Movie alert!  There is a documentary heading to a Theater Near You that you don’t want to miss!!

Young@Heart is a chorus based in Northampton, Massachusetts.  The average age of the chorus members is eighty.

And they sing punk.  And rock and roll.  Like you wouldn’t believe.

The documentary chronicles the group’s preparation for an upcoming concert.  You get to know the individual chorus members and watch their rehearsals.

I cannot remember the last time a movie felt more like a tonic, or a gigantic B-12 shot.  I defy anyone to come out of this movie feeling anything but euphoric.

Do not miss it when it comes to your town!

It’s very fashionable, indeed almost required, among my circle, to loathe Charlton Heston.  What a creep, right?  Can’t believe he was for gun rights!  What a right-wing wacko!

Even George Clooney attacked Heston in 2003, saying that he deserved whatever happened to him because of his position on the NRA.

George Clooney:  What a moron!

The fact is, Heston was a Hollywood giant who deserved our respect.  I’ve always greatly admired him, even though I disagree sharply with the politics of his later life.  In fact, I don’t even think he was the greatest actor.  But he was a great movie star, tireless political activist, and gentleman.

Heston may not have had the acting chops of Paul Muni or Spencer Tracy, but he starred in many important films, from The Greatest Show On Earth to The Agony and the Ecstacy to El Cid to Ben-Hur and Touch of Evil to his signature role as Moses in the greatest trash film of all time, The Ten Commandments.

He was also in many of the most significant science fiction films of the late 60s and early 70s, such as Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man.

He created many iconic moments in cinema, including Moses holding his staff over the Red Sea, Captain George Taylor’s immortal rant at the foot of the half-buried Statue of Liberty to his dying warning that “Soylent Green is people!”

He also had a good sense of humor about himself, parodying his Planet of the Apes persona both on Saturday Night Live and in a beautiful cameo in the 2001 remake.

His last great part was as the Player King in Kenneth Branaugh’s monumental 1996 film of Hamlet. 

Why doesn’t it bother me that this mediocre actor became the President of the National Rifle Association?  Because guess what, Heston was simply being a citizen activist, which he had been his whole life.

Originally a liberal democrat, he championed civil rights and fought institutionalized racism. He campaigned for Adlai Stevenon and John Kennedy.  He picketed a segregated movie theater.

In 2001 he quit Actors Equity in protest of the union’s refusal to let Jonathan Pryce, a caucasian actor, reprise his award-winning role as a Eurasian character in Miss Saigon from London to Broadway.  And you know what?  Heston was right.  Equity’s involvement in the affair, largely driven by actors B.D. Wong and Colleen Dewhurst (who heself had played Asian roles in Broadway, for heaven’s sake), was shameful and wrong headed.

And sure, he championed gun rights.  But so what?  He believed in them.  Since when is it wrong for an American to stand up for what he believes in, especially when it’s a constitutional issue?  And while the Second Amendment is perhaps my personal least favorite amendment, the wording is concise and unambiguous.  And is it fair for liberals like me to demand we ignore this provision while we decry the efforts of others to degrade the First Amendment?  I don’t think so.  In a democracy, good men of good will can disagree.

For the record, as much as I like Michael Moore, his ambush of Heston at his home in his film Bowling For Columbine was tasteless and low-class.

I would also like to point out that if I snubbed my nose at everyone I disagreed with politically I wouldn’t have much family left.  I am from Texas and Louisiana, after all.

I’m happy that I have one personal memory of Heston.  About twelve years ago the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood was having a festival of 70mm films.  My friend David and I attended a screening of Heston’s 1961 epic El Cid.  Right before it was time for the movie to start, a hunched, fairly feeble looking older man shuffled down the aisle to the front of the screen and turned around.  It was Heston!

The startled audience began to applaud (the theater had made no announcement about an appearance by the actor).  I turned to my friend and said, “Uh. . . I say you stand up for Charleton Freaking Heston.”  My friend agreed, and we began an extended standing ovation for the cinema legend.

He accepted the applause graciously and then proceeded to introduce the movie.  He then sat down with his wife Lydia in the audience and watched part one of the film.  During intermission he spoke with everyone who wanted to meet him.  He then sat down again and watched the rest of the movie.  Afterwards he hung out with the audience again for awhile, then drove off with his wife.

I was struck by his generosity of spirit, taking the opportunity to turn a screening of an old movie into a truly memorable event.  

My favorite quote of Heston’s was his answer to the question, “What do you think is your greatest film.”  His answer, “I don’t think I’ve made it yet.”

Mr. Heston, I for one will greatly miss your titanic presence in the movies and even in politics.  You were a true original and you had a true respect for acting.

Heston is survived by his wife of sixty-four years. 

 

Moses parts the Red Sea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUR-OdR3egU&feature=related

It’s people!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE

Greatest shock ending ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUR-OdR3egU&feature=related

Just in case anyone needs reminding, the very worst actor in the world, yea the actor who makes Christopher Lloyd look subtle and honest in the throes of this thespianic efforts, is was and I assume always will be Anthony Heald.

If you mercifully can’t remember this excruciating actor off the top of your head, perhaps you’ll remember him as the vice principal on “Boston Public.”  Or as the vicious Judge Wallace Cooper on “The Practice.”

No?

Well, surely you’ll recall his most famous role as the doomed psychiatrist Dr. Fredererick Chilton in “The Silence of the Lambs.”  It was the good doctor, you may recall, which was to provide Hannibal Lector’s final meal in the film.  Ahh, if only.

I don’t know why he gets hired.  But then I don’t know why John Leguizamo gets hired, either.

The Fourteen Ten Best Films of 2007

1.                  Ratatouille

2.                  No Country For Old Men

3.                  Michael Clayton

4.                  There Will Be Blood

5.                  In the Valley of Elah

6.                  Waitress

7.                  3:10 to Yuma

8.                  The Orphanage

9.                  Juno

10.              The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

11.              Sweeney Todd

12.              Persepolis

13.              Gone, Baby, Gone

14.              Knocked Up

Honorable Mention:  Breach, The Lookout, Enchanted, Hairspray, The Host, Death at a Funeral, The Nines, Superbad, Stardust, Zodiac and Once.

Best Actor

Chris Cooper, Breach

*Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah

Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

George Clooney, Michael Clayton

Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd

Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

Honorable Mention: Richard Gere in The Hoax; Jamie Draven in Badland; Joseph Gordon-Levitt in The Lookout; Ryan Reynolds in The Nines; Christian Bale in 3:10 to Yuma; Casey Affleck in Gone Baby Gone, Jindabyne

Best Actress

Molly Shannon, Year of the Dog

*Julie Christie, Away From Her

Keri Russell, Waitress

Ellen Page, Juno

Amy Adams, Enchanted

Best Supporting Actor

Irfan Khan, The Namesake

Alan Tudyk, Death at a Funeral

Ben Foster, 3:10 to Yuma

*Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men

Honorable Mention: Tommy Lee Jones in No Country For Old Men; Josh Brolin in American Gangster; Ashraf Barhom in The Kingdom; Armin Muller-Stahl in Eastern Promises; Jeff Bridges in Surf’s Up; Andy Griffith in Waitress; Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood; Peter O’Toole in Ratatouille
 
Best Supporting Actress

Sigourney Weaver, The TV Set

Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

*Amy Ryan, Gone, Baby, Gone

Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There

Honorable Mention: Michelle Pfeiffer in Hairspray and Stardust; Olympia Dukakis in Away From Her; Adrienne Shelley in Waitress; Melissa McCarthy in The Nines

Best Director

Sarah Polley, Away From Her

Paul Haggis, In the Valley of Elah

Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton

*Brad Bird, Ratatouille

The Coen Brothers, No Country For Old Men

Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Screenplay

Knocked Up

Waitress

3:10 to Yuma

Ratatouille

Superbad

*Michael Clayton

No Country For Old Men

Juno

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Cinematography

*No Country For Old Men

Atonement

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Sweeney Todd

300

 

Musical Score

*Ratatouille

Persopolis

Once

Hairspray

Production Design

*Sweeney Todd

No Country For Old Men

There Will Be Blood

Ratatouille

The Orphanage

Costumes

*Sweeney Todd

Visual Effects

*I Am Legend

Foreign Language Film

Persepolis (France)

