Joe's View

With Joe Meyers, entertainment writer

Archive for November, 2012

Max von Sydow honored with wide-ranging BAM retrospective

Friday, November 30, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

It’s a fool’s game to name the “best” or “greatest” in any artistic endeavor, but Max von Sydow certainly must be counted among the top actors in the history of movies for the scope and quality of the work he’s done over the past 60 years.

I can’t think of another star who has so skillfully combined work in arthouse fare and commercial film — who else can claim to have worked with Ingmar Bergman and Martin Scorsese?

The film division of the Brooklyn Academy of Music has just launched a two-week festival of von Sydow performances and the programmers have done a great job of trying to suggest the amazing variety of work the Swedish star has done in dozens of movies since the 1950s.

Today, BAM is screening one of von Sydow’s strongest films with Bergman, the harrowing war drama “Shame” and on Saturday and Sunday the films will include the 1986 Woody Allen classic “Hannah and Her Sisters” as well as the star’s wonderfully campy performance as the villain Ming the Merciless in the 1980 “Flash Gordon.”

The 83-year-old Swedish actor conquered art house audiences here when he was still in his 20s in a series of Bergman classics including “The Seventh Seal,” “Wild Strawberries” and “The Virgin Spring.”

George Stevens introduced the actor to Hollywood with the starring role of Jesus in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” in 1965 and then the Swede nabbed another leading role in the big-budget 1966 film version of the James Michener best seller “Hawaii.”

Since then, von Sydow has made films in many countries and several languages, but most moviegoers probably remember him best for playing the title role in “The Exorcist.”

The actor has only been nominated for an Oscar twice, in 1987 for the Danish film “Pelle the Conqueror,” and last year for “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”

BAM will screen another of my favorite von Sydow movies, the terrific Sydney Pollack espionage thriller “Three Days of the Condor,” on Dec. 6.

The Alsatian assassin in “Condor” is, technically, a “villain” — he is part of the hit squad that murders Robert Redford’s girlfriend (and co-workers) in the opening scene — but as the story proceeds, Joubert becomes more sympathetic as we see that he is just a gun-for-hire by the CIA or any other organization that will pay his fee.

We get hints of the humanity under Joubert’s surface in the opening scene when his kind eyes and warm manner make it appear that he might not enjoy the dirty work he does. Later in the film, when his contract has been fulfilled, he becomes something of a mentor to the Redford character by warning him of the dangers he faces within the CIA and then giving him a lift to the airport.

The performance has fascinated me for more than 35 years because there is so much depth and ambiguity in the way von Sydow plays a relatively small role.

As Ming, the actor had one of his rare comic roles and von Sydow is spectacularly funny, delivering the juicy Lorenzo Semple dialogue. “Flash Gordon” was a flop in 1980 — audiences then preferred their science-fiction straight up — but the movie has gathered a sizeable cult over the years for its good humor, lively performances and stunning production and costume design (the work of Fellini craftsman Danilo Donati).

But the sly, tongue in cheek tone is powered mostly by von Sydow savoring such evil Ming pronouncements as “Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror.”

I hope that the Motion Picture Academy will recognize this fantastic actor with an honorary Oscar while he is still with us. Meanwhile, you can treat yourself to a very well-selected overview of his work in Brooklyn. For the complete schedule, visit www.bam.org

When BB battled MM for the sex goddess championship

Thursday, November 29, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Marilyn Monroe’s increasing instability in the early 1960s can be attributed to many causes — soaring use of booze and pills, the final collapse of her marriage to Arthur Miller in 1961, contract disputes with the studio that made her a star (20th Century Fox).

It’s possible Monroe also felt the pressure of aging out of her status as a reigning sex symbol and the impact on her career of major changes that were underway in movies.

What was considered provocative in the mid-to-late 1950s was becoming old hat with the emergence of films that took a more adult approach to male-female relationships and sex.

While Marilyn struggled, just a few months before she died, to make it through a stale romantic comedy concoction called “Something’s Got to Give” (a remake of a 1940s hit), U.S. movie audiences were responding to frank new fare like “The Hustler.”’

European films were also drawing huge audiences here because of their freedom from the Motion Picture Code that kept Hollywood from adding nudity and frank sexuality that made big hits out of such imports as “La Dolce Vita.”

