by Bob Martin | Dec 27, 2012 | Actors, Art, Concerts, Directors, dvd, Exhibits, Film, Movies, music, Writing and Speaking
Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx
Quentin Tarantino, the over hyper creative genius, and his new film Django Unchained flirts with mastery. The film is maybe 15 min too long but its close enough(more about the 15 min later). If you’ve seen a ton of movies in your life, you will find a reference to just about every one of them in Django Unchained, that’s what Tarantino does, except in this one “The Guys with the White Hats” loses out. Directors like Sergio Leone, Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens, Tim Burton and many more have contributed unknowingly to this creative effort and again this is no knock on Tarantino’s creative talents, it is his creative talent in using themes we are all familiar with and in some cases turning them upside down that makes us laugh and maybe even think.
The film makes no pretense that the story of Django is based on anything remotely true and yet still is able to paint an ugly picture about this country’s past. The movie is often hilarious, heart breaking (for some of us) and outrageous. Tarantino has created an African America Super Hero who rides a horse that mimics Trigger and thus slaps down the fable of “Guys with White Hats” being the good guys. There is room here for a sequel(s), the son of Django Part 2.
The movie is gory, so if you find vampires, Bruce Willis, Jason Bourne or Bambi disturbing you should avoid Django and not see it. The dialogue at times is that of two 9 year old inner city kids acting out scenes from a movie, with a child’s emphasis on vulgarity. As promised, the wasted 15 min: Cutting the number of times the N-word is used in half to about 70 would make the film shorter giving Tarantino his masterpiece. Spoiler alert, no other movie that I’ve ever seen has approached the subject of Black Slavers (Blacks who enslaved other Blacks) and while its not gone into in great depth it has not been swept under the rug either and I am not sure how open Black America is to this fact. In addition Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) is an important and complex character in the film, similar to, but a more repulsive, Colonel Nicholson (Bridge on the River Kwai) who are both blinded to their own culpability.
Django Unchained is enormously entertaining and not a source for cultural or political debate and yet people will feel a need to see it as some referendum about current, past or future events. What can be debated is that Tarantino got to do a film that no African American director would be allowed to do, and that should be debated (and not with me). Django is a movie, just like Les Miserables, Jack Reacher, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are all just movies. Django just happens to be really good.
- Django Unchained: A love Story (visionarywateringhole.wordpress.com)
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- Django Unchained is a heroic love story
- http://sonofbaldwin.tumblr.com/post/37790755920/to-be-unchained
by Sandy | Jan 19, 2012 | Blogroll, Cable, dvd, TV
“Luther” is the main character in a fascinating TV series of the same name portrayed by the lovely Idris Elba. This excellent BBC crime drama follows detective John Luther as he figures out who did what to whom and maybe why. Evidently, I am not alone in my feelings about this show because the intense and talented Mr. Elba won a Golden Globe, (lead actor in a drama series) this past weekend. To celebrate, BBC America (BBCA) has stopped the presses and reprogrammed its schedule so that the TV show’s multitude of fans will be treated to a “Luther” marathon on Sunday January, 22, 2012. Yay! The “Luther” feast begins at 11AM EST. See ya there 😆 
There have only been 2 seasons – 6 episodes in #1 and 4 episodes in #2. (Both are available on DVD.)
by Sandy | Oct 20, 2011 | Art, Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, dvd, Museums
A few years ago, I watched an entertaining documentary called “Herb & Dorothy” as part of the PBS “Independent Lens” series. I just noticed that its now on DVD!
Herb & Dorothy Vogel collected art – it was their passion. These 2 acquired so many canvases and sculptures that they ran out of room in their NYC apartment. Not only was there no more wall space, but there was no room under the bed, in the bath room or in the closets.
From the 1960s through the 1990s, they collected over 4,000 items, even though as government workers they didn’t have lots of money to buy. They loved art and artists, found painters and sculptors before they became famous (and expensive) and bought what they liked. Eventually the collection was moved to a gallery at the National Museum of Art in Washington, DC with a speculated worth of millions. Is this what “having an eye” means?
Herb & Dorothy Vogel- glad I met them.
