The Ten Best Films of the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival

by Sam Juliano

For the second year in a row Lucille and I frantically criss crossed Manhattan with the resolve of people really on a mission.  Mind you we received passes for a bunch of specific films for two years prior to 2012, but only with the badges that allow admission to to all screenings, did we embark on a strategy of seeing as many films as possible for the ten day duration of the twelfth annual Tribeca Film Festival.  Most of the films were seen in  the Claridge Chelsea Cinemas on 23rd Street, the location that traditionally stages the majority of the venues, the last day’s award-winning encores, and the one location that is most conveniently located.  Indeed Lucille and I were able to find parking for all our trips in close proximity to the spacious three-floor multiplex, and took advantage of the discount offered at Lucky Burgers, where we consumed more vegeburgers in one week than any time previously.  We averted any screenings at the downtown movie auditorium known as the MBCC Tribeca PAC, located on Chambers Street, as past experiences were maddening in more ways than one.  In addition to the aforementioned Chelsea location, where the films were screened in six theaters, the SVA two auditorium complex was a short block away east on 23rd.  The mega screens of the SVA were utilized to present most of the “spotlight” films in the festival, especially with the impressive seating capacity offered there.  Meanwhile the AMC LOEWS Village 7 on 3rd Avenue and 11 Street was again the site of the second largest number of screenings at the festival in three sizable theaters in the popular east side multiplex, and the final day’s Back By Popular Demand showings.  It’s always a daunting challenge to pen in a film schedule that will work, even with most of the offerings running four times over the ten-day festival.  Even as holders of the permanent ‘A’ badges there were three instances we were shut out of intended screenings for arriving too close to the starting time with the respective theaters filling to capacity.  Still for the vast number of screenings all went quite well, and we had a great if exhausting time at this year’s event.  All told I managed 37 features, while Lucille watched 28 (we did split into two theaters on a few occasions) and young Sammy took in 6.  Broadway Bob viewed 7 films, while Melanie managed 2, but we did need to make some purchases of individual seats to allow for the instances where more than two people attended.  But most of the time it was Lucille and I in marathon mode, and it was an experience we’ll always remember fondly. 

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James Cagney blogathon: Max Reinhardt’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Note: The following review of Max Reinhardt’s 1935 film version of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is part of The Movie Projector’s ‘James Cagney blogothon’ hosted by R.D. Finch.

by Sam Juliano

The advent of the shimmering 1935 Hollywood interpretation of Shakespeare’s ethereal A Midsummer Night’s Dream was appropriately enough the result of public adoration of the stage work that ultimately inspired it.  Back in the days of the pre-code cinema, theater director Max Reinhardt was known for his flamboyant and controversial stage incarnations of the Bard, and his production of Midsummer was a huge hit in Vienna.  Attending one of the stagings, coincidentally enough, was Warner Brothers film mogul Jack Warner, who was executive in charge of overseeing what films the studio would be producing.  While at the time crime dramas and backstage musicals were the rage, Warner wasn’t oblivious to the Oscar bait films that could bring added prestige, what with the slew of successful literary adaptations crafted at M-G-M.  Two such works in fact debuted in the same year as Midsummer, and both ere based on Dickens’ novels: A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield.  While Reinhardt had long scoffed at the possibilities of cinema approaching the “superior” form of live theater, he quickly reversed himself after Warner offered him a sweet deal and the complete access to the studio’s advanced technical capabilities; that for example would enable characters to dissolve into this air.  Sold into expanding the possibilities of the stage Reinhardt drastically reversed himself, stating with unbridled enthusiasm: “The motion picture is the most wonderful medium for the presentation of drama and spectacle the world has ever known.  The screen has leaped further ahead in the last few years than the stage has evolved in centuries.”

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Desert Island Series One: Choose Your 25 British Favorites

