"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Thursday, December 29, 2016
"Hugo" (at NYC's MoMI tomorrow) may be not just Martin Scorsese's best film but possibly the greatest movie ever made
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The trailer for Hugo doesn't give much hint of the movie's brilliance, but then, it may be that nothing except the movie itself could do that. Which is kind of the point.
by Ken
SHORT VERSION: If you’re available and within range of the Museum of the Moving Image on Friday afternoon, and you haven’t seen Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011), or for that matter if you have, what you need to know is that there’s a repeat screening scheduled at 3pm, concluding the initial installment of the museum’s planned Scorsese retrospective, Martin Scorsese in the 21st Century. You'd be nuts to pass up the opportunity.
LONGER VERSION: I saw Hugo last Saturday afternoon knowing nothing about either the movie or the book it’s based on, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, except what I'd read in an online interview that was keyed on the MoMI page for the film, who was on hand to introduce the show and to sign books afterward, and by the time Brian finished his intro, before I’d seen a frame of the film, he’d sold me a book. By the time the film ended, I was entertaining the possibility that it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen.
That’s one reason I’m going back Friday – to see how Hugo holds up to a second viewing, and to a viewing with as much of the book as I can manage under my belt by then. Another reason is that I don’t know when I’ll have my next opportunity to see the film the way it was meant to be seen.
The first thing you're always going to be told about Hugo is that it's Scorsese's only "family" film, and this is true but misleading -- it suggests something very different from a film of unique richness, humanity, and depth. I'm hardly the world's biggest Scorsese fan, but there's never been any question in my mind about either his filmmaking talent or his passion for the medium. I've just tended to figure that the concerns that have tended to dominate most, or at least many, of his films, are just more important to other filmgoers than to me.
And then came Hugo.
Hugo (Asa Butterfield) and Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) inside the giant station clock in the movie, above, and in Brian Selznick's original pencil drawing, below. [Click to enlarge.]
THE MIRACLE OF THE BOOK
Ironically, Brian Selznick took it for granted that no movie could be made of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and probably some thinking of this sort went into his bold decision to make the book not just a written story (his original thought, he told us) but a hybrid of alternating text and pictures -- his own black-and-white, or rather many-shades-of-gray, pencil drawings. (He's a Rhode Island School of Design-trained artist.) So it came as a surprise when he learned there was interest in film rights, and something closer to shock when he learned just who was interested.
Brian has explained in interviews how the framework for the book evolved, out of his idea of an encounter between a child and an artifact of the all-but-forgotten pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès, which he had the idea of making one of the onetime magician's barely surviving automatons. (Yes, Méliès made automatons.) He sketched for us the steps by which Hugo Cabret was imagined, as the abandoned orphan son of a family of clockmakers, living secretly inside the hidden spaces of one of Paris's great train stations, filled with bustle and human traffic. (If I got right what Brian said, for the book he had imagined the Gare Montparnasse, but the film mostly re-creates the Gare du Nord. He even had a wonderful story of his own about a brief visit of his own, during the making of the film, to the real Gare du Nord; I wish he were on hand to tell it to you.) Within the station are a whole host of shops, including a toy booth presided over by crusty old Papa Georges, who has a goddaughter, Isabelle, becomes enmeshed in a complex relationship with Hugo. There's also a bookshop owned by a Monsieur Labisse, which is Isabelle's sanctuary; she lives her life through books.
Hugo, Isabelle, and the rest of the characters are his own invention, buttressed by apparently large quantities of research into the Paris of the period of the story, and of course into Méliès's life and times. It all works so well together that the book had a hugely successful life even when its creator thought it would remain a self-contained story.
THE MIRACLE OF THE FILM
But all that richness of story, character, and was sitting there waiting when the book found its way to Martin Scorsese, who wound up absorbing it all into his vision for a film that seems likely to stand as his testament as a filmmaker.
The stories of the book essentially are Scorsese's stories. Lonely Hugo looking out at the world through his clocks and grates apparently resonated powerfully with his childhood memories (and I'm guessing the the theme throughout the book of fiercely guarded secrets did too), and the history of film, not to mention film as the ultimate medium for dreams, is where he lives. And there's no question but that he "got" the book; it's breathtaking how much, in both detail and inspiration, Scorsese, screenwriter John Logan, and the entire production team drew from Brian Selznick's words and pictures.
Who but Scorsese would have -- or could have -- managed to mount a film production on this scale? The production team's stunning re-creation of the Gare du Nord (with all the hidden spaces where Hugo leads his cloistered life), all the incredible clockworks and other machinery, the zillions of other scenic effects (the production designer was Dante Ferretti; the costume designer, Sandy Powell), the 3-D cinematography -- it all cost a fortune, but for once in a film that blew its budget, not only can we see where the money went but it appears all to have been well spent. It's hard to think of another director who would have had the chutzpah to attempt such a production, or the determination and grit to get it done. Viewed now, however, expensive as the picture may have been, for what Scorsese and his huge and hugely talented and skilled team got it looks like kind of a bargain. (Brian, who was present for most of the filming, mentioned that he wrote a book on the making of Hugo and the people who made it, of which he's quite proud. I've got my copy on order.)
Cinematographer Robert Richardson's 3-D is a crucial component of the story. The visual field, in fact, just barely contains the enormous amount of intimate human observation; for once, Scorsese's famous obsession with detail expands and enriches rather than suffocating the picture. As noted, I'm in awe of the created physical production. At least as notable is the richness of humanity Scorsese and team have created in and around all their locations -- principally, of course, the train station, where they have invented a whole teeming daily life including a whole roster of characters, some of them invented by the film team, but then there's the Station Inspector, Hugo's ultimate nightmare, who exists in the book, ultimately playing the exact same role he does in the film, but has been expanded in the film to a major player throughout, with a fleshed-out life and also an added plaintive, comic tinge that's perfectly suited to Sacha Baron Cohen.
