‘Sunset Blvd.’ quick hit

March 23, 2012 by

Sunset Blvd./1950/Paramount Pictures/110 min.

“You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you. You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood,” said MGM’s Louis B. Mayer to writer/director Billy Wilder after a screening of “Sunset Blvd.”

In this magnificent skewering of Tinseltown, Gloria Swanson, a real-life silent film star, plays Norma Desmond, a fictional silent film star whom time has forgotten. William Holden is her sometime boyfriend and screenwriter of her comeback script; Erich von Stroheim is her ex-husband and ex-director, now a live-in butler.

Personally, I adore the idea of putting an ex-hubby on the payroll to do all my household chores, in a starched gray uniform, no less! “Sunset Blvd.” is a classic to be watched again and again.

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Top 10 lines from Billy Wilder’s classic ‘Sunset Blvd.’

March 21, 2012 by

Gloria Swanson and Billy Wilder

“Sunset Blvd,” Billy Wilder’s scathing portrait of Hollywood, stars Gloria Swanson as silent film star Norma Desmond seeking a return to the screen, William Holden as her younger boyfriend, a writer named Joe Gillis, and Erich von Stroheim as her faithful servant and eyeshadow adjuster. Wisconsin-born Nancy Olson plays the smart, fresh-faced girl who wants to be a screenwriter and who falls in love with Joe.

Here are my favorite lines from this terrific film, widely considered to be one of the greatest American movies ever made. It was written by Wilder, Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr.

1. Norma Desmond: “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

2. Joe Gillis: “Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.”

3. Salesman at a men’s clothing store, to Joe: “As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?”

4. Norma Desmond: “No-one ever leaves a star. That’s what makes one a star.”

5. Joe Gillis referring to Norma’s script: “Sometimes it’s interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be. This promised to go the limit.”

6. Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself): “You know, a dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit.”

7. Norma Desmond: “Without me, there wouldn’t be any Paramount studio.”

Nancy Olson and William Holden

8. Nancy Olson as Joe’s friend Betty: “Where have you been keeping yourself? I’ve got the most wonderful news for you.”
Joe: “I haven’t been keeping myself at all, lately.”

9. Joe Gillis talking about his car: “I kept it across the street in a parking lot behind Rudy’s shoeshine parlor. Rudy never asked any questions about your finances – he’d just look at your heels and know the score.

10. Norma Desmond: “All right Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

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New on DVD, Blu-ray: ‘Skin I Live in’ and ‘To Catch a Thief’

March 19, 2012 by

By Michael Wilmington

Antonio Banderas

The Skin I Live In (DVD)/2011/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment/117 min.

Pedro Almodóvar, the Spanish master of kink and perverse soap opera (“Matador,” “Law of Desire,” “Talk to Her”), here plunges into high Gothic melodrama, with Antonio Banderas as a wealthy and reclusive plastic surgeon, who becomes obsessed with implanting the features of his beautiful, beloved, dead wife on the face of a female prisoner (Elena Anaya) whom he keeps hidden away in his posh isolated home.

Also involved: a mysterious housekeeper who knows some dark secrets (Marisa Paredes) and a raunchy interloper in a tiger suit (Roberto Álamo).

Not for every taste of course – no Almodovar film is – but a good, creepy elegant old-school horror movie worthy of its obvious influences: Georges Franju’s “Eyes Without a Face,” James Whale’s Frankenstein, Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang. And the reunion of Almodovar and star Banderas, is a felicitous one. At the very least, this film will give you a different slant on Banderas’ “Puss in Boots.” (In Spanish, with English subtitles.)

Extras: Documentary featurettes; Q&A with Almodovar

xxx

Grant and Kelly: One of Hitchcock’s sexiest duos.

To Catch a Thief (Blu-ray)/1955/Paramount/106 min.

Cary Grant is a Riviera cat burglar, framed by another mysterious thief and chased by both the local gendarmerie and his old pals in the Resistance. Grace Kelly is a rich, gorgeous vacationer who can really get those fireworks and colored lights going.

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most purely entertaining movies, beautifully shot in Cannes and surrounding locations, with Grant and Kelly making up his sexiest couple, except maybe for Grant and Bergman in “Notorious.”

From the (not too good) novel by David Dodge, scripted by John Michael Hayes. With Jessie Royce Landis, Charles Vanel and John Williams.

Pure – well, a little impure – fun.

