Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine
‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,’ now streaming on Disney+, marks a new direction for Marvel – a downsizing to television after 2 decades of big-screen superhero splendor. Marvel’s top gun Kevin Feige, stars Anthony Mackie/Falcon and Sebastian Stan/Winter Soldier, and others gathered for a virtual press conference and discussed current and maybe upcoming developments. Here are excerpts:
Q: Is there a possibility that there could be more seasons of ‘Falcon’?
KEVIN FEIGE: It’s a funny question and it’s one that we obviously get asked much more in television. Because people expect it to be like what people know before. So, where’s Season 2? Where’s Season 1? we really did approach it like we do the movies, which is, We better make this great. Or we won’t be able to do another one. if we were able to do another one, there’s certainly ideas. The slight difference, of course, is as you’ve all heard me say, and I think is becoming clear with ‘WandaVision’ [the first Marvel series on Disney+], that they really will go back and forth between Disney+ series and Marvel Studios features. Sometimes we’ll be in a feature and then into an additional season. We’re just not gonna say who does what right this second.
Q: How did the streaming platform expand the storytelling bandwidth? And why did it make sense for this particular project and to explore this particular relationship?
FEIGE: This was really meant to prove that we could — to ourselves, to the audience and to Mr. Mackie and Stan — that just because it’s on TV doesn’t mean it’s not gonna be as big as it possibly could be as a movie. And that we were working just as hard on it and putting all of our blood, sweat, and tears into it. Which is why, in this first episode it really starts off with a bang. We kept saying, ‘If we’re gonna do a series with Falcon and Winter Soldier, we need to at least start off with the best action that we’ve ever seen.’ And we’ve seen a lotta cool action with both of them before. More importantly, you also see in that 1st episode (and will see much more of over the course of the series), we learn who the heck they are. We know a little bit about poor Bucky Barnes [Stan] and what he’d been through. Sam Wilson [Mackie], other than that he likes the job and is an inherently moral man and had been in the service and worked with PTSD, we didn’t know much about him. So, it was really an opportunity to go deep.
Q: Anthony, one thing we discover is that Sam’s from New Orleans which also is your hometown. What surprised you when you started learning more about this character that you’ve been portraying in these films all of these years?
MACKIE: Well, it’s always a surprise when the minds get together and information trickles down to you. When I first read the script I was happy and acknowledged the fact that he was from Louisiana. Specifically ’cause that’s the best state in the union and New Orleans is the best city in the world. I had one request that, if he was from Louisiana, I had to eat crawfish on-camera. I don’t know who said ‘No’ but somebody said no. So I don’t know if it was because they were outta season, but it was too much to get crawfish for Marvel. [Now he turns serious] But no, it was great. You know the idea of Sam Wilson, he’s always evolved in the world of the Marvel comic books and now he’s evolved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. ‘Cause if you remember, when Sam Wilson first started out, he was a hustler from Harlem. And then, as African-American culture evolved, Stan Lee evolved him in the comic book into different incarnations of himself. So I’m excited for everyone to see the, I guess, new and improved Sam Wilson.
Q: After ‘WandaVision’ and now this first episode of ‘Falcon and the Winter Solider,’ it seems a recurring theme is showing the emotional trauma of the main characters. Is that something we can expect more of?
FEIGE: Definitely. You feel it more because we have more time with the Disney+ series. But I think that’s something we’ve always tried to do. ‘Ironman 3’ was all about Tony Stark’s PTSD from ‘Avengers’ essentially. It’s always about exploring.
What’s great about the Marvel characters you’ve always heard us say is their flaws. Grounding something, for as crazy and extraordinary and science fiction and fantasy and supernatural as the MCU can get, it’s grounded in the character experiences and the emotions of the character. That’s always by far the most important anchor for any story we’re gonna tell. There has been a lot of trauma for these characters over the years — and you can easily forget that or brush that under the carpet. Because there’s sparkly portals opening and people cheering and Iron Man punching a flying lizard. But really, if you think about it, which we do, we think about: What if we were those characters? What if we lived this? There would be horrific elements to that, that would have repercussions years down the line. And that is very fun to explore.
