<![CDATA[CHUD.com - A Movie Website and SO MUCH MORE. - Blogs]]> http://chud.com/articles en-us N/A nicknunziata@gmail.com Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:01:56 EST 20 <![CDATA[Call It, Friendo]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/325/Call-It-Friendo.html
That's not an excuse, just an explanation. I've been doing this other music blog, and finding the time to write that a day makes me feel guilty about not keeping this one up. One of the things that helped over there was setting a goal for myself and sticking to personal deadlines. So, I make the promise to you, the reader, that you can look for new updates in this blog (including the return of the John Sayles Project) three times a week -- Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Another reason is that I've got things to talk about! I've been listening to a lot of music, a lot of new music, and watching a ton of television. I'll go through periods where I'll watch a lot of movies and then watch a lot of TV, and right now I'm completely obsessed with Mad Men, State of Play (one episode left; I can already see how the Affleck/Crowe casting is going to work in terms of replacing David Morrissey/John Simm in the film), and the first season of Dr. Who (which is the most fun I've had with a genre series since Buffy.).

But those are just promises. Let's see if I can put my fingers where my mouth is. (Which may, in fact, be what she said.)

"I Know What I'm Getting Out Of"

A modified version of these comments on Jules Dassin originally appeared on another blog I write for, New York Noir.

I’m not going to be one of those assholes who tries to pretend he’s been into Dassin forever, as I wasn’t. It was only since this year that I started watching the noir classics that I should have seen a long time ago. One of those pictures was Otto Preminger’s Laura, which kicks ass, but featured a beautiful actress named Gene Tierney in the lead. I’m not one of those assholes who pretends he’s been into shit forever, but am one of those assholes who will track down other movies featuring a pretty girl he likes. And Miss Tierney is, like the Stones sing, such a pretty, such a pretty, such a pretty girl.

Tierney (beautiful woman, crazy broad with a fucked up life) was the female lead in Night and the City, which was the first Jules Dassin picture that I watched. This is one of those movies that is simply perfect. I have a really hard time talking about the things that I love other than “Oh man, it’s awesome and this part rocks and that part rocks,” but Jesus God, is it ever good. Not only does it feature gorgeous cinematography, a great performance by Widmark as a boxing promoter who has epic fail encoded onto his DNA (the total loser: an under-used noir stereotype), great villains, one of the best fight scenes I have ever seen (it goes on forever and you feel every single punch), and a wonderful sequence near the end where a bounty is put out on a character’s head that feels so fresh it’s like you’re seeing that sequence for the first time, but you get a side order of Gene Tierney singing. And friends, let me tell you, Gene Tierney singing is pretty awesome. I haven’t seen as many noirs as I should, and I fell off major-ly in March, but Night is now not only one of my favorite noirs, but one of my favorite films of all time.

So, we went from Tierney to Dassin, and Night knocked my on my ass enough that I decided this Dassin guy was worth checking out. Which brings us to The Naked City. Fact: this is probably the first police procedural. Fact: it is awesome. Fact: it’s one of the all time great New York City movies.

New York Noir owes a great debt to The Naked City because of one word: location. Dassin, in all of the noir I’ve seen of his, knows how to use locations, and apparently, City was a big deal at the time because it was actually shot on location in New York and not on sets. It shows.

It’s funny how the smallest things can have a big impact on you when it comes to art, and especially film. There’s a scene in City where a cop is interviewing a woman in a resturant on the Lower East Side, and in the background, through the window, a bunch of Orthodox Jews are standing on the corner, waiting for a cab. Knowing what you know about the movie (or what at least the 40s version of Mr. Movie Voice has told you at the beginning), those are real people in real New York. They’re not extras, they’re just standing there, hailing a cab while this movie’s being made. Just another day in New York, just like how you walk by film shoots all the time when you live there. I remember thinking that was cool, buying into the whole of City because of it. Dassin was a Yiddish theatre actor in New York before moving into films, and he was clearly as in love with the city as most people — it’s a very dark movie, but it’s also a movie that shows New York as it is, and I think you have to acknowledge that to really love the city. Or something.

