Classic Movie Obsession (Memorial Day Edition): Howard Hawks’ Sergeant York

[Editor’s Note: Memorial Day is Monday, May 31st, but we’re posting this week’s Classic Movie Obsession now because Turner Classic Movies will be airing Howard Hawks’ Sergeant York on Friday, May 28th at 2:30pm Pacific Time/5:30pm Eastern Time.]

By Jennifer Baldwin. Director Howard Hawks is a favorite among film critics and students of auteur theory. His fans include critics Robin Wood and Andrew Sarris, the Cahiers du Cinema crowd, and even Quentin Tarantino. I’m a big fan too.

Much has been written and said about Hawks, about his great films, about how he could work in every genre. But there’s one major Hawks film that doesn’t get much ink spilled over it; it’s the one major Hawks film that always seems to get ignored by the film critics and fans.

That film is SERGEANT YORK. Why are critics and Hawks experts so reluctant to discuss this classic biographical film about one of America’s greatest war heroes? It’s a movie anchored by the performance of a major movie star in Gary Cooper. It’s a rousing war movie. It includes many of the classic Hawksian themes. It’s beautifully shot. So what’s the deal, critics? Why no love for YORK when you’ve got plenty of words to write about HATARI!?

Two words: God. Country.

Critics avoid YORK like the plague because the film has been slapped with that wartime “propaganda” label and that’s all it needs to be effectively silenced as a work of art and an important film in the Hawks oeuvre.

Not that I’ve taken a poll or anything, but life experience tells me that most critics are left-of-center politically and that for them the subjects of Christianity and patriotism are sticky issues. A film that’s unabashedly pro-Christianity and pro-American patriotism doesn’t appeal to the majority of Hawks’ critical champions. We all tend to write about the movies that excite us and for most critics, a movie that wears its Christian patriotic heart on its sleeve is not something that appeals.

Which is a shame, because as a Hawks fan myself and a huge fan of SERGEANT YORK, I find there’s not enough written about the film. Seeing as it’s Memorial Day weekend and SERGEANT YORK is playing on TCM on Friday, May 28 at 2:30 PM PT/5:30 PM EST, I figured I’d give YORK its fair shake and make it my Classic Cinema Obsession of the Week. Continue reading Classic Movie Obsession (Memorial Day Edition): Howard Hawks’ Sergeant York

Hollywood Round-up, 5/27

Cultural imperialism.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Sex and the City 2 continues to draw fire for its supposedly non-p.c. depiction of Middle Eastern society.  Women don’t seem to mind, with film off to roaring start at box office.  The cast is also out defending the movie.  Pic has incidentally been banned in Abu Dhabi, where some of the film is set (although shot in Morocco).  Brassy American cougars new weapon in war on terror.

• Alice in Wonderland passes $1 billion mark worldwide, and Tim Burton has now officially made up for Planet of the Apes.

• Hollywood celebrities largely sitting-out oil-spill relief efforts, probably because they’re still cleaning up the mess made by MacGruber.

• The Wrap talks about Hollywood’s all-white WASP summer.  Nice that this issue is finally being noticed – but will anyone’s head roll as a result?  Hollywood suddenly providing affirmative action for white people.  Prince of Persia played by white guy with Swedish name.

• Stallone and Kurt Russell mulling over Tango and Cash sequel, some 80 years after original.  Pic may be put on hold, due to Stallone scheduling conflict with Over the Top prequel.

• There’s also, apparently, going to be a remake of Logan’s Run, the 70’s Michael York sci-fi thriller about a future where people are killed once they hit 30.  Should be easy to cast, since everybody in Hollywood claims to be under 30.

• Congratulations to Christopher Lee on his 88th birthday today.  From Count Dracula to Count Dooku, there’s never been a better screen villain.

• In franchise news, Sherlock Holmes 2 has a release date, The Flash is about to be greenlit, and Tommy Lee Jones has apparently been cast in Captain America as Al Gore’s Harvard roommate.  Just kidding.

• Nice interview out today with the director of a cute new documentary, called Racing Dreams. We posted about this film recently.

• Panasonic has an extraordinary new 3D high-def camcorder that just hit the market, retailing at around $21,000.  I’ve had my eye on this for months, because I may be shooting my next feature with it.  Looks fantastic.

She'll do anything for a role.

