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No CineVerse meeting on Jan. 2
Sunday, December 30, 2018
CineVerse will not meet on Wednesday, Jan. 2 due to the Oak View Center building being closed. We will meet instead on Jan. 9. Happy New Year!
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January/February 2019 CineVerse schedule posted
Sunday, December 23, 2018
There are exciting things afoot at CineVerse in the first 2 months of the new year. Check out the all-new CineVerse January/February 2019 calendar, available here.
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No CineVerse meeting on Dec. 26
It would be downright cruel to ask anyone not to enjoy the day after Christmas with their families. So stay home Dec. 26, folks--there will be no CineVerse meeting that day. We'll see you back at your friendly neighborhood film discussion group in early January 2019. Happy holidays!
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The ABCs of entertainment: Astaire + Berlin + Crosby
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Irving Berlin's tune "White Christmas" was, for more than 50 years, the biggest selling song of all time. That makes it all the more fascinating to go back and rediscover an often forgotten and overlooked Christmastime film, "Holiday Inn," in which the song made its debut. "Holiday Inn" may not be as fondly remembered as its remake, "White Christmas," but thanks to the collaboration of its three titan entertainers--Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and Berlin--it's got too much talent to tank. Here's our recap of this movie, as discussed at CineVerse yesterday:
WHAT DID YOU FIND MEMORABLE, NOTEWORTHY OR UNEXPECTED ABOUT THIS PICTURE?
- This film features a rare teaming of two heavyweight talents of this era: Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, both top in their respective fields for singing and dancing. This was the first movie Astaire had to take second billing for.
- It’s often shown at Christmastime, but Holiday Inn arguably isn’t much of a Christmas movie; it covers many other holidays and times of the year, and the plot doesn’t have much to do with Christmas.
- Speaking of plot, there really isn’t much “story” here at all. The narrative seems more like a bare skeleton on which to hold up 14 different Irving Berlin tunes and watch Astaire and Crosby do their thing.
- The movie plays like a wartime propaganda film, as was the case with many Hollywood movies released during World War II. We get a montage during one number that uses stock footage of FDR and military aircraft and naval ships meant to inspire patriotism and remind viewers of the serious context going on behind the scenes.
- This film includes a very dated minstrel show sequence, in which white actors appear in blackface to perform. Today, this number can stop the movie cold and stand out like a racist anachronism.
- It’s meta: Here, you have a movie within a movie, a song-and-dance show within a song-and-dance show.
- It’s important to consider this sequence in context. Blackface characters and minstrel show numbers were common and acceptable in many Hollywood musicals and films from the silent era through the 1950s; examples include Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer, Swing Time, Everybody Sing, and more.
- Some believe we shouldn’t gloss over our history, even the unpleasant parts or periods; instead, it’s better to know the truth, warts and all, and to use dated instances of racism and racial stereotyping as a lesson we can learn from or a teaching point to enlighten others about.
- Reel Club blogger Kate Bellmore wrote: “Films are like allegories; they reveal messages about value systems from the historical moment they are created in. Films tap into culture, capturing everything from the fashion to the ideology of the people who make it. Holiday Inn reflects its time, and its time was full of racial injustice. The film does not intend to call attention to race, but it does because race is a part of 1940’s culture. The film does not try and suggest a pro-white mentality, but it does because that was the mentality of the 1940’s culture. At its surface, the film intended to be a holiday treat for audiences, with a little pro-Allie support sprinkled in; however, consistently situated between the taps dances and the fallings in love, is the unequal treatment between the races in America during the 1940s.”
- White Christmas, a 1950s remake
- Blue Skies, which also features Bing singing “White Christmas”
- Easter Parade, which also features that song
- Several all-time classic Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals, including:
- Top Hat
- The Gay Divorcee
- Shall We Dance
- Follow the Fleet
- Carefree
No rust on this bike
Sunday, December 16, 2018
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We ain't talking 'bout the hotel chain, neither...
