Joe's View

It has been announced in some of the movie trade papers that Mike Nichols is working on a possible American remake of the 1963 Akira Kurosawa kidnapping thriller, “High and Low.”
This seems like a pretty natural idea since Kurosawa was so heavily influenced by American cinema and he in turn inspired American directors who used several of the Japanese filmmaker’s samurai pictures as the starting point for “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Outrage,” among other Hollywood productions.
Kurosawa looked to American crime fiction for “High and Low,” which was loosely based on “King’s Ransom” one of the terrific 87th Precinct police procedurals by the late Fairfield County writer Ed McBain (the nom de plume of Evan Hunter).
Tomorrow night it will be my pleasure to introduce a free screening of “High and Low” at the Fairfield Library as part of the “Foreign and Fringe” series that I have co-curated with Drew Taylor of The Fairfield Weekly (he’s fringe and I’m foreign).
Movie buffs often overlook the contemporary dramas Kurosawa made in favor of the samurai pictures and the great Shakespeare adaptations “Throne of Blood” (1957) and “Ran” (1985).
American crime fiction has proven to be a potent source for directors all over the world, with Francois Truffaut drawing on the Philadelphia pulp noir novelist David Goodis for “Shoot the Piano Player” (1960) and Jean-Luc Godard using English language crime novels for several French pictures, including “Pierrot le Fou” (the director’s loose but fantastic 1965 adaptation of a Lionel White thriller).
More recently, Frenchman Claude Chabrol and Spanish director Pedro Almodovar have turned to British crime fiction master Ruth Rendell for inspiration and one of last year’s biggest U.S. art house hits “Tell No One” was a French dramatization of a novel by the hugely popular New Jersey writer Harlan Coben.
“Globalization” is nothing new when it comes to movies.
Join me tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. for a classic mix of Japanese visual style and American mean streets drama.
(The library is at 1080 Old Post Road in Fairfield Center. The phone number is 256-3155.)

The Sundance Channel is presenting the U.S. television debut of the 2007 documentary, “Confessions of a Superhero,” tonight at 9 p.m.
I watched the film by director Matt Ogens over the weekend and found it to be a fascinating but profoundly depressing look at four rather pitiful would-be actors who work in Los Angeles as panhandler superheros on Hollywood Boulevard, near the Mann Chinese Theatre. It’s like “The Day of the Locust” updated to the early years of the 21st century.
The Hollywood area went through some rocky times in the 1980s and 1990s — when it became synonymous with drugs and prostitution — but now with the arrival of the Kodak Theatre (home of the Oscar telecast), the studios for “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and other improvements, tourists have returned to the Boulevard in droves.
With them has come about 100 folks who dress up like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and other movie/TV personalities and who solicit tips for being photographed. They’re the West Coast versions of that “Naked Cowboy” who used to hang out in Times Square in his Jockey shorts around the turn of the century attracting lots of tourist photographers (I haven’t seen him lately).
Although the four people profiled in the documentary present themselves as aspiring actors who are doing the superhero gig until their big show biz break comes along, “Confessions” makes it pretty clear that the chances of Joe McQueen (aka The Hulk), Jennifer Gehrt (Wonder Woman), Max Allen ( Batman) or Christoper Lloyd Dennis (Superman) ever finding success as actors is pretty slim. Ogens follows the quartet to auditions where we see their very limited “talent” and he also includes humiliating clips from the Z-grade movies Allen and McQueen have found work in.
The naive exhibitionists opened the doors of their homes to Ogens and his camera and we get pathetic glimpses of squalid apartments, bad marriages, apparent psychological disorders and lots of delusional behavior. Dennis claims to be the son of the late Oscar-winning actress Sandy Dennis, but her family says they don’t believe his claims, and no evidence is offered to substantiate the assertion (couldn’t Ogens have looked a little deeper into this matter and settled it once and for all?)
Like so many reality TV shows, “Confessions of a Superhero” is compulsively watchable but left me feeling that it was an essentially mean-spirited project that took advantage of four very sad people and their friends and families.

