Gray and Grim: Effie Gray
Gray and Grim: Effie Gray
CATCHING UP WITH BLU-RAYS
As I said in my recent post, I’ve been laggard in keeping up to date on this website. The…
All That Glitters: Woman In Gold
I’m not sure why so many critics have taken aim at this movie, but it deserves a better break than it has gotten so far. Woman in Gold tells its remarkable true story with skill and sincerity. Helen Mirren is perfect in the leading role of Maria Altmann, the Austrian refugee who sues her homeland for the return of Gustav Klimt paintings the Nazis took from her family at the outset of World War Two. The “woman in gold” in his famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I isn’t just a celebrated beauty: she was Altmann’s beloved aunt. Ryan Reynolds is not the first actor who might come to mind to play her real-life lawyer, Randy Schoenberg (grandson of composer Arnold) but he does a…
All That Glitters: Woman In Gold
All That Glitters: Woman In Gold
From Buster Keaton To Shirley MacLaine: The TCM Classic Film Festival
I’m still recovering from the whirlwind that is the TCM Classic Film Festival. What a glorious event, attended by the most enthusiastic moviegoers in the world, run by a friendly staff, and filled to the brim with screenings, panels, interviews, and more. Because TCM stalwart Robert Osborne was recovering from a minor medical procedure and Ben Mankiewicz can’t be in two places at once, I had even more hosting duties than usual. My personal highlights were chatting with Christopher Plummer before a screening of The Man Who Would Be King, introducing a new restoration of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. with Carl Davis debuting his new orchestral score, and interviewing Shirley MacLaine—twice. It was equally enjoyable for me to introduce films I care about to such a receptive audience, including Walt Disney’s underappreciated So Dear to My…
From Buster Keaton To Shirley MacLaine: The TCM Classic Film Festival
From Buster Keaton To Shirley MacLaine: The TCM Classic Film Festival
Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart Work Hard to ‘Get Hard’
Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart Work Hard to ‘Get Hard’
Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart Work Hard to ‘Get Hard’
Full disclosure: I am not a fan of Will Ferrell’s comedies. I hoped that Kevin Hart’s brand of energy and the boldness of dealing head-on with racial stereotypes might give Get Hard a different dimension. No such luck. My students at USC laughed fairly often at our screening last night but I did not. Ferrell’s stock-in-trade is a self-aware silliness. In this film he plays a clueless money manipulator who’s enjoyed the fruits of success. He lives in a ridiculously opulent home with a social-climbing fiancée (Alison Brie) whose father (Craig T. Nelson) is also his boss. He treats his Latino house staff with the same irritating condescension as the fellow (Hart) who washes cars in the garage of his office building. When Ferrell is framed for fraudulent transactions and sentenced to ten years in…