City also features one of the more iconic voice overs in noir, which lives on today in what is probably the Naked City of the modern day, the Law & Order series. Dick Wolf’s more of a Dragnet guy, but there’s a lot of Lennie Briscoe in Barry Fitzgerald’s character, and again, the use of location — Law & Order was, for many years, the only NYC show being shot in New York.

Dassin also did Rififi, which is dark as fuck and features a heist sequence that’s been ripped off since time immemorial, and Thieves’ Highway, which I didn’t like that much, but I did like some of the characters in it (like the bickering rivals), the really tense end sequence which is mostly people sitting around a table, talking, and again, the use of location. I really like how Dassin manages to take noir out of the big city for a film that’s set mostly on the road.

I think, though, the way Dassin uses cities from Montmartre to New York, the way he makes locations feel like actual places and not just sets and the people in the background, the detail of it, is what was the biggest influence on me as a filmmaker and writer.

Thanks, JD, and sorry that you got fucked so thoroughly by HUAC.

(Dassin was a communist in the 30s who refused to testify before HUAC, but was named in the hearings. He had to leave America after being blacklisted — right as he was working on Night and the City. In the ensuing years, the U.S. government would, apparently, try to block him from even making movies overseas. To which I say: damn.)

]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/325/Call-It-Friendo.html <![CDATA[The Sayles Sojourn: Alligator (1980) and The Howling (1981)]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/175/The-Sayles-Sojourn-Alligator-1980-and-The-Howling-1981.html Alligator and The Howling, two creature features written by John Sayles early in his career.

Both these flicks, again, come out of the Corman school of filmmaking, Alligator directly and The Howling by Sayles and fellow alum Joe Dante. (Corman actually makes a cameo appearance early on in Howling.) Both films were done with a limited budget, so the effects range from effective and ridiculous. One's a giant alligator movie and the other's a werewolf movie -- I think you can guess which is which -- but both have some moments where you buy into the effects. I really loved the werewolf makeup in The Howling, especially the detail of having the werewolves retain some of their human features. And there's a sequence at the end of Alligator which is great B-movie fun. (I imagine seeing it with an audience would be pretty great, as would The Howling.)

While both of these monster movies have similar thematic content -- troubled individuals overcoming their pasts through fighting beasties -- they're also just tongue in cheek enough for the proceedings to be on this side of totally ridiculous. They're earnest, and they don't take themselves too seriously, plus, the actors are on board with it, too. One can only be too serious when directing a movie about a giant alligator, even if you are Robert Forster.

Of these two flicks, I liked The Howling more. Dante is a more assured director than Lewis Teague, it's got some things to say about the New Age movement (already in full swing by 1981, and there's a Scientology reference that reminds you just how old those crazies are), and it even managed to keep my jaded ass in suspense. It also has a really fantastic ending that led to me clapping a little. "Rare," indeed.

Sayles frequently acts or makes cameo appearances in either his or his buddies' films, and The Howling marks his first on-screen appearance within the Sayles Sojourn. I think one of the reasons I chose John Sayles for this cinematic adventure is that I like the way he looks, and acts. He's kind of goofy, but he's got a warmth to him. I want to hang out with John Sayles, is what I'm saying.

Sayles would, also, later costar with The Howling and The Lady in Red's Dick Miller in Dante's 1993 Matinee, one of my all time favorite films. You talk about an underrated classic, that's one of them -- it manages to capture so much about what it means to be a film geek, a geek in general, and why we should go to the movies rather than stay home and watch them on DVD. Goodman's monologue about "Here I am! What have you got for me?" demands to be branded in the minds of every person who eschews going to the theatre.

Since I'm one of those motherfuckers who likes to rank everything, I thought I'd keep a running tally of how I rate the Sayles movies, too: 1. Howling; 2. Lady in Red; 3. Alligator.

Next: For real, this time, Sayles' directorial debut, Return of the Secaucus 7, wherein I promise not to talk too much about how surprising the wang fest at the 30 minute mark was. If a flick has commentary from Sayles on it, I'm going to watch it twice, so look for that later this week.

