The Mabee AV Club

The Films of Fritz Lang

2007-10-03T19:20:00.000-06:00

The Man in the Monocle

Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter and occasional film producer, one of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of expressionism. His most famous films are the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and M, made before he moved to the United States. (Wikipedia)

Films:

Fury
PN1997 .F87 1990

M
PN1997.L38 M2 1997

Watch the trailer for Metropolis:

Click here for a filmography.

Books:

Fritz Lang : the nature of the beast / by Patrick McGilligan
PN1998.3.L36 M38 1997

The films of Fritz Lang : allegories of vision and modernity / Tom Gunning
PN1998.3.L36 G86 2000

Fritz Lang / by Lotte H. Eisner ; [translated by Gertrud Mander and edited by David Robinson]
PN1998.A3 L357713 1977

The cinema of Fritz Lang, by Paul M. Jensen
PN1998.A3 L359

Metropolis; a film by Fritz Lang
PN1997 .M436 1973

Aloha, Mr. Hand! (and see YOU next semester)

2007-05-09T23:35:00.000-06:00

Fast Times at Ridgemont High
WU Mabee AV PN1997 .F348 2004

Can there be anything about life in high school, particularly life in a suburban California high school, that the movie-going public hasn't already seen? Well, maybe there can. A little bit of it turns up in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," a jumbled but appealing teen-age comedy with something of a fresh perspective on the subject.

Cameron Crowe, who wrote the screenplay and the book on which it's based, spent a year masquerading as a high school student, making some very funny, believable notes on how his new friends really felt and sounded. Mr. Crowe chose to leave himself out of the resultant book, which didn't hurt it at all; questions about how he could know what had been said in a place like the girls' bathroom were rendered beside the point by the witty tone of his stories and by the ways in which they rang true. Amy Heckerling's film has no chief character either, and in this case it's more of a problem. The movie didn't necessarily need a reporter in it, but it needed a more distinct center than it has.

"Fast Times at Ridgemont High" begins not at high school but at a shopping mall. That's where most of the kids spend their time, and an amazing number of them seem to work in fast-food restaurants. There is Brad (Judge Reinhold), who declares, "I shall serve no fries before their time." There's Brad's sister, Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who complains petulantly to her friend and co-waitress, Linda (Phoebe Cates), "You're the one who told me I was gonna get a boyfriend at the mall." There's Mark (Brian Backer), who pines for Stacy from afar or at least from the movie theater across the way, where he works as an usher. And there's Mark's friend Mike Damone (Robert Romanus), who gives Mark lots of free advice about how to handle women. To demonstrate some of this, Mr. Damone stops at the mall's record store and tries out some of his best lines on a lifesize cardboard cutout of Debbie Harry. He particularly stresses the aphrodisiac qualities of "Led Zeppelin IV."

All these young actors are relaxed, funny and natural. But the movie's real scene stealer is Sean Penn, as a pink-eyed surfer named Jeff Spicoli who wouldn't dream of holding down a job. Spicoli's dream is to describe surfing to a television interviewer as "a way of looking at that wave and saying 'Hey, Bud, let's party.'" Spicoli thinks nothing of ordering a pizza delivered to his history classroom, though his teacher, Mr. Hand, doesn't take it that easily. Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) is so bothered by Spicoli's truancy that he sends other students out to catch him in the hallways. "You're wrong," yells Spicoli confusedly after he's been lured into the classroom on one such occasion. "There's no birthday party for me in here!"

When the movie captures the awful sound of a high school band imitating the Eagles at a prom or the spectacle of two fast-food workers discussing their companies' secret sauces (one is ketchup plus mayonnaise, the other is Russian dressing), it's onto something that is both amusing and real. And Miss Heckerling sounds this note often enough to make her film both worthwhile and disappointing simultaneously. There's a lot to make her film likable, but not much to hold it together.

Mr. Crowe's book, notwithstanding its amiably light tone, has a certain amount of grit; it has its share of deaths, drug problems and other bleak moments, including one young girl's vividly recalled abortion. Miss Heckerling's film, before being cut down to its present R-rated form, reportedly contained that abortion scene and some explicit sexual episodes. Her film can do just as well without them, since most of it is too fluffy and insubstantial to accommodate anything raw. There's evidence here that she was after something other than a cheerful, casually diverting movie, but she hasn't achieved much more.

"Fast Times at Ridgemont High" is quite messily assembled in some places, and there are moments when the director's comic timing is conspicuously off. The music, which ought to be one of the movie's bigger selling points, is for the most part thrown away. Don Henley, Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks, the Go-Go's and various others contribute songs that seem to drift in and out of the movie distractingly instead of helping to propel it along. ~Janet Maslin, The New York Times

Watch the trailer:

Katharine Hepburn Films

2007-05-03T18:54:00.000-06:00

Katharine Hepburn was born 100 years ago on the 12th of May in Hartford, Connecticut. She died in June 2003. Here are a few of the classic films from Mabee Library's collection that Hepburn made during her lifetime.

Adam's Rib
PN1997 .A265 2001

Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin's witty and intelligent script (despite many improbabilities, such as the conflict of interest in having a husband and wife contest the same case, and the plausibility-defying circus-like theatrics that Amanda deploys in the courtroom) propels this funny and barbed courtroom comedy. The legal and gender-fueled debates at the center of the film may seem somewhat antiquated today, but the intelligence and wit that inform much of the film's dialogue are still surprisingly fresh. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn share an onscreen ease and familiarity usually reserved for long-married couples. Ironically -- given that the film is about the legal ramifications of a woman's shooting of her philandering husband -- they had become an extramarital item themselves by the time this film was being made. Judy Holliday gives an unexpectedly affecting performance as the woman wronged, while bug-eyed Tom Ewell is solid as her weasel-like philandering husband. However, David Wayne as the lascivious piano composer/neighbor of the feuding legal eagles gives the most impressive supporting performance. His best line? "Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers." Technically, the film is very conventional. Outside of the opening sequences, in which George Cukor's camera roams the busy streets of rush hour New York, the film has a stage-like feel, with static shots of the battling spouses dominating the proceedings. Perhaps Cukor didn't want to distract us from the real star of the show, the clever and insightful Kanin/Gordon script. ~Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide

The African Queen
PN1997 .A31 1992

Yes, you know that the amusingly juxtaposed boozy sailor (Humphrey Bogart) and missionary's sister (Katharine Hepburn) will eventually see past their opposite-world differences to find love. But getting from A to B has never been so much fun as it is in this John Huston masterpiece. The African Queen is a sterling example of the kind of rollicking adventure that makes classic film enthusiasts pine for the old days. It has it all: action, comedy, and romance that unfold in a perfect synergy of plot, character, and dialogue. The film was deservedly nominated for four key Oscars: for Huston and James Agee's screenplay, for Huston's directing, and for Bogart and Hepburn, though only Bogart won (the only Oscar of his career). Bogie and Hepburn were in the primes of their careers here, and their talent shows. We buy that they grow to love each other, and the actions and incidents that prove their devotion -- Rose jumping into the leech-infested water to help Charlie, for example -- come across with genuine emotion. The only easy point of criticism (a big one for those who like their plots tight) is the ironic nautical coincidence that brings about our heroes' salvation. The beautiful on-location filming in the then-Belgian Congo and British Uganda was legendarily difficult. But, like Charlie and Rose trying to get that boat down the river, Huston and his team never gave up. Filmgoers everywhere should be thankful for that. ~Matthew Doberman, All Movie Guide

Bringing Up Baby
PN1997 .B753 1996

Bringing Up Baby is the quintessential screwball comedy, and one of the crowning comic achievements in the careers of director Howard Hawks and stars Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It may also be one of the defining examples of comedy feature film at its purest and most basic. At the time of its release, it seemed to close out the screwball genre: the portrayals in film inflated and punctured an array of movie (and social) stereotypes in as fine a style had ever been accomplished. The screwball comedy originated in the depths of the Great Depression as a reaction to the despair of everyday life, as well as to the publicized antics of wealthy fops and heiresses who seemed oblivious to the fact that people were literally starving to death. The idle rich were the genre's essential ingredient, from satirical pre-screwball efforts such as Zoltan Korda's Cash (an especially offbeat example since it was made in England) to pioneering Hollywood screwball comedies like Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey. As time passed, however, other targets became acceptable, including intellectual "eggheads" and eccentric members of officialdom. Bringing Up Baby skewers all of them and more -- including over-zealous psychiatrists and blustery, pretentious upper-class stuffed shirts -- hitting the bullseye with each one. Apart from its acting, pacing, and verbal acrobatics (an essential element of any Howard Hawks talking picture), Bringing Up Baby is a masterful achievement precisely because it distills its diverse ingredients down to the characters. The plot, such as it is, deals with mistakes and mistaken identities (right down to heiress Hepburn's pet leopard) but is really about nothing -- absolutely nothing, to paraphrase a standard articulated by Jerry Seinfeld in the 1990s. Even the one main element of the "story" -- the search for a missing dinosaur bone belonging to the museum where Cary Grant's character works -- is such an obvious, ridiculous comic device, a comedic equivalent to Hitchcock's "MacGuffin" concept. The screwball comedy was never quite the same, nor was any filmmaker or cast able to build a film on such slight material so successfully ever again. Indeed, most attempts that followed -- and there were ever fewer as the 1930s gave way to the 1940s -- seemed increasingly more pallid, awkward, and unimpressive. ~Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The Philadelphia Story
PN1997 .P521 1992

We open on Philadelphia socialite C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) as he's being tossed out of his palatial home by his wife, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). Adding insult to injury, Tracy breaks one of C.K.'s precious golf clubs. He gallantly responds by knocking her down on her million-dollar keester. A couple of years after the breakup, Tracy is about to marry George Kittridge (John Howard), a wealthy stuffed shirt whose principal recommendation is that he's not a Philadelphia "mainliner," as C.K. was. Still holding a torch for Tracy, C.K. is galvanized into action when he learns that Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell), the publisher of Spy Magazine, plans to publish an exposé concerning Tracy's philandering father (John Halliday). To keep Kidd from spilling the beans, C.K. agrees to smuggle Spy reporter Macauley Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) into the exclusive Lord-Kittridge wedding ceremony. How could C.K. have foreseen that Connor would fall in love with Tracy, thereby nearly lousing up the nuptials? As it turns out, of course, it is C.K. himself who pulls the "louse-up," reclaiming Tracy as his bride. A consistently bright, bubbly, witty delight, The Philadelphia Story could just as well have been titled "The Revenge of Katharine Hepburn." Having been written off as "box-office poison" in 1938, Hepburn returned to Broadway in a vehicle tailor-made for her talents by playwright Philip Barry. That property, of course, was The Philadelphia Story; and when MGM bought the rights to this sure-fire box-office success, it had to take Hepburn along with the package — and also her veto as to who her producer, director, and co-stars would be. Her strategy paid off: after the film's release, Hepburn was back on top of the Hollywood heap. While she didn't win the Oscar that many thought she richly deserved, the little gold statuette was bestowed upon her co-star Stewart, perhaps as compensation for his non-win for 1939's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Donald Ogden Stewart (no relation to Jimmy) also copped an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Philadelphia Story was remade in 1956 with a Cole Porter musical score as High Society. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Woman of the Year
PN1997 . W598 1997

