Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine
Sunday night saw the Critics Choice Awards present a 3-hour telecast, a mix of virtual and live onstage elements that really worked. It was handsomely produced and somehow managed to gather on Zoom entire ‘tables’ of casts from nominated movies and TV series. The CCA doesn’t confine itself to films but offers an entire slate of honors for television as well. Outside of the memorable tears suddenly shed by ‘Minari’ Young Actor winner Alan Kim, were there surprises, shocks even, for the film picks? No surprise really but I am struck by how much ANGER is expressed in these winners. What makes ‘Promising Young Woman’ work is its full-throated fury at what men can do so casually with women knowing that often there are no consequences. ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ is, of course, a cry at rank institutional racism and injustice. As are ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ and ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.’
Here, the CCA Winners in FILM CATEGORIES
BEST PICTURE Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
BEST ACTOR Chadwick Boseman – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
BEST ACTRESS Carey Mulligan – Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Daniel Kaluuya – Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros.)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Maria Bakalova – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Amazon Studios)
BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS Alan Kim – Minari (A24)
BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
BEST DIRECTOR Chloé Zhao – Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Emerald Fennell – Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Chloé Zhao – Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Joshua James Richards – Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale – Mank (Netflix)
BEST EDITING (TIE) Alan Baumgarten – The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
Mikkel E. G. Nielsen – Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
BEST COSTUME DESIGN Ann Roth – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Tenet (Warner Bros.)
BEST COMEDY Palm Springs (Hulu and NEON)
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM Minari (A24)
BEST SONG Speak Now – One Night in Miami (Amazon Studios)
BEST SCORE Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste – Soul (Disney)
71st BERLINALE ENDS
This year’s Golden Bear, the top prize as Best Picture at the virtual 71st Berlin International Film Festival, went to the provocative, angry and mesmerizing ‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’ from Romanian director Radu Jude. In Friday’s post-award press conference, his producer Ada Solomon confirmed that they are working on a censored version so that the graphic sexuality won’t prevent wide distribution in the US and Canada. The Grand Jury Prize, the second place winner, went to the wonderful heartbreaker ‘Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy’ from Japanese auteur Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Third place Jury Prize went to my personal festival fave ‘Mr. Bachmann and His Class,’ a lengthy documentary very much in the Frederick Wiseman observational mode as a teacher helps a diverse and mostly immigrant class of 6th grade students learn German, English and the demands of citizenship with kindness and common sense. A major new talent, Denes Nagy was named Best Director for his feature film debut, the sensational Hungarian WWII drama ‘Natural Light.’ Interestingly the competition’s 4 high-profile filmmakers came up empty-handed – France’s Celine Sciamma (‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’) and Xavier Beauvois (‘Of Gods and Men’), Germany’s movie star-turned-director Daniel Bruhl (‘The Alienist’) and Dominic Graf whose novelistic ‘Fabian – Going to the Dogs’ is a vehicle for Germany’s biggest star Tom Schilling.
NEW DVDs:
NOLAN’S WATERLOO? Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code, WB, PG-13) not only bucked the pandemic tide by opening in theaters last summer but stood as one of the year’s most anticipated action adventures by a filmmaker who is the biggest star in any of his movies.
Now that New York City’s movie theaters have opened for the first time in a year, moviegoers there can see ‘Tenet’ as Nolan always intended – on a big screen. What they see remains for many simply baffling. This is an 007-style picture without humor, a clear storyline and a cheesy premise that says action can be reversed in time. Which means we get to watch a lot of film being shown backwards which is, sadly, inherently boring. The most puzzling aspect of ‘Tenet’ has to be its tone. Or should we say its monotone: The first part of the picture when the spy business and the weapons business and the woman business are being discussed, giving information to the audience, it’s done in such a deadpan emotion-less manner, you wonder if maybe they’re not humans but all androids and this is Nolan’s big joke on the audience. But no. The only charm ‘Tenet’ possesses is the 2-minute appearance of Nolan regular Michael Caine who sadly suggests what we’re mostly missing in this 150-minute exercise in directorial missteps. Special Features: An hour-plus exploration of the casting, cinematography, costumes, music (wonderful Ludwig Göransson
score) and those epic action sequences, one involving a jet plane on and off the runway.
MIKE LEIGH’S TRIUMPH Mike Leigh’s ‘Secrets & Lies’ (Blu-ray, Criterion Collection, R) triumphed at Cannes 26 years ago, winning the top prize, the Palme d’Or, and it’s easy to see why. A compelling family saga where a London Black optometrist (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) discovers that her birth mother (Brenda Blethyn, Best Actress Cannes) is white.
Leigh’s consideration of what others may see as marginalized characters becomes here a gorgeous canvas. The exceptional cast, with many Leigh regulars, includes Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville and Phyllis Logan. In this director-approved 2K digital restoration, there is a December 2020 virtual conversation with Leigh and a 1996 audio conversation (that’s an hour-plus), along with a virtual interview with Jean-Baptiste. Plus an essay.