Edit: The Howling was Joe Dante's third feature, not his first. I amended the article accordingly. Thanks to Phil for pointing out the error. And for those wondering why I didn't review Piranha, Netflix doesn't have it.
]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/175/The-Sayles-Sojourn-Alligator-1980-and-The-Howling-1981.html <![CDATA[Some Thoughts On Jules Dassin at 1 AM]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/172/Some-Thoughts-On-Jules-Dassin-at-1-AM.html Alligator and The Howling than I thought. Plus, with the Secaucus 7 DVD having Sayles commentary, I know I'll be watching that twice before writing about it. (Thoughts on that one so far: Lawrence Kasdan is so unbelievably full of shit when he says he hadn't seen it when he wrote The Big Chill, and, Jesus, did David Strathairn come out of the womb as a 40 year old dude?)

Anyway, in addition to my Sayles fixation, I've been watching a lot of film noir over the past month or so, mostly from the classic era, although I'll throw in an occasional Red Rock West (Dennis Hopper was so great in that) or Body Heat to mix it up. It's definitely become my favorite genre, although I've been a cop show fanatic for a while now, but I like watching film noir because it allows me to think critically about movies while still enjoying the story and performances.

I've written about this elsewhere, but I think one of the reasons I love noir and detective stories so much is that they remind me of jazz. At some point, every variation on a particular story has been done, and at that point it becomes about the singer rather than the song. It's about the improvisation around the material, which is why Rian Johnson's Brick is so brilliant. The key moment in that movie being Levitt's line, "Either write me up or suspend me." How many times had we heard that before? But there it's given new context, and it works.

Through this journey into the heart of post-war darkness, I've discovered a lot of faces and filmmakers that I hadn't before. I think that's one of the joys of being a film fan in the Netflix age. I know there's the divide between guys my age and some of the other writers for this site, and I do believe that some movies need to be experience in the theatre for the first time, but I love being able to say, watch Laura and get a huge crush on Gene Tierney and then reorder my queue so I get a bunch of her movies in the mail. (Or Colleen Gray for that matter, which is how I wound up watching Red River for the first time.)

The Tierney connection is how I got hooked on the director Jules Dassin. His Night and the City may be my favorite noir yet, and I've already reordered my favorite films list so that has a spot on it. I didn't know that when he made it, the studios knew it was going to be his last movie after he was blacklisted. (I'm really surprised how many people of my generation don't know about, or don't understand the magnitude of the blacklist, which is really sad.)

In retrospect, it definitely feels like a filmmaker making sure he goes out swinging. Night and the City is just a brilliant, brilliant movie, and not just because Tierney sings in it. It's one of those movies, like Miller's Crossing or Nashville or, in terms of other noirs, Out of the Past or Bunny Lake is Missing, that I find to be flawless. It's a film I want to watch again and again, and introduce to people so I can talk to them about it.

So that's how I became a fan of Jules Dassin. Last night, I watched The Naked City for the first time. Loved that one, too. One of the things that I loved about Bunny Lake was Lawrence Oliver's Superintendent Newhouse, and I kind of wished I had a time machine to go back in time and force MGM to make more movies with that character. In Naked City, the lead detectives are Lieutenant Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and his protege Jimmy Halloran (Don  Taylor), and I loved both of these characters so much -- Fitzgerald especially -- that I wanted to go back in time and order Universal to make more movies with them.

 I adored that it's a New York movie shot on location when that sort of thing wasn't exactly done. There's a scene in the movie where a detective jumps over a fence, and some kid yells "Superman!" And another scene where that same detective interviews a woman in a shop on the Lower East Side, and in the background you have a bunch of Orthodox Jews talking on the street corner. (I couldn't read their lips, but I'm betting they were discussing A History of Violence.)

Both of them were one of many small details which made the film feel very real, and it's that kind of detail is why I get annoyed by films set, but not shot, in New York City. You can't really get that kind of detail, that vibrancy, unless you're actually shooting on the streets -- which is probably one reason why I love Mean Streets so much, too. There's a grittiness and a reality to it. I like that it's Scorsese with a camera and his friends from NYU shooting in stairwells and off fire escapes.

