Category Archives: film

Lame Adventure 370: People, People Who Need Barbra …

Posted on April 24, 2013 | 99 Comments
Banner outside Avery Fisher Hall.

Banner outside Avery Fisher Hall.

Are the luckiest people in the world — if they have a friend like Milton. The Film Society of Lincoln Center held their 40th annual Chaplin Award fundraising gala in Avery Fisher Hall on Monday night. This year the honoree was Barbra Streisand. Milton is a HUGE Barbra fan, and I am, too. Both of us have been fans since the 60s when he was a boy in Nebraska and I, a girl in San Francisco, decades before we were destined to join forces in 21st century New York City.

It was a black tie affair with Liza Minnelli, Wynton Marsalis and Tony Bennett performing. The speakers included Michael Douglas, Catherine Deneuve, Pierce Brosnan, Blythe Danner, Ben Stiller and, oh yeah, Bill Clinton was presenting the award to Barbra. With such a superstar honoree and that cast of stellar supporting players, the price of admission cost $200 to $500. Seats at the post-show dinner ranged from $1,500 a ticket to $100,000 a table. On my meager alms, no way could I attend. Milton was resigned to going solo and that bothered him.

A lot.

He is a long-time Film Society member. In March, he purchased his Barbra ticket the second they went on sale to members — members get first crack before the general public. He selected Tier 1, Box 3, seat 5. His seat was close to the stage, directly across from Barbra. The event sold out quickly. It generated $2 million for the Film Society, a million dollars more than any other Chaplin gala honoree. I suggested to Milton:

Me: Maybe they should have held it in Yankee Stadium.

Milton: For those prices, she’d have to sing.

As the honoree, Barbra’s job was to appear, soak up the adulation, accept her award from the 42nd president of the United States and give an acceptance speech. Nice work if you have the resume that rates it.

Last Thursday, something extraordinary happened. The Film Society announced that they were releasing a block of $25 partial view seats in Tier 3. Milton happens to know the layout of Avery Fisher Hall about as well as his own living room. For example, he can point out exactly where he and his mother sat when they saw Sarah Vaughn perform there in 1977. Milton scrutinized the cheap seats and he knew that Tier 3’s, Box 3, seat 15, would not only rock, but it was not partial view. In fact, this was the absolute best nosebleed seat in the house for it was in the box two tiers above his. He pounced and yes, I was there.

The coveted ducat.

The coveted ducat.

Damn fine view.

Damn fine view.

Nerd inside with collector's item Playbill.

Lucky nerd inside with collector’s item Playbill.

I was sitting directly across from Barbra’s box, too. From my bird’s eye view, I could even see where Hillary Clinton was sitting — center orchestra row six on the aisle next to a bald guy that looked a lot like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. I doubted that was who he was. Other celebrities that I thought I recognized were Bill and Melinda Gates. They weren’t sitting in Tier 3. I saw them riding up the escalator as we were people watching in the lobby.

No bland muzak here; guests were serenaded by this fine harpist.

No bland muzak here; guests were entertained by this fine harpist.

The event was bursting with the Swells of New York. Milton being Milton, he did have some qualms with the way some of the attendees were attired, especially the young woman in the short hot pink sheath with tall black boots.

Milton: Hideous!

He did give the two gay guys in matching skinny blue suits with brown dress shoes a pass.

Milton: They’re making a statement.

Me: Like what, they’re both colorblind?

We both agreed that this gent's red patent leather tassled loafers were great.

We agreed that this sockless gent’s red patent leather tasseled loafers were great.

The overall crowd was quite gay or as Milton put it:

Milton: I see a lot of men with their mothers.

There was a significant lesbian turnout, too.

The entertainment, as expected, was top notch. Liza Minnelli took to the stage first. Even though she now has hip problems and was supposed to perform while seated, she forced herself to stand and she belted her heart out.

Liza Minnelli

Liza Minnelli

Wynton Marsalis serenaded Barbra on his trumpet with Hello Dolly and 87-year-old Alan Bergman, who co-wrote the lyrics to The Way We Were with his wife, Marilyn, sang a very poignant version of that song to her. He wrote some new lyrics celebrating The Way You Are.

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis

Presenters included some of her leading men. Omar Sharif and Robert Redford appeared on a screen in previously taped tributes. Kris Kristofferson, her co-star in A Star is Born was there. He recounted that “the bathtub scene” with her was “a lot of fun”. George Segal who starred opposite her in The Owl and the Pussycat, joked that he did not know what was more improbable in that film; his role as a failed writer or hers as a failed hooker. Amy Irving, who starred with Barbra in her directorial debut, Yentl, recalled that their kissing scene was, “The best girl on girl action a girl could hope for.” Meow!