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn costarred for the first time in the delectable romantic comedy Woman of the Year. Tracy plays New York sportswriter Sam Craig, who becomes incensed at comments about the uselessness of sports made by foreign correspondent Tess Harding (Hepburn). Sam and Tess subsequently use their respective columns to carry on a feud-at least, until they finally meet face to face. After Sam takes Tess to her first baseball game (one of the funniest scenes ever committed to celluloid), the two fall in love. Once married, however, their happiness is threatened by their wildly divergent lifestyles (Sam hadn't intended to spend his honeymoon helping to hide a prominent European refugee from the authorities, nor is Tess prepared for her husband's rowdy sports-oriented pals). When Tess is voted "Woman of the Year", a jealous Sam walks out on her. She endeavors to win him back by cooking him breakfast-with disastrous results. Despite their oil-and-water relationship, Sam and Tess are made for each other, and they're back together for the final fadeout. A hands-down winner at the box office, Woman of the Year earned a "best original screenplay" Oscar for Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin. Nominated for an award was director George Stevens, an RKO contractee brought to MGM at Hepburn's insistence. And need we remind you at this late date of the subsequent lifelong romance between stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn? ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Here are a couple books from the library's collection that Hepburn wrote:

The Making of The African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind
PN1997.A31163 H47 1987

Me: Stories of My Life
PN2287.H45 A3 1991

Jazz Books @ Mabee Library

2007-04-25T19:38:00.000-06:00

The Art of Jazz: Essays on the Nature and Development of Jazz / edited by Martin T. Williams
WU Mabee Stacks ML3561.J3 A7

Beginner's Method for Jazz Improvisation / Adolph Sandole
WU Mabee Stacks MT68 .S35

The Heart of Jazz / William L. Grossman and Jack W. Farrell ; line drawings by Lamartine LeGoullon
WU Mabee Stacks ML3508 .G7

A History of Jazz in America / by Barry Ulanov
WU Mabee Stacks ML3561.J3 U5 1972

Jazz [videorecording] / a film by Ken Burns
WU Mabee A-V ML3506 .J38 2000b

Jazz Overview from Grove Music Online

Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence / André Hodeir
WU Mabee Stacks ML3506 .H6213 1979

The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz / Leonard Feather
WU Mabee Reference ML102.J3 F4 1962

...an excerpt from Jack Kerouac's On the Road (WU Mabee Stacks PS3521.E735 O6)

Great Chicago glowed red before our eyes. We were suddenly on Madison Street among hordes of hobos, some of them sprawled out on the street with their feet on the curb, hundreds of others milling in the doorways of saloons and alleys. "Wup! wup! look sharp for old Dean Moriarty there, he may be in Chicago by accident this year." We let out the hobos on this street and proceeded to downtown Chicago. Screeching trolleys, newsboys, gals cutting by, the smell of fried food and beer in the air, neons winking--"We're in the big town, Sal! Whooee!" First thing to do was park the Cadillac in a good dark spot and wash up and dress for the night. Across the street from the YMCA we found a redbrick alley between buildings, where we stashed the Cadillac with her snout pointed to the street and ready to go, then followed the college boys up to the Y, where they got a room and allowed us to use their facilities for an hour. Dean and I shaved and showered, I dropped my wallet in the hall, Dean found it and was about to sneak it in his shirt when he realized it was ours and was right disappointed. Then we said good-by to those boys, who were glad they'd made it in one piece, and took off to eat in a cafeteria. Old brown Chicago with the strange semi-Eastern, semi-Western types going to work and spitting. Dean stood in the cafeteria rubbing his belly and taking it all in. He wanted to talk to a strange middle-aged colored woman who had come into the cafeteria with a story about how she had no money but she had buns with her and would they give her butter. She came in flapping her hips, was turned down, and went out flipping her butt. "Whoo!" said Dean. "Let's follow her down the street, let's take her to the ole Cadillac in the alley. We'll have a ball." But we forgot that and headed straight for North Clark Street, after a spin in the Loop, to see the hootchy-kootchy joints and hear the bop. And what a night it was. "Oh, man," said Dean to me as we stood in front of a bar, "dig the street of life, the Chinamen that cut by in Chicago. What a weird town--wow, and that woman in that window up there, just looking down with her big breasts hanging from her nightgown, big wide eyes. Whee. Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there."

"Where we going, man?"

"I don't know but we gotta go." Then here came a gang of young bop musicians carrying their instruments out of cars. They piled right into a saloon and we followed them. They set themselves up and started blowin There we were! The leader was a slender, drooping, curly-haired, pursy-mouthed tenorman, thin of shoulder, draped loose in a sports shirt, cool in the warm night, self-indulgence written in his eyes, who picked up his horn and frowned in it and blew cool and complex and was dainty stamping his foot to catch ideas, and ducked to miss others--and said, "Blow," very quietly when the other boys took solos. Then there was Prez, a husky, handsome blond like a freckled boxer, meticulously wrapped inside his sharkskin plaid suit with the long drape and the collar falling back and the tie undone for exact sharpness and casualness, sweating and hitching up his horn and writhing into it, and a tone just like Lester Young himself. "You see, man, Prez has the technical anxieties of a money-making musician, he's the only one who's well dressed, see him grow worried when he blows a clinker, but the leader, that cool cat, tells him not to worry and just blow and blow--the mere sound and serious exuberance of the music is all he cares about. He's an artist. He's teaching young Prez the boxer. Now the others dig!!" The third sax was an alto, eighteen-year-old cool, contemplative young Charlie-Parker-type Negro from high school, with a broadgash mouth, taller than the rest, grave. He raised his horn and blew into it quietly and thoughtfully and elicited birdlike phrases and architectural Miles Davis logics. These were the children of the great bop innovators.

Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety--leaning to it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world. Then had come Charlie Parker, a kid in his mother's woodshed in Kansas City, blowing his taped-up alto among the logs, practicing on rainy days, coming out to watch the old swinging Basie and Benny Moten band that had Hot Lips Page and the rest--Charlie Parker leaving home and coming to Harlem, and meeting mad Thelonius Monk and madder Gillespie--Charlie Parker in his early days when he was flipped and walked around in a circle while playing. Somewhat younger than Lester Young, also from KC, that gloomy, saintly goof in whom the history of jazz was wrapped; for when he held his horn high and horizontal from his mouth he blew the greatest; and as his hair grew longer and he got lazier and stretched-out, his horn came down halfway; till it finally fell all the way and today as he wears his thick-soled shoes so that he can't feel the sidewalks of life his horn is held weakly against his chest, and he blows cool and easy getout phrases. Here were the children of the American bop night.

Stranger flowers yet--for as the Negro alto mused over everyone's head with dignity, the young, tall, slender, blond kid from Curtis Street, Denver, jeans and studded belt, sucked on his mouthpiece while waiting for the others to finish; and when they did he started, and you had to look around to see where the solo was coming from, for it came from angelical smiling lips upon the mouthpiece and it was a soft, sweet, fairy-tale solo on an alto. Lonely as America, a throatpierced sound in the night.

Jazz Albums @ Mabee Library

2007-04-11T20:35:00.000-06:00

A Subjective List of Great Jazz Albums (That Mabee Library Just Happens to Own)

Kind of Blue / Miles Davis
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.D38 K5 1987

Giant Steps / John Coltrane
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.C65 G52 1988

Birth of the Cool / Miles Davis
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.D38 B57 2001

Time Out / the Dave Brubeck Quartet
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.B78 T55 1997

The Shape of Jazz to Come / Ornette Coleman
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.C65 S53 1980z

Somethin' Else / Cannonball Adderley
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.A33 S6 1999

Body and Soul / Coleman Hawkins
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.H38 B63 1986

Concert by the Sea / Erroll Garner
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.G37 C6 1985

Live at Carnegie Hall / Benny Goodman
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.G66 L5 1986

Let My Children Hear Music / Charles Mingus
WU Mabee Music CD M1366.M56 L47 1992

Jazz Appreciation Month

2007-04-04T18:27:00.000-06:00

Smithsonian Jazz

Jazz History Month Resources

All About Jazz

Jazz 101 at Down Beat Magazine

Visit the American Jazz Museum in Kansas CIty, MO

Jazz events this month at Washburn:

April 5 7:30 p.m. WU Coleman Hawkins High School Jazz Festival
Price: $10/adult; $5/student
White Concert Hall

April 10 7:30 pm WU Jazz Ensemble Concert
Price: Free
White Concert Hall

Mabee Library's Orson Welles Collection

2007-03-28T21:17:00.000-06:00

Mabee Library's Orson Welles Collection

Citizen Kane
WU Mabee A-V PN1997 .C5117 1996

The Citizen Kane Book: Raising Kane
by Pauline Kael
WU Mabee Oversize PN1997 .C5117

The Magnificent Ambersons
WU Mabee A-V PN1997 .M254 1996

Touch of Evil
WU Mabee A-V PN1997 .T68 2000

The Trial (script)
WU Mabee Stacks PN1997 .W4413

War of the Worlds
WU Mabee A-V PS3545.E522 W3 1970z

Web Resources:

Orson Welles' New York Times page

wellesnet: the orson welles web resource

All Movie Guide page

IMDb page

Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint

2007-03-14T20:18:00.000-06:00

Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint - Steve Reich
WU Mabee Music CD
M452.R45 D5 1989

Different Trains / Steve Reich

Different Trains (1988) is perhaps Steve Reich's best-known work, and it is certainly his most powerful. The impetus for the piece lay in Reich's observation that, though he spent the first years of World War II being shuttled between divorced parents in New York and Los Angeles, if he had been in Europe, he would as a Jew have been riding trains to concentration camps. Two distinct sonic entities--taped phrases (from conversations with the nanny who accompanied Reich on his childhood trips, an American railroad worker from the war years, and archival recordings of holocaust survivors) and a string quartet--interact in a striking combination of pathos and psychic distance.

The string quartet prefigures the pitches and rhythms of each spoken phrase in an manner similar to that in Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, in which the winds play the distinctive rhythms of the text before it is sung by the choir. This abstraction of speech into purely musical components represented a new and apparently stimulating stylistic development for Reich, who explored it further in text-based works like The Cave (1994) and City Life (1995). The emotional impact of Different Trains is heightened by sound effects that evoke the era of World War II--most memorably, train whistles which become more ominous as the piece progresses from America to Europe--and by the manipulation of the text, which skillfully points up the ambiguity of the work's central theme. Reich eschews overt drama throughout, increasing the emotional impact by allowing the facts of the Holocaust, and the persecution that preceded it, to speak for themselves. ~David A. McCarthy, All Music Guide

Electric Counterpoint / Steve Reich

Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint (1987) belongs to a group of the composer's works (including Vermont Counterpoint [1982] and New York Counterpoint [1985]) which call for a soloist to play along with a recording of him- or herself. Written for noted jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, Electric Counterpoint requires the player to pre-record up to ten electric guitar tracks and two electric bass tracks; the player performs the eleventh part live against the tape. This configuration creates an interesting aural effect; the ethereal homogeneity of ten timbrally identical electric guitars simultaneously playing different figures is immediately quite striking.