(BTW: The “Herb & Dorothy” DVD, directed by Megumi Sasaki, was released at the end of December 2009)
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by Sandy | Oct 1, 2011 | Actors, Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Dance, Dancers, dvd, Film, Movies
If you like the theater and/or you dance sing, act – you know about the audition process and how nerve wracking it can be.
“Every Little Step” is a very entertaining documentary about that very same weeding out process – whittling from thousands, down to the very few special people who were chosen for the final tryouts to be in the 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line”. This legendary 1975 Broadway musical about dancers and their lives was conceived and directed by the late Michael Bennett. (Although in order to make the final cut, these young hopefuls had to be triple threat material – dancer/singer/actor.)
The film gets the viewer involved and invested early on so that you start to root for them all to win the few prized spots in the show.Their passion and hard work is awe inspiring.These performers love what they do regardless of the disappointments. As one young lady said, “If you don’t have something to ‘fall back on’ you won’t fall back – you just keep going.”
“Every Little Step” – Excellent!
“What I did For Love” (by Marvin Hamlisch, Edward Lawrence Kleban):
“Kiss the day goodbye
Point me t’ward tomorrow
We did what we had to do.
Won’t forget, can’t regret
What I did for love…”
by Sandy | Sep 21, 2011 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Books, dvd, Film, Movies
I kept noticing this “Tattoo” book that stayed on the Bay Area paperback best seller list last year forever. I got curiouser and curiouser. Rather than read it, I cheated and watched “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” on DVD first and then bought the books – yes, plural. I was so hooked on the main characters and their adventures that reading the whole trilogy by Swedish writer Stieg Larson was the only option. I had such a great time! 
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
The books are cleverly dense with detail, suspense, intrigue and double dealing. The screen writer was selective in what was included in the 3 subsequent movies, but they are well done (I think “Tattoo” was the best). I love a mystery – who disappeared, who was betrayed, who covered up. The 2 main characters, fearless, antisocial “Lisbeth Salander”, fiercely brought to life by Noomi Rapace and investigative journalist “Michael Blomkvist”, played by Michael Nyqvist, were great, but I must say that everyone was. Directed by Niels Arden Oplev, they did a super job.
The action takes place in Sweden – I marvel at the similarities and the differences to American life. A conspiracy is a conspiracy, politics is politics, muckraking is muckraking regardless of the language. The methods to uncover evil machinations are now global with the blanket use of the internet. Hacking has never seemed so exciting. A warming – some scenes are violent, but, they do give insight as to why our “Girl” behaves as she does.
Of course I’m sorry Mr. Larson passed away in 2004, especially since after reading the final book and watching the DVD (“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” ), I got the distinct impression that our non-heroine/heroine, Ms Salander, was not finished – there was more to do, more to reveal and dig up, more people to disturb. Sigh… (Hope that didn’t sound too callous?)
I don’t know why, but there is an American remake due out this Fall – David Fincher as Director (He did Social Network), David Craig (the most recent actor to play James Bond) and relative newcomer Rooney Mara as the tattooed girl. It better be good!
by Sandy | Aug 13, 2011 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, dvd, Film
French film, A Prophet (Un Prophète, 2009) directed by Jacques Audiard struck me as a cautionary tale for wayward youth. It details the experiences of 19 year old Malik (Tahar Rahim) as he serves his 8 year prison sentence for refusing to cooperate with police.
A product of juvenile detention facilities, incarceration in an adult prison matures him, not in the way usually meant. Instead of rehabilitation, “learning his lesson” while repaying his debt to society, etc., prison teaches him questionable survival skills and he toughens. What he learns in prison far surpasses what he could have learned on the streets.
Surviving alone may work on the outside, but in captivity, being part of a group is vital, and being the top dog in that group is prime, doing whatever it takes to get there. Malik adapts to the inhumanity that surrounds him and prospers.
You get drawn into the story and after awhile, you start to root for this young man and want him to rise above somehow. Which perhaps is a testament to both the acting and writing because Malik does some evil stuff, but you still want him alive and freed after his 8 years. (It’s not so much that you want him to “win”- but you want him to survive, to live long enough to discover another way of being in the world.)
But, what lingering effects do violent actions and experiences have on a kid? Are they difficult to erase like tattoos? Is he branded forever? I don’t know.
Fascinating movie.
BTW: Un Prophète (2009) won the Grand Prize at Cannes Festival, 2009