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Retro sipping for St. Pat’s from the Stark Bar and FNB

March 16, 2012 by

Green beer not doing it for you? Take inspiration from Ray’s and Stark Bar (at Lacma, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.) in Los Angeles and FNB to add vintage flair to your St. Patrick’s festivities. Here are two recipes from the bar’s extensive cocktail list and one of my own.

The Ginger Rogers hits the spot.

The Ginger Rogers
2 ounces gin
1 ounce ginger syrup (theirs is housemade with fresh ginger)
¾ ounce fresh lime juice
Top with ice and ginger ale; garnish with fresh mint

The Cheap Detective
2 ounces St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1 ounce Cynar
¾ ounce Campari
Garnish with grapefruit peel

From my kitchen: The LA Fizzy Blonde
8 ounces ginger ale (don’t use diet)
2 ounces fresh grapefruit juice
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
Mix soda and juice. Add ice and lime slice to garnish

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Another realistic gem from Belgium’s Dardenne brothers

March 16, 2012 by

The Kid with a Bike/2011/IFC/87 min.

Both a fiercely realistic crime drama and a tender, unsentimental, story of maternal love, “The Kid with a Bike” by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne is one of the best films I’ve seen in years.

Ex-documentarians known for their realism and compassion for troubled characters – “The Promise” (1996), “Rosetta” (1999), “The Son” (2002), “The Child” (2005), “Lorna’s Silence” (2008) – the Dardenne brothers won the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Jury prize for their latest work.

Watching “Kid,” set in Belgium’s Meuse valley, we meet Cyril (Thomas Doret), a restless, stubborn and intense 11-year-old boy, whose coldly negligent father Guy (Jérémie Renier) has placed him in a group home for children. Sure that this situation is temporary, Cyril figures that if he can leave the home and recover his bike, he’ll be able to reconnect with his father. His search plays a bit like a detective story as he tracks down the bike and his dad, only to be sent back to the home.

Shortly after this setback, Cyril randomly clings to a woman named Samantha (Cécile de France) and she is moved to try to help him, allowing him to leave the home on weekends to stay with her. Though Samantha is patient and generous, the boy’s craving for his father’s affection and a budding friendship with a neighborhood gang leader (chillingly played by Egon Di Mateo) gets Cyril into trouble, the repercussions of which could change the course of his life.

The film masterfully blends moods and genres – domestic drama, crime movie and fantasy. Says Jean-Pierre Dardenne: “We wanted to construct the film as a kind of fairy tale with baddies who make the boy lose his illusions, and Samantha, who appears as a kind of fairy.”

Poignant performances – newcomer Doret is a natural – assured direction, restrained writing and arresting use of music make “The Kid with a Bike” an exceptional cinematic achievement.

“The Kid with a Bike” opens today in LA and New York.

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‘Anatomy of a Murder:’ Preminger’s crowning achievement

March 14, 2012 by

Anatomy of a Murder/1959/Columbia Pictures/160 min.

Criterion’s DVD rerelease of “Anatomy of a Murder” is this month’s giveaway prize. To be entered in the draw to win, just make a comment on any post this month.

By Michael Wilmington

Lee Remick is sexy and flirtatious Laura Manion, a part originally intended for Lana Turner. Laura's dog Muff is frequently at her side.

One of the best and most true-to-life of all courtroom dramas, “Anatomy of a Murder” is also the best film producer-director Otto Preminger ever made. And he was a master – of film noir (“Laura,” “Fallen Angel,” “Whirlpool,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” “Angel Face”), of urban drama (“The Man with the Golden Arm”), of romance (“Bonjour Tristesse,” “Daisy Kenyon”), of historical epics (“Exodus”), of spy dramas (“The Human Factor”), of musicals (“Carmen Jones”) and, most characteristically, of dramas that examine big, complex institutions: “Advise and Consent,” “The Cardinal,” “In Harm’s Way.”

“Anatomy” is a great, realistic film on a great subject, with writing that cuts to the bone. It also has one of the most famous title sequences (by Saul Bass) in movie history. And one of the most influential scores, original jazz, composed and played by Duke Ellington.

The film’s source material was a best-selling book by John D. Voelker, a Michigan State Supreme Court Justice, using the pen name Robert Traver. He based the book on an actual murder case in which he’d been the prosecuting attorney. In that trial, an Army man shot and killed a popular small-town bar-owner who, he said, had raped his wife.

From left: James Stewart plays a lawyer defending an Army lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) with help from his old friend and fellow lawyer (Arthur O'Connell).

