Pulp Fiction (no 26)

(USA 1994 153m) DVD1/2

Ezekiel 25:17

p  Lawrence Bender  d  Quentin Tarantino  w  Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary  ph  Andrzej Sekula  ed  Sally Menke  m  various  art  David Wasco 

John Travolta (Vincent Vega), Samuel L.Jackson (Jules Winnfield), Uma Thurman (Mia Wallace), Bruce Willis (Butch Coolidge), Maria de Madeiros (‘Lemon-Pie’), Harvey Keitel (Winston ‘The Wolf’), Quentin Tarantino (Jimmy), Tim Roth (‘Pumpkin’), Amanda Plummer (‘Honeybunny’), Ving Rhames (Marsellus Wallace), Peter Greene (Zed), Eric Stoltz (Lance), Rosanna Arquette (Jody), Christopher Walken (Captain Koons), Steve Buscemi (Buddy Holly waiter), Frank Whaley, Bronagh Gallacher,

Though Pulp Fiction was received to virtually universal acclaim following its Cannes festival success and instantly hailed as a masterpiece by all and sundry, some critics dared to call it shallow, pretentious and junky.  They’re right in many ways, but they are missing the point?  The title of the film is, after all, Pulp Fiction and what we have here is a cinematic version of a cheap piece of pulp throwaway literature.  Just as such stories are meant to be expendable and forgettable, Tarantino uses this as a way to make even characters disposable and dialogue deliberately ‘normal’.  This may be the same world of Reservoir Dogs, personified by Travolta playing a relative to Michael Madsen’s character in Dogs, but this is, to quote Jackson’s Jules, “not the same ballpark, not even the same sport.”  It’s a cinematic adrenaline rush (excuse the pun) of unbridled virtuosity and energy.

            The story intertwines four plot lines; two hitmen killing some small time crooks and the ensuing accidental murder of a hostage; one of them taking out his boss’ wife for dinner and a funny but potentially fatal chain of events; a boxer being paid to throw a fight, then not doing and going on the run; and two worthless robbers deciding that robbing a diner is an easy target without reckoning for two of the diner’s customers. 

Monday Morning Diary (November 9)

 

 

 

       

Actor Hal Holbrook with Lucille at Cinema 1 on Friday night after screening of 'That Evening Sun'

Building line for Sunday afternoon showing of superlative Frederick Wiseman documentary 'La Danse' at Film Forum

 

by Sam Juliano

     Congratulations to the New York Yankees for winning their 27th World Championship, and to clutch DH Hideki Matsui for being named MVP.  Condolences to David Schleicher and the Phillies fans, but you can be sure they will be in the think of it next year again, as they are a great team, and had an outstanding playoff and World Series run.  Kudos to Dave Hicks and his Cincinnati Bengals, who are now 6-2 in NFL play, and to Joel Bocko, whose New England Pats are also 6-2.  The Giants are now 5-4, after starting the season at 5-0.

     In New Jersey, we elected a new Governor, Republican Chris Christie.  As a liberal Democrat I backed Jon Corzine, but let’s see if the new resident of the state house can do something for the dire economy and taxes here in the Garden State.

    I am deeply saddened at the announcement by Jon Lanthier that The Powerstrip may be no more, but let’s see where he surfaces next.  He’s much too good to go anywhere.  Jon is one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet anywhere.

 

     I managed to channel some deep emotional (and physical scars) into some torrid movie going, which began on the evening of Election Day – Tuesday – with a screening of the new Peter Greenaway documentary at the Film Forum.  I went into high gear over the weekend.

 

     Here is what I saw in theatres this past week:

 

     Rembrandt’s J’Accuse  **** 1/2  (Tuesday night; Film Forum)

     That Evening Sun  ****       (Friday night; Cinema 1)

     A Christmas Carol  ***         (Friday afternoon; Paramus multiplex)

     The Men Who Stare at Goats  *    (Friday afternoon; Paramus multiplex)

     The Fourth Kind  *             (Saturday morning; Edgewater multiplex)

     Precious   *** 1/2             (Saturday night; Union Square Cinemas)

     La Danse  **** 1/2           (Sunday afternoon; Film Forum)

 

     Metropolitan Opera HD simulcast of ‘Turandot’   (Saturday afternoon, Edgewater multiplex)

 

     The year’s two best documentaries (by luminaries Peter Greenaway and Frederick Wiseman) played in the same week at the Film Forum, and I was thrilled to immerse myself in the artsitic sensibilities of art history and dance on the highest level of sophistication and appreciation.  Greenaway’s film calls for an open investigation of Rembrandt’s famed cryptic painting (the fourth most famous of all-time, as he says at the outset, behind Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and The Sistine Chapel.  The film will appeal to far more than art lovers, as hopefully will Mr. Wiseman’s stunning look behind the scenes at the Paris Opera Ballet, and some of the most sublime moments the form can ever yield.  Wiseman, perhaps the country’s greatest documentarian has crafted one of his greatest works here.

