Asian craziness: The return

The New York Asian Film Festival is back, starting tomorrow, for more madness, monsters, and period spectacles that will likely never see another projector in the U.S. (Well, some might, if they please the festival's giddy crowds.) Who wouldn't want to see The X from Outer Space on his return to the big screen in Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit (pictured), following his stint as a commercial pitchman? New Jet Li? Clones? Sexual exploitation? You know you want it, so get over to the NYAFF and get some, through July 5.

BAMcinemaFEST kicks off

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is celebrating a decade of film programming with a two-week festival that begins today, including sneak previews of upcoming indies like In the Loop and Humpday, old favorites like The Royal Tenenbaums and Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (where has she been all my life?), and marathon screenings of...Diana Ross movies? (I don't think I've ever heard her name mentioned in the context of BAM.) The June 27 centerpiece event sounds like a can't miss: Screenings of Metropolis (pictured), accompanied by Irish rock collective 3epkano. The Robot Maria is much more of a BAM denizen.

Popdose: Twists of Lemmon

Five movies from Lemmon's ten-year stint at Columbia Pictures get the box set treatment. Under the Yum Yum Tree is a hard sit, but the rest show the actor finding, honing, then straining against a persona. Plus an affectionate documentary.

Summer of love

Movie love, anyway, as The House Next Door revisits the summer films of 1984. I've already chastised the Housemates for classifying The Bounty as a summer movie; it may be today, by the calendar, but not then, when Memorial Day weekend was still the kickoff. Beyond obvious hits like Ghostbusters, Gremlins, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, what's next: Dreamscape? Purple Rain? Bachelor Party? The Pope of Greenwich Village? C.H.U.D.? "If there's something strange/In the neighborhood/Who ya gonna call...?"

25% independent thinking

The latest thumbsucker on the transmogrification of film criticism and the popularity of aggregator sites like Rotten Tomatoes got me looking at my profile there. It says I agree with the omnipotent Tomatometer, the godhead at the center of the matrix, 75% of the time, meaning I run with the herd that votes "fresh" on Star Trek or The Hangover or "rotten" on the junkers three-quarters of every occasion I go to the movies. The last time I checked, pre-fatherhood, I was at 72%, which I think shows that I'm self-selecting more when I go out and skipping the more marginally reviewed movies that I used to see.

Extrapolating from this, you can say that the movie portion of this site and my other endeavors in criticism is 25% independent, go-my-own-way, he's-a-rebel thinking, which isn't bad. Hey, I've chucked vegetables at not one but two Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep pictures (how can the miserable Ironweed be at 90% fresh?) If my agreement level was too much lower, I'm not sure why I'd bother putting the effort into something I wasn't crazy about to begin with.

I'm no quote whore, not that I've ever been blurbed in a big way. (A quote of mine got on the box of a Canadian movie I reviewed, but it was attributed not to yours truly but to the outlet. Blame Canada.) The rest of the time, I'm just part of the pack mentality, the Borg that goes thumbs up or thumbs down. What I'd really like to see is a rating of reviewers, based on responses to the quality of the writing--and some measure of how many Tomatoes readers click beyond the headlines to the actual articles.

Sir Christopher Lee

Dracula has risen up in the world. I'm happy for the 87-year-old actor, part of my life since early monsterdom, and happier still that he has four movies in the can (including films with Julie Christie, Coiin Farrell, and Doctor Who David Tennant) and two set to go, in a remarkably long-lived career that stretches back to the 40s.

RIP analog TV

The plug has been pulled. Possible outcomes: Landfills reporting a huge uptick in discarded rabbit ears. Millions of dispossessed Americans turning to strengthening ties with family, friends and community. Many more people reading books. This newly empowered literati leading a peaceful revolution against the "vidiocy" brought on by television. A return to a pre-industrial way of life. The attainment of Utopia.

Popdose: Men behaving badly

Well, not Youssou D'Nour, featured in the new doc I Bring What I Love. But he has to make up for the bad boys in The Hangover (pictured) and the Elmore Leonard adaptation Killshot, which has gone straight to DVD. All are reviewed this week.

And the winner was...

Geoffrey Rush, who heads back to Australia following the June 14 closing of Exit the King with five New York acting citations under his belt, including Tony and Drama Desk Awards. This courtesy of David Sheward at Backstage, who had the philanthropic/insane notion to collate all this stuff.

Whacked

The IFC Daily reports that 80-year-old Andrew Sarris was sent packing from the fading-fast New York Observer yesterday, along with a bunch of other staffers. Is Rex Reed hanging on? A world where Rex Reed has a media home and Sarris doesn't is a grim place to contemplate.

(Update: He's now freelancing for the Observer, along with Reed. Borrowed time I think, minus benefits.)

RIP HDNet Movies

RIP from Time Warner Cable's lineup, anyway, due to some sort of backroom wheeling-dealings. Too bad; I'm not often using the upstairs hi-def set these days (it's flush against the baby's room wall and a possible distraction for her, according to the wife though this isn't scientifically proven, I add digressively) but when I could grab a few stray hours I'd enjoy an older movie (I had Howard Hawks' final film, Rio Lobo, in my sights this month) or a premiere like The Girlfriend Experience. This made me feel a little more in the loop given that, with Larissa to tend to, I don't live the days of wine and screenings lifestyle much anymore. Now that all the pay movie channels have gone HD, and I have MGM's good HD channel to fall back on, I won't miss it as much as I would have a year ago. I doubt however that I'll be paying $5 to premiere the likes of The Girlfriend Experience on HD on Demand when I had enjoyed the experience, or Experience, as part of the package.