If I haven't convinced you to check out The Naked City yet, you might be interested to know that one of the reasons it has such a vibrancy to it is because it's done in a pseudo-documentary style. It's such a strange combination, but it works so, so well -- it's part noir, part police procedural, but it also tries to move beyond that to give us snippets of life from New York City in 1948. The opening, where we intercut between late night jobs to and hear what people are thinking, is a great, great example of this. I don't know enough about film to accurately say, but I was surprised to see this technique of a fake documentary being used so early.

But the scope of the film is both broad and pointillist in its exploration of city life, which is another reason why I loved it so much. I have this theory that certain films are like Rosetta Stones, where if they're not completely ingrained in our culture like The Godfather or Star Wars, you can certainly see the influence even today. Red River was one of those, and so is The Naked City.

All that, and it's just a goddamn good movie. You should see it.

 Ebert says that Dassin invented the modern heist film with Rififi, and that's probably going to be next after I finish Secaucus 7. Two of Dassin's other films recently released by the Criterion Collection, Thieves' Highway and Brute Force are coming soon. I may write some more about him, but between the near-perfection of Naked City and sheer perfection of Night and the City, I think he may soon be one of my favorite directors.

And that's why I think being a film fan in the Netflix age has its benefits.

(Okay, so that wasn't entirely about Jules Dassin.)
]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/172/Some-Thoughts-On-Jules-Dassin-at-1-AM.html <![CDATA[Not Even Famous]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/170/Not-Even-Famous.html The Wire are two recent ideas --but it takes me a while to actually put together something worth saying. The most recent entry in my John Sayles Sojourn on Alligator and The Howling will be up later tonight, though.

Something short, though, on my mind. I don't really talk about it a whole lot (except in the last blog) because I don't want to be that guy, but last summer, I directed a film, my first. Monday of last week, I saw the rough cut, and, once I got over thinking about what went on the day we shot, I really enjoyed it. My producer is much more detached from the project than I am and she says we have a solid picture. I'm inclined to believe her at this point. This whole experience has been very surreal due to the fact that it's even been happening, so while I'm continuing to put in the work necessary regarding press kits and composers and pilots, I've decided to enjoy it a little.

One of the things that pleased me most about the way the film came out were the actors. I love actors, I know a lot of actors, even though I myself am not one. We got incredibly lucky with this cast -- they're all unknowns, but they're all very talented and I think most of them will be able to find steady work. One of them will, mark my words, have an Oscar within the next decade (assuming we're all still around by 2018).

Some them have already begun to get work in the industry, too -- one girl just booked a job as Isla Fisher's stand-in on that Shopaholic movie she's doing. Another friend's been on Law & Order: SVU (with Michael K. Williams, but not on screen together). I watched the episode of SVU, but I asked my friend, flat out, "Does this mean I have to go see Confessions of a Shopaholic?" She laughed and said no, it's just day work so she can get her SAG card.

That whole thing got me thinking, though -- obviously, I'll see anything any of the actors in my film do for the rest of their careers, whether it's stage, tv, television.  But what happens when they start booking gigs I'm not interested in? I am not a fan of chick flicks, generally. Nor would I be that thrilled if one of them got a job on, say, Heroes.

I guess that's one aspect of what friendship is, to Doogie it up. I know I've had a lot of friends who have done shit for me that they didn't want to do, or weren't necessarily 100 percent into. It's a give and take on both sides. But you know, these actors, they took this script I wrote and did something good with it.

