Armchair Film Fest – Page 2 – Six Degrees of Film

6 Degrees: Summer Film News

168816805 FOR 6 DEGREES COVER PHOTO SHOT — 6 Degrees of Film

Hello Film fans! In this edition of Summer Film News, we are looking at the movies opening in the summer of 2018. From the films we have seen, here’s a list with some that look interesting enough to recommend making a trip to the movies.

At the Movies Now: Avengers: Infinity War has already opened. This one is already setting records…. so we can safely say that this is a hit movie that will do well, as did the two similar films which are in the top ten box office hits of all time.

The Classics: The Seagull with Annette Bening is a remake of Chekhov’s classic play. And an artsy Chekhov film is something you don’t see too often, at least not with A-list stars. This one is billed as a story of ‘unrequited love and artistic jealousy.” Annette Bening is one of only a handful of actresses with enough clout and acting chops to pull this dramatic adaptation off. Brian Dennehy co-stars.

The Baby Boomer Movies: Book Club and Mamma Mia! Here we Go Again; Mission Impossible- Fallout and Life of the Party with Melissa McCarthy, are all baby boomer fanfare. Most of these are films that people of a certain age will gravitate towards.

The Documentaries: Out now is RBG, a documentary about the life of the notorious Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and a documentary on the life of Hedy Lamarr called Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Both are must see films in an era where we are striving to teach our girls about how to be brave and courageous, and to stand up for what we believe in. Coming soon is a doc on Pope Francis; Pope Francis- A Man of his word, from director Wim Wenders, plus an upcoming look at the life of Fred Rogers, the man who was known as Mr Rogers entitled Won’t You be my Neighbor? Rogers life may surprise some who have pigeonholed him as simply the nice man in the sweater who taught kids on public television.

Solo: A Star Wars Story opens May 25th, and is directed by Ron Howard. This is the highly anticipated prequel that is debuting at Cannes Film Festival. Some of the advance previews have gotten good reviews, so it looks promising. It is also an interesting prospect to watch an award-winning director such as Howard, one who is so obvious a fan of the genre and yet isn’t part of the original Star Wars clique, show us with fresh eyes their ‘take’ on this classic tale.

The Remakes and Sequel Season: Ocean’s 8 is out June 8th; this is the female version of the franchise and stars Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts. They will have to convince me the very original poster for this film contains something that has not been done and redone many times over….
• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom opens June 22nd
• Sicario: Day of Soldado opens June 29 plus the aforementioned Mamma Mia sequel plus Denzel Washington returns in his sequel offering as The Equalizer 2

Mamma Mia! Here we go again hits theatres on July 20th…here we go again… This may not be worth revisiting, but I’m a huge Meryl Streep and Colin Firth fan, and this premise does (not) seem interesting enough to hold our attention….
Mission: Impossible-Fallout starts July 27th…. And I ask without snark….but in the tradition of all good soap opera openings: will Tom Cruise ever make a film that is anything other than an exercise of gymnastics and stunts? He was a good actor in another life…

Papillon is coming at the end of the summer cycle, it’s set for release late in August. The original would be hard to beat. The original film from 1973 with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman was a great action-adventure film that was also an intense drama and remains one of McQueen’s great screen triumphs. Charlie Hunnam (King Arthur) plays the lead in the remake. The film is based on the real life story of a Frenchman who is desperate to escape from a life sentence in a French Guiana penal colony.

The Kids Films are Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation and Incredibles 2; plus Teen Titans Go! To the Movies…. I have often said that some of the most innovative work in film is done by Pixar (Incredibles 2) and is found in children’s movies. Therefore, let’s hope the imaginative sparks will fly into main stream films some day!

The Comedies of Summer include the Melissa McCarthy offering called Life of the Party, and Mamma Mia! Here we Go Again, plus Dog Days, opening in August, and a film with Mila Kunis billed as an “International espionage comedy’ also in August, called The Spy Who Dumped Me.
Regarding Life of the Party, I have found that some of McCarthy’s comedies have been hit and miss. Spy was funny but the one with Sandra Bullock- The Heat (2013)- was deadly dull. So who knows?…The story line for this outing has McCarthy going back to school with her daughter. This is one of our 6 Degrees reworks. Rodney Dangerfield, as Thornton Melon, went Back to School back in 1986 and it’s hard to find a comedy to top that particular subject. (Watch it just for the Triple Lindy!)

Dog Days looks light and fairly benign, and the film with Kunis-The Spy Who Dumped Me– could be something different, but we’ll have to wait for some early reviews. Although with SNL’s Kate McKinnon co-starring, this one could be a sleeper hit. Stay tuned

Something Completely Different:
Christopher Robin opens August 3th- and is a live action version of the well-known children’s story. This version, with Ewan McGregor, is billed as a fantasy and it could be one of those films where the previews show us one type of film, and we see a completely different version when we get to the theatre. McGregor sums up the plot of the grown up version of Christopher Robin as one where he is ‘finding his relationship with his younger self again.’

The Meg on August 10th stars Jason Statham in an updated action version of Jaws with a megalodon monster that measures 70 feet Ordinarily I would not include this type of rehash, but it seems intriguing enough as they are trying to mesh Jaws with Jurassic Park to create another box office bonanza.
Slender Man is a horror flick debuting in August. Horror is big, and many of the most original plots with the best reviews have come out of the horror genre. It and Jordan Peele’s Get Out come to mind. Horror used to be for the bad B set only, and the films in recent years have shown the genre to be making a comeback

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society starring Lily James opens in August in the states, with James playing a writer in 1946 who exchanges letters with German occupied residents of Guernsey during World War II.

This is the end of what we have seen that is coming this summer. And you can start adding to some of those lists we’ve been talking about. I’ve noticed that when you see film reviews and film blog sites, we are always looking at lists. And a few of these lists have films that I may have missed. But most of them seem fairly pedantic and uninspired. I have encouraged everyone to make up, besides the Netflix list you may keep or films that you have missed at the theatre, a running Personal list of films to record and to watch. In the same way we have book lists for those titles you want to read at some later date, these are films which are ‘must see’ for the course of your lifetime and that you don’t want to miss.

From 6 Degrees of Film; the Future of Film in the global village, there are several lists, including a list of top 100 films, that can be found in the back of the book. The book has an overview of the history of film, as well as some insights into where we are going with movie making in the twenty-first century.

In the coming months, 6 Degrees and Friday Flix will highlight some excerpts from the book that will apply to the current state of moviemaking in Hollywood. We have been talking about the diversity issues, and the MeToo movement which sprang from the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and the forerunner of this, the old Hollywood casting couch cliché where women were notoriously exploited by older, rich, powerful executive men who used young girls and got away with it for over a hundred years.

