Joe's View

With Joe Meyers, entertainment writer

Archive for October, 2012

A Halloween suggestion: the peerlessly scary ‘Don’t Look Now’

Wednesday, October 31, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

One of the last horror movies I caught in a theater — “Saw 3D” — was revolting rather than scary.

No suspense, victims you didn’t care about, and extended torture sequences.

The only real horror in the evening was the 17 bucks a New York theater charged for a Halloween weekend screening a few years back.

From my point of view, suggested horror is always more effective than any graphic display — remember the nighttime shark attack in the opening scene of “Jaws”?

I have a very short list of movies that have truly frightened me — near the top is the 1973 Nicolas Roeg ghost story, “Don’t Look Now,” starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. With few venturing out on this post-Sandy Halloween, the Roeg film is perfect for home viewing tonight.

If you’re a fan of the occult and have never seen it, the film should go to the top of your Netflix or download list. (The film is currently out of print on DVD, but available from Amazon for instant rental).

The British Film Institute includes “Don’t Look Now” in its “BFI Modern Classics” series of concise books devoted to re-examining films that have grown in stature over the years.

Author Mark Sanderson doesn’t exaggerate much when he writes about the picture’s “horrific, heart-stopping climax.” Many movie scenes go right out of your head a few hours after you leave the theater, but, believe me, you won’t soon forget the closing moments of Roeg’s film.

What’s so marvelous about the movie is that even after you know how the story ends, “Don’t Look Now” rewards repeat viewing because it is so visually dense that it’s hard to absorb all of the clues Roeg puts on the screen long before the finale.

Based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, the movie follows a British couple played by Sutherland and Christie who lose their daughter in a drowning accident at the beginning of the film. After the funeral, the couple travels to Venice — in the off-season — where Sutherland has been hired to restore the frescoes in a historic church.

Sutherland keeps having daydreams or visions that he can’t quite fathom. Christie believes these are messages from their daughter on “the other side” warning of danger, but the husband dismisses the notion as grief-related hysteria.

While the couple wanders around a creepily deserted Venice, the police are looking for a serial killer of young women.

What makes the picture powerful and horrifying is that we are drawn so close to the protagonists that we care deeply about their fate. The result is that rare horror movie with real dramatic depth and for which the adjective “haunting” is totally apt.

Broadway dark, but show goes on at Long Wharf

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

With public transportation in and out of New York City still down — and no subway service as well – most Broadway and off-Broadway shows are dark tonight, but I got word from press rep Steve Scarpa this morning that Long Wharf Theatre’s performance of “Satchmo at the Waldorf” scheduled for this evening will go on as planned at 7 p.m.

It’s a great show that I wrote about elsewhere on this blog, so if you have cabin fever and are up to a drive to New Haven there might be a few cancellations. Of course, you should call the box office first – 203-787-4282.

Scarpa said that the theater, located in a coastal zone, avoided the storm damage that impacted other parts of the Food Terminal complex. The facility is secure thanks to the new roof located over the Mainstage portion of the theatre.

Administrative offices, which had been closed Monday and Tuesday, will open on Wednesday. Director-star Kathleen Turner will start rehearsals for the forthcoming production of “The Killing of Sister George” tomorrow at Long Wharf.

Meanwhile Playbill.com reported today that The Broadway League, the national trade association for the Broadway industry, announced that all Broadway performances for Tuesday, Oct. 30 have been canceled due to “the suspension of public transportation by government authorities and additional safety precautions implemented due to severe weather on behalf of Hurricane Sandy.”

Broadway performances were also canceled for Sunday and Monday, Oct. 28-29.

Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of The Broadway League, said in a statement, “Now that the storm has arrived, I’d like to reiterate that the safety and security of theatregoers and employees is everyone’s primary concern. As a result of the suspension of public transportation by government authorities and other safety precautions implemented on behalf of Hurricane Sandy, evening performances will be cancelled tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 30th. We expect normal operations to resume Wednesday morning.”

Perfect for Halloween: the still-frightening ‘The Innocents’

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

A bunch of new horror pictures have opened over the past two weekends to satisfy that Halloween urge for something ghoulish.