So I think I owe them that.
]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/170/Not-Even-Famous.html <![CDATA[The Worst Show On Television]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/112/The-Worst-Show-On-Television.html
I caught 2/3rds of several different movies, including Independence Day and World Trade Center. I, also, got sucked into the still very, very good Homicide: Life on the Street tv movie that served as the series finale. I think Homicide was the Boogie Nights of television for me. I've mentioned this before, but PTA's film was the movie that made me want to be a director for reasons other than meeting Christina Ricci, and Homicide, even as a high schooler, was the first television show that elevated the form to something better, grander for me. I think the tv film is one of the finest finales of all time, and I still get chills when Gee sees Adena Watson in the squad room at the end. The tv movie also reminded me just what a great character Frank Pembleton was, and what a fantastic performance Andre Braugher gave on that show. It was coming across a few minutes of Pembleton and Bayliss interrogating a suspect that led to me watching the rest of the movie.

But by early evening, my boredom had gotten to the point where I was randomly flipping through the channels trying to find something, anything to watch. (For those of you wondering "why didn't he read a book?" see "five-seconds-from puking") I even watched part of an episode of Hannah Montana, something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. Although that particular experience made me resolve to come into work tomorrow even if I was puking up blood, it was nothing compared to the horror of Pants Off Dance Off.

For those thankfully not in the know, this show involves contestants stripping off their clothes while music videos play behind them. Then they are judged. It's on Fuse, which is basic cable, thus robbing the show of any nudity or strong sexual content. I really can't describe it any more than that. Some host, either Willa Ford or that methhead from Full House, run this shebang, which I guess is ending its third and final season this weekend.

I'd caught parts of Pants Off Dance Off before today, but it took a sickness to hit home just how terrible it is. This may in fact be the first television show I have seen with absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever. At least with reality shows or game shows, people are winning money or getting makeovers. This has women and men taking off their clothes for...what? So people just broke enough to get Fuse but not Showtime, MuchMax, or, even, the internet can watch it? Puberty, angst-ridden teenage boys?

It baffles me in a way that I think no other TV program has. If anyone can offer a defense, feel free to comment.
]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/112/The-Worst-Show-On-Television.html <![CDATA[The Sayles Sojourn: The Lady In Red (1979)]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/78/The-Sayles-Sojourn-The-Lady-In-Red-1979.html
I'll make this quick: In August, I wrote and directed an independent film. It wasn't my first screenplay -- I've been doing that since sixth grade -- but it was the first time I manned up and stepped behind the camera in a serious way. There were a lot of reasons behind my decision, but what it boiled down to was putting up or shutting up. I was 23, I'd been talking about how "what I really want to do is direct" since before I dropped out of film school, I was faced with a major change in the job that pays the bills, it was time to do to it. If I was going to ride thefailboat, I was going to make sure I at least crashed into a police cruiser on my way out.

It turned out to be an amazing experience in which I learned a metric ton about the craft and art of filmmaking, but guess what? I didn't totally suck. More than that, I realized, "Hey, yeah, I love doing this. This feels right." So since then, there's been a lot of self-reflection and thinking about "well, what kind of movies do I want to make? If I'm lucky enough to have a career, what kind of career would I like to have?" And from all I've read, John Sayles is a guy whose career I would like to have. Sayles has worked as a script doctor and screenwriter for many mainstream Hollywood films (Apollo 13 and The Mummy, among others, recently, he's co-written Jurassic Park IV and The Spiderwick Chronicles). He then takes that money and uses it to bankroll his own films (a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation helped, too). So that sounds like a career I'd like to have -- writing blockbusters by day and telling my own stories by night.Sayles seems like a guy who has got it figured out. Maybe by looking at his movies, I can figure something out, too.

The first major film written by John Sayles was Piranha, but Netflix didn't have that. So my first entry in the John Sayles Marathon of Madness is The Lady in Red, a B-movie from 1979. Like Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese, Sayles got his start working for Roger Corman, but even as a young writer working within some very specific parameters, Sayles makes story of The Lady in Red pretty special.

Next to the Wild West, I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the gangland era of the 20s and 30s is among the most mythologized times in American history. Lady in Red takes one of the time's most famous stories -- John Dillinger and the woman who betrayed him -- and fictionalizes it, focusing on the story of Polly Franklin, played by Pamela Sue Martin. Through the entire movie, Franklin can't catch a break. She gets seduced by this asshole reporter, who in turn gets her kicked out of the house by her super-religious father. She winds up working at a sweatshop and later a dance hall. She's arrested and pimped out by a vicious warden, who sends her to a brothel run by Louise Fletcher. Even her romance with gangster Dillinger (a very cool and subtle Robert Conrad) is cut short when Fletcher sells them out to the feds so she can stay in the country.