      A Sordid study of a grossly obese Harlem teenager, who is sexually and physically abused, and bears two children by her father (one with down syndrome) Precious is often a harrowing film, even if it rather overplays its cards at times.  As the girl’s mother, the actress Monique is extraordinary.  The film really impressed Lucille and Broadway Bob, but my reaction, while favorable, is a bit more measured.

      Lucille and I hit the jackpot on Friday night when we got to chat with actor Hal Holbrook after the screening of That Evening Sun, in which Holbrook gave a superlative performance as an uncompromising old man who refuses to give up his property and his past in a rural setting.  I took a picture of Lucille with Holbrook. The film is often beautiful to look at, but the burst of compassion at the end rings false, and some of his psychological insights are rather predictable.  Still a reasonably affecting independent film, which received a fantastic review weeks back from Jenny Bee Boulten.

      Jim Carrey, fine CGI effects and better-than-average 3 D digital work elevate A Christmas Carol to passable status, but I don’t think I’ll need to see it a second time.  The kids seemed to like it well enough.

      Both The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Fourth Kind were a waste of time and rank among the worst films of the year, easily.  The Clooney film was largely imbecillic, a poorly-written and conceived intended farce which is set (in large measure) in Iraq, while The Fourth Kind, which attempts to cash in on the success of Paranormal Activity is amateurish, preposterous and most unconvincing.  My son Danny thought it was pretty good though!  Ha!

      The HD broadcast of Puccini’s Turandot was riddled with serious pixel and audio problems throughout, yet this final opera from the most popular of all opera composers is always for so many reasons an electrifying experience.  I plan to have a review up this week.

Around the blogosphere some excellent work is on display.  Here’s some of it:

 

European traveller and good guy extraordinaire Troy Olson has a full report up on his trip to Italy at his site “The Life and Times of Troy.”  Please enage him as this was the trip of a lifetime.  He has several links up to the cities he visited.  Here’s the first one on Florence, but the others can be easily acessed:

http://olsonfamilymatters.blogspot.com/2009/11/italy-trip-report-day-1-florence.html

 

Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition (no 27)

(USA 1991/2001 95m) DVD1/2

Tale as old as time

p  Don Hahn  d  Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise  w  Linda Woolverton  story  Mme.le Prince de Beaumont  ed  John Carnochan  m/ly  Alan Menken, Howard Ashman  art  Brian McEntee

VOICES BY:- Paige O’Hara (Belle), Robby Benson (Beast), Jerry Orbach (Lumière), Angela Lansbury (Mrs Potts), Richard White (Gaston), David Ogden Stiers (Cogsworth/ Narrator), Jesse Corti (Lefou), Rex Everhart (Maurice), Bradley Michael Pierce (Chip), Jo Anne Worley (wardrobe),

When conducting the heroine round a tour of the enchanted castle, pompous clock Cogsworth attempts to make a little joke with his immortal line “if it’s not baroque, don’t fix it.”  The very line could read as a diagnosis of the problems Disney’s animation output at the time Beauty and the Beast was green-lighted.  Long gone the halcyon days of Snow White through Bambi, though Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp and One Hundred and One Dalmations were good, they were far from great.  Yet they were masterworks compared to the drivel of the seventies and eighties, where they plumbed truly new depths.  By the late eighties, computer animation was coming into vogue – one recalls a magnificent shot of a chandelier and ornate staircase in Oliver and Company that was a sign of things to come – and in 1989 The Little Mermaid was released to rapturous audience and some critical acclaim.  It was the first in a new line of Disney animations, equal parts cartoon and musical.  Yet it was two years later when that combination hit the jackpot with this third classic adaptation of Mme.le Prince de Beaumont’s ‘tale as old as time.’

Unforgiven (no 28)

(USA 1992 131m) DVD1/2

They had it coming

p/d  Clint Eastwood  w  David Webb Peoples  ph  Jack N.Green  ed  Joel Cox  m  Lennie Niehaus  art  Henry Bumstead

Clint Eastwood (William Munny), Gene Hackman (Sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett), Morgan Freeman (Ned Logan), Richard Harris (English Bob), Saul Rubinek (W.W.Beauchamp), Jaimz Woolvett (The Schofield Kid), Frances Fisher (Strawberry Alice), Anna Thomson (Delilah Fitzgerald), David Mucci (Quick Mike),

So the jailhouse chorus sang in Chicago, but the title is even more apt for Eastwood’s stunning revenge western.  Not only does it reinvent the genre in much the same manner as Leone and Peckinpah before him, it reinvents the mythology of the west.  Unforgiven has no decent men, only real men, men aware of their capacity for both good and evil while longing for the simple pleasures retirement can afford. 