Electric Counterpoint is in three movements, labeled simply "Fast," "Slow," and "Fast." The first begins with a stream of rapidly repeated chords that gradually fade in and out of audibility, subtly changing harmony at the quietest moments. After the harmonic outline of the piece has been presented, one guitar enters with a new theme, which seven other guitars reiterate one by one in canonic fashion. The remaining two guitars, along with the two basses, supply harmonic support. The second movement similarly builds up canonically, this time employing a slower, plaintive theme. While the third movement recalls the tempo of the first, it stresses rhythmic variety in its frequent metric shifts. The basses drive this effort, dividing the ambiguous twelve-beat textures of the guitars first into three groups of four, then four groups of three -- a familiar feature in Reich's music ever since Clapping Music (1972) and Music for Pieces of Wood (1973). These metric shifts are accompanied by complementary shifts in harmony. The changes in the final movement occur at shorter and shorter intervals until the basses fade out and the guitars reach a final harmonic and rhythmic acquiescence. ~Jeremy Grimshaw, All Music Guide

Selections from Mabee Library's Collection of Foreign Films in Four Parts

2007-03-07T21:37:00.000-06:00

Part Four:

Run Lola Run / Lola Rennt (Germany)
PN1997 .L65 1999

A film that sprinkles spine-tingling chills for its entire 81 minutes, Lola Rennt (known in the U.S. as Run Lola Run) is an intensely satisfying fusion of driving techno music and stunning visuals. Tom Tykwer's hip, German-language thriller is known primarily for its unique structure -- part video game, part choose-your-own-adventure -- which propels Franka Potente's feisty yet vulnerable Lola through three versions of a plan to secure an impossible sum of money in the next 20 minutes. But it's the details within that structure that sometimes escape critics' attention. In one original device, Tykwer follows the lives of the people Lola blows past, and how that split-second interaction helps determine the next months or even years of their lives. As they turn to stare or shout an insult, Tykwer zooms in on their faces, kicking off a flurry of snapshots that serve as chilling portents and bracing commentary on the interconnectedness of random events. Lola's initial idea for getting the money is the same each time, meaning that the viewer thrice watches very similar footage, but it's the small variations that make it newly engaging each time. The sequences are separated by the film's only quiet moments -- touching flashbacks of pillow talk in which Lola and Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) reveal their deepest insecurities. Shot through a gauzy red filter, these moments provide stark contrasts to the brashness of the rest of the film. The action is fueled throughout by pumping rave music, much of it composed by Tykwer himself. The resulting package is a spike of adrenaline that should thrill anyone who appreciates a smart concept executed at a frenetic pace. ~Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

The Legend of Paul and Paula / Die Legende von Paul und Paula (Germany)
PN1997 .L42 1999

A sentimental favorite of East German cinema, The Legend of Paul and Paula is a moving and realistic portrait of a couple's struggle to find satisfaction and love in their everyday lives. Paula, a single mother, works long hours at a supermarket and is generally dissatisfied with her life. Approached by an older tire salesman, Herr Saft, she gravitates toward him but their relationship lacks the overriding passion she desires. Paula drifts into a bar one night and meets a most unlikely match, Paul, a respectable but slightly dull, married man. After they fall in love to a wonderful soundtrack of '70s German pop music, Paul must choose between his terminally annoying wife and Paula. Unable to break with his past, Paul wavers and Paula withdraws, seriously hurt. The ending is a classic example of "You don't know what you have until it's gone." ~Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide

The Sea Inside / Mar Adentro (Spain)
PN1997 .M363 2005

Leagues beyond a disease-of-the-week movie, and a total departure for its director, The Sea Inside is a potent emotional journey anchored by powerhouse performances. It turns out that Alejandro Amenábar, known for gothic horror (The Others) and existentialism (Abre los Ojos), can do lyrical intimacy with equal finesse. Amenábar's technique is partly responsible for bringing Ramon Sampedro to life; his camera explores the rolling landscape of Sampedro's mind, as well as the photographs of his bedroom, which show the rich exuberance of Ramon's youth. But The Sea Inside wouldn't be half the experience without the work of Javier Bardem. He's such a charismatic figure, so quick to flirt or joke, that he can seduce even from his state of permanent recline, and at times, the 2004 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film is equally satisfying as a wistful romance. Ramon's very quickness of wit provides the film with a central conundrum: how can a person who seems so harmonious with his world want to end his life? The Spanish countryside provides an idyllic backdrop for such weighty philosophical debate, deceptively appropriate in the way it accentuates the fragile beauty of life -- especially as captured through Javier Aguirresarobe's cinematography. Amenábar's script is also keenly attuned to life's absurdities. A memorable argument transpires between Ramon, stubbornly confined to his bed, and a paralyzed priest, down two floors because his wheelchair couldn't be carried any higher into the house. A messenger runs between the two, exchanging barbs, but their polarized views lie a much greater distance apart. Ramon's sardonic outlook on religious salvation cannot be shaken, and Bardem's performance convinces the audience there's no reason it should be. The range of perspectives of those who care about him lends the film additional poignancy, never crossing over into maudlin sentiment. ~Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

The Ogre (Germany)
PN1997 .O335 1999

Based on a novel by French author Michel Tournier, this drama chronicles the redemption of Abel, a French POW responsible for kidnapping dozens of young boys for recruitment by the Nazi SS during WW II. The film opens with black-and-white shots of Abel's childhood in Paris. The year is 1925 and already he has problems getting along with teachers and students. Then he is befriended by the portly young Nestor. Abel loses his only friend during a terrible fire that demolishes the school and leaves him convinced that he has been blessed by fate to survive. Fourteen years quickly pass; the story turns to color, and the now hulking Abel is seen working in a Paris garage. He also spends time with his girlfriend Rachel. It is she who playfully dubs him "ogre" because he is rather rough in bed. Abel has always loved children. He was good friends with little Martine, until she falsely accuses him of rape and he is sent to prison. During the war, he is freed by the German invaders who involve him with the upper echelons of the SS and give him a job as a hunting assistant on Goering's Bavarian estate. ~Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Butterfly / Le Papillon (France)
PN1997 .P326 2004

Directed and written by Philippe Muyl, the family-friendly Le Papillon (The Butterfly) concerns a search for the title creature. Often lonely because of her single mother's busy work schedule, eight-year-old Elsa (Claire Bouanich) befriends an elderly neighbor man named Julien (Michel Serrault), eventually joining him on a trek to find a rare butterfly that lives for only 72 hours. As the relationship between the two teaches them both a few things about themselves, Elsa's mother (Nade Dieu) worries that her daughter has been kidnapped. ~Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

What Have I Done to Deserve This? / Que he Hecho yo para Merecer Esto? (Spain)
PN1997 .Q34 2003

What Have I Done to Deserve This? is a hilarious Pedro Almodóvar film about a spectacularly dysfunctional family living in Madrid. As is typical with early Almodóvar, the plot twists come thick and fast, and the entire film cheerfully teeters on the edge of insanity; indeed, this film is far more accessible and humane than many of the director's later works. Clearly, Almodóvar is drawing in this film to some degree on his own chaotic past. Born in the small town of Calzada de Calatrava, Almodóvar made his way to Madrid in 1968 and initially supported himself by selling used items in a flea market. Unable to attend film school, he took a job with the phone company, saved his salary, and eventually purchased a Super-8 camera. Almodóvar made a series of bizarre and entirely unconventional short films with his friends until he shot his first feature, Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del Montón (1980, aka Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom). Shot in 16 mm, the film was then blown up to 35 mm and became an underground hit, something like John Waters' breakthrough film, Pink Flamingos (1972). In What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Almodóvar chronicles the intersecting lives of speed-addicted domestic Gloria (Carmen Maura) and her husband, Antonio (Ángel de Andrés López), whose sons are prostitutes and drug dealers. Grandmother is mentally incompetent, Antonio is a Nazi sympathizer involved a plot of forge Hitler's nonexistent diaries, and the next-door neighbor is call girl Cristal (Verónica Forqué), who does little to ease Gloria's plight. All of this is played entirely for laughs, and somehow, it all works, making the characters in the film at once sympathetic, hilarious, and buffoonish, with the end result that the film resembles nothing so much as a live-action cartoon. Almodóvar's comic pacing never flags, unlike some of his later films, and he seems cheerfully at home in these lunatic surroundings, delivering one of the most satisfying and outrageous comedies of his long career. As he began to take his work more seriously, he lost much of his comic assurance; here, as a near-punk filmmaker, he creates a world of decadent exuberance that brims with contagious goodwill and absurdity. One of Almodóvar's best films, What Have I Done to Deserve This? is an excellent introduction to Almodóvar's work as a whole, and a reminder of a time when he did not take his work as seriously (often with unfortunate results) as he now does. ~Wheeler Winston Dixon, All Movie Guide

Sobrenatural (Mexico)
PN1997 .S627 1999

Unnerved by having heard a neighbor being killed, Dolores (Susana Zabaleta) is not easily reassured. Though her husband Andres (Alejandro Tommasi) discounts her concerns about nefarious goings on in their apartment building, whatever confidence she had disappears when he mutters the murdered woman's name in his sleep. When witchy neighbor, Madame Endor (Delia Casanova) says she is in danger, Dolores believes it. Then the psychologist her husband sends her to becomes convinced that she is correct in her concerns. Dolores believes Satan is involved in the unsettling events around her, and she gets the chance to find out. This film is in the Spanish language. ~Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Cows / Vacas (Spain)
PN1997 .V17 2002

In Basque country, feuds, governments, and wars come and go, while cows placidly observe the strange behaviors of the humans who care for them. In 1875, during a massacre inspired by an out-of-control family feud, a farmer and his friend find themselves in a ditch together. One of them dies, and the other survives by playing possum using his friend's blood as a disguise. As the film flashes forward in time, the man is now a grandfather who amuses himself by painting the tranquil gaze of cows over and over again, while he observes that his son is having an affair with his dead friend's granddaughter. Finally, during the Civil War in 1936, violence again mars the life of the family, as the illegitimate son of the earlier affair attempts to make headway with his life. ~Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Selections from Mabee Library's Collection of Foreign Films in Four Parts

2007-02-28T13:36:00.000-06:00

Part Three:

Character / Karakter (Dutch)
PN1997 .K37 2003

This dark drama from the Netherlands won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir), the most ruthless and intimidating bailiff in Rotterdam, is brutally murdered, and a young attorney, Katadreuffe (Fedja Van Huet), is arrested in connection with the crime. Under questioning, the angry young lawyer reveals a hidden motive for the killing -- he is Dreverhaven's illegitimate son. Katadreuffe's mother, Joba (Betty Schuurman) had an affair with Dreverhaven but refused to marry him, preferring to raise her son on her own, despite her difficult economic circumstances. Eventually, Joba takes in a boarder, Jan Maan (Hans Kesting), and Jan becomes something of a father figure to the boy, urging him to improve himself and pursue new opportunities in business. As a young man, Katadreuffe takes Jan's advice to heart and obtains a bank loan to open a cigar shop. The shop soon fails, and Katadreuffe must negotiate terms with the bank to pay off his debt. The young man discovers that the bank is managed by Dreverhaven and learns that his father has no desire to help him. While obtaining legal advice on his problems with the bank, Katadreuffe becomes interested in the study of law, and after a great deal of struggle, he makes his way through law school and obtains a low-level position with a prominent legal firm. However, his father often appears along the way, berating Katadreuffe and convincing him that he's doomed for failure, until the young man becomes convinced that Dreverhaven controls his entire life and wants nothing more than to destroy him. Karakter was based on a novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk that was a major bestseller in the Netherlands. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Age of Beauty / Belle Epoque (Spain)
PN1997 .B36424 2003

