Author Archives: Fran

I will admit to being one of the few people on the Planet
Earth who had never seen the Broadway musical The Chorus Line. Somehow, it
slipped by me, so when a friend highly recommended a new documentary called
“Every Little Step,” which is about the auditions for the 2008 Broadway revival
of “The Chorus Line,” I realized that I needed to watch the movie version to
catch up. “Chorus Line: The Movie” was heavily criticized when it came out, and
while I can see why, it was still fun settling down for hour or so with a bowl
of popcorn to watch the glitzy musical numbers, overflowing with energy and
impossibly slender people dancing. Even though the fashions and frizzy
hairstyles of the 80′s have not worn well, and even though the stories of the show
business “gypsies” now seem a bit clichéd, the music, color, and energy trumped
all. So the time flew.

Having watched the Chorus Line, I popped Every Little
Step, into the DVD player. This documentary uses footage from actual audition
tapes for the 2008 Chorus Line revival. Here are the real Vals, Cassies and
Pauls, 25 years after the opening of the Chorus Line, still giving it their all
to win a coveted role. The talent is stunning, and we get to see differing
interpretations of the roles. As with the original Chorus Line, some are
youngsters trying to break into the profession, but others are older and
fighting for their professional lives. This should be required viewing for any
young person who has stars in their eyes and wants to break into show business.
Behind the glamour and glitz of the stage is hard work and, often, heartbreak.

Many young girls get
bitten by the dance bug when they see The Red Shoes, a 1940 film about the
rise of a young ballet dancer and her life on stage. In “The Chorus Line,” one
character, named Val, differentiates herself by saying she hasn’t watched the Red Shoes. So if you watch the above two movies,
consider checking out “The Red Shoes,” to see what all the fuss is about. It
stars Moira Shearer as Vicky Page, a young ballerina who is singled out for
stardom by Lermontov, a ballet impresario. It’s filled with the churning
melodrama of her life and flamboyant dance numbers. It also peers into backstage
life: We see the dancers stretching, loitering, and gossiping, and waiting for
their moment on stage, however brief.  

Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?
Vicky: Why do you want to live?
Lermontov: Well, I don’t know exactly why, but… I must.
Vicky: That’s my answer too.

If you hesitate to watch foreign movies because of the
subtitles, here’s a movie that might change your mind: an Iranian film called The
Song of Sparrows. It has clear subtitles, an easy-to-follow story, and a lead
actor with an incredibly expressive face, in the person of Iranian film icon
Reza Naji. A few minutes into the film, the
subtitles will cease being a distraction. The movie opens at an ostrich farm
where  Karim (played by Naji) is an
ostrich wrangler. He gets distracted by workers manhandling some of the birds,
and an ostrich escapes into the nearby hills. Karim cannot catch up to the bird,
and he is fired.  A decent and kind man who
has, to our eyes, an idyllic life out in the countryside with his wife and
three children, Karim finds work in Tehran, using his motorbike as a kind of
taxicab. Tehran presents temptations to Karim–he becomes obsessed with making
money, and also amasses quantities of scrap from building sites, which he
stores in an ever-expanding heap at his home. And at one point he teeters on
the brink of theft. Will he be ruined by
the temptations of the fast-paced urban life of Tehran?

“The Song of Sparrows” reminds me a bit of “It’s a
Wonderful Life.” In both movies, so-called “average” men who find themselves in
a seemingly losing battle with the vicissitudes of life, come to the end of
their rope, only to find out what really matters. Director Majid Majidi is a
wonderful director with a particularly sensitive touch for children, seen here
with all their worries and joys. Look also for Majidi’s visual sense–there are scenes as colorful and carefully composed as Persian miniatures.

