Month: April 2011

ANNOUNCEMENT: LFM Covers The TCM Classic Movie Festival! + How TCM Changed My Life

By Jennifer Baldwin. From my earliest days as an old movie obsessive (circa, age fourteen), I’ve been obsessed with finding out how young people fall in love with old movies.

For my grandma’s generation, the love is easy to explain: These aren’t “old movies,” these are just THE movies, the ones they spent their lives seeing in the theaters.

For my mom’s generation, these old movies weren’t exactly contemporaries, but they weren’t so old and distant either. When my mom was a kid in the 1960s, the old movie stars were still around and the old movies must have still felt familiar, if a bit musty. It’s a lot like my own generation’s relationship to the movies of the 1980s. My Saturdays were filled with a never-ending supply of popular ‘80s movies on cable TV, just as my mom’s youth was filled with Rita Bell and “Bill Kennedy at the Movies.”

But how do people born in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s become old movie buffs? How do Generations X, Y, and Z get into watching movies made in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s?

I know how my own old-movie odyssey went, all of the influences and the inspirations. I know I owe a lot to the years 1988 to 1992, when it seemed like every summer another movie came out that was set in a 1940s Never Land – whether it was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or The Rocketeer or A League of Their Own – and each of these new movies whetted my imagination for the old ones.

I know I owe a lot to my grandparents and their love of jazz, and how that love was transferred to me, so that for three solid years I spent my summers at the Elkhart jazz festival and never at a New Kids on the Block concert. Being a fan of swing jazz and Dixieland made it easier to love other old things, like movies.

I know I owe a lot to my grandmother and my mom, who invited me to watch these strange old movies with them, folding laundry on the couch and falling in love with Cary Grant and Clark Gable, thus beginning my own long, intoxicating affair with old Hollywood.

But how do other people of my age and generation get into the old stuff? What are their paths to classic cinema ecstasy?

I have a feeling that no matter our divergent and differing paths, we have one thing in common: Turner Classic Movies. Continue reading ANNOUNCEMENT: LFM Covers The TCM Classic Movie Festival! + How TCM Changed My Life

LFM Review: Revenge of the Electric Car @ Tribeca 2011

By Joe Bendel. In Terminator 2, the villain of the previous film comes back as the hero of the sequel. Such is also the case with Chris Paine’s latest film, except it is a documentary. The freshly reformed protagonist? General Motors. The times just might be changing after all in Paines’ Revenge of the Electric Car, which premiered recently at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

According to Paine’s Who Killed the Electric Car, despite enthusiastic driver feedback, GM recalled their experimental EV-1, while twisting its mustache and laughing maniacally. Instead, they ramped up production on Hummers. The end, or is it? Fast-forward a few years and meet Bob Lutz, the Vice Chairman of the automotive giant. The car executive’s car executive, Lutz is no tree-hugger. Yet, like Saul on the road to Damascus, Lutz fundamentally changed his mind about the feasibility and desirability of electric cars. Only Lutz has the prestige to put GM back in the electric business and the guts to allow their old nemesis to document it.

Revenge has other protagonists, like Elon Musk, the tech-centric entrepreneur, who made his fortune with Pay Pal before starting Tesla Motors. Sleek and striking, these sports cars are probably too elite to change the world, but they ought to make electric cool. Unfortunately, Musk has trouble filling customer orders (including Paine’s). As more mass market competition, Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn has “bet the future” of his company on electric, but that shoe has yet to drop.

It is important to note, none of these ventures are the result of government mandates. Indeed, they are highly speculative ventures that might just short circuit careers and fortunes. To his credit, Paine himself gives due credit to the captains of industry and entrepreneurs of Revenge. Though he retracts nothing from his previous film, it is clear he and pre-government takeover GM made a lasting peace.

Of course, Bob Lutz is a major reason why. Although Paine probably has a naturally affinity for the Silicon Valley-based Musk, Lutz’s curmudgeonly charm dominates the film. The camera loves the cigar chomping old school executive far more than the icy Ghosn or the cerebral Musk. (While Revenge eventually addresses the government bail-out, most of the GM segments deal with Lutz’s early championing of the hitherto underwhelming Volt.) Continue reading LFM Review: Revenge of the Electric Car @ Tribeca 2011

LFM Review: Braid (Short) @ Tribeca 2011

By Joe Bendel. Kids focus on the most superficial things. Ting is a sweet-tempered, compassionate little girl, but her classmates zero-in on her sloppy braids. It is not her fault, though. Her grieving father Jie is not used to tying them. Nor does he have the heart to explain her mother’s extended absence in Bian Zi’s short film Braid, which screens as part of the Take As Directed shorts block at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

One day, while being ignored by the kids playing in her neighborhood, Ting finds an abandoned kitten. Empathizing with the motherless feline, she takes it home with her. Her father is trying to care for her as best he can, but he is overwhelmed with grief. Unemployed with few prospects, the death of his wife was also a devastating financial blow. Things look truly bleak for them, but keep an eye on that kitten.

Bian Zi’s fifteen minute Braid is surprisingly moving, particularly for a student film. Sensitively helmed, the Taiwanese filmmaker deftly hints at the metaphysical with the conclusion to what is an otherwise starkly naturalistic work. Unquestionably, though, the key to the film is the remarkably poignant, completely convincing work of Jun-Jie Du as Ting. Scores of viewers will want to adopt her, after only two or three minutes into the film.

Braid might be a simple story, but it is powerful in its honest directness, reaching deeper places than most smugly sentimental indies could ever hope to approach. Featuring truly memorable performances, the well conceived Braid is easily a stand-out among Tribeca’s shorts this year.  Highly recommended, it screens during the Take As Directed program on Thursday (4/28), Saturday (4/30), and Sunday (5/1).