After striking responsive chord at the Berlin Film Festival, Fernando Trueba's Belle Epoque (aka Age of Beauty) went on to win 9 Spanish Goya awards and an Academy Award for "Best Foreign Film." Set in pre-Franco Spain, film stars Jorge Sanz as Fernando, a carefree, pacifistic army deserter. Wandering about the countryside, Fernando is welcomed into home of the wealthy Don Manolo (Fernando Fernan Gomez). Far from upset by the boy's AWOL status, Manolo is delighted because he shares Fernando's political philosophies. What follows is sheer heaven for the peaceloving lad, who sits smilingly on the sidelines as Manolo's four voluptuous daughters (Adrian Gil, Maribel Verdu, Miriam Diaz-Aroca, and Penelope Cruz) literally fight for his attentions. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Criminal Life of Archibald o De La Cruz / Ensayo de un Crimen (Spain)
PN1997 .E64 1993

This Mexican-filmed black comedy (distributed in the U.S. seven years after its initial 1955 release date) is one of the minor but no less characteristic works of director Luis Buñuel. The film begins with Archibaldo (Ernesto Alonso) being triggered by a music box into a lengthy reminiscence of his childhood. It was an average, everyday incident, one that undoubtedly has occurred to us all: Archibaldo was caught dressing up in his mother's clothes by his governess, who was then instantly killed by a revolutionary's bullet before she could tell on him. The experience proved to be Archibaldo's "first rush," and he spends the rest of his life trying to re-create the sexual euphoria of that moment -- by murdering attractive women. Buñuel's characteristic perverse black humor then adds a twist, which prevents Archibaldo from fulfilling his desires. Perverse, but darkly funny, Ensayo de un Crimen is a slyly shocking delight. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Earth / Zemlia (Ukraine)
PN1997 .Z435 1991

Earth (AKA Zemlya) is the third of Soviet director Alexander Dovzhenko's "Ukraine tetralogy" (Zvenigora (1928), Arsenal (1929), and Ivan (1932) are the other films in the series). The story tells of a group of farmers in a Ukrainian village, who unite to purchase a tractor. The leader of the peasants is later killed by a kulak, or landowner, who dislikes any form of united front that might pose a threat to his long-established authority. The events fade into memory, but the long-ranging effects of the peasant "revolt"--like the Earth itself--last forever. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frida (Mexico)
PN1997 .F75 1997

Frida Kahlo was more than a mere Mexican artist. Crippled, Kahlo used her art to speak for other physically afflicted souls. She also was a controversial political figure, commiserating with the likes of Leon Trotsky and Diego Rivera. Directed by Paul Leduc and photographed by cinematographer Angel Goded, Frida features the artist portrayed by Ofelia Medina. In 2002, Kahlo's story would again be told in another film called Frida, with Salma Hayek in the lead role. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Born in '45 / Jahrgang 45 (Germany)
PN1997 .J25 2000

Originally banned in 1966, director Jürgen Böttcher's sexually frank tale of love and disillusionment among two newlyweds attempting to navigate the treacherous world of marriage was never officially released in his homeland until after reunification in 1990. Trapped together in a tiny flat and stifled by their newfound lack of privacy and personal freedom, recently-married couple Albert and Lisa soon decide to divorce. As Albert drifts aimlessly through Berlin and Lisa attempts to cope with the failure of the marriage, all hope for the pair seems lost until the prospect for a reunion begins to emerge. ~Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Jacob the Liar / Jakob der Lügner (Germany)
PN1997 .J29 1999

The screenplay for this wartime tragi-comedy was written by Jurek Becker, a Jewish survivor of the concentration camps and the Warsaw Ghetto. When he could not get the script produced, he transformed it into a worldwide best-selling novel. This movie was produced about ten years after the screenplay was originally written. The story concerns a ghetto character, Jacob (Vlastimil Brodsky) who tells the others huddled there that the Russians are winning the war against the Germans and are advancing on Warsaw. How does he know? He says he has a radio hidden away, which, if true, could earn him immediate execution. In fact, there is no such radio, and his prediction (for such it is) is years ahead of events. When the Germans begin executing residents and shipping the rest to concentration camps, his lie is shown for what it is. Indeed, his best friend commits suicide as soon as he learns the truth. However, for a little while, Jacob the Liar kept hope alive in a hopeless situation. ~Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Beyond Silence / Jenseits der Stille (Germany)
PN1997 .J43 1999

A young woman struggles with her unusual relationship with her mother and father in this drama from Germany. Laura (Tatjana Trieb) is a bright young girl whose parents, Martin (Howie Seago) and Kai (Emmanuelle Laborit), are deaf and dumb. Living in a small town in Germany, where International Sign Language has long been frowned upon due to local superstitions, Martin and Kai have a great deal of difficulty communicating with others. However, Laura knows sign language as well as her parents, and she frequently acts as an interpreter between her parents and others, often missing school as a result (though when translating for her mother at a parent-teacher conference, Laura cleverly twists a poor evaluation in her favor). Laura is given a clarinet by her Aunt Clarissa (Sybille Canonica), but this inflames an old sibling rivalry in Martin, and he makes it clear to Laura that he does not approve of her study of music, a subject he cannot understand or take part in. Laura begins learning the instrument despite her father's wishes, and she soon develops a keen talent. Years later, teenaged Laura (now played by Sylvie Testud) is a gifted musician and is encouraged by her clarinet teacher to attend a conservatory in Berlin, where a scholarship can be arranged. Despite Martin's objections, Laura goes to Berlin with Kai's blessings. While studying in Berlin, Laura meets Tom (Hansa Czpionka), a young man who teaches hearing impaired children, and she finds herself enjoying both romance and independence for the first time. Sadly, Laura's good fortune goes south when tragedy strikes at home. Jenseits der Stille, released in the United States as Beyond Silence, received a 1997 Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign Language film. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Germany in Autumn / Deutschland im Herbst (Germany)
PN1997 .D49 1996

This provocative film anthology contains nine short fiction and documentary films believed to have had great influence on the development of New German Cinema. Each of the five was directed by a different German filmmaker and are set during the politically tempestuous summer of 1977 in West Germany when terrorism ran rampant. Filmmakers include Fassbinder, Boll, Schlondorff, Sinkel, Kluge (who narrates) and more. ~Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Last Supper / La Ultima Cena (Cuba)
PN1997 .U43 1989

As indicated by the title, the Cuban The Last Supper (La Ultima Cena) has pronounced religious overtones--but not necessarily reverent ones. Based on a purportedly true incident, the film stars Nelson Allegra as an 18th century Cuban landowner. Allegra sees nothing wrong or unusual about keeping slaves, but he does worry about his status in The Next World. To this end, Allegra begins instructing his slaves in the edicts of Christianity, inviting a dozen of them to restage the Last Supper. Not even at the end does the hypocrisy of religiosity combined with forced servitude become obvious to the well-meaning Allegra. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Selections from Mabee Library's Collection of Foreign Films in Four Parts

2007-02-21T23:36:00.000-06:00

Part Two:

The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser (Germany)
PN1997 .M97 1993

Visionary New German Cinema director Werner Herzog's U.S. breakthrough, Jeder Fur Sich Und Gott Gegen Alle or The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser (1975) is a poignant, visually exquisite allegory of how civilization breeds despair. Based on a true story similar to the case in François Truffaut's The Wild Child (1970), Herzog's rendering of isolated, pre-verbal foundling Kaspar Hauser's release into the world as an adult reveals the perverse effects of "rational" thought and culture on natural, soulful innocence. While the painterly landscapes and lustrous dream images of deserts, mountains, lakes, and a golden, wind-swept field underline the beauty and wonder of the natural world outside his cellar, the limits imposed by language and the absurd urge to codify all experience become a "hard fall" to earth for the instinctually insightful and inadvertently threatening Kaspar. Along with Herzog's odd angles and compositions, former mental patient Bruno S.'s ethereal, evocatively affectless performance as Kaspar makes him both endearing and strange, emphasizing his impossible place in 19th century society. Enhancing Herzog's burgeoning reputation as an intense iconoclast after Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival and became an international success. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The Shop on Main Street / Obchod na Korze (Czechoslovakia)
PN1997 .O23 1965

On its initial release, The Shop on Main Street contained several ingredients that would make it an instant classic: it was a heartfelt drama about the effect of the Holocaust on two humble individuals, and a film made by Czechs who were dealing with a totalitarian regime of their own. The film can't help but be affecting, but it has lost some of its luster with the subsequent release of more complex studies of some of the same issues, namely Lacombe, Lucien, The Conformist, and Divided We Fall. And at 125 minutes, this simple story of a peasant who comes to understand belatedly the complicity he shares in the persecution of the Jews in his village, seems over-extended. Tono's fretting in the button shop as the roll of names is called in the town square outside seems to go on forever, and there's a crucial dramatic inconsistency: He should feel relieved when the name of his elderly friend, Rosalie Lautmann, isn't called. However, the film shouldn't be casually dismissed; both lead performers are superb, especially Ida Kaminska as Rosalie, and there is one bravura piece of camerawork, when Tono retreats to the back rooms of the shop and the camera prowls around each room until it "finds" him and he bolts to another room, where the process is repeated. ~Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Double Suicide / Shinji Ten No Amijima (Japan)
PN1997 .S474 2000

A landmark of modernist cinema, Double Suicide brilliantly recasts traditional bunraku conventions to a cinematic form that is visually stunning and emotionally riveting. Using his trademark graphic sensibility, director Masahiro Shinoda never allows viewers to forget that they're watching an adaptation of a play. Just as the black clad puppeteers are visible during traditional bunraku performances, so are they seen throughout this film as they hand props to the actors, move sets, and -- as if agents of fate -- guide the characters to their inevitable bloody end. The sets turn and break down like a kabuki stage while the walls and floors, blow-ups of voluptuous Edo-period woodblock and abstract calligraphy, threaten to overwhelm the characters completely. Both through Monzaemon Chikamatsu's narrative and Shinoda's deconstructed style, the film seems to push the two doomed lovers toward their destiny while tragically hinting at a world beyond this fate. Shima Iwashita delivers the finest and most honored performance of her long and illustrious career as both the courtesan Koharu and self-sacrificing wife Osan. A masterful example of modernist filmmaking on every level, Double Suicide pulls off a rare feat: a film that wears its self-conscious theatricality on its sleeve while still creating a drama that is emotionally compelling. ~Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Solaris (Russian)
PN1997 .S628 1991

