FILM REVIEW: PRINCE OF PERSIA

Time out

By Don Simpson

Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), the hunky swashbuckling heartthrob and adopted son of King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup), was raised alongside two nobly born brothers, Garsiv (Toby Kebbell) and Tus (Richard Coyle).

One day, while wandering around the desert with their very own Persian army in tow, the three brothers are informed by their uncle Nizam (Ben Kinglsey) that the sacred city of Alamut is selling weapons of mass destruction to enemies of Persia. The three brothers, without their father’s blessing, fall for Nazim’s Dick Cheney-esque trick; and thanks to Dastan’s videogame-on-steroids acrobatics the Persian army conquers Alamut without breaking a sweat.

As a result Dastan comes away from the battle with a nifty little dagger and the beautiful Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton), but the gift that he presents to his father (a prayer cloak) instantly burns the king to death. Dastan thus becomes a wanted man and flees with Tamina.

The dagger pilfered by Dastan is actually the Dagger of Time – a device which utilizes small doses of the “sands of time” to literally turn back time for a minute or two (a not-so-clever narrative device that becomes tediously overused throughout Prince of Persia). But that’s not all that this dagger can do: if it breaches the silo of the “sands of time” hidden underneath Alamut, it will release a sandstorm of Armageddon proportions. This is the WMD that the dastardly Nizam is after!

Dastan sleeves the magic knife in his crotch and thus Tamina stares wantonly and longingly at his…uh…dagger; Tamina, on the other hand, hides a spare vile of sand in her ample bosom and thus Dastan is often caught drooling at the sight of Tamina’s own guarded treasure. Despite the magnitude of its importance, no one seems to be able to retain possession of the Dagger of Time for more than a few minutes of screen time. Tamina steals it from Dastan; Dastan steals it from Tamina; Tamina steals it back; Dastan steals it back from her; random onlookers -- including the Sheik Amar (Alfred Molina), a crooked small business owner (a.k.a. ostrich race promoter) whose anti-government and tax rhetoric reeks of Sarah Palin -- steal it from Dastan or Tamina; all the while, Dastan and Tamina alternate unbridled animosity for each other with a plethora of near smooches.

Director Mike Newell’s Prince of Persia is basically a Disneyfied videogame and it seems as though the PlayStation [or Xbox or Wii – whatever your mental poison of choice] is skipping – the same events keep happening over and over and over again. (Have I ever told you that there is nothing that I find more boring than watching someone else play a videogame?) Lady destiny finally steps in to grab the reins of the storyline, sealing the fate of the Dagger of Time…as well as Dastan and Tamina’s lips.

The special effects are even less impressive than the graphics in most videogames and the fight scenes look exactly like a videogame, but the greatest foul of them all is found in the casting and make-up. I obviously need to brush up on my world history because I never knew that Persians were really just Westerners who wore black eyeliner and spoke in [mostly faux] British accents. (Maybe Newell and/or Bruckheimer did some research on Wikipedia and discovered that Persia’s modern day moniker [Iran] is a cognate of Aryan and means "Land of the Aryans"…and they took that tidbit of information way too literally?) Anything that could possibly be found objectionable to Disney’s red state audience -- meaning authentic Persian/Iranian characteristics -- was quite literally white-washed. This truly is the Disneyfied interpretation of Persia and it is every bit as malicious as Disney’s Aladdin.

Sure the plot blatantly alludes to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq by having the Persian army invade Alamut on all too familiar false pretenses; but this act reads more like “the Persians did the same thing, so what the U.S. has done to Iraq is not so bad after all.” Then the filmmakers’ questionable attitude toward unwarranted invasions and occupations is made all too apparent when Dashan rewinds history to the moment just after the Persian conquest of Alamut. Dashan has the opportunity to right Persia’s wrong, but he chooses to keep the Persian victory in the history books. If given the chance, I suspect that Disney would choose to leave the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the history books as well…though maybe they would grant George W. Bush a redo of his “Mission Accomplished” speech.

FILM REVIEW: SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

Boy (Devon Bostick) kills zombies in Survival of the Dead. 

Zombie need fighting

By John Esther

Once again George A. Romero directs viewers to another part of America where mass zombies roam the land, threatening to eat any humans they can slowly catch.

The six film of his kind, Romero’s absurdly titled Survival of the Dead sets itself between Philadelphia and Plum Island –- off the coast of Delaware. (The film was shot in Canada). Here, apparently an Irish homestead bordering on incest, two families are fussing and feuding about how to deal with them undead folk. Most of the O’Flynn’s, lead by Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh), have no time thinking about fixing people who might be the only ones on earth more challenged than the O'Flynns while the other dimwitted and more populous family, the Muldoons, led by Shamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick), have taken it as a god given right to quarantine the zombies until they find a cure.

After Patrick is ostracized from the island he sets up a trap to reel in humans and get their supplies by any mean and ornery ways necessary. A band of smarmy soldiers and Boy (Devon Bostick) in an armored truck full of cash are the latest would-be victims of Patrick, but they have enough ammo and audacity to turn the hunter into the hunted. After all being betrayed yet one saved by Patrick, Boy, Sarge (Alan Van Sprang), Tomboy (Athena Karkanis) and Francisco (Stefano Di Matteo) decide to head back to Plum Island with Patrick.

Back on the island, it does not take long before one human by the dozen zombies are slaughtered one way or another until the surviving few decide to leave the island -- although there is no indication the island will be any less safe than returning to the mainland.

Zombies kill humans, humans kill zombies, humans kill humans, but zombies do not kill zombies, and thus writer-director Romero’s tepid commentary on our belligerent times offers little in the way of cultural value. Sometimes it offers a few mild observations, occasionally humorous ones, too. But most of it is flimsy filmmaking. The film does not bother to explain how the undead came to exist. Ipso facto, the existence of zombies is just another situation for a bunch of undereducated and misinformed Americans to quibble over.

And why does it always take a blow to the brain to get rid of a zombie for good? A better and longer lasting solution to brain damage would be finding a way to end corporation misinformation and mercury poisoning while not playing violent kill zombie video games or patronizing mind-numbing “horror” films.

 

FILM REVIEW: SOLITARY MAN

The leering eyes of Ben Kalmen (Michael Douglas).

No stronger than his sex

By John Esther

Later this year, actor Michael Douglas is slated to return to the big screen in director Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Rests to reprise his 1980s-greed archetype and the politically motivated Academy Award-winning character, Gordon Gekko, where the once Ronald Reagen-era demi-tycoon of downtown Manhattan reportedly comes out of prison and attempts to rebuild his kingdom in the George Bush Jr. era.