Ben Stiller, who referred to himself as Barbra’s “cinematic son” — she played Mother Focker to his Greg Focker, in some of the Fockers comedies, introduced Bill Clinton. Clinton declared that every great person is driven, “But if that person has massive talent, big brains and a bigger heart, you want to go along for the ride.”

Barbra at lectern; Bill Clinton sitting behind her.

Barbra at lectern; Bill Clinton sitting behind her.

Barbra delivered an eloquent acceptance speech. She recounted tales from her youth, how she longed to be an actress who would perform the classics, but “no one wanted a 15-year-old Medea.” When she was 16, she had to perform a love scene opposite a guy she felt no attraction to. What she did to make the scene work was place a piece of chocolate cake behind him so she could look longingly at it.  She admitted, “Thank God I was given a good singing voice.”  She knew that her vocal gift was the key that opened the doors to her acting, screenwriting, producing and directing careers or, as she called herself, “a hyphenate.”  As she closed her remarks, she mentioned memories and added, “I feel like I should sing a song or something.” The audience went wild, hoping to hear her rendition of The Way We Were, but she quickly waved away that idea.

Former President Clinton returned to the lectern and delivered one more introduction. This was for Tony Bennett. He closed the event by singing Smile. Charlie Chaplin wrote the music to that song which was first heard in the film, Modern Times. Thanks to Chaplin’s contributions to film, this prestigious honor was started in 1972. He was the first recipient.

Barbra in center on stage at event's close.

Barbra in center on stage at event’s close.

Afterward, I joined Milton outside. We agreed that we had just witnessed 90 minutes of bliss.

Milton: I’m so glad we live in New York!

Me: I’m so glad I know you!

Barbra Streisand, 71 years old today and she still has it. (Invision — Photo by Charles Sykes)

Barbra Streisand, 71 years old today and she still has it going on. (Invision — Photo by Charles Sykes)

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Lame Adventure 349: Farewell 2012 New York Film Festival

Posted on October 16, 2012 | 41 Comments

Sunday night the New York Film Festival closed with several screenings of Flight starring Denzel Washington.  He is one of my favorite actors, but I refuse to shell out $20 for a film opening nationwide November 2nd that I can see at my local multiplex before noon for seven clams.  Milton did snag a ticket, but if he thought that Flight was the greatest movie ever made, he is in no hurry to sing its praises to me.  I am not feeling any suspense as I await his verdict.  It is very likely that when I see him this evening, any discussion of Flight might well be superseded by something as mundane as someone in his office misplacing the precious pizza cutter that he personally guards.

Milton and I did see two more films together – a hit and a miss.  The miss was The Last Time I Saw Macao.  We, along with our fellow audience members attending this sold out screening, chose to see this film because we were so impressed with the Portuguese director, João Pedro Rodrigues’ previous film that played the NYFF in 2009, To Die Like a Man.  That earlier film was a compelling story about a drag queen in Portugal living her life as a woman whose estranged son in the military re-enters the picture.  If this film sounds anything like La Cage aux Folles, that’s unintentional for it’s very different and ends tragically, no heartfelt singing of I Am What I Am here.

For The Last Time I Saw Macao Rodrigues collaborated with João Rui Guerra da Mata, a fellow filmmaker of Portuguese descent that was raised in Macao, a former Portuguese colony in China.

João Rui Guerra da Mata (left), João Pedro Rodrigues, and NYFF moderator Melissa Anderson.

The filmmakers original intent was to shoot a documentary about how much Macao had changed since Guerra de Mata lived there thirty years ago.  Instead, they turned it into a story with film noir-type elements about a man the audience never sees searching for an unseen friend in some sort of trouble with unseen bad guys.  If that last sentence confused you, exalt in the fact that you were not attending that screening.

The dialogue is voiceover of Guerra da Mata reading his memoir about Macao and Rodrigues reading something else I was frankly too bored to recall, but they revealed afterward that they wrote the script after they shot the film.

It showed.  We suffered.

The action is all on the soundtrack while the images are focused on various scenery including numerous stray dogs and cats, building windows, a dead rat in the gutter, a shoe, a cloth-covered bird cage, etc.  While watching these images the viewer hears the action occurring off screen throughout the entirety of the film.  Sometimes the audience hears someone terrified pleading for her life followed with the sound of a loud splash, sometimes the audience hears gunshots, sometimes there’s a fantastically loud rumble as if Armageddon is approaching.  As the ending credits rolled Milton declared:

Milton: I could have made that on my fuckin’ iPhone!