NEW DVDs:
CLASSIC, CLASSY, CANONICAL An instant sci-fi classic from the day it opened in 1997 writer-director Andrew Niccol’s ‘Gattaca’ (4K Ultra HD +Blu-ray +Digital, Sony, PG-13) is now released in a limited steelcase 4K Ultra HD. Ingenious and smart ‘Gattaca’ rates as Hollywood’s first film to revolve around genetic engineering. 
Ethan Hawke resists his DNA ‘destiny’ that says he’s not equipped to realize his dream of becoming a space navigator, so he takes the ID of a genetically superior but paralyzed athlete (Jude Law). Hawke then rises at Gattaca Aerospace where he meets magnetically attractive co-worker (Uma Thurman). None of this can go exactly according to plan once a flight director is brutally killed and everyone’s a suspect. Like the recent College Admissions scandal, ‘Gattaca’ depicts a world where money talks – it’s money that allows the rich to alter their offspring’s DNA for spectacular, guaranteed success. Special Features: ‘Welcome to Gattaca’ featurette, ‘Do not alter?’ documentary, deleted scenes and ‘substance test outtake.’
FARCE BECOMES HIM Parody drives Mel Brooks as producer, writer and star. He’s covered Westerns (‘Blazing Saddles’), postwar neo-Nazis (‘The Producers’), Golden Age Hollywood (‘To Be or Not To Be,’ ‘Young Frankenstein’).
So here comes ‘Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs’ (4K Ultra HD +Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, PG), a 1987 mockery of a then 10-year-old ‘Star Wars’ phenomenon. Who would have guessed that George Lucas’ fantasy universe would only grow in cultural might in the decades that followed? As the ‘Space Balls’ jacket proclaims, The farce is with you. Standouts include a young Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga sending up Princess Leia and Joan Rivers as the voice of Dot Matrix. Special Features abound: Brooks’ audio commentary, a conversation between Brooks and the late writer Thomas Meehan, also known for the musicals ‘Annie’ and ‘Hairspray.’ There are jokey featurettes ‘Spaceballs in ludicrous speed,’ ‘film flubs, a tribute to John Candy (1950-94) and even a storyboards-to-film comparison.
HE’S GONE! BUT WHERE? Tate Taylor, best known for the Oscar-winning ‘The Help,’ ‘Get on Up,’ the James Brown biopic with a sensational Chadwick Boseman, and the hit film version of the bestselling thriller ‘The Girl on the Train.’
He can be depended upon for first-rate performances and terrifically well-paced storytelling. ‘Breaking News in Yuba County’ (Blu-ray +Digital Code, WB, R) reunites Taylor with longtime friend Alison Janney in a comedic thriller that springs forward after a disappearance in a quiet suburb. The man’s wife (Janney) becomes a local celebrity as the search continues. But should the truth be revealed,? Won’t Janney’s 15 minutes too quickly fade? With Mila Kunis, Regina Hall, Awkwafina, Wanda Sykes and Matthew Modine.
IT CAME FROM JAPAN The great atomic mutant ‘Godzilla’ (4K Ultra HD +Blu-ray +Digital, WB, PG-13) returned in this well-regarded 2014 upgrade with a cast led by Aaron-Taylor Johnson (‘Nocturnal Animals’), Oscar winner Juliette Binoche (‘The English Patient’), Elizabeth Olsen (‘WandaVision’) and Kent Watanabe (‘The Last Samurai’).
The plot is both personal and professional as Ford Brody (Taylor-Johnson) goes to Japan to help his estranged dad (Bryan Cranston) discover what happened years earlier to a nuclear plant which blew up, killing Ford’s mom. MUTOs is the answer – “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms” aka giant parasitic monsters. Fortunately, their enemy is Godzilla. Special Blu-ray Features: Evidence not in the film that unravels, via 3 featurettes, the massive cover-up, plus a look at the legendary creature ‘Godzilla: Force of Nature.’
DUSTY, DANGEROUS OLD WEST An ambitious, old-fashioned post-Civil War Western, Paul Greengrass’s ‘News of the World’ (4K Ultra HD +Blu-ray +Digital, Universal, PG-13) blatantly evokes contemporary issues in our divided America to make these events of 150 years ring as topical today.
