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In the US: Turner Classic Movies Shows Bernard Herrmann Movies in December

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
31 replies | jump to latest

It is December 5, 2020 as I post this, and Turner Classic Movies is running a promotion in December. Once a week, on Wednesday evenings into late night (or maybe Thursday, I can check again)...they are running movies scored by Bernard Herrmann.

The promotion is called " Spotlight of the Month: Bernard Herrmann" and it is illustrated by a brief re-do of how his credit appears in (wait for it) ...Psycho: splitting apart, sliding into place, and splitting apart again. TCM gets it: when most movie folks think Bernard Herrmann, they think: Psycho.

And yet. A brief flash of clips on the commercial promoting Herrmann in the spotlight have clips from Citizen Kane and Jason and the Argonauts and Taxi Driver, too. A nice long run, Benny had(even if some of it was in exile after Hitchcock fired him.) In one match-up in the commercial, James Stewart rises upright and terrified in bed(from his nightmare in Vertigo) and..suddenly there is Anthony Perkins looking out from under furrowed brown with leer in the cell in Psycho. (Hey...if there's one SHOT in movie history that should have won the actor an Oscar, this is it.) There's also a quick shot of Tippi Hedren's head rising up and peeping out from the motorboat in The Birds.

I love how TCM mashes these clips together -- in the same "December" mash-up the Singin in the Rain trio dance over a couch and it starts to fall..and Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn finish the same shot in THEIR clip.

It looks like each week, they will cover Herrmann films in chronological order, for the most part. This last week they started with "The Devil and Daniel Webster"(Herrmann's only Oscar win), then Citizen Kane, then The Magnificent Ambersons...then On Dangerous Ground...then The Snows Of Kilimanjero.

I have not looked at the schedule, but I would assume that they'll get to the "Hitchcock Herrmann's" (one night, or two?) and the "Harryhausen Herrmanns" and then maybe finish up with "the new guys" (DePalma and Scorsese; Sisters, Obsession and Taxi Driver.)

Anyway, while I suppose they have run Herrmann marathons before...here's your chance in 2020 to take a nice long look...and have a nice long listen...to Bernard Herrmann. (With host intros and outros with all the Herrmann trivia.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And this:

"The Devil and Daniel Webster"(1941.) I watched this on TCM the other night, intrigued to hear this is the only score for which Herrmann won the Oscar. And he won over his OWN other score...a little something called Citizen Kane. I guess for Herrmann -- as for Hitchcock -- the Academy looked more warmly at these men in the 40s...they were "company town loyalists," worker bees. Hitchcock got a number of Best Picture nominations(and one win). And many Hitchcock actors were nominated (one win: Joan Fontaine for Suspicion.)

For Hitchcock, that ended came the fifties. Best Director noms for Rear Window and Psycho ONLY. NO Best Picture noms. And after Claude Rains for Notorious in 1946(Supporting) NO nominations for acting in Hitchcock movies save one: Janet Leigh in Psycho(Supporting, should have been Best Actress.)

This left movie history with the major snub of Anthony Perkins in Psycho, and a whole bunch of lesser snubbed Hitchcock performances: Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train; Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much; Vera Miles in The Wrong Man; Stewart, Novak, and Bel Geddes in Vertigo: Grant and Mason in NXNW(Grant coulda/shoulda won a "True Grit" like Best Actor Oscar for NXNW; a "career summary"); Perkins and Balsam in Psycho; Tippi Hedren in Marnie; Barry Foster and Barbara Leigh-Hunt in Frenzy(supporting.) But alas..none of them.

And back to Herrmann. That win for Daniel Webster, that nomination for Kane but...came the fifties, not even a NOMINATION for the classic scores of Vertigo and Psycho, or the equally great score of North by Northwest, not to mention the Harryhausen fantasy scores: Sinbad, Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts. A "new" Academy finally nominated Herrmann (posthumously) for Obsession and Taxi Driver in the same year but -- no wins.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Herrmann's "Daniel Webster" score and "Citizen Kane" score are good but I think they are hobbled by the sound recording systems of the 40s. The scores are tinny and small scale...it would take til the 50's and early 60's for Herrmann to produce the big, lush, sonorous and powerful Hitchcock and Harryhausen scores (less the purposely strings-only, weird and scary score for Psycho, an achievement unto itself -- the greatest scream score in movie history.)

I read that Herrmann did all sorts of experiments to give the Satanic tale of "Daniel Webster" its otherworldly feel. For instance, when "Old Scratch"(John Huston's dad, Walter) plays a mean fiddle at a barn dance, Herrmann superimposed four different fiddling sessions over each other, to given the Devil a superhuman musical prowess. Other parts of the score emphasized the otherworldliness of the project.

Briefly on the movie itself. We have Huston's Devil (rather an over-friendly Leprechaun who slowly turns evil) buy the soul of a young , broke , handsome farmer in exchange for 7 years of incredible wealth. Wealth corrupts the farmer. The Devil even supplies a temptress (named Belle) to make life a living hell for the farmer's "pure" wife -- up to an including stealing away the affection of her son.