Tonys for Billy(s)

By this time of the year theater watchers are prostrate with award-itis, but the Tonys get us to rally. Despite the best efforts of the sound and cameramen to sabotage the evening on TV the show looked pretty good from my sofa, which this year I was on and off running various errands during the show. (Life with children.) It had to be OK, given the utter predictability of the winners. Except maybe for the Next to Normal writers beating the Billy Elliot juggernaut (which included the showbizzy win for all three performers playing Billy, one of whom is pictured), everything was pretty much in lockstep with expectations. It was fun seeing Elton and Liza rock out with the cast of the Hair revival at the top of the show, and host Neil Patrick Harris cap it with a delightful 11 o'clock number. The one bit of excitement, a Normal/Billy tie for orchestrations, happened in the phantom zone where the design awards and best book of a musical were exiled.

The memories of Broadway 2008-2009 will have to last a little longer than usual this year; there are no summer openings for the first time in some time, so the 2009-2010 season doesn't kick off until October. The acclaimed West End revival of La Cage Aux Folles, from newly minted Tony Lifetime Achievement winner Jerry Herman, caused the only real stir of the evening (backstage) when Harvey Fierstein mentioned the possibility of a Broadway transfer, so (relatively) soon after the show's Tony- and Drama Desk-winning revival in the 2004-2005 season. If it's the best of times, look for it to be making the awards rounds next spring.

Fail rate

No real surprise here: 95% of all blogs wither and die. Their proprietors, realizing that it's easier to use Facebook or Twitter to communicate to friends, or that Internet jillions aren't coming their way, give up on them. I've come across these ghost blogs on various searches; I like the ones that say "I'll be back soon"...and the last entry dates to 2005.

The ones that tend to make it, to the extent that any blog "makes it" in a sea of bits and bytes, are those run by professionals, who know about content, deadlines, and news-gathering. Or do they? I've rarely been as depressed as when I read this, confirming what I fear, that rumor-mongering has replaced journalism in certain sectors, and that no one really gives a damn. It's all about "involving the reader in the process," and maybe, just maybe, getting it right in the very end, after it's passed through several spins of the news cycle. “Getting it right is expensive,” says one of these upstarts. “Getting it first is cheap.” A hateful, contemptuous attitude. May more blogs that subscribe to such a philosophy crash and burn.

Popdose: Drag Me to Hell

Alison Lohman fends off a gypsy curse as director Sam Raimi attempts to reclaim his Evil Dead-period mojo in the new horror movie.

Never forget

I was living in Hong Kong in 1989, a close-range vantage point from which to watch the unfolding horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre--and the quite stirring and beautiful candlelight vigils that sprung up around it. (The photo was taken at a commemorative ceremony held last year in Victoria Park.) Lora reminded me this morning of the staffers at our office who faxed news reports to their mainland friends and relatives, as the Chinese government moved quickly to stamp out news coverage, which it is doing today. But I can't forget wearing a black armband in protest, being subsumed by the vigils, which took over the streets, and hearing the accounts of acquaintances who were there in Beijing as the authorities opened fire. There were rumors that mainland sleeper cells were soon to erupt in Hong Kong, and the incident cast another shadow on the 1997 handover. In time, life returned to normal--that is, a new normal, from which the episode cannot be expunged from the historical record, nor forgotten in our own memories.

RIP David Carradine

As prolific as his father John, the actor will always be remembered for his Emmy-nominated role as Caine (pictured) on TV's Kung Fu (1972-1975), which he continued to play on various spinoffs through the 90s. That cult association assured him a place in the Quentin Tarantino universe, a destiny he admirably fulfilled in the Kill Bill saga. Laying down his arms, he was effective as Woody Guthrie in 1976's beautiful Bound for Glory, though late in what appears to have been an increasingly turbulent life he voiced second thoughts about the film. There was still more to like in an eventful career: Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha (1972), with his then-girlfriend Barbara Hershey; the driver "Frankenstein" in Paul Bartel's Death Race 2000 (1975); a curious choice for Ingmar Bergman in The Serpent's Egg (1977); Cole Younger in Walter Hill's The Long Riders (1980), opposite brothers Keith and Robert, in what remains the best telling of that tale; Tom Horn and Paul Gauguin in good TV movies in that period; a tough cop in Larry Cohen's delightful monster-in-Manhattan story Q (1982); a worthy opponent for Chuck Norris in 1983's Lone Wolf McQuade; and, not least, in drag as "Pearl" in the memorably squalid Sonny Boy (1989).

The annual Tonys torment

In a column that could have been written in the Clinton era, the New York Post's Michael Riedel gets exercised over a Tonys telecast (this Sunday) brimming with music but low on drama, with Best Play Revival and other categories booted. Twas ever thus; it used to be that the exiled designers at least got some exposure on PBS, but that hasn't been the case for at least a couple of seasons now. I'm not happy about it, but Blanche, you are in that chair. Perhaps the Obamas, who enjoyed the revival of Joe Turner's Come and Gone (pictured) last Saturday, could intervene--or maybe that part could be webcast?

The other part of this annual scourging is happening at All That Chat, where the sanctimony with which the nominations are treated gives way to bitterness over the unfairness of the telecast. Folks, that's showbiz: in exchange for a network berth, you get aging musical numbers stuffed down your throat, like the after-effects of gypsy curses from Drag Me to Hell. Maybe Ovation or a cable network could take it on, but that wouldn't please anyone without access--or, more to the point, the show producers looking to get some national exposure. Ratings-wise the Tonys don't do too bad for summer programming, but they aren't the Oscars, either. If the numbers were up maybe everyone could get the turn they deserve in the winner's circle. But, to quote from another movie, deserve's got nothing to do with it.