The acting, the acting, the acting, from top to bottom. Ben Kingsley is hardly an unknown quantity, but if he's ever done anything better, I haven't seen it. The bitterness and deadness of soul that enshroud Papa Georges most of the way -- who would have thought he had that kind of performance in him? (Answer: Marty Scorsese.) Or there's Jude Law, another actor of enormous demonstrated versatility who even so is stunning in his tiny bits of screen time as Hugo's sainted father, in terms of dramatic importance one of the story's most important character. By comparison, Michael Stuhlbarg would have been an obvious choice for the film historian Tabard, keeper of the flame of Georges Méliès, but that doesn't make him any less fine in his role. Obviously an enormous amount depends on the children, and Asa Butterfield (Hugo) and Chloë Grace Moretz (Isabelle) are just splendid -- not as "kid" performers but as for-real actors.
Movie Watch: Remembering Philip Seymour Hoffman the best way -- by looking at his work
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Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role of The Master (2012)
The great actor Philip Seymour Hoffman had an uncanny ability to disappear into a role yet at the same time to invest his performances with such complexity, depth, and empathy that they always felt deeply personal. Drawn to playing highly flawed characters, he was able to seem at once larger than life and recognizably imperfect. In over 60 film performances, the boldness of his choices was always breathtaking. As he once said, “It’s all risk! Living a life is basically about you entering one situation after another that you may or may not want to enter. Everything has stakes, everything has meaning, everything has consequences.” A profound search for truth was at the core of his art, and his death in 2014 was a tremendous loss to the public and to the many actors, directors, and colleagues whose lives he touched so profoundly. The screenings will be accompanied by guest appearances, to be announced, and clips from his other films, to showcase his astonishing versatility.
Sixteen films over three weeks, a large (and growing, as appearances are confirmed) number of them not just film screenings but also live events with post-screening discussions featuring key participants in the films -- that's's the retrospective The Master: Philip Seymour Hoffman, which began Friday night at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, with Jack Goes Boating and continues through October 2.
As the museum's chief curator, David Schwartz, noted in his introductory remarks Friday night, Jack Goes Boating is hardly one of Hoffman's better-known films, but it was an obvious choice to begin the retrospective. It was the first (and, alas, only) film that he directed, and it was also a project that grew directly out of his great passion for theater. As a play, Jack Goes Boating had been written and produced as part of the ongoing work process of the LAByrinth Theater Company, which he co-directed with his friend John Ortiz (who's also prominently featured in Jack). As the name suggests, the company isn't just a repertory company but is a theater lab, and playwright-screenwriter Bob Glaudini was on hand Friday night to describe how the play had been developed over an extended period within the company, with actors on hand to try everything out. And the process continued with the film, in which most of the principals were playing the roles they'd done in the stage production.
David Schwartz had Bob Glaudini offer some introductory remarks explaining this process, and for the post-screening discussion he was joined by a throng of key people involved in the transformation to film: producer Peter Saraf, director of photography Mott Hupfel, production designer Therese DePrez, and editor Brian Kates. (There were in fact several additional participants scheduled!) Saraf explained that, while he's spent 25 years in film, his first love was theater, and seeing Jack onstage he had the much-rarer-than-we'd-think experience of thinking that you could make a movie of that. It turned out that not only did the idea appeal to Phil, but he found himself really interested in directing such a thing.
Lest we think that Phil's ego was getting away with him, we learned quickly that in fact he originally had no intention of re-creating the role of Jack, a sad-sack schlub whose life prospects, both career-wise and personal, seem hopelessly mired at approximately zero. He considered acting and directing both such enormous jobs that he couldn't possibly tackle both -- not to mention the impossibility of performing the two jobs simultaneously. It was then up to the company and everyone else involved in the film project to persuade him that not only could he play Jack while directing, but he had to. Who else, they asked him, could play the role anywhere near as well as he had?
Once Phil was finally persuaded to undertake it, Peter Saraf recalled, he warned that his acting process was so immersive that he wasn't likely to be pleasant to be around, not exactly what you're hoping for in a film director. In fact, he was likely to be an asshole, but nobody seems to recall that happening. With regard to directing, once he sank his teeth into it, he discovered that he loved it, and if he hadn't died so tragically in February 2014, at age 46, he would undoubtedly have directred more films -- he already had a project in development.
THE SCHEDULE
Yes, I realize that by the time you see this, at least the first week's worth of offerings will have happened, but I thought you might want to see what's included in the retrospective. (I'm crossing my fingers that it displays OK!) And again, note that additional offerings may be converted to "live events" as post-screening discussion participants are lined up. Check the current version of the retrospective page and the museum's online calendar.
It's a grand day for a subway-line opening -- but then, after two years of waiting, what day wouldn't be?
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by Ken
After all the delays (about two years' worth), not to mention all the cost (the price tag we're hearing is "nearly $2.4 billion"), it's hard to believe that the day is finally here: the opening of the extension of the No. 7 line west and south from Times Square to 11th Avenue and 34th Street (last noted here). There's a celebration of the opening of the new Hudson Park, built in the area of the new western terminus of the No. 7, sponsored by the HY/HK (Hudson Yards/Hell's Kitchen) Alliance, scheduled to begin today at 11:30 -- timed to coincide with the ribbon-cutting for the start of service on the new extended route. (Note: This "Hudson Park," which I confess I'd never heard of, has nothing to do with Hudson River Park, which is actually, you know, by the Hudson River.)
Two points here, concerning things we don't have and don't do much here in the Big Apple:
(1) We don't have many Manhattan crosstown subway routes.
(2) We don't build many new subway routes -- in fact, hardly any.