Monroe had a huge French star nipping at her heels from 1958 onward when Brigitte Bardot emerged in the Roger Vadim smash “And God Created Woman,” which broke box office records on both sides of the Atlantic.

The movie created a tremendous buzz for its sexual content and became one of the rare foreign films to do as much business in U.S. theaters as some of the top Hollywood releases — Bardot’s popularity with American audiences was unprecedented for a non-English speaking actress.

As a cultural symbol in her native France, Bardot was peerless. In a 1959 essay, the great writer Simone de Beauvoir called the actress the most liberated woman of post-war France — a “locomotive of women’s history.”

Monroe was so frustrated by what she couldn’t do on screen in 1962 that the actress arranged to have partially nude pictures shot for Life magazine on the set of “Something’s Got to Give,” knowing that the “scene” she had set up would never make it into a Fox theatrical release of that period (the whole affair became a moot point when Monroe was fired from the film and died of a drug overdose a few months later).

Unlike Monroe, who was not taken seriously by critics while she was still alive, Bardot managed to thrive with reviewers and audiences through the rest of the 1960s by varying her film work between sex-tinged romantic dramas (and comedies), and serious pictures such as Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt.”

Bardot helped to give French films a major foothold in this country, opening doors at art houses in every major U.S. city through which such filmmakers as Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol would walk.

The French star has been retired from the screen for many years, but she is being honored with two events in New York City over the next month — a photo exhibit “BB Forever” at Sofitel New York and a four-week festival of her films, “Brigitte Bardot, Femme Fatale,” at the French Institute Alliance Francaise. The FIAF will be screening “And God Created Woman” and “Contempt” on Dec. 11.

Watching these films now, you can appreciate what a timeless fashion icon Bardot became in France and all over the world, with her “look” copied by countless other actresses and women on the street.

As deBeauvoir suggested in her essay, the performer’s personal aura of liberation eventually filtered down to women everywhere.

For more information on “Brigitte Bardot, Femme Fatale” visit www.fiaf.org

Sigur Ros, ‘Valtari’ & the rebirth of the (NSFW) music video

Wednesday, November 28, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

With both the short film and the music video seemingly in decline, we all owe a debt to the Icelandic band Sigur Ros for trying to keep both forms alive.

In connection with their most recent album, “Valtari,” the band commissioned short films from a wide array of directors, including John Cameron Mitchell and Alma Har’el. Most of them are quite arresting, albeit with sexual imagery that would prevent them from being aired on MTV or most of the other basic cable outlets.

The band asked the filmmakers to create whatever came into their heads as they listened to the new music. Each director was given the same small budget. Sigur Ros gave complete freedom to the directors and the result is a haunting, eclectic array of work.

The project will be celebrated globally the weekend of Dec. 7-9, with Real Art Ways in Hartford hosting the Connecticut leg on Dec. 7.

In other towns and cities on all seven continents (including Antarctica!), the “Valtari Film Experiment” will play theaters, rock clubs, hardware stores and hair salons.

In addition to the professional directors who participated, the band invited fans all over the world to contribute their own visual takes on the cuts from the album. The public screenings will include some of the fan videos.

An early video from the “Valtari” project by Israeli director Har’el — set to the track “Fjogur piano” — has gotten the most attention because of the participation of American actor Shia LaBeouf who appears in it in the buff (sorry).

The video appears to be part of the actor’s attempt to change the rather wholesome image he created in films like “Holes,” the Transformers movies and that dismal Indiana Jones sequel of a few years back.

LaBeouf bit the hands that fed him — the enormous paws of director Michael Bay and producer Steven Spielberg — in interviews in which he seemed to diss their Transformer movies.

At the moment, the actor appears to have turned his back on Hollywood. In addition to the risque Sigur Ros video, he will be featured in the next film by Lars von Trier — “Nymphomaniac” — around which have swirled rumors of hard core sex scenes.

Those who go to the Sigur Ros “Valtari” event will receive a secret URL and a password for that URL where they can enter to win a special prize package.