The visual introductions of both the Devil and his temptress henchwoman Belle, are nifty matches of fantasic, overlit, over-clouded imagery and "air pockets of silence) -- Hitchcock's technique. And I couldmt help thinking of Walter Huston and Simone Simon(Belle) as forerunners of Ray Walston and Gwen Verdon in the much more fun musical Damn Yankees of 1958.

Eventually Daniel Webster himself(Edward Arnold) shows up to save the farmer's soul in a courtroom debate with the devil -- decided by a jury of "the worst of the worst in history." Can the silver-tongued Arnold prevail?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I won't tell, but this: at film's end, Huston's Devil looks through his black book of potential souls to be bought, and picks one. Then the screen fills with his face as Huston(Oscar nommed for this), contorts his facial muscles and eyebrows with painterly precision -- now thinking, now menacing, finally SMILING -- and points a finger directly out at US. One of us is his next customer.

Turner Classic Movies saw something here. On their "December movies" promotion commercial, they put a clip of Huston pointing at US here, right after Norman Bates smiling at US at the end of Psycho.

A lot of power in breaking the fourth wall in a scary way...

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Sounds like a lot of fun. Herrmann did scores for quite a few genuinely great movies as well as for many very fun movies. He's about as good a one-person trip through Hollywood as anyone.

Two other 'history of Hollywood' notes right now:

1. Fincher's Mank opens on Netflix this weekend (I'm watching tonight). Reviews so far have been a bit muted. I hate to say it, but maybe Fincher's entered the late-Spielberg (Lincoln, The Post) phase of his career where he's simply not choosing the most cinematic projects (the whole thing sounds very "ideal for a small-screen mini-series" to me).
2. Coppola's recut version of Godfather 3, with the bloated retitle "The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone" opened in a few US cinemas this weekend prior to streaming and blu-ray release next week. It's getting +ve reviews, e.g.,
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-godfather-the-death-of-michael-corleone-2020
Note that, bloated retitle notwithstanding, The Godfather Coda is 14 minutes shorter than the original Godfather 3.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Mank (2020):
Unfortunately I agree with the tepid end of the reviews Mank has been getting. The script by Fincher's late father has evidently been a passion project for Fincher for many years, and it's natural to surmise that Fincher's personal connection with the screenplay has blinded him to the script's lack of cinematicness or indeed genuinely interesting content.

The film covers none of the filming of Kane nor the actual battles over its release and reception, rather the whole show is Herman banished to the desert to dry out and write his legendary first draft of Kane together with flashbacks esp. to 1934 and 1937 to (often drunk) Herman's relationship with Hearst and Marion Davies and political crossed swords with Hearst that he draws on while writing. All of that stuff, however, is only semi-interesting in my view (even *if* you're a Kane fan or superfan). It's *less* interesting than the backstory of Mary Poppins's author in Saving Mr Banks, moreover that film had the good sense to cover a lot of the actual filming of Mary Poppins whereas (beyond the backstory) Mank focuses just on the writing of Kane's screenplay which is just *so* uncinematic.

Many of Fincher's decisions strike me as bizarre, e.g., there are lots of scenes at San Simeon. Now, SS is one of the most stunningly cinematic locales imaginable. It's at the top of a damn mountain rising out of a hauntingly windswept, largely treeless mid-coast landscape! Yet Fincher never conveys this or any other real sense of the place, its simultaneous loneliness and awesomeness. This omission felt like directorial malpractice to me. Fincher's Hearst is English actor Charles Dance, whose quite distinctive booming voice and clearly non-American accent distracted me immensely. Oldman's Herman Mank. doesn't have an accent problem but his impression of Jewish Amercian-ness never quite worked for me either. The Herman-Hearst scenes *really* don't work in my view - they're miscast acting exercises I'm afraid.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Numerous bits of Mank dialogue rubbed me the wrong way - your mileage may vary.

A real eye-roller for me: in 1930 newly arrived in LA (at Herman's invite) Charlie Lederer coyly tells Herman that - surprise! - he's got a local Aunt whom he's going to visit his first weekend in town. Herman says he might just come along, and, accompanied by all sorts drunken pratfalls on Herman's part, that happesn the next day. Bigger Surprise! - Lederer's aunt is the movie star, Marion Davies, notorious mistress to one of the most famous and powerful men in America, WR Hearst, and they'll be visiting her in San Simeon the most opulent and famous private residence in America. We're supposed to believe that:

(a) a super-Hollywood Insider like Herman (well aware of the power of connections in all of life really but especially in Hollywood!) would have *no* idea that Davies is his old NY buddy Lederer's Aunt!
(b) Lederer wouldn't mention the crucial information about his Aunt & Hearst as serious enticement to Herman to take the trip up the coast with him rather than relying on bender-prone and unreliable Herman just happening to decide to tag along for a weekend with an arbitrary relative in god knows where.

In other words, the whole thing just reeks of movie phoniness. My eyes rolled.

