Kevin's Digital Week 13: Studio Canal Trio, Majestic Zinn History

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 15 February 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

The Studio Canal Collection—Contempt, The Ladykillers, Ran
(LionsGate)
For its first American Blu-ray releases, France’s Studio Canal has chosen three classics from three eras: Alexander Mackendrick’s blackly comic The Ladykillers (1955), Jean-Luc Godard’s bleakly comic Contempt (1963) and Akira Kurosawa’s black, bleak war drama Ran (1985). While the films themselves are superb—The Ladykillers features the incomparable Alec Guinness, Contempt grandiosely demonstrates Godard’s love-hate relationship with Hollywood, and Ran, among Kurosawa’s grandest epics, poetically shows man’s inhumanity—the Blu-ray releases are not a grand slam.

There are generally satisfactory transfers: although Ran and Contempt have less-than-stellar visuals, The Ladykillers has been superbly restored. Among the plentiful extras providing important contextual information about each film are a Daniel Day Lewis-narrated documentary about Ealing Studios, Forever Ealing, that’s the best Ladykillers bonus; One Upon a Time There Was...Contempt, which brilliantly explores Godard’s classic film; and several Kurosawa featurettes on Ran give a good overview of a remarkable career. A promising Blu-ray start from Studio Canal and LionsGate. 

DVD of the Week

The People Speak
(A&E)
This unlikely but triumphant dramatization of the late Howard Zinn’s popular A People’s History of the United States is a gripping account of how our country was shaped by ordinary people: those whose voices are ignored in most history books. Filmed at Boston’s historic Majestic Theater, The People Speak is narrated by Zinn (who recently died at age 87) and includes stars of stage, screen and music—from actors Kerry Washington, Kathleen Chalfant, Rosario Dawson, Josh Brolin, Danny Glover and Matt Damon to singers Bob Dylan, Eddie Vedder and Bruce Springsteen—all proclaiming the immortal words of dozens of unheralded patriots over the course of several centuries of American history. 

Of course, an event like this will generate more cries of “Hollywood elites/liberals rewriting history” — and there are moments of foolishness, such as Zinn disparaging Abraham Lincoln with an out-of-context comment about his wanting to save the union without freeing any slaves. Still, The People Speak is memorable viewing for anyone interested in American history. Extras comprise short backstage glimpses and interviews with Zinn, performers and audience members.

Traratino's "Inglourious Basterds" Draws Guilty Laughs and Massive Praise

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 12 February 2010 21:46

Written by Lloyd Carroll

Inglourious Basterds
directed by Quentin Tarantino
starring Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Bruhl, Diane Kruger

Like a lot of baby boomers, director/writer Quentin Tarantino grew up watching such World War II action flicks as Where Eagles Dare and The Dirty Dozen as well as lighter (and these days politically incorrect) fare about the great war on TV, such as McHale’s Navy and Hogan’s Heroes.

Tarantino has always enjoyed mixing over-the-top violence and guilty laughs and done so in the form of acts from a play. He gets to do all that in his latest screenwriting and directorial effort, Inglourious Basterds -- a movie whose title will drive those who write about it nuts because of the deliberate misspelling. (There's a '70s Italian war film with a name translated to The Inglorious Bastards which inspired this film but didn't serve as the source material).

Tarantino doesn’t hide the fact that his tale is complete fiction -- a total fantasy not based in any WWII facts. Inglorious Basterds is the nickname for a band of American guerrillas who kill Nazis in occupied France just before the D-Day invasion. Most of the “basterds” are American Jewish soldiers, who have a deeply emotional stake and are led by a suave, wisecracking commissioned officer from Tennessee, Aldo Raine (Pitt).

Pitt plays Aldo much the way the late Bob Crane played Col. Hogan, except that his character has an exaggerated “good ol’ boy” accent and a thirst for grisly violence and retribution which befits a Tarantino protagonist. When a Nazi is captured we watch Raine’s joy as he either cuts his scalp off, supposedly like an Apache warrior (the Germans refer to him as Aldo the Apache), or carves a swastika into the scalp of the few prisoners he lets survive.

As with other Tarantino films, there are several storylines in addition to the main one. The key secondary plot involves a Parisian movie theater owner, Emmanuelle Mimieux (Laurent) whose real name is Shosanna Dreyfus. Shosanna managed a miraculous escape from the French countryside years earlier when her family was massacred by a Gestapo unit led by the heinous Col. Hans Landa (Waltz). She wants to live in Paris without drawing needless attention to herself, but circumstances intervene when a dashing German war hero, Fredrick Zoller (Bruhl), falls in love with her.

