"Into The Woods" (2014)

directed by Rob Marshall
starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Anna Kendrick, Christine Baranski, and Johnny Depp

After growing up on the romantic expositionism of Rodgers & Hammerstein, I've found that Stephen Sondheim has taken some getting used to. I guess my first exposure was to his oeuvre was hearing the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, a project I happen to love -- but which makes many Puerto Ricans grit their teeth over the film's main Puerto Rican characters being played by a Russian-American (Natalie Wood as Maria) and a Greek-American (George Chakiris as her brother Bernardo). But straight Sondheim has been more difficult for me to swallow; A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum is more memorable to me for its insane story line than its songs (quick, sing me any other song besides "Comedy Tonight"). Only recently did I fall in love with a revival of 1970's Company, thanks to a recent staging featuring Neil Patrick Harris, a meditation on marriage; and Sweeney Todd, which is his most operatic work, has become one of my favorites due to the impassioned performances the work demands.

I had never experienced Sondheim's James Lapine collaboration Into The Woods in any form -- had not seen the show nor even heard any more of the score than the repeated phrasing of its title song. But the idea of fractured fairy tales has always intrigued me because so much of my sense of story and storytelling is centered on those childhood tropes penned centuries ago by the likes of Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen -- formalized European folk stories that, when you get down to it, are actually horrifying and grim morality lessons. Into The Woods the musical looks with a wink at the perennial presence of "the woods" in so many of these tales, a mysterious place of retrospection, danger, trial, and magic that transforms those who enter there. The more dominant theme of Into The Woods -- which begins with many characters singing "I wish" -- is "Be careful what you wish for." Because what happens after you get your wish? What are the ramifications for your life and the lives of others around you? What must you give up to attain your wish? What and who have you sacrificed and was it worth it? By also touching upon the ever-changing nature of what it is to be human, the story examines what happens beyond the "happily ever after" of most fairy tales and the results aren't so pretty.

Into The Woods the movie is an attempt to take the stage action of this alternately charming and preachy little piece and put it into a semi-realistic setting. As such, I don't think it works as well as it probably did on the stage. But it's not for lack of trying.

This Into The Woods stars some extremely capable personalities: Meryl Streep (a veritable and literal blue streak of impressive acting, as always), Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Anna Kendrick, Christine Baranski, and a sly cameo from Johnny Depp, all under the direction of James Marshall, who did stellar work with Chicago (but also confounded us with the opulent but less cohesive 9, let's be frank). And it starts with promise.

A witch (Streep) reveals to the childless Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Blunt) that because of an ages old dispute with the baker's father, she has cursed his descendants with barrenness. To reverse the curse, the witch tasks the couple with bringing her four items known from fairy tales. In the pursuit of these items the couple heads to the woods and crosses paths with an obnoxious, overeating red-caped girl headed to her grandmother's place; a dunderheaded kid who will trade a beloved cow for a pile of seemingly worthless beans; a conflicted, golden-gowned cinders hauler (Kendrick) weighing life amid familiar surroundings with a mean stepmother and stepsisters, or a restricted life of privilege as the bride of Prince Charming (Pine); and the witch's stolen and adopted daughter whose abundance of hair is the only entry to the doorless tower where she lives. Because we know the stories of Red Riding Hood, Jack & the Beanstalk, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, it's fun to see them given life in the first half of the film -- even when the story veers into the "I wish I hadn't just seen that," as in Little Red's confrontation with The Wolf (nice to see you, Johnny Depp, but did we really need you for those four minutes?).

After the momentum of its first half, the film's second half sags considerably. Though the audience already knows the fairy tales by heart, the author and director of Into The Woods count on this and choose not to show on screen the climactic moments of two of those tales. We do not get to see Jack face the giant and steal the goose that laid the golden eggs, nor do we get to see much of Cinderella's preparation for or interaction at the "festival" (OK, I tipped ou to the ladies', so correct me if I'm wrong) -- Cindy is whisked into a new dress by the spirit of her dead mother and sent on her way, pumpkin coach be damned, and escapes not because of the threat of being revealed in rags at midnight, but because of her own apprehension over being Prince Charming's choice.

Weighted down by issues of marital infidelity, fear of abandonment, class conflict, cowardice, disappointment, despair, disfigurement, and the ultimate downer -- death -- Into The Woods staggers like its unwieldy, half-seen, final act Giantess to an unsatisfying conclusion.

Into The Woods is a must-see if you have a real fondness for musicals and a musical Meryl. I think I'll have to see this one again at some point to get a deeper read on it. But if fantasy paired with passable music isn't your cup of RedBull, I'd say steer clear.

Belle (2013)

directed by Amma Asante
Starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton,Tom Reid


I don't always get to see the movies I want to see the moment they come out. While my schedule and my pocketbook play a part, it's mostly because not being in LA or NY means that the smaller movies pass me by.

One of the movies I got to see at last, thanks to RedBox, was Belle, the story of a mixed-race noblewoman living in England during the 1700s. Played by Gugu Mbatha Raw, whose career seems to be on an upward trajectory at the moment (see Beyond The Lights), Dido Elizabeth Belle was fathered by a titled Englishman who served as a naval officer in the West Indies. When her enslaved mother dies, Dido is scooped up from the islands and whisked to the seat of his family's vast holdings in central England.

While Dido's father makes very clear that he loves her and plans to provide for her, he cannot stay to raise her as his naval career is still in full swing. He instructs his elders to care for the girl. Dido's presence puts a serious crease in the alabaster foreheads of her grandparents, Lord and Lady Mansfield, and her maiden aunt, Lady Murray. After some initial "but she's black!" hemming and hawing, they cannot deny that the girl is heir to her father's fortune, and so must cope as best they can with creating rules for how this titled free person of color will live out her days in a society that hasn't yet learned how to deal with this sort of thing. As in the beginning of Beyond The Lights (as well as the forthcoming Black Or White), coping with the dressing of African American hair becomes a metaphor for the knotty dilemmas confronting white society with a black person in their midst.

Ghanaian-British director Amma Asante spends little screen time dwelling on the darker side of Dido's predicament at first, showing a beautiful young girl who wants for nothing in the way of clothes, jewels, nourishment and education under the protection of her grandfather at the well-to-do Mansfield Family estate. What's more, she has a companion thanks to the presence of another cousin, also named Elizabeth, who is around the same age. Dido is seemingly well loved and cared for, but when the family comes into contact with the rest of the world, she is generally kept out of sight. As she and Elizabeth come of age this becomes tougher to do. While her cousin prepares to marry without a dowry from her remarried father, Dido finds herself in an unusual bind: related to a good family and rich enough to provide an admirable dowry, with a mixed-race status that society sees as a literal stain on her attractiveness as a bride. Despite this, she is actively sought by the son of another respectable but impoverished family, but she is then physically disrespected by her fiance's bigoted brother. Money and race combine to unravel her engagement.

Meanwhile the intellectually curious Dido comes into contact with a brash vicar's son, James, who wants to go into the law under her grandfather's tutelage. Lord Mansfield is a distinguished and influential high court judge, and has had Dido assisting him with his letters. The film then becomes more about connecting Dido's story to the historically significant Zong massacre, a case appealed to the British high court in which the captain and crew of the British slave ship The Zong threw about half of their cargo of enslaved Africans overboard to drown, purportedly because there was not enough water on board to sustain them and the crew during a stormy passage, and filed an insurance claim when they reached Jamaica asking for reimbursement for the lost "merchandise." When the insurance company refused to pay, the case went to the high court. The truth emerges that poor conditions on the overcrowded, poorly managed ship led many of the slaves to sicken, considerably diminishing their worth on the open market. Rather than take the loss, the owners decided that the slaves were worth more dead than alive. The sheer horror of this -- as many as 142 African men, women, and children chained together and thrown to their deaths -- boggles the mind. The film has Dido and the vicar's son colluding to piece together evidence against the Zong's owners, and posits the idea that Lord Mansfield's own experience raising a person of color were what inclined him to rule against the Liverpool-based Gregson slave trading company that owned the Zong.

The 1783 case -- which was retried after this verdict -- was an important milestone in British history, because it turned popular sentiment toward the regulation of slavery in the British colonies and then to the eventual abolition of slavery altogether. The pressure was such that one prosecutor even attempted, unsuccessfully, to have the Zong's officers charged with murder, but formal accusations were never filed. Britain did abolish slavery some 90 years before the American South was forced to emancipate its slaves due to Lincoln's decree, with Lord Mansfield himself ruling in 1772 that slavery had never been authorized legally in the country and should never be.

