Welcome to the 378th Edition of my long-running series.
Unfortunately, the 49ers came up short last week. However, at least
they made it that far and I think have a great future ahead, especially
Colin Kaepernick who started only his 10th game and helped the get them
that far which is something that Alex Smith may not have been able to
do. The weather has remained pretty fair here but I know up north,
people got some bad weather so I hope those reading have survived this
weather. I will now get to my selections for the week.
Dream
for an Insomniac (1996): This is my independent romantic comedy for
the week which was written and directed by Tiffanie DeBartolo. Ione
Skye stars as Frankie who lives in San Francisco and is an actress
looking to get to Los Angeles. She works for a family run coffee shop
and is quite the insomniac. She longs for a man but has very high
standards but soon a man named David, played by Mackenzie Astin, walks
in for a job and they hit it off right away but then learns he has a
girlfriend but is still determined to hook up with him feeling she is
right for him. FRIENDS alum Jennifer Aniston, Michael Landes, and
Seymour Cassel co-star. This movie has gotten some mixed opinions but I
still enjoyed it. I really liked Skye and I enjoyed the dialogue,
characters, and quotes of many people in history and pop culture. This
would be a good date movie that can be tolerant if not enjoyable with
the guys and one for girl's night.
Marty (1955): I
have another romantic film for this week and is quite the classic.
Ernest Borgnine plays the title character who is a 34 year old butcher
but has not found love and his family is all over him to find that wife
and get married. He soon meets Clara, played by Betsy Blair, who is a
lonely person and is not the most glamorous woman so gets rejected a
lot. Marty soon sees the beauty that Clara has and form a relationship
where even then Marty's mother is not crazy about her. In watching
this, one of the first things I thought is that I'm glad my family is
not this overbearing with my not really knowing if I want marriage or
kids. Look closely for Jerry Orbach as a dancer in his film debut but
is uncredited. Delbert Mann makes his directorial debut of this film
with a script written by Paddy Chayefsky. This is a beautiful story of
two everyday people being rejected and resigning themselves to single
lives but then coming together. This actually won Best Picture that
year and is possibly Borgnine's best performance. I do not know
anything on Blair but she also put on a very good performance.
The
Daffy Doc (1938): This is my short film for the week which I decided
to go the animated route. This features a character named Doctor Quack
who is a surgeon with Daffy Duck as his assistant. This short also
features Porky Pig who becomes a patient with comical results. This has
some very funny gags and would be a good one to find. Porky was a lot
bigger in those days and barely fit through the circle for "That's All
Folks" which made for a comical end. We would see Porky slim down in
later years.
The Man Who Would Be King (1975): This is
part four of my Christopher Plummer series where he plays Rudyard
Kipling whose short story this movie is based upon. John Huston
directed this movie later in his career. Sean Connery and Michael Caine
star as British soldiers Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan in India
during the British rule. They soon resign and set out for a country
called Kafiristan where no white man has stepped foot since Alexander
the Great. They soon become known as gods but also find themselves in
over their head. This is a very fun adventure film with the leads great
in their roles. Huston originally planned for this movie to be in the
50s with Bogart and Gable in these parts but never got off the ground
before Bogey died in 1957 and Gable in 1960. This movie has a great
blend of action and comedy, especially from Caine.
Les
Miserables in Concert (1996): Last week I featured the hit 2012 film
and as I was searching the library I came across this which is
considered the 10 year anniversary and was an episode of GREAT
PERFORMANCES. This was a live show performed at the Royal Albert Hall
in London. Colm Wilkinson stars as Jean ValJean and was in the original
London and Broadway cast and even featured in the 2012 version.
Originally this was an 1862 novel written by Victor Hugo and there are
many movie versions of the story. I'll just give the basic story.
Valjean is paroled after 19 years of very hard labor in prison when his
only crime was stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family.
When on parole, he it nearly impossible to find work and make a life as
an ex-con. He then breaks parole and starts a new life where he takes
in an orphaned girl named Cosette but then becomes involved in the
French Revolution. In this time, he is still pursued very relentlessly
by a police officer named Javert. This is becoming my favorite musical
but if you don't know the story, this might not really be a good way to
start. As it says, this is more of a concert and has limited blocking.
The music is great and the performances are great but you might want to
learn the story or see the 2012 film first and then check this out.
The end is real good where many Valjean actors from around the world
come up and sing in their language. Many of the other actors were in
the original musical. I will say that an element that I liked better
about this to the movie was in this concert video Jenny Galloway plays
Madame Thenardier and though she was a lot more believable than Helena
Bonham Carter. Galloway was just perfect in her very mean and heavyset
physique in the ruthless foster parent and kind of the comic relief.
Alun Armstrong, who was in the orginal cast, plays Thenardier and like
Galloway is a lot nastier than Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen which worked
a lot better in this one in my opinion. This is worth a look if you
can find it and if you really like this musical.
Django
Unchained (2012): I decided to check out this Tarantino film this week
which he wrote and directed and has a cameo. Jamie Foxx stars as the
title character is a slave that gets freed by bounty hunter Dr. King
Schultz, played well by Christoph Waltz who was the villain in
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, and is a protagonist in this one. Schultz is a
former dentist turned into a bounty hunter so possibly an inspiration
from Doc Holiday. Schultz teaches Django to be a bounty hunter and then
helps him set out to free his wife Broomhilda, played by Kerry
Washington. They soon track her to a ruthless slave owner named Calvin
Candie, played very well by Leonardo DiCaprio in his first all-out
villain role, to a land called "Candieland" and I will never think of
that board game the same ever again. Samuel L. Jackson co-stars as a
black slave owner who works with Candie named Stephen and gives a very
good performance. Other actors in this film and many are cameos are THE
SHIELD alum Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Russ and
Amber Tamblyn, Robert Carradine, Ted Neely, Zoe Bell, Bruce Dern, Jonah
Hill, Don Johnson, M.C. Gainey, Tom Savini, among others. This movie is
not for everyone and contains a lot of violent scenes. It also
contains many uses of the N-word but appropriate for the setting of the
film. Like much of Tarantino, it gives a lot of action, comedy, drama,
and some ultra-violence. Tarantino also pays homage to other films
especially his use of many movie scores, many of which from Ennio
Morricone, while making this his very own. I look forward to what's
next with Quentin.
Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958):
This is my Italian comedy for the week directed by Mario Monicelli.
This is a heist comedy of an inept group of small-time thieves who plot
to rob a pawnshop but everything goes wrong. Vittorio Gassman stars as
Peppe who is a former boxer looking to strike it big and joins this
group. There are lots of very funny moments and characters with a very
good soundtrack and ranks up as one of the best comedies of all time.
This movie works well on many levels and if you can watch English
subtitles, this is for you. Italian actors Claudia Cardinale, Marcello
Mastroianni, and Renato Salvatori co-star and this movie is available on
TCM On-Demand on Comcast until February 15th.
In Cold
Blood (1967): Richard Brooks directed this adaptation to the
groundbreaking and controversial novel from Truman Capote. This is a
true story about the brutal murder of a family in a small Kansas town.
Scott Wilson and Robert Blake play ex-cons Dick and Perry who plan to
rob a home they believe have a lot of money but results in the murder of
the husband, wife and two kids. This shows the them trying to deal
with the job gone wrong, and the local police headed by Alvin Dewey,
played by John Forsythe, investigating the murders and their arrest.
This is a very well-done adaptation and Capote's book helped a lot in
the True Crime genre when he took interest in the story and visited the
town to learn about the killers and the events that happened. Blake
gives what might be his best performance and Wilson was good as the more
ruthless of the two. It also shows scenes from Perry's childhood that
helped shape him into the type of person he became. I read that at
first Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were to star in this film but both
pulled out. I actually think having more unknown actors worked just as
well if not beter as Wilson and Blake worked very well together and
Blake had quite a bit of resemblance to the real-life Perry Smith at the
time. This was also filmed on exact location, even at the home the
murders took place.
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008):
This is my German film for the week which was directed by Uli Edel.
This is based on a true story about a resistance group called the Red
Army Faction in the 60s and 70s believing they were fighting against
oppression and fascism not wanting a repeat of the Holocaust. Martina
Gedeck stars as one of the founders Ulrike Meinhof who was a journalist
for a left wing magazine. Moritz Bleibtreu plays another co-founder
named Andreas Baader who was a high-school dropout and criminal before
founding the RAF. Johanna Wokalek plays co-founder Gudrun Ensslin who
might have been the intellectual leader of the group. Simon Licht plays
fourth co-founder Horst Mahler an attorney and extreme leftist. These
are the main founders who for years orchestrated many bombings,
robberies, kidnappings, and assassinations in their beliefs which
actually won over a lot of the German population at the time. There was
also an interesting courtroom scene where the defendants insult the
judges to delay trial. This movie portrays them very well and the
disagreements between some of them that lead to certain downfalls of the
group. There is some pretty brutal violence at times but is still a
very well done film. It just won't be the most upbeat film you have
ever seen but seems pretty realistic. This is available on Instant
Netflix.
Winged Migration (2001): I remember when I
first saw this around the time it came out. I was in Columbus and with
my dad and stepmom and dad wanted to see a movie where we agreed but he
would not tell us what he was taking us to see but I continued. We
ended up at the Keys Cinema in his hometown which is now called the Yes
Cinema. Under both names they try to show independent films and do a
lot of other things. I soon learned I was about to see a documentary
about birds which on the surface just did not interest me and I started
thinking "what did I agree to" but I respected my father's decision
while also understanding his silence. I still remained open-minded and
really started liking what I saw. This is a movie that focuses on birds
of all shapes and sizes. Jacues Perrin directed this film which took
four years to make and the movie was quite the team effort including
more than 450 people including film crew, music department, and many
experts in the bird field. It also took people flying in planes,
gliders, helicopters, and balloons to capture the amazing footage that
they got. The movie consisted of very little narration and every once
in a while putting up some facts about the birds but the movie had the
perfect companion in the soundtrack. The music score was written by a
guy named Bruno Coulais and was nothing short of beautiful. The music
conveyed the birds in a perfect way. Many times had people singing to
the music like a man named Robert Wyatt which was great and some great
chorus numbers ending with Nick Cave singing TO BE BY YOUR SIDE which
has really become my favorite song by Cave who wrote the lyrics while
Coulais still wrote the music part. I have found that I love this movie
on so many levels and am now grateful to my dad for exposing me to what
I consider to be a masterpiece. It is a movie that deserves so much
more exposure. I checked this out when I was at the library so if you
can get your hands on it, please do. I do not believe you'll be
disappointed and it is very rare that I actually ask someone to watch
something. It is not often a movie affects me the way this one did and
probably will end up on my next top 100 list when I do the ten year
anniversary. Shortly after this, I decided to order the soundtrack to
the film as I do like it that much. I know if I got to be involved with
something like this I would proudly look back the rest of my life.
Well,
that is it for this week. Tell me what you like and dislike and stay
tuned for next week which so far includes Steve Buscemi, Christopher
Plummer, Meryl Streep, Myrna Loy, Steve McQueen, Paul Giamatti, and many
others.
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