The Future of Film in the Global Village

Talking about the future of film. I see a lot of art houses showing revivalist work and Film Festivals featuring favorite actors as well as genres and directors. I see the neighborhood movie theatres being converted into multi-use platforms. Some are mega-churches, or meeting venues.

And I see a lot of films being made for the small screen. You can bet there will be more series with six or eight episodes, (Benedict Cumberbatch as Patrick Melrose) to be sold as a feature in a ‘boxed set.’ And hopefully, we can create our own “Armchair Film Festivals” as we can begin to personalize our smart sets to view and download our favorite films, customized in a digital system for our own personal use. (You can make good use of the ‘must-see’ list of films!)

There are good and bad arguments in seeing our own tastes in cinema displayed before us. Of course, Netflix and Amazon will still be able to suggest films that we like, based on our settings. So that is not going away in the future world of film. But as we get older, our tastes in music and film will change along with everything else. We will see this is an evolving list to grow and to revise through the years.

Critics will perhaps move to categories and genres that encompass older films and films of the past….like the 6 Degrees of film critic! The inevitable comparisons in film styles and categories will make it necessary, after seeing many films with similar plots and story lines, to have film guides for the styles and genres of the past that reemerge in different formats.

And we will always have Paris. What do I mean by that? I don’t know, but it always sounds good, and I recommend every film goer to watch Casablanca at least once in your lifetime.
Speaking of Casablanca, here’s a line up of some films for Millennials to watch and record…

• Bogart Film Fest: Some of his best work is seen this month on TCM, including the aforementioned Casablanca and a less well known but equally entertaining film, Across the Pacific.

• The Thin Man Series: Coming on TCM this month, the original was one of the “Screwball Comedies” that Hollywood churned out during the depression era thirties. The witty repartee and the film chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy make these light comedies classic and timeless. Highly recommended as part of anyone’s must-see film series, and part of the Armchair Film Fest to record this month.

* The Great Escape with Steve McQueen. One of my favorite lines about the actor was from a critic who said, “He could act with only the back of his head on screen’ By that, I think the critic meant that Steve McQueen was a natural, and that he didn’t have to reach for anything. One of his early successes was in this film from 1963 featuring a great ensemble cast about a real-life prison break from a prisoner of war camp in Nazi Germany.

• The Lion in Winter: In contrast to the coolest of cool actors, here are two that blew hot most of the time: Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn. They worked together in the film adaptation of the play; “The Lion in Winter.” The wonderful thing about this story is that it really is part of our historical record. There was a Henry II who ruled England with his powerfully political wife, Eleanor of Acquitaine. And he really did lock her up after she rebelled against him with their oldest son, Richard the Lionhearted. And he did trot her out only for royal events such as Christmas holidays. And that is where the story picks up, with Eleanor coming home for the holidays. The playwright took the challenge of “What if…?” and wrote this funny, bizarre and poignant script which results in a bonanza of emotional scenes for great actors. This is a clever and moving film at times, and there really are no two better actors to play these over the top characters than Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn. They worked well together but were only on screen as a duo in this one film, (By the way, Hepburn’s nickname for O’Toole in real life was “Pig.”)

• Capracorn: This is the name given to all of the work of Frank Capra, who is somewhat unfairly labeled with the title of schmaltzy director of heart-tugging films. He did indulge in this tugging of heartstrings at times, as did many, (Spielberg is guilty of this too). But Capra’s films are classics, and some of them are seen less than the one shown almost on a loop at Christmas time, Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. Before Jimmy Stewart became George Bailey, he starred in You can’t take it with you with his acting partner from It’s a Wonderful life– Lionel Barrymore. Barrymore was a member of one of the first of Hollywood elite acting dynasties, the Barrymore Family. John, Ethel and Lionel were all consummate actors of stage and screen, and they would be the first ones to tell people how good they were.
• Barrymore portrays a laid-back character in this film, a complete turn-around from his mean Mr. Potter role in the Christmas classic. You Can’t Take it with you is also based on a Pulitzer prize winning play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The theme centers around the idea that we need to stop worrying about tomorrow, about making money, and concentrate on the things that matter and on what makes us happy. This was apparently a problem even when we supposedly lived in a much slower paced society. But this film came out during the Depression, (1938), and the themes of working for what really matters and looking for more in life than just getting ahead and making money were already huge issues for middle class America

I could go on about films for a long, long time. This will have to be the end of the Summer Film News and we hope you are as excited to see some of these films, on the big screen and the small one, as we have been in compiling the list and writing about them. Till next week, have fun, get those must-see lists of movies going, and see you at the movies!-ML

6 Degrees: Friday Flix Armchair Film Fest Edition

For the Armchair Film Fest Crowd: For those couch potatoes, like myself, who love films and prefer to partake of Film Festivals from the comfort of their living room chairs, here’s some recommended viewing for May. Here are two big blocks of films shown on Turner Classic you may want to watch and record. The first is the action adventure series with Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan who star together in a string of Tarzan films. Tarzan was the Nativist ideal billed as the “King of the Jungle” who ruled with compassion and care as the lord of his domain. This is on the heels of Darwin’s theory that the strongest survive, and it followed the early 20th century notion of the domination of stronger countries (The United Kingdom and the United States come to mind), over the weaker ones as we went nation-building throughout Africa and the Middle East. The entire film series has an underlying theme of man’s dominance, and yet some surprisingly modern views of women, as Jane, (played by Maureen O’Sullivan-mother of Mia Farrow) tosses aside all of society’s norms to abandon her country and her fiancée to live with Tarzan in the wilds of Africa. The best of the series, after the original Tarzan, is Tarzan’s New York Adventure and Tarzan Find’s a Son!

The other Film Fest that is a must see on TCM in May is the Thin Man series. Myrna Loy is a favorite for all women, including myself, who appreciate the strong female role models that popped up from time to time in Hollywood. Myrna Loy had terrific chemistry with William Powell, and the two made a string of Thin Man gems, with lots of witty dialogue and clever plot twists during the ‘screwball comedy’ period of the thirties and forties. The original Thin Man is one of the best of the series, as well as the second- After the Thin Man– with a young Jimmy Stewart, and the third, Another Thin Man, with a hilarious baby birthday party featuring the toughs of New York City, all of them tough guys carrying their babies around. As is often the case, hilarity ensues.

One not to be missed film on TCM is A Few Good Men, which in the climate we live in, both politically and ethically, is a wonderful example of an intense courtroom drama that has a lasting moral message of dogged determination and the idea that the truth will out in the end. A must-see for anyone who has never had a chance to watch one of Tom Cruise’s best performances, as well as an outstanding role for Jack Nicholson with the memorable line: “You WANT me on that wall!…You NEED me on that Wall!”….The connotations are obvious as they resonate today.