The film is beautifully photographed, exquisitely designed, and wonderfully acted. The subject matter is fascinating -- most people are surprised to learn that a black woman of privilege existed in England during the 18th century -- but the difficulties she faced and the implications for society at large due to her presence are presented as mere inconveniences and not the racial lightning strikes they must have been. Part of the problem may be that the most notable thing about Dido was her anachronistic presence in the highly stratified English society of the times; she herself wasn't a rabble-rouser, she was a young woman born at a time when women didn't make much noise and where she had few other people of color with similar status or influence with whom to commune or commiserate. The script does what it can to make her a feisty, free-thinking young woman with an inherent sympathy for enslaved Africans, but Dido's journey doesn't seem to come with any moment of real revelation or change. She doesn't devote herself to the abolition movement, or make a voyage back to Jamaica to find her mother's people, or seek out other free born people of color in England. The film implies that she will marry the vicar's son, who has been elevated to a "gentleman" due to his acceptance as a law apprentice, and she will continue to live in an all-white world as a kind of social curiosity.

Kudos to Amma Asante for getting the film made. This is an important story that needed to be told. And Gugu is eminently watchable as an actress.

Cinderfella: Chris Rock's Clever "Top Five" (2014)

written and directed by Chris Rock
with Rosario Dawson, J.B. Smoove, Cedric The Entertainer, Gabrielle Union

I've always liked Chris Rock's comedic sensibilities. Even when I don't exactly agree with what he says, I'm impressed by the thought process that gets him there. Comics are highly observant creatures, always examining the foibles of what it is to be human and exploiting the cracks between sense and nonsense and widening them so we laugh at ourselves. In Top Five, the new film he's penned and directed, Rock delves deep into ego, fame, insecurity, friendship, family, loyalty, and modern romance -- not to mention a running commentary on the all-time best in hip-hop and the enduring impact of the Cinderella myth on both sexes. The result is a thoughtful, funny, sad, touching meditation on modern life.

The story centers on a day in the life of one Andre Allen, a successful comedian whose big screen persona is best exemplified by a bear-suited action character that's appeared in a series of box office hits. But as the day dawns, Andre is deeply dissatisfied by the Hollywood corner he's painted himself into (this might make a good double-feature with the wonderful Beyond the Lights, as an examination of the golden handcuffs of contemporary fame, particularly for people of color). Fast hemorrhaging all of his "funny" in the pursuit of more serious fare, Andre is promoting a well-intentioned, historically important but violently maudlin pet project about the Haitian slave uprising; chafing at his made-for-TV engagement and impending marriage to a self-involved reality TV star (Gabrielle Union, all acquisitive self-centeredness until desperation causes the mask to fall); and aching to ditch the outlandish, ursine comic persona he's ridden to riches for something much more meaningful. As such, Andre is up to his neck in conflict. He's so far out to sea, he's not even aware how close he is to drowning until he bumps up against a smart, multi-tasking, blunt-spoken journalist who holds up a mirror and reminds him that he'd better start swimming because there's no one going to throw him a life raft.

As journalist Chelsea Brown, Rosario Dawson is the cool New York chica who's been around (she's got a daughter, juggles assignments for various media and dabbles in photography) but not enough so she can't still be surprised. Assigned to shadow Andre for the day for a New York Times story, Chelsea is the measured voice of the Average Joe(sephine), the true fan from back in the day, able to ask the celebrity point blank why he made the life, love and career choices he has. At first, Andre is intrigued then challenged and angered by Chelsea's questions, which force him to confront himself. As with most defensive subjects, this causes Andre to fire back a few personal questions at Chelsea, and the two compare notes and perspectives.

During this daytrip around Manhattan, Andre addresses a group of Columbia University students, then with Chelsea in tow, visits Sirius XM Radio (hey, I see you, my former Billboard colleague Larry Flick, host of The Morning Jolt); goes back to the old neighborhood to visit with his family and friends, a great sequence in which it's clear that the roots of Andre's comedy come from this keep-it-real crew of hilarious and highly complicated people (including Ben Vereen, Sheri Shepherd, Tracy Morgan, Jay Pharaoh, and Leslie Jones). He tries on tuxes for his arranged TV wedding, and preps for a TV appearance later that night. Partially accompanied by his handler and longtime friend (J.B. Smoove), Andre and Chelsea meander from the upper West Side to Harlem to midtown to SoHo to The Village and back to midtown, philosophizing, sparring, comparing notes and analyzing events. Their separate flashback recollections are some of the raunchiest, realest, damn-near shocking parts of the film and you will not be able to stop laughing (look for Cedric the Entertainer to do one of his funniest film bits to date).

As it turns out, Chelsea has a few kinks in her own armor to work out, and as the day moves along, she bumps up against some ugly realities, including having one of her many masks slip. Chelsea's revelations turn the balance of power between interviewer and interviewee. But the hours sharing "rigorous" truths have bonded celebrity and journalist into a relationship of sorts that neither can turn their back on. In the process of his time with Chelsea, Andre ultimately gets his groove back. It's quite a journey for both that takes them places they didn't foresee.

With its "Walking And Talking in New York" premise, Rock himself has said that Top Five pays tribute to films by Woody Allen (Manhattan, Annie Hall, Stardust Memories) and Richard Linklater (Before Sunset, Before Sunrise, Before Dawn). Rock puts his own twist on things by examining the lengths to which we humans will go for ego gratification, and the overt fear that we all have of losing everything we've gained by taking a risk. While some of the situations may seem over-the-top, it's really the chemistry of Rock and Dawson -- two smart, engaging, opinionated and culturally aware New Yorkers both on and off the screen -- that keeps the film moving.

While the nod to the Cinderella myth that comes as a payoff toward the end will have some believing that the saga of Chelsea and Andre didn't wrap up at interview's end, we don't really know what will come next for them. What occurred to me is that in the fairy tale metaphor, Andre is the Cinderella, and Chelsea the fairy godmother.

Kudos to Rock on a great job with story, pacing, and a stellar talent (look for cameos by Adam Sandler, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jerry Seinfeld as well). This is a funny, funny movie. See it now.

"Beyond The Lights" (2014)

written and directed by Gina Prince Bythewood
starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nate Parker, Minnie Driver, Danny Glover

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
This quote has long been attributed to "gonzo journalist" Hunter S. Thompson -- though, like much about the music business, the quote itself has been altered and adapted for various uses. Its adaptation makes it no less apt.

The music biz can be a great place for the lions to roam and roar but it takes a terrible toll on the lambs. I know. I spent a good part of my career writing about the public face of the music business, and two misbegotten years behind the record industry curtain, laboring deep in its boiler rooms. I was so out of place I was relieved to get back to the reporter role. There were many things going on that I would have preferred not to know about, and certainly the behaviors of those deemed to have power and the way in which women were fetishized and commoditized were among them.

I don't know what it's like to be on that side of the industry now, but I imagine it's not that much changed. For women, sex is either the trump card or the key to despair in most dealings. Either hike up your skirt and don't complain about being used, or use it to screw your way along whatever path you think it can take you. Beyond The Lights is partly about the soul-selling demands on female artists in contemporary music, but it also reminds us that it's a choice. There is a laundry list of contemporary female artists who said "no" to having their image, their music, their very bodies pimped out for mass consumption -- and most of them have faded into oblivion.

Beyond The Lights could be seen as a contemporary Captain Save-A-Hoe fairytale along the lines of The Bodyguard or even Mahogany, but that's just my romantic cynicism talking. Yes, it's a story we're not unfamiliar with, the Romeo & Juliet star-crossed lovers thing somehow never gets old, but told in a way that lets us linger a bit longer with our protagonists. "I see you," says policeman-with-a-heart Kazam Nicole to up-and-coming pop music siren Noni Jean, who, in a moment of existential angst, considers taking the easy way out from a balcony at the Sofitel in Beverly Hills. And Beyond The Lights allows us to "see" deeply into the characters: their motivations, their pressures, their desires, their pasts and the illusions they cling to make them seem more than just stereotypes.

A talented singer, English-born Noni's success has been orchestrated by her rigidly ambitious single mother Macy, played by the excellent Minnie Driver. But there is nothing that Macy won't do to advance Noni's career, from co-signing her daughter's half-naked appearances on screen to accepting and promoting a ready-made romance with a white rap star (played by Machine Gun Kelly).

Noni's life is heavily proscribed and she's on a short leash; director Gina Prince-Bythewood makes this patently clear by having Noni gussied up in stage gear that is both extremely revealing while simultaneously heavy on chains, buckles, shackles and restraint straps. Macy is holding the other end of the leash, and nowhere is that control more obvious than when she kneels before her daughter, undoing the endless buckles on a towering pair of torturous high heels Noni's been wearing. Our girl isn't free, and the weight of the chains are repressive enough for her to seek freedom in the well-muscled brown arms of her savior, Officer Nicole. As this goes against the well-laid plans of Mama Macy, whose life revolved around her daughter, complications ensue.

