Why is The Dead my favorite John Huston film? Well, I could direct you to my original review of Huston's adaptation of the classic James Joyce story. Or I could just show you the final scene. Back in the day: I cried so hard at the end of this movie, two colleagues had to help me out of the theater. No kidding.
The Moving Picture Blog
Random musings on all things cinematical, and otherwise, by Joe Leydon.
Saturday, August 05, 2023
The Dead is my favorite John Huston movie
Why is The Dead my favorite John Huston film? Well, I could direct you to my original review of Huston's adaptation of the classic James Joyce story. Or I could just show you the final scene. Back in the day: I cried so hard at the end of this movie, two colleagues had to help me out of the theater. No kidding.
Sunday, April 09, 2023
Celebrating Ward Bond’s birthday with... Hitler — Dead or Alive
On this date in 1903, actor Ward Bond was born in Benkelman, Nebraska. And I think it would be a nifty idea to celebrate the occasion by watching Hitler — Dead or Alive, an ultra-low-budget 1942 B-movie starring Bond as an ex-con who tries to collect a bounty on Adolf Hitler. No, I'm not making that up.
Back when I taught a college course focused on war movies, I often screened the final minutes of this obscure oddity, to give students an inkling of American attitudes during the early days of US involvement in World War II. Because even though the movie was an unabashedly cheesy Poverty Row production -- it dared to be a fantasy-fulfilling slice of cheese: At the end of the flick, Hitler is shot by Nazis who don't recognize him after Bond and his buddies shave off Der Führer's mustache. Again: I'm not making that up. Start looking around the 1:04 point in this video, and you'll see what I mean.
When I saw Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, and marveled at the movie's climactic killing of Der Führer, I couldn't help thinking of Hitler -- Dead or Alive. But I swear: I didn't know Tarantino actually was a fan the '42 film until he spilled the beans to Playboy in a 2003 interview:
When it came to Inglourious Basterds, there was a movie done in 1942, Hitler —Dead or Alive. It was just as America had entered the war. A rich guy offers a million-dollar bounty on Hitler’s life. Three gangsters come up with a plan to kill Hitler. They parachute into Berlin and work their way to where Hitler is. It’s a wacky movie that goes from being serious to very funny. The gangsters get Hitler, and when they start beating the fuck out of him, it is just so enjoyable. They shave his mustache off, cut off that lock of hair and take his shit off so he looks like a regular guy. The Nazis show up, and Hitler, who doesn’t look like Hitler anymore, is like, “Hey, it’s me!” And they beat the shit out of him. I thought, Wow, this is fucking hysterical.
Yes, it is. Who would have guessed that a hardline conservative like Ward Bond actually was Antifa?
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Flashback: Ethan Hawke and Me at 2011 Houston Cinema Arts Festival
I honest to God did not know until just a few minutes ago that a complete version of this existed on video: My 2011 Q&A with Ethan Hawke at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, where he received a lifetime achievement award. At first, Hawke is introduced by Richard Linklater, and graciously accepts the prize, in concert with a screening of "The Woman in the Fifth." We start chatting around the 11:25 mark. He's very funny, and very forthcoming. And I have a lot more hair than I do now. (Sorry: You will have to click the link, because I am unable to embed.)
Sunday, January 08, 2023
Let the Revels Begin: Houston Film Critics Society Announces Nominations for Annual Awards
The Houston Film Critics Society — of which I am a
founding/voting member — has released the list of nominations for the annual
HFCS Awards. Winners will be announced Feb. 18 at the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston
(MATCH).
Best
Picture
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
RRR
Tár
Till
Top Gun: Maverick
Women Talking
Best
Director
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Tár
Women Talking
Best
Actor – Leading Role
Austin
Butler, Elvis
Tom
Cruise, Top Gun: Maverick
Colin
Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan
Fraser, The Whale
Jeremy
Pope, The Inspection
Best
Actress – Leading Role
Cate
Blanchett, Tár
Viola
Davis, The Woman King
Danielle
Deadwyler, Till
Emma
Thompson, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
Michelle
Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Best
Actor – Supporting Role
Brendan
Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin
Barry
Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
Ke
Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at
Once
Mark
Rylance, Bones and All
Ben
Whishaw, Women Talking
Best
Actress – Supporting Role
Jesse
Buckley, Women Talking
Kerry
Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Jamie
Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Stephanie
Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Janelle
Monáe, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Best
Screenplay
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Tár
Women Talking
Best
Animated Feature
Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Turning Red
Best
Cinematography
Avatar: The Way of Water
Babylon
Nope
The Fabelmans
Top Gun: Maverick
Best
Documentary
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Bad Axe
Fire of Love
Good Night Oppy
Navalny
Best
Foreign Language Feature
All Quiet on the Western Front
Argentina, 1985
Close
Decision to Leave
RRR
Best
Original Score
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
Empire of Light
The Fabelmans
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Women Talking
Best
Original Song
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, “Lift Me Up”
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, “Ciao Papa”
RRR, “Naatu Naatu”
Till, “Stand Up”
Top Gun: Maverick, “Hold My Hand”
Best
Visual Effects
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
RRR
Top Gun: Maverick
Best
Stunt Coordination Team
The Batman
Everything Everywhere All at Once
RRR
Top Gun: Maverick
The Woman King
Best
Ensemble Cast
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Women Talking
Texas
Independent Film Award
Acid Test
Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood
Conception
Deep in the Heart: A Texas Wildlife
Story
Facing Nolan
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Jean-Luc Godard? Jack Palance wasn’t impressed.