If that sounds ridiculous, it kind of is. But between Sayles's script, the direction of Lewis Teague, and a very strong performance by Martin, the film manages to keep it together. In a strange way, this movie reminded me of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Both movies are about tangential figures to big American legends, and like Jesse James, the film continues to tell the story of Franklin after Dillinger is shot to death outside the Biograph. I'm not going to say that Martin is comparable to Casey Affleck -- if I had to describe her performance, I'd call it "solid" -- but you do wind up feeling for Franklin, and it's to Martin's credit that she plays her relatively subdued and not at all "big." (unless it calls for "big.")

One of the ways the film plays with the myth of the time is by using the song "42nd Street" as a recurring musical motif. Like Pennies from Heaven, which this would make a intriguing double feature with, the film contrasts the optimism of the song and Polly's dreams of escaping to California with the harsh realism of her craptastic life. When Polly finally manages to head towards the coast in the final scenes, she's not at all happy. She's going there because, once again, she's got nowhere else to.

Of course, this is a Corman B-movie, so you do get a dose of breasts, beasts (in the form of every man save Dillinger and her adoptive father who Franklin encounters), and blood. When it comes to the exploitative stuff, my favorite is a prison riot scene after Franklin's beloved Communist friend (all movies need one, after all) is killed. Again, it's to the credit of the writer and director that these scenes seem to flow naturally, and are just this side of silly. I really liked it, and if it weren't for the fullscreen presentation, I'd buy this on DVD.

It's hard for me to say where this fits into Sayles's filmography, as I'm watching it front to back and will be seeing many of these films for the first time. So this sojourn into the work of John Sayles may double back to comment on other things in this film and others as I watch more of his films.

Next: Either Return of the Secaucus 7, Sayles's first directorial effort, or a Alligator/The Howling double feature.


]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/78/The-Sayles-Sojourn-The-Lady-In-Red-1979.html <![CDATA[Film Forum's Massive United Artists Retrospective]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/55/Film-Forum039s-Massive-United-Artists-Retrospective.html
One of the things I did was check out some films I missed out on in the last couple months of the year, including I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan movie. I loved it, and am still putting together many thoughts about it, but it's definitely my favorite film from last year. It's just masterful.

I saw I'm Not There at Film Forum, located on Houston Street in the Village. It was my first time there, shamefully enough. In film nerd circles, especially the ones I went to school with, it was whispered about as a kind of Mecca, a sacred temple to the gods of film, and it was that pretentiousness/seriousness that made me avoid it for so long. You know, back when I was an asshole. But I survived, and I'll definitely be going back now that I've finally gotten serious about film.

One of the things that sets Film Forum apart, though, is its reputation as a repertory house. They just finished a Otto Preminger retrospective, for example, and Sidney Lumet's getting one from the 8th to the 28th of February. As Devin's written before, rep houses are few and far between, and the good ones are increasingly rare. The New Beverly in Los Angeles seems to be gaining quite a good reputation for itself, and I know Eli Roth has his own personal programming slate coming up. However, if you're on the East Coast and can make it up to New York, you'll definitely want to make time for Film Forum between March 28 and May 1.

During those five weeks, Film Forum is launching an unbelievable, remarkable retrospective in celebration of United Artists' 90th Anniversary. I could talk about how films are meant to be shared cultural experiences, and I could talk about how there are some films that demand to be seen on the big screen, and how there are some films that I've avoided seeing because I want to see them on the big screen first, but I've already talked too much. I ought to just let the films stand for themselves.