Groomed for a political career by his father (Danny Glover, his voice rapidly disappearing into unintelligible fog), a police captain, Kaz is an upstanding, goodhearted, boy scout soul who collects epigrams, pals around with a giant Rottweiler, tackles wife-abusers, doesn't maul on a first date, and maybe even rescues kittens out of trees (we know he rescues this little kitty from a balcony). He's even exceedingly kind to the audience; he treats us to numerous shots of his shirtless magnificence throughout. He's an old-fashioned leading man, a Prince Charming who only loses his cool and throws punches when women are being disrespected. But of course, Pops' plans for his son do not involve a violet-haired pop tart as a political first lady, and so he becomes the Montague to Noni's Capulets.

In 1994's Out Of Sight, on-the-run bank robber George Clooney tells improbable love interest, federal marshal Jennifer Lopez, that what they need is a "time out" to consummate their passion before the inevitable realities reassert themselves. When Noni faces a career crisis, complicated by Kaz's actions, the two take a memorable "time out" across the border, far from the lights of Tinsel Town. The disparity between Noni's on-stage persona and the natural woman she is, is astounding, and it's a transformation that Kaz has had a hand in.

Beyond The Lights has, in my estimation, some giant clumps of truth about the modern music industry and gives what feels like a real-time representation of how love connections can develop. And though the film may seem slow in segments, it's those lingering moments of chemistry between the marvelous Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker that engulf the viewer in their saga and spin pure magic on the screen. Their pillow-lipped presences lend the romance a veneer of verisimilitude in a way that uplifts the tropes of the star-crossed lovers tale. I like the movie.

[At the same time, the film makes me think about the fetishizing of young actresses, particularly young black actresses on screen. Gugu is beautiful; in this film she appears half naked, we are staring at her crotch and nipples covered by thin strips of leather in one of her first scenes, she is manhandled (OK, romanced) by two different actors, and it seems that the camera has lingered on just about every inch of her body by the time the film is over. Halle Berry showed her breasts on screen in Monster's Ball and earned an Oscar; what's next for Gugu?]

"Dear White People" (2014)

directed by Justin Simien
starring Tessa Thompson, Tyler James Williams, Teyonah Parris, Kyle Gallner, Brandon P. Bell



Got a chance to view "Dear White People" last month in a theater not far from Georgetown University. It was really good, deceptively simple but very clever. It started kind of slow and a bit detached in tone, with title cards describing this fictional ivy league school, but the flick got progressively stronger and more involving as we learn about the lives of a few of its black students, whose identities are as different from each other as possible.

The lead character is Sam White (the gorgeous Thompson), a bold black rights activist sister trying to assert herself in the world of campus social politics. She hosts a provocative radio show called "Dear White People," where she offers bon mots like, "Dear White People, stop dancing" and "Dear White People, your quota of black friends has just been raised to two." Her story is complicated by the fact that she is a child of a biracial marriage, that her father's compromised health is source of ongoing stress, and by the presence of her white lover, a fellow student. Just as her name suggests, her character is rife with conflicting realities.

Sam's story is contrasted against that of an introverted gay nerd Lionel (Williams, best known as the star of TV's Everybody Hates Chris) who doesn't fit into the "black" residence hall and is systematically humiliated in the "white" residence hall. Wrestling with other students, the college administration and himself to carve out a place where he can just be is a daily challenge for him. There's also a girl named Coco (Parris), who has changed her name among other things because she is desperate to separate herself from all things ghetto and thus chases after white acceptance. Then there's the popular black jock who is trying to live up to the high standards of his father (played by Dennis Haysbert), the college's dean of students, while simultaneously juggling a relationship with the white daughter of the college president and concealing a dependence on marijuana. And though the story takes place in present day, there are lingering pockets of racism on campus, both laughable and deplorable.

The film is more multi-layered than it seems on first viewing; the characters are struggling with finding their identities, managing their relationships within the college arena, and trying to use college as a springboard into who they will be for the rest of their lives. It shows that there is no one way or right way to be black, but even so, people of color instinctively band together to ward off the acts of active and passive racism that still rear their ugly heads on campus. Because college is a concentrated microcosm of the world, all of the action feels very impactful and thought-provoking. Within that are moments of provocative humor and dark satire; finding one's identity in college can mean trying on a number of hats, successfully or unsuccessfully. It can mean overthrowing the expectations of parents, lovers, and society itself. And it can also mean forming destructive habits and alliances.

The revelation of the film for me is, besides Tessa Thompson's fantastic portrayal of Sam, is Tyler James Williams as Lionel Higgins, the campus nerd who finally stands up. DWP has moments of originality, wit, and humor; it also knows on whose shoulders it stands, with a few moments that clearly pay homage to the Spike Lee oeuvre, as when a crowd of black students converge angrily on an unwitting movie ticket seller to protest the relentless showing of Tyler Perry movies, and the movie's climax will recall the moment that Mookie finally threw that trash can in Do The Right Thing. I also appreciated the soundtrack, which utilizes classical music in unique ways alongside contemporary R&B, hip-hop, and rock.

The movie never canonizes the black characters nor demonizes the whites; our identities and consciousness are fluid things and within that murk we must find common ground. It is said that today's young generation of millennials have a broader and more accepting view of race, but there is also a collective naivete and ignorance of history that persists in this generation, leading to more of the kind of outrageous actions and intense confrontations depicted here. Director Simien says he was inspired in part by the proliferation of white campus parties with themes demeaning to African Americans, and we see the evidence of real-life events of this nature in the end credits. The pictures will make you cringe. But Simien also shows that while racism is an American institution, we all can be angels and devils along a continuum of prejudicial behavior.

The Seventh Veil (1945)

I had never heard of this one before, just chose it at random on the Kindle. I am so glad I found it – I could watch it over and over. It's a psychological melodrama, somehow a mix in plot and tone of Humoresque (poor violinist struggles to become a concert performer and find happiness amid lots of classical music) and Jane Eyre (young orphaned girl comes into the employ of a mysterious and gruff older man who controls but ultimately romances her). I didn’t realize until the opening credits that fave James Mason is in it, all young and juicy. It is called The Seventh Veil. The film is British, from 1945, and stars Ann Todd (whom I had never heard of, but who apparently was able to convincingly fake playing the piano in several concert scenes when a stunt double wasn’t at the keys).

Hello, James Mason!

Todd plays Francesca, who at the start of the film is hospitalized for an undisclosed malady. She sneaks out of the hospital, slinks through the streets and jumps off the nearest bridge. She is rescued but seems catatonic until she is put under the care of a psychiatrist, played by Czech hottie Herbert Lom (those eyes! that voice!), who uses sodium pentothol and hypnosis to get the whole tale out of her. His theory is that there are seven veils of consciousness, and he must penetrate each one to find out why she tried to kill herself. She regresses to childhood and begins her story:

When 14-year-old Francesca loses her father she is sent to live with a distant rich cousin, played by Mason. He is a bitter, 30something bachelor with a limp and walking stick who treats her gruffly until he discovers that she plays music, and then he treat her only slightly less gruffly. A music scholar himself, Nicholas” pushes her into becoming a concert pianist. He alternately oversees grueling practice sessions and disappears for long stretches, leaving her alone with the servants. We never find out the mysterious reason Nicholas has been emotionally and physically crippled – it is mentioned that his mother ran off with a singer when he was a young boy.

Francesca goes on to a London music college, where she meets a brash American saxophone student and falls in love. Desperate to get away from Nicholas, she informs her guardian that she is engaged to be married. Nicholas is having none of it; he locks her in her room, and the next day drags her off to Paris to continue her musical training. Years pass. She ultimately makes a successful concert debut, but is haunted by memories of being caned on the hands by a teacher, making her fail a music fellowship exam (her hands were too swollen to play properly). She also longs for Peter, the fiancé she was forced to abandon. Still, she is resigned to her existence, every facet of which is controlled by Nicholas (mean and brooding, yes, but damn, Mason is fine!) Back in London, she makes her professional concert debut, but afterward shakes Nicholas and dashes around the city in search of Peter. She finds him leading a swing band at a supper club. When he sees her, he wordlessly sweeps her into his arms for a dance to their favorite song. But it is not to be: Peter married someone else. Francesca remains with Nicholas, who tells her which shows to perform, what to wear, and where to eat for dinner. Nicholas seems to anticipate her every need and want, but while she finds it satisfying she resents it too.

Keep practicing, Francesca, or you'll see the back side of my hand!