The film kinda, sorta knows that this is so. An insistently nudging, old-timey score in particular makes you feel a little bit like you're watching a '30s picture like Power and the Glory or The Front Page, and then these very movie-ish conceits like people withholding information for an improbable gag fit in with that. The meta-conceit that 'Herman's life was like one of his pictures didn't ya know?' isn't consistently followed and I didn't like it in any case. I don't need to have '30s Hollywood jollied up like that to be interesting to me. Grumble grumble. This script needed work.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

What of Mank (2020)'s Oscar chances? Is it Netflix's year for the big awards? Well, it's been a such a weird year that who knows what sort of competition there will be...but Mank is not nearly as good or interesting a film as The Irishman or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs or Roma or Marriage Story or Mudbound, and if those films couldn't shatter the streaming-glass-ceiling then I can't see Mank doing so, notwithstanding the weird year and the Academy's known weakness for Hollywood Insider tales.

In some ways even Sorkin's not especially interesting (e.g., not a single memorable shot - Sorkin only has editing ideas post-writing apparently) Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix this year too is a more successful picture than Mank is. At least it gets its casting right for example: Brits Eddie Redmayne and Sasha Baron Cohen play Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman respectively with great conviction, nailing their accents and specific ethnic vibes well. The actual content of Sorkin's story is inherently pretty interesting, and the flashback structure of the film is mostly pretty functional and unoppressive. And so on.

Another feature of Mank that rubbed me the wrong way: its image and sound has been very expensively degraded (e.g., adding reel change marks and soundtrack crackles and general tinniness) in the service of god knows what thesis about the content of the film (see my other comments about *this* idea). Yet the film's in wide-screen not Academy Ratio (4:3) let alone something even squarer. What gives? Too easy/cheap? Did Fincher not have the courage of his convictions? My phoniness spidey-sense is triggered big-time by this anomaly.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Thinking still further about Mank (2020) I find myself comparing its impact (or lack thereof) with the impact of another Netflix effort, Season 4 (Diana/Thatcher/1980s-focused) of The Crown. Season 4 of The Crown is far from perfect - e.g., it leaves out far too much that's crucial to the period in the UK for its Thatcher-side to be successful, see some notes I wrote on its board for details:
https://moviechat.org/tt4786824/The-Crown/5fb8fd77138bd7331338eb63/No-miners-strike?reply=5fc4e40527929119b5836e6b
*But* the show does score multiple powerful hits with performance, casting, at least 6 or 7 (out of 10) eps worth of really well-judged, interesting story-telling. Notably, Charles Dance who was a bust in my view as WR Hearst in Mank has a killer role (building on the previous season) in the first ep. of Season 4 as the doomed Lord Mountbatten.

Netflix never releases viewing figures but I'd guess they'll be seeing very clearly that Mank is being watched far less than the Trial of the Chicago 7 let alone Season 4 of The Crown. Hell, I wonder if it's even had the viewership that Welles's genuinely avant-garde The Other Side of the Wind got last year. If so then I say the viewers know what they're doing particularly when it comes to period stuff! Fincher is one of the most fastidious directors out there but his closeness to the material this time has led him astray in my view. His hundreds of takes can't make Mank's story cut any deeper than it does, which is not deep enough.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The NYTimes has been solidly in the tank for Mank (2020) over the last month, running fresh stories about it every couple of days. One recent article tried to put out one of the more damaging fires that has erupted around the film: that it peddles Pauline Kael's discredited theory that Welles's contributions to Kane's script were minimal. Two quotes from the article are especially interesting:

1. 'While [Mank Producer] Urbanski said that Kael’s argument had been discredited by historians, he added: “You could equally say that our film is 100 percent accurate if, and here’s the if, you accept that you’re looking at it through Herman Mankiewicz’s alcoholic perspective, because that changes everything.”'
2. 'To Fincher, the point of “Mank” isn’t who wrote what. He said through a representative: “It was not my interest to make a movie about a posthumous credit arbitration. I was interested in making a movie about a man who agreed not to take any credit. And who then changed his mind. That was interesting to me.”'

Urbanski offers a rationale for the film's, too cute by my lights, 'making Herman's life/world feel a lot like one of his movies'. But, seriously, why is Herman's broadly subjective experience of his (partial) authorship of a script a good topic for a film? Fincher's point is different: he keeps the putative content of the film objective but clarifies that the film's content is narrow: just the explanatory biography of how Herman first agreed to be an uncredited contributor (just the way he was for the Wizard of Oz for example) then after completing his first full draft decided he wanted a writing credit after all. But is that change of mind really that remarkable or interesting enough to support a whole movie? I don't think so.

Mank's producer & director are doing damage control, but the damage isn't that Mank embodies a discredited/disputed theory, it's that, whichever way you slice it, their movie doesn't have enough interesting content (it 'isn't a movie').