What's so important about this extension is that it opens up the last major area of Manhattan still available for really large-scale development: the Far West Side, including Hudson Yards. That's the reason our former mayor, Mayor Mike, came to push pretty hard on the construction. From what I've heard -- and bear in mind that I don't have terribly inside sources -- Mayor Mike made the lives of many people at the MTA (the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which includes New York City Transit (NYCT) as an operating division and which also has divisions responsible for new construction, a living hell, badgering them about the completion date for the No. 7 extension, even though the mayor has not only no authority over, but really no input into, the operations of the MTA.
From this you might think, whatta guy that Mayor Mike was, caring about the little people whose lives depend on mass transit. And you would be mostly wrong. While my particular subway commute spares me the worst horrors of the subway system at rush hour, when I am exposed to them, my observation is that riding conditions are basically bestial. In fact, I don't remember rush-hour commuting ever being this crowded or unreliable; if not for the undeniable change that the subways are now all air-conditioned, I would say that at least at rush hour, I've never experienced more brutal conditions. And on this count, even the air conditioning is a mixed blessing, because it pumps so much heat into the subway tunnels that underground stations have gone from hot to infernal. What's more, I'm becoming aware that nobody in the upper echelons of the MTA or NYCT gives a damn about either crowding conditions or on-time performance.
As far as I'm aware, Mayor Mike never lifted a finger on these fundamental quality-of-life issues for subway-commuting New Yorkers. No, it's just the transit routes that seemed to interest him. Once the No. 7 extension is up and running, it will be theoretically possible for employees to commute to and from the vast new commercial and residential developments to be built in the next decade or two. How bearable that commute is was never, as far as I'm aware, a concern of Mayor Mike's.
Just as is the case with the vastly larger project the MTA is currently involved in, what's known as East Side Access, the building of, in effect, another whole station below Grand Central Terminal to bring Manhattan-bound Long Island Rail Road trains, which heretofore have all come into Penn Station on the West Side, into GCT on the East Side. This dovetails with one of Mayor Mike's last and most grandiose projects: the rezoning and ultimate redevelopment of Midtown East, replacing who knows how many existing buildings with vastly taller ones once the "upgraded" zoning is in place.
Officially, Mayor Mike didn't get the new zoning through by the time he left City Hall, but it seems almost certain that among the apparently sizable network of to-be-instituted zoning and other changes he left behind, to kick in at intervals known only to the parties who were party to the plotting, the radical transformation of Midtown East is just a matter of time. That's what East Side Access is about. Not to make life easier for Long Islanders who work on the East Side, but to make it possible to bring in whole new quantities of workers to fill the new commercial and residential supertowers that will be springing up. Whether those new East Side commuters will actually be able to make their commute without a fair amount of pain wasn't a concern of Mayor Mike, and apparently is assumed not to be a concern of those employers who will be employing the new employees -- acually making the commute will be the employees' lookout.
(One thing that I can't stop thinking about is all the escalator technology that's going to have to work better than escalators have ever worked in the NYC subways. Remember that the new "station" is taking shape underneath the current rail and subway lines coming into Grand Central. I don't have the numbers handy, but we're talking about commuter platforms at staggering depths, and hordes of commuters who will have to be transported from those depths to street level and vice versa, when NYCT escalators are already breaking down at alarming rates, and current escalator technology seems terrible to the point of incapacitated when it comes to repair.)
THE AGE OF SUBWAY BUILDING ENDED ABRUPTLY
As for building new subway lines, it's something we hardly even attempt anymore. It's expensive, and disruptive. Of course the same was true of many of our subway lines when they were built. But as the city has become more built up, it has gotten that much more expensive and disruptive. Still and all, the fact remains that since the city's third subway system, following the private IRT and BMT, the city-built IND was built, mostly in the 1930s, with all kinds of future expansion possibilities built into the planning and construction for the next "phase," new line construction has been mostly limited to occasional patch-type connections and modest extensions -- like the No. 7 expansion.
Even the No. 7 expansion has been botched in at least one important way. When I say that the line has been extended from Times Square, at Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street, to 11th Avenue and 34th Street, that's all we will have to show for it: one additional stop. On all the existing north-south subway lines, there are stations at 33rd or 34th and 42nd Streets. On the "new" No. 7 line, considering the distance from Seventh to 11th Avenue -- and remember that those "avenue" blocks are about 2½ times as long as "street" blocks -- clearly should have called for an intermediate station, presumably at 41st Street and Tenth Avenue, before the line makes its southward turn. But all the parties involved in the planning played "financing chicken," and in the end nobody blinked and came up with a financing plan.
No doubt eventually a station will be added, at huge cost and with limited flexibility -- it's hard to imagine how a new station could be inserted allowing for transfers between directions. However, the Far West of 42nd Street has already been mostly developed, and so adding that station at 42nd Street and Tenth Avenue would only have improved access for people already living or working there, and nobody cares about them. In the World As Seen by Mayor Mike and his kind, it's only the developers of the new projects whose interests need to be served.
Speaking of missed, or at least deferred, opportunities, although the new tunnel extends south well below 34th Street, there are no present plans to even think about extending 11th Avenue subway service below 34th Street. At present there isn't any subway service west of Eighth Avenue. But that sort of extension would only be of interest to subway riders, not to big-time real-estate developers. So don't hold your breath.
I got this clever idea. At least I thought it was clever. Now I have to be in Astoria, Queens, in time for a 2pm 40th-anniversary screening of Cooley High at the Museum of the Moving Image, with director Michael Schultz on hand for a conversation afterward. (The museum has scheduled a whole little series with him, with conversations on several subjects that will include his take as one of the pioneering African-American directors to establish a sort of Hollywood franchise of his own.) I have a little extra time because I already have my ticket, which I was able to pick up Friday night when I got my ticket for that night's screening of Spike Lee's 25th Hour, in the museum's See It Big! New York in Film series. So I won't have to wait in line to pick up my ticket for Cooley High.
