Category: review

MOVIE REVIEW: Raging Bull

I didn’t go to church on Easter Sunday. I felt pretty crummy. Carol had gone to her parents’ house with Lydia. So, the day before, I went to the library and borrowed Raging Bull, which, inexplicably, I had never seen.

OK, that’s not entirely true. I had recorded it on my DVR some months ago, and started watching it at a point when I was running out of room on the machine. I got really impatient and zapped it shortly after the first scene.

So, this time, I had an unusual block of time to see it. Initially, I found the boxing sequences more compelling than the other scenes, but as the movie progressed, I found myself engrossed in both aspects of Jake LaMotta’s life. This is such a highly regarded film that I shan’t bother with the (pardon the expression) blow-by-blow. I do think that, even though the fight scenes were sometimes rough, the black-and-white film made the scenes, if not palatable, then at least bearable.

I AM going to suggest that, on the second disc of this two-disc DVD, I found the making of the film to be the most compelling extras I’ve ever viewed. The whole making of the film, how Robert de Niro had found a book that he didn’t think was all that well-written, yet told an interesting story. How director Martin Scorcese initially balked at doing the film at all because he’s not a sports guy, but that he ultimately understood boxing as a life struggle. How the script was written, and re-written. Specifically, how the boxing scenes were all shot first, with different cinematic palates, which made me want to watch them all again. How all the other boxers were played by real boxers. How the filmmakers found Joe Pesci, who was all but retired from acting, and how he directed them to Cathy Moriarity and others in the cast.

If you’ve never seen the movie, see the movie, then see the extras. If you love the movie, or hate the movie, watch the extras; it’ll make you want to see the movie again.
ROG

ROG

Oscar-Worthy Movies I Have Seen: 1931-1932

Production (Picture):
“GRAND HOTEL”, “Arrowsmith”, “Bad Girl”, “The Champ”, “Five Star Final”, “One Hour With You”, “Shanghai Express”, “The Smiling Lieutenant”
Nada, though I was in the room once when “The Champ” was playing on TV some years ago.

BTW, this guy named Walt Disney won a special award for his four-year-old creation, Mickey Mouse.
***
I forgot to mention that I appeared in some State University newsletter called The SUNY Watch, dated April 2007:

Your Name: Roger Green
Your Title and Name of Your Office: Information Specialist

Winter Techniques

What winter? The first half was so mild – an average of 12 degrees above normal over a 38-day period in December and January – that I didn’t even get into winter survival mode until mid-January. For me, winter is for seeing movies, usually at the Spectrum, usually Oscar nominated films.

I’ve most recently seen, in reverse chronological order, Notes on a Scandal, Volver, The Queen and The Pursuit of Happyness.
My favorite pictures of 2006, though, were Little Miss Sunshine and Stranger Than Fiction, because they both are intelligent, funny, and a little offbeat.
ROG

ROG

Oscar-Worthy Movies I Have Seen: 1930-1931

Production (Picture):
“CIMARRON”, “East Lynne”, “The Front Page”, “Skippy”, “Trader Horn”
Was watching some chunk of “The Front Page” on TCM in the past few years, but not enough that I’d count it.
But wait! There were some interesting films in this period that weren’t even nominated: Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich, Dracula with Bela Lugosi, and James Whale’s Frankenstein with Boris Karloff were all unnominated. I’ve seen at least portions of all of them, probably all of City Lights over time, which undoubtedly suffered from being a silent film in the talkies era.
ROG

ROG

Underplayed Vinyl: Steppenwolf

One of my favorite albums from my high school days, the first Steppenwolf album, was the best of the group’s output. The fact that I had not read Herman Hesse did not diminish my enjoyment.
1. Sookie Sookie – a song by soul singer/songwriter Don Covey, who wrote Aretha’s hits See Saw and Chain of Fools. The second single from the album, it failed to chart. It’s funky, in a rock sort of way.
2. Everybody’s Next One – a pleasant rocker about sex.
3. Berry Rides Again – rock and roll, with great Berryesque guitar riffs, and a piano that borrows from Berry’s pianist, johnny Johnson. Cops many of his terms, like “Johnny B. Goode” or “Roll Over Beethoven”.
4. Hootchie Kootchie Man – bluesy cover of the Willie Dixon song, as good as any of the Led Zeppelin blues covers
5. Born to Be Wild – interesting that song got buried this deep into the album. The third single WAS the charm, as it ended up going up to #2 on the charts. Possibly the song least reflective of the rest of the album. “Heavy metal thunder”, indeed. Became THE biker anthem when it was used in the movie Easy Rider.
6. Your Wall’s Too High – slow rock tune that changes rhythms ends side one.
7. Desperation – organ-driven rhythm and blues styling that has a feel of the title
8. The Pusher – the other song by the group that shows up in Easy Rider. Sonically, it’s more in keeping with the rest of the album than the hit, with those very creepy chords. A gripping take on the song by Hoyt Axton, who also wrote Greenback Dollar and Three Dog Night’s Joy to the World.
9. A Girl I Knew. The first single, a commercial dud. Starts and ends with a lovely harpsichord, in contrast to the louder tunes on the album.
10. Take What You Need – straight ahead bluesy rock
11. The Ostrich – my favorite song on the album, the political/ecological rocker. This song is a precursor to the even more didactic (and longer) title cut on Steppenwolf’s Monster album.
We’ll call you when you’re six years old
And drag you to the factory
To train your brain for eighteen years
With promise of security
But then you’re free
And forty years you waste to chase the dollar sign
So you may die in Florida
At the pleasant age of sixty-nine

