must-see," here at the old tertiary eyeball, but if you spend any time at a film group it's hard to imagine you not enjoying this. For some reason, I got a huge kick out of Herzog describing how he looks to the horizon as he walks over Ebert's Hollywood star. I wonder if anyone gets that mystical when they walk over Pauline Kael. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 11:57 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Elevator to the Gallows is pretty simple but quite effective.Malle was all of 24 when he directed that in 1958. He had already worked as a cameraman on Cousteau's first film The Silent World (which is well worth seeing if you cna get a hold of it), and as an assistant director on Bresson's A Man Escaped. And I think you can see echoes of both in how Malle lets the action unfold with minimal dialogue and sort of an observational camera which lingers on Moreau's face a good deal.
I think Malle had a pretty underrated career overall. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2015 10:14 am |
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Joined: 30 Oct 2014
Posts: 278
Location: Winnipeg: It's a dry cold.
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yambu wrote: Elevator to the Gallows ,1953, with the libido-inducing Jeanne Moreau. She and her lover plot the murder of her husband. The first thing to go wrong after the kill is a stuck elevator. From there things fly apart with great energy.
This is a muted thriller. The murder takes place just off-camera, and there is no blood anywhere throughout.
There is a perfectly suited score by Miles Davis, who, of course, was living in Paris at the time.
Yambu, I saw that movie in NY in 1958. Like the movie quite a bit. I guess you made a mistake by giving it 1953 as the date.  |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2015 8:24 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I caught The Three Caballeros at last, and was surprised by how much I liked it. I saw part of a travelog of Latin America Disney did that I really disliked (partly because it was really dated), but this one is a series of animated segments including a penguin who wants to leave Antarctica for the tropics because it's freaking cold in Antarctica (very amusing except I didn't like the narrator's voice) a section on Donald's tropical bird (really distant) relatives, and the story of a gauchito and his flying burrito--a small donkey, that is, not a lunch item from Taco Bell. This is told by an old gaucho who has a hard time getting to his subject. Again, very amusing.
The framing story is that it's Donald's birthday, which we learn is Friday 13. Apparently all Friday 13th, although his "official birthday" is June 9*, which was the date of release of his first cartoon. Anyway, he's got a box of presents from his Latin American friends. Among his presents are a film projector, screen and rolls of film (which is how we get the penguin and burrito films), a book on 'Brasil' from Jose Carioca, the cigar-chomping parrot. Jose sings about the wonderful land of Baia (the Brazilian state of Bahia--the song says that if you go to Baia you never return, which sounds more threatening than inspiring), and he and Donald visit it by entering the book, where they meet Aurora Miranda, Carmen's less famous but equally talented sister and a song and dance segment ensues that is really well done, with live actors inserted into the animation. Her song is really good, and in Portuguese, but the production number goes on a bit.
Finally, we go to Mexico with Panchito Pistoles, and, unfortunately the movie turns to travelog for a while, but we do get an animated section with Dora Luz, then another with a dancer (Carmen Molina, I think) dancing with animated cacti. The last is the really interesting section here, although we do get Donald chasing beauties on the beach at Acapulco. Apparently he missed Panchito singing "We're three caballeros, we're gay caballeros."
Not really one of the Disney classics, but entertaining, and only the travelog and a bit of bad narration lowers it to a 6.5.
*My theory on this is that Donald Duck is like Queen Elizabeth in that he has a real birthday and an official birthday, the latter varying from country to country. This means that he is probably in line for the British throne and we can look forward to him starring in a sequel of "The King's Speech." You thought George VI was a challenge. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2015 7:14 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| I saw The Three Caballeros as a child and still hold feelings of great affection for it, the title song, and "You Belong to My Heart." Where did you see it? Would love to revisit. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2015 7:40 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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billyweeds wrote: I saw The Three Caballeros as a child and still hold feelings of great affection for it, the title song, and "You Belong to My Heart." Where did you see it? Would love to revisit.
It was on TCM a couple of weeks ago and I recorded it. You can also rent it from Netflix along with Saludos Amigos, which I've yet to see.
They also had an episode of the "Disneyland" TV show, "A History of the Animated Drawing" which was worth seeing for the pre-movie camera devices such as the Zoetrope and Praxinoscope, and the astonishing Théâtre Optique, all of which are demonstrated by Mr. Disney. It becomes less interesting when we reach the sound era and it's restricted to Disney cartoons. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2015 11:20 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Through a Glass Darkly is Ingmar Bergman's first full-fledged effort to make his audience miserable. Enough people considered this art that the film won the Oscar for best foreign film. Karin (Harriet Anderson) is a young wife who is falling victim to schizophrenia (she's already been hospitalized at least once), and her father, brother and husband are alone with her on the remote isle of depression. All get to bawl.
This reminds me of the kind of stage plays I saw sometimes in high school and college: stiff and artificial and self-consciously intellectual. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2015 12:36 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Ballad of a Soldier: This is a 1959 film from the Soviet Union about World War II, so you know it's not going to be that critical of the Great Patriotic War, but it's a wonderful film. A young Russian infantryman (Vladimir Ivashov) finds himself on the spot when a bunch of German tanks break through. He's chased through the fields by one tank (they're not going to waste ammunition on one soldier), but he finds an an antitank gun and improbably not only takes out that tank (the dumbfounded look on his face is priceless) but a second tank. He's to be awarded a medal, but he begs to go home and repair his mother's roof. He's given six days for the round trip, and he has to commandeer cars and stowaway on trains to get there on time
The rest of the film is a series of episodes, all of which are masterfully executed. The highlight of the film are a couple of central episodes in which he encounters a beautiful fellow stowaway (Zhanna Prokhorenko) who is stowing away on her way to meet her fiance, but of course our couple fall in love and we really hope that they wind up together. The movie is spoiled, however, by a narration in which we discover the infantryman died in the war, and his grave is covered with flowers by all the people who met and loved him.
This film is a wonder of cinematography that suffers a bit from having a bit too much propaganda. Vladimir Ivashov is a dead ringer for Richard Thomas in his Waltons days. Zhanna Prokhorenko reminds me a lot of Emma Watson, in particular in her facial gestures. This is a compliment; they're both amazing and among the best performances of the 50's. |
Last edited by Syd on Thu Mar 03, 2022 1:17 am; edited 1 time in total
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2015 10:50 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I went to see "Woman in Gold" today, which was pretty good (as you would expect with Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren in the leads). I'm finally watching "The Rape of Europa" in response, which shows the danger of putting an art critic (and thieves) in charge of a country. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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