Let me start with a confession of bias. To me, film originated with two opposing impulses -- Lumiere vs. Melies, the train pulling into the station vs. the rocket to the moon -- which I characterize as documentary vs. fabulation. I am a lifelong member of the party of Lumiere, and it’s not just that I prefer documentaries to fiction films, but that fiction films appeal to me by how much they document a real world, and lose my interest when they depend on fantasy and fashion. So following a rundown of features that I couldn’t quite bring myself to recommend, here’s a variety of nonfiction films that I heartily endorse. If the subject interests you, each is worth seeking out.
Scandalously unable to finance another feature after the high critical acclaim and low public response to The House of Mirth (2000), Terence Davies turned to documentary, and returned to the theme of his earlier films about growing up Catholic and gay in postwar Liverpool. Of Time and the City (2009, MC-81) is an unapologetic mash-up of poetry and music, archival footage and cinematic contemplation of Liverpool as it has become today. Davies is crotchety as well as passionate, acerbic as well as lyric. He appropriates, uncredited, a lot of poetry that was immediately familiar to me, notably Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” and music ranging from Mahler to dancehall. Along with images old and new, words and music weave a mood of reverie, of celebration and regret, in 72 artful and highly personal minutes. Davies may not be a guy you’d want to know, but he expresses himself in a film you ought to see.
Speaking of things you ought to see but don’t really want to, War Photographer (2002, MC-79) follows the career of James Nachtwey as he documents war and famine, devastation and destitution, around the globe, from Bosnia to Rwanda to Indonesia and beyond (after the film was made, he was seriously injured in Iraq, but seems to have recovered). Nachtwey is a quiet, even subdued personality who funnels all his passion into steely acts of attention and witness. Director Christian Frei follows him into the heart of the action, and the photographer also has a mini-cam attached to his camera, so we share his view as he takes his pictures. Besides the witness to human suffering, this film proffers a provocative debate on the ethics of photography, in implicit answer to Susan Sontag. What might be ghoulish sensationalism is rendered admirable by the hushed intensity of focus that the photographer brings to his anguished subjects.
Trouble the Water (2008) also follows behind and incorporates the images of a witness to devastation, in this case Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans. The eyewitness in this case is a 24-year-old woman from the Lower Ninth Ward, who couldn’t afford the “luxury” of evacuation and took refuge with family and others in the attic of one house as their neighborhood was inundated, wielding her camcorder the while. Documentarians Carl Deal and Tia Lessin discover her and her footage of the storm, and then follow as she and her husband escape to the relative paradise of Memphis but then return to participate in the reconstruction of New Orleans. Kimberly Roberts is a force of nature herself. Daughter of a drug addict who died of AIDS, she initially seems a bit wacked, but is gradually revealed as strong and articulate, with a rap persona who winds up crafting some powerful songs about the disaster, including the title song that plays over the final credits. Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke will remain the definitive view from outside of Katrina, but this film offers an intense and ultimately uplifting view from the inside. No dvd release has been scheduled yet, but it has been shown on HBO. Watch for it.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Rahmin Bahrani, American neorealist
Rahmin Bahrani is emerging as one of the most interesting young filmmakers in America. His latest -- Goodbye Solo -- may seal the deal, but I haven’t seen it yet, though its reception prompted me to catch up with his first two films. Born in North Carolina and educated at Columbia, he then spent several years in his parents’ native Iran before returning to America to make films. The influence of Kiarostami is evident, as are the antecedent debts to Italian neorealism, Satyajit Ray, and Robert Bresson.
Man Push Cart (2005, MC-71) is a deceptively simple Sisyphean parable of a Pakistani immigrant in NYC, who every day before dawn wheels his coffee cart into traffic and drags it many blocks to its spot on the street, the play of neon reflections on its faceted stainless steel a silent commentary on the man’s dark, drab existence. The repetitive process is rendered with grim lucidity, which is enlivened by chance encounters on the street, with a girl from Barcelona who is filling in at a relative’s news stand, and a yuppie from Lahore who recognizes the pushcart man as formerly a successful singer back in Pakistan. But romance or rediscovery is not in the cards for our hero, just the daily grind of pushing that rock up that hill. It could all be very depressing, but comes across as astringent and bracingly real.