The water’s getting hard to drink
We’ve mangled up the countryside
The air will choke you when you breathe
We’re all committing suicide
But it’s alright
It’s progress folks keep pushin’ till your body rots
Will strip the earth of all its green
And then divide her into parking lots

CHORUS:
But there’s nothing you and I can do
You and I are only two
What’s right and wrong is hard to say
Forget about it for today
We’ll stick our heads into the sand
Just pretend that all is grand
Then hope that everything turns out ok

You’re free to speak your mind my friend
As long as you agree with me
Don’t criticize the fatherland
Or those who shape your destiny
‘Cause if you do
You’ll lose your job your mind and all the friends you knew
We’ll send out all our boys in blue
They’ll find a way to silence you

CHORUS

The first Steppenwolf is the bluesiest of the groups’s albums and has made, if not my 10 island albums, a top 25 list. Not so incidentally, yesterday was lead singer John Kay’s 63rd birthday. Kay and his mother fled from Soviet-occupied East Germany to West Germany when he was four, and ended up in Canada in 1958. Kay joined a blues band in Toronto called The Sparrows in 1965, which had been formed the year before with a different lead singer. The group moved to San Francisco in 1967, changed their sound somewhat, and got the recording contract that led to this album.

ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: The Namesake


The wife and I got to go to the movies on Good Friday. After going to an Indian-Pakistani buffet, we went to a movie at the Spectrum about a Bengali family from India. It was made by Mira Nair, who made the charming 2002 film Monsoon Wedding, as well as the entertaining 1992 interracial romance Mississippi Masala. we had been looking forward to seeing this picture, having seen the previews a number of times in the winter movie-going period.

Nair’s new film, The Namesake, though it also contains a wedding, paints with a broader palate. This is both the movie’s strength and weakness. Its most positive attribute is that it is a movie of scope, covering this Indian couple who come to the United States and raise a couple American kids who are less than enamored with the old traditions. The name of the male child is an important part of the story. The problem is that some segments are far weaker than others, and both Carol and I got impatient at times.

I find I almost entirely agree with the reviews, both positive AND negative.
(NEGATIVE) The episodic structure grows rather rambling over two hours.
(POSITIVE) The movie might be perceived as being a little slow but it’s surprisingly engrossing, and the occasional bits of humor are welcome and in keeping with the tone of the entire piece.
(POSITIVE) It’ll make you want to a) book a holiday to India and b) call your mother.
(POSITIVE) Sprawling but affecting family drama, marked by sensitive direction and fine performances.
(POSITIVE) A rich, if not completely satisfying, pleasure.
and especially this one
(POSITIVE) The Namesake takes in a lot of territory, and at times is too diffuse, too attenuated. But the actors are so expressive that they provide their own continuity. They transport us to a realm of pure feeling.

Ultimately, it’s worth it to see “Kal Penn [have] something more substantial on his resumé than Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies.” Days after seeing the film, the characters still resonate with us, especially the parents. It is another worthwhile film by Mira Nair about the immigrant experience.
***
Got this e-mail about a new animated film from an adoption group participant and wanted to know if anyone has seen the film – I haven’t – and if so, if he or she thinks the comments in the letter below are valid:

We feel that it is important to warn you about a Disney movie called “Meet the Robinsons” that is now playing at many local cinemas. The advertising for this animated feature makes it sound like a great movie for any young child. Fortunately, one of our adoptive parents alerted us about the negative adoption messages in the story and the very unhappy experience she had with both of her children who were very greatly disturbed by the messages conveyed in this film. As a result, I went to
see the film to decide if it warranted putting out an alert to our adoptive parent community. Indeed, I thought that the concerns raised were completely valid.
The movie is filled with extraordinarily inappropriate messages about adoption. The basic story is about an adorable baby whose birth mother leaves him on the doorstep of an orphanage. Portrayed as loving, sweet, extremely smart and overly appealing, he spends the next 12 years of his life wanting a family and being turned down by one family after another – in all, 114 couples refuse to adopt him. One scene shows a prospective dad losing interest in adoption because this very smart little boy is
more interested in science than sports. The prospective parents leave the disappointed child in a huff when he accidentally splatters them with some liquid from his science project. This is supposed to be funny.
Since no one else wants him, the child invents a time machine in order to go back in time to find his birth mother. The “bad guy” in his time travel journey turns out to be his best buddy from childhood, once his orphanage roommate. Now an emotional wreck resulting from being left behind when the orphanage was closed and shut down, the once-cute orphan is now mean and devious. Another chuckle. Various monsters attack the child as he continues his birth mother search. You get the picture!
I found “Meet the Robinsons” to be both tasteless and totally insensitive regarding adoption issues. Please think very carefully before taking your child to see it, whether adopted or not. I will write the Disney Corporation to let them know about my concerns about their flippant way of dealing with issues that are extremely important and not funny for millions of adoptees and their families in this country and around the world.

ROG

ROG
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial