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Best DVDs of September 2008: "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" - Season Three
by Armchair Commentary at 12:41 AM PDT, September 3, 2008
--Kelsey Who Would You Pick as the Voice of God?
by Armchair Commentary at 4:32 PM PDT, August 18, 2008
As in what? I asked. When he played God in Bruce Almighty? Many actors have played God (and non-actors like Alanis Morissette) before. But he just meant that if the heavens were to open up and a voice were to speak, to him it would sound like Freeman, as opposed to that of, say, James Earl Jones, whose boom always makes me think of either Mufasa's command from the sky in The Lion King (which he voiced) more than Darth Vader's.
The New Essentials: Essential Sequels
by Armchair Commentary at 1:50 PM PDT, August 6, 2008
Continuing our series of Essentials*, here's our Essential Sequels. Here's what our writer said: Hollywood loves sequels. They are easier films to market and have an already built-in audience. The downside: One can go to the well once too often (Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in the Hood). But the upside is when art and commerce are both gloriously served. These Essential Sequels took great movies to the next level. Primal sagas were expanded, and iconic characters more fully explored. In some cases, thrill rides were upgraded to extreme entertainments. This genre often gets a bad rap by critics who bemoan Hollywood's seeming lack of original ideas. These classics give sequels a good name. * "Essential" is not the same as "best," so these are not top 10 lists, but more a library-building guide that samples the significant DVDs from a genre, a decade, or a career. Essentials by Genre: Sequels (in no ranked order)
In topics: Action, Box Office, Comedy, Drama, Editors' Picks, Family Room, Fantasy, Film Vault, List Fever, Time Wasters
The New Essentials: Landmark Indie Films
by Armchair Commentary at 2:41 PM PDT, August 5, 2008
Continuing our series of Essentials*, here's our Essentials list for independent films. Here's what our writer said: As nurtured in Hollywood, moviemaking evolved from technological curiosity to mainstream entertainment early on, in partnership with the movie palaces that could exploit major studio productions for the masses. But some of North America's greatest films were made by independent filmmakers; artists driven by a passion for their craft creating work they could express in their own, distinctive voice. Whether seen in a neighborhood multiplex or on the small screen, these essential North American independent features offer a new world of possibilities. * "Essential" is not the same as "best," so these are not top 10 lists, but more a library-building guide that samples the significant DVDs from a genre, a decade, or a career. Essentials by Decade: Landmark Indie Films (in no ranked order)
The New Essentials Interview: Director Peter Bogdanovich Responds to Our Picks
by Armchair Commentary at 11:32 AM PDT, August 4, 2008
 Peter Bogdanovich, one of the most celebrated of the so-called New
Hollywood directors, was Old Hollywood at heart. A life-long film
devotee, he chronicled on index cards every film he ever saw between
the ages of 12 and 30. Grand total (with shorts and cartoons): More
than 5,300! A former critic and astute writer about movies, his two
collections of interviews with legendary directors and actors (Who the Devil Made It and Who the Hell's In It) are must-reads for film buffs. The Oscar-nominated director spoke with Amazon.com about his Essential films. --Donald Liebenson Bogdanovich: Targets came about because Boris Karloff owed (producer) Roger Corman two days (of work). Out of that crazy reason for a movie, we tried to make something meaningful because of Karloff's stature and impact. Targets is what we came up with. It was based in part on his persona and the other part on real-life (sniper) Charles Whitman. Apart from the initial limitations and the fact we didn't have a lot of money, Roger was the perfect producer. He completely left us alone. He told me it was the best script he had ever been involved with. Targets was a huge breakthrough. It didn't make a lot of money, but it got great reviews. It put me in the map, and directly resulted in my next two jobs. One was with Sergio Leone (Duck, You Sucker, which Leone thought was a great American title), which I didn't do, and The Last Picture Show. Giving Boris a fitting send-off was something that was very much on my mind. He was the one of the last golden age stars and the first star I worked with.
Bogdanovich: I was a good friend of Sal Mineo. He came over to the house one day and he brought this paperback. He said, 'I've always wanted to do this. I'm too old for it now, but I thought you might be interested.' What's weird is I had been in a drugstore not more than two weeks before and picked up a copy of that same paperback, The Last Picture Show. I thought that sounds like a movie I should make. I turned to the back and it said teenagers in Texas and I thought, 'Well, I don’t know anything about that' and I put it down. Eventually, I read it. The dialogue was flawless. Virtually every line of dialogue in the movie is in the book. The other thing was that I had no clue how to do it, and that interested me. I came to the conclusion to just do the book, which was a year in the life of a small town, one football season to the next. We talked about Jimmy Stewart for Sam the Lion. We never talked to Jimmy about it, but then we thought if he had agreed to do it, which he might have, it would be wrong to have this town with this movie star sitting in the middle of it. He was too big a star for the town.
Bogdanovich: This was an old studio system kind of project. They came to me. Barbara Streisand had seen Picture Show before it opened and told Warner Bros. that she wanted me to direct her next picture. They had a picture that they wanted me to do with her called A Glimpse of Tigers. It was a bittersweet comedy drama, and that didn't interest me, not with Barbra. The head of the studio said, 'Barbra really wants to work with you. What would you like to do with her?' So I said a screwball comedy because she's very good at comedy, like Bringing Up Baby; square professor and nutty dame. He said, 'Go ahead and make it.' I left the office producing and directing Barbara Streisand's next picture. (Buck Henry was brought in to do a script rewrite). Buck came in and he said, 'You're going to hate me, but I don't think it's complicated enough.' I said, 'Do you think we should have a fourth suitcase?' And then it became four suitcases. Howard Hawks took a lot of pride in What's Up, Doc?, because I told everyone it was stolen from Bringing Up Baby. There were so many homages to him. We called (Ryan O'Neal's character) Howard. Barbra called him "Steve" the way Lauren Bacall calls Bogart "Steve" in To Have and Have Not. The (climactic) chase was pure (Buster) Keaton, but everything else was Hawks.