Not too dissimilar, in director and co-writer Brian Koppelman's Solitary Man, Douglas plays Ben Kalmen, a Long Island man whose own greedy disregard for others has brought him to the brink of woe and is now attempting to regain his robe and crown.  

Once one of Long Island's most successful car dealers, six-plus years later after visiting a doctor -- who potentially has news of that fearful thing for the dedicated father and husband -- Ben is attempting to pull himself out of his current failures in family and finance. He has already lost his wife of many years, Nancy (Susan Sarandon), but manages a strained relationship with his daughter, Susan Porter (Jenna Fischer), and his grandson, Scotty (Jake Siciliano) -- much to the dismay of Susan's husband and Scotty's father, Gary Porter (David Costabile), who is probably more successful than Ben was at his age and far more subdued as well.

(Similar to this film's storyline, in the latest Wall Street, Douglas' Gordon is allegedly estranged from his daughter, played by Carey Mulligan. In the original Wall Street Gordon had a son.)

Feeling the patriarchal impotence of a man disconnected to his family, Ben buries up his manhood by continually seducing women of flaming youth (insert Catherine Zeta-Jones observation here). His current girlfriend, Jordon Karsch (Mary-Louise Parker), is not only considerably younger than Ben she also has enough income and influence to chauffeur Ben back on the top of the car lot. 

Shall he dwindle, peak and pine? Ben would rather co-play the beast with two backs with women that threaten his family and financial future rather than be the king hereafter. A masochist of Shakespearean proportions, the more Ben sinks in his own dick-sand the harder he tries to pull out, only to ejaculate it in all the wrong places.

A thoroughly engaging film and by far Douglas’ best films in years, Ben's primrose path eventually hoists the anti-hero on his own petard without creating some false sense of pathos for the character. Ben’s expense of spirit in a waste of shame is motivated out of his perverted sense of control for his mortal coil and while it is not easy to sympathize for him, his itching palm is of a far more benign nature than those capital characters on Wall Street.  

FILM REVIEW: HOLY ROLLERS

In search of Gold: Jesse Eisenberg in Holy Rollers.

Geld or G-d?

By Miranda Inganni

In a case of one man living an extreme double life, Holy Rollers tells the tale of a young Rabbi-in-training turned drug dealer.

Based on the true story of an Israeli drug dealer who used young Hasidic Jews as his drug mules between Europe and the US in the late 1990s, Holy Rollers stars Jesse Eisenberg as Sam Gold. While Sam’s family believes the oldest son has what it takes to be a good Rabbi and husband to Zeldy Lazar (Stella Keitel), Sam has strong doubts about their faith in his future -- especially when the arranged marriage to Zeldy is called off.

After turning to his outgoing neighbor, Yosef Zimmerman (Justin Bartha) -- the older brother to his best friend, Leon (Jason Fuchs) -- for something else in life, Sam and Leon agree to travel to Amsterdam to pick up what they believe is medicine for “rich people.” Only when they return to New York do Sam and Leon learn that the medicine is actually the illegal (as of 1985) narcotic, MDA --better known as "ecstasy." Leon quickly realizes the danger of his brother’s endeavors and unsuccessfully tries to convince Sam to forget about the geld and return to god.

Seduced by the money he believes can help his family, Sam continues working with Yosef and his boss, Jackie Solomon (Danny A. Abeckaser). Sam quickly falls for Jackie’s girlfriend and business partner, Rachel (Ari Graynor), and the lifestyle his new job affords him. Sam’s family realizes that things are not kosher, thus refusing the gifts he buys them. Disappointed in his lack of dedication to his religious studies, Sam's father (Mark Ivanir) ignores his son’s business acumen in the fabric shop in which Sam hopes to work with his father. But Jackie recognizes Sam’s shrewd business sense as an asset and a way to increase his cents. Of course, this can’t end well.

Directed by Kevin Asch and written by Antonio Macia, Holy Rollers' stereotypes are heavy handed, but apply to all characters enough to avoid making them seem like caricatures. Refreshingly low on violence for a drug movie and quite humorous at times, the script and acting lend levity to this otherwise loaded subject matter.
 

FILM REVIEW: CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY

Making money is faking sense: Jack Abramoff is Casino Jack.

This land is their land

By Don Simpson

Before Jack Abramoff became a highly influential and grossly corrupt Washington D.C. lobbyist for the Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig firms, he was the esteemed Chairman of the College Republican National Committee (1981-1985); and while Chairman, Abramoff is credited for making the College Republicans more activist and more conservative than ever before. It is also worth noting that Grover Norquist served as Abramoff’s executive director and Ralph Reed was hired as an unpaid intern –- the infamous Abramoff-Norquist-Reed triumvirate was thus formed. Other highlights on Abramoff’s resume: in 1985, he joined Citizens for America, a pro-Pres. Reagan group that helped build support for the Nicaraguan Contras; he also tried his hands at cinema –- writing and producing the anti-communist diatribe, Red Scorpion (starring Dolph Lundgren), which was released in 1989.

We all know something or other about Abramoff’s career as a lobbyist. Thanks to the “maverick” John McCain, we know that Abramoff conned wealthy Native American tribes while lobbying for legislation related to their casinos. Abramoff also developed an elaborate scheme concerning sweatshop labor in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI); he matched Tom DeLay (who later went on to star in Dancing with the Stars) with the Executives of Naftasib (a Russian energy company) who needed DeLay’s support in making it possible for the IMF to bail out the Russian economy; he was hired by Tyco to lobby Congress and the White House on Tyco's Bermuda tax-exempt status. The list goes on and on and on… For each of his lobbying jobs, Abramoff funneled millions of dollars from his clients to the deep pockets of influential politicians. Abramoff personified the power of money in politics.

Alex Gibney’s documentary provides a very detailed look at Abramoff’s history and grants us a pretty solid understanding of who Abramoff really is. Gibney interviews several of the key players in the Abramoff saga (many of whom were found guilty for their involvement with Abramoff) and whomever he does not have access to interview (most notably Abramoff and DeLay) Gibney utilizes stock footage which is then able to speak for itself. All of the talking heads are relatively upfront and frank with Gibney, which is where some of the most insightful information about Abramoff is revealed. I’m not typically a fan of talking head documentaries, but no other documentary filmmaking technique would have worked quite as well with this content.

