The Hardys Ride High (1939)

My first Andy Hardy movie, and you know I kind of like it. To one degree or another you can probably trace every 50's family sitcom to this series about a wise judge (Lewis Stone) and his over confident son (Micky Rooney). In this entry the Hardy's might be heir to a Two Million dollar fortune, but you know and I know, they won't have that money at the end of the film. However the whole things warm spirited and Rooney a lot funner then I had expected, so maybe it'd be worth your time.

The 40-Year-Old Virgian: Unrated (2005)

(Southern California; contemporary)

I can only echo my comments about Apatow's 'Knocked-Up': Compassionate, crude, but hilarious. Also Steve Carell really did a fine performance, he's so consistently praised that I sometimes find him off putting in his ubiquatiousness, but he really is quite remarkable in this role.

A Christmas Past (2000)

Not really a movie but a compilation of short, Christmas related, silent films from 1901-1925. The earlier ones are the more fascinating as they basically consist of recorded real life events, like a wealthy families children’s Christmas play, and a 1906 sleigh ride and snowball fight expedition. The later films are mostly about Santa Claus (including a 25 minute piece shot in Alaska), or people in Santa outfits, including the brave Octavious, who the title cards repeatedly remind us, "Never Fails". For extreme nostalgia junkies only.

Smotherd: The Censorship Struggle of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (2002)

500th Post!

Documentary chronicles the history of the popular but controversial late 60's variety hour. The brothers had signed to their CBS network program with employers who understood the duo to be essentially vaudevillian folk singers, however the program quickly took on a political bent that frustrated executives at the same time it pulled in massive ratings. Eventually the suits canceled the program on flimsy pretense and the brothers went on to win a $700,000 + lawsuit for unlawful termination. The programs ‘Pat Paulson for President’ can be seen as the inspiration for Stephen Colbert’s recent foray into the South Carolina primary.

Delbert Mann: 1920-2007

With the passing of Delbert Mann goes the last of the great film directors who got there start with live drama during the so-called 'Golden Age of Television'. Mann carried the small scale sensibilities of his television background with him into movies, concentrating on intament story lines, the first and most well known of which was 1955's best picture winner 'Marty', itself based on a teleplay. Mann's greatest work in my opinion was 'Separate Tables', a captivating account of two very different romantic relationships, which earned David Niven his Oscar. The Director would make his real money and extend his popular appeal with a series of Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies, but would ultimately return to the small screen where he felt they were still interested in making movies out of the kinds of stories he wanted to tell. Ironically it was during his second television period that Mann made his largest scope production with a remake of 'All Quite on the Western Front', though the sequel to 'Patton' he directed ('The Lat Days of Patton') was every bit as intament as the first was epic. Rest in peace the anti-David Lean.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)

Setting: Texas, China, California?; roughly contemporary

Second ‘Kill Bill’ film slows down a bit and provides further context and back story. Not as exciting in an action sense, but contains probably the better dialog, which ultimately is strong enough to make this film the equal of its predecessor.

28 Weeks Later (2007)

Setting: London, roughly contemporary

The Sequel to ‘28 Days Later’ looks at the effects of the ‘rage virus’ from a slightly loftier perspective. We are not confined in the cluster phobic but effective style of the first film, to the experiences of a small group cut off from information about the outside world. Here we have information about the outside world, though limited, that creates a broader sense of context and scope. We still center around a smaller group, but these people have lived through the initial infection and have something of an understanding about it. In fact they are engaged in the post catastrophe reconstruction, a somewhat unusual perspective for a work which at heart is a zombie movie, and something I’d like to see in further explored beyond the parameters this film set for itself. Like most zombie movies this one is primarily a chase in its later half and thus not particularly distinguished, though I must give them points for the reconstruction setting.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Setting: England, contemporary

Jon was expecting a broad spoof along the lines of the ‘Naked Gun’ or ‘Scary Movie’ series, but as I tried to explain to him that is not what this film is about. No the creative team behind ‘Shawn of the Dead’ have deeper sensibilities then that. While there is the knowing satyrical element where the creators reference genera conventions, this is secondary to a well constructed plot and likable characters, who are engaged in a storyline that comes at ‘the cop film’ at a good natured and sideways angel (or angle). I look forward to seeing more of this like from the able comedy duo of Pegg and Frost in the future.

Spider Man 3 (2007)

Setting: New York; roughly contemporary

Crowded third entry in spidy series has a lot to live up to after superb sequel but manages better then I had expected. Who’d have though Topher Grace as a supervillian?