STILL KICKING At 66 Jackie Chan, a living legend, stars as the titular head of both ‘Vanguard’ (Blu-ray+ Digital, Lionsgate, PG-13) and the film’s high-risk Vanguard security services who operate as some kind of private army for hire. Chan at this point is more figurehead than actual star as much younger agents do the fighting and running in a Chinese picture with dubbed English and lots of CGI.
In line with Chan’s emphasis on action comedy, the violence is muted – even when a bad guy is eaten by a (digital) lion, it’s all offscreen. Filmed in London, India, Zambia, Dubai and Arabian deserts, ‘Vanguard’ is handsome and propulsively kinetic. The nearly continuous extended action scenes are here with a welcome clarity that makes them easy to follow. In Mandarin and English with optional English and Spanish subtitles.
1936 NAZI FILMMAKING In 1936, a year notable for Hitler’s image-polishing Berlin Olympics and before his Nazis started their full-out genocide of Jews, the Third Reich allowed writer-director and leading man Luis Trenker to make Germany’s very first Western. In America! ‘The Kaiser of California’ (Blu-ray, Kino Classics, Not Rated) tells a highly fictionalized story of German Western pioneer Johann August Sutter who is famous for owning Sutter’s Mill, birthplace of the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Played by Trenker, a heartily masculine presence who draws comparison with the dashing silent era superstar Douglas Fairbanks, Sutter here virtually defines the American cowboy. This picturesque portrait, surprisingly for a Nazi production that would be expected to celebrate Aryan racial purity, salutes and honors the indigenous peoples of the Southwest. Trenker cast real Native Americans. It’s location work and cinematography give the film its Great Outdoors reputation with awesome vistas and daring rock-climbing feats that harken back to Trenker’s starring in many ‘mountain films,’ a popular 1920s silent era genre of Alpine movies that were hailed for the real dangers they captured on film. Trenker, born in the Tyrol region between Italy and Austria, filmed ‘Kaiser’ in Death Valley, the Grand Canyon and Sedona, AZ. Prior to this 2K restoration by Germany’s Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stifung, ‘Kaiser of California’ had never really been seen in the US (although it won the Mussolini Cup for best foreign film at the ’36 Venice Film Festival). In German with optional English subtitles. Special Feature: Audio commentary by the great Eddy Von Mueller who is as entertaining as he is informative.
A MEMORABLE LOLA Gwen Verdon ranks among 1950s Broadway’s greatest dancers and most beguiling stars. A muse — and later wife — to Oscar- and Tony-winning Bob Fosse (‘Sweet Charity,’ ‘Cabaret’), Verdon was in danger of being forgotten until she got a bit of her mojo back with Michelle Williams’ Emmy-winning performance in TV’s ‘Fosse/Verdon.’ Now the Warner Bros. Archive Collection releases Verdon’s enduring star vehicle, one that can be forever celebrated: The hit 1958 film version of Broadway’s musical smash ‘Damn Yankees’ (Blu-ray, WB, Not Rated).
A riff on the Faust legend with Ray Walston (‘My Favorite Martian’) reprising his Satanic Broadway role, the film soars with Verdon’s Lola who tempts Tab Hunter’s baseball player. The score is notable for 2 big hits, ‘You Gotta Have Heart’ and Verdon’s steamy ‘Whatever Lola Wants.’ In England because use of the word ‘Damn’ was forbidden, it was renamed ‘What Lola Wants.’ Fosse is here onscreen in ‘Who’s Got the Pain,’ a mambo duet with Verdon. When Verdon died at 75 in 2000, she was best known for her later movie roles in ‘Cocoon’ and it’s sequel.
LOMBARD – GLORIOUS FOREVER ‘Carole Lombard Collection II’ (Blu-ray, 3 discs, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) highlights 3 Golden Age Hollywood hits of the beautiful blond comedienne forever acclaimed for ‘Nothing Sacred’ and ‘My Man Godfrey.’ The 1935 ‘Hands Across the Table’ presents Lombard as a hard-working, gold-digging, husband-hunting manicurist whose meeting with a like-minded playboy (Fred MacMurray) sees sparks fly.
Her 1936 ‘Love Before Breakfast’ posits a delightful choice – which suitor will Lombard marry? The rich businessman? Or the working stiff? As a Depression-era fantasy this ‘Love’ must have been catnip to moviegoers. Best of this bunch is ‘The Princess Comes Across,’ also ’36 and also with MacMurray (the 2nd of their 4 teamings). It’s a comedic murder mystery with Brooklyn native Wanda Nash (Lombard) masquerading as Hollywood-bound Swedish royalty Princess Olga aboard an ocean liner bound for New York. MacMurray’s King Mantell is on the ocean liner as a band leader who like Wanda is hiding something. Which is why both are being blackmailed. When the blackmailer is killed, these 2 must find the murderer before they’re arrested, charged and convicted. There’s a dangerous stowaway on the voyage as well as 5 international cops who become a kind of threatening chorus to our prime suspects. Olga rates as Lombard’s not so sly send-up of MGM’s biggest star, the sensational Swede Greta Garbo (‘I vant to be alone’) who we could say reigned as genuine Hollywood royalty. Here the Princess Olga says, ‘I tank you very much.’ We say ‘Tank you’ too!