Popdose: John Wayne, John Ford, Howard Hawks

Saddle up, pilgrims, for extras-laden DVD editions of Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Hawks' El Dorado, with the Duke riding high.

On TCM: Great Directors

Turner Classic Movies embraces the auteur theory in a big way this month, establishing the primacy of the director every day in June. Whether or not you agree that the director is the true author of a film, there's no arguing that this doesn't give TCM a chance to showcase some great movies this month--and some that I've always wanted to see, some of which are I think new to the lineup. These include Tony Richardson's take on Hamlet (1969), with Nicol Williamson as the great Dane and Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia, on June 17; Jules Dassin's Phaedra, with Melina Mercouri and Anthony Perkins, on June 18, and Blake Edwards' The Carey Treatment (1972), with James Coburn, on June 19. And a whole day of Jacques Tourneur pictures, from various genres, on June 12. I hope it rains.

"Total Eclipse of the Heart," literally

One of the funniest things I've seen on the web in a long time, a kind of parodic extension of the "Pop-Up" craze that was the last big thing in music videos. The same group has done several of these. Director Russell Mulcahy, who went on to Highlander, approves: "Based on one of my early 'great' works. Thank you to all the talent involved for FINALLY correcting the original! This is great!"

Summer Cineaste online and on sale

The Summer issue is now available, on newsstands or online. Web content this edition includes an interview with Food Inc. documentarian Robert Kenner, "A Second Look" at the 1955 film Death of a Cyclist, and reviews of new books on Victor Fleming and Albert Maysles. There's a fair amount of sex in the print issue proper--but you'll have to buy it. Who said old media had turned up its toes? (Pictured on the cover is the latest film from the Dardenne brothers, Lorna's Silence, which opens in July.)

Last Titanic survivor dies

This AP story was interesting to me for a few reasons. The basic subject is of course compelling; two months old and a Titanic survivor, then flash ahead a staggering 97 years. Charles Haas was one of my English teachers at Randolph High School, and a world authority on the subject, who was in touch with many of the survivors and must have heard of this news today with a heavy heart. And I'm genuinely touched that Titanic film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet chipped in to pay for Ms. Dean's nursing home expenses. A thoughtful way to help ease a historic passing.

Larissa meets Godzilla

It's been five long years since a new Godzilla picture, so I'm posting this to let Toho Studios know that I'm prepping the next generation of fans. That's mom holding the Big G. (Larissa has my plastic model to chew on, but it's not as cuddly as this one.)

Popdose: The sweet-and-sour Sherman Brothers

It hasn't always been a spoonful of sugar for the Sherman Brothers, the prolific tunesmiths behind Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, "It's a Small World" and so much more from the soundtrack of our lives. A review of The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, co-directed by their sons in an effort to get them to make amends. Robert Sherman is pictured at right; Richard, at left.

Stanley Kauffmann: 50 Years at TNR

In 1959, film classics like Anatomy of a Murder and North by Northwest were in release, and Eisenhower was in the White House. And at The New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann assumed the position of film critic. And stayed. And stayed. Kauffmann, now 92, is still going strong, and TNR is celebrating his half-century of scrivening with a special section on its website. It's a nice tribute for that milestone achievement, one virtually impossible to duplicate today as print film criticism withers and morphs to the web; I'm not sure the Chicago Sun-Times will last enough to celebrate Roger Ebert's fiftieth there in a few years. Meanwhile, Andrew Sarris marches on at the New York Observer, but at age 80 he's a mere lad next to Kauffmann.

Rain of stars

I have no particular beef with movie and TV stars taking the Broadway stage. Julia Roberts, in Three Days of Rain, and Katie Holmes, in All My Sons, weren't exactly revelatory but they didn't disgrace themselves; there were far worse things about the Miller revival than Holmes' earnest but undistinguished acting. I'm used to big stars treading the boards to give "EBU" performances (they get that a lot in reviews, along with a certain amount of cred for trying it) and don't usually comment on the latest news of someone braving the stage. But when I read that Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig are teaming for a play this fall, color me impressed.

The drama in question, a two-hander by Keith Huff called A Steady Rain, has gotten good reviews on its home turf and has a clever website to boot. Jackman and Craig are an unlikely pair of Chicago cops but I didn't really see the former as Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, and the latter as James Bond, and they have the chops to pull this off, too. I can only hope that new producer Barbara Broccoli, of the Bonds, won't mess it up, as she did with the ghastly musical of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (clips of which elicited groans from fellow viewers at my viewing last night of the excellent Sherman Brothers documentary, The Boys.) And if Jackman and Craig hit it off maybe Jackman, a Bond candidate, could be enticed to play a villain in an upcoming entry. That would be cool, too.

Cannes winners

For the record. Antichrist (pictured) seems like another canned provocation by the occasionally really provocative Lars von Trier, but I suspect Charlotte Gainsbourg acts the hell out of it, as Isabelle Adjani did the similar-sounding Possession in 1978. Christoph Waltz is about the only thing anyone's excited about regarding Quentin Tarantino's irritatingly misspelled Inglourious Basterds. Too bad the Park Chanwook vampire flick Thirst is supposed to be a disaster, whatever the jurors thought. But The White Ribbon and A Prophet sound like respectable winners, not that any of it particularly matters, lamentably, given an eroding audience for specialty and arthouse fare in this country.

