Clown Time is Over

Inauguration notes.

Fine Obama speech, acknowledging the pep rally is over. Lemony and tough, almost astringent. Reagan gave you the grandfather routine. Now there’s work to do.

How about John Roberts flubbing the oath — repeatedly? This guy’s Chief Justice? Jesus, even Rehnquist got it right.

There was always something missing in Dick Cheney’s personification of Old Man Potter, but the last-minute addition of the wheelchair set things right. At least now George W. can stop tying those strings around his fingers.

The classy-yet-all-American musical interlude on “Simple Gifts” was nice. One hesitates before expecting that art and science might be brought back into the national imagination — one thing at a time, after all — but Obama is hitting the right notes so far.

Mostly watched MSNBC, where Chris Matthews was even wiggier than usual, at one point comparing the Bushes to the Romanovs, whereupon that sane fellow Eugene Robinson quietly suggested that no, it wasn’t quite like that.

Still can’t quite believe this good thing is happening. Or that the Bush years, now history, formed a large part of our lives. But goodbye to all that. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry. Sayonara, sucker. Up in the nursery an absurd little bird is popping up to say “cuckoo” — so long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night. Hasta la vista, baby. TTFN. Goodnight, Irene. Drop a line when you get a chance. Later. So long, it’s been good to know ya. But not really.

Movie Diary 1/19/2009

Anna Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920). Who needs Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson anyway? The bloody business of the English royal family is always juicy source material, and this one has special heft with two of Germany’s biggest stars playing Henry VIII (well, “Heinrich VIII” in the close-ups of documents) and Anne Boleyn: respectively, Emil Jannings and Henny Porten. Not quite as light-footed as Lubitsch’s royal lark in Madame Dubarry, but good spectacle.

1980 Ten Best Movies

"Solitude and isolation can, of itself, become a problem...."

Was 1980 the final year in a pretty good decade for film or the first year of a dispiriting period? Despite the ten best (and some excellent near-misses), I tend to think the latter. The blockbuster syndrome was already fully institutionalized, with The Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, and The Blues Brothers racking up big grosses. And I am underwhelmed by the officially anointed 1980 titles: Oscar’s Best Picture, Ordinary People, hasn’t aged well and isn’t talked about much today, while the movie sometimes referred to as the best of the 1980s, Raging Bull, has always struck me as about as illuminating as Jake LaMotta banging his head against a wall, no matter how beautiful its photography or skillful its boxing sequences. Other alarming omens: the first Friday the 13th movie, and Can’t Stop the Music. On the bright side, 1980 was the year of the only movie I’m an extra in, The Changeling. But enough about me.

1980’s #1 is a brilliant study of space, sound, and absence. The Shining is many things — Kubrick’s Scenes from a Marriage, a blistering study of narcissism, and one of the greatest films about trying to write. It’s about the watching of movies, too. Now that’s scary. Here are the ten best of 1980:

1. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)

2. Mon Oncle d’Amerique (Alain Resnais)

3. The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, restored version)

4. Sauve qui peut (La Vie) (Jean-Luc Godard)

5. Berlin Alexanderplatz (R.W. Fassbinder)

6. Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme)

7. The Falls (Peter Greenaway)

8. Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa)

9. The Long Riders (Walter Hill)

10. Radio On (Chris Petit)

The Resnais film is a classic, the Godard a return to form. Melvin and Howard is such a gorgeous piece of Americana you almost wish Demme had stayed in that vein, but maybe he did. The Falls is an amazingly quick three hours, whereas you feel every minute of the (14-hour?) Fassbinder. Kagemusha always felt like an underrated Kurosawa, especially good on the way people move.

Just missed: John Huston’s Wise Blood and Ken Russell’s Altered States, two odd movies I really like but haven’t seen since they came out. De Palma and Carpenter did nicely with non-major works, Dressed to Kill and The Fog, and two auspicious debuts predicted the coming of the indie picture: John Sayles (The Return of the Secaucus Seven) and Jim Jarmusch (Permanent Vacation). And since I’ve never known quite what to do with Heaven’s Gate in any of its incarnations, here it is relegated to this paragraph. And so much fuss at the time, too.

Next week: 1991.

Movie Diary 1/17/2009

New in Town (Jonas Elmer, 2009). The quaintness of Minnesotans, accidental shotgun mishaps, beer cheese soup. (full review 1/30)

The Student of Prague (Paul Wegener, Stellan Rye, 1913). As early as it is, there’s some striking stuff in this influential version of the man whose doppelganger bugs him. Wegener was a beast.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974). Walter Matthau in his great period (plaid shirt and yellow tie), plus some very unfussy treatment of police work. Matthau ups his business — the New Yawk honk, the reaction looks — as though he knows the material isn’t top-drawer and needs a little extra oomph. Pauline Kael’s take on Matthau in this one has always stuck in my mind: “He’s the New York hero, sour yet self-satisfied.”

The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974). Back when Coppola still had three names, he made this self-contained little art movie, a good representative of its time. Gene Hackman’s performance is as scrupulous as his eavesdropping character.

Notorious Last Chance Che (Weekly Links)

Reviews I filed for this week’s Herald.