"Dames are always pulling a switch on you..."
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Long considered a noir masterpiece, “Laura” (1944) has a different kind of noir pedigree than most films of this subgenre. Parsing through these differences was part of the fun of last night’s CineVerse meeting. Here are the notes from that discussion:
HOW IS “LAURA” DIFFERENT FROM OTHER NOIR FILMS YOU’VE SEEN?
- It doesn’t always use established noir conventions or characters:
- Typically, a noir has a femme fatale, a spider woman who seduces and leads men into peril deliberately. Laura would appear to have these qualities based on the descriptions and memories of the men and women who recall her, but she actually turns out to be rather innocent, naïve and ordinary.
- The lead male in many of these movies is often a private eye investigator, not an actual police detective (the cops are often depicted as untrustworthy foils for or enemies of the gumshoe private eye or lead male character in many films noir). Points of view alter as the picture progresses: we get POVs from McPherson to Lydecker back to McPherson and then to Laura.
- Arguably, the secondary actors and the characters they play steal the show here: Dana Andrews as McPherson and Gene Tierney as Laura may be attractive, intriguing as a potential romantic couple, and generate our sympathies, but it’s Clifton Webb as Lydecker, Vincent Price as Shelby, and Judith Anderson as Ann Treadwell who are the most interesting and memorable.
- Per A Sharper Focus blogger Norman Holland: “McPherson behaves as no detective would, taking first one, then two suspects along while he questions other suspects. He leaves the murder weapon overnight in a potential victim’s apartment.”
- Ponder the fact that the narrator is actually dead—he’s telling a story in flashback, yet how is this possible if he’s been gunned down by McPherson?
- Consider that Lydecker is suggested as gay, yet is so possessive and jealous of Laura that he kills her.
- Roger Ebert posited: “Laura has a detective who never goes to the station; a suspect who is invited to tag along as other suspects are interrogated; a heroine who is dead for most of the film; a man insanely jealous of a woman even though he never for a moment seems heterosexual; a romantic lead who is a dull-witted Kentucky bumpkin moving in Manhattan penthouse society, and a murder weapon that is returned to its hiding place by the cop, who will “come by for it in the morning.” The only nude scene involves the jealous man and the cop.”
- Additionally, the dead woman comes back to life a little over halfway in the movie, and herself becomes a murder suspect—very unusual.
- We also get Vincent Price in a memorable non-horror role, also unusual; Price said this was probably the best film he ever acted in.
- Necrophilia: an unhealthy attraction for a dead woman
- Being controlled by fantasy or illusion: McPherson and Lydecker build up Laura in their minds as a kind of idealized form of female perfection; in reality, she’s not a femme fatale who purposely leads men into danger or an unapproachable sexual dynamo ice queen beauty; she’s rather normal and innocent.
- Pygmalionism: being in love with an object of one’s own creation, and the objectification of people into objects of art.
- Consider all the objets d’art littered throughout the film: the clock, sculptures, paintings, vases, and décor. These objects are beautiful but inanimate, exquisite but lifeless, like the supposedly dead Laura is.
- Holland wrote: “In creating Laura, Lydecker becomes Pygmalion, the sculptor-creator of classical myth. A worshipper of Venus (beauty), Pygmalion sculpted a Galatea so beautiful and wonderful that he himself fell in love with her. Venus graciously gave the statue life…Laura is Lydecker’s creation—a beautiful objet d’art. The thought of another man’s handling her drives him crazy.”
- Vertigo (also about a man who falls in love with a beautiful dead woman or illusion)
- Rebecca (also featuring characters haunted by a beautiful dead woman)
- Sunset Boulevard (also including a voiceover narration by a dead man)
- Pygmalion (a man crafting a woman to his idealized vision)
- Several classic films noir, including The Big Sleep, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Fallen Angel, the Maltese Falcon, and others
- Anatomy of a Murder
- Carmen Jones
- The Man With the Golden Arm
- Angel Face
- Fallen Angel
- Daisy Kenyon
Off off off off off off off Broadway
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Christopher Guest has a knack for lampooning wannabes, hacks, washed-up talents and struggling artists, as evidenced in his multiple mockumentaries. He showcases these deft skills quite impressively in his directorial debut, "Waiting for Guffman," which flew well under the radar on its initial release but has since become a cult classic that even spawned, ironically enough, an off-Broadway musical (!). Last evening, CineVerse evaluated this picture and came away with the following thoughts:
WHAT TOOK YOU BY SURPRISE ABOUT THIS FILM OR DEFIED YOUR EXPECTATIONS, GOOD OR BAD?
- This isn’t a laugh riot knee-slapper with a high yuks quotient. Instead, the comedy is more spaced out, often subtle or chuckle-inspiring versus guffaw-inducing.
- Roger Ebert wrote: “Guffman'' is not as insistently funny (as “This is Spinal Tap”), perhaps because it has a sneaking fondness for its characters ("Spinal Tap'' ridiculed its heroes with true zeal). The movie doesn't bludgeon us with gags. It proceeds with a certain comic relentlessness from setup to payoff, and its deliberation is part of the fun (as when it takes its time explaining the exact nature of the travel agent's plastic surgery). Some of the better laughs are deadpan.”
- The dialogue was often improvised, and that comic spontaneity benefits the movie.
- There isn’t one lead star or comedian; director Christopher Guest builds his mockumentary comedies with a stock company ensemble cast that often includes himself, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Catherine O’Hara, and Fred Willard.
- Unlike other comedies and mockumentaries, the tone of the humor is less sarcastic, caustic, offensive or outrageous. There are no body humor jokes, and we get no crude, lowbrow humor. And the characters are sympathetic and relatively down to earth.
- Critic James Berardinelli wrote: “Where Spinal Tap, like many parodies, relied upon acid humor and vicious barbs to generate laughter, Waiting for Guffman is a much gentler creation. This movie can be considered an affectionate satire, because, while it pokes fun at small-town America and high school stage productions, it also offers up a heartfelt homage to them.”
- On the other hand, you could make a case that Guest delights in humiliating his characters here. Bluray.com reviewer Michael Reuben wrote: “Guest specializes in characters so wrapped up in personal obsessions, and so lacking in self-awareness, that they can't see how ridiculous they've become. There's a streak of cruelty running through his work, as characters routinely reveal too much for their own good on camera, but in his later efforts.”
- The title is a riff on the Samuel Beckett play “Waiting for Godot,” a name that makes you possibly think you’re about to see some pretentious, intellectual, elitist entertainment.
- It feels like an insider’s story; the characters, as well as the filmmakers, convey a knowledge and passion for off-Broadway theatrical life and the politics of putting on a play. Put another way, although this is a fictional and exaggerated comedy, it feels credible and plausible.
- Serendipity and parallelism: Corky is like the town’s founder in that both, it is suggested, follow the wrong path; the 150th anniversary musical is akin to the East-to-West expedition; the community thespians are like the earlier travelling settlers; and “California’s promise of riches has become Mork Guffman- Broadway producer and embodiment of a life outside of Blaine,” according to the blog Little Kicks Dance.
- Redemption: Corky, a washed-up Broadway wannabe, is getting his second chance.
- Small-town America can be both worthy of ridicule and charming thanks to its real everyday people.
- Unrealized dreams, which is a hallmark theme of Guests’ films
- This is Spinal Tap
- Best in Show
- Take the Money and Run and Zelig
- Borat
- What We Do in the Shadows
- The Producers, especially the “Springtime for Hitler” musical
- The SCTV television program
- Best in Show
- A Mighty Wind
- For Your Consideration
Femme fatale fantastico
The Guff-man cometh
Sunday, December 2, 2018
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