Popdose: The Girlfriend Experience

Porn star Sasha Grey goes legit in Steven Soderbergh's latest hi-def trifle, available on pay-per-view and now in theaters.

Goodbye Earl

TBS may throw it a lifeline, but I'm royally ticked off that NBC is cancelling My Name is Earl. It had its ups and downs, but really rallied in its fourth and, alas, final season, never failing to make me laugh out loud--something only its still-standing stablemate on Thursdays, The Office, does on a regular basis for me regarding network comedies.

It's the network thing that has me stewing. The show has been ailing in the ratings, though it can't be doing too badly for a program on cellar-dwelling NBC. What put Earl's head on the chopping block is that it's produced by 20th Century Fox Television. Fox doesn't want it (Why? Is it too brainy in comparison to its run of dull-witted redneck and trailer trash comedies?) and NBC doesn't want Fox to benefit from its continuing to air it. So away it (probably) goes--lacking a proper series finale, we'll never get to see Earl complete his karmic list. I'm stewed about that, and will miss the imaginatively dopey antics of Earl, Randy, Crab Man, and especially Joyce, played to a T (and A) by Emmy winner Jamie Pressly. Besides the down-and-dirty comedy, the show also had a warm heart and a genuine community spirit to recommend it; it was always smart, and non-condescending, about stupidity.

Meanwhile, Smallville and Scrubs limp on into ninth (ninth!) seasons. The all-but-bankrupt CW has nothing else on its plate, so it's exiled the exhausted Superman show, which came to a morose season finale that saw the death (and rebirth) of Jimmy Olsen and the hatching of another (yawn) Zod storyline, to Fridays, the Phantom Zone of network TV.

I'm more ticked off about Scrubs. I knew it might come back in some form or another, but its season finale was an effective capper to the show and a fitting exit for Zach Braff--who's returning for "transitional" episodes next year. No fair: Either take it off the respirator and exit gracefully, or reboot entirely. This half-and-half approach is unsatisfying to anyone whose emotional investment in the show was paid in full, and I can't see a semi-reborn Scrubs suddenly springing to life in the ratings after all its near-death experiences on two networks. It's only coming back because ABC owns it and wants to wring a few last bucks from the show before its final final fade. Scrubs is being whored, and I don't like it.

King of Cool

The Film Society of Lincoln Center, which claims it was misquoted over the whole Film Festival member tickets flap I wrote about a few weeks ago, is making up for the annoyance with a good week-long series, "Yesterday's Loner: Steve McQueen". It's advertised as screening "the 12 unforgettable films that made Steve McQueen a legend"--but omits The Blob, surely a more legendary credit than the plodding adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (1978), memorable more for his uncharacteristically bloated and bearded appearance than anything else. (Why not the spare and elegiac Tom Horn, released in the year of his passing, 1980? Just because a movie has been out of circulation for 30 years doesn't mean it's any good.) That all said, it's a well-chosen selection of pictures worth seeing on the big screen, from the underrated Love with a Proper Stranger (1963) with he and Natalie Wood in top form (pictured) to The Towering Inferno (1974), the only film of his I saw first-run, though I vaguely recall a drive-in screening of Bullitt (1968) with mom and dad when I was a tot. "Can't I just look it?" asked McQueen of screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser when Fraser presented him with pages of dialogue for The Sand Pebbles (1966). McQueen "looked it," and received his only Oscar nomination for his creative gazing.

I'll never forget being at a trade show some years ago and reeling off the members of The Magnificent Seven (1960) to chit-chatting guys who were stumped on the seventh (Brad Dexter is the closer) and wanted me to fill in the blank, then asked me to list the escapees of 1963's The Great Escape--James Donald escaped their mind. It all came up because they were talking about McQueen, and I knew the answers because I had seen both those John Sturges classics numerous times. (Who can forget the ending of Escape? That ball reverberating in the "cooler"...) McQueen, a star cut short at age 50; he'd probably still have the chops to play one of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds this summer, or at least advise star Brad Pitt how to play it, or look it, properly.

Story of my life

Jonathan Lethem's story "Ava's Apartment", in the May 25 New Yorker, concludes at the Gracie Mews diner on First Avenue, a place I know well, having eaten there countless times when I lived in the less expensive section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It helped sustain me as a single, and was a pleasant post-theater hangout for me and my wife-to-be, particularly after a renovation a few years back. (The story's protagonist is a New York type I know well, and might have become had Cupid's arrow not struck.) Nothing more to say on the matter, just happy to see a little slice of my life immortalized by the writer--as it happens I live in his now-gentrified old neighborhood, and walk past the Brooklyn House of Detention, his "Fortress of Solitude," everyday, though have never visited, as either a tourist or inmate.

Drama Desk winners announced

A short and snappy ceremony resulted in big wins for Lynn Nottage's Ruined (pictured) and Billy Elliot the Musical at the 54th Drama Desk Awards, held last night. I've just come from the after party, held at the large and lovely Rouge Tomate bistro, where I met winners Geoffrey Rush (Exit the King), Pablo Schreiber (the off-Broadway reasons to be pretty), and Janet McTeer (Mary Stuart). The understandable absence of overseas-based winners like Shrek the Musical designer Tim Hatley was more than made up for by the present-and-accounted-for star wattage of winners Liza Minnelli and Angela Lansbury, whose award was presented by Jane Fonda. Besides Nottage's win for the gripping Ruined--one of seven Off or Off Off Broadway winners this year--I was especially gratified to see set designer David Korins take home a statuette. It couldn't happen to a better designer, or a nicer guy.

Live Design: End-of-season wrap-up

The most production-heavy Broadway season since 1984 has come to an end, and I look at no less than eight revivals herein, including John Glover, Bill Irwin, Nathan Lane and John Goodman in Waiting for Godot at Studio 54 (pictured). Lots of awards nominees are among them; I'll be at the Drama Desks on Sunday night, mingling with the bold and the beautiful.

Popdose: Star Trek

Phasers on stun as I review the new movie, and some of the old ones, with colleague Lance Berry.

Viewing party at my place

Popdose: Johnny Got His Gun on DVD

The release of Dalton Trumbo's film of his 1939 antiwar novel, the winner of the National Book Award 70 years ago, prompts a few thoughts about violence, onscreen and off.

RIP Alfred Appel Jr.

One of the first courses I took at Northwestern was Appel's "Introduction to Contemporary American Literature," in which he taught his own book, The Annotated Lolita. (The annotations were his; the book was of course Nabokov's.) Twenty-six years later, I still have that book, and I still refer to it. And I remember with pleasure many wonderful lectures he gave on that and other classics, his screenings of adaptations like The Killers (1946), and his stories of brushes with greatness with the likes of Nabokov, Hemingway, Gary Cooper, and Lee Marvin. An inspiring professor and a nice guy, too, who I always enjoyed chatting with between classes; looks like I'll be picking up his 1991 revision of The Annotated Lolita to see what he added.

Goodbye Scrubs

After eight seasons on two networks, Scrubs is saying goodbye tonight, if not necessarily farewell. It may come back in a new form, but it won't be the same without its truly talented cast, who ran with every zany idea that the inspired writing staff threw at them. 30 Rock gets all the credit for its innovative structure, and all the Emmy glory besides; all I can say is that I never missed an episode of Scrubs, even when it occasionally flagged, and have never made it through an entire episode of Tina Fey's critics' darling. (It tries too hard; Scrubs was breezy.) At its best, Scrubs struck a perfect balance between broad, often fantastic break-the-fourth-wall comedy, and affecting drama--it was sort of the Barney Miller of hospital shows, with an equally unbeatable ensemble across the board. Not a "numbskull" in the bunch.

A fabulous Woman

Writing about the "Late Film" program at BAM got me thinking about how formerly disgraced pictures go from the lower depths to becoming overrated. I think it may have something to do with younger cineastes looking for something to call their own that hasn't already been claimed and lionized by the old guard. If that's the case, then maybe instead of raiding the vaults, we (and I count myself; I'm not Rex Reed's age, yet) might instead to turn to lost, or at least orphaned, pictures, that never got their proper due and could use a champion. Exhibit A: Amy Heckerling's I Could Never Be Your Woman, which was supposed to debut in 2007, went straight-to-DVD a year later, and is now on cable, where it completely charmed me.

That strident title didn't help, but this is Heckerling's show all the way and I can live with it. The film was also a victim of bad timing: If only it could have waited for male lead Paul Rudd, her Clueless discovery, to emerge as a more of a marquee, thanks to his successful run of Judd Apatow, or Judd Apatow-like, comedies. The shame of it all, and why it's definitely worth catching (Cinemax has it in rotation), is that a spectacular Michelle Pfeiffer performance has gone unseen. She's looser, funnier, and more beguiling than she has been in years, and the film comes just as she seemed about to fall into caricature mode, via Hairspray and her fantasy witch in the underrated Stardust. She's good in those parts, but she really scores here playing a normal human being, a producer of an urban tween TV show whose inner child is feeling a bit beleaguered, as her daughter (Atonement's Saiorse Ronan) clambers into adolescence and she begins a tentative romance with a rising young comic actor (Rudd) who's a decade younger. Even her personal advisor, Mother Nature (Tracey Ullman), can't help her through an unexpected midlife crisis.

The movie is a lot of fun. Heckerling loves all the showbiz stuff and doesn't satirize it, though the movie implicitly comments on the silliness of ageism: Pfeiffer, Rudd, and Stacey Dash, as Pfeiffer's secretary nemesis, are all older than the parts (Dash, the star of TV's Clueless, a good 20 years older) but play them comfortably, and there's a good scene where Pfeiffer gives hell to a cad (U.K. Office co-star Mackenzie Crook) who's commenting on the alleged deterioration of actresses of her generation. I liked all the actors who flit in and out, particularly Jon Lovitz, as Pfeiffer's implant-obsessed ex. Lovitz and Pfeiffer as husband and wife is enough to blow a hole in the continuum of plausible movie marriages, yet they click. Working with comedians like Lovitz and Fred Willard brings out the best of Pfeiffer's timing and instincts, and on the more dramatic side of the scale she and Ronan are thoroughly believable. I'm making I Could Never Be Your Woman my cause; what else is out there that needs nurture and support?

RIP Dom DeLuise

We're fast losing a whole generation of funny people I enjoyed in movies and on TV back when I was a kid--Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur, and now the Brooklyn-born DeLuise. I don't think I'll ever forget him fumbling around Gene Shalit's feet on the Today Show, twiddling with his shoes and asking, as if he were a salesman, "Do we have these in blue?" Maybe you had to have been there, but it cracked me up when I was 11 and he and Gene Wilder were promoting The World's Greatest Lover in 1977 . A little DeLuise could go a long way, particularly if he had to vamp too strenuously when the material was lacking. But he was the best thing about several awful (and awfully popular) Burt Reynolds pictures (his "Captain Chaos" got me through the near-unbearable Cannonball Run films, and he showed how much he could do with a stronger part in Reynolds' more buttoned-down The End), added to the anything-goes flavor of Mel Brooks movies like The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1973) and Silent Movie (1976), and was a good foil to Wilder in their films together, appearing in drag in 1986's Haunted Honeymoon. He could play it straight--that's him as a nerve-jangled airman in 1964's Fail-Safe--and could hold himself back, as in the 1980 comedy-drama Fatso and his own, underrated comedy caper, 1979's Hot Stuff.