The Avengers

Well, we recently listed the top 10 money making films of all time. And the Avengers makes the list at No. 5 AND No 7…(Age of Ultron). So it’s no wonder that the new Avengers film: Infinity War, has suddenly begun to explode records in terms of box office earnings. There are several reviews of the movie in this week’s 6 Degrees magazine, and most of us have gleaned that some of the Marvel characters don’t make it through to the end in this one. Enough said, however, in true Marvel hero fashion, the one hint I will drop is that most of these characters that meet their demise have already announced their sequels so we’ll have to just stay tuned to see if they live to fight another day. My prediction: as long as they are making money hand over fist for the studios, we don’t have to worry about a shortage of super-heroes!

One list I found funny this week in 6 Degrees supposedly had the ten most boring films of all time. And Brad Pitt was in three of them. I didn’t agree with all of the films on the list, not because any of them were particularly stellar ( However I do like Meet Joe Black), but because in my lifetime, I’ve seen so many really bad, really boring films. And these would not make the top ten cut.

That happens a lot when I see the lists compiled from many of these film blogs. I realize I’ve seen a hell of a lot of films, and some really bad ones to boot. And my movie watching experience extends decades beyond what these bloggers and writers are including when they compile any list-comedy, film noir, action, drama, etc….So I suppose it’s all relative. However, I am not as down on Brad Pitt as this critic seemed to be. He also had Tom Cruise in two of these films, and yes, they were bad Cruise vehicles. (See above-Tom Cruise was in a few good films like A Few Good Men)

Stay tuned for the Summer Film News coming next week. We highlight some of the top summer offerings, as well as discussing some of the major film trends of the 21st Century. Don’t miss out! Till next time, have fun and I’ll see you at the movies!-ML

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

Happy Friday Film Fans! At the movies this week, we see Roger Ebert’s Film Festival-Ebertfest 2018 is going on this weekend in Chicago. Some of the featured films this week on the Ebert site include The Rider, praised as …” the best American movie this critic has seen in the past year”, which is high praise indeed for critic Godfrey Cheshire. Also a documentary of Elvis: The Searcher, is featured, which garnered good reviews also

Amy Schumer is out with a comedy called I Feel Pretty and the controversy from the start has to do with the idea of “body-shaming’ to generate laughs. We are indeed in a Brave New World, as I could take my millennial readers on a trip down memory lane where the norm was what is now called “Body-shaming.” We are living in a different world, but funny is funny, and according to most critics, the body shaming critique is not the movie’s biggest problem. *(Hint: Most comedies should be funny!)

There is a Time Media Company list of 100 Most Influential people that includes many current stars like Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman); Hugh Jackman (The Greatest Showman); Greta Gerwig (director of Lady Bird); Director of Oscar winner: The Shape of Water’s Guillermo del Toro; John Krasinski, star of the horror hit A Quiet Place, and Chadwick Boseman of Black Panther fame. All their tributes are featured in 6 Degrees magazine this week. They’re worth a read.

Last week we listed some of the more interesting upcoming films coming soon; Some will be featured at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival next weekend. There’s also a piece in 6 Degrees magazine about films that turn 20 this year. It does speak to the idea that there are some films that age well, and some that are forgettable and will fade from memory. It’s a fun parlor game-to think of films you have seen in the past decade, or since 2000, that really stand out in memory….I’ve written about some of these memorable films in the past, but write a comment to let me know if there’s some that stand out for you…

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I have a piece that I published this week about some of the spiritual elements from the Oscar winning The Shape of Water. Some other films at the movies recommended are Wes Anderson’s quirky The Isle of Dogs, and we hear Blockers is a good light comedy. For the Armchair Film Fans, TCM is screening W.C Fields’ The Bank Dick and Steve McQueen’s The Thomas Crown Affair this weekend. Both are recommended viewing. Till next time, see you at the movies!-ML

6 Degrees: Oscar News

Oscar News

The Oscars show was always a big deal for me…but in recent years, …not so much. The glamour is not there, and there are so many award shows, it just doesn’t pack the same punch. The turning point for me happened when they sent the Disney characters into the audience one year and Tom Hanks and Paul Newman just looked embarrassed. They don’t seem to know how to bring the show into the modern era

The biggest problem that has been widely documented is the diversity issue. The Academy was an “Old White Guy” organization and it showed. They have worked on trying to repair the breech, but it’s been painfully slow to watch.

Some stand-out moments I remember from recent years occurred when Lady Gaga sang The Sound of Music, and then when Billy Crystal returned to host the show it just seemed funnier, but James Franco remains, in my opinion, the worst host in Oscar history. I hope the show isn’t overlong, and the disaster of an announcement for Best Picture doesn’t occur again…Warren Beatty is probably blackballed forever. I keep watching it out of habit, but with each passing year, the glitz and glamor of a bygone era becomes more painfully evident.

Here is what I wrote about the Academy Awards in my book 6 Degrees of Film: The future of film in the Global Village from 2013:

On the Academy Awards

One of my biggest beefs is that even in the twenty-first century the Academy Awards show looks a lot like a holdout from a bygone era. The glitz and glamour are not as believable when there is so much more to the film industry in the modern era. The age of computer imaging and video games and the type of sophisticated special effects used in modern films are barely acknowledged. Little mention is given to the separate awards ceremony held for the scientific and technical awards. James Cameron invented a new method of filmmaking, and George Lucas and others initiated many breakthroughs in the way we see things on film. But none of these accomplishments are honored. New categories should be created to acknowledge these developments so they can be brought to the public’s attention. The global village of filmmaking is compartmentalized into one or two categories of short films and the foreign film category. Even though Slumdog Millionaire won several Oscars in 2009, the film is treated as if none of that ever happened. The encapsulated world of Hollywood elites still appears to be fairly homogenized (barring a few obligatory jokes about Jews in Hollywood). The only nod to the changing of the guard was in 2010 when Barbra Streisand handed the Best Director award to a woman (Kathryn Bigelow for Hurt Locker) for the first time, and when Halle Berry, the first African American woman to receive the Best Actress award, acknowledged Hattie McDaniel and all of the women of color who had come before her. If Hollywood and filmmaking are a large part of the American persona, and this show is one of our best chances to advertise our unique and diverse American way of life, then why doesn’t Hollywood pull out all the stops on these occasions? Instead, the powers-that-be in Hollywood present a timid and tepid tribute to films in a way they have done many times before. Shouldn’t there be some acknowledgement of innovation? To my mind, that is “the stuff that dreams are made of,” which Bogey spoke of so long ago….