Conceived partly as the anti-2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) weaves a hypnotic fable about love, humanity, and memory out of its science fiction premise. Reinstating the detritus of everyday existence absent from 2001's future vision, Tarkovsky's tracking shots and long takes reveal the space station's claustrophobia and decay; the beautiful early images of nature further underline the ugly, dehumanizing effects of technology. Shifts between color and black-and-white, an enticingly old-fashioned space station library, and the evocatively ambiguous ending interweave past and present, as pragmatist Kelvin's re-acquaintance with his dead wife, Khari, suggests the dramatic stakes of trying to erase the past . Regardless of the political message that could be inferred regarding the Soviet bureaucracy, Solaris was the rare Tarkovsky film that avoided extensive mandated edits and received a relatively normal U.S.S.R. release; it was, however, cut by 35 minutes by the American distributor in 1976. Restored to its original length in 1990, Solaris has garnered more and more fans for its cerebral yet rapturous inquiry into what it means to be human. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The Spirit of the Beehive / El Espiritu de la Colmena (Spain)
PN1997 .E73 1988

Widely regarded as a masterpiece of Spanish cinema, this allegorical tale is set in a remote village in the 1940s. The life in the village is calm and uneventful -- an allegory of Spanish life after General Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. While their father (Fernando Fernán Gómez) studies bees in his beehive and their mother (Teresa Gimpera) writes letters to a non-existent correspondent, two young girls, Ana (Ana Torrent) and Isabel (Isabel Telleria), go to see James Whale's Frankenstein at a local cinema. Though they can hardly understand the concept, both girls are deeply impressed with the moment when a little girl gives a flower to the monster. Isabel, the older sister, tells Ana that the monster actually exists as a spirit that you can't see unless you know how to approach him. Ana starts wandering around the countryside in search of the kind creature. Instead, she meets an army deserter, who is hiding in a barn. The film received critical accolades for its subtle and masterful use of cinematic language and the expressive performance of the young Ana Torrent. ~Yuri German, All Movie Guide

Burnt by the Sun / Utomlennye Solntsem (Russia)
PN1997 .U84 1995

By the early '90s, it was finally possible for filmmakers working in the former Soviet Union to deal honestly with the horrors of the 1930s, when Stalin and his regime "reassessed" the contributions of many heroes of the Revolution, resulting in mass imprisonments and death for many millions. Nikita Mikhalkov's brilliant film about those dark days is ironically set at a sunny summer retreat where Serguei Petrovich Kotov (Mikhalkov), an officer who has been honored for his contributions to the success of the state, and his family are enjoying an idyllic summer's day. The film's deliberate pacing for a full half-hour (we might think we're watching the Russian equivalent of Renoir's Partie De Campagne) lulls the viewer into a false sense of serenity. When Dimitri, an old lover of Kotov's young wife and now a government official, arrives, Mikhalkov allows our suspicion that Dimitri's visit isn't merely personal to accumulate slowly. The film flirts with sentimentality, especially in casting Mikhalkov's real-life daughter as Kotov's irresistibly cute little girl, but after all, the filmmaker's goal is to show the toll that a repressive political regime can exact on the lives of individual citizens. ~Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

The Young and the Damned / Los Olvidados (Mexico)
PN1997 .O58 1996

Luis Buñuel was little more than a footnote in motion picture history for his two early surrealist films with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou and l'Age d'or, when Los Olvidados boldly affirmed his status as a major international director. A brutal and unflinching look at the ugly circumstances of life for juvenile delinquents and runaways in Mexico City, Los Olvidados seems like the model for many "socially responsible" films about financially and spiritually underprivileged youth that appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, as it also looks back toward the Italian neo-Realism that had begun in the second half of the 1940s. But this is unmistakably the work of Buñuel, the arch cynic and surrealist, and if he casts a relatively kind eye on several of his young protagonists -- most notably the tragic Pedro (Alfonso Mejia), cast off from his family with nowhere to turn -- his view of the adult world is jaundiced beyond redemption (significantly, the most sinister and least sympathetic of the film's delinquents, Jaibo (Roberto Cobo), is also the oldest). In Buñuel's universe, mothers turn their backs on their sons and sleep with their friends, blind beggars play sexual games with young girls, wealthy men proposition young boys, and cripples are so venomous that one feels little or no sympathy for them when they're attacked. The film's sole compassionate adult, the warden of a juvenile home, is decent and caring but ineffectual, an easily surmounted obstacle to the corruption of the outside world. Punctuated by beautifully troubling dream sequences, Los Olvidados was first released in the United States as The Young and The Damned, and the title was apt, though Buñuel makes abundantly clear that if these young men have been condemned to hell, it is one that the adult world (and, implicitly, ourselves) have helped to build and maintain. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Volga, Volga (Soviet Union)
PN1997 .V662 1996

First released in 1938, Volga Volga is typical of the escapist musical comedies churned out by Russian filmmaker Gregori Alexandrov. As usual, the film's star is Alexandrov's talented wife Lubov Orlova, here playing a blonde physical culturalist named Strelka. The hero is Byvalov (Igor Hinsky), an intinerant musical-instrument manufacturer who dreams of forming his own orchestra. The storyline leads hapharzardly to a climactic boat race on the Volga, during which Stelka and Byvalov pledge eternal love to one another. Most critics noted that director Alexandrov's principal inspiration seemed to be Mack Sennett's Keystone comedies. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears / Moskva Sljesam Nje Jerit (Russia)
PN1997 .M77 2004

Moscow of the late '50s is the initial setting for this movie of three young girls out for love -- the upwardly mobile Lyuda (Irina Muravyova), the secure Tonya (Raisa Ryazanova) and the head-over-heels Katya (Vera Alentova). The film re-engages the trio 20 years later, focusing on their varied life changes. Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears received the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1980. ~John Bush, All Movie Guide

The Promise / Das Versprechen (Germany)
PN1997 .V478 1995

Two star-crossed lovers, separated by the Berlin wall for thirty years are reunited. The major events in their separate lives become the focus in this German political drama. The story begins in August 1961 as the Wall is being built. In Eastern Berlin a group of young adults plans their escape. Included in the group are Konrad and Sophie who has an aunt on the other side. It is the aunt who will sponsor the escapees. Escape will be the only way Konrad and Sophie will be able to stay together. Konrad is involved in a mishap en route and must remain in East Berlin. In 1968, the lovers at last get a chance to briefly meet in Prague. There they express their frustration and pain. At least there, in Prague they can find occasional happiness. Suddenly Russian tanks appear and destroy their new dream. 1980 comes. Sophie and Konrad have since married other people. Their next meeting is bittersweet as they look back upon their promise which was broken by circumstance, and by the decisions each lover had to make. ~Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Selections from Mabee Library's Collection of Foreign Films in Four Parts

2007-02-14T19:18:00.000-06:00

Part One...

Z (France)
PN1997 .Z2 2002

Turning the events preceding the 1960s military junta in Greece into a kinetic political thriller, Costa-Gavras' Z (1969) is a cinematically compelling argument against state repression. In a story based on the assassination of pacifist Gregoris Lambrakis, Greek expatriate Costa-Gavras' French New Wave techniques create visual energy and documentary immediacy while humanizing the Lambrakis analogue (Yves Montand) and his wife (Irene Papas). Cinematographer Raoul Coutard's moving camera and location shooting pump up suspense as key witnesses are pursued by mysterious thugs; newsreel-style crowd scenes become threateningly chaotic, emphasizing the government's collusion in the assassination. The couple's flash-cut memories of their married life emphasize the personal loss inflicted in the name of "democracy." Despite the film's basis in fact, Costa-Gavras neither identifies the country nor gives names to the main characters, turning the story into a universal warning against the rise of totalitarianism. An international hit (though banned in Greece), and all the more relevant amid late-'60s cultural upheavals in the U.S. and France, Z won awards as Best Film of the Year from both the National and New York film critics groups and became the first film nominated for Oscars as both Best Picture and Best Foreign-Language Film. It won the latter, along with Best Editing. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Babette's Feast / Babettes Gæstebud (Denmark)
PN1997 .B18 2001

The sophisticated and subtle screenplay for Babette's Feast, adapted by director Gabriel Axel, is based on a story written by Isak Dinesen, the writer memorably played by Meryl Streep in the biopic Out of Africa. In the film's first half, the emotional detachment of the pious characters is mirrored in the directorial approach, which allows the narrator to explain the matters before us, keeping us at a distance. When the feast begins, the narrator steps aside, Axel's direction becomes more evocative, and our participation becomes more active. Axel plays things low-key: his camera doesn't swoop or dance, but lingers lovingly over every aspect of the meal. The soundtrack includes some beautiful period music, but Axel mostly allows the sounds of the meal to become the symphony of the feast. Made out of humility and love, the feast is Babette's supreme artistic expression, and her hedonistic present encourages the feasters to look a little more closely at their own lives, as the magical and voluptuous feast dramatically counterpoints their puritanical existence. Babette's offering is a ritual sacrifice, intended to encourage the austere characters with the possibility that their material nourishment may provide spiritual sustenance as well. The film also contains a cultural context, as the political revolutions in 19th century Europe lead to Babette's displacement and the resultant cultural blending of Babette's southern European Catholic sensuality with sober northern European Protestantism. Their pact, to say nothing about the magnificence of the feast, ironically reveals the ineffable truth that Babette's artistic expression of love cannot be properly praised with words. Like the guests' spiritual values, it exists on a higher plane, where simple acts of generosity can erase personal prejudices. The film leaves us with a haunting echo of the roads not taken, as the characters must ponder the paths they have chosen and ask themselves: have they made the most of their gifts? Babette's Feast won several major awards, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and the British BAFTA Award for Best Film of 1987. ~Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide

Hidden Fortress / Kakushi Toride No San Akunin (Japan)
PN1997 .K345 2001

Kurosawa's light adventure is probably best known as one of the primary inspirations for George Lucas' Star Wars (1977), but it's a masterful entertainment in its own right. Toshiro Mifune stars as a famous general who uses a couple of clownish peasants to help him transport a gold shipment and a volatile young princess through enemy territory. The film was the pioneering effort of the Japanese film industry in the use of the widescreen ratio, and, in a sense, Kurosawa's brilliantly supple deployment of the process is the star of the film. Especially in the early sequences in the prison and the quarry, the director achieves extraordinary effects of mass and scale as he suggests the smallness of the squabbling peasants and the stature of General Rokurota. He also uses the available space to spread the characters as far as he can, expressing the common distrust that is, at times, the only emotion these four very differently motivated characters share. Kurosawa has often suggested to his actors that they imagine themselves as various animals in an effort to elicit a more overtly physical performance, and that seems to be the case here, as the slightly exaggerated ensemble acting style enhances the humor of a film that is sometimes reminiscent of an early silent. Mifune, a virtuoso of physical acting, did all his own stunts, the most impressive being a horse-mounted pursuit while swinging a sword. Like Star Wars, the film has something of the quality of a fairy tale, one which can be appreciated both by children and adults. ~Michael Costello, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Faat-Kine (Senegal)
PN1997 .F3 2000