by Sam Juliano

Unless we count some relinquished worldwide possessions, it would be difficult to find a proper British desert island for the hermetic movie fan to indulge in the most cherished of all moving pictures made within the shores of the “other Eden.”  Indeed the closest in temperament if not geographical kinship would be the British Crown Territory known as the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina, inhabited by a scant 3,100 or so kelpers, who recently voted overwhelmingly to maintain Queen Elizabeth as their monarch of choice.  The mountainous archipelago includes two larger islands, West Falkland and East Falkland, with the latter the home of the capital, Stanley.  British movie fans will be  boated in from Stanley to one of the smallest islands in the chain, Sea Lion Island, which measures 5 by 1.5 miles, and is presently home to only seven residents all year round.  The relatively harsh Winter runs from late April to early October, and it is during this time that sequestered British movie fans will be staying in separate screening rooms at the Sea Lion Lodge for an entire Winter, watching the same twenty-five films repeatedly, with sharing expressly forbidden.  Before flying in to Stanley from the USA, UK and a few other countries fans must submit their choices of the twenty-five films that they will be watching over and over during the time they will be spending at the lodge, exclusive of some outdoor breathers and the time needed for dining and rest.  Indeed, it will also be the responsibility of the traveler movie buff to bring DVD or blu-ray copies of the films he or she has chose.  Rules are simple enough: any film made in the U.K exclusively or in co-production is eligible to be chosen.  The question that needed to be correctly answered in settling on a choice is simple if it is a personal favorite  not necessarily a film that would be identified as what is generally regarded as great.  A good part of the time a favorite is also ‘great’ and vice-versa, but the final criteria to come to a fair compromise within own’s own tastes and perceptions is to ask oneself: is this the kind of film I can honestly watch repeatedly.  Usually the answer will come down to what dozen British films are that viewer’s personal favorites.

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Confessions of a Les Miz Junkie

by Sam Juliano

One of the running jokes the last few weeks is how many times I have watched Les Miserables on the big screen.  I have kept this big secret from circulating, as I would surely be seen as someone with more than a few screws loose if I divulged the truth.  I have always regarded a musical film as more imminently condusive to re-viewings if for no other reason than to revel in the songs in much the same way someone would listen to a CD album at home.  The theatre’s booming speakers and the big screen visualization of course make it much too tempting if the theatre is just minutes from your home.  Alas, in the spirit of full divulgence I hereby provide the evidence for the loss of my sanity, if indeed I ever had any when it comes to movies on the outside.

After what seemed like an eternity for the Christmas Day opening, I escorted my family to attend a sneak preview on Christmas Eve at 10:00 P.M. a day ahead of the planned viewing.  The problem with this strategy is that we uniformly refused to forfeit our original itinerary, and went ahead with the holiday viewing, seeing Les Miz a second time, albeit two hours earlier at 8.  What does one do after watching the same film on two successive days, much less days few would ever venture out to a multiplex?  The answer is bonafide lunacy.  See it again on the day after Christmas, and then a fourth time the following night after that.  So there you have it.  Four nights consecutively.  The first two were with the full family contingent, the third with my wife and two daughters, and the fourth with two cousins.  After that four-peat I stayed clear of screens showing the cinematic transcription of one of the most successful musical theater phenomenons in history, content to that point to listen to the CD score in my computer room.

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The Ten Best Films of 2012

by Sam Juliano

2012 may have been a year to forget, because of the horrific tragedies that underlined life as we know it, and for that reason we leave it with no misgivings, hoping that somehow there will be some light at the end of the tunnel.  As far as the world of film goes, the year edges out 2011 in my view, though I anticipate a few will take me to task on that conviction.  The year opened strongly with a brace of carry-over foreign-language films that were technically 2010 releases, but well within the parameters of the guidelines that have been followed by USA critics for decades, for the purpose of uniformly evaluating each and every year’s cinematic achievements.  It then ended with two months of cinematic bliss, where a number ‘prestige’ domestic releases hit the mark.  In between as always were some dire months, where multiplex actioners and sequels poluted out screens, and sent many of us scurrying to revival houses to take in some glorious retrospectives.  To that end, I was fortunate enough to watch nearly every feature offered in the Film Forum’s unique Spaghetti Western Festival, the William Wellman Retrospective, the ‘French Old Wave’ Festival  and Universal’s 100th Anniversary Festival, as well as screenings in one-week runs of a number of restored classic, most at the Film Forum, and some at the IFC.  I managed to take in about 154 new releases and approximately 120 revivals, for a grand total of 274 films seen in theatres.  My beloved soul mate Lucille was with me for most of these, and several of my kids, especially young Sammy, were on board for this unique learning experience.  In addition I attended 4 operas at the MET, 21 concerts at the Avery Fisher Hall and 14 Broadway and off-Broadway stage plays, bringing my outdoor venue total to nearly 300.    In any case, 2012 will mark the final year where I watch anything and everything with wreckless abandon, as it is time now to focus on my important domestic matters, like college for the kids, home repairs, and at least one tentatively planned overseas vacation.  Yes the site will continue to operate, and yes I will continue to watch films, but at a scaled down pace.  I must embrace some moderation at this time for a bevy of reasons.  I don’t need to see every last release, and trips to NYC with the outrageous toll hikes must obviously be lessened at any rate.