Posted on April 26th, 2011 at 9:37am.


FRANCE EATS HOLLYWOOD’S LUNCH: LFM Reviews the New French Anti-Terrorism Thriller The Assault @ Tribeca 2011

By Joe Bendel. It was France’s Entebbe. In what is often referred to as “the most successful anti-terrorist operation in history” (at least among those not involving the Israelis), French commandos stormed an airliner hijacked by Algerian Islamist terrorists on Christmas Eve. The hijackers had no intention of negotiating. Their plan was to crash Air France 8969 into the Eifel Tower. The year was 1994. The missed lessons are painfully obvious. In a case of France eating Hollywood’s lunch, Julien Leclercq vividly dramatizes the historic raid in The Assault (French trailer above), which screens at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

The Algerian terrorists were Islamic and they never let their captives forget it. As soon as they secured the plane, Abdul Abdullah Yahia and his accomplices forced all the women to cover-up with makeshift head scarves. The French being French, they first tried to appease GIA terrorists. Not surprisingly, the Islamist GIA was not interested in a payoff. They were hoping to make a big statement instead. Fortunately, they were delayed so long in Algiers (where the Algerians refused to remove the gangway stairs from the airliners, yet perversely denied permission for the French GIGN SWAT team to operate in-country), Flight 8969 was forced to stop for refueling in Marseilles.

Considering the film is called The Assault, it is not much of a spoiler to say the GIGN eventually board the plane. However, there is nothing video game-like about the film’s centerpiece action sequence. This is close-quarters combat, vividly depicted as a distinctly violent, claustrophobic, confusing, and messy proposition. Tense and scrupulously realistic, these scenes are unlike anything peddled by recent antiseptic Hollywood action movies.

Reportedly the terrorists were even more sadistic than they’re portrayed as being in Assault. Of course, there are understandable limits to what a commercial release can bear (particularly in France). To his credit, Leclercq and co-screenwriter Simon Moutairou never try to ameliorate the terrorists’ crimes with sympathetic back-stories. Instead they show them executing hostages in cold blood. Frankly, the GIA as seen in Assault can only be described as hateful savages.

Assault’s one weakness is the rather cookie-cutter characterization of the GIGN officers. Viewers only glimpse the private life of Thierry, a family man wrestling with his conscience after his previous assignment. The rest are essentially interchangeable. However, Mélanie Bernier makes a strong impression as Carole Jeanton, an ambitious Interior Ministry bureaucrat, who goes from Chamberlain-esque appeaser to a Churchillian advocate for an armed response to terror in about thirty seconds flat. Maybe it was the guns pointed at her.

The Assault is the sort of action film Hollywood ought to be producing at regular clip, but refuses to do so for petty ideological reasons. Still, though the GIGN emerges as the film’s heroes, the French government takes quite a few lumps. Recreating an important historical incident with grit and tick-tock precision, Leclercq’s Assault is easily one of the best selections at this year’s Tribeca. It screens Thursday (4/28).

Posted on April 25th, 2011 at 9:00am.

Disney’s Tron and ‘Digital Freedom’

Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde in "Tron: Legacy."

By David Ross. I finally saw the vacuous Tron: Legacy (see here for Libertas’ original review). My motive was less science fiction completism than the desire to take a long gander at Olivia Wilde, whom I last saw kissing Mischa Barton in The O.C., but the movie managed to frustrate even this simple desire. La Wilde does not appear until the movie is half over, and then in a boyish bob and inexplicably unflattering rubber cat-suit. In the end, I had to make due with a mere glimpse of shoulder: thin compensation for two hours of Tron’s mumbo jumbo.

The movie denounces joyless soulless totalitarian mechanism, but who favors joyless soulless totalitarian mechanism? This is about as interesting as coming out against puppy torture or tulip decapitation. What two-year-old wouldn’t understand that sunless realms devoted to murderous bloodsport are somehow bad? Serious dystopian works are about the nuanced psychology of totalitarianism (v. The Lives of Others). Only Hollywood pats itself on the back merely for recognizing that totalitarian systems are – to choose an IQ-appropriate word – yucky.

All of this is water under the bridge of another exercise in Hollywood banality. What I really want to mention is the delicious Disney hypocrisy with which the film opens. Grid inventor Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) tells his son as he goes through the good-guy routine of tucking him into bed: “Clu, Tron, and I built a system where all information was free and open. [Nostalgic sigh]. Beautiful.”

The Encom boardroom.

We then proceed by route of cliché to the dark, metallic boardroom where the evil corporation Encom is counting its money. Bruce Boxleitner, an old Flynn protégé, asks: “Given the prices that we charge to students and schools, what sort of improvements have been made in Encom OS-12?” The mustache-twirling CEO says: “This year we put a 12 on the box.” A techie-genius-for-hire chimes in: “OS-12 is the most secure operating system ever released. The idea of sharing our software or giving it away for free disappeared with Kevin Flynn.”

This is too rich coming from the company that rammed through the so-called “Mickey Mouse Protection Act“; that sued L.A. produce vendors for selling piñatas featuring unlicensed Disney characters; that sued a pair of clowns for sporting Disney-themed costumes. I recall a funny episode of The Simpsons in which – parody verging on reality – the mere mention of Disney brings two lawyers immediately to the door with a cease-and-desist order.

And the chutzpah of the allusion to “improvements”! Disney has never met a peacefully interred classic that it was not ready to disinter and pimp out. Exhibits A and B: Cinderella II: Dreams Come True and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. This is worse than merely repackaging the same old product (which by the way Disney does all the time in the form of “Platinum Editions”); this is willfully disfiguring mythic pattern, confusing something that was unconfused.

Posted on April 25th, 2011 at 8:26am.