The greatest takeaway from Casino Jack and the United States of Money concerns just how influential some lobbyists can be. They allow the corporations and individuals with the most money to have tremendous influence on politics in the United States. I don’t recall that Gibney ever makes reference to the evil “O” word (oligarchy); but Casino Jack and the United States of Money provides indisputable evidence that the Unites States is not a democracy or republic, it truly is an oligarchy. Thanks to loose campaign finance laws (made even more lax by the Supreme Court, supposedly in the name of “free speech”), money is able to get the financial elite’s choice of politicians elected; and thanks to the efforts of lobbyists, money is able to get the financial elite’s choice of legislation passed. If you’re hoping for change, well…one thing we should have all learned by now is that no matter how adamant a presidential candidate is about the subjects of campaign finance reform and curtailing the power of lobbyists, a politician is not going to bite the hands that are feeding him or her.

By the way Casino Jack and the United States of Money is the first of two films about Abramoff to be released this year. George Hickenlooper’s bio-pic starring Kevin Spacey in scheduled for release in Octover 2010.

THEATER REVEW: GOTTERDAMMERUNG

Brünnhilde (soprano Linda Watson) in Götterdämmerung.

The Great Reckoning of Ragnorak

By Ed Rampell

L.A. Opera’s culmination of Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungen is not only the fourth, final and finest installment of the four part Ring Cycle, but goddamn, Götterdämmerung is the greatest opera I’ve ever seen in my entire life!!!

In terms of its breathtaking design, staging, mise-en-scene, special effects, costuming, performances, hidden message and of course Wagner’s virtuoso music, director-designer Achim Freyer surpasses himself with his tour-de-force Twilight of the Gods (as Götterdämmerung is called in English).

Götterdämmerung is the endtimes gospel according to the ancient Germanic and Nordic myths, as retold in libretto and stirring musicality by Wagner, and here intepreted by the brilliant Freyer. The complex, intricate plot of the gold stolen from the Rhinemaidens and forged by the dwarf Alberich into a magical, omnipotent ring that begins in the Ring Cycle’s first installment, Das Rheingold, which L.A. Opera opened back in February, 2009, reaches its conclusion in Götterdämmerung. The Ring’s second installment, Die Walkure, depicted Wagner’s rousing "The Ride of the Valkyries," as the chief god Wotan punishes his daughter the winged women warrior Brünnhilde (soprano Linda Watson who reprises her role in Twilight) for perceived disobedience. In Siegfried, the third installment, heroic but not too bright Siegfried (heldentenor John Treleaven also returns in Twilight) rescues and weds Brünnhilde.

Götterdämmerung unfolds with all the high drama of Shakesperian tragedy: If Wotan’s (aka Odin, as all Thor comicbook readers know) misbegotten treatment of Brünnhilde suggests King Lear’s similarly misguided actions towards his loving, loyal daughter Cordelia, Twilight calls to mind Othello. As in the latter, wherein the insidious, envious Iago schemes to split Othello and his bride Desdemona up, the misshapen Alberich (baritone Richard Paul Fink in his L.A. Opera debut), Hagen (bass Eric Halfvarson, who has also played several other roles in L.A. Opera’s Ring Cycle) and Gunther (bass-baritone Alan Held, who previously portrayed Wotan) cunningly conspire to divide Siegfried and Brünnhilde, with similarly disastrous results. Siegfried may have brawn, but not enough brain, and this Twilight tale ultimately, inexorably leads to what Christians call The Apocalypse, and ancient Scandinavians and Germans called “Ragnorak”: The destruction of the gods’ fortress of Valhalla and the deities’ downfall.

Much has been made of Freyer’s avante garde style and sensibility, with a Star Wars and Blue Man Group panache replacing traditional iron horned helmets, breastplates and other operatic conventions, which opera purists scorned. But what I think is far more important is the content of the Cycle and Freyer’s interpretation of it, and why this opera which premiered in 1869 remains relevant for our times. The key is that Freyer, born in Germany in 1934, was a “meisterschuler” -- a sort of star stude-- – of leftwing playwright Bertolt Brecht, arguably the 20th century’s Shakespeare. Freyer presented productions at the fabled Berliner Ensemble, which is to Germany what the Group Theatre is to America. However, unlike the Group, which was chronically plagued by underfunding, the Berliner Ensemble was the German Democratic Republic’s national theater, and with the GDR’s state subsidized support, the Ensemble could rehearse shows a full year before premiering them.

The anti-fascist Brecht, who’d married Jewish actress Helene Weigel, fled the Nazis in 1933, relocating to Denmark until Hitler invaded there, moving on to Finland until Germany struck, then crossing the vast Soviet Union until he departed on the very last passenger ship out of Vladivostok before the Nazis invaded the U.S.S.R. Brecht wound up at Santa Monica, co-wrote Fritz Lang’s 1943 anti-Nazi film, Hangmen Also Die!, but then fled persecution by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Eventually Brecht established the Berliner Ensemble at East Berlin, in the GDR (aka “East Germany”).

Consciously, unconsciously or both, Freyer appears to bring a leftist sensibility to Wagner’s Ring Cycle. It’s deities toppling tale symbolizes the current collapse of capitalism that’s still unfolding. Once known as “masters of the universe,” like Valhalla’s gods, Wall Street’s financiers have been brought down by the financial meltdown. The omnipotent Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008; this April the Securities and Exchange Commission charged godlike Goldman Sachs with fraud. Just this month, as Greek workers battled imposition of austerity measures with Siegfried-like heroism, the stock exchange plunged with its steepest ever decline, almost 1,000 points in a mere matter of minutes. And so on, from Asgard and Valhalla to Wall Street; o, how low the mighty have fallen! We’re witnessing the Götterdämmerung of capitalism and the capitalist class.

In terms of form, Freyer seems to have deftly deployed Brecht’s well-known “alienation effects” via the Ring Cycle’s wildly imaginative sets, costumes (devised with his daughter, Amanda Freyer, co-costume designer), lighting (co-created with lighting designer Brian Gale), etc. While it’s true that Freyer’s far out aesthetic “alienated” many opera traditionalists, Brecht’s alienation technique was intended to emotionally distance audiences from productions they observed. In this way Brecht theorized viewers would use their intellects to discern lessons to be learned from Lehrstücke, or teaching plays, intended to bring spectators to a higher awareness. Thus, the formal, modernist mode Freyer uses for the almost 20-hour Ring Cycle aims at making audiences think, as well as feel, and perhaps to reflect on the contemporary relevance of the catastrophic collapse of the gods in our own age of ongoing turmoil.