Tonys nominations announced

Tony Awards announced; chat room explodes. Where's The Seagull? Desire Under the Elms? So, Elton John and Billy Elliot the Musical are good enough for Tonys, but Chekhov and O'Neill aren't? (Pictured is one of the three Billys nominated on the same line, each Billy being exactly as good as each other Billy and all. There's an assembly line out there putting together Billys to precisely the same specifications.)

Popdose: Enchanted April on DVD

Seventeen years after its Oscar-nominated theatrical release, Enchanted April arrives on DVD. Couldn't it have come a few days sooner, though? I mean, it's May...

Late shows

BAM Cinematek has kicked off The Late Film, a series that focuses on onset-of-winter features (not necessarily final productions) of noted auteurs. It got underway with last night's showing of Billy Wilder's mangled 1970 release The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which came in for additional mauling based on reviews I read this week. It's not at all bad--but it's not all that great, either (though who knows what we're looking at, given all the cuts?), and a lot of the films in the series tend to be middling and sort of interesting, rather than revelatory. That applies to Alfred Hitchcock's uneven Marnie (1964), John Ford's 7 Women (1966), which my film group watched some years back, Michael Powell's Age of Consent (1969), with Helen Mirren in her debut, and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (pictured, 1999), which I've never really been tempted to revisit. But throwing the occasional spotlight on movies that aren't Psycho, Stagecoach, Black Narcissus, and Dr. Strangelove is why repertory cinema exists, so the series has an intrinsic value. And I saw Robert Altman's The Company (2003) at BAM when it was a new movie, so I feel like I've become part of the repertory experience.

Popdose: My Rod Lurie interview

Nothing But the Truth, the whole truth, from filmmaker Rod Lurie, as he talks about the two new films more-or-less premiering on DVD this week, his upcoming remake of Straw Dogs, and being called a "middlebrow hack" by yours truly.

Drama Desk nominations announced

Looks as if this year's nominators were working 9 to 5 (pictured) this awards season--the soon-to-open musical garnered 15 nominations, the most of any show in the 2008-2009 season, and a record haul. (Having been on the committee, I can assure you that they were working 9 to 5, and then some, to place the best of Broadway, Off Broadway, and Off Off Broadway into contention.)

"Meet the Scholars"

LPA Cinema Series is pleased to present "Meet the Scholars," a series of programs (admission free) in which authors of books about film appear to discuss their work, show a few film clips, and take questions from the audience.

All programs are held at The New York Public Library’s Riverside Branch, 127 Amsterdam Avenue at 65th Street.

Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 6:00pm: Author Molly Haskell discusses her book Frankly My Dear: “Gone with the Wind” Revisited. Haskell presents a new slant on Scarlett O’Hara and her three most significant creators: writer Margaret Mitchell, movie producer David O. Selznick, and actress Vivien Leigh.

Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 6:00pm: Author Richard Koszarski discusses his book Hollywood on the Hudson. Koszarski surveys the surprisingly vibrant New York film production scene of the 1920s and 1930s, with appearances by everyone from D. W. Griffith to Oscar Micheaux and Gloria Swanson to Betty Boop.

Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 6:00pm: Author Imogen Sara Smith discusses her book Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy. Smith charts the rise, the fall, and the enduring genius of the silent clown.

RIP Bea Arthur

Maude was one of those Norman Lear shows that revolutionized TV in 70s, and her 80s hit, The Golden Girls, continues to win new fans. I saw her on Broadway in 2002 in her one-woman show, Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends. To have seen her in Fiddler on the Roof or Mame, her legendary Tony winner, would have really been something. No question about it, though: she didn't need the help of canned laughter to land her best zingers on TV, and I liked her appearances in the occasional film (Mel Brooks' History of the World: Part I) and TV show (her last role was as Larry David's mother on the hilarious fifth-season ender of Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2005). And her immortality certainly got a boost from her appearance in 1978's infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.

Popdose: Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Rockin' those spring movie blues away with a headbanging documentary that tugs a little at the heartstrings, too. Pictured is frontman Steve "Lips" Kudlow, hard at work.

RIP Jack Cardiff

Some years ago the magazine I once edited, Lighting Dimensions, ran a terrific interview with the cinematographer and director, whose career behind the camera spanned generations of cinema. My friend and colleague John Calhoun did his customary outstanding job with the text; what's missing from this web version, besides cleaner copy, are pictures. And in Cardiff's case, images told us so much.

So many outstanding credits as DP; some of my favorites include the Oscar-winning Black Narcissus in 1947 (just awesome use of color), 1948's The Red Shoes (ditto), 1951's The African Queen, the 1956 War and Peace (Oscar nomination), 1958's The Vikings (splendid fun), and 1980's The Dogs of War. His lighting seemed to sparkle off every rain-soaked leaf in the jungle--and every speck of sweat on Stallone--for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985).

