Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality. That much we already knew. What I didn’t expect to discover after viewing “Game Change,” a new HBO film about the 2008 McCain campaign, was how much sympathy I would feel for Palin, and even more for John McCain.
I saw “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” for the first time in a defrocked Lutheran Church in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, which Milos Stehlik had taken over for his newly-born Facets Multimedia. “It is a film you must see,” he told me. “Bring a pillow. The pews can get hard.”
I saw a great film, one of the greatest ever made. An essential film. In 1999, I made it one of the first titles in my Great Movies Collection. Now I wonder if I really saw it at all.
When April with its sweet showers brought flowers to the lawns of May and birds filled the air with melodies, Dan-Dan the Yo-Yo Man made his annual pilgrimage to our playground at St. Mary’s School. He drove up in a dark maroon 1950 Hudson we all recognized on sight: It had the Step-Down Ride that allowed it to out-corner Fords and Chevys at the stock car races out at the fairgrounds. To own a car like that was to be a Duncan Yo-Yo professional.
Dan-Dan dismounted on the far side of the big Hudson, and when he walked into view there were already two Yo-Yos spinning in the air before him, making a whirl of red and yellow. He walked smiling toward home plate, let the yo-yos bounce off it, and snapped them on the fly into his pockets. He took out one, and rocked the baby, walked the dog, skinned the cat, made the monkey climb the string, and went around the world. Then he pulled out a Camel, lit up, and passed out flyers for the city-wide Duncan Yo-Yo contest that would be held on the stage of the Princess Theater on Main Street in Urbana for the following three Saturdays.
This is the best of times and the worst of times for the kinds of films we here in this blog find ourselves seeking. I’m talking about good independent films–which usually means films financed, released and marketed outside the big distribution channels. That’s a vague category which might also include foreign films, documentaries and classic revivals. These are the films where the future of film as an art form resides.
I have nothing to say against mainstream movies, the kinds that open on thousands of screens and are the only movies most people ever hear about. I like a lot of them–too many some of my readers say. They fend nicely for themselves. Sometimes they can be genuine art. Good for them.
I speak instead of films that make their own way in the world, inhabiting those few theaters that are booked with taste and independence. Or films available only on DVD. Or films finding their largest audiences at festivals. Or playing in video in demand. Or rediscovered after some years. Or lost.
The way Michael Douglas and Oliver Stone explained it to me, modern Hollywood is doing the same thing modern Wall Street is: Trading for its own benefit, and not for the good of its customers.
“Let put it this way,” Stone said. “If you look at the figures at Goldman Sachs, 67% of their profit in 2008 came to their own house. They made most of their money for themselves and 11% for their customers. That’s a huge difference from
At noon Sunday, I attended a press screening of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” I returned to my laptop, wrote my review and sent it off, convinced I would be in a minority. I loved it, but then I’m also the guy who loved “Beowulf,” and look at the grief that got me. Now Indy’s early reviews are in, and I’m amazed to find myself in an enthusiastic majority. The Tomatometer stands at 78, and the more populist IMDb user rating is 9.2 out of 10. All this before the movie’s official opening on Thursday.
A great many Americans no longer believe in the separation of Church and State, and indeed deny it is a principle found in the Constitution. Yet the wording of the First Amendment is quite clear, and its importance to the founders is underlined by its being first. Certainly it was clear to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Claude Chabrol, who died Sunday, Sept. 12 at 80, was a founder of the New Wave and a giant of French cinema. This interview, which took place during the 1970 New York Film Festival, shows him at midpoint in his life, just as he had emerged from a period of neglect and was making some of his best films.
Claude Chabrol’s “This Man Must Die” is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There’s no doubt as to the villain’s identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).
Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.
I came across a statistic the other day that claimed only about ten percent of Americans have traveled outside their country. There is no reason for this. The recession is not an explanation; the survey was taken back when Bear, Sterns was still paying its rent. This is the richest and least-traveled of “developed” nations, and I have a feeling many Americans thank heaven every day that they have never had occasion to leave it.