Milton’s iPhone with screensaver featuring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in “Gilda”.

Afterward during the q&a, where much yawning was emanating all around us, one of the audience members volunteered:

Audience Member: I really didn’t understand who was being killed.

The filmmakers explained that they had made “an abstract film noir”:

Filmmakers: Some people get killed.  Some people survive.  Some people turn into animals.

Milton groaned deeply.  Afterward, he told me that the woman sitting next to him didn’t know whether to laugh or sleep.  He found her struggle infinitely more interesting than what was taking place onscreen.  He issued me a dictate:

Milton: If you write about this in your blog, don’t raise it a notch and call it crap!

The next day we saw No, a vastly more entertaining political thriller directed by Pablo Larraín set in Chile in 1988 when the Pinochet government announced they would hold a vote to get the people’s permission to maintain control.  The opposition was allowed 15 minutes of broadcast time each day for four weeks leading to voting day to build a case urging the citizens to vote no.  A clever  ad man played by Gael García Bernal oversees the No campaign.  Larraín intercut many of the actual campaign spots that were broadcast in 1988 within his film which he shot on U-matic videotape, the same format used in that era.  Compared to The Last Time I Saw Macao, No received our vote for the greatest movie ever made.

Pablo Larraín sitting between Antonia Zegers (left) and NYFF moderator Amy Taubin (right).

As Milton and I were leaving Alice Tully Hall for the last time until we return to the New York Film Festival in 2013 he announced:

Milton: This was a lot of fun even though I hated most of the films.

For anyone that would like to know what are Milton’s 100 personal favorite films click here.

Milton’s iPhone gotcha shot of Pablo Larraín.

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Lame Adventure 347: New York Film Festival 2012

Posted on October 9, 2012 | 112 Comments

The New York Film Festival is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.  Milton and I have been there every day since Saturday, even though we’ve only seen three films thus far.  Milton, who has been a longtime member of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, has not been wild about the location of our seats.  For many screenings we seem to be sitting in the nosebleeds.

Guy playing the piano with his dog outside Alice Tully Hall on Saturday.

The first film we saw was Amour, written and directed by one of our favorite filmmakers working today, Michael Haneke.  He won the Palme D’Or at Cannes for this very unsentimental story set in Paris about Georges and Anne, a longtime married couple coping with the ravages of old age after one suffers a stroke and the other is the caregiver. The octogenarian actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, both give extraordinary performances. Veteran actress Isabelle Huppert plays Eva, their middle-aged daughter that resides in London, who feels increasingly frustrated and helpless every time she visits her parents.  Although this film is depressing,  Haneke is such a talented filmmaker, it is riveting and packed with brilliant moments including a chilling nightmare sequence that elicited gasps from the audience.  Of course the real horror is the physical decline that likely awaits many of us as we approach our own mortality.   Yee ha.

Paparazzo Milton sees Michael Haneke milling around the Alice Tully Hall lobby pre-screening of “Amour”.

We noticed that our audience was full of senior citizens including a woman that inched toward her seat with half the energy of a sleeping snail before she settled in front of us.  All the while her friend repeatedly bleated in a thick New York accent, “Fran!  Over here, Fran!  Fran, over here!”  This agitated Milton who kept muttering fluent monosyllabic. There was also quite a lot of loud phlegmy coughing around us prompting him to mutter:

Milton:  God, we’re seeing this in a tuberculosis ward.

Fortunately, the film was excellent, even though we were sitting in row U.

The next day we had tickets to Beyond the Hills, written and directed by the Romanian filmmaker Christian Mungiu.

Milton’s iPhone gotcha shot of Christian Mungiu mingling with fans post “Beyond the Hills” screening.

We’re sitting in row T and Milton is fixated on the two and a half hour running time:

Milton:  This better be good.

I reminded Milton about the Bela Tarr screening we attended last year for The Turin Horse, a film about the futility of existence as illustrated through an ill work horse and two peasants eating potatoes. It was 146 minutes long – but we both loved it.

Beyond the Hills, is a story set in the present about two 25-year-old women that were best friends in a Romanian orphanage after they were abandoned at a very young age by their parents.  One woman is essentially an atheist, but the other has joined a monastery.  When they were in the orphanage, the relationship was sexual.  The secular woman, after working as a waitress in Germany, misses her friend terribly, so she visits her in the monastery.  She wants to rekindle what they had before but the religious woman has decided to devote her life to God.  Life in the monastery provides her with security and a sense of home. The besotted secular friend, grows increasingly unhinged.  The members of the monastery, a priest and several nuns, resort to a barbaric religious ritual to control the situation.  It ends miserably.