Nicholas engages a famous German painter to create her portrait. Max initially says he no longer does portraits, but Francesca, bored with having only Nicholas to talk to, taunts Max into taking on the job. The two spend hours together and soon the artist is head over heels. Francesca agrees to run away to Italy with Max, but when she coolly informs Nicholas of her plans, he goes ballistic and actually whacks her knuckles with his cane. Injured – and reminded of the awful moments as a child when her hands were caned so badly she couldn’t play -- she runs into Max’s arms, and they drive off toward Italy. But, wouldn’t ya know, the car veers off the road, crashes, and goes up in flames.

Francesca and Max are rescued and taken to the hospital. Francesca is convinced she will never play piano again and tells Max she no longer wants to live. It is later that night when she makes the suicide attempt we see at the top of the film and lands in Dr. Larsen’s care.

Max is no fan of psychotherapy. When one of Dr. Larsen’s attempts fails to snap Francesca out of her malaise, the artist spirits her from the hospital to his palatial home. (I guess there is no such thing as a starving artist in 1940s England.) Dr. Larsen tracks down former fiancé Peter -- now divorced -- to find out more about what happened between them. Next he visits Nicholas to ask for help in curing her – which sends Nicholas into a rage and gives the doc a clue as to the real nature of his feelings for his ward. Nicholas heads straight to Max’s to confront Francesca. He tells her that she can play again, and reminds her that they have a strong bond that they have built up over the years. Max busts in and demands that Nicholas leave, but too late, the Nicholas Svengali Effect is already working its magic.

Francesca agrees to submit to another therapy session. Dr. Larsen plays one of her recordings, compelling her to play along on the piano and see that she can indeed play. Max, Nicholas, and Peter are waiting to see her. When she descends the stairs her face lights up, and she runs into the arms of … Nicholas, who was there for her all along.

NOTES:
I found the story compelling, and the script is great. Ann Todd reminds me of Joan Fontaine: a mix of helplessness and grit. Herbert Lom’s psychiatrist is so good – so commanding, so soothing, so earnest and empathetic – he practically had ME hypnotized through the screen. If I were Francesca, I would have chosen the good doctor.

Herbert Lom as the good doctor, peeling away the "seventh veil" of consciousness.

The American boyfriend Peter also gets a lot of the great lines. Francesca berates him for his rudeness and lack of refinement, saying, “It must be how you were brought up,” and Peter, unfazed, quips, “I was dragged up – I know it!” He also has a sequence where he woos the shy rich girl by telling her what happens between men and women in the movies – very clever.

James Mason is pure ice for most of the movie. He's like Heathcliff plus Mr. Rochester plus Henry Higgins. When Francesca tries to tell Nicholas about her engagement, she is at his feet begging. “Nicholas, I’m engaged!” And he’s like, “Hmmm. Go to bed.” “Did you hear what I said?” “Yes. And pack a bag before bed because we’re going to Paris in the morning.” Of course Francesca has a snit fit and screams “I won’t go, I tell you!” and Nicholas cracks her one in the face. I was shocked, frankly. “How old are you?” Nicholas demands. “Seventeen,” she whimpers. “Exactly,” he says, in Mason’s rich and oily vocal cadence. “You are still my ward. Do you know what that means? It means that until you are 21, you are under my guidance and protection, and you live under my roof. Should you try to run away, I can have you brought back immediately -- by the police if necessary. Do you understand? Now go to bed.” And she does.

She also has Max spouting some flowery sentiments; when he tells her she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever painted, she counters saying that he’s painted the portraits of numerous beauties. “I say this not only because you’re beautiful, but because I love you,” he flutters. When he asks her to run away with him, she falls into his arms and muses, “How do we do this, Max? Should we get married?” Max pulls back, not in alarm, but just says, “I hadn’t thought of that.” “It doesn’t matter,” she says. Remember—this film was made in 1945! The heroine has chosen to go live in sin with her German lover in Italy – but of course, Nicholas puts the kibosh on it.

Finally – the music is incredible. As I mentioned, I chose the flick at random as it was related to some other older films I was looking at. If it had turned out to be corny or horrible, I just would have quit in the middle and watched something else. But The Seventh Veil had me spellbound from the opening credits because of the music – the soundtrack was wonderfully nuanced, carefully orchestrated, and dynamic. No wonder – the London Symphony Orchestra was playing it all, including the concert sequences, which included Chopin, Beethoven, Dvorak. Highly recommended.

More of ... Have You Seen These Black & White Flicks?

I just love older films. I'm fascinated by how people lived: the clothes they wore, the lingo of the times, the level of technological advancement or lack thereof, the social climate that made certain actions and topics of conversation taboo, how people of different colors and cultures interacted or were prohibited from interacting, what the stereotypes were. Because so many modes of social behavior are considered acceptable now, the character quandaries presented in older films can be completely obsolete today.

Black and white films are interesting because they reduce the distraction of color so the eye can focus clearly on character and detail. Dialogue becomes that much more important. Here's a couple more b&w films that I've taken a gander at:


Rita Tushingham as Jo has a fling with Paul Danquah in A Taste Of Honey-- ah, young love.

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Lest you think my taste runs only to French nouvelle vague, take a gander at this, the source of that fun little Herb Alpert horn ditty . Counter to the jauntiness of that tune, A Taste of Honey is part of what was known as Britain's "kitchen sink" domestic dramas of the '50s, in which the lives of working class Brits are depicted in all their unglamorous grittiness. The style was a break from the upper-crust dramas and drawing-room comedies of Noel Coward in merry olde England. This story was notable for having been penned by an 18-year-old, Shelagh Delaney, and directed by Sir Tony Richardson (husband to Vanessa Redgrave and father to actresses Joely and the late Natasha Richardson (wife of Liam Neeson)).

Here, a young working class British lass named Jo, raised in a broken home by an alcoholic "good time girl" mom who frequently neglects her, struggles to finish high school and then stand on her own two feet apart from her mother's haphazard lifestyle. By chance she meets and has an affair with a Black sailor off a boat docked nearby. He ships out, and she's left knocked up with a brown baby. Shocking! Meanwhile, fast-pants Mum marries her latest swain and goes off, leaving Jo to her own devices.

The rest of the film follows Jo's travails as she tries to create a support system of sorts, getting a job in a shoe shop and befriending a young man whom she eventually learns is gay. Their friendship weathers that storm of revelation and soon she invites the young man to live with her in the tumbledown attic apartment she's found. As she awaits the baby's birth, it seems her pal is ready to be a surrogate father and her neighbors will be the makeshift relatives, and things seem to be going well, considering. But out of the blue, here comes Jo's half-drunken tart of a mom, freshly ditched by Romeo, to muck things all up to hell with her bigotry and self-centeredness. As the film closes, Jo happily awaits the birth, still oblivious to all she has just lost because of her mom.

We don't know what happens to Jo after the baby comes, but the film makes clear the distinctions between the family we are born to and the family we choose. We know Jo's struggles are about to ramp up again in a seemingly endless cycle.

The film is unique in its time for its frank treatment of interracial relationships and sexuality.




A Man Named Adam (1966)
There are only a handful of big screen performances by Sammy Davis Jr., and most of them are not in starring roles. Here he is the lead as Adam Johnson, a self-indulgent, womanizing, alcoholic jazz trumpeter who tries the patience of everyone around him, as he is determined to dig himself even deeper into oblivion. Nobody likes an angry black man, and in 1965, with integration still a new concept in the country, he is liked even less.

But he has much to be angry and bitter about: the country's persistent divide on race relations, which have some welcoming him with open arms and others heaping him with abuse. This is a man sickened by the pressures of American race relations. As it turns out, he has even more of a reason to be an asshole: A racist incident that put him behind the wheel in a drunken car accident years before in which he lost his wife and young son. But Adam's wallowing in grief and anger causes him to bite every hand that is held out to him, including that of selfless non-violent civil rights activist Cicely Tyson, at her most gorgeous in a short natural and barely any makeup. Tyson's character tries hard to calm the storm raging inside of Adam, but he cannot contain his justifiable anger at the slights angled his way.

The flick is notable for the appearances of Lola Falana as a flight attendant pickup, Ossie Davis as Adam's friend, Good Times actors Ja'Net DuBois as a former girlfriend and Johnny Brown as a blind pianist, Rat Packer Peter Lawford as an agent, Louis Armstrong as a successful bandleader, Frank Sinatra Jr. as Adam's young trumpet protégé, and velvet-voiced jazzbo Mel Torme as ... Mel Torme. It's a bumpy film, an awkward snapshot of a man spiraling to certain self-destruction that no one seems to know how to stop. While the characters are left to cluck over the dirty shame that is Adam's life, the audience knows that even today this is a fate that too often befalls African American men.


William in Green Dolphin Street: "Got me a wife and kid -- granted, not the wife I intended to have, but who's quibbling?"

Green Dolphin Street (1947)
I'm a sucker for old-style melodramas, I guess because I try to keep my own emotions under wraps most of the time. The more dramatic a story, the more attuned I become. These type of films are only successful through careful direction and acting, and Green Dolphin Street definitely has those. This is a classic Hollywood book-to-film costume saga with star turns from Lana Turner, Van Heflin, Donna Reed, then-newcomer Richard Hart and a slew of stock Hollywood character actors like Gladys Cooper, Edmund Gwenn, Dame May Whitty, Frank Morgan, and Reginald Owen.

Set in 1840, starting in England's Channel Islands and ranging all the way to the South Seas, the story turns on one basic tragic mistake: a slip of the pen. To grasp the import of this, you really have to understand how limited communication was in those days -- without phones, international mail could take weeks or months to arrive -- and circumstances for both the writer and the recipient could change completely within that time. You also have to understand how few life choices there were for middle class white women (all women, really) in the 19th century. If a young woman married well -- into a family of wealth and or position -- she could expect to live a decent life. If she married poorly, she could be guaranteed a life of struggle but at least she would have her husband and children for company. If no suitor came along, the woman was destined to live at the whim of her family, to whom she was likely a financial burden, a source of public shame, and likely a servant/caretaker. The only other honorable choice was to devote herself to a life of service in the Lord. A single woman who dared to travel alone, have a career, or sample more than a few love affairs would have been considered at best low class or at worst, a common prostitute. To the merchant class of that time, a young woman had few options and the best was marriage.

The lively and lovely Patourel girls, Marianne and Marguerite, are in the market for a successful beau who can keep them in the style of their shipping magnate father. Both meet the handsome and rakish trader William Ozanne, and both are smitten. William has eyes for the good and humble Marguerite, and noting this, conniving Marianne convinces him to join the Navy to give her more time to work her charms on him. He enlists and soon leaves on a trading trip to China with the platoon but gets drunk, is rolled by locals, and misses his boat. Now MIA from the Navy, William has to make a run for it or face courtmartial and disgrace. He turns up in New Zealand, helping to colonize a tough landscape alongside his friend Tim Haslam. After bending everyone's ear about the love he left behind, Tim encourages him to write and propose marriage. In a drunken spree, William takes up paper and ink. Except he addresses the letter to the wrong sister!

Feisty and scheming Marianne is jubilant when she receives the letter. She defies her parents and sails off to the wilds of New Zealand, while her poor dejected sister surrenders herself to the local convent. When Marianne arrives, William is too noble/stupid/aghast to admit his mistake, and the two are soon married. They have to learn how to live together, work a lumber operation, get along with the local Maoris, not perish in the heat, and survive a spectacularly filmed earthquake and tidal wave (it won best special effects at the Oscars). As Marianne comes to know Tim Haslam better, she soon falls for him, even as she gives birth to William's child. She discovers soon enough that it was Marguerite William wanted all along, but they have made their bed and must lie in it. The irony is that not only did Marianne marry the wrong man for the wrong reasons, she is repeating the fate of her own mother, who chose the rich Octavius Patourel as a husband over the love of her life, Edmund Ozanne -- William's father. And in its final moments we get to see pictures of the saintly Marguerite, locked away in her nunnery, affirming to all that she is satisfied with the life given over to God.

How's that for a twisty story? Elizabeth Goudge, author of the original novel, actually won an MGM Writers Prize for best original story. And as a side note: The movie's haunting theme, titled "On Green Dolphin Street," has become an enduring jazz standard that has been recorded by dozens, including Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughan.

"Reality, What A Concept": RIP, Robin Williams

Robin Williams was a funny man. But funny seems to come with a price.

When I first saw his standup on an HBO special in the late '70s, I was astounded by the rapidity of his speech and his movement, by the level of his free associations and mimicry, and by his ability to keep it all wired to a free-flowing but lucid performance. He was able to channel all this energy and multiple streams of influence into one comedic whole and deliver it up. You had to be smart enough to keep pace with him and get all of his references. Even when you didn't, you were able to glean enough of his comic essence to appreciate his artistry. He seemed to be always "on."

Robin parlayed that artistry to stardom in his role as Mork from Ork in Mork & Mindy, the TV sitcom that spun off of the phenomenally popular Happy Days. An alien proved the perfect role for him, as he seemed otherworldly. His style was closely associated with the quicksilver, oddball performances of his idol, Jonathan Winters, but with a more contemporary bent.

Robin Williams gave me plenty of laughs, but I have to say that I preferred his more dramatic roles. I'm rather sensitive myself, so something about his comedy suggested to me that he was thisfreakinclose to becoming completely unhinged. "Manic" might be one way to describe his art. While this was a draw -- he always seemed to be able to pull back from the edge -- it made me nervous. Was there desperation behind it? Pain? Insecurity? A mental imbalance? I wondered.

Robin soothed my concerns when he played more constrained roles in film. I remember him in the late Paul Mazursky's Moscow On The Hudson, which was a dramedy about a Russian circus musician who defects to America in the middle of a good will tour. The film is a valentine to the American way of life, while also a meditation on the sadness and isolation of immigrants who make a tough choice and then must assimilate to a bewildering new culture. Robin's performance made you feel Vladimir's longings, fears, regrets, joys, and frustrations in such a fresh and heartfelt way that it was a revelation. He gave compelling performances in films that ran the gamut from low comedy to high drama, to thrillers and fantasies. He could channel his energy into creating a complete film portrayal.

Many of his comic films were targeted to kids and families: Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, Hook, Jumanji, Night At The Museum. Kids seemed to connected to his joyous and freeform antics. These kinds of films weren't really my thing; I didn't realize until now just how influential Mrs. Doubtfire has been for a whole generation of divorced families! (I'm like: Meh, a meddling man in a dress confusing his kids and interfering with his ex-wife. And--angel chorus--Pierce Brosnan.) He never gave anything less than his all in every performance.

It's been said that comic personalities need laughs. They live for them and live by them -- it's how they get paid. The laughter of strangers becomes like the air they need to survive. Without it many comics falter and flail. Some literally die without a constant diet of approbation.

Robin reportedly suffered bouts of depression. He battled addictions. He may well have felt pressure to keep to the high bar of comic genius that he set for himself early in his career. He may not have been getting the steady diet of laughs (or therapies or prescription drugs or nurturing) he needed to keep himself level. He may have been heartbroken about the state of his past, present or future. He may have just looked down the road and seen a seemingly endless cycle of balance, relapse, rehab, balance, relapse, rehab, and lost the will or any compelling reason to continually submit himself or his family to the painful cycle. NPR just reported that he was in the early stages of Parkinson's disease. Maybe he saw what is in store after a Parkinson's diagnosis and didn't want to go through it publicly. I don't pretend to know. He opted out.

I'm not sad for Robin Williams -- he's at peace, and he left a comic legacy of considerable proportions. I'm sad for us. Because we've lost his talent and his humanity. By all accounts, he was a warm and caring person, something that came across in many of his film performances, in his devotion to Comic Relief (which raised money for the homeless), and his appearances before our troops.

I'm sad because every time someone takes his own life we have the same old debate about mental illness and addiction, looking for something outside of ourselves to blame it on. We don't seem to understand that we are all (Robin too) part of the same fabric of social and cultural standards, the same outlandish expectations, the same senseless acts of violence, the same media ignorance passing as wisdom that negatively impacts all of us in this country. No wonder so many of us regardless of celebrity, class, gender or race are spinning in confusion, despair, and hopelessness in a vacuum that no one dares to identify or claim. I'm saddened by all the denial, by the tacit agreement that those who take their lives are selfish or weak or cowardly, by the hand-wringing we do about those who fall through the cracks even when we blame those who have fallen for creating the cracks in the first place.

We behave as if we know something about life that Robin didn't, and we think that if he really knew it, he would not have asphyxiated himself on Monday morning in Marin County. I'm sad because we will never know what Robin thought he knew when he made that fateful decision.

Yes -- reality is a helluva concept that few of us can completely get our arms around. Thanks, Robin, for making us laugh while you tried.


[Photo 2: fanpop.com]

Deconstructing James Brown: "Get On Up" (2014)

directed by Tate Taylor
starring Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis, Dan Aykroyd
Jill Scott, Tika Sumpter, Aunjanue Ellis, Tariq Trotter

August 6, 2014

If you didn't know it before, by now you should all know the name of Chadwick Boseman. Let's hope Oscar knows it too when awards season rolls around.

How can any performer truly embody the essence of a preternaturally talented, conflicted, driven, troubled, egomaniacal, essentially history-making artistic personality -- especially one who, in his later years, became something of a frazzled caricature? Watch Chadwick Boseman portray the mighty James Brown in Get On Up, and the answer is there before you on screen. It's uncanny: the cadence of his speech, his physicality, the street-wise logic, and the hair (oh, the hair). The darkness and the light of the Soul Man, while still lending him dignity.

