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Remembering Mike Wallace

Anath White

News that the incomparable journalist Mike Wallace has died brought back a story. In a life filled with remarkable and dramatic events, it is perhaps among the most memorable but little told. It happened in Iran in 1981.

In early 1979, the Iranian Revolution burst upon the world, forcing out the widely-hated, long-serving despot, Shah Reza Pahlavi, and bringing the exiled Islamic fundamentalist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power. Anger at America, whose policies had supported the Shah and interfered in Iran’s politics for decades, was widespread, as thousands of Iranians demonstrated daily in the streets, and Khomeini denounced “the Great Satan.” That November, revolutionary students stormed the American Embassy in search of C.I.A. files, taking the 52 staffers present hostage. It was a siege that would last a seemingly infinite 444 days, becoming an American sensation on the nightly news (ABC’s “Nightline” was created to cover “the Iran hostage crisis”), and profoundly influencing the outcome of the 1980 Presidential election.

The Boulevard of Broken Manhood

Omer M. Mozaffar

I have long had trouble enjoying live sporting events, concerts, and stage shows for three reasons. First, I would tire from watching the show from one single angle. Conditioned by movies, I need the variety of angles, the intimacy of close-ups and the sweep of tracking shots. Second, live events will never have the polish of a polished movie. And, third, (more applicable to large stage shows) the dialogue is always too enunciated and thus distant, even when it is “realistic.”

Is a reasonable doubt unreasonable?

Gerardo Valero

The dissection of a real life legal case from every possible point of view may be the main subject from Barbet Schroeder’s “Reversal of Fortune” but the heart of the film unquestionably resides in one of the most amazing acting performances in the history of cinema: Jeremy Iron’s portrayal of Claus Von Bulow

The real Von Bulow was indeed convicted to a thirty year term for the murder of his socialite wife Sunny, played by Glenn Close, but the movie, without taking sides, does make it clear that his sentencing was somehow influenced by the court of public opinion in which everybody believed Claus was guilty, he had to be, he certainly seemed like a man guilty of something.

Allenville: A nice place to visit

Michał Oleszczyk

Judging from the overwhelmingly tepid critical reaction that “To Rome with Love” has been getting since it opened in Poland, European film critics seem to take offense at what they describe as glossy, superficial way of presenting their continent in Woody Allen’s recent movies. I know a Spanish film buff who hated (hated, hated) “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” as well as a Parisian who despised “Midnight in Paris.” Clearly, there’s something about the way Allen shoots European cities that many of their natives object to. They hate how prettified and inane their stomping grounds look on the screen (mere sightseeing folders, they say). And yet they never minded when New York was getting the same kind of Allen treatment back in the day. It seems we’re much more comfortable with mythologizing someone else’s home than we are with other people sprinkling glitter on ours.

Varieties of Leaves of Grass

As far as I know, “a mixed bag” is a negative expression, but I think that is an appropriately positive one in case of “Leaves of Grass” (2009) for its seemingly disjointed combination of crime story and philosophy. The movie throws such discrepant stuff into its plot that it could actually make a good shopping list: Latin, marijuana, Socrates, crossbows, poetry, bongs, Heidegger, family, catfish, Whitman, parallel lines, menorahs, swastikas, murder, and so on.

Taking the Plunge

Michał Oleszczyk

Some tricky music rights issues finally got resolved, and so Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Deep End” is back on the map, and with a recent run at Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek under its belt to prove it. A legendary specter for years – lusted after but near-impossible to track down and watch – it now arrives as part of the adventurous BFI Flipside series in a lush DVD/Blu-ray edition that will have you gasping equally at Jane Asher’s copper-red coiffure and John Moulder-Brown’s baby blue eyes (the latter firmly fixed on the former throughout the movie).

A beaten-down soul keeping her family intact

There was a moment in “Winter’s Bone” when I felt sheer horror triggering my heart to thump in loud heavy beats. A moment more haunting and terrifying than anything I’ve seen all year. Not since the gas station scene in “No Country for Old Men” and the French vanilla ice-cream desert in “Inglourious Basterds” have I held my breath for so long. It is what I like to call a pulse-raiser scene, one of those moments when you really want to look away but you simply can’t because you care too much for the victim. 