Italian men are said to be extraordinarily attached to their
mothers, and we see this in “Mid-August Lunch,” a delightful movie by director
Gianni Di Gregorio. Gregorio also plays Gianni, a middle-aged wreck of a man
living with his 93-year-old mother in a condo in the heart of Rome. Gianni is
an alcoholic, has fallen on hard times, and can’t pay his condo fees. The
building manager, knowing he has Gianni on the ropes, will forgive some of the
debts if Gianni will take care of his elderly mother for a day or so. So over
comes another ancient lady–actually two ancient ladies–because an aunt has been
thrown in as well. Gianni feels ill, and, as one thing leads to another, finds
himself also caring for the doctor’s mother. The strength of this movie is that
instead of it being just a situation comedy, we come to know four women of
great charm and character. They, too, are unsettled by this unexpected turn of
events, which could be seen as one of the indignities of old age. Gianni’s mother
insists that they have a nice meal, to be prepared by the long-suffering Gianni
and his friend. The tablecloth is laid, the wine is chilled, they feast, and toast
to life. Under the spell of this wonderful meal, suddenly, the ladies are not
old; Gianni has no problems, and they are simply enjoying life. Then another
problem arises: the ladies don’t want to leave!

This is a warm-hearted and life-affirming movie that has
lots of smiles. Some critics have called this movie a “trifle,” and, while it
isn’t a grand drama, cooks, who know the profound part food plays in human
affairs, will only smile at this characterization. You may also want to watch
the accompanying film short, in which the director visits the ladies, played by
real life women Valeria DeFranciscis, Maria Cali, Marina Cacciotti, and Grazia Cesarini Sforza.
And be sure not to miss the recipe for Aunt Maria’s Pasta al forno, included in the DVD notes. Deliziosa!

I just watched Kings of Pastry the other evening, expecting it
to be a fluffy documentary about French pastry chefs competing for the
title of “Un des Meilleurs Ouvriers de France” (One of the Best Craftsmen of
France, otherwise known as MOF). I never dreamed that the competition was the
culinary equivalent of the Iron Man triathlon, pitting the chefs against one
another in a grueling survival-of-the-fittest contest. As one critic has said,
this is the “culinary equivalent of The
Hurt Locker.” In three days of
competition each chef must prepare a tiered wedding cake, cream puffs and
chocolates, tea pastries and jams, a restaurant-style plated dessert, a
chocolate sculpture and a sugar sculpture and chocolate lollipops, plus a
fiendishly difficult special desert added at the last minute by the judges.
Winners get to wear prestigious red, white and blue collars. This is a
different world from where you or I might bake a batch of chocolate chip
cookies to nibble. It’s one where chefs dissect cream puffs and taste them with
the seriousness of nuclear scientists. They spin sugar into fabulous flowers,
birds, ribbons and bows–pastry works of art– each more fantastical than the
last. And they must do it at a relentless pace under the eyes of exacting
judges. When, at the last minute of the
competition, a chef dropped a fabulous sugar sculpture comprised of arabesques
of spun sugar intertwined with sugar roses, I screamed. It was a truly shocking
moment. This is a fascinating
documentary about anyone who competes at the highest level, whether as an Olympic
athlete, or in this case, a pastry chef.

Bright Star is the
story of the three-year romance of Romantic poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne.
Keats moved next door to the Brawne family in Hampstead, near London, in 1818,
and Fanny, a.k.a. the luckiest teenage girl in the universe, immediately is drawn
to Keats. She is theatrical, creative, and outgoing, and they soon fall in
love. The morals of the time allowed them only time to read together, and to walk
through the woods (accompanied by Fanny’s little brother and sister), and their
love was tame by modern standards, but the intensity of their feelings burns
through the screen. Perhaps they knew
they would only have a brief time together, as Keats began to sicken with TB. It
was during this time that Keats wrote some of his greatest poetry. Meanwhile,
his friend Charles Brown tries to discourage Fanny, feeling that the
relationship could only end in marriage and in Keats being destroyed by the
pedestrian needs of married life. Keats goes to Italy to try to recover from
his illness but dies at the age of 25 on Feb. 26, 1821, and Fanny is left to
wander the nearby heaths in black, mourning.