Returning to content, Wagner’s Ring Cycle also has much to say about Germany’s collective psyche. In Siegfried Kracauer’s brilliant 1947 From Caligari To Hitler, A Psychological History of the German Film -- arguably the best book of cinema criticism ever written -- Kracauer showed how the procession of movie monsters and tyrants of the pre-Hitler, Weimer screen were forebodings, predictions and projections of Nazism from Germany’s collective unconscious. These terrifying premonitions included 1914’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Dracula drama Nosferatu and Lang’s M in 1931. starring Peter Lorre (a frequent Brecht collaborator) as a psychopathic pedophile and serial killer. But as the Ring Cycle’s obsessions with world conquest and domination based on ancient Aryan legends reveal, the Germanic fixation on “tomorrow the world” was reflected in mythology, epic poems and operas long predating the advent of films.

Much has also been made of the $32 million budget of Freyer’s Ring adaptation, and detractors have tried to use its pricetag against him as a sign of extravagance. However, if put into perspective in the L.A. entertainment scene, this is less than the budget of the average Hollywood movie. In any case, L.A.’s first ever complete production of the Ring Cycle has generated lots of buzz and 115 cultural, artistic and educational institutions have joined forces to create Ring Festival LA, which is presenting related “symposia, panel discussions, lectures, art exhibitions, concerts, films, theater, educational events and tours” through June, according to Festival leader Barry Sanders. Placido Domingo, the Eli and Edythe Broad General Director of L.A. Opera, calls this “the largest, most significant cultural festival in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival.”

Accordingly, the presentation of Freyer’s unconventional Ring Cycle helps to push L.A. Opera towards the front ranks of world opera. Starting this May, fans won’t have to see the Ring Cycle on the installment plan, minus intervals of months between the mounting of each production. Starting May 29 and through June 26, opera lovers will be able to choose between three different Ring Cycle cycles in order to see the four part work in its entirety within days. And yes, Placido Domingo also returns as Siegmund in Die Walküre.

As for moi, the entire experience has turned me, musically, into a Wagnerian.

For more information on shows and showtimes please go to: http://www.laopera.com/

FILM REVIEW: PRINCESS KAIULANI

Film the legend: Q’orianka Kilcher in Princess Kaiulani.

A motion picture pretender to the throne

By Ed Rampell

British writer-director Marc Forby’s movie Princess Kaiulani, about the last heiress apparent of the Hawaiian kingdom, has generated controversy in Hawaii and raises a number of complex issues. What are filmmakers’ responsibilities to historical accuracy, especially when portraying actual historical personages? How obligated are non-indigenous artists to the people they are depicting? What say does an ethnic group have in how it’s portrayed, especially by others from the dominant majority culture?

On the other hand, how much dramatic license does the First Amendment guarantee artists in their storytelling? Is -- as Al Franken asserted – irony constitutionally protected, even if some don’t get the irony? The free speech flap generated by South Park vis-à-vis its recent Prophet Mohammed brouhaha, as well as Arizona’s banning of ethnic studies in public schools, makes these questions and controversies all the more timely and pressing.

This biopic purports to tell the tale of a fabled beauty who became embroiled in political turmoil, and of her romance with an Englishman. The movie’s press notes assert that, “Princess Kaiulani is the inspiring true story of the Hawaiian princess.” The problem is that this is a dubious claim. The simple fact of the matter is that Kaiulani opens with a historically inaccurate scene that never happened, and much of the movie is likewise historically suspect.

As the princess electrifies Honolulu during a ceremony an armed group of haole men invades the grounds of Iolani Palace. DeSoto Brown, the highly respected Collection Manager of Bishop Museum Archives in Honolulu, asserts, “Either Kaiulani or Princess Liliuokalani turned on the lights(There are different accounts). These were electric arc lights used as streetlights for some of the downtown streets. This was on May 23, 1888. It sounds like the armed haole men are based on when [King] Kalakaua was forced to fire his cabinet and accept the new ‘Bayonet Consitution’, which limited his power; that happened in June and July of 1887… [T]he movie has these events happening at the same time, which is obviously phony, as can be seen by the different dates,” Brown asserts.

On July 30, 1889 Captain Robert Wilcox, a Hawaiian nationalist, led a detachment of Native militants to Iolani Palace to try and reverse the “Bayonet Constitution” and fighting took place near the Palace. The so-called “Wilcox Rebellion” failed; according to Gavan Daws’ Shoal of Time “Seven of Wilcox’s men had been killed and a dozen or so wounded.” This date also doesn’t match up with the date of the Honolulu electrification ceremony, so it seems that Princess Kaiulani conflated two or three different events for dramatic purposes.

Even before its release the reportedly $9 million indie co-starring Barry Pepper and Will Patton stirred outrage in the Aloha State, and an outcry from Native Hawaiians forced Forby, who reportedly married a non-Native who grew up in Hawaii, to change the original title of the film, from Barbarian Princess to Princess Kaiulani. Some Hawaiians expressed concern that their beloved royal highness would be depicted by a non-Hawaiian, Q’orianka Kilcher, an actress of Peruvian, Alaskan, Swiss and other mixed European heritage, who partially grew up in Oahu. Kilcher portrayed Pocahontas in Terrence Malick’s 2005 film, The New World, and has participated in Native and environmental protests at South America.

According to the Honolulu Advertiser, “Hawaiian musician Palani Vaughn turned down the role of King Kalakaua after rejecting a script he said was marred with cultural and historical inaccuracies, including behavior ‘unbefitting a princess’ such as mouthing off at the king and getting into a violent altercation with her father. ‘A non-Hawaiian is trying to interpret in an un-Hawaiian way what he is supposing has happened,’” said Vaughn, a noted Native entertainer long associated with King Kalakaua, the so-called “Merrie Monarch.”

There was also anxiety regarding the film’s depiction of the princess’ romantic life, and the Advertiser reported that a sex scene involving Kaiulani “was cut [from the script] after complaints.” Brown doubts the veracity of the romance between the princess and a British youth she met while studying in the U.K., and asserts that Kaiulani was not engaged to Clive Davies (Shaun Evans), although this supposed relationship is a major part of what is, in large measure, a love story.

In any case, onscreen the affair is insipidly rendered, with lots of photogenic makeout shots. After the Hawaiian monarchy is toppled by a U.S.-backed coup Kaiulani returns home to help her beleaguered people. Her erstwhile British suitor, who has not received replies to his letters, follows her across the globe to the Islands, where his family has large plantations. Once the lovers are reunited, Clive gives the princess an ultimatum: return to Britain to marry him or they’re through. The film intends to show Kaiulani’s loyalty to Hawaiians when she refuses, and they break up. Clive has traveled around the world for nothing. Of course, the simple solution to this dilemma would be for the Englishman to stay in Hawaii and run his family’s agricultural holdings, but somehow this never occurs to him, despite the fact that he’s supposedly so in love with the exquisite wahine of mixed Polynesian and Scottish heritage.