But this will not be a column boasting about my travels to every continent except Australia and Antarctica, and how as a wee lad I saved up my 75-cent an hour salary and boarded a DC-6 that took me to London by way of Gander, Reykjavík and Aberdeen. No, not even though I just googled Antarctica and this is all I found on the page: “stu is a legend and the good guy has cheap sales.” That piece of internet vandalism, no doubt created by a friend of Stu’s, was authored (I somehow know) by an American [1] who has never walked three steps outside his own state–of mind. I am enlisting a cyber-posse to track him down and airlift him to the South Pole with a hooded sweatshirt bearing the legend “I’m With Stupid” and an arrow pointing to a penguin. We will leave him with two cans of Ensure and a match.
Not long ago I read an article about a new skyscraper charmingly named The Shard that will be the tallest structure in Europe. I posted it on my Facebook page, adding something like: “Great! Just what the London skyline needs!” A reader quickly commented that I was showing my age.
I only met Judith Crist once, but her career had an enormous role in shaping the world of the movie critics who followed her. She was the first full-time female movie critic for a big American daily newspaper, but set aside her gender: By her success and fame, she created jobs for movie critics where there were none before.
• Toronto Report #5
It’s little wonder Errol Morris and Werner Herzog are good friends. They have this in common: They make strange, brilliant films, and they have strange, brilliant minds. I’ve never had the pleasure of observing either one at those “round tables” they convene at film festivals to give a dozen critics the experience of sitting for a dozen minutes at the same table with a great person, and the opportunity to judge the great person’s ability to generate sound bites. I don’t even know if Errol does round tables to promote his films. But if he does, I’m pretty sure he would take the entire twelve minutes to answer the first question.
I was one of the allegedly three billion people watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on TV, and I think I received the intended message: China is here, big time. The scope, precision and beauty of the production was, you will agree, astonishing. The distinguished director Zhang Yimou was given $300 million and full rein of his imagination, and perhaps some of his background in opera was also useful.
The sheer size of the production was awesome. It said a lot for China, both positively and perhaps negatively. With the exception of the star pianist Lang Lang, a duet between Sarah Brightman and Liu Huan, and some featured dancers, the emphasis was not on individuals, but on masses of performers, meticulously trained and coordinated. What was your reaction to the opening spectacle of 2,008 drummers, creating waves and shapes of lights with their drums? Mine was amazement and pleasure. Also a reflection of the discipline and dedication of these unpaid drummers. You could see the little earpieces with which they apparently received cues; you could imagine the performance otherwise breaking down into chaos.
I think I may have just seen the 2010 Oscar winner for best foreign film. Whether it will win the Palme d’Or here at Cannes is another matter. It may be too much of a movie movie. It’s named “A l’origine,” by Xavier Giannoli, and is one of several titles I want to discuss in a little festival catch-up. Based on an incredible true story, it involves an insignificant thief, just released from prison, who becomes involved in an impromptu con game that results in the actual construction of a stretch of highway. At the beginning he has no plans to build a highway. He simply sees a way to swindle a contractor out of 15,000 euros. He is sad, defeated, unwanted, apart from his wife and child, sleeping on a pal’s sofa. What happens is not caused by him nor desired by him. It simply happens to him.
This is one of those movies that catches you in its spell. It’s a hell of a story. There’s a difference between caring what happens in a movie, and merely waiting to see what will happen. The hero, who calls himself Phillip, ends by bringing about an enterprise involving millions of euros, hundreds of workers and tons of massive earth-moving machinery, falling in love with the lady mayor, and becoming a good man, all without ever saying very much. I was reminded of Chance the Gardener In “Being There.” Phillip is shy, socially unskilled, inarticulate, apparently the opposite of a con man. To repeat: There is a true story involved here. Some facts are offered at the end. The highway, which which the workers essentially built on their own, with the con man as “management,” was completed on time, under budget and up to code.
I had no idea. For days I’ve been reading waves of messages from the lonesome, the shy, the alone, the depressed. Some who live as virtual hermits. Some who have few or no friends. Some who rarely speak with their families. Some who have never dated, or ever had sex. Some who consider it a good day when they never speak to anyone. Some who are sad to be alone. Some who are relieved. Some who can’t do it any other way.
Day after day these posts arrived after
Sometimes two films set up an uncanny resonance with one another. I saw two documentaries back to back. One filled me with hope and the other washed me in despair. They were both about the education of primary school children.