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

2. Coppola's recut version of Godfather 3, with the bloated retitle "The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone" opened in a few US cinemas this weekend prior to streaming and blu-ray release next week. It's getting +ve reviews, e.g.,
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-godfather-the-death-of-michael-corleone-2020

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I like how that reviewer cuts to the chase on the two "takeaways" from that movie: "Its not as good as the first two" and "Sofia Coppola isn't good in it." Fair enough -- I think for all of us, certain takeaways "lock in" and that's that, for years thereafter.

Of course, those are both correct. Sadly the easier one to jump on is Sofia Coppola. I've always made this connection: "Mean," though it may have been, Hitchcock always CORRECTLY cast his daughter Pat as the "dowdy one" (her comparison to Janet Leigh is rough and comical in Psycho -- "He was flirting with you, he must have noticed my wedding ring") , whereas Coppola gave his daughter a very major role(after Winona Ryder quit over exhaustion issues) and screwed up the story in a key way. When handsome Andy Garcia goes after Sofia "for love," he comes across as a male golddigger out to get into the Corleone family through the "plain" daughter. Oops.

But there were also issues with Sofia's acting ability, a certain callowness that -- ironically enough -- paid off surprisingly well in her final scene.

As to "not as good as the first two," well:

Half of Godfather II (the Robert DeNiro part) was in the NOVEL The Godfather, so really it took two movies to film the whole novel (less the trip to Vegas for gyno surgery.)

And: Godfather II came out less than three years after I, so it was from the same time and place. 1990 was a long ways away.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

My point of contention has always been that Godfather II is not really as good as the original. Audiences didn't think it was as good -- II earned less than half of I at the box office. But they both won Best Picture, and that's proof of Hollywood acceptance. (But hey, I also think that Chinatown should have beaten Godfather II for Best Picture.)

Since I believe that II isn't as good as I -- I tend to lump II with III, rather than lumping II with I. Capice?

II didn't have Brando or Caan(or Clemenza or Tessio for that matter), which weakened it. III doesn't have Brando or Caan OR Cazalle OR Duvall...which further weakened it. Interestingly III rather brings Talia Shire up to the front as a "murderous Corleone plotter" -- but also brings in Diane Keaton("weakened" by too many comedies at that point) and...she no longer fits the movie. IMHO.

One thing I love in Godfather III is that "Die Hard"--inspired helicopter machine gunning of the Mafia meeting in a penthouse room. It was like a nod to "80's action cinema" -- The Godfather adjusts.

Also, a couple of great murders at the end -- one via poisoned éclair(hello, Lucretia Borgia), the other via...a pair of eyeglasses turned into a knife with no gadgetry involved at all.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Note that, bloated retitle notwithstanding, The Godfather Coda is 14 minutes shorter than the original Godfather 3.

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Couldn't hurt. I understand that the opening sequences have been trimmed. And if there is less of Sofia Coppola...mo' bettah.

I'd like to note this:

One thing that was great about The Godfather ("I") was that it was a three hour "epic" that moved like wildfire, particularly after the long establishing wedding sequence. This was a welcome surprise to us youngsters who had been dragged to the interminable "art epics" Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago in the 60's..Coppola "re-wrote" how an epic could MOVE.

But then Godfather II returned us to that "art epic" quality with the overlong and artful DeNiro sequences. Critics raved(particularly about the "period detail") but to me it was like..."Oh, back to David Lean, huh?" And again: 1974 audiences weren't all that excited.

Godfather III rather went back to "The Godfather' for mob plotting, violence, and narrative pace, which made it "less" that the art epic Godfather II, but closer in SPIRIT to the original.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Mank's producer & director are doing damage control, but the damage isn't that Mank embodies a discredited/disputed theory, it's that, whichever way you slice it, their movie doesn't have enough interesting content (it 'isn't a movie').

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I enjoyed reading your takedown on Mank; I have an affinity for a "deep dive" into a topic, and well, Psycho is relevant ENOUGH here -- not that I think it has to be.

The relevance, I think, is in "the curse of the movie biopic" and here the comparison is(of course?) "Hitchcock" that 2012 misfire about the making of Psycho that was just barely ABOUT the making of Psycho. "Hitchcock" famously abused the famous Alfred-Alma partnership to put Alma IN CHARGE of everything , from casting, to directing the Arbogast murder, to writing "an ending that saves the movie"(what? the shrink scene?) and it just stood against anything in the public record. Hitchcock also included Alma's near romance with Whitfield Cook(which actually happened in 1950, not 1960) and, also famously, was forced NOT to film much at the famous house, or many the famous scenes, because Universal laywers wouldn't allow it.

But I digress.

But not so much, because it sounds like "Mank" has fallen prey to the same kind of "falsification of the facts" and conversion of what COULD have been an interesting story into something else. The dragging-in of a long lost controversy(Pauline Kael's take on Mank being the auteur of Citizen Kane) reminds us that Kael -- for all of HER fame -- was rather rapidly discredited as both a scholar and a maker of opinion on movies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I would expect, swanstep, that David Fincher is the main draw for you. As I recall you like his work. I like a lot of it, though I can't always remember all that he's done. Se7en seemed to "make" him, in its special look and its special feel and the screenwriter's horrific, heartbreaking twist ending. I find Zodiac to be a crystalline, perfect rendering of a time and a place that heads for a dead end ending (though, weirdly enough, on a recent Netflix re-viewing, I think I was wrong the first time: I think the identity of the Zodiac IS given to us, after all.)