So there I was in my hometown of New Orleans in 1991, attending
the junket for City Slickers and seated at a table with Jack Palance. I
wanted to ask a question I figured that he hadn’t been asked a zillion times
before, so I tossed him this one: What was it like to work with Jean-Luc Godard
in the 1963 international co-production Contempt?
Palance
smiled at me — indeed, almost winked at me — and replied.
“Godard, I thought, was a good filmmaker, but he was so… Well, I remember, we had a question about a scene that we were doing, and I thought maybe there was something I should be doing, and he said, blatantly, ‘You know, of course, that I am considered one of the great filmmakers today.’ And I said, ‘No, I didn’t know that. Why don’t you tell me about it?’ And so he goes on like this.
“He was one of those guys, one of those directors — I’ve worked with a few of them, and my God, they’re infuriating! Because suddenly he’s walking out there, and he’s throwing things, saying, ‘And then you will do this! And then you will do that!’ And you stop and say, ‘Hey! I'm not going to do what you’re showing me anyway. So don’t show me!’
“See, he was doing that with all the actors. Like, ‘And now, I think if you touch the glass on the table…’ And you know you’re not going to touch the glass after he’s shown you something like that.”
And yet, for all that, Palance said Contempt had its funny moments. Sort of.
“I think one of the most memorable things for me in that film was doing a scene with Brigitte Bardot. We were in that red car, a little red car, and we had a scene where she and I just drive away. We’re going off to something. No dialogue. And we’re set up somewhere in Italy, and Godard’s got his camera way over there. He’s sitting on a box, hunched over, and he wore a hat, looking like a very, very artistic picture of a director.
“And so, we start to drive. We drove by, and we could hear his voice saying, ‘All right, we will do an encore. We will do it again, please.’ So you come back — there’s no explanation of what went wrong — and you do it again. And then you do it again. And do it seven, eight times — just driving by the camera, nothing else. And nobody says, ‘Faster,’ or ‘You're looking at the wrong direction,’ or some goddamn thing.
“So, as we got back this time, I said to Bridget, ‘Look, if he says we’re going to do it again, you and I are going to lunch.’ And as we drove by, we heard the voice saying, ‘Tell them we will do it again’ — well, we just kept driving.
“It’s true. We went off into the mountains, had a nice lunch, came back — and so help me God, he had not moved! He was sitting there, and as we approached, he said, ‘Tell them we will do it again!’
“And that was Jean-Luc Godard…”
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Must-See TV for Me: Netflix’s Clusterf**k: Woodstock ‘99
Yes, I will be watching
when Netflix premieres the docuseries Clusterf**k: Woodstock ’99 on Aug. 3. My son probably
will be watching, too. Because, well, back in 1999, we were there. And on the final
evening, I was very sacred.
Tuesday, May 03, 2022
Something about abortion
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
First Look: Alex Winter’s The YouTube Effect
In his other life, actor Alex Winter
of Bill and Ted fame is an accomplished documentarian. Among his
credits: Downloaded (2013), a fascinating study of Napster and the filesharing
revolution; Deep Web (2015), an illuminating overview of the Internet’s
non-indexed substratum, with special attention paid to the (alleged) Silk Road
mastermind Ross Ulbricht; and Zappa (2020), the definitive cinematic
biography of maverick musician and Mothers of Invention founder Frank Zappa.
And now Winter has a new one: The
YouTube Effect, which will have its world premiere June 11 at New York’s
prestigious Tribeca Film Festival.
What’s it all about? According to the PR
announcement:
“The feature documentary
takes viewers on a timely and gripping journey inside the cloistered world of
YouTube and its parent company Google; investigating YouTube's rise from humble
beginnings in the attic of a pizzeria to its explosion onto the world stage,
becoming the largest media platform in history and sparking a cultural
revolution, while creating massive controversy in the age of
disinformation. In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, YouTube brought in
8.6 billion dollars in advertising revenue, a 25 percent increase in its year
to year results. While traditional media is struggling, YouTube is thriving.
“The You Tube Effect examines how the platform has become a lightning rod for online radicalization, surveillance, algorithmic capitalism, the proliferation of misinformation, and of course, influencers and cat videos.
“The feature doc is thrilling, shocking and hilarious, but always highly compelling, and above all, entertaining. YouTube is a world populated by some of the most brilliant minds in tech, business, media and politics, as well as pranksters, trolls and conspiracy theorists. The YouTube Effect gives viewers exclusive access to all of the key players.”