Chop Shop (2008, MC-83) takes place in a realm that seems fantastical but is utterly factual, a little slice of the Third World right in the Big Apple -- Willets Point, a twenty-block area of fly-by-night auto repair shops, presided over by the looming presence of Shea Stadium. We follow 12-year-old Alejandro, an apparent orphan, as he works odd jobs and small crimes to survive, while allowed to live above one of the repair shops. He is thrilled when his 16-year-old sister Isamar comes to live with him, but not so thrilled when he learns what she has to do to get by. They dream of getting a burrito van of their own. Bahrani’s world is not one where dreams have much chance of coming true, but where life is lived as if it’s real, in a savvy mix of exhilaration and despair.
Man Push Cart (2005, MC-71) is a deceptively simple Sisyphean parable of a Pakistani immigrant in NYC, who every day before dawn wheels his coffee cart into traffic and drags it many blocks to its spot on the street, the play of neon reflections on its faceted stainless steel a silent commentary on the man’s dark, drab existence. The repetitive process is rendered with grim lucidity, which is enlivened by chance encounters on the street, with a girl from Barcelona who is filling in at a relative’s news stand, and a yuppie from Lahore who recognizes the pushcart man as formerly a successful singer back in Pakistan. But romance or rediscovery is not in the cards for our hero, just the daily grind of pushing that rock up that hill. It could all be very depressing, but comes across as astringent and bracingly real.
Chop Shop (2008, MC-83) takes place in a realm that seems fantastical but is utterly factual, a little slice of the Third World right in the Big Apple -- Willets Point, a twenty-block area of fly-by-night auto repair shops, presided over by the looming presence of Shea Stadium. We follow 12-year-old Alejandro, an apparent orphan, as he works odd jobs and small crimes to survive, while allowed to live above one of the repair shops. He is thrilled when his 16-year-old sister Isamar comes to live with him, but not so thrilled when he learns what she has to do to get by. They dream of getting a burrito van of their own. Bahrani’s world is not one where dreams have much chance of coming true, but where life is lived as if it’s real, in a savvy mix of exhilaration and despair.
Rossellini's Historical Films
The Criterion Collection once again proves its inestimable value and exquisite taste with an Eclipse boxed set of “Rossellini’s Historical Films: Renaissance and Enlightment.” Though made for tv broadcast and popular consumption, Rossellini’s late films seem esoteric and strange, until you fall under their spell and they become an acquired taste. The Rise to Power of Louis XIV, separately released by Criterion, is certainly the most approachable of those I’ve seen, but in this set the one that gripped my attention was Blaise Pascal (1972); it certainly had me taking down my old paperback of the Pensees and grazing through my old annotations. I liked when Pascal bested Descartes in disputation, but Rossellini went on to give fair play to the latter in Cartesius (1974), never a thinker I cottoned to but whose life was interesting to follow. I confess to fast-forwarding through parts of the three-episode Age of Cosimo de Medici (1973), though the third part, which focuses on Leon Batista Alberti, is consistently fascinating. First off, let’s grant that these films are long and slow, with lengthy bits of argument and exposition somewhat awkwardly declaimed, but their pageant-like quality, with devotion to scenic verisimilitude and patient reenactment, offers a wide window into the past. I eagerly anticipate another set that will include Socrates and The Messiah.
Speaking of esoteric, I won’t do much of a postmortem on my “Four Seasons in Japan” film series, but will note my pleasure in drawing a more than decent audience for such high-flown fare, and look forward to cultivating that audience in that time slot, with my Cinema Salon Film Club at the Clark starting in September. Of these four, Ugetsu was a bit of disappointment, most of the Mizoguchi images that stuck in my mind must have come from Sansho the Bailiff, but there are still more films of his I would be eager to see when they become available. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs certainly held up, on a second viewing within a relatively short period, and I tracked down another Naruse film, Late Chrysanthemums, which whets my appetite for more. A re-viewing of An Autumn Afternoon merely confirmed how much I love Ozu, certainly among my favorite directors. And Ran was a revelation -- turns out I had never seen it, just the start on an inadequate videotape -- proving that Kurosawa was a master to the end.
Speaking of esoteric, I won’t do much of a postmortem on my “Four Seasons in Japan” film series, but will note my pleasure in drawing a more than decent audience for such high-flown fare, and look forward to cultivating that audience in that time slot, with my Cinema Salon Film Club at the Clark starting in September. Of these four, Ugetsu was a bit of disappointment, most of the Mizoguchi images that stuck in my mind must have come from Sansho the Bailiff, but there are still more films of his I would be eager to see when they become available. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs certainly held up, on a second viewing within a relatively short period, and I tracked down another Naruse film, Late Chrysanthemums, which whets my appetite for more. A re-viewing of An Autumn Afternoon merely confirmed how much I love Ozu, certainly among my favorite directors. And Ran was a revelation -- turns out I had never seen it, just the start on an inadequate videotape -- proving that Kurosawa was a master to the end.