Over the past few days, The Los Angeles Times has been under fire for accepting a page one ad for an NBC show that was disguised to look like a news story.
The same paper is about to publish a movie studio-manufactured insert for the new Robert Downey-Jamie Foxx movie, “The Soloist,” that has been tricked-up to look like it was produced by the news staff.
Hard times for the media seem to be producing boom times for advertisers who want to push the envelope — in terms of content — and who want to carve out new territory in spaces reserved for non-advertising material.
Remember those creepy ad blimps floating over Los Angeles in the futuristic 1982 sci-fic flick “Blade Runner”?
The movie was set ten years from now, but public areas in most cities are already packed with enormous commercial sales pitches everywhere you look — giant fashion ads on the walls of buildings in downtown Manhattan, flashing video promos for TV shows on subway entrance kiosks.
The MTA wants to introduce ads that will flash on the sides of subway cars as they pull into stations.
Soon to go up on walls in the hipper reaches of New York and Los Angeles is the exceedingly weird Diesel sneaker ad that debuted in many of the men’s magazines this month — I ran into it in the April GQ and Details.
Diesel attracted criticism from environmentalists last year with its “comic” global warming fashion ads in which models wearing the company’s jeans and shirts were seen cavorting high above flooded New York and Rio locations.
The new sneaker ad was shot by John Scarisbrick at 1896 Studios in Brooklyn and is, as they say, open to interpretation.
Is the well-dressed young man (model Jon Kartajenera) an assassin who is using his Diesel high tops to strangle the life out of that elderly gent on the floor?
Is the old man on the floor playing slave to the young man’s master in some sort of S&M scenario?
What do the trophies in the background have to do with anything?
Asked to explain himself by a reporter from the fashion trade paper WWD, Diesel creative director Wilbert Das said, “There are no messages, themes or commentary to understand. Our objective is to intrigue and provoke a thought.”
The first “thought” the ad provoked in this viewer was: Will the carefully staged Scarisbrick photo sell sneakers?

The Steven Pasquale debut CD, “Somethin’ Like Love” (ps classics), is a beautiful collection of mostly old tunes brought up to date by the singer-actor featured on the FX series “Rescue Me” and in the just-opened Broadway production of the Neil LaBute play, “reasons to be pretty.”
When they passed around the talent (and the good looks) this guy certainly got more than his share.
The CD will be officially released on April 21, but the collection has already been made available for online downloading at iTunes.
Produced by jazz master John Pizzarelli and his singer-wife Jessica Molaskey, “Somethin’ Like Love” demonstrates Pasquale’s ability to blow the dust off American Songbook standards such as “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” and “My Funny Valentine.”
The only new tune on the CD is the title track — co-written by the producers — but Pasquale makes it sound as much like a standard as the songs that come before and after (“The Lady’s in Love With You” by Burton Lane and Frank Loesser and “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” by Irving Berlin).
Pasquale’s singing has a mysterious simplicity. He doesn’t over-dramatize the lyrics in the contemporary Broadway belter manner, but somehow the ease of his performance makes every word sound fresh and the smooth Pizzarelli arrangements perfectly complement Pasquale’s vocals. The whole thing has the feeling of a great, late-night set in a New York club.
Pizzarelli writes in the liner notes that he hears echoes of Chet Baker and Bing Crosby and Johnny Hartman in the performer’s voice — “rich legato lines and…a sound that harks back to another time, but still feeling very much of the present. The result is an intimate performance that is rare for an artist’s first solo outing.”
Indeed.
After I put “Somethin’ Like Love” into the CD player, I had the eerie feeling that this was a recording I had been listening to and enjoying for years. The CD went into immediate heavy-rotation with Frank and Ella and it feels right at home there.