The film is at its best when it succeeds in raising awareness about the plight of Hawaii, which suffered an American-backed overthrow and invasion in 1893, leading to U.S. annexation in 1898. Kaiulani, a young brown woman, throws herself into the fray as a champion for native rights, and she meets with Pres. Grover Cleveland in Washington before returning home to support the Hawaiians. There are great, rare interior shots of Iolani Palace, where cinematography is generally tabu (although I imagine some Polynesian purists also resented this as a cultural intrusion). But the movie repeatedly undermines itself by straying from the truth. For instance, after an 1895 attempted counter revolution to restore Hawaiian sovereignty, it’s falsely claimed that there were many casualties, which is not true. It’s also disappointing that Kaiulani’s rather famous encounter with author Robert Louis Stevenson is omitted here. (That might have necessitated cutting one of Clive and Kaiulani’s interminable makeout sessions.) And so on.

Kilcher, who was recently interviewed on Pacifica radio’s Democracy Now! when she attended Pres. Evo Morales’ pro-indigenous, pro-Mother Earth summit at Bolivia, is okay as Kaiulani. She was far more fetching as that other aboriginal princess, Pocahontas, in The New World, and is more prudishly treated here, perhaps out of deference to Hawaiian sensibilities about their beloved royal highness. She’s reduced to making out; no bodice ripping here, please! And in some unflattering close ups Kilcher looks as if she leads with her chin like Jay Leno does, deflating claims of Kaiulani’s great beauty.

A Hawaiian who works in the Islands’ film industry summed up the problems with this mediocre movie: “Of the four local producers and production manager none had Hawaiian blood.” Neither did the writer-director, although some of the actors did, such as Leo Akana, who portrays Hawaii’s last monarch. Like Queen Liluokalani, who composed songs such as the famous "Aloha Oe," Akana is also a gifted compser, who has written many great love songs, as well as pieces about the ongoing Hawaiian sovereignty movement for indigenous rights.

One can, I suppose, defend Princess Kaiulani’s departures from historical veracity on the grounds that it is not a documentary. A notorious comment I once heard regarding this subject was in regards to Disney’s animated feature about another character whom Kilcher has played. Disney hired an American Native historical consultant descended from Pocahontas’ tribe to work on its 1995 cartoon starring Mel Gibson and indigenous actress Irene Bedard. When Disney screened Pocahontas for her, the consultant was mortified at how her 12 or so year old ancestral tribeswoman had been transmogrified into a busty bombshell and given the full Disney treatment. Disney’s defense was that it was, after all, just a cartoon.

But the American Native consultant fired back that if this wasn’t a matter for concern, why did the studio choose the name of a real historical individual, instead of having Disney’s much-vaunted “imagineers” simply make a character up? The answer, of course, has everything to do with marketing, and nothing to do with historical accuracy, authenticity or cultural sensibility: It’s easier to sell a preexisting brand name with a high recognition factor the current huckster had nothing to do with developing, than it is to create a memorable character who will catch the public’s attention in a crowded marketplace.

FILM REVIEW: HAPPINESS RUNS

Idealism chases nihilism in Adam Sherman's Happiness Runs.

And hippies begot punks

By Don Simpson

Presumably in the late 1960s, Victor’s (Mark L. Young) parents (Andie MacDowell and Mark Boone Junior) discovered what they thought was utopia –- a far out rural hippie commune founded on the precepts of free love, drug experimentation and freshly grown vegetables.

Twenty years later, finding themselves trapped like rats in this no longer utopian cage, the offspring of the free love generation have evolved into bitter and jaded punk rockers. For this next generation, freedom has become unbearably oppressive. Brimming with animosity for their spaced-out and disillusioned parents, these kids will do whatever they can to not follow in their parents’ footsteps; yet they can’t shake the promiscuity, so they turn instead to harder drugs and darker music. Their chosen soundtrack –- The Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Fear, Bad Brains, UK Subs, Cro-Mags, The Descendents, Siouxsie & The Banshees –- perfectly reveals the inner turmoil and angst raging within their teenage bodies.

Victor’s desire to escape the confines of the commune is the strongest of them all, but how can a teenager with no education or money survive in the real world? When Becky (Hanna Hall), one of the few lucky teens who actually escaped (to attend college), returns to the commune Victor’s escape plan is temporarily thwarted. Victor wants to whisk Becky, his childhood sweetheart, away with him; but Becky has returned to the commune to care for her dying father (John Walcutt).

Propelled by the stress of her father’s terminal illness, Becky attempts to escape reality by way of a strict regiment of drugs, booze and fucking like a bunny (The Virgin Suicides’ Cecilia Lisbon is no longer a virgin). Several of the boys take advantage of Becky’s easiness, but at the end of the night she always seems to end up in Victor’s bed. With much more haste and purpose than the other teens, Becky is headed down a self-destructive path; it is not until Becky achieves her destiny (a moment eerily foretold by Victor’s recurring prophetic nightmares) that Victor will garner enough motivation to pack his bag and escape to the real world.

According to Donovan, “happiness runs in a circular motion” but writer-director Adam Sherman’s cinematic debut reveals that happiness runs in a downward spiral. Based loosely on Sherman’s own upbringing, Happiness Runs is an extremely dour portrait of communal living. Sure, for its first generation this commune might have been the great utopia; but Sherman’s film reveals that a structure-less land of free love and limitless drugs is not a suitable environment for children.

True to its setting and the drug-induced mindset of the characters, the cinematography (by Aaron Platt) is stunningly and hypnotically stylized giving Happiness Runs a carnivalesque feel -- this is Sherman’s way to stress just how unreal life on the commune is. Happiness Runs is hauntingly beautiful to watch, but Sherman’s perspective is so biased and so vengeful that the film’s message curdles in his steaming enmity for the elders of the commune. The aged hippies are presented as mere stereotypes to be despised and ridiculed by the audience. (Sherman is, to quote the Dead Milkmen,  “dreaming acid dreams of a hippie soufflé.”) We are forced to see the adults just as the commune’s younger generation does –-- as a pathetic joke worthy of nothing other than our disdain -- and the youth are revealed to be martyrs whose lives were destroyed by their horribly oblivious parents.

LA JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2010: THE YANKLES

No Saturday games: a scene from The Yankles.