Here are just some of the films that will be playing at the Film Forum during its UA Celebration:

Raging Bull. Manhattan. Paths of Glory. The Killing. The Thief of Baghdad. Stagecoach. Red River. Annie Hall. The Apartment. Goldfinger. Dr. No. The Great Escape. Midnight Cowboy. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. West Side Story. Night of the Hunter. Some Like It Hot. The General. Sweet Smell of Success. The Thomas Crown Affair (McQueen Edition). A Hard Day's Night. Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Steamboat Bill, Jr. Marty. City Lights. Coming Home. The Magnificent Seven. The Long Goodbye. Kiss Me Deadly. The Mark of Zorro. Last Tango in Paris. The Manchurian Candidate (Sinatra Edition).

As George Clooney would say in the "I will watch it on cable a lot, but not an Oscar picture" movie Michael Clayton, "Got your heart racing, don't I?" Check out Film Forum on the web at www.filmforum.org for more information.

If you love movies, and live in New York, you should not miss this. I know I'll be there for as much of it as I can.
]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/55/Film-Forum039s-Massive-United-Artists-Retrospective.html <![CDATA[The Wire: Grace After Midnight (Snoop's Memoir)]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/30/The-Wire-Grace-After-Midnight-Snoop039s-Memoir.html
"Dear Brendan,

Did you watch Sunday's episode of The Wire? As you know, it's my favorite television show of all time, and I know you have a great affection for it as well. Michelle and I are very busy on the campaign trail, but we made time to watch it. My thoughts: Omar is going to kill everyone, isn't he?

By the way, if I am elected President, I will make sure that David Simon receives a Kennedy Center Honor. Would you consider making a donation?

Best,

Barack Obama"

Anyway, you don't need another schmuck telling you how great The Wire is. Yes, it's probably the greatest show television has ever produced, ever, but hearing hype like that can cloud one's judgment of the thing. You just need to sit down with the first episode of the first season, with "This America, man. Gotta let him play." and go on the journey yourself. It's the only way to really get it, I think.

(Top five Wire episodes, for the record: 1. "Middle Ground," 2. "Final Grades," 3. "Homecoming," 4. "The Hunt," 5. "Dead Soldiers.")

One of the most popular characters on The Wire is Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, the soldier of drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield played by Felicia "Snoop" Pearson. Pearson comes from the same inner-city Baltimore streets as the characters on the show, and is probably the only series regular on a major television show to have done hard time for murder. She also teamed up with celebrity ghostwriter David Ritz to pen the memoir Grace After Midnight.

I picked it up a few weeks back, and it's not very good. Pearson has a unique speaking style that doesn't translate well to the page, and many times during the book, I thought "this would be a lot better if she was telling it to me." I get the feeling that's what Ritz did, set up the tape recorder and let Snoop talk about her journey from a cross-eyed crack baby to a convicted felon to a star of The Wire.

 The book isn't terrible, though, and there are some really worthwhile stories here. (One of my favorites was when 2Pac comes to Snoop's neighborhood.) Pearson, who is openly gay, writes honestly about being gay and black in the inner-city, never once shrinking from who she is. While these sections, like others in Grace After Midnight, seem somewhat glossed over, her description of watching Boys Don't Cry for the first time is one for the ages.

Those looking for behind the scenes tidbits into how The Wire is shot or what McNulty's like in real life won't find them in this book. It's 240 pages long, and Michael K. "Omar" Williams, who discovered Pearson in a club, doesn't show up until page 220. Snoop only discusses one scene from The Wire in detail, the famous "nail gun" scene that opened season four. More emphasis is placed on how the show, and people's response to her role on it, gave her a second chance after prison. According to the book, Snoop continued to deal drugs through the filming of The Wire's fourth season and it was only after the season began to air that the response to her role convinced her it was time to pack up her "shop" for good.

If you're a Wire die-hard, this book is worth your time, but not your money. Get it from the library.

(The Wire's fifth and final season is currently airing Sunday nights at 9 on HBO. Grace After Midnight and the first four seasons are available in stores now. )
]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/30/The-Wire-Grace-After-Midnight-Snoop039s-Memoir.html <![CDATA[Henry VIII Has A Posse (The Tudors, Episodes 1 & 2)]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/27/Henry-VIII-Has-A-Posse-The-Tudors-Episodes-1-amp-2.html
The best teacher I ever had was my high school history teacher, Doc Worthington. Obsession with all things Braveheart aside, Doc taught us that history was not just a series of events, but a succession of people. Real people -- ones with the same wants, desires, and flaws as those of us taking his class. And the events that changed the world didn't, for the large part, start out of some noble ideal, but because the wrong person was slighted.