            In the Wyoming town of Big Whiskey in around 1880, two cow hands, drunk on whisky, facially disfigure a prostitute and are only fined for the crime.  Hurt by the injustice, the other ladies of the institution band together to offer a reward of $1,000 for anyone who kills the attackers.  Hearing of it, a young gunslinger tries to encourage a retired outlaw to take on the job, and the latter agrees but only if his old partner in crime – also now retired – can come with him.

City of Hope (no 29)

(USA 1991 130m) not on DVD

If you can’t get respect you settle for fear

p  Sarah Green, Maggie Renzi  d/w  John Sayles  ph  Robert Richardson  ed  John Sayles  m  Mason Daring  art  Dan Bishop, Dianna Freas  cos  John Dunn

Vincent Spano (Nick Rinaldi), Joe Morton (Wynn), Tony lo Bianco (Joe Rinaldi), Barbara Williams, Stephen Mendillo (Yoyo), Angela Bassett (Reesha), Charlie Yanko (Stavros), Chris Cooper (Riggs), Jace Alexander (Bobby), Todd Graff (Zip), Scott Tiler (Vinnie), Frankie Faison (Levonne), John Sayles (Carl), Lawrence Tierney (Kerrigan), Jaime Tirelli (Fuentes), Gloria Foster (Jeanette), Tom Wright (Malik), David Strathairn (Asteroid), Anthony John Denison (Rizzo), Josh Mostel (Mad Anthony), Kevin Tighe (O’Brien), Gina Gershon (Laura Rinaldi), Bill Raymond (Les), Joe Grifasi (Pauly),

Still there’s no DVD release for City of Hope, something to be shouted about from the rooftops much like the cries for help issued by one of its characters in the closing scene.  The title itself is a cynical one, for there’s little hope on display here.  All there is are characters taking one step forward and two steps back as they fight to make life better for themselves. 

Wonders in the Dark…To Give Away Two Autograph Copies of Author Eric Beetner’s and J.B. Kohl’s Book “One Too Many Blows To The Head.”

Hi! Sam Juliano, Allan, and Wonders in the Dark readers…
WitD readers, I’ am so happy that Sam Juliano, so graciously, let me use his blog Wonders in the Dark as a platform to announce the give away of two autograph copies of authors Eric Beetner’s and J.B.Kohl’s just released mystery novel…“One Too Many Blows To The Head.”

I hope to return to Wonders in the Dark and post information about the contest shortly, but in the meantime, I was very fortunate to discuss with author Eric Beetner, which boxing films are his favorite(s) and which ones were most forgettable.

Therefore, Wonders in the Dark readers, as you wait for details about the contest…Please let author Eric Beetner, author J.B. Kohl, Sam Juliano, and Allan Fish know which boxing films are your favorites and which ones were forgettable.

Our Mutual Friend (no 30)

 

by Allan Fish

(UK 1998 350m) DVD1/2

It just keeps rolling along

p  Catherine Wearing  d  Julian Faring  w  Sandy Welch  novel  Charles Dickens  ph  David Odd  ed  Frances Parker  m  Adrian Johnston  art  Malcolm Thornton  cos  Mike O’Neill

Steven Mackintosh (John Rokesmith), Anna Friel (Bella Wilfer), Keeley Hawes (Lizzie Hexam), Paul McGann (Eugene Wrayburn), David Morrissey (Bradley Headstone), Peter Vaughan (Mr Boffin), Pam Ferris (Mrs Boffin), Timothy Spall (Mr Venus), Kenneth Cranham (Silas Wegg), Katy Murphy (Jenny Wren), Dominic Mafham (Mortimer Lightwood), David Schofield (Gaffer Hexam), David Bradley (Rogue Riderhood), Edna Dore (Betty Higden), Margaret Tyzack (Lady Tippins), Robert Lang (Mr Tremlow), Paul Bailey (Charlie Hexam), Anthony Calf (Alfred Lammle), Peter Wight (Mr Wilfer), Catrina Yuill (Lavinia Wilfer), Michael Culkin (Mr Veneering), Martin Hancock (Sloppy), Linda Bassett (Abby Paterson), Rachel Power (Pleasant Riderhood), Willie Ross (Mr Dolls),

Admittedly the allusion to a great Broadway musical may not at first seem appropriate when discussing a classic nineteenth century novel, until you remember that the song in question alludes to the mystique of the Mississippi.  And for the Mississippi read the Thames, for that is, to all intents and purposes, what Dickens’ masterpiece is about.  Indeed, it’s fair enough to say that, though cinematically speaking David Lean stands tall to cineastes, this may well be the greatest adaptation of Dickens, strictly as an adaptation, ever seen.  It even does Edzard’s Little Dorrit one better.