Tom Hanks plays a decorated war veteran who goes from town to town reading the news from various papers. Because these are isolated towns, it doesn’t matter that these reports are weeks old. In Texas Hanks’ Captain rescues a young blond girl who has been kidnapped and raised by the Kiowa Indians. She speaks no English and he discovers she must be returned to a place hundreds of miles away through dangerous territory. So this odd couple begin their odyssey, a trip of life-threatening obstacles and survival. Special Features: featurettes on the director, on the Kiowa, on Hanks partnering with Germany’s Helena Zengel, who’s now 12, a commentary by Greengrass who is also co-writer, and deleted scenes.
VIVA LA CINEMA — IN 8 COURSES A delicious plunge into postwar French film history by first-rate critic turned filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, ‘Journeys Through French Cinema’ (Blu-ray, Cohen, Not Rated) is a successor to his stimulating 2016 3½ hour ‘My Journey Through French Cinema.’
This nearly 8 hour series, divided into 8 parts, lets Tavernier showcase the greats that are well-known and others whose artistry remains if their reputations do not. We follow the effects of the 5-year Nazi Occupation and then in the late ‘50s the influence of America’s great Hollywood directors – Ford, Fritz Lang, Hitchcock – to fashion the Nouvelle Vague or New Wave which in turn changed cinema on a global scale. There are interviews alongside the meticulously well-chosen film clips; one chapter is devoted entirely to film composers.
TAKING FLIGHT Pixar has once again tried to out-do what it’s already done and leap to another artistic level with the ambitiously realized ‘Soul’ (4K Ultra HD +Blu-ray +Digital, Disney, PG),a journey into the afterlife that wonders about the meaning of Life.
Here is Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx), Pixar’s first Black protagonist, a New Orleans musician who ascends into another world just as he’s gotten his big break. The Great Before is where Joe finds himself, or part of himself, and teams with Soul22 (Tina Fey) to search for answers to life’s enormous questions. Pixar developed an entirely new process to present the ‘souls’ in The Great Before. The Blu-ray Bonus extras range from audio commentary, deleted scenes and a look at the film’s artistic and technical innovations to featurettes on the music and the sound, ‘Pretty Deep for a Cartoon’ and ‘Not Your Average Joe,’ about creating this first Black lead character.
SURF’S UP, VERY UP Originally conceived as a no-budget teen drama to be filmed on the Hawaiian beach that was his front yard, producer Randal Kleiser’s 1987 ‘North Shore’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, PG) is most interesting today for its revealing behind the scenes commentary by Kleiser, a hitmaker with ‘Grease’ (’78) and the Brooke Shields’ ‘The Blue Lagoon’ (’80), and first-time feature film director William Phelps. They candidly discuss the difficulties making the film, recasting the female lead once filming began, mirroring little known realities about the surfing scene. It’s a classic coming of age story about an Arizona kid (Matt Adler who got the role because he could….surf!) fulfilling his dream with a pilgrimage to surf the famed North Shore of the title. Once on the sand, he encounters real-life obstacles like rival surfing gangs who ‘own’ sections of the beach. Easily the most compelling presence is surfer god and mighty hunk Laird Hamilton who makes a convincing villain and went on to be considered the greatest Big Wave Surfer in history. Phelps wanted a docu-style flavor with a small crew of 6 that all too soon ballooned to 10 times that once Universal came aboard as filming began on location. There are deleted, extended scenes and an alternate ending.
ALONE IN THE DARK Abel Ferrara is the brand name behind the low-key ‘The Projectionist’ (Blu-ray, Kino Lorber, Not Rated), a documentary profile of a dedicated and very unique theater operator! 
Nick Nicolaou in the 1970s operates a Times Square adult film house and Ferrara follows him through the following decades as he cooperates with city regulations, theater chain takeovers and a vividly changing cultural landscape. Nicolaou, a Cypriot immigrant, began working in movie theaters as a teen and stoically endured to become NYC’s last independent theater owner. Ferrara has never gotten more personal than this. Bonus features: Matt Barry’s doc short ‘Cinevangelis: A Life in Revival Film.’
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3tTfDeS
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