Or, in the case of Henry VIII, because the King of France kicked his ass in a wrestling match.

The probably-too-cynical for high school theory of Doc Worthington kept pinging in my brain as I watched the first two episodes of The Tudors, Showtime's series about the early reign of King Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Several decades and wives away from the fatty we remember him as, Henry here is an athletic twenty-five year old, but he's no less petty, no less decadent. And while there's that intial disconnect between the corpulent Henry and the tennis-playing, wench-nailing one, the series acknowledges that in its opening credits. (Over paintings of the later Henry VII, Meyers narrates "You think you know a story, but you only know how it ends. To get to the heart of the story, you have to go back to the beginning.")

Even two episodes in, you can see the two main arcs of the series being laid out. The first is Henry's relationship with his most famous wife, Anne Boleyn, played by the "where the hell did she come from?" Natalie Dormer. Boleyn's the daughter of the former English Ambassador to France, who already tried unsuccessfully to pimp out Anne's sister Mary to Henry VIII. (But not before Mary treated the King to one of those "only on cable" sights, a medieval blowjob.) Ambassador Boleyn's motives seem to be related to gaining favor with the king -- i.e., "suction."

The second arc in The Tudors can best be described as "A Man For All Seasons: The Series." Already, the series has devoted considerable time to Henry VIII's relationship with the 500 pound behemoth of humanist philosophy, the Magic Martyr himself, Siiiiiir Thoooooommmaaasss Moooooore! (Like my friend Jenni says, once a Catholic school kid, always a Catholic school kid.) More (played by Jeremy Northam) is Henry's former teacher and represents his better half, pushing Henry to be a just, fair ruler, while Sam Neill plays Cardinal Wollsey, the Palpatine to Northam's Obi-Wan. Wollsey wants power, for himself, for Henry, and for England. And you wonder why that guy never became Pope.

Like Henry tells the audience in the opening narration, we know how both these stories end. The fun of The Tudors is its take on the journey from the bedroom to the executioner's block. (Spoiler!) The Tudors also follows a trend in historical drama, especially on television, which presents all figures and events in the Doc Worthington mode: human, petty, power mad. So yes, Henry breaks the sixteenth century version of the United Nations up because he got pwned in a wrestling match, and the Duke of Buckingham tries to overthrow the king because he caught one of Henry's boys (Henry Cavill, one of the aformentioned posse, along with Dead Like Me's Callum Blue) in flagrante delicato with his daughter. For the record, she looked like she was worth it.

This presentation of historical figures, along with Rome and Deadwood, begs the question "What's the deal with all this revisionism?" If I had to guess, I'd guess it has to do with the pre-eminent issue in the world and America today: Iraq. The motivations behind the war were largely out of the same simple, human motive (revenge, greed), and in order to feel better about our current President, it may help audiences to see other figures in a similar fashion. This theory gets all shot to hell when you consider that The Tudors and Rome are joint British TV productions, but there you go.

This is a cable series, which means that attention must be paid. (If Willy Loman had lived, do you think he'd be a Wire fan?) To recap all the political manuevering and attempted assassinations and treaties made and broken just over the first two episodes would spoil the fun, not to mention take more time than I think you're willing to devote to me telling you about it. It also helps if you have a basic knowledge of the time period so you can catch shout-outs like Martin Luther, but it's not required. But if you're a fan of Deadwood, Rome, or even the labyrinthine plotting of The Sopranos or The Wire, The Tudors (whose second season starts in March) is worth checking out on DVD.

I'll continue to recap the show and offer my thoughts as I progress through this series.


]]> no@spam.com (Brendan M. Leonard) Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/27/Henry-VIII-Has-A-Posse-The-Tudors-Episodes-1-amp-2.html