Happiness is a good father

Omer M. Mozaffar

Every semester, I ask my students this one simple question. “Can you honestly say that you are happy?” In a class of 40 students, maybe only six will raise their hands. And that is pretty sad.

Are they plagued by those uncertainties of youth? Are they wondering if they will find a career, love, or meaning? Are they terrified by the threats of terrorist attacks, financial collapse, climate change and, well, the Apocalypse? Or, have they decided that the “American Dream” was not Thomas Jefferson’s vision, but is instead a sappy Hollywood fantasy? Or, maybe they just hate my class? Sure.

In answering this question, Gabriele Muccino’s “The Pursuit of Happyness,” takes many usual directions that Hollywood movies take. At first, he seems to answer the question the way we would expect a Hollywood filmmaker to answer:

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Charlie Schmidlin

A man suited to expression but made to court contrition instead, the Georgian-born director Sergei Parajanov posed within his all-too-scarce filmography — beginning with 1951’s short “Moldavian Fairy Tale” and ending with 1988’s “Ashik Kerib” — a complete dichotomy of artistic vision and personal reality. His interpretations of the natural world’s rhythms are distinctly his own, utilizing punctuations of artifice to decorate exquisite portraits of little-seen cultures set during the 18th-century. But his most critically acclaimed films, such as the tableaux-heavy “Color of Pomegranates,” likewise garnered attention from Soviet authorities, and landed him outlaw status and even prison sentences with increasingly ludicrous accusations. Along with “Pomegranates,” his 1964 drama “Shadow of Forgotten Ancestors” also fell at the center of controversy surrounding Parajanov, but in its blistering Shakespearian romance based on Carpathian folklore, the film offers an illuminating side to the Armenian director’s aesthetic, and a perfect introduction to his stunning body of work.

“Unforgiven” was Eastwood’s turning-point

Gerardo Valero

Clint Eastwood is one of the few filmmakers whose work I always attend on his reputation alone. This is not to say they’ve been classics (think of his orangutan movies) but when entering a theater I can be reasonably confident, worst case scenario, of seeing something above average.

Eastwood has had several defined periods, such as his Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and the cop pictures of the 70s and 80s (which arrived a bit late here in Mexico because “Dirty Harry” was censored). In a career that spans five decades and included dozens of features, a single splits it into Pre and Post, and that film is “Unforgiven.” It’s hard to think of a single feature that puts into perspective a filmmaker’s career like this one does for Eastwood, and it opens the door to his current stage which has included some of his best work.

Uncle Boonmee as a video installation

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest movie “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” scored some points from me at the beginning. After the enigmatic opening sequence featuring a cow and the jungle shrouded in strange atmosphere, the following sequence with a car going along some country road drew my attention. The land was different, the trees and plants surrounding the road were also different, and the climate was also different, but the mood was somehow familiar to me.

It was not different from what I remember from our family’s occasional short journey to my grandmother’s country village. We also went there by a car, we also went along a paved country road, and I used to pensively look at the landscape outside car while a little bored in backseat.

The Caustic Cruelty of Remorse

Omer M. Mozaffar

I find it easy and necessary to forgive the sources of my wounds. Most of them. I find it impossible, however, to forgive others for wounds inflicted upon my loved ones – especially my friends, siblings, children, and parents – even when the victims themselves are forgiving. But, most of all, I’m often imprisoned by my own remorse for the real and perceived impact my choices have had on others. Remorse is a vicious debt collector that knocks on the door to my heart on its own erratic schedule. Such is the case with Will Smith in Gabriele Muccino’s “Seven Pounds” (2008).

A suicide fights for his life

On his last day on the job, John Ottway sits in a bar full of workers. Most are involved in a violent brawl, but he sits alone isolated and unbothered by his surroundings. His sad eyes seem lost in thoughts of hopelessness. As he walks out in the cold mist to a remote spot, we learn of a suicide letter he’s written to the wife who left him. Ottway holds the barrel of a rifle in his mouth and closes his eyes, ready to pull the trigger. The unlikeliest of signs makes him remove the rifle, the howl of a wolf in the dark.

Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey” tells the ironic story of a suicidal man who ends up fighting for his life after a plane crashes into the wolf-infested wilderness of Alaska. I don’t know about you, but the first half of that sentence interests me more than the second half.