Bogdanovich: Director Vittorio Da Sica once said that you're not a director unless you've directed a child. I thought, okay; let's give it a shot. I have two daughters and the father-daughter relationship interested me, but what interested me most was the fact that the character of the girl was the smartest character in the movie. One of my favorite reviews was Ms magazine, which said there was only one fully realized woman's part in the entire year, and that was Tatum O Neal in Paper Moon. I like the picture a lot. I didn't enjoy making it because I had a lot of personal problems, but I liked the way it turned out. It was tough to do, because Tatum had to carry a lot of the picture. She had never acted and we had to work very closely with her. Ryan had to have an enormous amount of patience, which he did. I think it's one of my best pictures.
Bogdanovich: The great accomplishment of Saint Jack was we really made up the script over there (in Singapore). All the things are based on what happened to me or that I experienced or heard while I was there. It was a life-altering experience. There's not a shot heard in it, but it's my Viet Nam movie. It's about the hypocrisy of the government and the army, the ugliness of it all. It just went darker than any picture I'd ever done except for Targets. I did the film with Roger (Corman) because no studio would do it with Ben (Gazzara). They wanted Paul Newman or Warren Beatty or somebody like that. I had compromised on Nickelodeon and At Long Last Love, so I said I'm going to do it my way or I'm not doing it. I think Benny is superb in it. It's a film I'm particularly proud of. I think Saint Jack and the next one, They All Laughed, are sort of the peak of my creative abilities. They're two of my best films, and they're not well known.
Bogdanovich: It's not my best film necessarily, but if I was passing through the Pearly Gates and they said, 'We'd like to look at one film you feel represents you,' I'd say that one. The Picture Show people aren't my people. They're from Texas. The people in They All Laughed, their sensibility; that's who I am. It's a love letter to New York, which was my hometown, and I was very much in love with Dorothy. I had a feeling it was going to be Audrey Hepburn's last movie because she didn't enjoy the process anymore, although we had a good time. I am so privileged to have had her in the movie. She is incandescent. Some of the best moments in the picture are hers, just little behavioral moments that she did and that no one else could possibly do. And John Ritter was one of my favorite people in the world. He was in Nickelodeon, which was his first big picture. We became friends years before because he read for me for Picture Show and I always regretted not using him. I called him before They All Laughed and I said, 'We're shooting a comedy in New York, and you're playing me. Do you want to do it?' He said, 'When do I show up?'
Bogdanovich: The director's cut that is available now on DVD has the Bruce Springsteen score, which was originally taken out, and it has eight additional minutes, two critical major sequences, that were cut. I was very disapproving of the original and I got into a lot of trouble with Universal because of it, but I'm very happy to say that after more than 20 years, the version that is available is the good one. It's the first film I made after Dorothy was murdered. I hadn't done a film for three or four years. I'd been writing a book about her and I came to understand something very interesting about her. She had been very interested by (John Merrick), the Elephant Man. She had seen the play on Broadway and she bought a book about him with a lot of photographs I couldn't bear to look at. I didn't quite understand until after she died exactly why she was so taken with him. The story of Mask helped me understand it, which is that she herself was always being stared at on the street. People were looking at her constantly. She stopped dogs! She didn't understand why it was happening, and it made her extraordinarily uncomfortable. I realized that anything that sets you apart makes you an outsider. How you cope with that is what makes that story interesting.
Bogdanovich: I thought it was a hell of a story. Orson told it to me back in the '70s. Then along came this script 30 years later and it was the same story. I thought, 'Wow, that’s weird.' He had told it to me very quickly in a few potent sentences. Here it was written, but pretty much the same story. A lot of research had to be done. The film is really about a woman caught between powerful men. The murder keeps her bound to him forever. (It is conventional wisdom that Orson Welles based Charles Foster Kane on Hearst), but the character was a combination of several people. This film gives Marion Davies her due. (In being associated with the untalented Susan Alexander character in Citizen Kane), Orson always felt that she got the short end of the stick. The cast was terrific. Kirsten Dunst is a pro, and Eddie Izzard playing Chaplin; that was daring. He wasn't doing The Tramp. He was doing Chaplin. I had a good time with the actors and had a great production designer, Jean-Vincent Puzos; the best I'd ever worked with. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based freelance entertainment writer and DVD reviewer. The Most Entertaining "Disaster" Ever!
by Armchair Commentary at 12:57 AM PDT, August 1, 2008
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I've been enjoying the Olympics... commercials. Especially the Visa ones ("Go World") narrated by Morgan Freeman. As I was commenting on how well his voice fits to narrate over Michael Phelps' slo-mo swimming, much like Patrick Dempsey's for State Farm Insurance or Jeff Bridges for Duracell, my husband replied, simply, that "Morgan Freeman is the voice of God."
Which got me thinking: If you were to cast anybody to be the voice of God (however you think it should sound), whose would you pick? I vote for Freeman and also like the idea of Patrick Stewart's voice thundering above, but that may be too traditional. But I think someone like Zach Braff's may be a wee too upbeat. (Perhaps St. Peter in a quirky mood.) -- Ellen