And here we are, five years after 6 Degrees of Film was published, and I still have the same complaints! There are no innovative new categories, and the diversity issue is still front and center. We are still talking about the ‘old white guys’ show, with few exceptions.

But this year may be different. In this changed atmosphere, post #MeToo and Harvey Weinstein, then there may be some movement in the gender discrimination category.

Would it kill them to be innovative and come up with some new categories? Such as best “Breakthrough Performer” or Most Promising….really anything that smacks of “Something Different.” There’s been some discussion of late about naming the Best Picture that was awarded the Oscar for “Best Picture.” The Godfather and Lawrence of Arabia come to mind.

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Movies of the 21st Century

Winners in this category would be Slumdog Millionaire, with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, A Beautiful Mind and Gladiator being on the short list.

Nominated films that were superior include: Lost in Translation, Capote, Munich, Juno, There Will Be Blood, Up, The Social Network, Inception, Moneyball, Gravity, Her, The Big Short, The Revenant, Arrival, Fences, and a few more that define the times we live in much better than the films that won the Oscar.

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This year, Lady Bird and Get Out will probably not win, as they are not odds on favorites. The Shape of Water is an interesting entry, and it gets my vote, but Three Billboards is an outside favorite that has a good chance.

The point of it all isn’t really that these winners are the “Best” films, but the films with either more popular votes from Academy winners, or they represent a snapshot in time, and may or may not have staying power. Most of the recent winning films are forgettable.

Sign up for 6 Degrees Friday Flix

Sign up for my mailing list to see all the latest news in film each week in Friday Flix. 6 Degrees of Film magazine features all the latest reviews and articles from leading publishers about current and classic movies. In editing the magazine, I make a point of going into the archives as well as searching the internet to find the latest reviews and summarizing the Big Picture each week in Friday Flix.

6 Degrees of Film blog features quarterly newsletters, weekly film reviews and reports, as well as excerpts from my 2013 book 6 Degrees of film: The Future of film in the Global Village. We also include reviews of classic movies, and current films in theaters and recommendations on television in the recurring feature: The Armchair Film Festival. In other words, 6 Degrees is your one-stop shopping for all the film news that’s fit to print. Join us as we go through the latest winners and wrap up the Oscars report this week. We love to hear from you all….Enjoy the show and until next week, see you at the movies!-ML

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

For those who are disillusioned about politics and America, and America’s place in the world, please remember that we’ll always have Paris. You may have heard that line, and perhaps you don’t know that it’s one of the memorable lines from Casablanca. My personal favorite line in this film is NOT “Play it Again, Sam”, (which was a misquote: The line is: “Play it, Sam!…You played it for her, you can play it for me!”), but the line where Bogie tells someone that he came to Casablanca ‘for the waters.’ When told they were surrounded by desert, he says, “I was….misinformed.”

Casablanca

Casablanca is just one of the memorable films playing this month on Turner Classic Movies. Last week we mentioned Meet Me in St Louis, which is a great holiday film starring Judy Garland . One of the highlights of the film is Garland singing, “Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which became one of her signature songs.

Garland is also in the remake of The Little Shop around the Corner, the classic Ernst Lubitsch film with Jimmy Stewart from the thirties. They remade it as a musical, In the Good Old Summertime, with Judy Garland and Van Johnson in the fifties. And then, they remade it again with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. As you can tell, the story is memorable enough to rework, and each of these films did well at the box office.

The plot revolves around two co-workers who compete for sales in a small music shop, and they develop a dislike for each other. Their personal life is marked by a correspondence, (they used to be called ‘pen-pals’ in the old days,) that develops into a romantic courtship.

For each slight given the other, they tell their friends about the wonderful nature of the person that they have met and their developing romance through the mail. Of course, they don’t know what the other looks like. And so, the plot thickens when they agree to meet, and the male in the story realizes that the person he has been dreaming about is the same annoying young woman he works with in the store.

At first, he begins to tease his co-worker, and begins to see that she has also fixated on him as her romantic ideal. From there, he begins to try and develop a friendship with her, and draws her out about her ‘intended.’ The girl eventually does decide that the real flesh and blood person she works with is the one she would choose, and the end has the two pairing up as he reveals his love for her.

The plot plays like a revamped Shakespearean comedy, with twists and turns and sub-plots that lend itself to the final denouement. But the story has proven to be a durable one, as they’ve remade it successfully in three separate variations of the theme. The story in each film starts as a kind of screwball comedy, with mistaken identities and revolving doors, but at the essence of this tale is the sweet and at times, bittersweet nature of love, where the eternal ideal is always at odds with the realities of life. The true meeting of the minds is seen in the final outcome for each of these stories, and the updated versions through the past century of film are worth a view (or two.)

We also talked last week about Lord Jim as a Spiritual film that’s recommended to rent or record. Another great performance from Peter O’Toole that is playing this month on TCM is My Favorite Year. The movie would never have worked without the over-the-top character of O’Toole parodying his own legendary capers and drunken displays. This is a good film for the holidays and for those old enough to appreciate the air of nostalgia that surrounds the main characters and the plot.

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There’s an Armchair Film Festival waiting for those who love Hitchcock: Rear Window, with Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart, and North by Northwest with Cary Grant are both on TCM this month. These two movies showcase Hitchcock in top form. The paranoia and slightly dark and deviant world that he hints at or alludes to at times is seen just peeking through enough in these two films to make them more than merely interesting.

For those who have never seen Albert Brooks on film, I would recommend hitting record for Modern Romance. Brooks has a droll way of delivering a line that no one else has been able to achieve. The closest I can think of in comparison is W C Fields. Both comics talk about the situations at hand, and at the same time they seem to comment on the state of the world and their own sly and paranoid asides and thought experiments tend to lend a totally different meaning to the spoken word. Watch the master at work in Modern Romance on TCM.

Finally, for some of the greatest repartee ever filmed, the Thin Man Series with William Powell and Myrna Loy is playing on TCM around New Years. Start the New Year the right way and record these two in action. They are funny and droll, they’re stylish and entertaining and witty as well as being perfect foils for each other in this series of films.

Hope everyone is enjoying their holidays and taking time to see a movie or two. I’m looking forward to The Shape of Water, and of course, the latest Star Wars film is about to drop in the next week. The other films that have been well received are Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Wonder, and The Disaster Artist. Till next week, see you at the movies-ML

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

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Hello to all Film Fans & Friends! The good news, surprising to some of us, is that Dunkirk has opened to really good reviews. It’s short-107 minutes -Thank God! (Spare me from the overly long Summer serial movies recently that have begged for good editing!). So that’s a pleasant surprise… And the Planet of the Apes film has also gotten surprisingly good reviews. There is always hope that we’ll salvage a fairly blah summer film season.

Wonder Woman has continued to rake in the money. But there comes a point in the summer film season when we start to desperately look around for some good films on the horizon. And there are usually these great little hidden gems of cinema that are a big reason why many of us continue to watch movies.

6 Degrees Magazine: This week, check out these articles online. There’s an article about Director Werner Herzog’s masterpiece of a documentary Burden of Dreams, which is about the making of the film Fitzcarraldo in 1982.

Critically Speaking: As mentioned, the reviews for Dunkirk and War for the Planet of the Apes have been good. Also, there’s The Big Sick, with a supporting cast that includes Ray Romano and Holly Hunter, so that has garnered interest and hope that the Rom-Com’s are not dead (simply in need of a 21st Century upgrade!).

The Indie Film: The Little Hours is reviewed on the macguffin film site as well as the sci-fi film from director Luc Besson, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Film Comment also has a post on the Valerian film, which is based on a popular French graphic novel series entitled Valerian and Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mezieres. Film Comment calls the series of books a “travesty of storytelling”, and says the film itself is “bereft of narrative tension” but instead functions “strictly as spectacle.” Valerian reviews as a whole have been mixed, so this explains it as good as any other reason I’ve heard. Rolling Stone has a film review of Valerian with the lead: “Luc Besson makes a Sci-Fi Mess.”

We’ve already mentioned War for the Planet of the Apes, which has garnered good reviews after suffering through a few stumbles in the past with some duds in the continuing “ape” series. There’s a film out called Endless Poetry, from an 88 year old Chilean-French filmmaker which has been getting good reviews.

And finally, Lady Macbeth is reviewed on Ebert.com, and focuses on the performance from the 21- year old lead Florence Pugh. It’s worthy to note that Lady Macbeth is NOT based on the Shakespearean character, but instead comes from a Russian novella by Nikolai Leskov titled “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk”, a book centering on ways women were suppressed and stifled in the 19th century. (It makes a difference!)

Notable Deaths: There’s an interview from Film Comment featured in our magazine done recently with the late Martin Landau, who won an Oscar for his supporting role in Ed Wood. And the other recent passing was of the much-admired Horror Director George Romero, famous for the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead film, as well as the many spawns of that classic: Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and many others, including the TV series from 1983, Tales from the Darkside.

Well, till we meet again film goers. I’m excited about the films coming soon (Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is one) and the great Armchair Film Festival offerings from Turner Classic. Hitchcock lovers have had a fantastic month in July if they tuned in and recorded the entire catalog of Hitchcock classics. One of my favorite lines will always be from Notorious, when Madame Sebastian learns her son has married a spy. She quietly lights a cigarette and tells him, “We are saved by the enormity of your stupidity.” I have truly come to adore that line, and try to apply it to my own life whenever possible. See you at the movies!-ML

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

Happy post-Fourth of July week, readers and moviegoers! We are seeing lots of films debut this month, and I’ve included some of the summaries up front so you can judge for yourself. One of the things that I’m excited about is the line-up on Turner Classic this month, which is showing so many of the great Hitchcock classics in July. Make sure, especially if you haven’t seen them, to set the DVR to record some of the top films: Psycho, Rear Window, The Birds, Notorious, and many more.
Armchair Film Fest: The Hitchcock list of films on TCM is phenomenal. They start with his early silent work and run through his classics all month long. This is definite fodder for the Armchair Film Festival devotee. The Armchair Film Fest is my favorite kind of film festival personally! One thing has always stuck with me in the biography and studies of Hitchcock-Hitchcock was asked about his penchant for horror films, and what his idea of something that was really funny would be. He said that a party where the food was all dyed blue was something that struck him as hilarious. There are some people that are originals. Hitchcock was a one of a kind, unique character in films-one who will never be replicated.
Also on TCM this Saturday, one of the films that is certainly unique, is the comedy with Eleanor Parker, who is remembered as the Baroness in The Sound of Music. She stars with Robert Taylor in Many Rivers to Cross. The film is light and at times a “fluff piece”, but the portrayal of a strong pioneer woman by Parker remains one of the highlights of the era.
Most of the fifties women were at times even sycophantic in their deference to men. Parker plays this role with a gusto and a physical presence that makes it memorable for most women of the 21st Century to relate to the character.
Some of the political films playing this month will also seem tailor made to this era in our political life. They are showing the original The Manchurian Candidate which was thought to have been banned at the time due to the controversial content. It turns out, that wasn’t accurate, but the film wasn’t seen for many years, due to contractual agreements. It is a very gripping 1962 Cold War thriller about a U.S soldier who is captured and brainwashed to be used as a political assassin.
The other film for Armchair Film Fest is Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracy. I would invite anyone, on the left or right, to watch this great classic with the memorable opening soundtrack pulling the camera back with the folk spiritual “Old Time Religion” playing solemnly as the shot pans to small town, USA . In this case, it’s a small town where the famous Scopes Monkey Trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, and Tracy delivers one of his best performances as the distinguished lawyer Henry Drummond, who is defending a high school science teacher, (played by Dick York), who was teaching the theory of evolution in his class. The film is powerful, as is the message which is derived from the play of the same name. We are still debating the Evolutionary theory with the creationists defending their viewpoint well into the 21st Century.
What’s Playing: Here’s a quote about the film, Okja, which says a lot. The film has generated a lot of good buzz, but ….”somewhere in here lies a great film wanting to come out” This review and more are featured in this week’s 6 Degrees magazine. Here’s a recap of the plot.
The Plot of Okja: A CEO-played by Tilda Swinton, announces that a new breed of super-pig has been developed. A cross between a pig and a hippotamus has been created with the animal having the disposition of a puppy. The purpose of breeding them is to solve the world’s food shortage, and to create an eco-friendly food source. Twenty-six super pigs are to be grown over a period of ten years as the corporation has a competition. At the end, they will be taken back to America to be hailed as a success.
Okja is the name of the pig raised in South Korea by a young girl, who bonds with the animal. In the end, the film is a cross between Animal Farm, Charlotte’s Web, The Yearling, and a slew of films that come to mind about kids and their pets.
The Big Sick has been getting lots of good reviews. It’s an updated modern-day version of a romantic comedy. The two lovers are star-crossed, with their life situations updated for the modern era. He is a comedian and a Muslim, and she is a WASP. They break up and are reunited when he learns she is sick and going to be placed into a medically-induced coma. At this point, he must confront his deeper feelings for her and reconcile his hostility to commitment with his love for her. And there is comedy! Holly Hunter plays the mother and Ray Romano is the father of the sick girl. So there are laughs to be had along the way. We haven’t seen too many good rom-com’s since When Harry met Sally, so this is a re-fashioned kind of plot for the new age.
Spider-Man:Homecoming has also debuted over the holiday weekend. And Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is reviewed on the Macguffin site, as well as the afore-mentioned films.
Film Comment has a post on The Dirty Dozen, released in 1967. It was a landmark war movie, but not really in the same class as Saving Private Ryan or even The Longest Day. The Stranger, also from 1967, is reviewed and it’s another 1967 release, starring Marcello Mastroianni. Based on The Stranger by Albert Camus, it has rarely been seen since its release, due to distribution rights disputes. It is faithful to the book by Camus, and is generally regarded favorably by critics who’ve seen it.