The Devil and Daniel Webster

Like many tales about the good vs. the evil, the evil mostly steals the show from the good in “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1941), a cautionary moral tale based on Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story which is sort of a New England version of the tale of Faust. Though it was made 70 years ago, the movie remains as a darkly enjoyable movie with the wonderful moments that can both amuse and chill us with the subtle creepiness pervading its rural background. Sure, we are happy to see the soul of an ordinary American luckily saved from the eternal damnation in the end, but, folks, can we deny that we had a fun with Mephistopheles before the obligatory finale?

Dear M. Night Shyamalan

Omer M. Mozaffar

I hope this letter reaches you with the best of health and spirits. I am reaching out to you not only because I loved your movies, but also because we are of the same generation of Desis. We migrated here with our parents during that first huge wave some forty years ago and now we are both (perhaps in self-perception) regular middle-aged guys from big cities experiencing the next phases of our lives. I am sure that many of your childhood experiences paralleled mine, both in school playgrounds and in our private imaginations. In some ways, we are peers; in some ways I admire your work. The fact that I am writing this letter implies that I am concerned about a progression that seems to be taking place in your films.

The fate of the Jerryphile

Scott Jordan Harris

I love Jerry Lewis. I love Jerry Lewis so much that I have a friend who, whenever I mention Lewis online, sends me the simple two word message “Rupert Pupkin”. That, of course, is the name of Robert De Niro’s deranged wannabe in Martin Scorcese’s “The King of Comedy”. Pupkin is so obsessed with Jerry Langford, the comedian played by Jerry Lewis, that he kidnaps him and takes his place on his talk show.

Mapping Out the Line

Michał Oleszczyk

Terrence Malick’s return to movie-making in 1998, preceded by a twenty-year period of largely mysterious retreat, was a tremendous event, the result of which – “The Thin Red Line” – exceeded any expectations one might have had at the time. I can still recall four consecutive evenings in early 1999, when I watched the movie repeatedly at the local cinema in my Polish hometown of Tarnowskie Góry. The first screening was so moving, I felt entranced and compelled to come back the next evening – and the next, and the one after that.

Mogul seeks employment. Will work from home.

Steven Boone

Those dudes over there in Ho’wood have no idea what makes a movie that the people will fall in love with, only how to front-load some lackluster ideas with massive budgets, multimillion-dollar print and advertising blitzes, and lame distractions like 3-D in lieu of good stories or capable storytelling.Just as all it would take to get truly progressive social policies on the table are public officials who aren’t spineless or sociopathic, all the movies need is a creative executive who makes the sane calls, pushes for real ideas instead of bait-and-switch schemes gleaned from the advertising industry.

Pre-1966 Ho’wood (aka Hollywood) was full of such moguls. For all the racism, sexism, jingoism, and general dizziness that marks Hollywood history, it must be said that the businessmen who ran the show early on were at least in touch with audiences and filmmakers, not just baiting them with barrels of cash and empty promises of “awesomeness.” (We live in the Awesome Age, where every scrap of popular entertainment is calculated to knock you down on your ass at every instance. The general effect, though, is similar to watching a hyper kid’s melodramatic “death” during a round of cops-and-robbers. “There is nothing so boring in life, let alone in cinema, as the boredom of being excited all the time”–Anthony Lane.)

Gerardo Valero of Mexico City discusses “The Godfather: Part III”

Gerardo Valero

I was born October 1° 1962 in Mexico City where I currently reside with my wife Monica. I have a degree in Architecture and a MBA from IPADE here in Mexico. My interest in movies started at a very young age as my father used to take me and my brothers to double or even triple features at our neighborhood theater.

I mostly remember seeing Tarzan movies and Disney classics though mostly we watched a lot of forgettable war and cowboy movies which I once feared would make me dislike cinema but on the

Life beyond Rationality and Compassion

Omer M. Mozaffar

Have you ever been hit so hard that you’ve been left in a permanent daze? I’m speaking of a defining event that, in a matter of moments, changes everything for you, permanently. Maybe it’s a collision. Maybe a life event like a tragedy or a divorce. You’re at the epicenter of the calamity. The destruction hits you right between the eyes. And while you make sense of what hit you, if you ever do, your loved ones bear the brunt of the hurricane that you become. Like a set of ripples, it realigns everything you do. Peter Weir’s “Fearless” 1993 shows us the effect of a plane crash, and tells us that when we get hit with such cataclysms, no single way resolves the trauma.