Boston blackguards
Confusable with Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead in multiple ways, What Doesn’t Kill You (2008, MC-71.) also stands in the shadow of The Departed, Mystic River, and Gone Baby Gone, so it’s no surprise it came and went without notice, despite worthy performances by Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke, and an authentic directorial perspective on South Boston from Brian Goodman, telling more or less his own story. Ruffalo plays him, and he himself plays the gang leader under whose sway the two longtime friends chafe, each going astray in his own way, with one headed for redemption and one for oblivion. It’s all done well enough (including Amanda Peet as the wife), but not well enough to stand out in a crowded field.
I also caught the recent Criterion release of the granddad of all these films, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), directed by Peter Yates from the George V. Higgins novel. Not exactly Bullitt goes to Boston, this film suffers from too many “friends” and not enough Eddie, in the person (and presence) of Robert Mitchum. He’s a small-time hood and Quincy family man in a bind, running guns and facing time, negotiating with other crooks and the cops, caught in a web he doesn’t begin to discern. At times this film plays like an instructional documentary for a bank heist, and at others like a primer on deviousness, as the bad and not-so-good guys make their deals in the shady bars of Boston, and on the plaza of the then-new City Hall. As gritty and downbeat as it gets, as meticulous and observant as it is, this film lacks a beating heart, ending with only a flashing neon sign in an almost empty bowling alley parking lot.
I also caught the recent Criterion release of the granddad of all these films, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), directed by Peter Yates from the George V. Higgins novel. Not exactly Bullitt goes to Boston, this film suffers from too many “friends” and not enough Eddie, in the person (and presence) of Robert Mitchum. He’s a small-time hood and Quincy family man in a bind, running guns and facing time, negotiating with other crooks and the cops, caught in a web he doesn’t begin to discern. At times this film plays like an instructional documentary for a bank heist, and at others like a primer on deviousness, as the bad and not-so-good guys make their deals in the shady bars of Boston, and on the plaza of the then-new City Hall. As gritty and downbeat as it gets, as meticulous and observant as it is, this film lacks a beating heart, ending with only a flashing neon sign in an almost empty bowling alley parking lot.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Next at The Clark
An Artist in Her Own Right:
Barbara Stanwyck and the Modern American Woman
Free Films Saturdays at 2:00 in the Clark Auditorium
Like Georgia O’Keeffe’s, Barbara Stanwyck’s career spanned most of the 20th century, and according to film scholar David Thomson, reveals the most “credible portrait in cinema of a worldly, attractive, and independent woman in a man’s world.” Brooklyn-born orphan Ruby Stevens became a showgirl in her teens and by the age of 20 she was starring on stage as Barbara Stanwyck and moving on to a 60-year career in Hollywood as a tough, smart, funny, and sexy leading lady. This series will survey the best of Stanwyck’s groundbreaking work from the same era as the O’Keeffe paintings displayed in the Clark’s special summer exhibition.
July 18: Baby Face. (1933, 70 min.) A barmaid marshals her assets and climbs man by man from the basement to the penthouse. This startlingly explicit film is notorious for leading to the Hollywood production code that desexualized film for decades.
July 25: Stella Dallas. (1937, 106 min.) A millworker marries a rich man, and after a divorce, poignantly gives up her daughter to a better life. This classic “woman’s weepie,” directed by King Vidor, earned Stanwyck her first Academy Award nomination.
August 1: Ball of Fire. (1941, 111 min.) A gang moll takes refuge with a group of seven professors (i.e. dwarves) and instructs them in compiling an encyclopedia of slang. Howard Hawks directs Stanwyck to her second Oscar nomination, as she charms the flustered Gary Cooper.
August 8: The Lady Eve. (1941, 97 min.) A con woman supreme wraps a bumbling herpetologist beer heir around her little finger – twice! No Oscar nod, but perhaps her greatest performance, in Preston Sturges’ classic screwball comedy, opposite Henry Fonda.
August 15: Double Indemnity. (1944, 107 min.) The ultimate femme fatale lures an insurance agent into a plot to kill her husband. Film noir doesn’t get any darker than Billy Wilder’s great thriller. Stanwyck indelibly earns her third Oscar nomination by seducing Fred McMurray (and the audience) while trying to outsmart Edward G. Robinson.