Black Book (Netherlands)

*The Orphanage (Spain)

The Band’s Visit (Israel)

Documentary

Flock of Dodos

Maxed Out

Sicko

No End in Sight

*The King of Kong:  A Fistful of Quarters

The Eleventh Hour

In the Shadow of the Moon

For the Bible Tells Me So

The Rape of Europa

King Corn

Rodent Love

Why is Ratatouille the best movie of the year?  Because it simply does so many things so well.  First of all, as an animated film, it’s drop-dead gorgeous.  Second, it’s got exceptional character design.  Third, its theme is universal:  It’s about a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who wants to break into a world that thinks he’s unworthy.  Writer/director Brad Bird is like the great Japanese anime directors:  He doesn’t treat animation as if it’s a “family film” ghetto.  It’s just his method of telling great stories.  Finally, the voice work in Ratatouille pushes it over the top.  It goes past the traditional gimmickry of using movie stars for all the voices, like so many animated films of today.  Brad Bird is a treasure, and I cannot wait to see what he cooks up next.

Movie I Least Expected to Love

Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  (But I did!)

Huzzah For Adult Movies!

Or, perhaps I should say, movies for adults.  Michael Clayton is a candy store of a movie for grownups.  It’s a movie about adult problems, adult responsibilities an adult situations.  The dialog is dazzling and is delivered with utter confidence by a spectacular cast.  There are so many moments to treasure in this movie that it truly calls for repeated viewings.

Most Woefully Underappreciated

Waitress, 3:10 to Yuma, The Lookout, Jindabyne, The Nines, Death at a Funeral, The Last Legion, Badland

Good Popcorn Movies

Fracture, Grindhouse, Shooter, Shrek 3, Mr. Brooks, Live Free or Die Hard, Transformers, The Kingdom, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Simpsons Movie, The Last Legion, American Gangster, Bee Movie, Shoot’em Up, The Golden Compass, I Am Legend, National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Maybe Not Great, But SO Much Better Than the Boring Book
Atonement

Best Casting of Three People Playing the Same Role

Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave all play Briony in Atonement.

Best Casting of Six People Playing the Same Role

Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Ben Wishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin all play (sort of) Bob Dylan in I’m Not There

If You’re Really in a Merchant/Ivory Mood

Amazing Grace

Becoming Jane

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Best Visual Effects

*300

The Host

The Year’s Best Lines

“It’s when people die in the wrong order.  That’s when things get really fucked up.”  Deborra-lee Furness tells it like it is in the overlooked Jindabyne

“To tell you the truth, I don’t really know what kind of girl I am.” June fesses up to her parents in Juno.

“It’s a mess, ain’t it sheriff?.”  “If it ain’t it’ll do till the mess gets here.” – Tommy Lee Jones and his deputy assess a mess in No Country For Old Men.

Best Costumes

300

Best Remake of Hitchcock’s Rear Window

Disturbia

Best Action Sequence

The wordless chase across the rooftops of Tangiers in The Bourne Ultimatim

Viggo Mortensen takes on assassins in a steamroom in Eastern Promises

The final shootout in The Kingdom

New Genre That I Approve Of

Eco-Horror films.  This year’s best example:  The Last Winter.

A Good Year for Action Flicks!

The Bourne Ultimatim

Live Free or Die Hard

The Kingdom

The Last Legion

Best Movie in Which A Former James Bond is Impaled on a Miniature Church Steeple

Hot Fuzz

Best Handi-Capable Moment

After losing a leg to zombies, Rose McGowan turns that frown upside down by strapping an Uzi to the stump.

What An Amazing Year for Barbra Streisand’s Stepson

Josh Brolin’s career profile went up several notches in 2007, due to his superb performances in four movies.  He played a sick and evil doctor in Grindhouse, an opportunistic lawman in the Valley of Elah, a ferociously corrupt New York City cop in American Gangster, and a foolish fortune-grabber in No Country For Old Men

The Year Ben Affleck Found His True Calling

Directing!  Gone, Baby, Gone is enough to make us forgive you for Pearl Harbor and Gigli. 