Baby Driver is still making waves with critics this week. And the independent The Little Hours is reviewed favorably on rogerebert.com. Will Ferrell’s The House has bombed badly, with a quote in a review reading: “movies require scripts.” Ouch.
Critically Speaking: There’s a podcast from Vanity Fair titled: “How Hollywood Ruined Zombies, According to George A Romero”. And there’s an interesting post from Barron’s: “Is Hollywood Finally Desperate Enough to Give up on Theaters?” The thinking here is that since there is a massive wave of talent and energy moving to the small screen, in the form of Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and others, that eventually it will make more financial sense to release them to the cable pay-tv audience format. To have on-demand movies simultaneously available for the home viewing audience. I hate to tell these people, but we are just about there now. There simply isn’t a lot of lag time from the debut at the theater to the home screen.
Vox has released a list of 50 films that we are supposed to be excited about yet to be released this year. One of my big beefs is with the titles that list this incredible number of films that are supposed to be: the best of the year, the century, the top 50 films in Sci-fi, the top 100 action films, etc. I have a top 100 list of best films in my book, 6 Degrees, but that is from all films-starting at the turn of theth Century. I cannot believe that there are 50 really good films lurking out there waiting to be released this year, but there are a few that I did agree on regarding 2017 releases.
A Ghost Story has been getting good buzz from the Sundance debut. It stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck. Dunkirk is coming soon, with Tom Hardy, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
The Dark Tower is the Stephen King adaptation that has been long awaited by fans of the serial novels. Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey star in the horror/fantasy/action/adventure…and oh yes, Western! Epic. Ingrid goes West was another popular Sundance Film Fest release, said to be dark and funny, with Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen. Another Stephen King adaptation is It, releasing on September 8th. The sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle is coming this fall and Colin Firth returns along with Taron Egerton.
Blade Runner 2049 is coming in October, with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford. Much anticipated, this one is set 30 years after the first film debuted. Also in October, a biopic of the Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, in a courtroom drama depicting one of his biggest cases, defending a black chauffeur accused of sexual assault and attempted murder.
The Holiday Season is anticipated to begin early with Murder on the Orient Express dropping on November 10th. Kenneth Branagh directs the Agatha Christie remake with an all-star cast. Also in November, the indie film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri looks interesting, with a cast including the great Frances McDormand, of Fargo fame.
Pixar has Coco debuting in November, a children’s movie with a cast of Hispanic and Latino actors. But nothing will matter after December 15th, because as everyone knows, Star Wars sucks all the oxygen out of the room! Star Wars: The Last Jedi debuts and that is almost all she wrote. Still….Steven Spielberg is directing a film about the Pentagon Papers, a timely subject for this era where we hear lots of rumbling about the days of Watergate and the sixties. Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep star in this one. Opening on Christmas Day: The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman, about the life of P.T. Barnum.
And also at Christmas, the soon to be retiring Daniel Day Lewis is reunited with director Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) in a film called Phantom Thread, set in the world of fashion during the fifties.
That’s a wrap for this week, folks! I’m looking forward to some of these big screen releases, as well as the Hitchcock Armchair Film Fest all this month on TCM. Stay tuned later this week as we offer a complimentary download of my Hitchcock chapter on my 6 Degrees blog site. See you at the movies!

6 Degrees Friday Flix

So…is the movie Good or Bad? That is the question coming from one spot-on commentator in our 6 Degrees magazine from this past week asking about the reviews for the film “Ghost in the Shell” with Scarlett Johansson. There are plenty of mixed reviews for this one, and the consensus was that they used the term “whitewash” to the extent that the film was buried somewhere in the lead….

But the bottom line is that all that may be overcome if the film has good “buzz”. And this film did not. There are plenty of reviews out there that are mixed for most of the films. It’s always a question of the audience preferences, and there have been several films in recent years that have bombed in the U.S. and done quite well overseas

Some examples are: John Carter; The Golden Compass; After Earth; Poseidon; Water World; The Wolverine and Pacific Rim. Some films don’t hold up well, some are big hits but fade fast from memory. The dirty little secret we all must concede is that film reviews are highly subjective, and with the amount of film blogs and posts out there, you can usually find even the worst reviewed film with at least one critic who actually likes it!

The other comment comes from Sir Smoke regarding the posit from an article stating that New Horror films are better than ever….Sir Smoke simply said, “No. New Horror Sucks”. I couldn’t agree more. As someone who was raised on Hitchcock…and with the idea that the best elements of horror are found in the simplest of details, some of the latest horror films don’t seem to rely on the simple ingredients that made Hitchcock the master of suspense. These details, the things that make for the best components that create horror in the mind and on the screen are somehow lacking in most of the new age horror films.

Simple elements of suspense are found in all of Hitchcock and in films like The Portrait of Dorian Gray, The Tingler, Carnival of Souls or George C.Scott’s 1980 film, The Changeling. In this latter one, the simple act of rolling a small red ball down a flight of stairs is listed in ‘The Horror Digest” blog as one of the scariest moments on film. Such a simple act and yet…the horror!

On Critical Thinking: There’s a piece called, “Just review the Damn movie” this month that speaks to a lot of the political correctness surrounding recent films with issues such as diversity and whitewashing. Some of the films that are striving to portray women and people of color or those in the LGBT community with dignity and accuracy are at odds with most of the history of film. And for that matter, the history of the United States and the rest of the planet as well!

There are some big problems facing Hollywood these days. These are addressed in a piece from 6 Degrees Magazine written by Bill Mechanic, the CEO of Pandemonium Films and featured on Deadline.com. The problems surrounding what has become the Hollywood machine includes top executives leaving the major studios like Paramount and Sony. The “Tent-Pole Films” (Defined as films that are big expensive draws for global audiences and are designed to spawn multiple sequels) are not producing the results in many cases that were expected. Big, expensive movies that flop after huge amounts, hundreds of millions of dollars are poured into the making of them, mean that somebody’s head will roll when the bottom line looks bleak.