So I got this idea that I could go to the park-opening festivities today, and then take advantage of none other than the newly extended No. 7 service to get me to the museum! It's a little tricky, because on weekends the trip normally requires not one but two train changes, and with trains on sparser Sunday schedules. And, most important, I didn't know when exactly regular service on the "new" No. 7 will begin.
In the most hopeful scenario, I was imagining taking the extended No. 7 to get to the area, since otherwise it's quite a schlepp out there. Alas, that's not to be, it appears, as I learned via this pass-along from AM New York via Justin Ferate's mailing list:
New No. 7 Subway Station to Open Sunday on the Far West Side of Manhattan
By REBECCA HARSHBARGER
AMNY | September 10, 2015
Aerial view of the new 7 train station at West 34th Street and 11th Avenue. (Credit: MTA) [Click to enlarge.]
Residents and businesses on Manhattan's far west side will finally see the light at the end of the tunnel on Sunday, with a new subway station opening that will serve as many as 35,000 riders during rush-hour following almost eight years of construction.
The No. 7 train will leave the 34th Street-Hudson Yards stop on 11th Avenue during a ceremony Sunday morning. Normal service for riders will start around 1 p.m., the MTA said.
The city-funded station cost $2.42 billion, and brings the No. 7 line 1.5 miles to the new stop near the High Line and Hudson Yards development.
The MTA predicts that it will become the busiest station in its subway system. The station will serve the new apartments, offices, shops, and restaurants in the Hudson Yards area as the only station below 59th Street in Manhattan to go west of Ninth Avenue, the MTA said.
The No. 7 connects with 18 other subway lines across its route.
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the No. 7 train for a run from Times Square to the new stop at the end of his term in December 2013, the month it was originally set to open. However, its debut had been delayed by the MTA's struggles with installing incline elevators and safety systems.
The last subway extension was in 1989. The MTA added three new stations then to its map: 21st Street-Queensbridge, Roosevelt Island and Lexington Avenue-63rd Street.
It will serve new apartments, offices, restaurants, and stores in the Hudson Yards area on the far West Side.
"The opening of the extension is a real boon to the far West Side, and opens up many new travel options coming and going to the area," said riders' advocate and MTA board member Andrew Albert.
"This includes travelers to the Javits Center, the new offices, and apartments already open or coming to the area. It's always wonderful when New York's transit system expands."
The riders' group 7 Train Blues was glad the opening was almost here.
"We're excited to see progress and hope to have transit continue in a positive direction," said organizer Hayes Peter Mauro. "Including extensions, improvements, and proper maintenance."
One challenge has been installing the transit system's first two incline elevators. The new station is 80 feet under the ground – but still nowhere as deep as the 191st station on the 1 train, which is 180 feet down. The last extension of the subway system was in 1989. The MTA added three new stations – 21st Street-Queensbridge, Roosevelt Island, and Lexington Avenue-63rd Street.
Aha! "Normal service for riders will start around 1 p.m., the MTA said." So, ah, OK, if I could actually board a train at 1pm or even a little bit later, I could pretty likely make my connection to the E at Court Square and then one station later change for the R -- or this weekend an F, I think -- at Queens Plaza. But again, those other trains will be on Sunday schedules, and if it gets much later than that, it gets dicey.
Further consideration: If I attempt this plan, I may have to decide at what point I need to abandon it and scramble to make the trip by existing transport from the Wild, Wild West in order to be assured of on-time arrival at the museum. Right now I'm thinking that the time might actually be no later than 1pm. Or actually, really, probably earlier. After all, if "normal service for riders will start around 1 p.m.," is there any assurance that I'll be able to get on the first train? Or even the second or third? Won't there be, like, a million people gathered for the festivities determined to ride the new line, not just on the first day, but on one of the first trains? Probably not many of them will be attending the Cooley High screening, but I don't think I can count on squeezing onto a train ahead of them.
Hmmm. It's history in the making, but maybe it'll have to be made without me.
AFTERTHOUGHT, 11am ET: I'm thinking I don't think this is gonna happen
Not the ribbon-cutting, I mean; there's no reason why that shouldn't proceed as scheduled. I mean me being there for it. I mean, what really is the point? I can always just travel the new stretch of the No. 7 line on some coming day.
It occurs to me, though, that come that day, it will be pretty much a "hop-off, look at the new station and the new park, and hop-back-on" affair, seeing as how I don't expect to have any earthly reason to be at 11th Avenue and 34th Street anytime soon. I was there on May 26 for an Open House New York tour of the renovations to the Javits Center (when, come to think of it, I also faced the problem of having to leave early in order to get to MoMI for a screening -- of Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which I made; I enjoyed the film a lot).
At the time, the street-level shell of the new subway station was certainly visible, but otherwise the area of what I gather now is "Hudson Park" was pretty much a wasteland. Even now, though, for most of us it's still a rail terminus kind of in the middle of nowhere. But then, that's how a lot of subway lines were when they were built. One of the ways New York City has grown is that if you build a subway line, they will come. The developers, that is. (Who else matters?)
A wistful final visit to the Museum of the Moving Image's spectacular "Mad Men" exhibition
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One of the head-slapping features of MoMI's Mad Men exhibition, which closes Friday, is a re-assembly of two actual sets: the original Draper family kitchen (above) and Don's famous SCP office, each adorned with an adjacent screen showing a loop of scenes that took place on that set.
by Ken
Speaking of the re-assembled set of Don Draper's office in the Museum of the Moving Image's Mad Men exhibition, (produced, as we've noted here, with large amounts of cooperation from the participants, especially from creator-mastermind Matthew Weiner, who seems to have gone all out) at a recent MoMI screening of the about-to-open Queen of Earth at which star Elisabeth Moss -- known to Mad Men fans for seven seasons as rising-star advertising copywriter Peggy Olsen -- and director Alex Ross Perry were on hand for a post-screening discussion, Elisabeth talked a little about her powerful emotional response to her first viewing of the exhibition, in which naturally she and her character figure prominently. She seemed freaked out to find herself on exhibition in a museum. She also spoke about the time-warp sensation of seeing Don's office again -- and the memories it brought back of all the time she spent during production hanging out or napping there.
