Tag: reviews

MOVIE REVIEW: My Week With Marilyn

Thinking of the slender Williams as the voluptuous Monroe was not something I would have considered.

My Week with Marilyn was based on a couple of non-fiction books first published in the late 1990s. The Wife and I saw the film last Saturday at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, NY.

In 1956, Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) is directing and starring in the movie ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’ in London. He hires American film icon Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) to costar with him. The 30-year-old MM, accompanied by her new, third husband, the playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), is a sensation to the crowds in England. But artistic differences make the filming frustratingly slow for the director, and stressful for the actress. Marilyn befriends the third assistant director, essentially gofer, 23-year-old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) and he becomes one of the few people she trusts, and ultimately has the title experience.

Thinking of the slender Williams as the voluptuous Monroe was not something I would have considered, but she pulls it off, in no small part, based on an interview I read in EW, of getting The Walk. Interestingly, at the beginning and end of the movie, largely removed from the storyline, Monroe/Williams performs a couple of songs, and she looks even more full-figured.

This was a slight, but sweet story of an actress who was instinctively good at her craft, but wanted to get more skilled, but on her own terms. It was also clear that “Marilyn Monroe” was a role she played, which made her extremely popular but also trapped her. I would be surprised if Michelle Williams was not Oscar-nominated as Best Actress.

Kenneth Branagh may also get a Best Supporting Actor nod as the frustrated director. I was tickled by this casting since both Olivier and Branaugh starred in and directed movie adaptations of Henry V, the Shakespeare play, in 1944 and 1989, respectively.

My Weekend With Marilyn is a surprisingly sweet, even somewhat chaste film, given the subject matter. I enjoyed it.

Book Review: The Complete Peanuts, 1950-1952

When I bought The Complete Peanuts, 1950-1952 last year, I knew that I would enjoy it.

Unfortunately, for some contractual reason, the reruns of the Peanuts strip that appear in newspapers these days are limited to the 1960s or 1990s. I’ve pretty much stopped looking at them. Now, if they were allowed to go back to the very beginnings of the strip, THEN I’d start reading them again.

The problem for the syndicator, from a pure marketing point of view, is that the characters were still evolving, not at all as familiar as some of them would become. The key characters in the early days were Charlie Brown; Patty, not to be confused with the much later Peppermint Patty; Shermy, who’d end up in the background by the 1960s; and Snoopy, who was seen walking more on four legs than two. Violet, who ended up in the background, too, entered some seven months later; it was she, not Lucy, who held the first football that Charlie Brown missed.

Schroeder, the piano prodigy practically from birth, and needier than crabby Lucy were introduced as much younger characters than the other children. It was only later than the strips covered in this first volume that they, and baby Linus, aged to where we would most recognize them.

When I bought The Complete Peanuts, 1950-1952 last year, I knew that I would enjoy it. In fact, I like it more than the “classic” period of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Among other things, Charlie Brown wasn’t always so put upon. He was a bit of a scamp, who initiated mischief, compelling his friends to chase after him. He had moxie. No wonder Shermy felt as he did in the very first strip, shown below.

I recommend this book, in which we see the evolution of these beloved, and in some cases, largely forgotten characters.

MOVIE REVIEW: Hugo

Once all the parts are finally in place, it becomes not just a fabulous adventure, but a wonderful piece of history of movies.

I went to the Madison Theatre in Albany Saturday. While it was not on the newspaper listings, my wife told me that Moneyball was back at the cinema according to the theater’s website. Having disappointingly missed it before, I thought I’d finally go see it. Alas, it was not there. But I’d heard some decent stuff about Hugo, so I opted for that.

Ostensibly, Hugo is about a 12-year-old orphan (Asa Butterfield) who lives in the walls of a Paris train station in 1930, taking care of the clocks there in lieu of his MIA uncle (Ray Winstone), while trying to stay out of the way of the station inspector (a surprisingly effective Sacha Baron Cohen). His single link to his late father (Jude Law) is a mysterious mechanical device that the boy tries to get to work, stealing parts from a grumpy old man who sells tinker toys (Ben Kingsley). From all of that, the plot, also involving the old man’s goddaughter (Chloë Grace Moretz), departs.

Much of this I knew. And to tell the truth, it was a little too long getting through the early exposition; maybe a lot too long, and I struggled to see the point of it all. But once all the parts are finally in place, it becomes not just a fabulous adventure, but a wonderful piece of history of the movies. I read one suggestion that it was not marketed that well, and I can’t disagree, but I don’t quite know how to describe it myself without giving away key plot elements that ought to be experienced first hand. I will reveal that there are lots of “tips of the hat” to other filmmakers, such as Harold Lloyd (see the poster).