The phrase for some of these less than promising films is the “get-around-to it” movies-meaning you’ll get around to seeing them on Netflix or the small screen. We’ve all seen plenty of films in that category…

The changing nature of the business is part of the entire work force that has to adapt to change. Disney has proven to be a major Disruptor by taking much of the market share. They have bet on big brands, Pixar and Star Wars plus Marvel Studios, and it has become harder for other studios to compete. It’s become in essence the Wal-Mart effect for the Movie Industry.

Is the movie business in denial, as one writer from The Verge posted recently? Some six of the seven major Hollywood studios are negotiating to release their films on home video barely three weeks after the theatrical release date. Virtual Reality is another focus for the business, with major theaters touting the VR experience as a way to counter slumping ticket sales. This is part of the aforementioned long-term trending. The idea that most brick and mortar buildings now housing movie theaters may become akin to the arcades of old, with other entertainment options featured along with films, is now taking hold. This may be the wave of the future…

The Armchair Film Fest: For the month of April, there are some great films to set your designated machine to record: Recommended are The Miracle Worker, Hannah and her sisters, Ivanhoe, Harvey, The Set Up, A Hard Day’s Night, Funny Girl, Please Don’t eat the Daisies and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Watch the 6 Degrees magazine for reviews on these films if you’ve never seen them…

All of these films are on Turner Classic, which is great because there’s no commercial interruptions. One other noticeable difference on the Turner Classic site is that they’ve finally said goodbye to Movie Morlocks and have an upgraded blog site: Streamline, which has a much cleaner look and some interesting reviews- the short films of Harold Lloyd and Wuthering Heights vs Jane Eyre-all featured on our 6 Degrees Magazine site this week.

Two master film makers are mentioned in a post about the most difficult scenes to film Director Stanley Kubrick did one small scene in “The Shining” over 148 takes. But Chaplin was most notorious for his perfectionist style-one scene in “City Lights”, just a short time on the screen, took him an astonishing 340 times for the girl to say the line, “Flower, sir?” to Chaplin. Food for thought the next time the boss demands your attention to detail!

Finally, the magazine features reviews of Barbarella with Jane Fonda, Francis Ford Coppola’s first major picture, Finian’s Rainbow, The Zookeeper’s Wife and Going in Style (the latter didn’t get great reviews).

There’s a post listing the best films of Al Pacino, and one piece on the many plot holes found in Marvel pictures. Those who read me regularly can see me smiling, as we all know that the main reason for Marvel pictures isn’t to tie up loose endings and create logical plot points!

There’s also a post that lists the best films about World War I, in honor of America’s 100th Anniversary of our entrance into WWI. The one thing I do take issue with is the inclusion of one of my favorite films: Lawrence of Arabia. Although it’s true that the film does depict war scenes and occurs during WWI, this film isn’t really part of the European war that was fought on the continent. So technically, it may be included, but it’s not one that immediately springs to mind when I think about the Great War. Galipoli, Sergeant York, and Paths of Glory yes-but not Lawrence!

I’m thinking about the Summer Movies a bit early this year. Some look very promising, and we’ll talk more about them in the coming weeks. Also recommended is a good book on film- Talking Pictures-by the Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday.

I’ll be back next time with more of the latest from the La La Land of filmdom. Till then, see you at the movies!-ML

6 Degrees of Film: Friday Flix

This week there are mixed reviews out for the new live-action Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson as Belle the Beauty and Dan Stevens as the Beast. The knock on this is that it’s a CGI version of the exact story that was made so well back in 1991. So now they are re-creating it with live actors and CGI. A remake that falls shot of the original, but isn’t really terrible…hmm, that is not an original story in Hollywood.

There are reviews for not only Beauty & the Beast, but also Kong: Skull Island and Get Out featured in the online 6 Degrees of film magazine. I have a short review of Kong: Skull Island set to preview this week, but in case the suspense is killing you, know that it is recommended to wait for the small screen where you may safely scroll through to the big fight scene.

On this St. Patrick’s Day, they always trot out the predictable Irish film list. It’s a fairly short list, but The Quiet Man, from 1953, is usually at the top of most of them. And I agree, it’s a great film about Ireland, filmed on location and is a beautiful movie both in storyline and visuals. One of the missing points rarely mentioned is the strong female lead from Maureen O’Hara. She plays a young bride who is torn between her brother and loyalty to family and her love for her new husband, played by John Wayne. And even though she is literally dragged kicking and screaming to the final resolution, she is seen as a strong, funny, smart and never cowed Irish woman with a mind of her own. This was quite a feat for the time period when this film was made and Director John Ford brought out all the best elements of O’Hara’s character to create this unique early model of feminism and strength. There’s a review from Filmsite on 6 Degrees that details much of the background of the making of this film.

One other thought about St. Patrick’s movie madness for my Armchair Film Devotees-rent the film, “The Playboys” with Aidan Quinn, Albert Finney, and a young and beautiful Robin Wright. Made in 1992, the film is a romantic drama surrounding a group of touring actors who descend on a quiet Irish village and disrupt their normally placid lives. This is one to add to the usual list of Irish must-see films to break out on St. Patrick’s Day.

From the Past: The Origin stories-a term of late for back stories that are fleshed out and made into feature films. Turner Classic is showing some of the great ones through the month of March. The term “to Gaslight someone” or to cloud someone’s vision of reality is taken from the film, Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Directed by George Cukor, it’s still a classic tale.

Frankenstein & The Mummy, both with Boris Karloff, are shown this month. The original vampire story, Nosferatu, a silent film directed by the legendary F. W. Murnau, is shown. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was remade recently by Martin Scorsese and starred Leo DiCaprio (Shutter Island).

Humphrey Bogart became a film star, a gangster, after starring in the play, “The Petrified Forest” and then the film version with Leslie Howard, who declared he wouldn’t make the film without Bogart. Bogey was so grateful he named his daughter Leslie, after his friend. And years later, after laboring for many years pigeon-holed as a tough guy, Bogart got his big break in a leading man role starring in Casablanca, in 1942, with Ingrid Bergman.

The original Pink Panther film, that launched so many terrible sequels and a few funny ones, starred not only Peter Sellers but also David Niven, and was directed by Blake Edwards. King Kong was made in 1933 and made a star of Fay Wray. It is still probably the best version of the story.