“A Small Act” centers on the life story of Chris Mburu, who as a small boy living in a mud house in a Kenyan village had his primary and secondary education paid for by a Swedish woman. This cost her $15 a month. They had never met. He went on to the University of Nairobi, graduated from Harvard Law School, and is today a United Nations Human Rights Commissioner.
This is a golden age for film criticism. Never before have more critics written more or better words for more readers about more films. But already you are ahead of me, and know this is because of the internet.
Twenty years ago a good-sized city might have contained a dozen people making a living from writing about films, and for half of them the salary might have been adequate to raise a family. Today that city might contain hundreds, although (the Catch-22) not more than one or two are making a living.
Film criticism is still a profession, but it’s no longer an occupation. You can’t make any money at it. This provides an opportunity for those who care about movies and enjoy expressing themselves. Anyone with access to a computer need only to use free blogware and set up in business.
What does it feel like to resemble the Phantom of the Opera? You learn to live with it. I’ve never concerned myself overmuch about how I looked. I got a lot of practice at indifference during my years as the Michelin Man.
Yes, years before I acquired my present problems, I was not merely fat, but was universally known as “the fat one,” to distinguish me from “the thin one,” who was Gene Siskel, who was not all that thin, but try telling that to Gene:
“Spoken like the gifted Haystacks Calhoun tribute artist that you are.”
“Haystacks was loved by his fans as a charming country boy,” I observed.
“Six hundred and forty pounds of rompin’ stompin’ charm,” Gene said. “Oh, Rog? Are those two-tone suedes, or did you step in some chicken shit?”
The real Phantom: Lon Chaney in 1925
“You can borrow them whenever you wear your white John Travolta disco suit from ‘Saturday Night Fever,'” I said.
“Yeah, when are you gonna wear it on the show?” asked Buzz the floor director. “Enquiring minds want to know.”
“He wanted to wear it today,” I said, “but it’s still at the tailor shop having the crotch taken in.”
“Ba-ba-ba-boom !” said Buzz.
“Here’s an item that will interest you, Roger,” Gene told me one day, paging through the Sun-Times, his favorite paper, during a lull in the taping of our show. We taped in CBS Chicago’s Studio One, home of the Kennedy-Nixon debate.
“It says here, the Michelin Man has been arrested in a fast food court in Hawaii for attempting to impersonate the Pillsbury Dough Boy.”
I flew home from the Oscars to find half a dozen e-mails awaiting with the same unbelievable message: Variety had fired its chief film critic, Todd McCarthy. Its spokesman was hopeful Todd and its chief theater critic, David Rooney, who was also fired, could continue to review for the paper on a free lance basis. In other words, Variety was hopeful that without a regular pay check, McCarthy would put his life on hold to do a full-time job on a piecemeal basis.
Todd McCarthy reviewed films for Variety for 31 years. He was the ideal critic for the paper — better, we now realize, than it deserved. His reviews and the reviews of Kirk Honeycutt at the Hollywood Reporter were frequently the first reviews of a new film to see print. Honeycutt fortunately continues.
A newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine. When one croaks, get the hell out. The lengthening toll of former film critics acts as a poster child for the self-destruction of American newspapers, which once hoped to be more like the New York Times and now yearn to become more like the National Enquirer. We used to be the town crier. Now we are the neighborhood gossip.
The crowning blow came this week when the once-magisterial Associated Press imposed a 500-word limit on all of its entertainment writers. The 500-word limit applies to reviews, interviews, news stories, trend pieces and “thinkers.” Oh, it can be done. But with “Synecdoche, New York?”
Demise of the ink-stained wretch
Worse, the AP wants its writers on the entertainment beat to focus more on the kind of brief celebrity items its clients apparently hunger for. The AP, long considered obligatory to the task of running a North American newspaper, has been hit with some cancellations lately, and no doubt has been informed what its customers want: Affairs, divorces, addiction, disease, success, failure, death watches, tirades, arrests, hissy fits, scandals, who has been “seen with” somebody, who has been “spotted with” somebody, and “top ten” lists of the above. (Celebs “seen with” desire to be seen, celebs “spotted with” do not desire to be seen.)