Yes, the winds of controversy are blowing around this film. African Americans, so prominent on the screen, are missing from the production team in this instance (it was produced by British rock icon Mick Jagger, among others). A story about one of the most influential, beloved, and conflicted figures in American music seems to skip over some essential facts. The film itself hopscotches through times, cherry-picking pivotal moments. It skirts the protagonist's problems with domestic violence and drug abuse. But what it does show adds up to a lasting impression of the man's life and times, and engages the audience in co-authoring the import of the narrative from what we thought we knew and what we learn here.

col·lage
[kuh-lahzh, koh-] noun
1. a technique of composing a work of art by pasting on a single surface various materials not normally associated with one another, as newspaper clippings, parts of photographs, theater tickets, and fragments of an envelope ....

Yada yada yada, let's get to

4. a film that presents a series of seemingly unrelated scenes or images or shifts from one scene or image to another suddenly and without transition.

This is a film collage, a sewing together of scenes, inspirations, influences, and ideas about Brown. As a piece of art, Get On Up stands out as an attempt to add context to the myriad pieces of a divided soul. The performance by Boseman, as well as those of the stellar supporting cast, is toweringly compelling.

Controversy aside -- Watch it, and have a funky good time.

Backward Glance: "Django Unchained" (2012)

directed by Quentin Tarantino
starring Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz

WAY BACK IN 2011 A FRIEND sent me a pdf copy of script for the then-upcoming Quentin Tarantino flick Django Unchained. I took a couple of days to read it. It was sick. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. The script was kind of like Mandingo (trashy soap opera) meets both Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (WWII revenge yarn that I did not like at all) and his Kill Bill (modern-day femme revenge yarn, which I did). Tarantino called it a "Southern," in that it's a Western genre piece set in the South. The time period is slavery, so the n-word, which Quentin sprinkled liberally all over Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, is now the inch-high frosting on the entire thing, And here Tarantino graphically depicts the very worst treatment of slaves: psychological torture, mutilation, humiliation, sexual abuse, and other forms of degradation and violence. While this is meant to give a true picture of the horrors of slavery, it also borders on exploitation; since this is Tarantino, after all, he takes things to stomach-churning extremes.

The story centers on Django, a slave who was just sold away from his beloved wife and is being marched to a new plantation with a shackled coterie of other slaves until a German bounty hunter shows up, shoots his sibling overseers (a criminal lot with a price on their heads), and then mentors him to be his bounty hunting partner. With a Beatrix Kiddo-times-ten focus on vengeance, Django only wants to rescue his beloved and do some death-dealing to those who mistreated her, primarily infamous plantation owner Calvin Candie. The German King Schultz (who explains that as a European he has no stake in the slavery game) agrees to free Django and help him rescue his love in exchange for help nabbing some high-priced quarry.

The storyline also involves slavers who operate literal death matches between slaves, basically human dogfights where white gentlemen of leisure can gamble and entertain themselves with a bloody spectacle (critics have since said that few slave-owners would throw away money by allowing one of their slaves to be incapacitated or killed unnecessarily, but seeing as how the institution of slavery itself was mutilating and killing black folk on the daily, who knows). The script also lingers quite a bit on the existence of exclusive brothels where white men can use pretty black slave women, here called “ponies,” for their pleasures. And wouldn't ya know, this is one of the fates in store for Django's missus (many of the brothel scenes do not make it into the final film).

I could only guess at what actress would want to take on the role of Django’s beloved, since she appears nude for most of her scenes and is raped, beaten, abused, and worst of all made to speak German (horrors!) in the film! (just kidding). Somehow Kerry Washington springs to mind. (And indeed, that is who they cast.) And I can't picture who will be Django -- it's a role that requires a Sam Jackson, but he's too old. And I couldn't see Will Smith operating within the Tarantino milieu.

What amused me most about the script I saw is that it was riddled with misspellings – and why should that make me feel good? Bleh. Culture doesn't stop for little things like spelling. Anyway, the black female character is here named "Broomhilda," a name that Tarantino tells us is a legendary moniker connected to a Rhine-soaked folktale of yore, as in Wagner's Siegfried opera. Except, Quentin, “Broomhilda” is the cartoon witch whose name was a play on the real name, which is actually Brunnhilde or Brunhilda.

At least get your lore right, when you are basing a whole plot point around it! For indeed, the story of Django's quest to reunite with his Broomhilda is equivalent to Siegfried's quest to climb a mountain, slay the dragon and claim princess Brunhilde for his own.

In the months after reading the script, I watched as Tarantino cast Jamie Foxx as Django, Leonardo DiCaprio as the sadistic owner of Candyland plantation, Samuel Jackson as a typical house n---er, and Christoph Waltz as the bounty hunter.

I did see the film, Christmas weekend, 2012. It is an odd movie, both visually arresting in some places, and cold and flat in others. So many of Quentin's films are about paying tribute to other films and other genres that occasionally the here-and-now of the singular narrative gets obscured. By turns irreverent and chilling, Django at times feels like it should have stayed in the oven a bit longer. Appearances by spaghetti western icons Lee Van Cleef and Franco Nero (star of the 1966 Italian-made western Django), as well as '80s TV veterans Tom Wopat and Don Johnson, character actors Bruce Dern, Russ Tamblyn, and black film pioneer Don Stroud, not to mention a completely anachronistic Jonah Hill, smack of stunt casting. Seeing Tarantino himself as an Australian in the slave trade just totally takes you out of the movie.

Overall Django Unchained is stylish, in that Jamie looks the part, and you root for him to win: He goes from a whip-scarred, unkempt, downtrodden slave in rags to a gun-totin' badass who looks damned fine on a horse in his western duds as he carries out a mission in the name of love. Christoph Waltz, playing an alternate version of the courtly killer Nazi in Basterds, does a fine turn (he won his second Oscar). As Calvin Candie, the sadistic owner of the Candieland plantation, Leo DiCaprio is a bit of a surprise -- as a racist scion of a Southern family he hits all the marks with chilling ease, particularly the scene where he lovingly strokes the skull of a former slave and expounds on his twisted belief in the inferiority of the black race. Washington has little to do but look pretty and helpless, as she becomes the star of her very own Perils of Pauline.

But when Sam Jackson, as the most nefarious of all Uncle Toms, shows up, the film takes an even nastier and more depressing turn. The final shootout is an unrelentingly gory bloodbath that makes the shootout at the climax of the Tarantino-scripted True Romance look like a pajama party.

I have a fondness for many of Tarantino's films, but this isn't at the top of my list of faves. I didn't hate it by any means; Quentin took home a Best Original Screenplay for Django, and that seems fair. But the script lacks the snappy, memorable dialogue of many of his other classics. Django says relatively little during the first half of the story, compared to other Tarantino heroes, though he gets off some choice lines. (Waltz's King Schultz character gets most of the laughs for his turns of phrase.)

Many of the scenes may trigger your squeamish side. By the time it's over you will be glad of the outcome, but if you watch it again you may wish you could fast-forward a few times. In my opinion.

Django is a film unlike any other -- no western has yet starred a black protagonist since the days of Buck And The Preacher and Thomasene & Bushrod (the 1970s) or, perhaps, Will Smith in 1999's the Wild, Wild West. Certainly none were set during slavery, when a black man had any agency. Tarantino continues to draw criticism for how he treats African American stories and characters on film, but he is one of very few filmmakers whose worldview includes people of color.

Purple Passion: Looking Back At "Purple Rain"

30th Anniversary of Purple Rain

When Prince's “Soft And Wet” from For You hit the airwaves I was somewhere around my first year of college and somewhat scandalized by the subject matter. But the booty knew better; the dancefloor payoff was too rich to ignore. By the time of the Dirty Mind album, I’d been fully indoctrinated into the provocative peacock funk, raw and clever wordplay of the Minneapolis wunderkind (and saw him perform at a club in Boston during the boots-underpants-overcoat phase). I played 1999 on an endless loop at the house one summer, driving my parents insane. Controversy further fueled the fires of fandom.

So I was a devoted Prince fan when Purple Rain came out. Devoted after a fashion – I was never one to go whole hog over-the-top with buying every piece of material he issued or aping his look. For one thing, I couldn’t afford it. For another, in 1984 I had some semblance of a professional life (yes, that’s how old I am). I was not yet working within the realm of the music industry; I was wearing preppy oxford-cloth shirts with jacquard bows and feathered hair as a book production manager for Scholastic in Greenwich Village. My boyfriend at the time was in law school but gigging in a covers band on weekends. (Btw: It’s interesting to note the varying impact the film had on those above and below the legal drinking age at the time.) The conversation within our music-fan circles was all about Prince and his cohorts.