The power of The New York Times — when it comes to theatrical productions — has been illustrated yet again by one of the hottest Manhattan tickets of the moment, the Theatre for a New Audience production of “Hamlet.”
The show is playing at the wonderful Duke on 42nd St. venue and there has not been a ticket to be had since Charles Isherwood wrote last week in the Times that Christian Camargo is one of the best Hamlets he’s seen (“virtually perfect,” in the critic’s words).
When I caught “Hamlet” on Sunday there were a large number of people hoping for cancellations, but every seat in the sleek and intimate theater was filled.
I had planned to see the off-Broadway show long before the reviews appeared because an actor pal of mine — Alyssa Bresnahan (left, with Camargo) — was cast in the role of Gertrude.
Bresnahan is well known to Connecticut audiences for a series of stunning performances at Long Wharf Theatre and Hartford Stage, including a great Josie in Gordon Edelstein’s “Moon for the Misbegotten” (which played both state venues) and an unforgettable Maggie the Cat in a Michael Wilson production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at Hartford Stage (in the latter show, Bresnahan rose to the considerable challenge of acting opposite a legendary Maggie of the 1970s — Elizabeth Ashley — in the role of Big Mama).
People were debating the merits of this new “Hamlet” during the two intermissions — more than once I overheard the word “Olivier” — but I thought it was a wonderfully simple and direct staging. I was glad to hear from Alyssa after the show that the company has been playing to student audiences throughout the run — because of the clarity of the text, and the elegant modern costuming, this would be a perfect first production of “Hamlet” for teenage theatergoers.
By casting many of the parts younger than is standard — Bresnahan is only slightly older than Camargo — this “Hamlet” is much sexier than most productions.
Director David Esbjornson (who staged Edward Albee’s “The Goat” on Broadway a few seasons back) did a fine job of cutting and shifting scenes for a faster and more immediate take on the material.
Was this the near-definitive “Hamlet” Isherwood wrote about last week?
I doubt it.
But then again, it seems to me that the whole point of seeing “Hamlet” regularly throughout your theatergoing life is to enjoy the nearly limitless ways in which it can be staged and to see each new actor’s take on the title role.

One old-time Hollywood mogul spouted an oft-repeated maxim that was something like “If you want to send a message, go to Western Union” but popular entertainment has proven him wrong again and again.
Indeed, the Warner Bros. studio of the 1930s created a niche for itself as a purveyor of exciting entertainment that also carried strong social messages that resonated with Depression era moviegoers.
Paul Levine’s latest thriller, “Illegal” (Bantam), features a smart mix of thrills, wit and strong characters that is given an extra punch from the book’s in-depth treatment of one of our thorniest contemporary political issues — illegal immigration.
The novel is centered on a great new Levine character — Jimmy “Royal” Payne — whose personal life and career both seem to be slipping away from him when we meet the trial lawyer in a judge’s chambers where the judge has just pulled a gun on our hero.
The judge is corrupt and Jimmy is there as part of a sting operation in which it is presumed the judge will accept a bribe of $45,000 (Jimmy was given $50,000 but skimmed $5,000 off the top).
The terrific opening chapters are just a teaser for the main narrative in which Jimmy joins forces with a 12-year-old (illegal) Mexican immigrant named Tino who was separated from his mother in their terrifying journey across the border.
“Illegal” has such a strong page-turning narrative that Levine’s detailed reporting on immigration never gets in the way of the suspense and the black comedy, but the novel also dramatizes the hypocrisy of so much anti-immigrant chatter.
We follow Tino’s mother Marisol into the horror of the meat plant work that depends on immigrants, as well as the California farm jobs that could not be filled without a huge supply of immigrants-without-papers.
In the post 9/11 hysteria, TV pundits and op-ed columnists seemed unable to distinguish between potential terrorists and the huge and covert workforce crossing our southern border that has kept the economy of farming, meat-packing and the “service” industries churning in huge swaths of the U.S.
Levine’s marvelously complicated villain Simeon Rutledge who owns a huge California farm — and much of the town adjacent to it — boils the issue down skillfully in one scene where we get to share his thoughts: “He admired the courage of the men and women who risked death to come north and look for honest work. He couldn’t understand why Europeans who braved an Atlantic crossing in search of a better life should be held in higher regard than Mexicans who crossed the desert last week, pursuing the same dream.”
I wish that Lou Dobbs would read “Illegal.’