This Year’s Bad But Oddly Enjoyable Sandra Bullock Time Travel Movie

Premonition.  Not as good as The Lake House, but still fun in a stupid way.

Not Nearly As Bad As Everyone Said

Lions For Lambs

Funniest Movies

Hott Fuzz

Juno

Death at a Funeral

The Simpsons Movie

Best Gross-Out Joke of 2008

Jonah Hill picks a dancing partner with a very short skirt and a very unfortunate personal hygiene issue in Superbad.

Best One Since The First One

Live Free or Die Hard

Best Western since Unforgiven

3:10 to Yuma

Scariest Movie in a Really Long Time

The Orphanage

Best Monster Movie in a Very Long Time

The Host (South Korea).  This feels like the Godzilla movie Hitchcock might have made.  Great special effects, very scary monster, plus (and this is the unusual part) wonderful writing and acting to support the human story.

Give Her Some Leads in Big Pictures Already

Maria Bello is ready for her closeup.  Give her some meaty roles in big movies!!

Good Year for Jane Austen Dweebs (Like Me)

Becoming Jane

The Jane Austen Book Club

Please May We See More Of . . .

Jindabyne’s Deborra-lee Furness

Stardust’s Charlie Cox

Hairspray’s Nikki Blonsky

The Kingdom’s Ashraf Barhom

Also Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode, Maria Bello, Hugh Dancy, Kathy Baker, Alexander Siddig, Aishwarya Rai.

Who Cares if He Can Act or Not, Just Please Keep Letting Him Make Movies
I’ll watch Josh Hartnett even in dreck like 30 Days of Night.
Most Underappreciated Comeback The wonderful Frank Oz, directing the shockingly underappreciated Death at a Funeral.  We can’t even remember the last good movie farce.
  The Dogs of 2007 Sunshine.  Directed by the talented Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Millions, Shallow Grave), this big-budget science fiction epic is a shoddy mess.  I don’t know what Boyle was smoking, but he needs to take a vacation from filmmaking for awhile if this is the kind of dreck he feels like making.

 
The Brave One.  Clenched-jawed Jodie Foster enters Death Wish territory.  Why? Puzzlingly Overrated
Into the Wild.  I truly think Sean Penn missed the point of the book. 
Further Evidence That Jessica Alba Just May Night Be the Greatest Actress Ever

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Enough Already

Ocean’s 13

Misery I Didn’t Need

The Savages

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Most Ludicrously Misleading Ad Campaign

The Bridge to Terebitha.  The trailers made it look like Narnia II, when it was actually a sharp and well-acted story about the painful lessons of childhood.  It’s one thing when a studio knows it has a bad movie and tries to disguise it as a good movie.  But in this instance they actually HAD a good movie and really sunk it with a dumb ad campaign.

Most Disappointing Movies

Across the Universe.  I mean, it had mad genius Julie Taymor directing, it had a raft of immortal Beatles songs, and a talented cast?  Alas, unless you were a teenage girl, this movie was virtually unwatchable.

Rendition.  Even with five of my favorite actors (Reese Witherspoon, Peter Saarsgard, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin) this movie was thinner, shriller and just not as hard-hitting as I had hoped.

Dan in Real Life.  This dreck was unrecognizable as real life to me.

Worst Actress

Once again, Jodie Foster scores as the ludicrous radio-show-host turned gun-toting vigiliante in the repulsive The Brave One.  One more win and this award will be renamed for Ms. Foster.

 
 
Got any feedback?  Please leave a Comment here!  Remember, I have no problem when people disagree with me.  Having bad taste is your right as an American.

 

 

 

Saw my beloved “Rear Window, ” my all-time favorite Hitchcock movie, tonight at the Arclight.  Seeing such a beautiful movie from another time is the best tonic in the world.  Just to be reminded that movies can reach such sublime heights.  Makes you think anything might be possible.

In three different theaters, yet!

1.  10:40 a.m. Burbank AMC.  SICKO.  This is arguably Michael Moore’s most powerful film.  I expected to hate the Cuba part, but against all expectations, it was the most moving and telling sequence in the movie.