Voelker/Traver and Wendell Mayes adapted the book and a phenomenal cast brought the story to the screen. We see Jimmy Stewart at his best as the wily and ingenious old-school defense lawyer Paul Biegler, Ben Gazzara as his cocky murder-trial defendant/client Army Lieutenant Frederick Manion, Lee Remick as Manion’s sexy wife Laura, George C. Scott as the icily astute prosecutor Claude Dancer, Eve Arden and Arthur O’Connell as Paul’s sharp-tongued secretary Maida Rutledge and Paul’s amiably soused fellow counsel Parnell McCarthy. The trial’s owlish, chatty but punctiliously fair Judge Weaver is played unforgettably by famed attorney Joseph Welch. Kathryn Grant is also memorable as the sweet but mysterious Mary Pilant.

If Paul is going to get Manion off, the only defense that is likely to work is Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity – an “irresistible impulse” that drove Manion to kill his wife’s rapist. The movie makes clear that Paul is not necessarily seeking the truth, but a victory for his client. So the trial becomes, in some sense, a piece of theater. Paul is creating a dramatic scenario that we know is a slanted one. Judge Weaver is there to mediate, but also to be a kind of commentator and chorus.

At the same time, Preminger (the son of a Viennese trial lawyer and a law school graduate who never practiced law himself) gives us a course in what happens during a trial and why the American legal system, for all its seeming flaws, is a model of both legal science and human compassion.

We want Paul Biegler to win, but mostly because he’s played by Jimmy Stewart – who brilliantly manipulates his movie persona as the stammering, sincere, dryly funny hero, while also showing us a somewhat devious side beneath the mask. It’s an incredibly adroit performance, as good as Stewart’s signature roles as George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Scottie Ferguson in “Vertigo,” and Jeff Smith in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

And Stewart anchors an eminently satisfying cast. Remick is wonderful as Manion’s flirtatious, cheerfully brazen and narcissistic wife Laura, a part originally intended for Lana Turner. The prosecution’s arrogant head lawyer Claude Dancer is played with nerveless intensity by Scott. Stewart, O’Connell and Scott got Oscar noms for their work.

Preminger shot the movie in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (Marquette, Ishpeming, Big Bay and Michigamme). The streets, the bar and the courthouse are real. And the scenes in Paul’s home (with its books, fishing gear and record collection) were shot in Voelker’s own house. “Anatomy” has the flavor of a semi-documentary, or of one of those Henry Hathaway crime dramas/noirs of the ’40s: “The House on 92nd Street,” “Call Northside 777” (with Stewart as a crusading Chicago reporter) and “Kiss of Death.”

Laura (Lee Remick) and her husband share pathology as well as passion.

Preminger’s filmmaking style is often called “objective.” He doesn’t try to force reactions on us, instead leaving us free to observe and judge. “Anatomy of a Murder” is especially ripe for such analysis, since the audience is essentially the jury.

But there’s a catch. Does anyone really watch a Preminger movie without knowing who the good guys and bad guys are? Even in “Anatomy of a Murder” we sense Paul might be defending a guilty client, but we also know he’s upholding the law, and his vision of it: the depth, mercy and grandeur of the law in which he deeply believes.

The fact is that Preminger is never completely objective. A lawyer as well as a man of the theater, he is always arguing a viewpoint, letting us know whom he likes and whom he doesn’t. He just does it in a subtler, more stylish, less forced manner than most other directors.

What’s special about Preminger’s cinematic style is his propensity for long takes and single shots with an unobtrusively moving camera. Preminger once said that, ideally, every scene should be done in a single shot. And that’s often what he often tries to do, for the sake of the actors (who don’t get their performances chopped up) and to preserve the feel of realism.

Lee Remick, Eve Arden and James Stewart appear in a courtroom scene.

To some in 1959, “Anatomy” looked like an opportunistic and deliberately sensational shocker, with a script that contained words such as “rape,” “bitch” and panties.” The film was even banned temporarily in Chicago. But Preminger played anti-censorship battles with such shrewd facility that it sometimes seemed he had gulled the censors into being his unofficial P.R. team.

“Anatomy of a Murder” may have raised hackles in its day, but it’s survived as a movie treasure and is one of the top films from 1959 – a year that also saw the release of classics like Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” William Wyler’s “Ben-Hur,” Howard Hawks’ “Rio Bravo,” George Stevens’ “The Diary of Anne Frank” and Vincente Minnelli’s “Some Came Running.”

Preminger’s trial drama can stand with any of them.

“Anatomy” will play Friday and Saturday at the New Beverly in LA.