Another thing we learned is that Alex has worked up a bit of shtick for joint appearances with Elisabeth. When the interviewer gets around to asking about their future plans, he announces that he's looking forward to seeing what happens in the next season of Mad Men. Elisabeth seems to enjoy this less than you might think.
Alex and Elisabeth have now made two films together. (I got to see both at MoMI. Alex's two earlier pictures were also screened, but I couldn't make those.) So tell us, Elisabeth, what does happen in the next season of Mad Men?
But I've gotten ahead of myself. So far this holiday weekend I've faced an almost impossibly strenuous schedule of almost nonstop sitting -- in the darkened auditorium of MoMI, watching the initial offerings in this month's See It Big! New York in Film series. Friday night it was a restored 251-minute version (plus intermission) of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America. Then yesterday I was scheduled for three Martin Scorsese pix: Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, and The Age of Innocence (which I was especially curious about, since I'd never seen it, and in the last year I've been doing a humongous quantity of Edith Wharton reading). Today was, by comparison, a piece of cake: just Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.
I may as well own up that although I was scheduled for the three Scorseses yesterday, I bailed out of Taxi Driver -- in part because of blogorific obligations. Skipping it meant I didn't have to be in Queens till 4:30 instead of 2:00, and made the day oodles more manageable. I was sorry, because I don't think I've seen Taxi Driver since it was released, and I would have been curious to see how it holds up. I was also sorry because it would have been interesting to see it along with King of Comedy, as a sort of Scorsese "These Guys Be Nuts" double bill.
Alas, I didn't get to see Travis Bickel say, "You talkin' to me?" My goodness, De Niro looks young! (I guess 'cause he was.) I did, however, get to see him as Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese's later King of Comedy and as "Noodles" Aaronson in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. I'm not sure there's anything to add to what's already been said about these astounding performances. Luckily, they're there to be watched over and over.
In addition, it would have been nice to have Taxi Driver as the middle link of a triptych of astonishing and utterly different Robert De Niro performances, begun Friday night with Once Upon a Time in the West (all 251 minutes of it!). Then too, Once Upon a Time in America bookends neatly with Do the Right Thing as a pair of New York-centric epic films -- even allowing that Leone's Lower East Side is a figment of his own particular imagination, bearing little resemblance to the real thing at any point in time.
There's lots we could talk about here, but the dominant image I left with today came from one last visit to the spectacular Mad Men exhibition, which opened in March and, after multiple extensions, finally ends its run on Friday. I've paid a number of visits to it, both long and short, and today after the movie, since I didn't need to rush out, I thought I'd give it one last look.
The first thing I discovered is that even after all this time, the exhibition was still packed, and visitors seemed just as absorbed and enchanted as they've seemed in all my visits since March. It's hard to describe the exhibiton without making it sound like just lots of old stuff put out on display. In fact, it's made up of a huge collection of exhaustively researched and fastidiously presented displays of the work process, including the enormous background work and inventive fernebt, involving the entire creative team at all stages of the process, covering characters, places -- including the re-assembly of the sets for the Draper kitchen and Don's office at SCP, not to mention the MM writers' room and such other fascinating items as an actual secretary's desk, showing how the desk drawers were filled with relevant objects. It's explained that Matt thought this kind of attention to detail would help the actors function in the time and place ot the show.
It's a pity it wasn't possible to camp out at the museum for, say, a week, and start fresh each morning exploring a new area of the exhibition. Today I kept seeing all sorts of things I knew I'd seen but that I hadn't properly taken in, as well as all sorts of things I didn't remember having seen or at least taken proper notice of at all.
One thing I lingered over today was the re-creation of the Mad Men writers' room, with its plethora of information about what went on there. It's awesome to think of what came out of that room.
One corner of the exhibition I know was new to me. In one corner there's a little screening area where a series of Mad Men clips are played in endless repetition -- one from each season (including the two "halves" of Season 7), following filmed intros from Matt Weiner. I wandered in at Season 6, the scene in the finale where Don, in front of the clients, to the astonishment and horror of his agency colleagues, tells his own personal Hershey's story -- what a Hershey bar meant to him growing up dirt-poor in the whorehouse, rolling clients' pocket change. And even without available seating until that scene came up again. It was my impression that pretty much everyone who found the little space was doing the same thing. There were all kinds of scenes, all great to watch again, but the draw was the information that came out in those intros.
With regard to Don's performance at the Hershey's meeting, by the way, Matt doesn't think of it -- as a lot of us do -- as a "meltdown." He thinks of it rather as a "cleansing," a coming-to-grips with the Dick Whitman part of him that he's been struggling with all season. Matt says he always thought there would be a scene where Don tells his own past story to Roger and the others. Well, here it is. (In talking about Season 7, though, Matt does acknowledge that the meeting was "catastrophic" for Don -- getting him fired, after all.)
From Season 1, for example, the chosen scene was Pete Campbell's breathless ratting out of Don in Bert Cooper's office, only to have Bert say, "So what?" Matt explains that the writers had made the decision to allow Don's secrets to hang over him, perhaps subject to blackmailing, they would end that plot thread in 15 minutes, and he revealed that their guiding principle in arranging this dénouement had been a line of Japanese-inspired philosoph¥ that Bert in fact quotes -- something like "The Japanese say that a man is the room he's in."
