The 64-65 World’s Fair marks the crossing of a cultural Rubicon. In 1965 DuPont Corporation sponsored an exhibit called the “Wonderful World of Chemistry”, featuring a musical with a song called “The Happy Plastic Family”. Two years later, in 1967 the movie “The Graduate” was released, with the famous exchange: I just want to [...]
I was prepared to love “Where’s Poppa”, it features the nexus of Normal Lear sitcom character actors who, when I was growing up, felt like extended members of my raisenette-sized broken nuclear family. How fun it would be to see censor-free Barnard Hughes, Vincent Gardenia, Ron Liebman, Rob Reiner, and a pre-SNL Garret Morris. But [...]
1968-born director Brett Morgan makes two excellent choices in creating “Chicago 10″: to avoid the use of 60′s songs in the soundtrack, and to employ a fluid style of animation for much of the picture. Ultimately though he proves himself to be unwilling to grapple with the complexities and emotional underpinnings of the events of [...]
(photo from K. Silam Mohammad’s lostintheframe.blogspot.com) “The Pawnbroker” stars Rod Steiger as a Holocaust survivor who becomes a pawnbroker in Spanish Harlem in the early-60′s. This places the action 20 years out from WWII, roughly the same time that has passed since the first Desert Storm — not a long time. It must have been [...]
A charming time-capsule starring another charismatic but forgotten actor, Dane Clark (not the execrable Dane Cook), alongside a young Sidney Poitier, “Go Man Go!” features a bebop score by Slim Galliard, who was a favorite of Jack Kerouac. I wonder what the connection with “On the Road” is — I remember the phrase “Go Man [...]
I’ve recently run into several mid-30′s, culturally hyperliterate NYC women who, when asked if they know who Charles Nelson Reilly is, respond with a blank stare. Although the Krapmeister is no spring chicken, this is making me feel Really Old, it’s putting me into Ian McKellan in “Gods and Monsters” territory. CNR was a gem, [...]
Ali McGraw is so appealing in Love Story. Ryan O’Neal too. The movie is overwrought but it’s truly character-driven. Ali McGraw looks like an ex of mine, and the deathbed scenes reminded me of my mom’s recent passing so I suppose the experience was preloaded. I found myself feeling that slightly painful feeling of falling [...]
I just saw William Wellman’s “Lost Boys of the Road”[correction:"Wild Boys of the Road", ed.], a 1933 film about Depression era kids leaving home and jumping freight trains. Frankie Darro stars and is GREAT. What a natural, I don’t know why he didn’t become a big star. He has an ability to convey honesty and [...]
There is a whole crop of self-satisfied sell-out former genius baby-boomer actors, comedians and musicians who you must forcefully hate now because soon they will be too old to hate, it will be unseemly. Many are former comedians, which I attribute to the greater fall from grace by the “truth-teller”. The list includes: Steve Martin [...]
If I walk around with a t-shirt that says “main character” will I be protected from harm? Clint Eastwood, as Pauline Kael said, only has one expression, but he does that expression really well. Does no one else notice the similarity between Clint Eastwood and Hugh Jackman? Both gracile action stars who bulk up to [...]