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Bold gambits pay off in rapturous “Les Miserables”

by Sam Juliano

                             ‘Those who do not weep do not see’      -Victor Hugo

Art is manipulative.  Whether its creator’s intent is to spur humor or consternation, or move the work’s viewers to the depth of their being, there is always a conscious and overriding intent to embolden and exhilarate through a direct appeal to the emotions.  Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Mozart, Beethoven, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Dickens and Dante succeeded as well as any others in the pantheon of Western culture.  Then there’s Victor Hugo, whose 1862 novel Les Miserables, written on wide canvas of suffering, injustice and loss, asserted that love and compassion are the most important gifts one can forward another in this life.  Hugo takes his case even further when he proposes that “To die for lack of love is terrible, the asphyxia of the soul” and “To love or have loved, that is enough.  There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”  Hugo’s sprawling novel, with it’s emotional epiphanies and character-driven melodramatic narrative was meant to be a transformative work, one aimed to spur government reforms, especially within the justice system and the unjust class structure in nineteenth-century France, one that turns good people into beggars and criminals.   With it’s larger than life characters and lofty philosophical themes, Hugo’s novel was a perfect subject for the cinema, and tailor-made for some kind of operatic transcription.  To be sure there have been dozens of film adaptations of the epic work dating back to the silent era all the way up to a 1998 adaptation by Bille August with Liam Neeson and Geoffrey playing Valjan and Javert.  The number of times filmmakers worldwide have turned to Hugo’s novel may well in fact be within hailing distance of Stoker’s Dracula and Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.  The best of these versions was  Raymond Bernard’s four-hour plus epic of 1934, which is the most faithful to the source, and a 1935 Hollywood treatment with Fredric March and Charles Laughton in the leads that is well acted and mounted but substantially truncated.

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5. The Gold Rush

by Sam Juliano

The following is the transcript of classroom introduction, and post-film discussion in an undergraduate cinema studies class held in the Margaret Crowden Auditorium at Jersey City State College on the morning of Friday, September 10, 1972.

Professor Harold Keaton:  Hello ladies and gentleman.  My name is Professor Harold Keaton and I would like to welcome you all to ‘Introduction to Cinema Studies till 1941′ Please check your schedule and make sure you are presently in the right class.  This is the Margaret Crowden Auditorium.  The class will convene every Friday morning from 8:30 till 11:40 A.M.  Depending on the running time of some of the features you can generally figure on a 15 minute break, at which time you are welcome to indulge in a snack that either was brought in or obtained at the student union building directly across from the entrance to this building.  I do not permit smoking in my class, so for those who indulge, you can avail youself of the break time outdoors.  The current fall semester, as many of you are already aware will run for fourteen weeks until the first week of December, when final exams will be administered.  The grade you earn in this class will be based on three components.  The first will be the cumulative average of two term papers that will deal with assigned topics that tie in with the weekly screenings.  The topics will be given out on the third week of class, and will be accepted voluntarily.  The best strategy is to complete the first before the halfway point, so that the final seven weeks can be utilized to negotiate the second one.  The second component is the final exam, which will be given during the second week in December.  The exam will take into account the films that are screened and the lectures and discussion that preceed and follow the viewings.  The last requirement to figure into your final grade will be active participation in class discussion and analysis.  I will closely monitor the contributions of each and every one of you, and can only advise you to be as animated as possible in your invlovement in class discussion.  I’d go as far as to say that this component may well be the weightiest of all three.  If there are any people who define themselves as shy, I’m sorry to say that this is not the class for you.  The first three weeks will cover silent comedy, with today’s sceening of The Gold Rush set to launch during today’s session.  Has anyone in this class ever seen the film, or have heard of the director and lead actor, Charles Chaplin?  Please state your name at all times before responding.

James Woods: I have seen a few shorts by Chaplin, that were once shown on Ch. 13, but I haven’t seen The Gold Rush.

Brian Leary: (coughing) I saw it once, but I can’t remember too much about it.  My father took me to some theatre across the river in Manhattan when I was about 11.  I remember my father laughing himself silly, and a few times I joined him.

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29. Being There

by Sam Juliano

“It’s for sure a white man’s world in America. Look here: I raised that boy since he was the size of a piss-aint. And I’ll say right now, he never learned to read and write. No sir. Had no brains at all. Was stuffed with rice pudding between th’ ears. Shortchanged by the Lord, and dumb as a jackass. Look at him now! Yes sir, all you’ve gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want.”