Fincher crossed paths with Aaron Sorkin on The Social Network, one of the few Sorkin scripts that just didn't entertain me. All those kids either smarter than I'll ever be or richer than I'll ever be, and double-crossing each other. A hard watch.

Anyway, it would sound like Fincher did "Mank" mainly to honor his father and his father's script, which makes things...too bad. For the criticism the film is now receiving is really against the father, not the son -- and the son is to blame for exposing it.

I'll take a look at Mank sometime. Its Fincher after all.

Which reminds me: there is, on Netflix, I think, a really low budget black and white film called "Curtiz" that basically tries to cover Curtiz making Casablanca -- complete with Bogie and Bergman lookalikes -- and STILL doesn't get it right. Though a memorable scene of the middle-aged, unattractive Curtiz taking a phone call while schtupping a woman IN HIS OFFICE reminds us that "MeToo" was different in the 40s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In some ways even Sorkin's not especially interesting (e.g., not a single memorable shot - Sorkin only has editing ideas post-writing apparently) Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix this year too is a more successful picture than Mank is.

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Aha...so you finally took a look at The Trial of the Chicago 7.

I liked it as I like all Aaron Sorkin scripts(with the exception of the too-hard-to-watch Social Network): with a grain of salt that I'm being royally entertained by a writer who isn't REALLY that great at all, a bit too sitcommy even as I can't help but like the ping-pong bounce of his characters talks.

On my list of personal favorite films, I've given Sorkin scripts the honors three times -- Charlie Wilson's War, Moneyball, and Molly's Game -- almost entirely for the dialogue(as delivered by top notch, attractive actors.) Way back at A Few Good Men, I loved Nicholson in all three of his only scenes, and the dialogue, too. (The Nicholson-free scenes were a slog.)

But the "tells" are there, too. Sorkin too often has his characters mention their roots in their dialogue("I may be just the son of a Greek soda pop maker..." "I may be just the son of a postman...") and he flat out repeats himself ("If you had invented Facebook...you would have invented Facebook!" "If you were supposed to have Joe Smiths job ..you would have Joe Smith's job!)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Tarantino has singled Aaron Sorkin out as the best writer in Hollywood -- which I think means that QT knows Sorkin is actually Number Two(to QT.) But I must admit, both men write dialogue that is fun to hear, easy to remember and again -- usually delivered by The Best in the Business.

And...The Trial of the Chicago 7(directed, like only Molly's Game, by Sorkin himself) is ...business as usual. But with even MORE characters to bounce the dialogue around -- 7, in fact. Plus the lawyers. And the Judge.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

At least it gets its casting right for example: Brits Eddie Redmayne and Sasha Baron Cohen play Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman respectively with great conviction, nailing their accents and specific ethnic vibes well.

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Yes...except Tom Hayden in real life was much uglier than Redmayne -- and yet still bagged Jane Fonda as a wife. Proof positive that leadership and conviction can get you the hot chicks. And Hayden ultimately cheated on Fonda and got millions in the divorce action.

--
The actual content of Sorkin's story is inherently pretty interesting, and the flashback structure of the film is mostly pretty functional and unoppressive. And so on.

--

I thought the opening was fun, with the fast moving, heavy-beat music(with horns) introducing us superfast to most of the Chicago 7, as the next finished off the sentence of the last with a new ending.

With that rather maddening low-grade naivete by which current Hollywood folks try to judge history, the idea that the Chicago 7 trial "was relevant to today" struck me as superficial . The trial helped lead to something vitally important -- the end of the draft in America. Thereafter, the times led to Ford and Carter and Reagan and Bush and Clinton... and a few more decades of "business as usual" that really don't match up to what was going on in 1969.

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All this said, the Oscar Academy has recently insisted that (a) there WILL be a live Oscar telecast in April, and (b) they will allow a release window through February 2021 for eligble films. So -- in direct contrapunction to Spielberg's belief that only "real" theatrical movies should be voted upon, with the rest to get Emmys only...

...will the 2020 Oscar movie feed come solely from Netflix?

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Aha...so you finally took a look at The Trial of the Chicago 7.

I've been catching up with Netflix a bit recently... so seeing all their possible Oscar contenders. Trial is the one that (even though its not quite my thing) feels most like a relatively well-considered and polished Oscar-bait movie to me. Mank and Spike Lee's Da Five Bloods both struck me as weakly thought out *as* movies: Mank doesn't have enough interesting content, and Da5B is rather flabby, uneven in tone, and shaky about story basics (key coincidences provoke eye-rolls). They're both way below their directors' respective top tiers.