Why? Because he was different. His music was different. He looked and dressed ... different. And if he was channeling James Brown and Jimi Hendrix with a spine of George Clinton and the ghost of Little Richard, who among the new power generation would really know or care? He presented the old in an exciting new package. In addition to his musical virility, he was an enigmatic beauty. Easy on the eyes, androgynous, power and posturing in a pint-sized package. An exhibitionist on stage yet oddly monosyllabic in the press glare. A man of color, but with a heritage murky enough to seem pan-ethnic. A man sho-nuff, but with enough eyeliner and hair gel to make one wonder. This dichotomous, international man of mystery had a broad-based appeal. He was a phenomenon, and one whose talent and surrounding mythology was already a buzz beginning to blanket the cultural landscape like some sort of nuclear fallout.

Purple Rain the movie was an anticipated event among fans. We were waiting with the proverbial bated breath, with our little puppy tongues hanging out. We were going to see the man himself on the big screen and lap up every ounce of artistry he was prepared to offer. It was going to be like a Prince show to the 8th power, because he would actually speak to us, show us who he was. Our appetites were whetted by the brilliance of “When Doves Cry,” which had landed on the radio and sounded like nothing else we'd ever heard. Anticipation was at a fever pitch.

Because Purple Rain was the locus of our attention, my boyfriend and I snatched up a copy of the soundtrack -- which arrived weeks ahead of the movie -- on release day. We rushed home and placed the vinyl album on the turntable, prepared to be transported into bliss. We were ... disappointed.

“What the hell is this shit?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Me either.”

“There’s a couple of good jams on there, ‘Baby I’m A Star,’ ‘Doves,’ 'Take Me With You,' but overall…?”

“I know, right?”

“So disappointing.”

What we heard was distinctly more pop and rock-edged, darker and more serious than what we were expecting, with lyrics that were either trite or confusingly opaque. And Prince’s tortured screeching at the end of the introspective “The Beautiful Ones” and the rude “Darling Nikki” left us scratching our heads. Just what was “purple rain” anyway? Purple Rain the album seemed impenetrable, inscrutable, in a word, weird. We began to jokingly refer to it as Prince’s epic project, “Screams In The Night.”

Needless to say: Context is all.

We saw Purple Rain the first weekend it opened, if not the first night. I know the theater was packed. Primed by our reaction to Prince’s opus "Screams In The Night," we were prepared to witness a royal mess. Instead we had our minds blown. The film was simultaneously amateurish, retro, misogynist, inspired, affirming, engrossing, compelling, funny, eye-opening and brilliant. It gave us a heaping helping of the Minneapolis music scene that had birthed Prince, and it was like stepping into another country with its own style of dress, language, and culture. This world was informed by the artistic, the outré, the retro (the ‘40s style dress and chitlin'-circuit comedy routines of Morris Day and Jerome Benton and The Time) and the overtly sexy. The Revolution was the coolest band a guy could have. It was a world we all wanted to be part of, where everybody wanted to go. After seeing the film we went home and put the soundtrack back on the turntable. Now it all made sense, it told the complete story of The Kid's struggles.

Was Prince a good actor? He didn't really need to be. The picture gave us enough of a sketch of what it was like to be him, even if the script was not supposed to be a dyed-in-the wool autobiography. And he gave us some of the best music of his career to that point. And if that wasn't enough, what about the visuals? Minneapolis in winter -- had we really ever seen it before? (Indeed, did we not need proof that people of color actually lived in the Land of 1,000 Lakes?) The purple motorcycle, the constructed fairyland of The Kid's basement apartment, Apollonia's cape (I looked everywhere for one just like it), the iconic white guitar, Morris' yellow Cadillac -- everybody has an image that sticks with them.

It was not a perfect film. But it was one of the closest things we'd seen to contemporary artistic reality in a spell (Wild Style had debuted the year before; Krush Groove would arrive in 1985). Its very rawness contributed to its popularity. Like many fans, I went back to the theater multiple times to plunk down my money and watch it from beginning to end. Most of the time I went alone. I might have seen it eight or ten times on the big screen during its run (not to mention numerous VHS, cable and broadcast TV viewings since) because I could not get enough of it. This collective need to experience it repeatedly turned Purple Rain into box office gold -- much to the surprise of its producers and the motion picture suits in charge.

Because more than anything else, Purple Rain is the story of triumph over adversity, which is something we all relate to and aspire to. And when Prince & the Revolution sing "Baby I'm A Star," we know that it's our own personal theme song. Years before the ubiquity of reality shows, we looked at Prince and projected ourselves onto that stage, in the spotlight, moving and grooving and being cooler than hell.

That idea was sexy enough to keep us all coming again and again.

And One Sword To Rule Them All: "Excalibur" (1981)

directed by John Boorman
Starring Nicol Williamson, Helen Mirren, Nigel Terry, Liam Neeson, Corin Redgrave, Cheri Lunghim with newcomers Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne, Neil Jordan and Ciaran Hinds

Excalibur, the Sword Of Power.

I watched Excalibur last night. I've seen it a handful of times since it was first released and it's one of those flicks where if it's on, I gotta watch it to the end. So involving and detailed is its whole mise-en-scene that I get swept into that world and have a hard time coming back out. It's a weird movie with its own distinct mood. Still, I'm never ready for it to be over.

I'd been fascinated by the King Arthur myth since I was a kid, beginning with Disney’s The Sword In The Stone, in which the kid Wart is tended to by a daffy Wizard and a talking owl (the same Disney universe of woods where, apparently, Aurora is being seen to by three daffy fairies before meeting her spinning wheel fate the next glen over, and beyond the next clutch of trees Snow White is tending to her dwarfs). In the animated fable, Wart falls into a river and is transformed by Merlin into a fish in order to learn a few life lessons before resuming his human form.

I loved that sequence as a kid; the idea that a poor anybody could experience magic and then be transformed into a king was transfixing for a fantasy-minded kid from the Bronx. The boy-as-fish scene -- in fact the entire Disney movie and title -- is taken directly from the first book of T.H. White’s opus The Once and Future King, a thoroughly detailed and deeply researched rendering of the King Arthur tale that I read in high school. The book gave me a deeper understanding of all the players in the Arthurian legend, their motivations, and the ultimate tragedy that befell them all.

Excalibur pulls from that source but more directly from the 15th century Thomas Malory classic Le Morte D'Arthur, which I have never read. In my estimation, Excalibur is one of the best contemporary screen adaptations of that story. It retains both the folksiness and the grandeur of the legend, but also the abiding sadness of a world lost through the folly of man himself. All of that is due to the off-kilter but brilliant world view of director John Boorman. But while I live for this kind of artsy approach, the critics panned Excalibur when it arrived in theaters.

I saw Excalibur soon after its April 1981 release in Boston with a Cape Verdean guy I had just begun seeing. We were crazy about each other. We were young and there was a desperate, star-crossed lovers aspect to our relationship since I was graduating from college within the month and returning to New York, while he had no plans to go to college or ever leave Roxbury. Every moment we spent together had a dramatic urgency and perhaps this lent to the initial romantic impact of the film on my senses.

The spellbinding Excalibur is a cinematic dirge, mourning the loss of a world that was both more magical and more noble than ours. There is a pageantry about the film, a surreal, distant quality to it that is the embodiment of myth. Each shot is gorgeously composed in exquisite, painterly detail to serve as an eternal tableau. The film has its excesses, to be sure: the lighting of the titular sword and the outre musings of Merlin can be over the top. But the story is not to be imagined as taking place in the natural world as we know it. History has already shown us that things will not end well; Arthur will be betrayed and outwitted even as he establishes the roots of a democratic thought system that remains the bedrock of the British and American judiciary today. Excalibur is impressionistic art. It's high opera captured on film.

Excalibur also features a number of British stars we will come to know well later in their careers – Helen Mirren, Gabriel Byrne, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Ciaran Hinds – but for the most part, they are all unknown to us and are treated as an ensemble. Even the actor who portrays Arthur (Nigel Terry) is an unknown quantity to Americans, so this adds to the sense that the viewer is being plunged into a strange history in which there are no star turns (none of that “with Sir Laurence Olivier as Uther Pendragon!” crap). The plunge is also enhanced by the fact that Boorman uses “Siegfried’s Funeral March” by Richard Wagner in the opening and throughout the film, to give the whole a distinctly operatic atmosphere, and by the fact that Excalibur has no opening credits other than title and a few lines about the setting. The audience is dropped front and center into a medieval land-rights battle between the armies of King Uther Pendragon and the Lord of Cornwall, mud and spittle flying, armor clanking, broadswords hefted, grunts and curses and horse whinnies fogging the night air.