Barbara Stanwyck and the Modern American Woman
Free Films Saturdays at 2:00 in the Clark Auditorium
Like Georgia O’Keeffe’s, Barbara Stanwyck’s career spanned most of the 20th century, and according to film scholar David Thomson, reveals the most “credible portrait in cinema of a worldly, attractive, and independent woman in a man’s world.” Brooklyn-born orphan Ruby Stevens became a showgirl in her teens and by the age of 20 she was starring on stage as Barbara Stanwyck and moving on to a 60-year career in Hollywood as a tough, smart, funny, and sexy leading lady. This series will survey the best of Stanwyck’s groundbreaking work from the same era as the O’Keeffe paintings displayed in the Clark’s special summer exhibition.
July 18: Baby Face. (1933, 70 min.) A barmaid marshals her assets and climbs man by man from the basement to the penthouse. This startlingly explicit film is notorious for leading to the Hollywood production code that desexualized film for decades.
July 25: Stella Dallas. (1937, 106 min.) A millworker marries a rich man, and after a divorce, poignantly gives up her daughter to a better life. This classic “woman’s weepie,” directed by King Vidor, earned Stanwyck her first Academy Award nomination.
August 1: Ball of Fire. (1941, 111 min.) A gang moll takes refuge with a group of seven professors (i.e. dwarves) and instructs them in compiling an encyclopedia of slang. Howard Hawks directs Stanwyck to her second Oscar nomination, as she charms the flustered Gary Cooper.
August 8: The Lady Eve. (1941, 97 min.) A con woman supreme wraps a bumbling herpetologist beer heir around her little finger – twice! No Oscar nod, but perhaps her greatest performance, in Preston Sturges’ classic screwball comedy, opposite Henry Fonda.
August 15: Double Indemnity. (1944, 107 min.) The ultimate femme fatale lures an insurance agent into a plot to kill her husband. Film noir doesn’t get any darker than Billy Wilder’s great thriller. Stanwyck indelibly earns her third Oscar nomination by seducing Fred McMurray (and the audience) while trying to outsmart Edward G. Robinson.
Potpourri
I defy you to find any connection amongst them -- neither style nor era nor nationality --but here’s a quick rundown of some films I’ve been watching lately, each worthy in its way but not something I would urge you to put in your Netflix queue unless some detail piques your interest.
Given what Kate Winslet and director Peter Jackson have gone on to since, I was interested to revisit Heavenly Creatures (1994). Jackson’s transition from his early splatter movies (unseen by me) to the imaginative fantasies of his Lord of the Rings trilogy (seen by everyone) is blessedly reticent with the bloodletting, though it details a real-life murder in 1950s New Zealand. As a tale of adolescent lesbian infatuation and the intense fantasy world the girls create for themselves, the film is so convincing and absorbing that it’s a shame it has to come round to a sensational climax. The Kate Winslet character went on in real life to become the British writer of historical mysteries, Anne Perry.
I remembered being impressed with Lady with a Dog (1959) decades ago, but I don’t know what prompted me to watch it again, though I do know that I would have enjoyed it more if I had read the Chekhov story first, since while this Russian film is lovely, it is so filled with soulful staring into space that it would have helped to be able to fill in the interior monologue. As a quiet study of bygone manners and passions, Josif Heifits’ film was a striking surprise to come out of the Soviet era.
Watching all the Rossellini I can get my hands on, I got around to the one commercial success of his career, Generale Della Rovere (1960), which stars a superlative Vittorio De Sica as a collaborationist con man and gambler, who tries to save his own skin by impersonating a resistance leader at the behest of the Nazis. In prison he comes to know the men he’s spying on, and by indirection himself, as he becomes the fearless leader he pretends to be. This is a waystation, or even an aberration, on the way from Rossellini’s classic postwar neorealism to the televised docudramas that occupied the end of his career, with the staginess and meticulous mise en scene looking backward and forward at the same time. Purportedly Rossellini and DeSica got together and decided to make a film that would win the Golden Lion at Venice and revive both their careers, and then they did so. The Criterion dvd has some excellent extras, including interviews with Isabella and the other Rossellini children, which bring out how autobiographical the film was for both men.
Anthony Mann is one of those directors who was once seen as a Hollywood journeyman and is now seen as an auteur, and I have been belatedly catching up on his oeuvre, so I made a point of recording Man of the West (1958) when it came round on TCM. Unfortunately, what seems archetypal to some seems formulaic and implausible to me. Likewise, some have no trouble with the fact that Gary Cooper is decades older than the character he is meant to portray, in fact older than Lee J. Cobb who plays his uncle, the raging gang leader whose protege he once was. Cooper has gone straight but Cobb longs to drag him back into his Old West crime family. Julie London is on hand as a saloon canary (though she never gets to sing), to demonstrate Cooper’s innate nobility and the gang’s sexualized nastiness.
I had never seen a Batman movie nor thought I would, but credible recommendations and an opportunity to watch on big-screen hi-def led me to take a gander at The Dark Knight (2008). Yes, there is some impressive visual spectacle. Yes, there is the appeal of familiar faces in so many roles, notably the late Mr. Ledger. Yes, Christopher Nolan directs this comic book for adults, with characters and situations that are indeed impressively dark. But yes, it is awfully long and exhausting, and no, you don’t have to see it if you don’t want to.
Given what Kate Winslet and director Peter Jackson have gone on to since, I was interested to revisit Heavenly Creatures (1994). Jackson’s transition from his early splatter movies (unseen by me) to the imaginative fantasies of his Lord of the Rings trilogy (seen by everyone) is blessedly reticent with the bloodletting, though it details a real-life murder in 1950s New Zealand. As a tale of adolescent lesbian infatuation and the intense fantasy world the girls create for themselves, the film is so convincing and absorbing that it’s a shame it has to come round to a sensational climax. The Kate Winslet character went on in real life to become the British writer of historical mysteries, Anne Perry.
I remembered being impressed with Lady with a Dog (1959) decades ago, but I don’t know what prompted me to watch it again, though I do know that I would have enjoyed it more if I had read the Chekhov story first, since while this Russian film is lovely, it is so filled with soulful staring into space that it would have helped to be able to fill in the interior monologue. As a quiet study of bygone manners and passions, Josif Heifits’ film was a striking surprise to come out of the Soviet era.
Watching all the Rossellini I can get my hands on, I got around to the one commercial success of his career, Generale Della Rovere (1960), which stars a superlative Vittorio De Sica as a collaborationist con man and gambler, who tries to save his own skin by impersonating a resistance leader at the behest of the Nazis. In prison he comes to know the men he’s spying on, and by indirection himself, as he becomes the fearless leader he pretends to be. This is a waystation, or even an aberration, on the way from Rossellini’s classic postwar neorealism to the televised docudramas that occupied the end of his career, with the staginess and meticulous mise en scene looking backward and forward at the same time. Purportedly Rossellini and DeSica got together and decided to make a film that would win the Golden Lion at Venice and revive both their careers, and then they did so. The Criterion dvd has some excellent extras, including interviews with Isabella and the other Rossellini children, which bring out how autobiographical the film was for both men.
Anthony Mann is one of those directors who was once seen as a Hollywood journeyman and is now seen as an auteur, and I have been belatedly catching up on his oeuvre, so I made a point of recording Man of the West (1958) when it came round on TCM. Unfortunately, what seems archetypal to some seems formulaic and implausible to me. Likewise, some have no trouble with the fact that Gary Cooper is decades older than the character he is meant to portray, in fact older than Lee J. Cobb who plays his uncle, the raging gang leader whose protege he once was. Cooper has gone straight but Cobb longs to drag him back into his Old West crime family. Julie London is on hand as a saloon canary (though she never gets to sing), to demonstrate Cooper’s innate nobility and the gang’s sexualized nastiness.
I had never seen a Batman movie nor thought I would, but credible recommendations and an opportunity to watch on big-screen hi-def led me to take a gander at The Dark Knight (2008). Yes, there is some impressive visual spectacle. Yes, there is the appeal of familiar faces in so many roles, notably the late Mr. Ledger. Yes, Christopher Nolan directs this comic book for adults, with characters and situations that are indeed impressively dark. But yes, it is awfully long and exhausting, and no, you don’t have to see it if you don’t want to.
Breaking Bad & other worthy TV
I’m off my film watching and reviewing stride, so I going to start to catch up with a few firm recommendations for long-form viewing, tv originals now on dvd.
Breaking Bad went through two seasons on AMC without attracting my attention, despite being promoted along with Mad Men. But I came across an article that compellingly praised the second-string cable channel for having the two best shows on tv. With the first season already out on dvd, it was easy to try out this series, and soon jump on the growing critical bandwagon. If you tend to like HBO series, then take a look at what AMC is doing. The creator of Breaking Bad is Vince Gilligan, a veteran of The X-Files, which means nothing to me, and the star is Bryan Cranston, of Malcolm in the Middle and other tv that I have never seen. But together they’re doing something special here -- taking an unlikely premise and spinning it out to absurd yet oddly convincing lengths. Cranston is a straight-arrow high school chemistry teacher in Albuqueque, who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, and to build a nest egg for his family before he dies, decides to “break bad” and start cooking crystal-meth. Complications ensue, which I will allow you to discover for yourself. (Any resemblance to the premise of Weeds is decidedly superficial, though it’s possible this is more of what Pineapple Express wished to be, ordinary guys in an action movie situation.) This series is culturally and socially observant, suspenseful and funny, grisly and wry, with great characterizations from a large cast of characters who are easy to become involved with. After the initial seven hour-long episodes, I’m eager for the second season to come out on dvd or re-run on AMC. This show is more interesting and amusing than any chemistry class has a right to be.
Having re-watched all 26 episodes of The World at War for the first time since it was broadcast in 1974, I have to say that it stands up very well as a panoptic view of the cataclysmic events of WWII. With footage from German, Russian, and Japanese archives, as well as the American and predominantly British viewpoint, you see things rarely witnessed before or since. Laurence Olivier’s narration and the plangent music are perfectly and memorably pitched. And there is a poignancy in the first-person recountings from the early Seventies, which are more distant from us than they were from the events themselves. This series is a window on a perspective we always need to keep in view.
As a big fan of the Emma Thompson-Kate Winslet Sense & Sensibility directed by Ang Lee, I didn’t feel the urge to watch the three-hour Masterpiece Classic version broadcast on PBS last year, but I did finally catch up with it on dvd, and I have to say that for those of us who can never get enough Jane Austen (as long as her memory is not traduced by the adaptation), this is well worth watching, with exceptional location shooting for a tv series and solid performances from Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield, who do not supplant Emma and Kate but offer new shadings to the sensible and sensitive Dashwood sisters and their errant suitors. Classic, indeed.
Breaking Bad went through two seasons on AMC without attracting my attention, despite being promoted along with Mad Men. But I came across an article that compellingly praised the second-string cable channel for having the two best shows on tv. With the first season already out on dvd, it was easy to try out this series, and soon jump on the growing critical bandwagon. If you tend to like HBO series, then take a look at what AMC is doing. The creator of Breaking Bad is Vince Gilligan, a veteran of The X-Files, which means nothing to me, and the star is Bryan Cranston, of Malcolm in the Middle and other tv that I have never seen. But together they’re doing something special here -- taking an unlikely premise and spinning it out to absurd yet oddly convincing lengths. Cranston is a straight-arrow high school chemistry teacher in Albuqueque, who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, and to build a nest egg for his family before he dies, decides to “break bad” and start cooking crystal-meth. Complications ensue, which I will allow you to discover for yourself. (Any resemblance to the premise of Weeds is decidedly superficial, though it’s possible this is more of what Pineapple Express wished to be, ordinary guys in an action movie situation.) This series is culturally and socially observant, suspenseful and funny, grisly and wry, with great characterizations from a large cast of characters who are easy to become involved with. After the initial seven hour-long episodes, I’m eager for the second season to come out on dvd or re-run on AMC. This show is more interesting and amusing than any chemistry class has a right to be.
Having re-watched all 26 episodes of The World at War for the first time since it was broadcast in 1974, I have to say that it stands up very well as a panoptic view of the cataclysmic events of WWII. With footage from German, Russian, and Japanese archives, as well as the American and predominantly British viewpoint, you see things rarely witnessed before or since. Laurence Olivier’s narration and the plangent music are perfectly and memorably pitched. And there is a poignancy in the first-person recountings from the early Seventies, which are more distant from us than they were from the events themselves. This series is a window on a perspective we always need to keep in view.
As a big fan of the Emma Thompson-Kate Winslet Sense & Sensibility directed by Ang Lee, I didn’t feel the urge to watch the three-hour Masterpiece Classic version broadcast on PBS last year, but I did finally catch up with it on dvd, and I have to say that for those of us who can never get enough Jane Austen (as long as her memory is not traduced by the adaptation), this is well worth watching, with exceptional location shooting for a tv series and solid performances from Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield, who do not supplant Emma and Kate but offer new shadings to the sensible and sensitive Dashwood sisters and their errant suitors. Classic, indeed.
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