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In ‘The Lady Vanishes,’ Hitch pushes form to near perfection

March 12, 2012 by

The Lady Vanishes/1938/GB Pictures/96 min.

By Michael Wilmington

Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood are an utterly beguiling English couple.

In “The Lady Vanishes,” his marvelous 1938 mystery classic set aboard a train racing though the Balkans, Alfred Hitchcock pushes the romantic-comedy-thriller form to near perfection. It’s one of the most purely entertaining movies he ever made, and it can be watched over and over again with no diminution of pleasure.

Arguably funnier than Hitchcock’s other train classics – “The 39 Steps” (1935), “Strangers on a Train” (1951) and “North By Northwest” (1959) – “The Lady Vanishes” offers one of Hitchcock’s greatest assemblies of characters and actors: Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty, Cecil Parker, Linden Travers, Catherine Lacey, Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford.

Hitchcock loved trains, in life as well as in his movies. In “The Lady Vanishes” we can see why. Though shot mostly on a sound stage, this locomotive is somehow supremely convincing – with its cozy yet menacing cars, jiggling tables, rushing train-sounds, compartments full of strangely cool or deceptively amiable passengers and that wonderful dining car, where so much tea is sipped, so much suspense generated and where the final crackerjack gun battle takes place.

Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (“The Rake’s Progress,” “Night Train to Munich,” “Green for Danger”) wrote the script from a novel called “The Wheel Spins,” by Ethel Lina White. But the Gilliat-Launder stamp, a special brand of breezy and irreverent class-puncturing humor, is all over this film, almost as much as Hitchcock’s flair for tension, perverse romance, dark humor and similar irreverence toward class.

“The Lady Vanishes” offers one of Hitchcock’s greatest assemblies of actors.

The ingenious story is in line with brainy mysteries by writers like Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr. What happens? A congenial old lady named Miss Froy (played by the irresistible Dame May Whitty) disappears from the train and, when her pretty and saucy fellow passenger Iris (Margaret Lockwood) tries to find her, everyone who saw Miss Froy denies she existed.

Only Michael Redgrave as Gilbert, an amorous young musicologist, believes her. As Iris and Gilbert put their nimble wits together, love and melody and mystery bloom, even as the vanished lady remains peculiarly elusive. The train’s odd-lot passengers – including a suave doctor (Paul Lukas), a philandering politico and his inamorata (Cecil Parker and Linden Travers), a nun in high heels (Catherine Lacey) and those ineffable cricket fans Caldicott and Charters (played by the immortal Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford) – keep denying Miss Froy was ever there. Things get progressively stranger, faster, funnier and more dangerous.

Besides human passengers, a magician’s bunnies are aboard this mystery-filled train.

If Hitchcock loved trains, he makes us fall in love with this one, too – and with many of the people aboard, including some of the villains. And non-villains like Caldicott and Charters, who became so popular that they began making appearances, as the same characters, in other films (“Night Train to Munich” and “Crook’s Tour”). And Miss Froy, who looks a bit like Agatha Christie, or the way we envision Miss Marple to look. And of course Gilbert and Iris, an intrepid, utterly beguiling, English couple if ever there was one.

As I said, “The Lady Vanishes” is one movie classic that most audiences are sure to enjoy. If you don’t enjoy it, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Maybe what you need is a long train ride in the Balkans.

“The Lady Vanishes” plays on the big screen this Wednesday, March 14, at 7:30 p.m. at the Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave. in Santa Monica.

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Tense one-take ‘Silent House’ undercut by lack of depth

March 9, 2012 by

Silent House/2012/LD Entertainment, et al/88 min.

Does the average moviegoer care if a movie seems to be shot in one continuous take? Maybe, maybe not. To create the appearance of a one-take thriller, “Silent House,” directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, was filmed on one Canon 5D camera with two operators in 13 total shots.

Whether you know or care about tricky production, the point is to try to make you feel the fear of the main character Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) a girl who’s in for a bad night at her family’s dark, isolated, creaky, spooky (natch) summer home. “The continuous take in itself is really what builds the tension,” said Lau at a recent press day in Beverly Hills. “She’s trapped in terror.”

(Similarly, Alfred Hitchcock crafted the illusion of a continuous shot in his first color film, 1948’s “Rope,” starring James Stewart, John Dall and Farley Granger.)

Kentis and Lau (co-directors of 2003’s “Open Water”) remade “Silent House” from Gustavo Hernández’s “La Casa Muda” (2010), which was inspired by events that occurred in a Uruguayan village in the 1940s. For their version, Lau wrote a new script, working late at night and listening to Nine Inch Nails. In addition to Trent Reznor, the filmmakers said they drew inspiration from psychological thrillers like Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” (1965).