He received a fourth cinematography Oscar nod for 1961's luminous Fanny, a year after receiving a directing Oscar nomination for the superb adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, beautifully shot by his contemporary and kindred spirit Freddie Francis. Both had spotty histories behind the megaphone, but Cardiff's yielded a personal favorite, the cold-eyed, ruthless and thrilling mercenary adventure Dark of the Sun (1968), with his frequent star Rod Taylor. He also directed the "Smell-O-Vision" gimmick picture Scent of Mystery (1960), took over for an ailing John Ford on 1965's Young Cassidy, with Taylor, put Alain Delon and a nude Marianne Faithfull on wheels in 1968's The Girl on a Motorcycle, and called it quits as a helmer with 1974's fun schlocker The Mutations, with Donald Pleasence cross-pollinating man/plant hybrids. Typically, in his DVD commentary on The Mutations (available as The Freakmaker), Cardiff doesn't condescend to the assignment; equally typically, frustratingly so, neither Sons and Lovers (I think the best Lawrence on film) nor Dark of the Sun are available on R1 DVD. (Motorcycle is to be reissued next month.)

Cardiff received an honorary Oscar in 2001. He never really stopped working in some capacity, and advised Sony on its recent, gorgeous transfer of Michael Powell's A Matter of Life and Death (1946). There's an anecdote about him in my Popdose review of the DVD, which shows him to be warm and gently impish right up till the end.

(UPDATE: Director Ken Annakin, also 94, died the same day as Cardiff. Duly noted.)

Big lights in little China

Jon Turtletaub is directing his National Treasure star, Nicolas Cage, in an upcoming Disney picture based on The Sorceror's Apprentice segment of Fantasia. That combination of talent means it won't be high on my viewing list when it opens; Turtletaub is one of the most insipid directors working, and Cage...perplexing, to say the least. But after a shoot in Park Slope I am enjoying the spectacle they're conjuring across the East River in Chinatown, in the vicinity of Grand Street--a gorgeous tableau of Chinese lanterns that have been shining brightly each night for a week now. There are Flickr pictures up of the day look, but it's not the same thing. You can enjoy the night shoot from a lovely overhead vantage point by taking any of the Manhattan Bridge trains and keeping your eyes peeled as they approach or depart from Grand Street--fares are going up, but this is still a $9.50 cost savings over actually seeing the movie, which will likely edit it down to a few measly shots anyway.

Ford wrangler

He's not Susan Boyle--yet. But my buddy Brad Nelson is on his way to web stardom, courtesy of the Ford Motor Company, which turned down federal bailout money but couldn't say no to Brad's plans to get its Fiesta off and running. Follow the "Follow the Fiesta" campaign that Brad and the lovely Emma are a part of; rumor has it that Julia and not Ryan Stiles is eager to lay hands on Brad, but a woman of the West doesn't give up so easily. (I can feel Brad, the stoic cowboy type with a touch of The Office about him, blushing as he reads this, but that's the cost of celebrity.) To think that when I met Brad at the Lighting Dimensions International trade show in 1997, he was a lowly intern, hand-pressing my suits, preparing my morning omelets, and separating my M&Ms by color (no yellows!) as I strode the show floors like the editorial colossus I once was. Now I'm reduced to figuring out how to get my cats to jump through flaming hoops or some other wacky YouTube stunt so I can compete on his level.

RIP Tharon Musser

There are theatrical lighting designers, and then there is Musser, who truly revolutionized the form. I met her in 2000, when she was part of a Lighting Dimensions International panel on the ground-breaking design of A Chorus Line (pictured) 25 years earlier. (It was the first to use a computerized lighting console, which was faithfully adapted by Natasha Katz for its recent revival.) She won a Tony for that achievement, plus two others, for Follies and Dreamgirls, and received an additional seven nominations. Her debut show was Long Day's Journey Into Night in 1956; the last of her many credits was Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West in 1999. I regret not seeing any of her work first-hand; then again, her inspiration is felt throughout the profession, and touches every show in some way.

Susan Boyle

I have nothing to say about her, really; she broke as a global village phenomenon while I was off duty (a blogger should never admit to be being off duty, but I was off duty) and has somehow lingered for a week or two more, generating reams of bits and bytes and analysis and overanalysis. What will her fans think, though, if the Sidney Falcos combing through her trash discover that maybe she doesn't like cats? Or has been kissed? (The Victorianism of it all!) And you can see the trajectory, as sure as a chalk outline around a murder victim: The second thoughts ("Is she really that good?"), the little touches to make her just a little more attractive, like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, the sudden, unanticipated displays of diva behavior, the wearing away of the "authenticity" as she buys in, wraps herself in ermine and emeralds, and marries Colin Farrell. (Well, my crystal ball may be a little fuzzy there.) For now, at least, she's as pure as a Manhattan snowfall before it turns to slush, before we realize we can't protect the virtue and innocence we feel she represents and that we covet. It won't be pretty to watch us tear down what we have built up. In the meantime, I don't mind putting my cards on the table and admitting that I want some of that hit action, too, so if titling a post "Susan Boyle" somehow raises my numbers, hey, I'm in the Susan Boyle business, too. Aren't we all in the Susan Boyle business?

RIP J.G. Ballard

Spring fever has struck and I've been away from my post, and active with the baby, these past few days. I hate to resume on a down note but I regret to note the passing of the British novelist, best known for the disturbing Crash and the autobiographical Empire of the Sun--two very different works united by a watchful and intensely engaged prose style that encompassed the modes he worked in with seeming ease. (A Scottish friend loaned me a copy of Ballard's cheeky Hello America, hoping to get a rise out of me, but what I got, besides the satire, was the usual lift I experienced whenever I explored "Ballardian" dystopias). He also contributed the story to the 1970 Hammer picture When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth--not a credit high on his resume, but the kind of thing a fan remembers.