I think people will watch it on video, see that it is visually stunning, but will be bored and not bother to finish it; that would be a mistake. It turns out to be a lovely and moving essay on loss and discovery, and of film itself.

I should note that I saw the 3D version, and while I generally hate 3D – it reminds me of the Viewfinder I used to play with as a kid – it was well utilized by director Martin Scorcese, making his first family-friendly film, one his tween daughter can see, in lieu of Goodfellas, for instance.

The Year, Sort Of, In Review

Incidentally, the name of the charts of music generally associated with African-Americans has changed several times, from rhythm & blues (or R&B) to soul to black, back to R&B to R&B/hip-hop.

 

For the past several years, I have gone to the random number generator and taken a random line from a random post each month. It is not exactly representative of the year, but it does hit on some significant points.

January: I mean, I look at the synopses [of Night Gallery] and say, “Oh, yeah, right.” [Answering Gordon’s question]
February: The week before my mother died, I had nothing on any credit cards, save for any recurring expenditures, such as the newspaper. [That soon changed.]
March: Someone told me a long time ago that the number of keys one has related to how important they were. [ABC Wednesday]
April: This specific song [Help] my daughter knows all the lyrics to, without either encouragement or prompting from me. [My Beatles countdown]
May: I specifically remember him [my friend Steve] going on and on about this great singer/guitarist named Bonnie Raitt, who I had never heard of, but who he had seen perform in the area; her debut album would come out later that year. [This was my first 40 years ago entry]
June: Somehow, it seems as though he [my father] became a bit more real to her [my daughter]. [My Father’s Day post]
July: Maverick was on either Saturday or Sunday afternoon. [100 TV memories]
August: Incidentally, the name of the charts of music generally associated with African-Americans has changed several times, from rhythm & blues (or R&B) to soul to black, back to R&B to R&B/hip-hop.
September: It’s not a belief system; it’s not an “either, or,” it’s a fact, Jack. [Part of Amy’s question to me re: global warming.]
October: He [Glen Campbell] shared the fact that the favorite of his songs was Wichita Lineman, as he noted his favorite lyrics.
November: Media being as diffused as it is, a Real Housewife of Schenectady might be well known in certain circles but totally invisible by lots of others. [Re: the late Andy Rooney]
December: One [boycotted product] was for a drink mix from Pillsbury called Funny Face, targeted to compete with Kool Aid. [My more-or-less weekly question]

MOVIE REVIEW: Mary Poppins

The highlight for me was the dancing of the chimney sweeps to Step In Time; incredible!

 

The day after Christmas, the Palace Theatre, a once-and-again-classic Albany movie theater from the 1930s with a fascinating past, was showing the 1964 movie Mary Poppins at 3 p.m., preceded by activities for children. We pretty much missed the activities, such as posing with a young woman dressed as Ms. Poppins, because I was still moving slowly from whatever bug was paining me.

My wife decided that we should go up to the balcony, which I thought was an intriguing idea; it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a film from there. At some point, Ms. Poppins took the stage and announced the winners of a couple of drawings. Then there was a 10-minute drive-in movie theater intermission countdown that looked EXACTLY like this, only the full 600 minutes long. Then we got a short, Pecos Pest, a Tom and Jerry cartoon about the mouse’s guitar-playing Uncle Pecos terrorizing the feline.

Then our feature began. This was DEFINITELY a film, as opposed to some digital version. For one thing, there were three or four pops/skips, a couple of which unfortunately appeared during songs early on. For another, the second reel was much more orange-tinted than the prior or subsequent part of the film. Rather than annoyed, I found it oddly charming.

Speaking of odd, this was the first I had actually seen the movie. Oh, I’d viewed various segments over time. And I had read book adaptations to the Daughter. But I was unaware of the subplot involving women’s suffrage that Mrs. Banks (Glynis Johns, who I remember from a short-lived CBS fall 1963 sitcom called Glynis) was involved with. The guy with the cannon on a neighboring roof? New to me. But I must have seen the end of the film on TV, for I clearly recall the anagrammed name of the old banker changing to the actor who actually played him.

Julie Andrews was wonderful in this, of course, though Mary Poppins is sterner than I would have suspected. The songs by the Sherman brothers were infectious, especially, for the Daughter, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The first song A British Bank, though, reminded me greatly of the With a Little Bit of Luck from My Fair Lady by Lerner and Loewe from about a decade earlier.

But the highlight for me was the dancing of the chimney sweeps to Step In Time; incredible! Indeed, my admiration for Dick van Dyke, already quite high, increased greatly.

One last bit: the tickets cost $5 each for The Wife and me, $3 for the Daughter, purchased at the box office. But, had we bought them online, it would have cost $23 more!

A good time.

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