Che. “Call it the anti-Oliver Stone approach.”

Defiance. “There’s something uncanny in the setting.”

Last Chance Harvey. “Hoffman takes a singular approach to romantic comedy: he’s annoying.”

Chandni Chowk to China. “There is much nonsense to savor.”

Paul Blart: Mall Cop. “He brandishes his cop-stache with great pride.”

Hotel for Dogs. “A statement from the Dog Pound Anti-Defamation Society is called for.”

Notorious. “There shall not be a Jim Carrey comedy called The Godfather .”

And an interview with Defiance director Ed Zwick: here.

Movie Diary 1/14/2009

Paris 36 (Christophe Barratier, 2008). From the guy who did Les Choristes. If that’s not enough information, the film’s about a music hall in Thirties Paris, shuttered but then re-opened by a spirited group of actors and crew — kind of like Hotel for Dogs but with French people.

Secrets of a Soul (G.W. Pabst, 1926). Unusual, not to say daffy, drama attempting to bring psychoanalytic ideas to the movie screen. Not surprisingly, it’s the dream sequences that allow for the greatest visual extravagance. Werner Krauss plays the patient, a man who cannot touch a knife or give his wife a child.

Movie Diary 1/13/2009

Last Chance Harvey (Joel Hopkins, 2008). Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, in a movie by the guy who did the nice Jump Tomorrow in 2001 and hasn’t had a credit since. (A movie that gets extra props from me for using “Instant Karma!” in a really cool way.) This one’s so low-key Emma Thompson seems to be trying to get the boys to goose it up, already. (full review 9/16)

Movie Diary 1/12/2009

The Bells (James Young, 1926). Lionel Barrymore is a small-town innkeeper who does something bad and is tormented by guilt. No actual connection to the Poe poem — this was based on a popular morality play — but Barrymore is very good and the picture has a dandy pre-stardom role for Boris Karloff. I will introduce a screening of this next Monday night: details here.

Notorious (George Tillman, Jr., 1009). The story of Biggie Smalls, who went to South America to marry a high-ranking Nazi spy. Sorry, but I didn’t get a chance to make a Hitchcock joke before everybody else did. (full review 1/16)

Chandni Chowk to China (Nikhil Advani, 2009). A Bollywood picture gets a good-sized push. It’s enjoyably ludicrous — you know, like Slumdog Millionaire. (full review 1/16)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Steve Carr, 2009). Kevin James in a Happy Madison production — but where’s the Rob Schneider cameo? (full review 1/16)

1932 Ten Best Movies

Consider this:  Less than a half-decade earlier, the greatest course-change in film history (silent to sound) had caused moviemakers to re-think everything they knew about what they did. Careers ended, new ones began from scratch, technologies had to be invented. And by the way, the world was mired in a financial Depression.

Yet somehow 1932 was a great year in film. A few giants got their careers in gear, including Renoir and Ozu. Josef von Sternberg was in full stride with Marlene Dietrich, and Ernst Lubitsch was at a pinnacle. Hollywood films grappled with social issues and exploded in horror.

It takes some kind of film to knock out Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise, but I have to go with Scarface (shot in 1930, but unreleased until ’32). The perfection of TiP is just slightly nipped by Scarface‘s rippling, urgent dynamism — and maybe by its American-ness, too. More notes below, but here’s ten best:

1. Scarface (Howard Hawks)

2. Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch)

3. Boudu Saved from Drowning (Jean Renoir)

4. Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg)

5. I Was Born, But… (Yasujiro Ozu)

6. Freaks (Tod Browning)

7. Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian)

8. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy)

9. Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh)

10. The Mummy (Karl Freund)/The Old Dark House (James Whale)

Freaks is rough and strange, but there’s nothing else quite like it; I write at length about it here. (Quickie Amazon Editorial Reviews: Love Me Tonight here, Chain Gang here.) If you’ve never seen Me and My Gal, you’ve been missing sheer pleasure. And I’m cheating with the tie of the Universal horror pictures, but I couldn’t choose between the poetry of The Mummy and the luscious camp hilarity of Whale’s film. The missing horror from this year is Vampyr, which for some reason I have never quite been able to click with. I’m also regretting Borzage’s A Farewell to Arms, a beautiful film ill-served for years by lousy public-domain prints, and Capra’s American Madness, which, with I Am a Fugitive, is a strong example of the social-issue Hollywood picture of the era.

Next week: 1980. All work and no play….

Movie Diary 1/10/2009

You don't mess with the Mabuse

Hotel for Dogs (Thor Freudenthal, 2009). A good lesson for the kids: break into the the dog pound, where employees are evil, and let the dogs into a condemned hotel in a sketchy part of town. Dog people will love it anyway. (full review 1/16)

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (Fritz Lang, 1922). Such a strong influence on everything from Scarface to The 39 Steps to The Dark Knight, it’s somewhat surprising this film isn’t mentioned more often as a kind of “founding work” of the movies. But the 4 1/2 hour running time might have something to do with it. And please note: Dr. Mabuse himself disapproves of the Expressionist aesthetic.