• AND … in an extraordinary new development, Heidi Montag – unfazed by the apparent casting of Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington – has begun publicly lobbying Michael Bay to replace Megan Fox in Transformers 3!  In an effort to display her bona fides for the role, so to speak, Ms. Montag has posted a video at You Tube in which she displays her prowess shooting a handgun at a firing range.  [Footnote: how great must Bay’s job be?  This stuff never happens to Ang Lee.]  Ms. Montag is not likely to get the role, although she would’ve been perfect for Andy Sidaris’ films.  WE WILL CONTINUE TO WATCH THIS STORY CLOSELY …

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

[UPDATE: Govindini’s seen Sex and the City 2, and will be reviewing it shortly – with details of the controversy.]

The European Twilight

Thematics of emptiness: on the set of "The International."

By David Ross. I believe that we are witnessing Europe in its death convulsion. I have in mind Europe’s economic situation, which is worse than ours insofar as there’s no pro-growth, free-market, small-government solution waiting in the wings – but even more I have in mind its spiritual situation. Vastly admiring Children of Men (one of the most moving books I’ve ever read), I’ve been reading some of P.D. James’ mystery fiction. She brilliantly evokes the symptoms of spiritual decay: empty churches, childless couples, bureaucracies people dislike but nonetheless accept as faits accomplis, monuments and traditions that lurk as depressing wraiths of former glory. While living in the UK from 1996 to 2000, I remember picking up on this funereal aura and finding it very unfamiliar and unaccountable. Americans are simply not used to thinking of themselves as occupying the dying embers of history.

James, however, is detached from this dynamic: she observes it without embodying it and understands it only in terms of its external manifestations. She is like H.G. Wells’ Victorian time traveler, puzzled and appalled but in no position to philosophize the finer points of the situation she encounters. In his unnerving novel Elementary Particles (titled Atomised in the UK), Michel Houellebecq provides a full theory. In his historical scheme, the rational impulse arose as a kind of mutation in the cultural DNA of the West; rationalism promulgated scientific materialism; scientific materialism dismantled the structure of religious faith and negated all systems of meaning that transcend the self; the spiritual vacuum was filled by – could only have been filled by – an ultimately unsatisfactory and self-destructive hedonism and social atomism. If this scheme is familiar to the point of being trite, Houellebecq has a subtle feel for the texture of this reality (its brittle intellectualism, its flatness of affect) and a rigorous, dark instinct for the equivalency of all actions once they have been drained of anything except physical meaning. He is also particularly good at demonstrating how his philosophical premises play out in the individual case.

Juliette Binoche in "Cache."

Fancying itself on the cutting edge, film has institutionalized the post-modern manner, but its dabbling in glass and chrome set design, in the spectra of blue-grey, in fractured narrative, is usually nothing more than window dressing. Tom Tykwer’s The International (2009) is typical: a bland thriller involving the usual corporate conspiracy dressed up as post-modern statement. Far more to the point is Michael Haneke’s Caché (English title Hidden, 2005), in which a French literary pundit (on television, of course) suddenly begins to receive cryptically threatening letters and surveillance video of his own house. The film is an intricate cultural puzzle, but its most basic comprehension is that the post-modern bourgeoisie is resourceless to defend or even justify its existence – and that history, far from having ended, increasingly threatens the equilibrium of Europe’s culture of weakness and indulgence.


The New Battle for Hearts and Minds Series

[Editor’s note: the trailer above contains strong language and scenes of battlefield violence.  Viewer discretion advised.]

By Jason Apuzzo. The trailer above is for a forthcoming on-line documentary series by independent filmmaker Danfung Dennis called Battle for Hearts and Minds.  On July 2nd, 2009, four thousand US Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade launched a major helicopter assault into a Taliban stronghold in the Helmand River Valley in southern Afghanistan in order to break a military stalemate reached with the Taliban.  Dennis was embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Company, as they were dropped 18 km behind enemy lines.

The series focuses on the sometimes contradictory roles played by the Marines as both warriors and statesmen in their effort to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the Afghan people.

Based on the trailer, the series looks like it will be intense and compelling – and we look forward to its debut.  You can read an interview with Dennis about his experiences with Echo Company here.  In the interview Dennis goes to great lengths to describe how the Marines do everything possible to distinguish between friend and foe in Afghanistan in order to avoid civilian casualties – often a very difficult task when the enemy hides among civilians.