From Season 5 there was the scene where Peggy comes to Don's office to give her notice. In the intro Matt talks about the arc of the Don-Peggy relationship, noting that by Season 5 he had become so hard on her that the writers told him they just couldn't let her keep working there, and Matt agreed. He insisted, though, that Don was no harder on Peggy than he was on himself -- it's just that she's a different person.
I was especially tickled to have Matt set the stage for the scene in Season 4, Episode 12, "Blowing Smoke" (directed by John Slattery), where Don deals with the agency's loss of the indispensable Lucky Strike account by writing the letter "Why I'm Quitting Tobacco," which he will have published as a full-page ad in The New York Times. Matt explains that they always planned to do this as a video collage, which begins with a voice-over as Don begins writing, then has the voice-over continue as we see Don typing and correcting the letter, then opens up to a wonderful assortment of other individuals and groups reading it in the Times.
What tickled me was that I had just come from the nearby Don Draper exhibit, where I had read a posted version of the ad!
The exhibition is not only a glorious tribute to a show that stands as one of TV's great achievements, but an education in what it took that large team of fantastically skilled and hard-working people to produce it. There's so much more I'm sure I could have learned from it. Now I'll have to settle for the shows themselves. I still haven't bought those final two half-seasons, which are incredibly expensive, but maybe it's time for me to go back to Season 1, Episode 1.
Movie Watch: "See It Big! 70mm" at the Museum of the Moving Image. Plus an Urban Gadabout note: "I Remember NY"
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Coney Island (this Sunday, August 9) is one of two neighborhoods tour leader Joe Svehlak will be revisiting this month in his Municipal Art Society series I Remember New York. Also coming up is Downtown Brooklyn (Sunday, August 30). See below.
by Ken
As I mentioned recently, I wiped out most of a day of potential Jane Jacobs Weekend walks to catch a 70mm screening of Robert Wise's 1965 film version of The Sound of Music, which as it happened I had never seen in any form, at the Museum of the Moving Image. These days, as digital projection takes over for theatrical showing even of movies that weren't made digitally, it's getting harder and harder to see films on, you know, film, and the 70mm jobbies -- forget about it. At the MoMI Sound of Music event, though, Chief Curator David Schwartz mentioned that the museum would be showing a 70mm print of West Side Story -- the 1961 film musical Wise had already directed which established him as candidate for the Sound of Music film when, apparently, nobody else wanted to direct it -- in an upcoming installment of its See It Big! series, this one devoted to 70mm films.
Well, See It Big! 70mm is here! Eight films, ranging chronologically from 1961 (West Side Story) through 2014 (Interstellar), each being shown either two or three times between August 7 and August 30.
With a higher resolution and more light hitting the frame, 70mm film offers a bigger, brighter image than 35mm. It also offers richer sound, with more space on the soundtrack. It is the ideal film format for ambitious cinematic spectacles, yet with the transition to digital filmmaking, 70mm movies have become increasingly rare.
But, as the introduction goes on to note, 70mm hasn't been entirely abandoned.
Filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Christopher Nolan are keeping the tradition alive, with films that were surely inspired by the work of Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Douglas Trumbull, and Robert Wise. From West Side Story to Interstellar, here is a selection of great 70mm films, including adventure, comedy, drama, musical, and science fiction -- and all indelible experiences.
THESE ARE BIG MOVIES
In the listing below, culled from the museum's listings, it occurred to me to include the films' running times, because so many of these are really big time-wise in addition to film-format-wise. Four of the eight are over 2½ hours, and a fifth, Interstellar, is only six minutes short. Two, in fact, are over 3 hours, and one is over 3½ -- Lawrence of Arabia, of course. Although director David Lean has been dead for 24 years, there are people who'll swear that the movie still hasn't ended.
It's a wild mix of films. I'm taking a pass on 2001, which I just saw at MoMI in 70mm -- but if you haven't seen it in 70mm, you should. It doesn't solve the film's problems or plug its gaps, but for the considerable effect it makes nevertheless, it really should be seen in full format. But I'm hoping to get to all the others -- some that I haven't seen, or seen theatrically, since they were new, and four that I've never seen at all.
It's the usual MoMI deal: Screenings are free for members at the "Film Lover" level and above; for others it's $12 ($9 for senior citizens and students), which includes museum admission for that day. Both members and nonmembers can book ahead; go to the link below and if you prefer follow it to the alternate date(s); then click on the "Order tickets online" link. I would be especially careful with the films that are only being shown twice.
With a higher resolution and more light hitting the frame, 70mm film offers a bigger, brighter image than 35mm. It also offers richer sound, with more space on the soundtrack. It is the ideal film format for ambitious cinematic spectacles, yet with the transition to digital filmmaking, 70mm movies have become increasingly rare. Filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Christopher Nolan are keeping the tradition alive, with films that were surely inspired by the work of Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Douglas Trumbull, and Robert Wise. From West Side Story to Interstellar, here is a selection of great 70mm films, including adventure, comedy, drama, musical, and science fiction -- and all indelible experiences.
See It Big! is an ongoing series organized by Reverse Shot editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert, Chief Curator David Schwartz, and Assistant Film Curator Aliza Ma.
2001: A Space Odyssey
(dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968, 159 mins)
Friday, 8/7, 7pm; Saturday, 8/8, 2pm; Sunday, 8/9, 2pm
The Master
(dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012, 144 mins)
Saturday, 8/29, 2pm; Sunday, 8/30, 2pm
URBAN GADABOUT NOTE: Joe Svehlak's MAS "I Remember New York" walking tours
This month Joe Svehlak, the total sweetheart among NYC tour guides, a lifelong New Yorker who pours passion as well as charm into his tours, and has always given a generous sense of historical development in his neighborhood walking tours, has two more tours coming up in the wonderful "I Remember New York" series he's been doing for the Municipal Art Society: Coney Island this Sunday, August 9, 10:30am-12:30pm, and Downtown Brooklyn.