It’s a one-joke movie sustained by a vulnerable premise. Yet Hal Ashby’s Being There against all odds employs amazing restraint and subtlety to pull off what could have been a tiresome exercise in satirical overkill. Aided by acting icon Peter Sellers playing against type as a mentally retarded gardener who is forced to leave the protection of a Washington town house, where he was employed by a wealthy patriarch referred to by the maid as “the old man,” Being There is pretty much unlike any film released before or since.  Scripted by Jerzy Kosinski, the scathing satire takes aims at media obsession, how television shapes the public mind, and how frankness and the desire to please can lead to misrepresentation of staggering proportions. Sheltered since childhood, and exposed to endless hours of vapid staring at the boob tube, “Chance”, who speaks with a deadpan delivery is seen as a profound sage and philosopher by a media crazed society who read his simpleton pontifications with metaphorical glee. Kosinski continues to up the ante throughout the picture to the point where the final revelation, though utterly preposterous, shows the depth of the conceit in a world short-sighted by mechanized reactions that never leave the box of acceptability.

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36. The Circus (1928)

by Sam Juliano

Swing Little Girl, Swing high to the sky,

And don’t ever look at the ground,

If you’re looking at rainbows, look up to the sky,

You’ll never find rainbows, if you’re looking down, 

Life may be dreary, but never the same,

Some days it’s sunshine, some days it’s rain.

Swing little girl, Swing high to the sky,

And don’t ever look to the ground,

If you’re looking at rainbows, look up to the sky,

But never, no never, look down.

-Charles Chaplin, 1969

When the immortality of Charles Chaplin is broached, one will readily identify the uproarious ingenuity of the conveyor belt and winding gear sequences in Modern Times, the eating of the shoe and the dinner roll dance in The Gold Rush, or the continuing drunk vs. sober saga of the millionaire played by Harry Myers in City Lights.  Likewise, cineastes will no doubt recollect Monsieur Verdoux’s continued failed attempts at murdering Arabella, the hysterical vocals inflections in The Great Dictator or the spirited slapstick in Shoulder Arms when the doughboy goes undercover dressed as a tree.  All of these films have multiple moments of comic inspiration, and still others like One A.M., A Dog’s Life and The Kid would serve as springboard for further discussion.  Since it first appeared in 1928 The Circus has steadfastly held down the dubious position as Chaplin’s most underrated film, and the one that has received short shrift in both summary assessment and in the unavoidable rankings of the master’s canon.  Yet The Circus has been favorably re-evaluated in recent years, and is now being seen by many as one of the silent clown’s supreme masterpieces, a film that boasts the strongest first reel of any of his films, and one that includes some of the best set pieces.

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55. Female Trouble

by Sam Juliano

Present-day John Waters fans who are only familiar with his vomit-inducing Pink Flamingos may be unaware that his best work followed that landmark of sleaze with Female Trouble (1974) and Desparate Living (1977). Of these two, the former rates a slight edge, as it gave bad taste an entirely new level of meaning. Yet, it’s outrageous characters, vile mise en scène and trashy decor was what Waters was all about in those years, and as he was in his writing “prime” it brought out his most inspired talents for satire and self-parody, no matter whose expense it was at. You know you’re in for a most “special” experience after the opening scene, when rotund Baltimore high-schooler Dawn Davenport (played by the king of sleaze himself, Divine) takes major issue with a Christmas present she received from her parents; she discovers a shoe box under the Christmas tree that does not contain the cha cha heels she asked for:

Dawn Davenport:  What are these?

Mrs. Davenport:  Those are your new shoes, Dawn!

Dawn Davenport:  Those aren’t the right kind, I told you cha cha heels, black ones!

Mr. Davenport:  Nice girls don’t wear cha cha heels!

Dawn Davenport:  Gimmie those presents, I’ll never wear those ugly shoes! I told you the kind I wanted! You ruined my Christmas!

[stomps the Christmas presents]

Mrs. Davenport:  Please Dawn! Not on Christmas!

Dawn Davenport:  Get off me you ugly witch!  [pushes mother into Christmas tree]

Mr. Davenport:  Dawn Davenport are you crazy? Look at your mother!

Dawn Davenport: Get off me……Lay off me! I hate you; fuck you! Fuck you both, you awful people! You’re not my parents! I hate you, I hate this house, and I hate Christmas!

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