40 Year Old Version and (horribly reviewed!) Hillbilly Elegy next maybe.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

"Curtiz" that basically tries to cover Curtiz making Casablanca -- complete with Bogie and Bergman lookalikes -- and STILL doesn't get it right. Though a memorable scene of the middle-aged, unattractive Curtiz taking a phone call while schtupping a woman IN HIS OFFICE reminds us that "MeToo" was different in the 40s.

I thought about watching this but the reviews weren't kind. The risqué scene you describe has a counterpart in Mank: the 1930 future all-star writers' room at MGM that includes Ben Hecht, Sid Perelman, Lederer, Charles MacArthur, & Herman L. himself has as its typist/stenographer a busty female in pasties on top and, I think, a showgirl-skirt on bottom.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've been catching up with Netflix a bit recently... so seeing all their possible Oscar contenders.

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This is going to be interesting. Can the Oscars function with eligible movies ONLY from Netflix? I don't think that Amazon Prime and/or Hulu are in the business of producing quality original films.

The Roger Ebert movie review site right now is constantly reviewing "little indie movies" that don't seem to be shown anywhere; I guess if they get put on streaming somewhere -- they will be eligible?

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Trial is the one that (even though its not quite my thing) feels most like a relatively well-considered and polished Oscar-bait movie to me. Mank and Spike Lee's Da Five Bloods both struck me as weakly thought out *as* movies: Mank doesn't have enough interesting content, and Da5B is rather flabby, uneven in tone, and shaky about story basics (key coincidences provoke eye-rolls). They're both way below their directors' respective top tiers.

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I will note this, personally: Netflix surely carries weight with me because I count "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"(by the Coens) as my favorite film of 2018 and "The Irishman" as a rare "tie favorite"(with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) of 2019. So that's two Netflix movies in a row. And I actually made it out to the local theater to see The Irishman on the big screen so it counts "regular."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Both "Buster Scruggs" and "The Irishman" have a somewhat skimpy feel to them, I call it "Netflixy." But the Coens pulled off some gorgeous cinematography for "Scruggs" -- an anthology of five stories which won my heart with only one of them ("The Gal That Got Rattled"), amused me with one other (the title tale) and...rather put the others into formation around them. Worked for me. Great "connective tissue" between the stories(the flipping pages of an Old Western novel and its "color plates.") Great score. Favorite of 2018 -- but it wasn't the Best Picture at the Oscars that year. I can't remember what was.

I would suppose that thus far, from the Netflix stable, the Sorkin, the Lee, and the Fincher are front runners simply because of their pedigree. Hillbilly Elegy has Oscar-tested Ron Howard(but why did he win?) at the helm and Glenn Close and Amy Adams as contenders -- but the reviews have been brutal. I have seen it, maybe I'll reserve my opinion for a bit.

I would say that of that group, "The Trial of the Chicago 7" (with its A-list and/or Oscar-winning cast) is on track to be the winner. It is NOT my favorite of 2020. Something else is. I'll talk about that later.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I thought about watching this (Curtiz) but the reviews weren't kind.

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It wasn't very good. It was actually rather odd in that the Casablanca aspect was never really lingered upon, outside of a few scenes with "Bogie and Bergman." It was a "foreign film" and seemed to have an art film/indie streak to it.

I'm reminded here that "up top" you singled out "Saving Mr. Banks" as a GOOD making of a movie biopic, and I'd agree. That was a much more "in depth" study of how a movie was made...and Disney made it and thus allowed clips FROM Mary Poppins to be used...which Universal would not allow to Fox Searchlight with Psycho for "Hitchcock."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The risqué scene you describe has a counterpart in Mank: the 1930 future all-star writers' room at MGM that includes Ben Hecht, Sid Perelman, Lederer, Charles MacArthur, & Herman L. himself has as its typist/stenographer a busty female in pasties on top and, I think, a showgirl-skirt on bottom

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"MeToo" is at once fading out in Hollywood and still claiming victims, sometimes simultaneously. TWO studio chiefs were both recently fired over liasions with a young actress who -- phone texts prove -- was very much offering herself to them for roles(and angry when she didn't get BIG roles). So even consent can get you fired.

But as a matter of "yesteryear," there has always been a link between "willing women" and powerful men(or just men, in Hollywood.) Movie mogul Mike Medavoy said of Biskinds "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls" about 70's Hollywood -- "He's wrong about drugs, we couldn't have made movies on drugs like that -- but he's right about sex."

On the gossipy side(and hell, why not) we have such examples as Jerry Lewis claiming that, during his top star years, he was "provided with a woman in his dressing room each morning" to start the work day; of Sinatra casting the dance hall girls of "Sergeants Three" on location in Utah with call girls(for after-hours relaxation -- and you can SEE the women in the dance hall scenes, they sure can't act); and of a book on the making of Jaws noting that Universal flew a high-priced hooker out to the Martha's Vineyard location to "relieve Spielberg's tension" during the stressful making of that movie. Its "part of the business" -- for the men, and for the women. And you can add in the gay component as well. Men for men; women for women.