We are, as most people are aware, sorely lacking in good war reporting these days – i.e., reporting that lacks a political agenda, but also that captures the complexity of the situation we’re facing.  I’m hoping this series gets some attention.  From a photographic  standpoint the series certainly looks extraordinary.  Dennis shot the footage with a custom built rig using a Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70 f/2.8 L lens, Sennheiser ME-66 and G2 wireless system, Singh-Ray variable ND filter, and Beachtek 2XAs mounted on a Glidecam 2000 HD with custom made aluminum ‘wings.’

You can find out more information about the series here.  Feel free to also follow Danfung Dennis on Twitter, or visit the Facebook page for The Battle for Hearts and Minds.

Hollywood + Indie Round-up, 5/26

Damp white people playing Persians.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Atlas Shrugged has a shoot date, but no cast.  Ayn Rand suddenly hot in Obama era.  The question is: can a Dagny Taggart franchise compete with The Green Lantern?  Only the free market will tell.

• New rumor has Tarantino interested in Dracula project.  Not enough fake blood in Hollywood for that one.

• Lewinsky scene cut from new movie about Clinton.  That’s what unrated DVD extras are for.

• HuffPo asks why Last Airbender and Prince of Persia have whitewashed, non-ethnic casts.  So nice of them to notice.  I used to worry about this stuff more until James Cameron stopped casting humans, altogether.

• Washington Post columnist compares Tony Stark to Jack Abramoff.  Which is basically why nobody reads The Washington Post.

• Six new superhero flicks to come out over summers 2011-2012: Captain America, Green Lantern, Thor, Spider-Man reboot, Batman 3, The Avengers … have we had enough of this stuff yet?  Instead of a ‘superhero,’ how about just one (1) movie about an average soldier fighting terrorists in Afghanistan.  Just one.

• AND IN MORE SERIOUS NEWS … The SilverDocs fest announced its lineup today.  Among the most interesting entries is the documentary Beyond This Place (see the trailer), which – picking up on the theme mentioned below in Govindini’s piece on Happiness Runs – is another film that takes a harsh look at the legacy of the 60’s-hippie culture.

• More details coming out now in The New York Times about Jafar Panahi’s release.  His bail was apparently (the equivalent of) $200,000.

• There’s a new Indian movie out about the Mumbai terror attacks called 26/11.  We’ll keep an eye out for that one …

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood (and independent cinema) …

Happy Birthday Duke

Big Duke.

By Jason Apuzzo. Today is John Wayne’s birthday, and we would be most remiss if we didn’t remember The Duke for a just a few moments on his big day.  John Wayne was born 103 years ago today in the small town of Winterset, Iowa.  He went on to become the most enduring, popular movie star in history and an icon of American culture worldwide.

Several years ago Govindini and I had the pleasure of meeting the Duke’s family at a screening of the newly restored, 3-D version of Hondo.  They’re delightful people and are doing a wonderful job of preserving the Duke’s legacy for future generations – we wish them the very best, and congratulations to them on this day.

As I mentioned in a Classic Movie Update post from a few days ago, there’s a lot of Duke news to report:

• There’s a 50th anniversary benefit screening of The Alamo this week at John Wayne’s birthplace, with Wayne’s daughter Aissa in attendance.  The benefit event, a fundraiser for the John Wayne Birthplace Museum and Learning Center, takes place over 2 days – May 28th and 29th.  Wayne directed The Alamo himself (with spot 2nd unit direction from John Ford) – a huge, sprawling and satisfying epic, featuring an extraordinary musical score by Dmitri Tiomkin – and The Duke considered it his most important film.  Wayne considered the film a parable of America’s place in the world as the lone outpost of freedom.  The Alamo famously went up against Kirk Douglas’ left-leaning Spartacus at the 1960 Academy Awards.  If you’re anywhere near Wayne’s birthplace of Winterset, Iowa, you should certainly catch this wonderful-looking event – and feel free to purchase your own copy of The Alamo in the LFM Store below.

• In related news, The Criterion Collection has just put out a new, restored version of the John Wayne/John Ford Classic Stagecoach on DVD and Blu-Ray.  You can buy this version in the LFM store above.

• Since I’m in the mood for it, here’s my list of Duke Wayne’s Top 5 films, all available in the LFM store above:

  1. The Searchers
  2. Stagecoach
  3. Red River
  4. Hondo (particularly in 3-D)
  5. The Alamo