There’s a new “Paranormal Activity” in theaters – number four! — which opened in the number one slot last weekend (although it didn’t gross as much as the first three pictures) For real scares, however, it’s hard to be “The Innocents” starring Deborah Kerr as a governess who fears her charges have become possessed by evil spirits.

Kerr – who died in 2007 — was an amazingly gifted and versatile actress who was Oscar-nominated six times and failed to win (she was finally given an honorary Academy Award in 1994).

What’s even stranger about Kerr’s situation is that she was not nominated for what is arguably her finest performance — as the freaked-out governess in the great 1961 film version of the Henry James novella, “The Turn of the Screw.”

The British production is one of the very best supernatural dramas and Kerr’s performance as the terrified governess Miss Giddens is moving and chilling.

What makes “The Turn of the Screw” — and the movie adaptation — so unsettling is that it allows us to decide for ourselves if the secluded mansion where Miss Giddens goes to work is haunted or if she might be a religious hysteric who is projecting her own twisted fantasies on the two children who are her responsibility.

Something terrible happened at the country home a few months before Miss Giddens arrived — a murder that grew out of the sexual relationship between the previous governess and a brutish gamekeeper.

The new governess begins to suspect that her two young charges — Miles (Martin Stephens, below) and Flora (Pamela Franklin) — were witnesses to all sorts of unspecified sexual “evil” before the violence erupted.

The adaptation for “The Innocents” was a collaboration between Truman Capote and John Mortimer (the latter would go on to write the wonderful “Rumpole of the Bailey” mysteries).

The script and the direction by Jack Clayton are full of very subtle suggestions of the possible corruption of innocence.

We are drawn so deep into Miss Giddens’s terror and hysteria that the scares in the movie are much stronger than the shocks in a standard horror potboiler.

Rent it now: Annette Bening in ‘Mother and Child’

Monday, October 29, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Annette Bening got a lot of well-deserved attention 2010 for her work in “The Kids Are Alright” — including an Oscar nomination — but few have seen the other superb performance she gave that year, as an emotionally closed-off middle-aged Los Angeles nurse in Rodrigo Garcia’s “Mother and Child.”

Karen gave up a daughter to adoption when she was just a teenager and when we meet her more than 30 years later, she is devoted to caring for her elderly mother (Eileen Ryan) and her hospital job.

The movie crosscuts between the Bening character and the grown daughter, she has never met — Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) — who is a high-powered attorney in L.A.

In a separate plot thread, Kerry Washington plays Lucy, another Angeleno trying to adopt a child after she and her husband have gone through the agony of failed fertility treatments. The lives of Karen and Elizabeth and Lucy eventually intersect in the film’s extraordinarily emotional closing scenes.

Karen is the character who goes through the biggest changes, as she deals with the death of her mother and a new co-worker played by Jimmy Smits (above) who manages to break through the hard shell the woman has maintained for years.

Karen also starts thinking about trying to contact her long lost daughter.

Bening gives the sort of warts-and-all performance that is more common in European films than in contemporary Hollywood movies.

It is refreshing to see an American star in her 50s who still looks like a real woman and who can play characters that are not glamorous.

You can visit Internet chat rooms in which Bening’s appearance in this movie is mercilessly criticized, but the unvarnished look contributes to the power and the depth of the performance.

One of the most moving — and realistic — elements in the film is the way that Karen’s life changes make her more attractive both emotionally and physically. The camera comes in close to Bening and she and Garcia use the close-up in a way that is reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman’s work with actresses back in the 1960s and ’70s. Bergman believed nothing in a movie could compare with the face of a great actress, a philosophy Garcia obviously shares.

‘The Editor’s Eye’: a strong argument for the (physical) book

Sunday, October 28, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

As long as publishing houses like Abrams put out stunning volumes like “Vogue: The Editor’s Eye” there is no need to worry about the future of the physical book.

An art object that also serves an educational function, the book takes us behind the scenes at Vogue to show us the work that goes into arranging the elements that go into the great pictures and fashion spreads that have made the magazine number one in its field.