These will be more personal versions of popular tours Joe has been doing for some time, tracking changes in these much-changing neighborhoods. His tours have always been personal, but in this I Remember New York series he's undertaken at age 75, he has been unabashed in sharing his history with the places he's leading us through. It says something about Joe that I run into him all the time taking other people's tours; his enthusiasm and curiosity seem if anything to have continued growing with time.
On the first tour in the I Remember New York series, Joe mentioned that at his age he doesn't know how much longer he'll want to continue leading tours, and for anyone who appreciates the value of experience and memory, the walks in this series so far have been treasures. On those my schedule has enabled me to do, there was a special warmth to this walk through Manhattan's Financial District, where he had his first job and later worked for a considerable time; and then in the two-part traversal of Brooklyn's Sunset Heights, where he did much of his growing up and later returned as a first-time homeowner and pioneering preservationist. I really should have posted something about the series sooner. Sorry!
Not to mention that Joe is just good company. Again, there are links for online registration for both members and nonmembers. I'm embarrassed at how long it took me to find my way to MAS; now I can't imagine not being a member.
Join tour guide and preservation activist Joe Svehlak who still swims here, to reminisce about Coney Island in his younger years when Steeplechase Park was still a great amusement attraction before it was demolished in the 1960s. Hear Joe describe the thrill of the Parachute Jump and the Steeplechase. In addition to Steeplechase Park, Joe remembers four rollercoasters, merry-go-rounds, and an assortment of other rides, sideshows and games of chance. Both the Cyclone rollercoaster and the Wonder Wheel are New York City landmarks and a testament to Coney Island's illustrious past and resilience. We'll also view a new amusement park, a restored carousel, and two poignant memorials by the ballpark. Stroll the boardwalk as Joe remembers family outings, amusements, bathhouses, and other facilities and attractions by the sea. On our walk we'll learn about Coney Island's honky-tonk past and issues of preservation and planning for the future. Coney Island has seen many changes in Joe's lifetime. He's happy to see it coming back with new amusements, activities and restaurants. Stay for a swim and treat yourself to a Nathan's Famous! Please note that this tour has been offered before with a slightly different theme, and there may be significant overlap in content. Cost: $20 / $15 Members
In his lifetime, tour guide and preservation activist Joe Svehlak has seen major changes Downtown Brooklyn. Growing up in the 1940s and 50s, Joe remembers Brooklyn's Downtown as one of New York City's premier shopping and entertainment centers, with grand elegant department stores, specialty shops, fine restaurants and magnificent movie palaces. He would look forward to the special holiday shopping trips Downtown and the occasional treat of a movie in one of the great theaters. By the 1970s economic decline, the days of the grand department stores were over. The Fox and the Albee theatres were demolished for other commercial purposes. The Paramount became part of Long Island University and the Metropolitan is now the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Fifteen years ago Joe moved Downtown and is now witnessing dramatic high rise construction all around him. New streetscapes and plazas are adding to Downtown Brooklyn's new livability. New Hotels and shops are opening and even a new park is planned. Joe's thoughts and memories will guide us through his neighborhood as we view old civic buildings, new commercial development, designated New York City landmarks, the revitalized Fulton Mall, redesigned Flatbush Avenue, Metro Tech expansion, and even some surprising religious edifices. End by the landmarked monumental Dime Savings Bank and Junior's Restaurant, noted for its cheesecake. Please note that this tour has been offered before with a slightly different theme, and there may be significant overlap in content. Cost: $20 / $15 Members
SPEAKING OF MAS --
The new walking-tour schedule, likely to cover September, October, and November, should be coming out in the next week or two. Meanwhile there are still a whole bunch of really interesting-looking walking tours that can still be booked for August. Check them out here -- or go to mas.org anytime and click on "Tours."
Even if you don't know who Glen Campbell is, you should watch the movie about his farewell tour, "I'll Be Me," tonight
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I'll Be Me, which had a limited theatrical release in 2014, makes its TV debut tonight on CNN.
by Ken
The post title isn't facetious. James Keach, director and co-producer of I'll Be Me, the story of a "goodbye tour" that was scheduled for 5½ months when he got involved but stretched to 51 concerts over some two years, has already encountered the question "Who's Glen Campbell?" (If anyone needs reminding, the "official trailer" clip provides some reminders of how big a star he was, both as a recording artist and as a TV personality.)
But then, when James co-produced the 2005 Johnny Cash-June Carter biopic Walk the Line, as he explained at a screening of I'll Be Me Friday night at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, he heard the question "Who's Johnny Cash?" Notably when it came to selling the project to a studio, a bunch of studios passed, with the resident genius at Sony announcing that nobody cares about Johnny Cash. (James noted that several hundred million dollars' worth of box-office receipts suggest he was wrong.) It was in good part on the basis of the trust he'd earned with the Cashes that the Campbells were interested in having him work on their project. From James's standpoint, having been through the experience of Walk the Line made him not want to do such a project. But he agreed to meet with the Campbells, and was so taken by them, and by the fascination of how much of Glen there still was in the 75-year-old Glen, butted up against stark reminders of the Alzheimer's ravages.
Early in the film we see Kim explaining to Glen (likely not for the first time) that James is going to be working with them on a movie about him, and the always-jovial-country-boy Glen, approving, declares, "I'll be me."
By the time filming began, we see Glen making abundant use of his country-boy joviality to deflect questions about his already-impaired memory. Because by the time the 2011-12 tour documented in the film began, the public had been informed that Glen had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And yes, it's now possible to actually diagnose Alzheimer's. In the film we see him undergoing both an MRI and a PET scan, and we see doctors showing him and explaining both the picture of the shrinkage of his hippocampus, included in the Mayo Clinic clip, and a series of cross-section images of his brain that show sections that are afflicted with plaque. These are things that formerly couldn't be seen except at autopsy.