Most of the videos for “Valtari” — including “Fjogur piano” — are available free of charge at http://sigur-ros.co.uk

Details on the Hartford screening can be found at www.realartways.org

‘Delights’: scenes from a great star’s life (and imagination)

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Ildiko Nemeth and her New Stage Theatre Company are presenting another beautiful puzzle of a theater piece — Fernando Arrabal’s “Garden of Delights” — at the Theater for the New City through Dec. 2.

Nearly every piece of the puzzle is fascinating — and gorgeous to look at — but they don’t fit together in a conventional manner.

Nemeth works in an abstract, suggestive style designed to challenge theatergoers who are looking for a traditional narrative approach. Like last winter’s “Hypnotik,” the new piece could be seen as a riff on that comment Jean-Luc Godard once made to a critic about his offbeat films having “a beginning, middle and end — just not necessarily in that order.”

“Garden of Delights” introduces us to a great actress named Lais (played with tremendous force and oddball humor by Kaylin Lee Clinton) as she is preparing to do a phone interview with a show that allows audience members to question celebrities.

The weirdly detached host complains that he is used to having his guests live in the studio for the show, but Lais is a Garbo-like recluse who never appears in public except on stage.

Her secluded home includes a flock of women/sheep who appear from time to time and a weird bald man in a cage who dresses in what looks like a shiny gorilla suit.

The line between great acting and madness seems to disappear when Lais is offstage. The only thing that keeps her even slightly tethered to reality are the questions coming in from her fans over the phone — in odd intervals that suggest Lais might be imagining the whole thing.

Arrabal and Nemeth flash back to Lais’ youth in a convent where she and her best friend fantasize about the lives they will lead once they are free adults. Lais meets a strange young man in the woods who convinces her to try on his time-travel helmet.

“Garden of Delight” is played out in the largest space at the Theater for the New City — a hangar-like venue that allows for the creation of huge stage pictures. Nemeth uses the depth and breadth of the big box theater like a giant canvas on which there is always something bizarre and beautiful to look at.

Nemeth has recruited an impressive group of design and technical people to accomplish her vision, from the video projections of Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger to the striking costume and lighting design of Egle Paulauskaite and Federico Restrepo.

For more information on “Garden of Delights” visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net

Rent it now: the still provocative British classic ‘Victim’

Sunday, November 25, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Video distributors love to celebrate anniversaries with reissues of their major titles.

“Ben-Hur” appeared last fall in a belated deluxe 50th anniversary edition — the restoration of the 1959 best picture Oscar winner was so complicated that Warner Home Video delivered the DVD set two years late.

A multi-disc anniversary edition of the 1961 hit “West Side Story” was released last November, packed with great extras.

No one marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark British film “Victim,” however. It popped up on my Netflix queue last year — I forgot that I put it on the list — and I was amazed by how little time has dimmed the power of this Basil Dearden-directed thriller about a blackmail ring in London.

“Victim” was considered quite daring in its day — on both sides of the Atlantic — because it was one of the first films to deal with homosexuality in a serious manner and Dirk Bogarde was the first major actor to agree to play a gay character.

Bogarde stars in the film as a closeted married lawyer whose career is threatened by blackmailers. In 1961, homosexuality was still a criminal offense in England so rich and powerful gays became the targets of extortion attempts.

For Bogarde, the role represented a real risk because he was a reigning romantic screen idol of the 1950s. His managers violently opposed the actor agreeing to star in “Victim.”

It’s still considered dicey for major stars to tackle gay roles in today’s marketplace, but 50 years ago it was downright dangerous.

Bogarde was so tired of playing bland heroes, however, that he believed he had little to lose. “I was the Loretta Young of England,” he told a reporter a few years later.

The actor’s risk paid off. “Victim” stirred up real controversy so lots of people saw Bogarde’s powerhouse performance. From that point on, he was able to avoid pretty boy roles in favor of provocative fare such as “The Servant” (1963) and “The Damned” (1969).

Today’s image conscious stars should look at Bogarde’s career for a good example of how taking big risks in role selection can deliver huge rewards.

‘Holiday Buzz’: murder & a Greenwich Village coffeehouse

Saturday, November 24, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Mystery readers who avoid and/or mock the “cozy” genre often cite what they see as the absurdity of amateur sleuths stumbling upon murder after murder in their otherwise idyllic communities.

Cabot Cove, Maine — the setting for “Murder, She Wrote” — has a higher homicide rate than Manhattan, the critics cry, and the same goes for that little village where Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple pushed her way into so many criminal investigations.