“Silent House” also features Adam Trese and Eric Sheffer Stevens as Sarah’s father and uncle, and Julia Taylor Ross as a family friend, but ultimately it’s Olsen’s movie. Because she’s rarely offscreen, the film hinges on her presence and acting.

Expressive, vulnerable and luminous, Olsen is compelling to watch. “I felt like I was part of the editing process,” said Olsen at the press day. “It was like dancing with the DP [Igor Martinovic] and figuring out a rhythm.”

The drama hinges on a devastating secret, long hidden within the walls of this sinister summer home. Though “Silent House” is swift and slick, unfortunately, the twist that’s supposed to lend psychological depth feels clumsy and lame, like a thin slap of paint on a faded front door.

“Silent House” opens today nationwide.

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‘Sound of Noise’ riffs on cops, rogue musicians; director/drummer to battle Melvins Friday at Cinefamily

March 7, 2012 by

Sound of Noise/2010/Magnolia Pictures/102 min.

The cop drama gets a frenetic comic spin in “Sound of Noise” by Swedish filmmakers Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson. When a group of six drummers decides to unleash anarchy by commandeering everyday objects (medical equipment, paper shredders, jack hammers) to use as makeshift instruments, they draw the ire of a police officer with an ax to grind.

Amadeus Warnebring (Bengt Nilsson) is the tone-deaf black sheep in a family of prominent musicians and, though he hates music, he has what it takes to track down these percussive renegades. “There’s a metronome here somewhere,” Amadeus tells his team as he surveys the scene after one of the gang’s hit-and-run performances. “Find it.”

Leading the raids is a take-charge blonde named Sanna Persson (Sanna Persson Halapi), who has decided it’s time to strike back in a city that’s “contaminated by shitty music.” (The city as well as the exact time is undefined; the film was shot mostly in Malmö, Sweden.) Despite his frustration, which he vents at one point by smashing instruments, Amadeus also finds it hard to resist Sanna’s allure.

Weirdly original and whimsically entertaining, “Sound of Noise” charms in a way that’s delightfully absurd and singularly Swedish. Bengt Nilsson brings just the right amount of loner intensity to Amadeus; Sven Ahlstrom neatly complements as Amadeus’ brother Oscar, golden boy and admired conductor. It’s also nicely lit by cinematographer Charlotta Tengroth.

“Sound of Noise” is the first feature from Simonsson and Stjärne Nilsson. Their previous work includes the acclaimed shorts “Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers” (2001), “Way of the Flounder” (2005) and “Woman and Gramophone” (2006).

“Sound of Noise” opens Friday, March 9, in New York, LA and Seattle. Over the next several weeks, it will play in select cities; check local listings for details. The filmmakers will be at Cinefamily (611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, 90036, 323-655-2510) on Friday, March 9, and Saturday, March 10, for Q&As. Additionally, on Friday, Cinefamily will host an opening party featuring a live drum battle with co-director Ola Simonsson and Melvins’ drummers, Dale Crover and Coady Willis.

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Free stuff from FNB: Win ‘Anatomy of a Murder’

March 5, 2012 by

Lee Remick plays Laura Manion. Remick’s co-stars (Stewart, Scott and O’Connell) earned Oscars noms for their performances.

This month, I am giving away a copy of Criterion’s rerelease of the Otto Preminger classic “Anatomy of a Murder” from 1959. Nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture, the film features a Duke Ellington score and an all-star cast: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O’Connell, Eve Arden and George C. Scott.

In what is arguably the best role of his career, Stewart plays a small-town Michigan lawyer defending an army lieutenant (Gazzara) accused of murdering a tavern owner, who he believes raped his wife (Remick).

As Criterion puts it: “This gripping envelope-pusher, the most popular film by Hollywood provocateur Otto Preminger, was groundbreaking for the frankness of its discussion of sex – but more than anything else it is a striking depiction of the power of words.” This two-DVD special edition is packed with special features.

(Syd is the winner of the February reader giveaway, a DVD copy of “Notorious.” Congrats to Syd and thanks to all who entered!)

To enter the March giveaway, just leave a comment on any FNB post from March 1-31. We welcome comments, but please remember that, for the purposes of the giveaway, there is one entry per person, not per comment.

The winner will be randomly selected at the end of the month and announced in early April. Include your email address in your comment so that I can notify you if you win. Your email will not be shared. Good luck!

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