The thing that is most obviously riveting about the film is the extraordinary level of musical skill and artistry Glen retains, much of it still in evidence at the final concert, in November 2012. At one point Glen, asked how he's still able to do this, says he can't explain it, that it's all in his system somewhere. The doctors are at pains to explain that Alzheimer's deterioration is highly individual, and also speculate that Glen's ongoing deep involvement in his music seemed to be giving him some grounding, and may possibly have slowed the rate of deterioration in other aspects of his brain function.
Yes, at concerts the song lyrics are being fed to Glen on Teleprompters, and he forgets things and sometimes performs songs more than once, but the musical skills and the musicianship are pretty amazing. Already at the start of the film Kim tells us that he has become "unrehearsable," and over time his worsening condition but when it comes to performance time, he generally rises to the occasion, for audiences that clearly have come not just to see but to support him. From one concert there's a "dueling" duet with daughter Ashley on banjo and Glen on his guitar, and while Ashley seems to hope he will pick up on melodic cues she feeds him, he always has the rhythm of the cues, and as the two get deeper into the number, he generates a lot of heat.
The tour came about originally to promote a new record, made with an all-new, younger backup group (James says the record company was hoping to reach a younger audience), which included the youngest of his eight children, the three with Kim, his wife since 1982: in addition to Ashley, sons Cal and Shannon. All three come across in the film as not just gorgeous and highly talented but extremely personable. And for all the mixed emotions a project like the tour and film must have caused, they were all glad to have the opportunity not just to be with but to perform with their father over this period. Although it was a new musical group he was touring with, the road crew was his regular gang, clearly an extended family of sorts.
The family thought Glen would be up to the tour and the film, or they wouldn't have gone ahead with it. They also wanted to be open about his condition, and for the public to see that condition. From not long after they went public with the diagnosis, we see Glen appearing on The Tonight Show, doing two numbers with the band, and afterward we see Jay Leno, clearly deeply moved, coming back to thank him for appearing and inviting him to come back anytime he wants.
As James explains, Glen wanted people to see his Alzheimer's. Kim talks in the film about the importance they all felt of removing the shame from the disease, and James made a point of the considerable institutional support the film is receiving -- there are a lot of organizations involved with Alzheimer's (including Lily, which has a possibly helpful drug in the testing stages) strongly interested in getting this kind of portrait before the public.
At this point there are fewer and fewer people who haven't had a personal experience of Alzheimer's, and James rattled off some numbers about the likelihood of each of us actually having it which were scary enough that I didn't register them. The odds, it seems, are getting worse for each of us. I'll Be Me gives us a kind of view of the disease that just hasn't been available before. I expect I'll want to watch it again, and apparently there will be "extras" on the DVD that give us even more.
No doubt CNN will give the film a bunch of airings beyond tonight's premiere. It's worth checking the schedule.
Father's Day -- next Sunday, June 21 -- is your once-a-year chance to show Dad how you really feel.
by Ken
When I shared the Museum of the Moving Image's horrific Mother's Day film lineup, I promised to return with the grisly details for the second half of the museum's celebration, "Horror Mother's Day and Father's Day." Unless you're lucky enough not to have e-mail, by now your e-mailbox should be choked with offers to take care of your celebratory needs. So you'll be glad to know that the museum has an equally, er, uplifting triple bill scheduled to honor Dad, the poor sonofabitch.
The primal bond between parent and child is undeniable, and is at the heart of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, which are observed on Sundays in May and June as though they are national holidays. For anyone looking for an alternative to Hallmark sentimentality, or for those parents -- or non-parents -- with great taste in movies and an appetite for horror, here are six classic movies to mark the occasions.
The deal again is that each film is is $12 ($9 for senior citizens and students; free for members at the Film Lover level and above). Museum admission for the day is included with the ticket. Advance reservation (for members) or purchase (for nonmembers) is not only possible but recommended.
And again, those of you who aren't within striking distance of the museum may wish to avail yourselves of your usual film sources to re-create all or part of this lineup in the none-too-comforting privacy of your own home.
"A never-more-menacing" Robert Mitchum as "creepy preacher Harry Powell"
Sunday, June 21, 2pm
Dir. Charles Laughton. 1955, 92 mins. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Restoration funding provided by The Film Foundation. With Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish.
Acting legend Charles Laughton’s sole screen directorial credit is perhaps cinema’s most remarkable one-off. Creepy preacher Harry Powell (a never-more-menacing Mitchum) offers naive widow Willa Harper (Winters) a fresh start, but her kids rightly worry his intentions are less than pure. Part horror film, part fairy tale, The Night of the Hunter is an idiosyncratic, dazzlingly shot cinematic wonder.
Georges Franju's "classic example of the poetry of terror"
Sunday, June 21, 4:30pm
Dir. Georges Franju. 1960, 88 mins. 35mm. With Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob.
Working in his secluded French chateau, a brilliant but mad doctor tries radical plastic surgery to restore his beautiful daughter’s face, which was disfigured by a car accident that he caused. This “classic example of the poetry of terror” (Dave Kehr) is at once horrifying and filled with stunningly beautiful images.
From Stanley Kubrick, a "primal Freudian drama played out in a haunted hotel"
Sunday, June 21, 6:30pm
Dir. Stanley Kubrick. 1980, 144 mins. 35mm. With Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd.
“Here’s Johnny!” All work and no play makes Jack a monstrous dad in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s tale of a caretaker driven mad in a cavernous hotel during an isolated Colorado winter. A visionary child is pitted against a murderous father, as the primal Freudian drama is played out in a haunted hotel.