Bonnie & Clyde was a huge hit for Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and it also made the career of the noted film critic Pauline Kael, who loved the film and was hired by the New Yorker during this time period. Kael was ascending as a critic at the same time as the New York Times fired their long-time movie critic Bosley Crowther, who hated the film, and had vehemently panned it. Bonnie and Clyde was considered hip, and a product of the new age of film makers coming into their own in the sixties. Violence and sex were still taboo subjects for the mass audience, and Director Arthur Penn’s edgy production was considered cutting edge for its day.

Finally in March for TCM, there’s two films that routinely make the top ten lists for film critics- The Wizard of Oz from 1939, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, made in 1968. These two are definitely on my personal list.

There’s a biography in 6 Degrees magazine paying tribute again to the TCM host Robert Osborne, who died this past month. Some film legends and critics are irreplaceable. Robert Osborne, Pauline Kael, and Roger Ebert all fall into this category. The documentary about Roger Ebert, “Life Itself”, is featured in an article on Ebert.com that we highlight in 6 Degrees.

Another exciting feature on the Ebert site is the Women Writers Week, which premieres during the last week of March where they will be showcasing the work of their team of women writers and critics. As mentioned, Pauline Kael was one of the pioneers in film criticism for decades, and her voice, along with Ebert’s, is sorely missed. At a time when more and more publications and news organizations are ditching their staff, we need to focus and promote the great work done by both men and women who write for blogs, online movie sites and other publications where at times, they are paid little or nothing to continue to build up the craft of film criticism and to speak out and promote the arts.

Shout out to my good friend and colleague: Professor Futon Spoonin-who curates the wonderful Flipboard mag: Film 101: Classic Cinema to Celluloid…. Prof: I tried to write to you and couldn’t get thru the maze of Flipboard tech-so here it goes….I plead guilty to the charge and simply add that the nature of the beast: Content Curators-means we are always “ripping off” other people’s content! I think even the New York Times conceded they cannot review all of the films out there…so therefore, we must find great and informative content from all sources available.

This week, on St. Patrick’s Day, wishing everyone the best and hoping that the road will rise to meet you and that you find yourself in heaven, one half hour before the Devil knows you’re Dead!-See you at the movies-ML

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

This week, there’s still some controversy about the Oscars show that
somehow managed to crash land the ending of a perfectly decent show. And then we found out that the ratings were abysmal, so perhaps it’s better to just go back to the drawing board and be glad more people didn’t see the fiasco at the end of the evening! And on a sad note, the beloved figure for movie buffs, Robert Osborne, a man who was the urbane and dapper host of Turner Classic Movies for many years, died recently. He will be missed. Here’s some of what’s happening atthe movies, found in the magazine-Six Degrees of Film online:

The Upcoming Dates for Festivals: Noir City: Will be held March 24
to April 2 in Hollywood- Two of the best Noirs featured: This Gun for
Hire & Ministry of Fear.

For the Armchair Film Fest: The Annual TCM Classic Film Festival:
April 6 to April 9th: Make ‘Em Laugh: Comedy in the Movies: Born
Yesterday, The Graduate; High Anxiety, Postcards from the Edge, What’s
Up, Doc? are just a few of the classic comedies featured.

Books on Film: The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies- “Hollywood welcomes innovation, but it also controls it” is a quote from book author, David Bordwell. He writes about the fact that, although the times we are living in are extremely disruptive, the film industry has actually encouraged the Hollywood machine to remain fairly consistent in terms of the style and the production techniques used in film from the early years. Bordwell argues that the Hollywood model of mass market theatrical filmmaking is continuing with traditions that emerged as early as 1917. The norms of the actual process of filmmaking have remained fairly stable, as the mores and styles have changed through the years. In the book I wrote in 2013, 6 Degrees of Film, many of these same ideas parallel those of Bordwell’s The Way Hollywood Tells It. The films of the modern era are very much in league with the styles and filmmaking techniques that emerged in the early classics and during the Golden Age of Cinema.

Robert Osborne: Goodbye to a genuine Good Guy. Osborne had written the definitive history of the Oscars, and was once an actor himself. But his legacy is one that made him a beloved fixture at Turner Classic Movies, where he introduced feature films for decades.

Recommended: A great piece in The Hollywood Reporter has been written on the origins of how the original King Kong came into being. It’s called, “Origin of ‘Kong’: The Unbelieveable True Backstory of Hollywood’s Favorite Giant Ape“, and it’s centered around a real life explorer and filmmaker named Merian C. Cooper, who ended up at RKO with the legendary David O. Selznick. Selznick came up with the name, King Kong, by the way.

Of Note: There’s a piece on Dr. Strangelove, one of our favorite films. At this period in our history, Strangelove seems strangely prescient suddenly. There’s more on the continuing Oscar drama surrounding “”envelope-gate”. And coming soon to the 16th Annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York, The Godfather cast members will reunite. That should be worth the wait.

What Critics are Saying About: I don’t feel at Home in this World Anymore- has been given glowing reviews by critics. The unusual choice of the worst Best Picture “Snubs” from the past two decades is another list that is interesting. There are reviews for all 9 of the Best Picture nominees for 2017 found in our magazine. An interesting, but a bit in the weeds piece, again from David Bordwell, on the early history of Cinema, is one where he explains the static camera style of the early days of cinematography, the “tableau” style. The issue surrounding this is how the techniques of storytelling developed in films in the early period-before 1920, when films were still silent. Bordwell explores the style in detail in this article from his site.

Reviews for: Get Out has been getting positive reviews; Kong: Skull Island has had many good reviews, but there are some mixed opinions on this one; Beauty and the Beast has debuted with favorable reviews; Moonlight, the best picture winner (eventually), has also garnered mostly favorable reviews. The Ottoman Lieutenant, although praised for its visuals, has been garnering poor or lukewarm reviews owing primarily to a weak script. Logan has been garnering good reviews. And finally, there’s a list in our magazine of the best Vampire movies of all time. If you’re a fan, check it out.

Best of the Web: Check out these sites on the web. Some of the best articles are found on The Hollywood Reporter, NPR (National Public Radio), the L.A. Times and Davidbordwell.net.

One of the titles that caught my eye was “Films for Intelligent Audiences“. Of course, readers, you are all intelligent, and although I don’t agree with many of the films listed, the concept is a good one. Hollywood and filmmakers in general need to make MORE films for Intelligent Audiences. Some of the films that I did agree about that were on this list include Inception and The Big Short, Fight Club, Prestige, The Matrix, GoneGirl, and Memento. The idea is that we should promote and applaud more films that make us think and take us out of ourselves by challenging our intellect. These are the films that will be remembered a generation from now.

Here’s to the films that challenge us. See you at the movies!-ML