And speaking of cat videos on YouTube:
Monday, March 28, 2022
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
The Power of the Dog Takes a Big Bite Out of the Houston Film Critics Awards
Friday, December 31, 2021
Ten Reasons Why I Won't Miss 2021
Why I won’t miss 2021:
Had to battle prostate cancer again.
Dealt with
a month-plus scare when it looked like I might also have lung cancer.
Pipes froze
and burst in my attic during February Freeze, causing water damage throughout
my house.
Spent over
two months living alone in Extended Stay while waiting for insurance adjuster's
estimate, searching for a contractor, and getting repair work done.
Anne stayed
with our son and his girlfriend with our cat; I needed to stay where I had
reliable WiFi for writing, Zoom interviewing, and long-distance teaching.
Needed to
have my doctor up the dosage of my antidepressants.
Even with
the drugs, I had anxiety attacks -- many, but far from all, attributable to the ongoing COVID pandemic -- that caused me to bust multiple deadlines and
sorely test the patience of my incredibly patient editors.
While at
Extended Stay, I tripped one night on my way back from the bathroom. Wrenched
my arm while breaking my fall, but it could have been worse: One inch or so
further to the right, and I would have banged my head on a dresser and likely
killed myself.
Had to
comfort my son when his and his girlfriend’s dog died of old age while his
girlfriend was out of town.
Never
forgot for a moment during ANY of this the hard lesson I learned during my
formative years as a welfare worker: There were MANY people who were having a
MUCH worse time than me. God bless and keep them – and me – during a
(hopefully) better and COVID-free 2022.
Saturday, October 16, 2021
In Response to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Bush League Shenanigans
In the interest of full disclosure: I am a member of the
Critics Choice Association, so I cannot claim to be at all objective in this
matter. However, since I share the sentiments of CCA CEO Joey Berlin — and have
his permission to reprint this message sent to me and other members of the
organization today — here goes.
And by the way: Views expressed are not necessarily those
of any other publication or organization with which I am affiliated.
Also: Go to hell, Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect any TV network money.
To the Membership, Joey Berlin CEO
CCA |
Friday, October 08, 2021
Zooming with Mye Hoang — Director of the A-Meow-Sing Documentary Cat Daddies
Call it Kedi — American Style, and you won’t be far off the mark.
Cat Daddies, Mye Hoang’s irresistibly appealing documentary, is so insightfully observed, beautifully crafted and warmly empathetic that even normally feline-averse viewers will want to sing its praises and hold it close to their hearts.
Not unlike Kedi, Ceyda Torun’s splendidly graceful 2016 film about the multifaceted feline population of Istanbul, Cat Daddies will be pure catnip for anyone who can’t get their fill of their favorite four-legged friends on YouTube and Instagram. In sharp contrast to Kedi, however, Hoang’s documentary is less about the fiercely independent critters themselves than the bonds that form between men (and, sometimes, the women in their lives) and the cats who deign to be their comrades.
Hoang, a Dallas-born, Los Angeles-based producer and director, turns her camera on a diverse array of guys, ranging from a cross-country trucker to a homeless New Yorker to a movie stuntman whose romance with a stuntwoman is sparked by their shared love of cats. Much of the movie is light, even celebratory, as it pushes back against stereotypes of various sorts, and shows how companionship with cats can be therapeutic, inspirational — and in at least one case, high remunerable.
However: Cat Daddies was filmed largely over the course of 2020, a year when COVID-19, California wildfires, and other disasters amped stress levels, all of which Hoang duly acknowledges — sometimes as as subtle allusions, sometimes as front-and-center threats — in many of the multiple narratives she interweaves throughout her film. It’s a tricky balancing act, but she pulls it off with wit, intelligence, and compassion.
As Hoang says in her director’s statement:
“We all know the stereotype of the crazy cat lady. And many of us have that friend, the one with the Instagram feed dedicated exclusively to cats. Self-described ‘Crazy Cat People’ are a force to be reckoned with — a community that’s here to stay and has only grown stronger in the age of social media.
“I watched over the course of a few years as my husband [filmmaker Dave Boyle] transformed into a bona fide crazy cat person after we adopted our first cat. However, something else changed inside him — something deeper. He seemed to grow into a softer, more patient and compassionate person. This inspired me to find more men who had undergone a similar transformation, and document their stories.
“As I dug deeper on ‘Cat Instagram,’ I discovered dozens of men who seemed to be living their best life with their feline companions. Their stories ran the gamut — from firefighters in South Carolina who unapologetically dote on their ‘fire cat,’ to an unhoused immigrant on the streets of New York who always puts the needs of his cat above his own. Many of the subjects are the very embodiment of the traditional definition of ‘manliness’ — the aforementioned firemen, a stuntman, a truck driver. All of them unapologetically dote on their beloved pets in a way that I found very touching.
“I see Cat Daddies as both a collective portrait as well as a time capsule, documenting a challenging year in which people desperately needed hope, relief, and companionship. It may not convert everyone to love cats, but I hope seeing images of men caring for these little creatures wins over a few skeptics and becomes a catalyst for compassionate change.”