Ben Whishaw as Keats
and Abbie Cornish as Fanny convey the youth and almost morbid intensity of the
couple as they fall in love.Whishaw, especially, has the daunting task of portraying a
poetic genius, and is convincing. This is what Keats wrote to Fanny:

Bright Star
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

The movie Fahrenheit 451 was released in 1967 to mixed
reviews. Director Francois Truffaut did not speak English, and it was his first
color film, so some critics felt that he was out of his element. Time has
passed, though, and this movie seems more and more insightful about human
nature, and filmmakers now feel that it was greatly underrated. Truffaut visualized a future in which the
government–here called “The Family”–banned books because it was felt that ideas
are confusing and create discontent. Books were rooted out and burned by
“firemen,” who no longer put out fires, only set them. Instead of reading,
citizens pop pills–there are red, green, and gold ones–and watch vacuous
“reality” television programs. Montag, a fireman, is married to Mildred, played
by Julie Christie. Christie also plays a neighbor who draws Montag into
dangerous conversations about books. Montag’s curiosity about books, and his
doubts about The Family set him on a collision course with the status quo.

One of the odd charms of this movie is that it is the future
as imagined from the vantage point of the 1960s, before computers, the
Internet, microwaves, women’s lib, and cell phones–a strange, “retro,” future.
Phones are ornate and clunky, Mildred’s stove is a big, turquoise cast iron
monster, and Montag commutes to work on a monorail, a form of transportation
that never caught on. So technologically, Truffaut was off target, but in a fun
way.   

Many of his predictions about society, though, have come
true, and the staying power of this movie derives from this. The reality
programs, the ubiquity of drugs to solve every problem, the “dumbing down” of
culture, the short attention span of the public, and the corruption of the
media are all portrayed here with discomfiting accuracy.

The movie is based on the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, who was
once asked where he got the idea for the book burnings:

Well, Hitler of course.
When I was fifteen, he burnt the books in the streets of Berlin. Then along the
way I learned about the libraries in Alexandria burning five thousand years
ago. That grieved my soul. Since I’m self-educated, that means my educators–the
libraries–are in danger. And if it could happen in Alexandria, if it could
happen in Berlin, maybe it could happen somewhere up ahead, and my heroes would
be killed.

Paris 36 is a badly-named musical that is all about the ups
and downs of a French music hall in 1936. The title sounds
futuristic to me, but this movie is all about nostalgia for the vanished world
of French vaudeville. It plays out before a backdrop of historic events such as
the French workers’ strikes of that era, but Paris 36 is really a soufflé of a
movie that’s all about some unemployed performers who decide to take over
Chansonia, the shuttered music hall where they worked a few months earlier, and
stage a show there. Will the show go on? Do you have to ask? There is a plucky
ingénue named Douce who auditions and turns out to be a star, and who loves
Milou, a political firebrand/stagehand. Will their love be thwarted by the lustful
Bad Guy Galapiat? Do you have to ask? Meanwhile, loveable Germain  Pigoil struggles to make the music hall a
success so he can win back his son, the accordion-playing JoJo. There are musical numbers galore, Douce
warbles a bit like Edith Piaf, and there are glorious shots of Paris, with its lively street scenes and bistros.

Let me say upfront that you will either be charmed by all of
this, or exasperated, as it is as sweet and insubstantial as a whipped cream-filled French
eclair. I like whipped cream-filled French eclairs (unfortunately for my
waistline), and I found the musical numbers charming, and even enjoyed the
comic schtick of vaudevillian Jacky Jacquet. And I couldn’t resist the love
story of Douce and Milou played before a dark and sparkling Paris where a
jewel-like Eiffel Tower twinkles on the horizon. There is a hyperreal touch of
“Moulon Rouge” in this movie and the Paris it evokes is the Paris of a Technicolor
dream. If you would like to suspend all belief for a few hours and enjoy
yourself with a sweet fairy tale, this movie is for you. The movie is in French
with English subtitles.