A movie brimming with wisdom and energy, Faat-Kine offers a knowing appraisal of the state of the Senegalese nation as well as a delightful portrait of the country's middle-class. Directed by Ousmane Sembene, considered by many critics to be the dean of African cinema, Faat-Kine features a winning performance by Venus Seye as the movie's heroine, a single mother who leads a happy, successful life despite the numerous setbacks she has encountered. More than anything else, the movie is a platform for Sembene's message of personal responsibility and social uplift. In offering a plot that follows the pedestrian affairs of daily life, Sembene connects his grand pronouncements on Senegalese society to the familiar. Reflecting his desire to communicate his politics clearly, Sembene's camerawork is admirably simple and economical, refusing to call attention to itself. The result is a movie of high social ambition that remains accessible and unpretentious throughout. Though Faat-Kine verges occasionally into didacticism, the movie never loses its equanimity and is never less than likable. Anchored by an appealing central performance and Sembene's sagacity, Faat-Kine is of a rare breed: a message movie that oozes good humor. ~Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide

Oblomov (Russia)
PN1997 .N47 1998

Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov takes a break from emulating his beloved Chekhov to film the classic Ivan Goncharov novel Oblomov. The title character (played by Oleg Tabakov) is a 19th century Russian civil servant and landlord who chooses to go to bed one day--and never get up. Preferring to sleep his way through life rather than confront it, Oblomov is shaken from his slumbers by the arrival of a childhood friend Shtoltz. A series of flashbacks show why it is that this friend's presence gets Oblomov out of his 'jammies and back on his feet. Also known as A Few Days in the Life of I. I. Oblomov, this sprightly film is an excellent early example of the work of the director who would win a 1994 Oscar for his Burnt by the Sun. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Secrets of the Heart / Secretos Del Corazón (Spain)
PN1997 .S322 2000

A young boy's fascination with the deaths of several people close to him spark his growth from boyhood in this Spanish drama from writer-director Montxo Armendáriz. The hometown of nine-year-old Javi (Andoni Erburu and his brother Juan (Alvaro Nagone) is a rural farming village in the early 1960s. Their father, they are told, accidentally killed himself while cleaning his gun, and the room where the death occurred has been declared off limits to the boys. Juan tells his younger brother that ghostly sounds can be heard in the room, but when Javi sneaks in and hears the unearthly moans, it's really the sound of their mother making love with their uncle Tio (Carmelo Gomez). Javi's friend Carlos (Inigo Garces) has also suffered the loss of a parent, his mother, who committed suicide. Javi and Carlos sneak into a haunted house, also rumored to be a site where spectral sounds can be heard, and they overhear something in the basement. His adventures inspire Javi to question the deaths of his father and Carlos' mother, leading to a revelation. Secretos del Corazon (1997) was the winner of four Goya Awards, as well as an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. ~Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

L'Enfant Noir (Guinea)
PN1997 .E63 1995

This unique French-Guinean drama is adapted from the 1953 autobiographical novel by Guinean author Camara Laye and features in its cast actual members of the author's family. It is set in French-ruled Guinea and centers on the adolescent Baba who lives with his family on the banks of the Niger River. But for Baba's tendency to get in trouble with his mother, Kouda, for hanging out with his friends after dark, he and his family are close and very happy. Wanting for his son to have a better life, Baba's father, Madou, decides to send the youth to boarding school; Baba is nervous about the prospect, but dutifully goes to the coastal city, Conakry where he is alternately exhilarated and bewildered by city life. The prospect of learning French and other lessons is at first daunting, but with the help of his middle-class uncle Moussa and his family, Baba learns to adjust. After experiencing the highs and lows of his new life for a year, Baba finally returns to his village a mature young man. ~Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Official History / La Historia Oficial (Argentina)
PN1997 .H576 2004

This is an emotionally gripping, fictional look at a couple torn apart by the infamous Argentine campaign of killings and torture that sent thousands of accused terrorists to unmarked graves in the mid-and late-'70s. Alicia (Norma Aleandro) and Roberto (Hector Alterio) adopted a little girl (Analia Castro) during this period of governmental terror in Argentina. Alicia has always wondered about the parents of their little girl, a topic her husband has forced her into forgetting as a condition of the adoption -- he alone knows the full story. Thanks to censorship, Alicia -- like others -- is not fully aware of how much killing has gone on until her students at school start complaining that their textbook histories were written by murderers. Add to this a long conversation with a friend who had been in exile after she was tortured by the government, and Alicia starts to do some serious political and personal research on her own. The results reveal the identity of the little girl's dead parents and reveal that Alicia's husband has had a nasty hand in the government repression and dirty dealings with foreign businesses. She also learns the identity of the girl's grandmother. Her next decision will determine what to do with this information. ~Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Bicycle Thief / Ladri di Biciclette (Italy)
PN1997 .L27 1998

Though not the first Italian Neo-Realist film seen outside of Italy (or even Vittorio De Sica's first Neo-Realist work), The Bicycle Thief (1948) is considered the seminal film of the movement, alongside Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945). Following the guiding Neo-Realist precept of drawing stories from the daily life of post-war Italy, De Sica and writer Cesare Zavattini carefully interweave a wider view of Italian culture with a portrait of the bond between a father and son, revealing the impact of poverty and bureaucratic absurdities on one of many struggling families. Shooting on location with non-professional actors in the two leads (well-coached by actor De Sica), De Sica's mobile camera transforms moments of Antonio's odyssey into poetic images of isolation and despair, while never losing sight of the gritty hardships of quotidian experience. An even greater international sensation than his first Neo-Realist film (Shoeshine (1946)), The Bicycle Thief earned a special Oscar for Best Foreign Film and became a signature work for a movement that also included Bitter Rice (1948), Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema (1948), and De Sica's Umberto D. (1952). Inspiring filmmakers across the world as an alternative to expensive Hollywood fantasy, The Bicycle Thief revealed the potential power of combining local concerns with an unflinching cinematic style. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch a scene from the film:

Macario (Mexico)
PN1997 .M253 1998

B. Traven, the reclusive author of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, used an old Mexican folk tale as the basis for his novel The Third Guest. The book was in turn adapted for film as Macario. Ignacio Tarso plays a poverty-stricken peasant who goes on a hunger strike, hoping that someone will take pity on him and give him a turkey dinner. Torres' wife Pina Pellecier steals a turkey, and just as Torres is about to wolf down his food, he is visited by Death (Enrique Lucerio). The grim reaper offers to bestow magical powers upon Torres in exchange for part of the meal. Torres is gifted with the ability to restore health to sick people, but he is permitted to utilize this gift only upon persons of Death's choosing. At first, Torres is lauded as a hero, but before long he is being shunned as an instrument of Satan. Torres' last-ditch effort to redeem himself causes him to renege on his bargain with Death--and you know what that means. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Mabee Library's Collection of Sci-Fi Classics

2007-02-07T18:34:00.000-06:00

Here are a few films from Mabee Library's science-fiction collection. Stop by the library to check them out or to find others!

2001: A Space Odyssey
PN1997 .T96 1994

A mind-bending sci-fi symphony, Stanley Kubrick's landmark 1968 epic pushed the limits of narrative and special effects toward a meditation on technology and humanity. Based on Arthur C. Clarke's story The Sentinel, Kubrick and Clarke's screenplay is structured in four movements. At the Dawn of Man, a group of hominids encounters a mysterious black monolith alien to their surroundings. To the strains of Strauss' Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a hominid discovers the first weapon, using a bone to kill prey. As the hominid tosses the bone in the air, Kubrick cuts to a 21st century spacecraft hovering over the Earth, skipping ahead millions of years in technological development only to imply that man hasn't advanced very far at all psychologically. U.S. scientist Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) travels to the moon to check out the discovery of a strange object on the moon's surface: a black monolith. As Floyd touches the mass, however, a piercing sound emitted by the object stops his fellow investigators in their path. Cutting ahead 18 months, impassive astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) head toward Jupiter on the space ship Discovery, their only company three hibernating astronauts and the vocal, man-made HAL 9000 computer running the entire ship. When the all-too-human HAL malfunctions, however, he tries to murder the astronauts to cover his error, forcing Bowman to defend himself the only way he can. Free of HAL, and finally informed of the voyage's purpose by a recording from Floyd, Bowman journeys to "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," through the psychedelic slit-scan star-gate to an 18th century room, and the completion of the monolith's evolutionary mission. With assistance from special effects expert Douglas Trumbull, Kubrick spent over two years meticulously creating the most "realistic" depictions of outer space ever seen, greatly advancing cinematic technology for a story expressing grave doubts about technology itself. Despite some initial critical reservations that it was too long and too dull, 2001 became one of the most popular films of 1968, underlining the generation gap between young moviegoers who wanted to see something new and challenging and oldsters who "didn't get it." Provocatively billed as "the ultimate trip," 2001 quickly caught on with a counterculture youth audience open to a contemplative (i.e. chemically enhanced) viewing experience of a film suggesting that the way to enlightenment was to free one's mind of the U.S. military-industrial-technological complex. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Alien
PN1997 .A32 1997

Combining science fiction with horror, Swiss artist H.R. Giger's alien design and Carlo Rambaldi's visual effects creepily meld technology with corporeality, creating a claustrophobic environment that is coldly mechanical yet horribly anthropomorphized, like the metallic monster itself. Director Ridley Scott keeps the alien out of full view, hiding it in the dark or camouflaging it in the workings of the Nostromo. Signs of '70s cultural upheaval permeate Alien's future world, from the relationship between corporate capitalism and rapacious monstrosity to the heterogeneous crew and Ripley's forceful horror heroine. The intense frights and gross-outs, however, are credited with making Alien one of the biggest hits of 1979 (it premiered on the two-year anniversary of Star Wars); Giger, Rambaldi, et al. won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Alien went on to spawn three genre-bending sequels (and reconditioned Ripleys): exceptional '80s actioner Aliens (1986), dark prison drama Alien 3 (1992), and exotically grotesque Alien Resurrection (1997). With its atmospheric isolation, implacable monster, and whiff of social conscience, Alien stands as one of the more thoughtful yet utterly terrifying horror films of the 1970s. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Blade Runner
PN1997 .B562 1999

Critics and audiences didn't care for it in 1982, but Ridley Scott's Blade Runner has since risen from cult object to classic of postmodern science fiction. A dystopian view of the future as a decaying, nostalgia-ridden junk culture, it features enormous neon billboards, ad blimps, and soaring Mayan temple-esque skyscrapers, evoking an infernal consumer society divided between those divinely living in the clouds and the multi-cultural exploited masses inhabiting the permanently dank streets. Only the robot "skin job" replicants understand the value of life and freedom. As Deckard's search for the replicants becomes a philosophical rumination on man, machine, and life, Blade Runner's striking production design and visual effects (supervised by FX maestro Douglas Trumbull) underline the cost to humanity of technology-obsessed late capitalism. Blade Runner's increasing stature merited the 10th anniversary release of the "Director's Cut," which rendered the film even more evocatively ambiguous by adding a brief unicorn dream and eliminating the studio-mandated voice-over narration and tacked-on "happy" ending. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

The Day the Earth Stood Still
PN1997 .D39 1998

At a time when science fiction on film had yet to work itself out of its bug-eyed monsters period, The Day the Earth Stood Still was a dramatic step forward for the genre. Intelligently written and directed, well-crafted, and boasting a top-notch cast in good form, it was a class act all the way, as well as one of the first Hollywood films to take the idea of extra-terrestrial visitors seriously (if not as a practical reality, at least as an interesting metaphor). Klaatu, as played by Michael Rennie, was that rare alien invader who wanted to save us from ourselves, and Rennie gives the character an intelligence, compassion, and strength that make him seem a lot more human than many of the Earthlings he encounters, while Sam Jaffe, Patricia Neal, and Billy Gray manage to prove that not all the Earth people are violent, brain-dead slobs. Director Robert Wise and his crew create an admirable sense of tension and awestruck wonder in the wake of Klaatu's arrival (many later films with higher budgets failed to capture the magic of the spaceship landing in Washington D.C. or the towering mystery of Klaatu's robot assistant Gort), and, at a time when Cold War paranoia was at its height, The Day the Earth Stood Still carried a strong pro-disarmament message that was quite brave for its day. The film's message remains pertinent today, and, as entertainment, its intelligence, warmth, and solid filmcraft make it an enduring classic of its kind. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
PN1997 .I58 1988

Though it was an inexpensive production for B-movie studio Allied Artists, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is a class-A 1950s science fiction allegory about the fragility of inner passion. With Siegel's matter-of-fact approach and "ordinary" small town setting and characters, the story about human possession by unexplained alien pods becomes all the more frightening; though the pods are from elsewhere, the "monsters" assume human faces. While the pods have often been seen as a Cold War sci-fi metaphor for Communist infiltration of American society, they are an equally compelling symbol of soul-deadening 1950s suburban conformity. Siegel himself liked to assert that the Hollywood studios were filled with pods; and when Allied Artists saw Siegel's bleak ending, they demanded a prologue and epilogue that added an element of hope. The "Siegel version" of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, however, was seen in Europe and "underground" American screenings, before the 1979 reissue officially deleted the studio-mandated additions. Though it has been remade twice, in 1978 by Philip Kaufman and 1994 by Abel Ferrara, Siegel's tightly constructed, black-and-white version remains the best adaptation of the Jack Finney story. The movie also features a cameo appearance by Siegel assistant Sam Peckinpah. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Media for Black History Month

2007-01-31T20:41:00.000-06:00

Do the Right Thing
PN1997 .D6 1990

Provoking both substantial praise and fierce criticism for its "inflammatory" content, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) examined racism in all its complexity, eschewing simple answers for an ambiguous, artistically ambitious mosaic. The action is confined to one Brooklyn block on the hottest day of the summer, and the Bedford-Stuyvesant location thus becomes a multi-racial and multi-ethnic microcosm, spanning all ages and character types. The tapestry of incidents, whether humorous, intimate, or increasingly hostile, becomes a means to articulate a wide range of attitudes and beliefs, bolstered by cinematographer Ernest Dickerson's contrasting "hot" and "cool" colors and Lee's stylistic breaks from traditional narrative, such as direct address to the camera. Sal's Pizzeria may be the central site of confrontation, but it isn't just a matter of black vs. white. The final quotes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. offer differing views about racism and violence, punctuating a film that at all points questions what is the "right thing" and never offers a clear or simple answer. Funded by Universal after School Daze's success in 1988, Do the Right Thing premiered to acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival that was matched in the U.S. despite unfounded trepidation that it would provoke violence. Considered one of the few great American films made in the 1980s (although it was largely ignored by the Oscars), Do the Right Thing confirmed Lee as one of the preeminent filmmakers to emerge from the decade, while its box office success helped galvanize a new wave of 1990s African-American cinema. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Listen to Public Enemy's song "Fight the Power" from the film's soundtrack:

Bla zing Saddles

PN1997 .B62 2004

Mel Brooks at his ribald, tasteless best, Blazing Saddles stands out as one of the all-time great film spoofs. Sparing no one from his outrageous brand of humor, Brooks proved he was an egalitarian when it came to making fun of people, regardless of skin color or religious persuasion: where blacks may come off as stereotypical, whites are seen as just plain stupid and ignorant. Beyond its over-the-top humor and genre revision of the Western, Blazing Saddles boasts some great performances, with Madeline Kahn, Gene Wilder, and Slim Pickens doing some of the best work of their careers. It also features a number of scenes that have elevated the film into the realm of the comedy classic, perhaps most infamously the one involving beans, a campfire, and the most gratuitous display of flatulence ever to cloud a movie screen. ~Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Hoop Dreams
GV884.A1 H66 2005

The celebrated documentary from director Steve James, Hoop Dreams follows two young boys trying to take their basketball game from the inner-city streets of Chicago to the NBA. Tackling issues of racism, politics, and the dangerous power of hope, the film stands out as a complex and astute examination of the African-American experience. With the all-powerful image of Michael Jordan presiding over the film, Hoop Dreams exposes the way in which basketball has become the dominant force in the lives of so many African-American young men, who rely on their athletic skills to rise above the poverty surrounding them in a society that values only what these boys can do on the court. The film brilliantly elucidates a journey of lost innocence where the casualties of a game mean much more than simply losing on the court. ~Rachel Deahl, All Movie Guide

The Blood of Jesus

PN1997 .B66 1993

In the 1940s, Spencer Williams emerged as a major figure in African-American independent filmmaking. His first feature, The Blood of Jesus, is plagued by poor acting, simplistic writing, and extremely low production values that make the film look unsophisticated at best and amateurish at worst. Nevertheless, the seeds are also there for a quality film. Williams makes effective use of music, from the hymns that are present throughout much of the film to the jazz that takes over during the temptation scenes, and his handling of the jarring scene where Ras shoots Martha demonstrates his directorial skills. Finally, there is the extended sequence of Martha's odyssey through the afterlife as she is led by Satan's agents, Judas and Rufus, first to a nightclub then to a roadhouse. Williams often lingers in these places for no reason except, presumably, to soak up the scenery, indulging in some visual sinfulness under the guise of condemning this world of temptation. As much as the film has a moralistic and prudish tone, Williams' preoccupation with showing how good of a time the people are having in the nightclub and roadhouse provides an intriguing distraction; on the one hand, it serves to make the audience understand why Martha is so tempted by that world, but on the other hand, it provides Williams with the opportunity to add some welcome spice to the picture. The crime is that despite the mediocre material offered here, there is ample proof that had Williams been given access to the studio resources that plenty of lesser-talented white directors were, he would surely have left a greater mark on American film. The historical significance of The Blood of Jesus was finally recognized in 1991 when the Library of Congress placed it on its National Film Registry of American movie landmarks. ~Bob Mastrangelo, All Movie Guide

In the Heat of the Night
PN1997 .I5 1983

Norman Jewison's In The Heat of the Night was one of the unlikeliest hits to come out of 1967. Few issues were more provocative or dangerous to discuss in private, much less on screen, than race relations in the United States, and that went double for the Deep South, where the movie (based on John Ball's book) was set. Additionally, the country didn't seem to be clamoring for that kind of discussion: to this day, Roger Corman's The Intruder (1961) is the only theatrical film ever made about school integration in the South. Jewison defied every piece of industry wisdom and won out, mostly because he played it straight and honest, with a cast led by two actors who could hardly have been improved upon for the parts they played. The thematic set-up was surprisingly similar to The Defiant Ones, in which Poitier had co-starred for Stanley Kramer nine years earlier, but the directorial touch was smoother and the film was filled with an enviable range of wonderful supporting performances. In The Heat of the Night was successful enough to generate a brace of films that tried for the same mix of topicality and drama (as well as two sequels, They Call Me Mister Tibbs and The Organization that were more action-oriented), among them William Wyler's The Liberation of L.B. Jones (which came from the same screenwriter), Lamont Johnson's made-for-television My Sweet Charlie, and Ralph Nelson's Tick Tick Tick, all of which opened race relations to more honest and straightforward cinematic exploration. ~Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America's Music
M1366 .K45 2000

In conjunction with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' ten-part 2000 PBS special, Columbia/Legacy and Verve teamed up to issue a special series of reissues covering much of the history of 20th century jazz. The central release of this program is the five-CD box set Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America's Music, its 94 selections covering the history of 20th century jazz, from 1917 to the mid-'90s. Chronologically, the set is very skewed toward the first 50 years of that time span; there is only just under a CD's worth of music dating from after the mid-'60s. What's here is a very good range of classic jazz from throughout the decades, touching upon performances, many acknowledged classics, from many of the music's giants: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and up to Wynton Marsalis and Cassandra Wilson. There are just a few dubious inclusions (Grover Washington, Jr.'s "Mister Magic," for instance), and as music it's nearly wall-to-wall excellence. As far as core classics of the jazz repertoire, there are quite a few: Armstrong's "West End Blues," Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)," Count Basie's "Lester Leaps In," Holiday's "Strange Fruit," Ellington's "Take the 'A' Train," Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts," Monk's "Straight, No Chaser," Davis' "So What," Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," Coltrane's "Giant Steps," Weather Report's "Birdland," and Hancock's "Rockit." As education, if you didn't know much about jazz before hearing this box, you'll have been exposed to a good deal of its major touchstones after digesting it. Just don't be under the impression that it covers all of the main mileposts, or even that it gives you all of the key launching pads from which to explore further. ~Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

Winter in Films

2007-01-24T19:07:00.000-06:00

Here are a few films available from Mabee Library that use winter as set dressing, plot point, or simply the time of year.