A lot of plain-looking men have said they entered (or financed) the movie business "just to meet women." It worked...though modernly, it works "at your peril."

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

"Buster Scruggs" ....Worked for me. Great "connective tissue" between the stories(the flipping pages of an Old Western novel and its "color plates.") Great score. Favorite of 2018 -- but it wasn't the Best Picture at the Oscars that year. I can't remember what was.

Best Picture for 2018 was lame-o Green Book (probably the worst Best Picture since King's Speech). Buster Scruggs was way better as were at least 20 or 30 other films. My faves that year: Leave No Trace, The Favourite, (2 excellent S Korean dramas) Burning & Shoplifters, (Schrader remakes Bergman) First Reform, (standout horror) Hereditary, (stand out comedy) Death of Stalin.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Best Picture for 2018 was lame-o Green Book (probably the worst Best Picture since King's Speech).

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My aging memory's better than it should be in some regards, but on Best Pictures anymore...no way, Jose.

Which is odd. From memory, I can give you the Best Pictures of the 60s in order: The Apartment, West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, Tom Jones, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, A Man For All Seasons, In the Heat of the Night, Oliver, Midnight Cowboy. Right off the top of my head. But two years ago? Nada.

What's ironic about Green Book is that the makers thought they had "safe Oscar bait" but that backfired on them. All those white men on stage to pick up the award.

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Buster Scruggs was way better as were at least 20 or 30 other films.

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Well, on the one hand I am pretty limited in my range of favorite filmmakers these days. The Coens are among them. On the other hand, it just may be that I spend the rest of my days ONLY responding to the fillmakers I know. I did it with Hitchcock. Now I do it with Tarantino. The Coens, Scorsese usually get my love, too. "Odd Man Out": Spielberg. He was a big deal in my youth, and rich and famous now, but I rarely feel that his heart is in anything. Of course, those other guys make crime films and thrillers a lot.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

My faves that year: Leave No Trace, The Favourite, (2 excellent S Korean dramas) Burning & Shoplifters, (Schrader remakes Bergman) First Reform, (standout horror) Hereditary, (stand out comedy) Death of Stalin.

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You are valued, swanstep, for giving us a wide and sweeping and detailed view of ALL the films out there in a given year. Its so fascinating to me. I am here to "pick the good stuff among the usual stuff." Mainstream Man. Hah.

Of your group above, however, I DID love The Death of Stalin. Its from that writer-director who approaches political satire with a gut-busting hilarity and a profane rage. (Some of the insult lines he cooks up are the most creative lines I've ever heard in my life.)

I would advise a viewing of The Death of Stalin to anyone looking for a sense of what Totalitarnism looks and feels like...and how certain people "for the people" will take power to abuse and torture and rape and kill "the people." (The villain among villains in the film is the guy who plays Beria...obese and ugly, to sexually obtain women, he imprisons and executes their husbands.) Still...hilarious.

Meanwhile: There was something about the whole MOOD of "Buster Scruggs" that did it for me. The score. The very gorgeous and atmospheric cinematography. The "color plates" that illustrated each story. And in "The Gal Who Got Rattled" a deep emotion and a "surprise character" who starts out the story as nothing much and reveals incredible heroism in the crunch. But it is still not enough. Also, the comedy precision of a little yapping dog called President Pierce who ends up the key to everything going wrong. Meanwhile, the story about Liam Neeson silently carting around an armless, legless trunk of a man who can spout Shakespeare by memory for frontier entertainment...strange indeed. Plus..Buster Scruggs himself is a dandy creation...a wimpy looking sad sack who turns out to be a merciless killer.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The NY Times has yet another long article about Mank/Fincher today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/movies/david-fincher.html
This time, however, the article, which is titled 'The Unhappiest Auteur', spends a lot of its time (rightly in my view) complaining about Mank, to which one wants to reply: "Right, the movie's not great, not close to being great. So why is the NYTimes lavishing at least 20% of its weekly movie coverage for months on it?" The whole phenomenon feels like a '70s/'80s SNL skit ("The Unhappiest Auteur... orders pizza!" now brought to you by the Paper of Record!) waiting to happen.

I know this sort of sycophancy has happened before: maybe with Malick's Tree of Life or De Palma's Bonfire of the Vanities or Jodie Foster's directorial debut....what am I thinking of? At any rate there was a case just like this where the Times could *not* shut about a film and its director for months before a film came out, and then after it was released and flopped the Times continued to flack for it in ever more tortured ways, all of which that led to lots of jokes at the time.

People make indifferent or even bad films all the time, even wunderkind white guys experience significant career dips... Wall-to-wall coverage of failure and mediocrity does no one any good. I'm sure Fincher himself must want to crawl under a rock at this point.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

People make indifferent or even bad films all the time, even wunderkind white guys experience significant career dips... Wall-to-wall coverage of failure and mediocrity does no one any good. I'm sure Fincher himself must want to crawl under a rock at this point.