Then there is Bridget von Hammersmark, a British spy modeled on Hitler’s love interest Marlene Dietrich and played by rising star Kruger. Her character obviously brings a bit of sex appeal to this war film, and it turns out that she is the glue that holds the disparate plot threads together.

The cast of Inglourious Basterds is superb, and Pitt reminds us why he is the top leading man in Hollywood today. Nonetheless, the best performance is turned in by Waltz, who puts you on the edge of your seat as the SS chief in France. Waltz’s Landa is sophisticated — he can speak five languages — urbane, charming and icily diabolical. He does for Inglourious Basterds what Ralph Fiennes did for Schindler’s List when he portrayed SS concentration camp commandant Amon Goethe.

It would have been an injustice if Waltz hadn't been nominated for a supporting actor Oscar, and even though the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are not usually Tarantino fans, he's likely to win and there are bets that this film -- nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture and Directing -- may be a spoiler in this year's race.

Return to "Memphis," Musically

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 12 February 2010 21:38

Written by Lloyd Carroll

Memphis
Book and Lyrics by Joe DiPietro
Music and Lyrics by David Bryan
Directed by Christopher Ashley
Starring Chad Kimball, Montego Glover, J. Bernard Calloway, Michael McGrath

Although the city of Memphis was located in the heart of the Deep South where segregation was the order of the day, many white Memphians had a deep appreciation of rhythm & blues music. Sun Records' head Sam Phillips knew that there was a market for a hybridization of country music and rhythm and blues that would soon come to be known as rock & roll. Phillips would go onto sign such rock legends as Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, yes, Elvis Presley.

It would have been great had the play Memphis been a Broadway musical recounting of the Sun Records story. Alas, it is not. Instead, Memphis is a fictionalized version of how rock & roll grew out of what white Southerners called “race music” back in the late '40s and early '50s. As a result, we have to endure two hours watching the doomed interracial romance between Huey (Kimball) and Felicia (Glover).

Huey Calhoun is a junior high school dropout and a functional illiterate who has a love of gospel music and the fast-paced music that comes out of Delray’s Underground club on Beale Street every evening. After weeks of listening to these magical melodies outside the club, Huey works up the courage to enter. While the club owner, Delray (Calloway) appreciates this white man’s love of his music, he is somewhat incredulous at Huey’s pledge to make hit records out of it. He is also less than sanguine over Huey’s romantic interest in his sister, Felicia, who is an engaging chanteuse.

Huey eventually talks his way into a tryout a major Memphis radio station where Perry Como is considered cutting edge. As soon as he closes the studio door, Huey ditches anything considered clean-cut in favor of the music that he hears at Delray’s, including that of his infatuation, Felicia. The station manager, Mr. Simmons (McGrath), of course wants to fire him on the spot, but reconsiders when the phones start ringing off the hook, requesting more of the music that he is playing. Simmons can’t understand why teens like it but he does appreciate the fact that high ratings mean big bucks for his station.

Kimball plays Huey as a cross between such folksy populist commentators as Will Rogers and John Henry Faulk and that paragon of simplistic southern virtue, Gomer Pyle. It is funny for about 20 minutes but starts grating after that. Kimball’s happy-go-lucky simpleton act also detracts from the plausibility that Felicia, a beautiful, bright lady, would ever fall for this country bumpkin. Aside from their different backgrounds, Felicia can’t wait to get out of Memphis and go to New York while Huey enjoys being a big fish in his little pond.

Memphis is far more enjoyable when the dialog stops and the singing and dancing starts. Thankfully there are plenty of terrific original numbers, all of which were composed by Bon Jovi founding member and keyboardist, David Bryan. Among the memorable toe-tapping tunes here are “The Music of My Soul,” “Scratch My Itch,” “Everybody Wants To Black on a Saturday Night,” “Change Don’t Come Easy,” and “Steal Your Rock ’n’ Roll.”

It seems ludicrous that Presley’s name is not mentioned once during this show. It didn't seem coincidental that Memphis opened on Broadway just a few months before what would have been the 75th birthday of Memphis’s most famous resident. Incidentally, Legacy Records -- which controls Elvis’s RCA catalog -- is planning a four-disc, 100-song box set to mark the occasion.

Memphis
Shubert Theater
225 West 44th Street
Between Broadway and 8th Ave.
New York, NY

opened Oct. 19th, 2009