Take Out plunges us into
the sights, smells, and sizzles of a Chinese restaurant’s kitchen. Woks smoke, vats
of sauce steam, and there are platters of sliced meats and vegetables, and
pails of rice. We follow the kitchen’s routine from dawn to closing. (Tip: This
is not a good movie to watch if you are hungry. Order a takeout meal first, and then watch the move.) Working at the restaurant, and the focus of
this movie, is Ming Ding (played by Charles Jang), a Chinese illegal immigrant
whose family has paid for him to be smuggled into the United States. He is a
delivery man at this restaurant, and is part of a vast underground economy of illegal
Chinese immigrants whose jobs in New York City, behind the scenes in sweat
shops and restaurants, are barely a rung above indentured servitude. 

In an effort to promptly repay
his family, Ming has unwisely borrowed money from a loan shark, and has fallen
behind in his payments. Thugs visit him at night and whack his head with a
hammer, telling him to come up with the money or his debt will be doubled. Take Out follows him through the day as he toils to earn the money, doing
his own deliveries as well as the deliveries of a sympathetic fellow delivery
man.

The issue of illegal aliens
is controversial, and in Take Out we see one facet of the story. Ming Ding
seems mainly guilty of being naïve, and in becoming enmeshed in an economic
system that thrives on cheap labor. He works hard, bicycling his way through
rain and traffic, but we are left wondering if this hard work will ever be enough to free him
from the grasp of the loan sharks.

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956) is one of those movies
you have to be in a certain whimsical mood to watch. With animation by the legendary Ray
Harryhausen (of “Jason and the Argonauts” fame) it’s as much a cultural
artifact as a movie. Its flying saucers and aliens spoke to an America emerging from World War II with an anxiety about infiltration, invasion, and
destruction, and some of the film footage comes from World War II newsreels. From
our perspective, it’s more fun than frightening: the flying saucers zip around
like little bumblebees, and the aliens stagger in tin can-like space suits. It all leads up to the set piece of the saucers
attacking Washington, D.C., and crashing into the Capitol Dome. If you like
this kind of stop-action animation, you might also enjoy George Pal’s 1953 “The
War of the Worlds,” (can be obtained through ILL), and Robert Wise’s 1951 “The
Day the Earth Stood Still” (DVD DAY).

Tigerland is the story of a group of U.S. Army recruits
going through advanced infantry training in 1971, during the Vietnam War. They
are on their way for a week at “Tigerland,” a base in Louisiana made to seem as
much like Vietnam as possible. While a few of the men have volunteered, most
are draftees. The training is brutal. Colin Farrell, in a breakout role, plays
“Private Bozz,” a draftee from West Texas. He is a smart aleck and
insubordinate, but during the course of the training, emerges as a natural
leader. Meanwhile, he makes enemies. And during a last maneuver in Tigerland, some
of the ammunition is live.

This movie isn’t for everyone–if some movies can be called
“chick flicks,” Tigerland is a “bro-mo.” The prevailing color is olive drab,
the movie’s pace is as jittery as the nerves of the men it portrays, and there
are many fistfights and brawls, and scenes in barracks and latrines. But a
shadow pervades the movie that renders it as something more than a routine war
flick. Most of these men were born on the wrong side of the economic divide–there
would be no occupational deferments or stints in college for them. And while
they talked of going AWOL to Mexico, there seemed to be a fatalism about their
future. They had not had a break before the war, and would not get one now. And
though Private Bozz, the “hero” of Tigerland helps a fellow recruit, who is
psychologically cracking under the experience, to bail out of the Army, he does
not help himself, and at the end of the movie gets on the bus to be deployed with
everyone else. Tigerland shines an unblinking light on the fundamental
unfairness of this system, and if you are interested in the history of the
Vietnam War, this is a must-see.

Tigerland is rated “R” for language, violence, and adult
situations.