A CODE RED TRIO Three new Blu-ray releases of classic ‘underground’ exploitation movies are here to warm the hearts of those who find mainstream movies ridiculously predictable. These Code Red DVDs share an urge to shock, stupefy, or both. All three are now seen via brand new HD master. * ‘Werewolves on Wheels’ (Blu-ray, Code Red, R) is a 1971 release, arriving in the wake of the tsunami that was the low-budget, drugs and sex road odyssey blockbuster ‘Easy Rider.’ Here the odd coupling of ‘Father Knows Best’ TV kid Billy Gray and ‘Eve of Destruction’ balladeer Barry McGuire seems perfectly natural. The story sees our Hells’ Angels-style biker gang roam the Southwest looking for kicks. Not the kind they expect when they stumble upon a secret sect of Satanic monks, who offer a topless snake dance among many forbidden but troubling delights. ‘Ironmaster’ (Blu-ray, Code Red, Not Rated) is an Italian import via director Umberto Lenzi that takes us back to maybe 2 million BC when Vudu (hunky George Eastman, born Luigi Montefiori), an exiled tribesman, figures how to make iron weapons and saves his tribe from their deadly rivals. Lenzi, the director of films like ‘Seven Blood Stained Shadows’ and ‘Spasmo,’ knows his groove among these Stone Age stoners. Eastman returns in the 1984 ‘Blastfighter’ (Blu-ray, Code Red, R) which is actually a big, very heavy machine gun known here as a superweapon. Quentin Tarantino has ‘approved’ this slice of drive-in mayhem. Special Features include an audio commentary with star Michael Sopkiw, new interviews with Eastman, Sopkiw, director Lamberto Bava (‘A Blade in the Dark’) and cinematographer Gianlorenzo Battalgia.
MIGHTY MIGHTY MEL Does ‘The Producers’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) rate as Mel Brooks’ Greatest Comedy Ever? A fearless attack on hypocrisy, sentiment and cynicism, this is the 1967 movie that less than a quarter century after Hitler’s Holocaust sees a Jewish writer-director offer a kind of Part II to Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator,’ a celebration of the insanity that defined Der Fuhrer by ceaseless mockery. 
While more popular in its Broadway musical version, ‘The Producers’ on film has the kind of dream cast that would be a Brooks signature, led by that immortal ham Zero Mostel (‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’), the sublime Gene Wilder (‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,’ Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’), Dick Shawn (‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’), Kenneth Mars as the deranged Hitler acolyte, a truly terrible playwright, and most splendidly, the unforgettable Christopher Hewett as the not so closeted drag queen, flamboyantly gay director Roger De Bris. The Special Features range from Michael Schlesinger’s audio commentary, a Making of featurette and most intriguingly, a 51 second ‘Peter Sellers’ Statement [to Variety, the trade publication] Read by Paul Mazursky.’
SIRK! ROCK! Douglas Sirk’s rising reputation as one of Hollywood’s greatest auteurs and visual stylists make his 1957 biopic ‘Battle Hymn’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) worth watching. Rock Hudson, whom Sirk had ’discovered’ as a Universal contract player and boosted to stardom with ‘Magnificent Obsession,’ ‘All That Heaven Allows’ and ‘Written on the Wind,’ stars as WWII fighter pilot Dean Hess (the real Hess serves as technical consultant) who remains haunted by his accidental bombing of a German orphanage. A clergyman who went back in the Air Force to fly during the Korean War, Hess’ life-saving work was rescuing 1,000-plus orphans and homeless kids by transporting them to safety. Anna Kashfi is the Korean woman willing to risk her life to save the orphans. With an audio commentary.
TUFF ENUF KIRK In 1968 when Kirk Douglas starred as a tougher than tough LA police detective in ‘A Lovely Way to Die’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated), a changing Hollywood was trying to balance student rebellion, hippies, anti-Vietnam War protests and European imports with their casual sex and nudity with traditional old-fashioned filmmaking. Douglas, 52 and a star since the 1940s, was following Paul Newman (‘Harper’) and Frank Sinatra (‘The Detective’) in a trendy resurgence of big-screen tough detectives.
Like James Bond, Douglas’ Schuyler is a ‘chick magnet’ who is thrown off the force for police brutality – for beating up gangsters. He’s hired as security to Silva Koscina’s rich widow who just happens to be on trial with her lover for murdering her older husband. Filmed entirely on East Coast locations, unusual for Universal Pictures at that time, ‘Lovely’ has pace, energy (of course it’s got energy with full steam ahead Kirk!) and a comical undertone with a gang of murderous thieves in a nearby mansion who like to freeze corpses. Look for unbilled Ali MacGraw in the opening scene. A year later with ‘Goodbye, Columbus’ she would be a star. There’s a welcome audio commentary.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/30v9TLW
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