Before Valkyrie, there was The Restless Conscience

If the impending release of Valkyrie piques your curiosity about the anti-Hitler resistance in Nazi Germany – and if you’d like to know a little bit more about that clandestine movement before or after you see Bryan Singer’s splendidly acted and uncommonly gripping film – let me whole-heartedly recommend Hava Kohav Beller’s deservedly Oscar-nominated The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler Inside Germany, 1933-1945. It will be available on Amazon.com (and elsewhere) in March 2009, and I’ll be writing more about it then. But if you simply can’t wait that long to watch it – and frankly, I don’t see why you should – you can order a DVD of the documentary directly from Ms. Beller’s website. My original 1992 review of the film is here, and my contemporaneous interview with Ms. Beller is here.

Burning question of the day

Is Jay Leno's move to prime time a sign of the Apocalypse?

It's a wonderful movie

As much as I unashamedly and unconditionally love It's a Wonderful Life, I don't think I've ever actually seen it on a big movie screen. That is, not until now. Thanks to the folks at the Angelika Film Center here in Houston, I'll have a chance next week to finally watch this classic the way God and Frank Capra intended me to see it. You, too, can check one of the special screenings scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Dec. 22 and 23, and 1:50 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Dec. 24 and 25. Gosh, do you think they'll be serving eggnog at the concession stand?

Huh?

I am watching Law & Order on NBC -- and I just saw a spot for Doubt that makes the movie look like... a holiday-themed comedy. WTF?

Houston crix pick pix, Part 2

The Houston Film Critics Society -- of which I am a member -- has announced its second annual list of year-end accolades. I'm especially pleased by the group's selection of Anne Hathaway as Best Actress for her absolutely fearless performance in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, and Terence Blanchard (a fellow New Orleans homie) as composer of the Best Musical Score for Spike Lee's criminally under-rated Miracle at St. Anna.

BTW: There will be an "official announcement" of the winners during a special program at 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 20, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Admission is free and open to the public, and there will be a reception afterwards where you can meet.... well, me. And other HFCS members, of course.

40 years ago

Geez, was I ever really that young? Was my hair ever really that red? And how did I ever pass inspection at my high school's NJROTC program? Well, wait a minute, now that I think about it, I seldom did pass inspection. That's one reason I actively avoided military service. (Of course, the other reason was Vietnam, but let's not go there.)

Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!

Iraq Shoe Tosser Guy: The Animated Gifs. Scroll down for the best one of all. (Hat-tip to Steve Phelps.)

Very bad, very sad news about Peter Falk

According to court papers filed by his daughter, Peter Falk suffers from Alzheimer's disease and dementia and is no longer competent to run his own life. The news, I must admit, makes me want to me take a second look at one of the actor's more recent films, Checking Out (2005), which now seems, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, uncomfortably prescient. Falk gives a grandly flamboyant yet effectively disciplined performance in the comedy as Morris Applebaum, a retired Shakespearean actor who, on the eve of his 90th birthday, informs his adult children that he plans to take his own life. As I explained in my Variety review when Checking Out was showcased at WorldFest/Houston: Morris' children are "slightly relieved when he tells them that, no, he's not afflicted with some painfully lingering disease, and he's not unduly depressed after the death of his loving wife and long-time co-star. But they're hard-pressed to counter Morris' simple, unshakable logic regarding suicide: He's had a good run so far, so why wait around until he's wasting away in a hospital room or worse?"

Are you ready to start getting what you pay for?

James Surowiecki of The New Yorker on the future (or the lack thereof) of newspapers: "The peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they’ve arguably become more popular. The blogosphere, much of which piggybacks on traditional journalism’s content, has magnified the reach of newspapers, and although papers now face far more scrutiny, this is a kind of backhanded compliment to their continued relevance. Usually, when an industry runs into the kind of trouble that Levitt was talking about, it’s because people are abandoning its products. But people don’t use the [New York] Times less than they did a decade ago. They use it more. The difference is that today they don’t have to pay for it. The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product...

"[I]t would not be shocking if, sometime soon, there were big American cities that had no local newspaper; more important, we’re almost sure to see a sharp decline in the volume and variety of content that newspapers collectively produce. For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime — intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on — and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is."

Tacky question

Isn't $76 million, like, more than the combined North American grosses of every movie Guy Ritchie has ever directed? Just wondering.

The Day before

Yes, the original still packs a wallop.

R.I.P.: Van Johnson (1916-2008)

Van Johnson enjoyed a long run as an MGM contract player during the heyday of the Hollywood studio system, more or less defining the term “heartthrob” while playing a series of affable boy-next-door types in movies as diverse as A Guy Named Joe (1943) and In the Good Old Summertime (1949). Later, he made an even more memorable impact as an idealistic Naval officer who removes a paranoid Humphrey Bogart from command in The Caine Mutiny, and a glad-handing millionaire car dealer who nearly woos Debbie Reynolds away from Dick Van Dyke in Divorce American Style (1967).

Like many actors of his generation, he aged gracefully while availing himself of the employment opportunities open to Old Hollywood luminaries – a dinner theater gig here, a TV guest spot there – during the ‘70s and ‘80s. (I don’t have to tell you that he guest-starred on The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Murder, She Wrote, do I?) Along the way, he worked for everyone from Frank Capra (State of the Union, 1948) to Woody Allen (The Purple Rose of Cairo, 1985), and comported himself with the sort of charismatic professionalism that contemporary actors might do well to study and emulate.

Was Van Johnson a great actor? Well, he gave a few great performances. And I’m sure millions of moviegoers over the years would say they had a great time with many of his movies. Chalk up his passing, at age 92, as one more melancholy severing of our ties to a time when movies were magic, and even secondary stars seemed larger the life.

Golden boy

Hugh Jackman as Oscarcast host? Hey, why the hell not? He looks great in a tux. He can sing all of the nominated songs. He's already warmed up by hosting the Tonys. And all the comic-book geeks will tune in to see Wolverine. Genius choice. Really.

R.I.P.: Bettie Page (1923-2008)

Richard Corliss of Time magazine bids adieu to the notorious Bettie Page. And Manohla Dargis offers an insightful appraisal.

POTUS vs. ETs

The muddled remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is pretty lousy – you can read my Houston Chronicle review here – but I must I admit that, while enduring a press screening earlier this week, I found myself fascinated each time Kathy Bates appeared on screen as an aggressively authoritative U.S. Secretary of Defense. Throughout this lavish but lumbering “reinvention” (yeah, right) of the 1951 sci-fi classic, Bates’ Sec. Regina Jackson more or less single-handedly commands all branches of the U.S. military (and the combined police departments of, oh, I dunno, maybe three or four states) in an all-out campaign to kill or capture the stolid extraterrestrial (played, stolidly, by Keanu Reeves) who’s threatening to save the Earth by annihilating earthlings. It’s not that Bates gives such a great performance. (Chalk it up as just another grab-the-paycheck turn by another under-employed Oscar-winner.) But I couldn’t help wondering: Why is the Defense Secretary giving all the orders while the unseen President and Vice-President hide out in undisclosed locations?

For that matter, why did another Defense Secretary (played by Jon Voight, another slumming Oscar-winner) have to take charge of defending the planet while an unseen (and, evidently, incompetent) U.S. President remain on the sidelines last year in Transformers? Did the filmmakers responsible for both these popcorn flicks assume that, at this particular point in our country’s history, audiences simply wouldn’t believe that a Chief Executive could really be an efficient Commander in Chief? Is this something else for which we can blame the incredibly unpopular lame duck currently nesting in the White House?

It wasn’t always like this, you understand. As recently as 1996, the charismatic POTUS in Independence Day played by Bill Pullman earned audience cheers with an impassioned call to arms – a rallying oration not unlike the St. Crispin’s Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V – before personally leading the last-ditch fighter-jet assault against alien invaders. But, then again, maybe folks found it easier to believe in a competent Chief Executive twelve years ago. Or ten years ago, when, in Deep Impact, a reassuring African-American prez (Morgan Freeman) kept hope alive even while a humongous meteor bore down on our planet.

All of which makes me wonder: Who’ll be leading the best and brightest of humankind against extraterrestrial terrors in movies made during the Obama Administration? Don’t laugh: Even the most fantastical of popcorn flicks make at least a token effort at credibility. And even the most (seemingly) apolitical of pop-culture trifles often can tell you a lot about the attitudes and assumptions of mass audiences at the time those trifles are pitched at the ticketbuying public.

Looking good

GQ Magazine asks: ""Is it just us or is Jennifer Aniston getting hotter?" Nope, it's not just you.

R.I.P.: Forrest J. Ackerman (1916-2008)

I can't begin to tell you how bummed I am to hear about the death of Forrest J. Ackerman, whose magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland was, I freely admit, one of my earliest influences as a movie buff. As a literary agent, he helped launch the career of Ray Bradbury, which should be enough to earn him a revered place in pop culture history. But as the publisher of the aforementioned monster mag -- well, let's just say that if you're of a certain age, and you enjoy a certain kind of movie, you know this world is a lesser place without him in it.

Rolling Stone again

When I first read this piece about a possible remake of Romancing the Stone, I thought: "Too soon!" Then I remembered: We're talking about a movie that's almost a quarter-century old. Sigh.

Nobel Son

The first 20 or so minutes of Nobel Son are borderline unwatchable — the graphic depiction of a jokey-violent thumb severing is only the most egregious of its off-putting elements — and, truth to tell, it’s hard to argue that the rest of the movie offers adequate payback for any moviegoer who refuses to bail out early. If you do stick around, however, you likely will be pleasantly surprised, if not immensely grateful, as genuinely clever substance emerges from the thick fog of frenetically overheated style. You can read my Houston Chroncile review here.

Time flies

According to Reuters, the 2009 Berlin Film Festival -- set to unspool Feb. 5-15, 2009 -- "will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a series of films from both sides of the Iron Curtain in the last decade of the Cold War." Think about that for a second. Twentieth anniversary. Twenty years. Two freakin' decades.

All of which leads a 56-year-old fossil like myself to wonder: Just how many of my college students -- hell, how many people who voted in the last U.S. Presidential election -- have no living memory of the Soviet Union? And does this lack of experiential knowledge make them any more or less optimistic than the rest of us when it comes to contemplating the current state of the world?