Many books have been devoted to the compositional and lighting art of photographers who have graced the magazine’s pages — including legends like Irving Penn, Helmut Newton (below) and Richard Avedon — but “The Editor’s Eye” celebrates the women who come up with the concepts and assemble the physical elements that lead up to the pictures we see on those glossy pages.

The book works as an adjunct to the wonderful documentary of a few years ago, “The September Issue,” that detailed the months of work that go into Vogue’s gigantic fall fashion issue. It takes herculean labor by Anna Wintour and her staff to produce the monthly jolt of glamour and art and news that Conde Nast’s flagship publication delivers.

The book introduces us to top editors spanning the last half century from Babs Simpson to Grace Coddington (left, the true star of “The September Issue,” who stole every scene she shared with Wintour). Each editor gets a good introductory essay and then page after page of examples of the pictures they worked on.

In her foreword, Wintour points out that until she arrived at the magazine in 1988, the editors responsible for the sittings were never credited.

“Until that point, editors were neither seen nor heard of, for that matter. Instead, they were figures worthy of L. Frank Baum, wizards who wielded their magic from behind their versions of the curtain…the magazine page.”

“It’s that search for the perfect photographic moment that separates the editors from the stylists. This is a crucial distinction,” Wintour writes.

“It isn’t simply a case of dressing a girl and placing her in the frame. A good editor instigates all sorts of visual codes and cues to work in conjunction with the girl in a dress. The editor imbues the recording of fashion and beauty with a resonance that speaks of art, life , the here and now, and maybe, the tomorrow.”

“Vogue: The Editor’s Eye” is the perfect gift book for anyone with an interest in fashion or photography or brilliant book design. No electronic tablet yet created can duplicate the sheer visual pleasure of paging through this gorgeous book.

‘The Art Forger’: a book that needs no labels to be enjoyed

Saturday, October 27, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

One of the great things about the introduction and acceptance of the e-Reader over the past few years is that it seems to be breaking down those arbitrary genre lines that have been set by publishers and bookstores for aeons.

Just as the introduction of home video and computers allowed people to watch as much porn as they like without ever being seen slinking into a porn theater or adult book store, the e-Reader frees people up to enjoy books without labels (or potentially embarrassing covers).

Real men can read romance.

Real women can read smut.

And no worries about someone on a train or a plane — or the next beach blanket over — seeing you with a book you might not want other people knowing you are reading.

Arbitrary classification of books is ridiculously limiting, as I learned recently when I enjoyed B.A. Shapiro’s new novel “The Art Forger” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) and then spoke with the author about her long journey to publication.

A slew of editors and publishing houses rejected the book, telling the writer they liked “The Art Forger” — as well they should, since it is a very good story, very well told — but they didn’t know how to sell it (i.e. what to call it).

Shapiro’s book has elements of classic mystery, romance and thriller as it follows a young Boston artist who is hired to make a copy of one of the paintings stolen in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist two decades ago.

Certainly, “The Art Forger” qualifies as a suspense novel since it keeps you turning the pages, wondering if Claire Roth is going to get away with her deception, and whether or not she is doing anything truly illegal.

Shapiro’s story also works as a philosophical examination of the differences between something “real” and a “copy” and whether or not people in power know, or care about, the difference.

Fortunately for the writer (and for us) her own story had a happy ending. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill bought the manuscript and then supported it with a strong promotional campaign that has led to good early sales.

Rather than put the book into a niche, the publisher trusted in the quality of the material, prepared it with obvious belief in it, and put it out for everyone to enjoy (the book was published last week).

Who knows how many books as good as “The Art Forger” — and as hard to classify — never found their way into the right hands?

Rent it now: Christian Bale’s 2007 ‘flop’ ‘Rescue Dawn’

Friday, October 26, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Christian Bale won the best supporting actor Oscar in 2011 for his fine performance in “The Fighter” but he is even better in a little-seen 2007 film “Rescue Dawn.”

The original ad campaign — and even the title — made the movie appear to be a gung-ho Vietnam prisoner-of-war camp drama in the tradition of “Missing in Action” and “Uncommon Valor.”

The promos tailored for the original summer season multiplex audience were a distortion of German director Werner Herzog’s powerful, unsettling story of Dieter Dengler (Bale), an American citizen born in Germany, who was shot down over Laos in 1965.