RIP Judith Krug

The librarian was not a famous person, but her tireless efforts against book banning (including titles that personally offended her) made her a true American, in the finest sense of the word. These are the real, unsung heroes. Let's continue her legacy and make this country a smarter, saner place.

Byrne this

You have to take these dubiously sourced items (scroll down) with a grain of salt, but if there's any truth to it and Gabriel Byrne really thinks theater is dead I may have to pull him aside for a talking-to the next time I see him in my neighborhood. Good as he was in A Touch of the Poet some seasons back he must have known that odd play wasn't going to draw a younger crowd, so why diminish the accomplishment? He was aces in that and in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten and with luck we'll see him someday in Long Day's Journey into Night; he could be a definitive Tyrone. Before that, maybe he could satisfy his appetite for youth by going into Mamma Mia! or Shrek the Musical or something family-friendly; hey, if he's good, maybe the audience will grow up to follow him as he works his way through the O'Neill canon. Or maybe she should just sit down with his new In Treatment co-stars Hope Davis and Alison Pill, who have thriving theater careers, and get a good dose of the talking cure to chase away those Broadway blues.

Popdose: Doubt on DVD

In which I express a few doubts about the Oscar-nominated film of the award-winning play. Liked John Patrick Shanley's commentary, though.

RIP Marilyn Chambers

The Ivory Snow girl-turned-porn performer gave a reasonable account for herself as a mainstream actress playing attractive ambulatory contagion in David Cronenberg's Rabid (1977). But I'd be lying to you if I said she didn't she made a bigger impression on me in the artsy Behind the Green Door (1973) and especially 1980's Insatiable, where the fulfillment of her desires more than lived up to the title. (It's available as a special edition DVD, but I wouldn't look for it at Blockbuster.) You have a talent, you go with it--and she said she felt more exploited in her non-X ventures.

Live Design: A package of plays

High season on and Off Broadway continues with plays galore, led by Yasmina Reza's smash God of Carnage (pictured), with Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels at war with each other. And much more still to come before the Broadway season wraps up on April 30.

Happy Easter

Sent from one of my "Peeps," Roger Winslow:

Numbers crunching

I always thought that the change in title of the play The Madness of George III, to The Madness of King George when it became a film--because of marketing fears that U.S. audiences wouldn't know what to make of the "George III"--was a movie urban legend. Now I'm not so sure. Across the bottom of the front page of today's New York Times is a banner ad for the third season of Showtime's The Tudors, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers as "King Henry 8." I think a reasonably educated adult, even one who watches Showtime, would recognize King Henry VIII, or King Henry the Eighth--and if you don't, chances are The Tudors isn't your cup of mead anyway. (We love every salacious minute.) I resent being played down to--King Henry ate what?

Film Society to me: Drop dead

At least, that's how I read this section from a New York Times piece today about how the Film Society of Lincoln Center's new executive director, Mara Manus, is shaking things up there.

"Traditionally, a film society membership, which ranges from a $75 minimum to $1,000-and-up patron status, guarantees the right to buy tickets for the festival. The review process is not complete, but Ms. Manus said low-end donors were likely to lose that assurance.

“We’re moving to change that structure, just to allow more people to have access to the New York Film Festival,” she said. “People who have been giving $75 have been taking up a chunk of the tickets when in fact this is the biggest thing we do and we want it to be available to more people.”

It's by no means clear what's going on here, but the implication is that my $75, which I've been paying as a member for 15 years now (and sometimes upping, to a dual membership) will suddenly be valueless, as I go through the annual ritual/ordeal of trying to obtain tickets. By "more people," is Manus (as much scourge as savior, and maybe much more the former, as various blogs opine) saying she plans to democratize the process by opening it to more non-member buyers? Perhaps--but in low-ebb economic times I suspect she means "more people" as in "more people with fat-cat memberships," making the festival more elitist than ever as she runs the place "more like a business."

We'll see. But I don't like the sound of it. It's the little guys like me who buttress the Film Society. Screw us, and we'll just take that $75 and reinvest it in places like Film Forum and BAM Cinematek, where I just saw Hunger for $7--a lot less than what I would have paid to see it at last year's festival.

The Light that failed

I can't say I ever watched it, being more of a Young and the Restless hipster for a spell, but I'll miss having The Guiding Light on the dial on CBS. Seventy-two years as a fixture on radio and TV is nothing to sneeze at, and the final broadcast on Sept. 18 will be something to watch, even if you're as ignorant of its history as I am. There's talk of it moving to cable or the web; the latter would be an interesting transition. But another piece of old media, redolent of history, will go out with the Light.

Cereal killers

Another casualty of the internet is April Fool's Day. You can't post something prankish, or read someone else's goof, without ten commenters spoiling the fun within seconds. I miss it--but hats off to the BBC for running some very deadpan bits on this morning's NPR broadcast that got me going ("Melbourne is planning to host the annual running of the bulls, as Pamplona gives up the contract it has held since the 13th century...").

In the spitit of goofiness, I present this "Tribute to Discontinued Breakfast Cereals," which I happened across (on The House Next Door site) as I was consuming a bowl of the allegedly healthful oat bran concoction that my wife favors. Me, I was always a Count Chocula kind of kid, right up to about age 36. I honestly cannot believe some of the ADD-causing stuff that slipped past the FDA--and that's no joke.