2:10 Cinerama Dome.  TRANSFORMERS.  Pretty cool, pretty fun, and the battle sequence at the end is pretty great.

7:30 Egyptian/American Cinamatech.  HAWAII (1966).  Based on one chapter of Michener’s 1, 000 page novel, it is a scathing indictment of the American Calvinist missionaries in Hawaii in the early 1800s.  Directed by my beloved George Roy Hill and starring Julie Andrews and Max Von Sydow.

There are plenty of successful things in pop culture that I understand I’m simply too old to understand.  Torture porn films, like SAW and its ilk, for example.  Text messaging.  Lucky Brand jeans.

 

But, for whatever reason, I’m completely on board with this whole graphic-novel-into-movie thing. 

 

I’ve always felt that traditional superhero comic books were not a good fit for movies, because the world of a comic book is so artificial and fanciful, whereas movies tend to be very literal.

 

However, with the BIG exception of ROAD TO PERDITION, I have loved every cinematic graphic novel adaptation I have so far seen.

 

I just got back from seeing 300 at the huge, iconic Grauman’s Chinese theater, I have to tell you I loved every minute of it.

 

I believe two things are true about movies.  One, movies are dreams.  Two, movies are about telling stories with pictures.

 

Movies like 300 score big in both departments.  The story is obviously Frank Miller’s fever dream of the Battle of Thermopylae, and the wildly overheated visual style of the film is very definitely an exciting new way to tell stories with pictures.

 

Everything in 300 is dialed up to eleven.  No one speaks, but rather pontificates or just simply shouts.  There’s an exclamation point at the end of everything. 

 

From the decadent splendor of the Persian God-King Xerxes and his armies to the stunning battle landscapes to the straining muscles of the Spartan fighters, the movie is a visual feast.

 

So after enjoying FROM HELL, AMERICAN SPLENDOR, SIN CITY and now 300, I say bring on the graphic novel adaptations!!

One of the nicest things about living in a city like Los Angeles is that I get many opportunities to see older movies on the big screen. On Saturday night I braved the rain to make my way to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s screening of Roman Polanski’s classic chiller. For those of you who might not be familiar with this wonderful movie, the plot concerns a young couple, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her actor husband (John Cassavetes) who move into a creepy old New York apartment building (actually, the famous Dakota).  Their noisy and peculiar neighbors (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) appear excessively interested in Rosemary’s pregnancy. It had been many years since I’ve seen this movie, and the first thing that struck me was how amazingly good Ruth Gordon is.  Thirty-eight years after the movie was made, it is clear that the Oscar she won for the performance had little to do with sentiment.  She is on fire as the dotty Minnie Castevet. 

And whatever you may think of Mia Farrow as an actress, she’s absolutely tremendous as Rosemary.  Her physical frailty only emphasizes her steely determination to keep a suspected coven of witches from getting their claws on her baby. And what can I say about Mr. Polanski that hasn’t been said?  He is a master at finding the creepy in the everyday.  Rosemary’s comfortable Upper West Side life becomes more and more frightening with very little overt cinematic tricks or gimmicks.  Polanski understood that the unknown is the most frightening thing and that the more banal and humdrum evil is portrayed, the more frightening it is. There were a few members of the audience sitting near me who were clearly seeing the movie for the first time, and I really enjoyed their increasingly alarmed reactions as the noose of the fiendish plot grows every tighter on poor hapless Rosemary. It’s interesting that Frank Sinatra, Farrow’s then-husband, absolutely hated that she was making a movie like Rosemary’s Baby.  He visited her on the set and made scenes.  The iconic Vidal Sassoon short-short pixie haircut she gets halfway through the film was probably the last straw for him.  He served her divorce papers on the set.  What a nice, supportive husband. 

Mia, it was worth losing Frank to make this movie.  It’s the performance of your career.  While I don’t approve of watching movies on television (I don’t want to hear about how great your home theater setup is, not interested, blah blah blah blah I can’t hear you), since not everyone who reads this blog has the opportunity to see great films like this on the big screen, I recommend that everyone go out and rent this movie immediately.  See how horror films are supposed to be made.  

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