Of course, devotees of hard-boiled cop and detective stories conveniently overlook the fact that few of their series heroes are any more “realistic” than the nosy ladies who populate traditional mysteries — most cops go through their entire careers without ever using their guns and most private investigations involve such thrills as pulling bank statements or dredging up a straying spouse’s receipts from a hot sheets motel.

I’m seeking escape rather than realism when I read mysteries, so I enjoy both the rough stuff and the lighter side of crime solving.

“Holiday Buzz” (Berkley) is the 12th entry in Cleo Coyle’s delightful series about a Greenwich Village coffeehouse manager — Clare Cosi — who has honed her detective abilities through a series of well-plotted and New York City-color-drenched mysteries.

“Cleo Coyle” is the pseudonym for the husband-and-wife writing team of Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini whose love for their adopted home town is on every page of the dozen books.

Setting is one of the major drawing cards in cozies and the lovingly depicted Village Blend coffeehouse and the city around it are presented with great affection and humor.

“A cocoon of comfort on an island of chaos,” is the way the coffeehouse is described near the beginning of “Holiday Buzz” which is set during the Christmas season. Clare is hired to provide the coffee service at a holiday benefit in Bryant Park, where one of her part-time staff is found murdered after the event.

The young woman was Irish, and it turns out she was in the country illegally, so “Holiday Buzz” has lots of turf to explore in addition to Clare’s determination to find out who killed Moirin Fagan.

One of the major strengths of the series is the supporting cast of characters which includes Clare’s ex who is still the coffee buyer for the Village Blend, Clare’s rich mother-in-law, and Clare’s boyfriend, NYPD detective Mike Quinn.

Street smarts often mean more than DNA evidence in the Coyle books which is fine by me — modern police technology and forensics don’t often make for very scintillating reading.

When the hard-boiled fans diss traditional mysteries they often overlook one of the bits of realism that powers so many of the stories by Christie and her followers — the ineptness of cops in too many murder cases.

Much of police work seems to involve finding a viable perp as quickly as possible and then building a case against him or her. The rush to judgement can be very sloppy, as the long-running stage hit “The Exonerated” and the new Ken Burns documentary “The Central Park Five” demonstrate.

Amateur sleuths like Clare Cosi might not be realistic but there is something deeply satisfying about the way they keep working cases until the true murderer is found.

Lincoln Center celebrates 40th anniverary of ‘Discreet Charm’

Friday, November 23, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Time flies even when you’re not having fun.

It seems impossible that 40 years have passed since Luis Bunuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” opened but it’s true, and starting today the Film Society of Lincoln Center is celebrating the anniversary with a new 35mm print of the movie that has been booked for a seven-day run.

The booking is tied in with the non-profit Manhattan institution’s forthcoming “Spanish Cinema Now” series which will include a retrospective of Bunuel masterpieces.

“Discreet Charm” might not be the Spanish director’s greatest film — “Viridiana” probably holds down that spot — but it is perhaps the most sheerly enjoyable of all the European classics that were released during the Golden Age of the 1960s and 1970s.

A few years after it won the Oscar for best foreign language picture, I booked it at the arthouse I ran on the Delaware coast and forced all of my friends to see it (fortunately, they were all glad I did).

Bunuel was prized by moviegoers for his vicious satire, but by the time “Discreet Charm” came out the director was in his 70s and had mellowed a bit. The movie is anti-clerical and anti-Capitalist in a gentle manner that is more charming than abrasive.

At a time of life when his peers Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin had more or less burned out, Bunuel scored the biggest commercial and critical success of his career, capped by an Oscar (amusingly, the director had said many years earlier, “Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar).

“Discreet Charm” follows a group of well-heeled French friends whose dinner plans keep getting derailed.

Bunuel mixes dreams, romantic fantasies and black comedy in a delicious entertainment. The cast includes two of the most elegant French actresses of the period — Delphine Seyrig (of “Last Year at Marienbad”) and Claude Chabrol’s muse Stephane Audran — along with Bunuel regular Fernando Rey.

If you’ve never seen this thoughtful and delightful classic, try to get to Lincoln Center over the next week for a rare theatrical booking.

For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 22, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

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