Strike out

By John Esther

The story of an orthodox yeshiva college baseball team is a fairly original concept, opening up for cultural understanding, dialogue about what it means to be a religious Jew in America (as opposed to a cultural Jew) and a refutation to the stereotype Jews cannot play sports -- although there a particularly plenty examples to the contrary in professional baseball (their clubs are easier to get into than golf), but that will have to be found somewhere else. Directed and co-written by David R. and co-writer Zev Brooks (Coen bros. cue?), The Yankles is a silly story, unnecessarily set in Los Angeles (although shot in Utah) filled with “sweet as kosher wine” sentiments about a bunch of unlikely sports heroes playing one of America’s most boring pastimes. 

 

FILM REVIEW: IRON MAN 2

Robert Downey Jr. returns as Tony Stark in Iron Man 2.

Weapons of mass entertainment
 

By Don Simpson

Iron Man 2 opens as Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) comes out of the closet to the world…as Iron Man. Ever since the days chronicled in Iron Man the world has been a much safer place, and Stark has no qualms about reaping the egotistical benefits of outing himself as the world’s savior (unlike most superheroes who prefer to remain masked and anonymous). Stark is a very strange breed of hero indeed -- he profits as a war-mongering defense contractor by day but he purports to be the great peacekeeper of the world by night.

There is a sentiment here that romantically harkens back to the advent of the nuclear bomb: if one country owns the most powerful weapon in the world then peace will prevail forever but if other countries (we’re looking at you, Russia!) get their grubby little mittens on their own weapons of mass destruction then the world will fall apart (history not withstanding). The United States Senate -- led by the oh so swarmy Senator Stern (Gary Shandling) -- decides that they need to own Stark’s Iron Man technology before other countries are able to successfully manufacture their own. (National defense is not something any good Republican, Libertarian or Democrat for that matter is interested in privatizing.) To prove that point -- we have already been introduced to a scarred and tattooed Russian, Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), who proves to be well on his way to making his very own Iron Man weapon.

When Iron Man finally has his first run-in with Vanko, he gets his ass-kicked…but he still manages to prevail as the winner. Vanko is prudently ushered off to prison; but Stark’s oh so cheesy competition in the defense contractor biz, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), sees a great deal of potential in Vanko, so he covertly breaks Vanko out of prison and hires him as his lead designer of a competing Iron Man suit.

I should probably also mention that Stark is rapidly approaching his death; not, however, because of plethora of villains introduced thus far, but because his body is being contaminated by the very same technology that saved his life. If Stark does not invent a new power source soon, he will die. And time keeps on ticking…

To add to his problems, Stark’s once loyal military pal, Lt. Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard from Iron Man), seems to be turning against him. “Rhodey” even goes as far as stealing one of Stark’s many Iron Man suits, which he quickly “upgrades” by attaching a shit-ton of Hammer’s artillery. Making matters even more convoluted, the eye-patched Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the hourglass-shaped Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) pop into the picture representing a covert superhero squad called S.H.I.E.L.D. (The only apparent purpose of Nick Fury and Black Widow’s appearances, as well as the post-credits scene, is to allude to the possibility of an Avengers film.)

Something I would usually intend as praise for a Hollywood action film, Iron Man 2 surprisingly opts to concentrate more on plot and dialogue than action. But no matter how much time writer Justin Theroux and director Jon Favreau dedicate to the plot, there just are not enough hours in a day to clarify this befuddling mess. There are just far too many villains and subplots for any of the content to be properly communicated. There are at least two or three viable films here. Even the film’s two, yes two, climaxes –- Stark’s discovery of a new power source and Iron Man’s final battle with Vanko –- are quite anti-climatic.

The casting, though, is top-notch. Downey Jr. is, once again, excellent as the narcissistic hero and Gwyneth Paltrow reprises her role as Stark’s always loyal lap dog (though this time she is given a little more bark and bite); Cheadle, Jackson, Johansson, Rourke and Rockwell are all perfectly cast but frustratingly under-utilized. If this film has anything going for it, it is the acting and the dialogue; but Iron Man 2 would have probably been a much better film with half the cast.

And, like Tony Stark himself, it is difficult to tell if Iron Man 2 stands behind peace or violence. No matter how ridiculous the rival defense contractors (Stark and Hammer) and Senator Stern appear to be, Iron Man 2 never attempts to prove their opinions or motives wrong. If anything, Iron Man 2 seems to exist as justification for the United States to play global peacekeeper and for more money to be invested into all-powerful weaponry. If I didn’t know any better, I would guess that Theroux and Favreau are actually trying to say that if the United States were the sole owners of weapons of mass destruction then the world would be a much more peaceful place. (That said; it is very difficult to believe that the Clash would allow not one but two of their songs --“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” and “Magnificent Seven” --on the Iron Man 2 soundtrack.) Like the film’s two statuesque dames who truly are blasts from cinema’s past, the story harkens back to the red scare mentality of Stan Lee’s original cold war Marvel comic.

LA ASIAN PACIFIC FILM FESTIVAL 2010: BRUCE LEE REMEMBERED

A scene from Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon.  

Bruce Lee remembered

By Miranda Inganni

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 30-odd years, you have heard of Bruce Lee. Indeed, November 27th of 2010 would’ve been his 70th birthday.  

Born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, Lee was raised in Hong Kong until he was 18 at which point he returned to the States. Tragically, Lee died 37 years ago when he was only 32. During his short life, he managed to revolutionize martial arts, star in a number of films (notably Fists of Fury, The Chinese Connection, Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon) and television series The Green Hornet and Batman and inspire martial artists around the world, all the while taking care of his wife and two children. This year’s Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival celebrated their 26th anniversary by honoring Mr. Lee in myriad ways.

April 30th kick-started things with a free outdoor screening of Lee’s classic, The Chinese Connection. On May 1st it was a one-two punch with a special showing at noon of the iconic, Enter the Dragon, followed by a panel discussion featuring actor/martial artist Bob Wall, president of Bruce Lee Enterprises (and Lee’s daughter), Shannon Lee, and filmmakers Brett Ratner and Reginald Hudlin. The festivities were round(house)ed out on May 2nd with an intimate gathering entitled "Bruce Lee: Family Man at the Director’s Guild of America." The trio of guests were Lee’s wife, Linda Lee Cadwell, daughter, the aforementioned Shannon Lee, and his goddaughter, Diana Lee Inosanto. Winston Emano magnificently moderated.