It has taken the 2007 French comedy-drama, “Shall We Kiss?,” more than a year to reach these shores, but it was worth the wait.
Writer-director-star Emmanuel Mouret (left) has drawn valid comparisons with Woody Allen for his smart and challenging look at modern love among brainy folks who think they can control their passions.
The picture opens in a deceptively simple manner.
Nicolas (Mouret) sees the attractive Emilie (Julie Gayet) trying to hail a taxi in a rather quiet part of a small French city. He offers the woman a lift to her hotel where they have dinner and drinks.
Although both of these strangers have partners, there is a spark between them.
When Nicolas says he would like to give Emilie a non-romantic farewell kiss, she declines, saying that was how a friend of hers got into a terrible fix.
His curiosity aroused, Nicolas asks Emilie to explain and she tells us the story-within-the-movie that forms the bulk of the running time of “Shall We Kiss?”
We are introduced to longtime platonic Paris friends, Judith (Virginie Ledoyen) and Gabriel (Michael Cohen), who slowly drift into a very complicated romantic/sexual entanglement. They both think they are sophisticated adults who are in control of their emotions and their desires, but the movie illustrates the way that passion can short-circuit the smartest of individuals.
“Shall We Kiss?” does have the urban intellectual aura of a Woody Allen movie, but the film might also remind you of Rob Reiner’s Woody Allen-like romantic comedy, “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) in the way that it rephrases that Billy Crystal-Meg Ryan hit’s central question — Can men and women be friends without any romantic/sexual entanglements?
Unlike the American films, “Shall We Kiss?” explores some of the serious implications in the material, ending on a slightly melancholy note.
Mouret is sharp enough to see that there is a very fine line between comedy and tragedy when it comes to affairs of the heart.
(“Shall We Kiss?” is now playing at the Bethel Cinema; the Garden Cinemas, Norwalk; and the Avon Theatre, Stamford.)

The Noel Coward comedy, “Blithe Spirit,” might be a tad creaky 68 years after its first production, but the new Broadway revival is serving as a great showcase for the 83-year-old stage and screen legend Angela Lansbury.
After a long absence from the stage — during which she became a TV star on “Murder, She Wrote” — Lansbury returned to Broadway a few seasons ago with a fine, Tony-nominated performance as a long-retired tennis star in “Deuce.”
It was wonderful to see the veteran actress command the stage in the flimsy Terrence McNally two-hander that co-starred Marion Seldes, but I am glad Lansbury decided to come back again in a much more interesting role that allows her to cut loose in a way that is delighting critics and audiences (and will probably earn her a fifth Tony Award in June).
As the medium Madame Arcati, Lansbury is displaying the sort of glorious extravagance that was once a hallmark of stage stars who more often than not had to put flimsy parts across to those 1,500 or so theatergoers on the other side of the footlights. These days, most of the new plays call for a scaled-down, more realistic form of acting, and New York is packed with wonderful actors who can play the hell out of roles in scripts by David Mamet and Neil LaBute and Tracy Letts and other masters of lifelike modern theatre.
Arcati was created by Noel Coward in 1941 and first played by one of the greatest ham actresses of all time — Margaret Rutherford.
Lansbury has followed in Rutherford’s footsteps before, playing the Agathie Christie sleuth Miss Marple in “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980) two decades after Rutherford played the part in a series of four MGM Marple films (Christie was reportedly appalled by Rutherford’s antics but the films remain a hoot and still turn up frequently on TCM).
In the current “Blithe Spirit” you can see traces of Rutherford in Lansbury’s terrifically over-the-top performance, but the way in which the actress delights in the eccentricity of the character reminded me most of Lansbury’s great work in the 1978 film “Death on the Nile” (another Christie mystery).
The actress played a demented romance novelist named Salome Otterbourne. Critic Pauline Kael described the performance as “a superlative caricature of a wreck of a vamp.”
“Lansbury doesn’t walk; she slouches and lists (and not because she’s on a boat). She’s whooping it up one moment and sagging from booze the next. She’s all curves, satin turbans, amber beads that hang to her crotch, and drizzling clouds of chiffon and fringe…Lansbury does a Margaret Rutherford, but with visions of satyrs in her bulging eyes. Talking out of the side of her gargling, sloshing mouth, she bats Fuller Brush eyelashes…You feel she needs a derrick to lift them. It’s a glorious piece of eccentric excess, right down to the love bracelet on the ankle.”
The actress doesn’t wear a love bracelet in “Blithe Spirit” but Arcati, like Salome, is a secret boozer who overdresses for every occasion and delights in her own battiness.
Who knows when there will be another performance this hilariously over-scaled and this sheerly pleasurable on Broadway?