Milton declared this film:

Milton: Brokeback Mountain meets The Exorcist.

Milton iPhone gotcha shot of Anjelica Huston trying to slip into Alice Tully Hall through a side door.

On Monday night Milton and I had tickets to a film written and directed by Sally Potter called Ginger and Rosa.  We have third row balcony seats, seats he despises because they’re located a time zone away from the screen.

Ginger and Rosa is a pretentious 89-minute film with a terrific classic jazz soundtrack that seemed to run five hours as I drifted in and out of consciousness.  The story is set in 1962 England during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a time when 17-year-old Ginger, a budding radical suffering extreme anxiety about a potential nuclear holocaust, worships her best friend, Rosa, a full fledged slut, who sleeps with Ginger’s cad of a father.  The worship ends, the world continues and Ginger writes a poem where she forgives Rosa.  Milton delivered a one-word review:

Milton: Awful.

I would have almost preferred watching a black screen with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie playing on the audiotrack.

Afterward he revised it when he assessed the talent of the 63-year-old filmmaker, Sally Potter:

Milton: She’s too old to be making a film this bad.

Then, he revised his assessment a third time; he was impressed with Elle Fanning’s performance as Ginger:

Milton:  I don’t know what’s in the water those Fanning sisters drink, but they all have talent.  Too bad they can’t find a filmmaker that knows what to do with them.

Elle Fanning sitting in the center during post “Ginger and Rosa” screening q&a. Photo taken from third row balcony seat i.e., the moon.

He added authoritatively:

Milton:  This was so bad it made Beyond the Hills seem like Gone with the Wind.

Red carpet.

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Lame Adventure 333: A Brief History of Hollow

Posted on August 20, 2012 | 88 Comments

In July my friend and fellow blogger up in Montreal, Le Clown, published a post that resonated with me that he magnificently titled, “FTW LOL [Insert Emoticon]”.

Dad Le Clown going incognito wearing his daughter, Tiny Geek, as a fashion accessory. Paper glasses optional.

For anyone that’s just emerged from a twenty-year hiatus trapped near the earth’s core that may be unfamiliar with Internet slang, FTW can mean For The Win or Fuck The World or Free The Whales or What The Fuck backwards.  LOL means Laughing Out Loud or Lots Of Laughs or Lots Of Love or Lick Oggleby’s Lederhosen (to an imbecile).  Knowing Le Clown as well as I do, I don’t think his post’s title was shorthand for “For The Win Lots Of Love [Insert Emoticon]”.

Le Clown trying to sleep off the horror of Internet slang.

His post was a concise and witty rant about foregoing emoticons and simply owning what it is that one is trying to communicate.

Le Clown’s back yard. The horror of lawn mowing.

If you’re saying, “Fuck The World”, it’s ridiculous to add “Laugh Out Loud” and a Smiley Face emoticon.  We get it; you’re feeling like one of life’s losers.  Own it.

In general, I loathe emoticons. I am well enough equipped to mangle the English language on my own without the addition of shallow symbols or acronyms, but I do revert to Internet shortcuts when writing texts.  In my overall writing, I make a conscious effort to use these abbreviations sparingly.  I would sooner sever a digit than use slang or emoticons in business email.  I admit that my job as Minister of Tile is the embodiment of a comedy of errors, but I do try to give the illusion of being professional.

Recently at The Grind my computer was rendered inoperable when my hard drive became infected with a nasty virus that took a day to clear.  I spent several hours on the phone with my company’s IT support service.  Never once was I compelled to Laugh Out Loud.

No laughing at this.

After work, I was walking down West Broadway to the Chambers Street subway station en route to The Land of Gin and Tonic.

A happy place.

As I was passing Balloon Saloon, I encountered a giant yellow balloon Smiley.

Smiley.

I emitted a low growl:

Me: There’s the bastard that started this emoticon hysteria!

Smiley:  I’m going to outlive you!  LOL!

You’re a schmuck-ette!

That elicited the one Internet slang term I have had reason to use in daily life.

Me:  WTF?

That does not mean With The Flowers.