30 Rock: Season 1 (2006-2007)

Setting: Mostly New York City; contemporary

The funniest show on television. I know a lot of people prefer ‘The Office’ and that’s supposed to be the new ‘Seinfeld’, but ‘Rock’ is the true heir to that 90's favorite. It’s the true heir both structurally and in idiosyncracy of humor, however you’d probably have to go back to ‘Cheers’ to get as good of an ensemble cast. Also the most current stop in Alec Baldwin’s surprising reinvention of himself.

28 Days Later (2003)

Setting: London to Manchester England; roughly contemporary

Danny Boyle directed zombie-type movie was surprise hit. Good, but not great as some have claimed. This genera has its limitations but is usually good for some action, a little character development, and perhaps some social commentary. Reminded me a bit of Wells’s original ‘War of the Worlds’, both with decimated/ abandoned English setting, and the story sequence with the solders reverting to tribalism.

The Hoax (2006)

Setting: New York, Nevada, The Bahama’s, Switzerland, (imaginary sequence in Mexico); 1971-1972, epilog 1974.

Before writing his fictisive “autobiography” of Howard Hughs, author Clifford Irving penned a book on a famous art forger entitled ‘Fake’, this book in turn served as partial inspiration for Orson Wells experimental film “F For Fake” in which Irving appeared as himself. Those who have seen Wells film know it to have been constructed as an elaborate trick on the audience, and the makers of this film about Irving’s larger claim to fame, have borrowed from former’s sensibilities.

The Hughs book was a hoax, but one that its own perpetrator came to believe in to a certain extent. It was based on an extensive mining of material on the reclusive billionaire, and systemized by the authors own channeling of his subject. Irving ‘literally’ became Hughs for the purpose of dictating the rambling reminiscences on which his book would be based. He also came to believe, quite enthaticaly, if the authors own accounts are here to be trusted, in a Hughs connection to a slightly completed, underhanded series of dealings with Richard Nixon, dealings which again if the film is to be believed, lead in an indirect way to Watergate, impeachment proceedings, and the presidents resignation. How much of this is true is open to a deserved bit of skepticism on the part of the viewer, but that in itself feeds the effectiveness of the film which is not so much about any of the specifics, as about the layers of lying and self deception that can bring potentially anyone down, the victims of their own ‘hoax’.

You're A Good Man Charles Schulz (2007)

Like most any American whose childhood fell between about 1950 and 2000, I grew up reading Charles Schulz ‘Peanuts’ in the funny pages of my local paper. I watched “It’s Christmas Charlie Brown” nearly every year, as well other ‘Peanuts’ specials, and thought for a distressingly long time that the lyrics to “Hang on Sloopy” where “Hang on Snoopy”. But on the whole, other then greatly admiring the Christmas special, I thought Schulz work was very simply, and had grown uber-repetitive over the course of nearly 19,000 strips. However in late 1999 I caught part of a profile of Schulz on an episode of 60 Minutes (only a few months before he died), that completed changed my perceptions of the man, and has had me fascinated with him ever since.

Schulz was something of a psychic wreak, ‘Peanuts’ being in fact a kind of fifty-year session of self therapy, centered on events of his childhood and acted out by characters both arch-typial and representative of people from the creators past, and aspects of his psyche. Linus was named for his best friend at the art school where he taught, as well as his inner philosopher. Schroder goes back to a youthfull enthrallment with a friends mothers playing of Beethoven. Lucy was his first wife. Charlie his somber demeanor and insecure sense of self. The ‘little red-haired girl’ the women who got away. Snoopy, his fantasy life who came to dominate the strip during the aftermath of his divorce.

One thing that the PBS documentary really brought home to me was the cruelty that was so central to ‘Peanuts’ and which Schulz himself kind of acknowledged the strip was about. The passive aggressive punch line of the very first strip set the tone for decades to follow: “Good old Charlie Brown, oh how I hate him.” There was meanness, rejection, existential fear, and indifference. These are dark and deep things to grapple with in a four panel about big headed children, but they resonate, because they are formative. I myself remember a period as maybe a three or four year old child, waking up every morning and feeling my heart to see that I was still alive. Where did I get this fear at such a young age when I didn’t really understand what death was? It’s the kind of youthful experience you might think that you had alone, that no one else could relate to. Yet we all had childhood fears, we were all concerned about rejection, and death and loneliness, and Schulz recognized that, and it resonated, remarkably well. Just as he resonates to me, representative of the psychic struggles of a life time.