Merlin: "I wish I didn't already know what's going to happen here (sigh)."


Merlin the magician is adviser to Uther. He is the fulcrum from which the storyline swings, as he knows all that will happen before it does and can summon otherworldly powers to his and Uther’s aid. Uther forms a truce with Cornwall after hours of bloody night clashes, and Cornwall invites him and his men to his castle for a celebration where Cornwall’s wife Igraine is bidden to dance for the throng. Mistake. Within hours of forging the truce, Uther is rudely salivating over Igraine and announcing his lustful intentions toward her, which gets him and his men thrown out of Cornwall castle. As Cornwall plans to take his battalion into the forest to dispatch Uther et al once and for all, Uther prevails on Merlin to aid him in his quest to screw Cornwall’s wife. Merlin does so against his better judgment, magically transforming Uther into the image of Cornwall so he can slip into the palace unchallenged and bed Igraine. As Uther sates his lust, the real Cornwall meets his death in battle with Uther’s men. (“He came, and he went,” said my witty date.)

Thus is the story set in motion, for Uther takes the now widowed Igraine to wife as her young daughter, the necromantically gifted Morgana, watches. Igraine gives birth to a son, but Merlin shows up to collect the child as part of the bargain he struck with Uther to bring him to Igraine in the first place. Baby Arthur is secreted away and give to Sir Ector to raise alongside his son Kay.

We next see the teenaged Arthur at the jousting tournament where the misplacement of Kay's sword leads to the pulling of the Sword In The Stone. Lines among the local knights are quickly drawn between those who believe that with the sword Excalibur in hand, Arthur is the rightful king of England, and those who think its hooey, and new battles are fought. Tutored by Merlin in wisdom and the natural magic that is dying out with him, Arthur proves to be an apt pupil and a harmonizing force among the different factions. But as soon as Arthur claps eyes on Guenevere (Lunghi) he's a bumbling goner, and though Merlin tries to get him to cool his jets the two are eventually married.

The story is well known by now. The only notes left to add are that Lancelot is here played by hot stuff Nicholas Clay, and it would be tough for any Arthurian chick to ignore him. Lance's armor is highly polished so as to appear blindingly white on the screen, thus telegraphing the goodness of his soul. He appears truly tortured over his love of Jen.

Boorman's own son Charley plays Arthur's wicked son Mordred, spawned when Arthur was tricked into laying with his own evil sister Morgana (Mirren). The film takes a truly icky turn when Mordred shows up, and also when poor Percival is tortured by Morgana on his quest for the Holy Grail.

Excalibur is not a perfect movie. But its images, musical moments, and ideas about justice, peace, faith, and the destiny of Man will haunt you afterwards. It goes to show why the story of King Arthur and the ideal of the Round Table has endured for generations.

"Begin Again" (2014) or, A Music Industry Fairy Tale

directed by John Carney
with Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levin, Yasiin Bey, Hailee Steinfeld





Finally made it down to Ye Olde Cineplex to take a gander at Begin Again, the new film by director John Carney, who helmed 2006's Once -- a film I haven't seen all of and which is apparently so charming that a Tony-winning Broadway musical of it was mounted.

My principle reasons for wanting to see it were 1) Its storyline has something to do with today's music industry, 2) Mark Ruffalo, 3) Mark Ruffalo, and 4) Mark Ruffalo.

Ruffalo had been acting for a decade by the time I really noticed him, in 2000's You Can Count On Me, where he played the sexy, rumpled, rebel ne'er do well brother to Laura Linney's uptight big sister. The role fits him well. He did a version of the sexy interloper in The Kid's All Right, and here he reprises that kind of character as Dan, the hard-drinking down-on-his-luck record label exec reeling from the break up of his marriage to Catherine Keener and being fired from the label he co-founded after a streak of bad signings.

Drunken Dan stumbles into an East Village open-mike night event -- where A&R men do occasionally discover great talent -- and hears the reluctant singer-songwriter stylings of Gretta, played by Keira Knightley. Gretta herself is mourning betrayal by her songwriting partner and longtime love Dave, a budding pop star (Maroon 5's Adam Levine in a smarmy turn) with whom she had traveled to New York on his label's dime to start ramping up his career. Morose Gretta is importuned by a busking friend to come to this show, so her half-hearted performance is a skidmark along her tucked-tail retreat home to London. While the audience at this NYC hip-pit is lukewarm to Gretta's skills, Dan has A Beautiful Mind-like power to hear all the fully-produced potential in Gretta's music and accosts her with the idea that they can make beautiful music together. The sequence of how he hears her music more fully produced is magical -- but also doesn't quite fit with the rest of the film's tone. Up to now Gretta has been a behind-the-scenes-kinda chick in Dave's universe, so she's is reluctant to alter her music or step out front, and certainly not with Dave, whose glory days as a Grammy-winning producer are significantly behind him. He admits that his clout to get anyone signed is severely diminished if not nonexistent.

Ruffalo's grizzled boy-charm comes into play and Gretta finds herself convinced to do something outrageous -- record an album of her songs live at various outdoor locales in New York City. It's an intriguing idea, though thoroughly impractical. The fun of the film is seeing how this improbability comes to life with a motley crew of musicians, a rigged traveling recording studio, an influx of cash from a Dan-friendly artist (Cee-Lo Green, in a picture-stealing cameo), some risky locations, and even a guest turn on guitar by Dan's precocious teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld of True Grit fame showing an unprecedented amount of thigh). The songs are pleasant and mildly thought-provoking, but not earth-shaking.

Knightley, dressed down here to represent your average bohemian girl singer, doesn't embarrass herself at the microphone but has little real star power as a performer in this role. (I was astonished to notice in the closeups how jacked up Knightley's teeth remain this far into her full-fledged movie-star trip -- but perhaps the small physical flaw is part of her appeal? She's so easy on the eyes I guess it doesn't matter that her teeth are triple-rowed up in there.) Knightley's Gretta stands up for the craft of music, just making songs for their own sake and not wanting to sell out for pop stardom. Cute, noble, even, but from my current window seat in the music biz, this looks exactly like that time-honored recipe for starvation that bedevils many a brilliant music creator.

Begin Again gets the finer details of the music industry wrong. For instance, one of the founding partners of a label -- here played by Mos Def (officially credited as Yasiin Bey) -- can't just "fire" his co-founding partner. And while the music industry of yore (1940s through the 1990s) is rife with music execs who boozed, drank, screwed, smoked, popped pills, flouted the rules and barely functioned in their jobs, today's trouble-beset industry has no room and no tolerance for money-sucks and fuck-ups like Dan. There is too much still at stake. And if you're going to go around the city recording live music in open-air venues -- already a nightmare for background and ambient noise -- make sure that the tech holding the microphone isn't simultaneously jumping up and down, stomping his feet, and screaming "Great!" before the track is over (as Dan does a few times).

What it gets right is the power of music itself to transform, to heal, to bond, and to uplift. The real golden threads of Begin Again, at least for me, begin with the recognition that for many creative folks, music is the lingua franca not only of artistic expression but of human communication. One's musical tastes do tell a lot about one. Trading lyrics and song titles is a form of language that many of my friends indulge in. Bonding over appreciation for certain artists or tracks can be an indelible connection. By listening to each other's iPods, Dan and Gretta draw even closer and forge a deeper understanding of the other's musicality. This is probably a spoiler: Some moviegoers may find it jarring or unrealistic that when Dave plays Gretta a new song he has written on his own during a solo trip to LA, she knows instantaneously that something is amiss in their relationship. I thought it was a great detail about their music and their communication style.

The movie also demonstrates the many ways in which music brings together people who might never have met or worked together in any other capacity. Looking at the performers that Dan and Gretta gather for her project is a perfect example. Another detail I like is that the film may take place in New York City, a classic setting for thousands of films and my home town. The director doesn't give us the glossy, high finance, fantasy corporate center New York, and neither do we get the gritty, dark, crime-ridden mysterious New York either. It's just everyday life here, the weird mix of funk, grunge, utility, surprise, art, retail, and workaday monotony that undergirds the soul of the city. It's brownstones and bodegas, cobblestones and fire escapes, fire hydrants and chain link fences, plate glass and cement. And of course people of all shapes and sizes who flock there to make music.

For about five minutes in the latter part of the film, we think that we're going to get a pat, Hollywood ending tied up with a Valentine red ribbon. That it doesn't happen feels far more real and true. The two main characters do begin again, and that new beginning could not have happened without their meeting. But their beginnings are facilitated by their connection, not the goal of it.

Like most fairy tales, Begin Again is a sweet film (despite all of Dan's cussing). If you're a music person like me it will restore or reaffirm your belief in music as a tonic to the soul.