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I can't get through the pay wall, but its an interesting idea you have raised here, swanstep, and I will offer a guess as to why it is so:

The dearth of major movies released in 2020...let alone by major film makers...has probably really impacted the ability of newspapers and magazines to write ARTICLES about new movies. Its like a hole in their coverage.

And Fincher is one of a group of modern-day fillmakers whose works usually merit some discussion. He earned his slot, and I expect that the NY Times moved on covering Mank accordingly (although, did I miss something here? Does the NY Times share ownership with Netflix in some way?)

I'm a QT buff(for better or worse) and I noted that when "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" came out last year -- no wait, uh -- in 2019(hah)...it had many articles (1) When it was announced as the next QT project; (2) When it was cast ("Leo and Brad!") (3) while it was being made 4) when it came to the Cannes film festival ; 5) upon release and (6 for many, many weeks after release including (7) when it came out on DVD.

QT thus gave newspapers and magazines(and their internet equivalents) sales and "click bait" for MONTHS off of one movie. "Mank" was perhaps a hopeful to generate the same kind of coverage, if only "a little bit."

I have not watched "Mank" yet, but I will. There have been some articles reminding us that HBO(not HBO Max) way back in 1999 did a "cable TV movie" about Welles, Hearst and Mank called "RKO 281" which (one article contends) was "less stylish than Mank, but more interesting." Maybe I can find RK0 281 on HBO Max.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I can't get through the pay wall

Try 'right-clicking' on the link and selecting 'Open in an Incognito a.k.a. Private window'.

Or open an Incognito/Private window separately and paste the link into it separately.

Note that this sort trick is normally only good for one story at a time so you have to close the Incognito/Private window you're using after you've finished reading a story and launch a new Private/Incognito window for each new story (and close after, etc.).

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Mank (2020):
Unfortunately I agree with the tepid end of the reviews Mank has been getting. The script by Fincher's late father has evidently been a passion project for Fincher for many years, and it's natural to surmise that Fincher's personal connection with the screenplay has blinded him to the script's lack of cinematicness or indeed genuinely interesting content.

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I personally left Mank unwatched for a few weeks until I felt like I was up to it. I can say that the movie actually pushed me to a low level of rage in its passionate pursuit of NOT telling the right story. Oldman just lying there in bed actually made me claustrophobic and angry. I tell you, I had to go look at Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon in The Dark Knight just to remember how warm and engaged an actor he COULD be.

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The film covers none of the filming of Kane nor the actual battles over its release and reception, rather the whole show is Herman banished to the desert to dry out and write his legendary first draft of Kane together with flashbacks esp. to 1934 and 1937 to (often drunk) Herman's relationship with Hearst and Marion Davies and political crossed swords with Hearst that he draws on while writing. All of that stuff, however, is only semi-interesting in my view (even *if* you're a Kane fan or superfan). It's *less* interesting than the backstory of Mary Poppins's author in Saving Mr Banks, moreover that film had the good sense to cover a lot of the actual filming of Mary Poppins whereas (beyond the backstory) Mank focuses just on the writing of Kane's screenplay which is just *so* uncinematic.

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I like your references, swanstep, to the Mary Poppins movie which, I daresay may indeed be the one that really got WHAT to do with the making of a classic. Tom Hanks authoritative turn as Walt Disney -- with nary an impression on screen -- gave us a sense of how Uncle Walt elected to use his power to get that movie made...over the objections of a very negative author.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Many of Fincher's decisions strike me as bizarre, e.g., there are lots of scenes at San Simeon. Now, SS is one of the most stunningly cinematic locales imaginable. It's at the top of a damn mountain rising out of a hauntingly windswept, largely treeless mid-coast landscape! Yet Fincher never conveys this or any other real sense of the place, its simultaneous loneliness and awesomeness. This omission felt like directorial malpractice to me.

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Agreed. Its as if the movie so hews to its claustrophobic black and white "world," that Hearst's great castle isn't allowed to really exist.

The overall paucity of this film -- and its black and white mimimalism -- reminded me of a straight to streaming movie called "Curtiz" which has been playing for some months now to no acclaim. THAT one has a few stray shots of Casablanca being filmed and...nothing else of interest.

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Oh, well. The movies are still in limbo. The future lies ahead.

Here's a report:

Scorsese gets closer to actually making his movie about the greed killings on the Indian reservation, Killings of the Flower Moon. DeNiro is still the land baron behind the killings, but Leo has turned down the role of the FBI man investigating. That role now goes to Jesse Plemons(Hoffa's adopted son in The Irishman) and Leo is taking the "subsidiary villain role" of a white man who married into a Native American family so as to get the murder inheritance money. The entire rest of the main cast is Native American.

And this: I can't help thinking that ol' Quentin Tarantino is in the catbird's seat right now. He promises "one more movie" in the wake of the success of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but he knows, in his heart, that there is no point in promoting ANYTHING until a few years have passed, and theaters are re-opened, and a movie distribution system is back in place. QT can spend the next one, two, three, four...FIVE? years doodling around with ideas until Hollywood hype is back.