Herzog has long been fascinated by what happens to “civilized” people when they are stranded in the wilderness. His international reputation was made with the 1972 drama, “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” about a European conquistador lost in the Amazon jungles in 1560.

The vision of Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) slowly going mad as his party traveled by raft up the Amazon inspired sequences in Francis Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” a few years later.

Herzog returned to the same themes in “Fitzcarraldo” (1982) about another madman (again played by Kinski) who wants to build an opera house in the jungles of Brazil.

The German director has alternated between fiction and non-fiction films about displaced people in remote and desolate environments. In 2005, Herzog scored an arthouse hit with his documentary “Grizzly Man” about an aspiring nature TV host who was killed by a bear in Alaska.

“Rescue Dawn” is of a piece with those earlier Herzog pictures; it’s as much about the jungle as it is about the Laotians and the American prisoners. The director gives the whole film the feeling of a documentary; he eschews the cheap melodrama and surging military music that we’ve grown to expect this type of story.

The movie shows how Dieter and the two other American prisoners in the small compound go slowly mad from the heat, the isolation, the creatures in their hut, the stench.

Herzog found the perfect acting partner in Bale, who clearly will go to almost any lengths to bring a sense of realism to his characterizations. The actor became famous (notorious?) for the 63 pounds he lost to play the skeletal title role in “The Machinist” in 2004, as well as the awesome musculature he built specifically for the role of lunatic Wall Street shark Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho” in 2000.

Bale doesn’t appear to be Kinski-crazy, but he spends most of the movie in a mad leather, eating bugs with glee, grinning in the face of death — in other words, being entirely convincing as a young man trapped in a jungle hell beyond his worst nightmare imaginings. It is hard to imagine any other actor in Bale’s age range — with the possible exception of Ewan McGregor — who would go this far to please his director.

Should Liam Neeson be playing Jack Reacher?

Thursday, October 25, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

When I was at the annual international celebration of crime writing in Cleveland earlier this month — the Bouchercon — everyone seemed to be buzzing about the upcoming Tom Cruise picture based on one of Lee Child’s terrific novels about the adventures of ex-military cop Jack Reacher.

Few writers or fans that I talked with were happy about Cruise playing the title role in “Jack Reacher,” which is based on “One Shot,” an early novel in the series.

Child describes a big man in his books — well over 6 feet tall — and Cruise is a famously diminutive movie star.

At one of the Bouchercon panels the results of a poll asking the question, “Who should play Jack Reacher?” were released and the actor who came in first place was Liam Neeson. (Cruise was in the number four position in the poll, followed by “Anyone but Tom Cruise.”)

Neeson, who turned 60 last June, is about 20 years too old to be the Reacher of the novels, but the poll reflects the actor’s surprising emergence as a major action star over the past few years.

Starting with “Taken” in 2008 and continuing with “The Grey” last year and the current “Taken 2” Neeson has demonstrated considerable conviction in playing action roles, along with huge audience appeal (“Taken 2” brought in more than $100 million in its first two weeks in theaters).

The movie industry is still rather shocked by Neeson’s late-career success in the action genre — he spent more than 20 years working in movies primarily as a character actor before his fortunes changed with “Taken” — but it seems obvious that audiences are responding to the humanity and intelligence he has brought to stories that could have been empty exercises in style without him.

With Neeson in these roles, there is a real human being in jeopardy, so the stakes are much higher than they would be with Sylvester Stallone or even Bruce Willis playing the parts. Those two guys are movie stars from head to toe — Neeson seems like someone you might actually bump into on the street or sit next to on an airplane (in tourist class).

“Taken 2” is little more than an extended chase — in exotic Istanbul — but Neeson’s concern for his endangered ex-wife and daughter holds everything together. And while he is physically still more than up to the rigors of the running and fighting these movies demand, the character’s intelligence is what saves the day again and again.

I am withholding any judgement on Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher until the movie opens at Christmas — he’s a wonderful actor who was terrific in last year’s “Mission Impossible” sequel — but I can see why those mystery fans were so enthusiastic about Liam Neeson.

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