Sitting next to a large video monitor displaying a loop of family photographs, Lee’s ladies were candid and comical, relating personal stories and memories of life with Bruce. All three agreed on what an amazing man Bruce was as a family man, actor, philosopher and martial artist. While Shannon was only four years old when her father died, she clearly remembers him as an “extremely vital, playful…passionate man.” Her mother, Linda, echoed the sentiment and added that not only was she honored to be his wife, but asked what woman wouldn’t have wanted to be Mrs. Lee? Linda also made it abundantly clear that the definitive Bruce Lee movie has yet to be made, citing cinematic biographies that were ridiculously fictitious. Diana, who is older than Shannon and therefore closer to her brother Brandon’s age, reminisced about the backyard sparring between Lee and her father, Dan Inosanto (a famous martial artist and actor in his own right), fighting with Brandon for the trampoline (and getting into trouble as a result).

The conversation respectfully stayed away from the macabre or salacious tabloid fodder about Bruce’s death focusing instead on all the positive feats Lee accomplished during his life as well as the legacy he left behind. While nothing was revealed that you can’t already find in books or online, the honesty and sincerity with which Linda, Shannon and Diana spoke was refreshing and touching.
 

LA ASIAN PACIFIC FILM FESTIVAL 2010: CLASH

A Clash with a dragon. 

Going straight to hell

By Miranda Inganni
 
A box office smash when it was released in Vietnam late last year, Clash (Bay Rong) premiered as the International Centerpiece at the 2010 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival on May 2nd at the Director’s Guild of America Theatre in Los Angeles.

Kicking booty and looking pretty, director Le Thanh Son’s stylized film follows Phoenix (Veronica Ngo), a woman who has lived a life of slavery in different forms, as she gathers a team of thugs – some far more capable than others  -- including check (marital arts icon Johnny Tri Nguyen), in order to steal a high-tech laptop full of secret code -- yet with little in the way of security passwords to break into -- from French gangsters who just want the money for drink.

Of course, nothing goes quite according to plan and no one is quite who they seem to be. Filled with thrilling ultimate fight scenes, and plot twists, the film relies too heavily on flashbacks to tell the story. In an especially annoying sequence toward the end of the movie, the bond between Ngo and Nguyen, which we’ve just watched unfold throughout the movie, is thrust in our faces once again.

And, in case you are curious, the title has nothing to do with The Clash’s anti-Vietnam Invasion song, “Straight to Hell,” which was sampled in the song "Paper Planes" featured in Slumdog Millionaire.

 

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES FILM FESTIVAL 2010

Subversive cinema? A scene from Leave Her to Heaven. 

Cinephilia: Movie Mania at Hollywood and Divine

By Ed Rampell

During the 1970s I attended Hunter College’s film school in Manhattan with movie critic, historian, author and CUNY-TV programmer Brian Camp, who has the most cinematic encyclopedic mind of anyone I’ve ever known. Luis Reyes has actually co-written an encyclopedia about film, Hispanics In Hollywood, as well as two movie history books with me, including Pearl Harbor in the Movies. Both Brian and Luis are motion picture purists, who often grouse that today’s audiences, especially the younger generation raised on a steady diet of TV, videos, DVDs, Blu-ray, videogames, the Internet, etc., have little or no interest in watching vintage films on the big screen in their original formats -- especially those that are silent and/or black and white. I confess to holding similar filmic fears. To paraphrase that old counterculture expression: Don’t trust any viewer under 30.

But ye of little film faith! The April 22-25 Turner Classic Movies Film Festival at historic venues along (appropriately!) Hollywood Boulevard’s celebrated Walk of Fame gives reason to hope that my fellow cineastes have little to worry about. Judging by the festival’s huge turnout, cinephilia is alive and well. Audiences came from far and wide to be regaled by star-studded panels and Q&As with notables (often conducted by TCM hosts Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz) before and after screenings, and, above all else, to watch features, shorts, cartoons and documentaries (yes, on a motion picture screen in the formats they were originally projected in), stretching from the silent era all the way to the first in a series on film history that TCM won’t air until next November. Film festival attendees viewed oldies but goodies as avidly as SEC regulators gawk at porn.

Audience turnout was a film festival organizer’s dream come true and there was a great camaraderie among the countless devotees united by movie madness. Indeed, despite the fact that your humble scribe was credentialed to cover the TCM Film Festival, due to the overflowing crowds he was unable to get a place on the red carpet for the screening of 1954’s A Star Is Born or even a ticket to watch the Judy Garland/James Mason classic inside of a mobbed Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the 1927 movie palace which reportedly seats 1400-plus ticket buyers. And while many of the moviegoers were indeed senior cinema citizens and middle-aged movie addicts enjoying once again the films of their youth, a surprisingly substantial percentage of the fans consisted of under-thirty cinephiles likewise reveling in reels of undiluted, unspooled silver screen nirvana.

There used to be a comic strip in the Village Voice that guaranteed all of its dialogue was overheard on New York’s streets, mass transit, etc. So in that same surreptitious spirit and at the risk of seeming to surveillance my fellow film fans, allow me to report on some of the conversations I eavesdropped on -- uh, accidentally/ on purpose overheard -- while sitting in theater seats waiting for the curtain to rise, made by some wistful whippersnappers besotted by movie magic. 

Before Mel Brooks was interviewed at a showing of The Producers in Grauman’s, two young men in their late teens or early twenties who seemed to be film students intently discussed with great relish the various films they were catching at the festival. The conversation turned to Alfred Hitchcock, and they told stories about the “master of suspense” and his work as if they personally knew Hitchcock, who was long dead well before they were born. Among the things they said was that there are no pictures of Hitchcock laughing, but these budding cinephiles should check out the photo of Sir Hitchcock at Hitchcock’s Wikipedia entry. In any case, while they spoke, in the cinema of my psyche I flashbacked to me and Brian, and our fellow film school acolytes, Kenny, Mario, Lenora, etc., animatedly discussing, debating, Howard Hawks, Bernardo Bertolucci or whatever auteur du jour.

Upstairs, at a Mann’s Chinese screening of The Proposition attended by Anjelica and Danny Huston, before Mankiewicz interviewed the latter who starred in the 2005 Aussie Western, I overheard a pretty 20-ish female gushing over the white haired Robert Osborne. “I’d love to marry him and discuss movies all day!”