Dame Emma Kirkby and Jakob Lindberg Perform Dowland and Purcell at “Orpheus in England” Venue at Madison Ave. Presbyterian Church

by Sam Juliano

      Few classical or opera afficionados have even heard of British ”Queen of Early Music” Emma Kirkby, much less have been aware that she is considered one of the ten greatest sopranos of all-time according to BBC Music magazine.  A former classics student at Oxford and English teacher, Kirkby made her mark as a soloist with little-known renaissance and baroque repetory, and in 2007 was appointed “Dame Commander” of the British Empire in the Queen’s birthday honor’s list.

     Declaring the lute as the biggest inspiration of her career, she has in recent years collaborated in concert with renowned lutist Jakob Lindberg, with whom she appeared on Sunday, Nov. 1 at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in an afternoon “Orpheus in England” venue that featured music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the latter’s death.  The soothing timbre and controlled vibrato of Kirkby’s expressive voice was magnificently complemented by the seductive tone of the lute, which Lindberg strummed with his fingertips on an instrument several hundred years old.  Between Kirkby’s solos, which he underscored with his gentle accompaniment known in the baroque period as basso continuo, Lindberg offered some exquisite solo work of his own, including Dowland’s “Prelude and Fantasia” by a sixteenth-century composer known for his own glorious lute playing.  Unquestionably the most sublimely beautiful moment in this nearly two-hour concert occured right before the intermission when Kirby sent shivers down the spine of those in attendance with a faultlessly modulated, piercing delivery of Dowland’s electrifying In Darkness let me dwell, where the singer lingered over the predominantly one-syllable phrases that comprised one of Western music’s most shattering compositions:

“The ground shall sorrow be; The roof despair, to bar/All cheerful light from me.  The walls of marble black That moistened still shall weep; My music hellish jarring sounds To banish friendly sleep.  Thus wedded to my woes And bedded to my tomb, O, let me living die, till Death do come.  In darkness. (Anon.)  The lyrical beauty and dexterity of the passage is conveyed powerfully by the melancholy progression, especially the unresolved harmony that ends the song, which sounded all the more trenchant as it echoed through the church.

Rosetta (no 31)

(Belgium/France 1999 94m) DVD2

Why me?

p  Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne  d/w  Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne  ph  Alain Marcoen  ed  Marie-Hélène Dozo  m  Jean-Pierre Coco  art  Igor Gabriel

Émilie Dequenne (Rosetta), Fabrizio Rongione (Riquet), Anne Yernaux (Mother), Olivier Gourmet (Boss), Bernard Marbaix (camp manager), Frédéric Bodson (head of personnel), Florian Delain, Christiane Dorval,

The cry of desperation from our eponymous heroine comes in the opening scene, an extended sequence where we see her march along the various corridors and warehouses of a factory where she has just been told she has been let go.  She cannot understand why they are letting her go, she’s a good worker.  The thing is, it’s the end of her trial, and she just cannot accept that she is returning to the ranks of the unemployed.  Finally, manhandled off site by security, we next see her by the roadside eating, wearing the same jacket and unflattering stockings that we will see her in for the rest of the film.  Welcome to the grim world of the Dardenne brothers.

            Rosetta is a teenager who lives in a caravan site with her alcoholic mother, and her only concerns are trying to keep her mother away from the booze and her slime-ball boyfriend, while trying to get herself a job that lasts and get a bit of security.  At every turn, it seems, her aspirations seem to fall flat, and her anger and frustration intensifies.

Spike Jonze’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ is Nice to Look At But Not to Listen To

by Sam Juliano

     While I have never warmed to the cinema of Spike Jonze, whose mind puzzles have developed more than a cult following over the years, I must say this latest failure was somewhat of a surprise, since the source material here is perhaps the most beloved Caldecott Medal winner in history.  Maurice Sendak’s expressionistic story centering around the fantasies of an eight-year-old boy named Max, who has a disinterested sister, an occupied mother, and an often-MIA father.  The book is comprised of 37 pages and nine sentences, and would immediately provide a huge challenge for any filmmaker hoping to go further than the cinematic ‘tone poem’ that this film at least in some measure tries to achieve.

     Sendak’s story, which spurs the dark recesses of the imagination like few picture books have makes equally creative use of the English language and alliteration.  Max’s anger in fact makes him believe he is all-powerful and can rule the world, until reality sets in and he realizes he’s in a faraway place, where he can never earn th etrue love he left behind.  Dressed up in a ubiquitous wolf-suit, Max chases the dog with a fork and growls at his Mom, who irate herself calls him a “Wild Thing” to which Max shouts back “I’ll eat you up!” a statement that wins him supperless banishment to his room.  There Max fantasizes that his bedroom turns into a magical setting with a wild forest and a little boat in the ocean.