Later, I Googled Smiley and learned from Wikipedia that its first known appearance was in 1953 on a poster for a film called Lili starring Leslie Caron. Apparently, it also appeared five years later, on the poster of another Caron vehicle, the multiple Oscar-winning Lerner and Loewe musical, Gigi.  What blew the little that remains of my mind was the first time that Smiley appeared in a film.  This was a drama written and directed by Ingmar Bergman called Port of Call, described in Wikipedia as follows:

“… this 1948 Swedish film deals with adolescent sexuality, promiscuity and abortion in a frank and open way that would have been impossible to portray in Hollywood films of the same period.”

Where Smiley fit in that story, I have no idea.  The Swedish title of the film is Hamnstad, not, to employ a Le Clown-ism, “Hamnstad LOL :) ”.  Knowing the Bergman film canon as well as I do, this Glum face would seem much more appropriate than Smiley.

The Ingmar Bergman-worthy sibling of Smiley.

I purchased that Glum greeting card approximately twenty-five years ago.  I have had so many friends I could have given it to, I regret not purchasing it by the case.

In 1963, a commercial artist named Harvey Ball was paid $45 to create a happy face symbol to raise the morale of employees at a Massachusetts-based insurance company.  In ten minutes he created the yellow Smiley.  Less than ten years later, Smiley exploded when two Phildelphia-based brothers Bernard and Murray Spain used it on novelty items including mugs, bumper stickers, and tee shirts.  If you loathe the phrase, “Have a happy day,” blame Gyula Bogar.  By 1972, a New York-based button manufacturer, NG Slater, produced 50 million happy face buttons.  The population in the US that year was 209,896,021.  If the average US household was comprised of four people (mine was comprised of six that year plus my dog, Mean Streak), there were 52.5 million households. Figure that almost everyone in the country had at least one of those irksome buttons.

“That really makes me smile!”

Yes, when I was thirteen I had one, too.  You could not escape Smiley.  And now forty years later, Smiley continues to thrive on the web.  This vacant symbol and cockroaches will likely survive nuclear war.  I’m not feeling very Lick Oggleby’s Lederhosen about that.

So confusing and all in French! WTF?

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Lame Adventure 331: What a Scream

Posted on August 13, 2012 | 105 Comments

I had a very productive weekend.  I stocked up on paper towels.

Cheap thrills.

I also saw a ridiculously souped-up Mini Cooper.  Clearly the souper-upper wished this was a sports car.

Ridiculous from the rear.

It brought to mind a guy I sometimes see in my neighborhood that walks his cat on a leash.  The humiliated cat slinks along miserable, probably dreading encountering dogs.  Cats are not meant to walk on leashes.  Get a dog if you must scratch the leash itch.  That poor cat should be free to do what all cats do, lounge around and claw the couch.  Back to the Mini Cooper faux sports car, I half-expected it to be an automatic, but it was a stick.

Ridiculous from the front.

I also saw some flowers in a planter that were such a vibrant shade of deep pink.  They were so eye-catching, not that I would be caught dead wearing that color.

Nice in a planter, not nice anywhere on my person.

Turning back the clock to just before quitting time on Friday at The Grind, my sidekick, Greg, asked me:

Greg:  Are you familiar with the Wilhelm Scream?

Me:  Should I be?  Is that the noise my mother emitted when she hatched me?

Greg:  It’s a popular scream from the Warner Brothers sound stock library that’s been used in many films.  There are links to it on YouTube.

Me:  Huh.  I’d like to hear that.

No sooner did I say that than Greg shared the definitive link featuring Wilhelm Screams.  This is a twelve-minute collage of screams that have appeared in films from 1951 to almost the present.  It’s a favorite sound effect of George Lucas’s, and it’s also been used by directors Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino;   Pixar has utilized it in many of their animated films.  It’s familiar wail can also be heard in numerous action and horror movies.  Within the first three minutes of this collage you’ll even hear it in a scene with Judy Garland and James Mason from A Star is Born.  I urge you to click this link, not necessarily to listen to all twelve minutes of Wilhelm screaming in its entirety, like I did at my generally pointless leisure (illustrating that this site is not called Lame Adventures for nothing), but simply so you’ll have a better comprehension of just what it is that I’m talking about.

A few other interesting, or semi-interesting, or “oh, please end this painful as paint drying torture” of a discussion about the Wilhelm Scream include the following factoids — it got its name from a character named Wilhelm who appeared in a Western released in 1953 called The Charge at Feather River.  It was also voiced by Sheb Wooley.  To readers of a certain age, and you know who you are, if that name sounds familiar, that’s because he’s the guy that sang the novelty hit from 1958, The Purple People Eater.  That is a song that’s so irritating it could elicit an endless loop of Wilhelm Screams.

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