Here’s some of my personal highlights of the TCM Film Festival:

To tell you the truth, on the opening night instead of inside at Grauman’s for A Star Is Born I preferred to be poolside at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (where the first Oscar ceremony took place in 1929 and I was filmed for the 2005 Australian documentary, Hula Girls, Imagining Paradise) for Neptune’s Daughter, the 1949 crowd pleaser featuring Esther Williams, Betty Garrett, Ricardo Montalban, Red Skelton and Xavier Cugat. The screening was preceded by the Aqualilies’ synchronized swimming to disco versions of songs immortalized by Marilyn Monroe and Edie Adams in honor of swimmer/actor Williams. In a poolside interview with Mankiewicz the 89-year-old wheelchair-bound “aquamusical” star seemed to be quite a diva. In any case, while Neptune’s Daughter appears on the surface to be innocuous mindless entertainment (and it is indeed good fun with lots of slapstick, mistaken identity, nautical dance numbers, etc.) the film actually reveals much about the era’s racial attitudes, from the interracial romance between Williams and Montalban to an extremely “exotic” work performed by Cugat’s orchestra and dancers from south of the border. Mel Blanc, best known as the voice of Warner Bros. cartoon characters, plays a stereotypical Hispanic, and the country the one Latino is identified as coming from is called “South America.”

TCM is also doing its bit to make sure that audiences today don’t forget the despicable mud crawling and throwing of the Hollywood Blacklist.  According to a trailer with the Hollywood Ten’s Dalton Trumbo and his son Chris, part of TCM’s upcoming seven part series, Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood, deals with movie McCarthyism in the portion on 1950s films. The coming attraction was shown at the Egyptian Theater after the screening of the series’ first installment to air in November 2010, Peepshow Pioneers, a superb re-telling of the creation of moving pictures, the sagas of photographer Eadweard Muybridge, inventor Thomas Edison and those mostly immigrant early moguls such as the Brothers Warner, plus the talents who wrought the art and craft of cinema, including Edwin S. Porter and D.W. Griffith. While this is familiar territory for those in the know about movie history, Peepshow Pioneers is told in a highly entertaining, engrossing way, with great clips from Georges Melies, Lumiere Brothers, Griffith, etc., films. Although I’m a film historian, I too learned much, including the staggering assertion that Magic Lantern shows began in France around the time of the French Revolution (who knew? Was there a Magic Lantern equivalent of Sergei Eisenstein?), and by the time of the nickelodeon and movies being projected on screens in the 1890s, audiences had already been watching moving images onscreen for more than a century. And did you know that at the turn of the last century Fort Lee, New Jersey was the Tinseltown of its day? Holy Kinetoscope, Batman! I can’t wait for the entire Moguls & Movie Stars series to play on TCM, and its 1950s chapter will premiere shortly before 2011, the 60th anniversary of the second wave of HUAC hearings aimed at Tinseltown’s reds under the beds.

One of the worst informers of the Blacklist era was Elia Kazan; nevertheless, I went to see a restored version of Kazan’s 1960 New Deal drama, Wild River, co-starring Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet as a stubborn old lady who refuses to vacate her home as the Tennessee Valley Authority prepares to flood the area. Convincingly playing a character 30 years older than her, Van Fleet’s Big Government hating Ella Garth seems like the grandmother of today’s Tea Party activists. TCM is big on film preservation and it aired a short featuring Martin Scorsese, Anthology Film Archives’ Jonas Mekas, etc., on this subject prior to Wild River.

According to TCM’s Festival Programming Guide, Leave Her to Heaven was not only “The top-grossing 20th Century-Fox film of the 1940s” but “One of the most subversive of all Hollywood films.” In this bone chilling film noir-ish tale Gene Tierney plays a terrifyingly psychopathic femme fatale, who stops at nothing in her monomania for Cornel Wilde, destroying everybody who stands in her way -- including her overzealous self -- all in glorious Technicolor. Leon Shamroy’s cinematography won him an Academy Award, while Tierney’s tyrannical depiction scored her an Oscar nomination.

A sold out Grauman’s screening of Hitchcock’s masterful 1959 film, North By Northwest, was preceded by Osborne interviewing co-stars Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau. Marie Saint revealed she was half-Quaker and gave a shout out to her fellow Friends in the audience. Landau revealed that, with Hitchcock’s blessing (and this is a story those two young film students would relish), he played his killer as a homosexual who wanted to have Marie Saint liquidated because he was jealous of her relationship to Cary Grant’s character. Landau disclosed that screenwriter Ernest Lehman added a line of dialogue, wherein Landau’s gay character refers to his “woman’s intuition, if you will.” Indeed, if you must.

During the festival Club TCM was established adjacent to the Roosevelt’s lobby. Complimentary food was sometimes dished up there, as were panel discussions and interviews, such as the one I attended featuring 96-year-old Norman Lloyd, with great stories about old timers such as Charlie Chaplin and Nigel Bruce (best known for playing Dr. Watson in the 1940s Sherlock Holmes movies), and clips from Lloyd’s TV shows and films, from Alfred Hitchcock Presents (more Hitch trivia!) to St. Elsewhere to The Dead Poets Society.

While seeing Mel Brooks live was a dream come true, my personal favorite of the film festival was the presentation of “Out of Circulation Cartoons” from 1931 to 1944 by Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, etc., presented by Donal Bogle, the preeminent film historian of the celluloid stereotypes of blacks. Bogle put into context the racial, sexual, religious, musical, etc., caricatures and tropes of blacks in ‘toons such as Uncle Tom’s Bungalow, Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, Hittin’ the Trail for Hallelujah Land, and Isle of Pingo Pongo. Needless to say, all of these animated shorts were created by the dominant majority culture, not by African Americans, and are so culturally dubious that they have been censored since 1968. Amidst their racial archetypes, as well as what Bogle readily admits is the ‘toons’ indisputable wit and talent, are other telltale signs of their times. Napping bloodhounds in Uncle Tom’s Bungalow are drolly referred to as “sit-down strikers,” while anti-fascist agitprop is inserted in a wartime ‘toon, as a creature clearly resembling Soviet leader and U.S. ally Joseph Stalin kicks the derriere of another character who looks like Hitler.  

Other flicks presented at the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival included 1923’s Safety Last, 1933’s King Kong, 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1967’s The Graduate, etc.

The most common “complaint” overheard at the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival was too many movies, too little time to see them all, often at competing screenings. I for one lamented missing seeing Jean-Paul Belmondo in person at a screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless.  Alas! A cinephile’s motion picture cup runneth over! As movie mania descended upon Hollywood and divine, I imagine that my cineaste brothers Brian and Luis would have enjoyed the films, panels and bonhomie of fellow buffs. With this film festival TCM is not only my favorite TV channel, but now one of my favorite festivals. Hooray for Hollywood – and TCM!!!