Fargo
PN1997 .F34 2003

Fargo never seems to make up its mind if it wants to be an absurdist comedy or a stylized crime drama, and that's a big part of its charm: somehow it manages to be both at the same time. While the movie never shies away from the grim facts or consequences of the kidnapping and multiple murders at the core of the narrative, Fargo does manage to skate playfully into a dryly comic look at life in the frozen wastes of Minnesota, where cuisine is ruled by the buffet and folks really say "You betcha!" Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, former Minnesotans themselves, understand the physical and emotional landscape of the little town of Brainerd, and they seem to laugh both with it and at it; while they can't help but find humor in the nasal, Nordic drawl and implacably low-key nature of these people, Joel and Ethan seem genuinely to like them -- especially Police Chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand, in a deservedly Oscar-winning performance), whose perversely sunny disposition only partially obscures the fact that she's a clever, observant, and very effective cop. The Coens have even more fun (though of an edgier variety) with Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi, who steals every scene he's in), a weasely crook whose every word and gesture screams, "I'm Not From Around Here." Despite the film's assured comic sensibility, the Coens bring a nail-biting tension to the murder scenes, and William H. Macy's Jerry Lundergaard is a pathetically compelling mass of misguided motivation and bad choices. While most of their films are remarkable for a gymnastic visual style, the Coen brothers give Fargo a stark, clean look that's the perfect match for the chilly near-monochrome of the snowy Midwestern landscape; Fargo looks less like a Coen brothers film than anything else they've done, while defining their signature themes as clearly as anything else they've done. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Midnight Cowboy
PN1997 .M54 1994

Based on a James Leo Herlihy novel, British director John Schlesinger's first American film dramatized the small hopes, dashed dreams, and unlikely friendship of two late '60s lost souls. Dreaming of an easy life as a fantasy cowboy stud, cheerful Texas rube Joe Buck (Jon Voight) heads to New York City to be a gigolo, but he quickly discovers that hustling isn't what he thought it would be after he winds up paying his first trick (Sylvia Miles). He gets swindled by gimpy tubercular grifter Rico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) but, when Joe falls in the direst of straits, Ratso takes Joe into his condemned apartment so that they can help each other survive. Things start to look up when Joe finally lands his first legit female customer (Brenda Vaccaro) at a Warhol-esque party; Ratso's health, however, fails. Joe turns to a final homosexual trick to get the money for one selfless goal: taking Ratso out of New York to his dream life in Miami. One of the first major studio films given the newly minted X rating for its then-frank portrayal of New York decadence, Midnight Cowboy was critically praised for Schlesinger's insight into American lives, with the intercut mosaic of Joe's memories and Ratso's dreams lending their characters and actions greater psychological complexity. While they may have been drawn by the seamy content (tame by current standards), the young late '60s audience responded to Joe's and Ratso's confusion amidst turbulent times and to the connection they make with each other despite their alienation from the surrounding culture. Midnight Cowboy became one of the major financial and artistic hits of 1969, winning Oscars for Best Picture (the first for an X-rated film), Best Director, and former blacklistee Waldo Salt's screenplay. Though the one-two punch of Midnight Cowboy and The Graduate (1967) proved Hoffman's range and Voight's Joe Buck made him a star, both lost Best Actor to classical cowboy John Wayne for True Grit. Even though it was a hit, the Academy ignored the theme song "Everybody's Talking," sung by Harry Nilsson. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch Harry Nilsson perform "Everybody's Talking"

The Idiot
PN1997 .H25 2003

A former soldier is branded an idiot because of his epileptic seizures caused by wartime experiences. He shows unbridled compassion for people after he moves in with friends of his family as he tries to help a young man ruined by the war and a woman hounded by a wealthy but cruel suitor. All the characters are victims of the war and its devastating emotional aftershocks. Taken from Feodor Dostoyevsky's classic novel, the screenplay was written by the film's director, Akira Kurosawa. ~Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The Winter's Tale
PR2839 .A1 1980

King Leontes of Bohemia suspects his wife, Hermione, and his friend, Polixenes, of betraying him. When he forces Polixenes to flee for his life, Leontes sets in motion a chain of events that lead to death, a ferocious bear, an infant left in the snow, young love, and a statue coming to life. ~Kathy Li, The Internet Movie Database

Download the play HERE from Project Gutenberg

Citizen Kane
PN1997 .C5117 1996

Widely considered the greatest American movie ever made, Orson Welles's film debut reconceived Hollywood conventions of story-telling and visual structure, suggesting the essential mystery of a person's inner self and inspiring countless filmmakers with its technical accomplishments. Already famous for his work in radio and theater, 24-year-old Welles was given complete creative freedom when RKO Pictures signed him in 1939. Co-authored with Herman J. Mankiewicz, the Kane screenplay dispensed with linear biographical narrative in favor of flashbacks recounting Kane's life from several points of view, ostensibly to solve the puzzle of Kane's deathbed utterance. Collaborating with cinematographer Gregg Toland, Welles used specially constructed sets to compose the film through a number of long takes in deep focus and high-contrast black-and-white, creating meaning through the juxtaposition of multiple actions and characters in a single take rather than through numerous edits. While the imagery and the carefully choreographed soundtrack provide clues to Kane's nature as he ages from innocent boy to corrupt magnate, he ultimately remains an enigmatic figment of memory. Kane's real-life model, however, was no mystery; newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst tried to suppress what he considered an unflattering portrait of himself. While RKO rejected an offer to reimburse their costs in exchange for burning the negatives, Citizen Kane's release was hindered by Hearst's campaign against it. Though non-Hearst papers recognized it as a vanguard work, and it was nominated for nine Oscars (four for Welles himself), Kane was not a popular hit. Despite the film's artistic approbation and subsequent wide-ranging influence, from 1940s film noir to the French New Wave to American film school grads, Welles never again had creative control in Hollywood. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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Sarah Plain and Tall: Winter's End
PN1997 .W57 1999

This follow-up to the acclaimed made-for-TV movies Sarah, Plain and Tall and Skylark finds Sarah (Glenn Close) and her husband Jacob (Christopher Walken) dealing with the trials of life on their Kansas farm in 1918. Jacob must contend with the unexpected arrival of John (Jack Palance), his father, who left him and his mother behind many years ago, while Sarah is worried about her eldest daughter Anna (Lexi Randall), who has left home to help treat the victims of the influenza epidemic. Anna, meanwhile, has worries of her own, as her boyfriend has just shipped out to fight in WWI. Based on the novel by Patricia MacLachlan, Sarah, Plain & Tall: Winter's End was produced as part of the award-winning anthology series Hallmark Hall of Fame. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The Last Post of the Semester

2006-12-13T13:29:00.000-06:00

Since this is the last post of the semester, I thought I would use some items I had intended to use earlier but didn't have the chance.

Un Chien Andalou
PN1997 .C44 1990

Un Chien Andalou is a landmark of early avant-garde cinema. Impatient with the polite cinematic surrealism of artists like Man Ray, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali wanted to stir things up and create "a despairing, passionate call to murder." Indeed, the images in Chien horrify even today, most notably the notorious eye-slashing scene near the beginning of the film. Many of the images seem to spring directly from Sigmund Freud's writings on sexual anxiety, such as breasts that mysteriously turn into a buttocks or a disembodied limb discovered by an androgyne, while others remain willfully obscure. Though the plot as such ostensibly concerns two quarrelling lovers, Buñuel and Dali gleefully destroyed all temporal and spatial continuity and systematically dismembered all forms of linear narrative and thought. Instead, meaning is created through visual associations, giving the film a thoroughly nightmarish quality. Chien went on to influence generations of filmmakers, from Maya Deren's masterpiece Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) to David Lynch's dark classic Eraserhead (1977), and it established the career of Buñuel, one of cinema's maverick filmmakers. ~Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Watch Un Chien Andalou in its entirety:

Land without bread
PN1997 .C44 1990

"Do you see this wonderful valley?" director Luis Buñuel asked his crew as they began filming this documentary; "well, this is where Hell begins." Buñuel had long displayed a love/hate relationship with his native Spain, and his bitterness rarely flowed with greater force than in Las Hurdes. While the Spanish valley of Las Hurdes Bajas is green and beautiful, the mountainous region of Las Hurdes Altas is mired in economic and cultural poverty. As captured on film by Buñuel, Las Hurdes Altas is a land of flinty soil where few if any crops will grow. Bread is a rare luxury that must be brought in from the valley. Many of the residents subsist on pork, and most suffer from dietary deficiencies. The village's only salable export is a bitter variety of honey, and the Catholic Church has all but abandoned the region; the single teacher at the village's tiny schoolhouse is the town's sole contact with the outside world. Intermarriage among the families in the village has left many of the children retarded or handicapped, and the children who are born healthy often succumb to starvation and common illnesses. And Las Hurdes is a place with no art, culture or music; intellectually, the village is as barren as its soil. While it was Buñuel's sole documentary, Las Hurdes is thematically consistent with his other films; its fascination with insects, unblinking look at human cruelty, subtle but clear disgust with the Catholic Church, and moments of jet-black humor mark it as the work of Spain's greatest surrealist filmmaker. Las Hurdes was also embraced as an attack on Franco's regime; a British leftist group screened it in the United Kingdom as "The film that answers Franco." ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Genius Loves Company / Ray Charles
M1630.18.C48 G4 2004

Genius Loves Company is the last studio album Ray Charles completed before his death in June 2004. Prior to this, the last studio album he released was Strong Love Affair in 1996, which was a stab at modern pop, filled with new songs and given an adult contemporary sheen. It was not one of his most distinctive efforts, even when judged against his latter-day albums, and it disappeared not long after its release. Charles left Warner and, years later, signed with Concord, who released Genius Loves Company, which had a decidedly different approach than the all-modern Strong Love Affair. As the title acknowledges with a wink, this is a duets album, which may be a little commonplace as far as latter-day superstar albums go but is still a step up from his previous studio album since it puts Ray Charles in a comfortable, relaxed situation that plays to his strengths. Instead of trying to put Charles in a modern setting, producers John Burk and Phil Ramone (Burk helmed seven of the album's tracks, Ramone is responsible for the other five, and their work fits together seamlessly) go for a clean retro setting with a few guitars, synths, and a rhythm section, occasionally dressing it with an orchestra or some strings. In other words, apart from the glistening production, it's not far removed from any of Charles' crossover records from the '60s, and he's also given a strong set of songs, largely familiar pop classics, from "Fever" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word" and "Crazy Love." His duet partners are fairly predictable — classy newcomers like Norah Jones and Diana Krall, but also old stalwarts like Elton John, B.B. King, Johnny Mathis, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, and the ubiquitous Willie Nelson (who has never sounded older than he does here on "It Was a Very Good Year") — but they're also reliable, never overshadowing Ray yet never shrinking in his shadow either; in short, it sounds more like a real duets album than most superstar duet records. The end result is modest, friendly, laid-back, and pleasing, one that remains faithful to Charles' music while sounding relatively fresh. It may not be weighty enough to be a career-capping masterpiece, but it's sweet enough to be an appropriate final album — which is far more than can be said of Strong Love Affair, or any of the other albums he cut in the '80s or '90s for that matter. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from Genius Loves Company

Watch a Behind-the-Scenes featurette about the recording of Genius Loves Company

Dr. Strangelove: or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
PN1997 .D7 1997

In 1964, with the Cuban Missile Crisis fresh in viewers' minds, the Cold War at its frostiest, and the hydrogen bomb relatively new and frightening, Stanley Kubrick dared to make a film about what could happen if the wrong person pushed the wrong button — and played the situation for laughs. Dr. Strangelove's jet-black satire (from a script by director Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern) and a host of superb comic performances (including three from Peter Sellers) have kept the film fresh and entertaining, even as its issues have become (slightly) less timely. Loaded with thermonuclear weapons, a U.S. bomber piloted by Maj. T.J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) is on a routine flight pattern near the Soviet Union when they receive orders to commence Wing Attack Plan R, best summarized by Maj. Kong as "Nuclear combat! Toe to toe with the Russkies!" On the ground at Burpleson Air Force Base, Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) notices nothing on the news about America being at war. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) calmly informs him that he gave the command to attack the Soviet Union because it was high time someone did something about fluoridation, which is sapping Americans' bodily fluids (and apparently has something to do with Ripper's sexual dysfunction). Meanwhile, President Merkin Muffley (Sellers again) meets with his top Pentagon advisors, including super-hawk Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), who sees this as an opportunity to do something about Communism in general and Russians in particular. However, the ante is upped considerably when Soviet ambassador DeSadesky (Peter Bull) informs Muffley and his staff of the latest innovation in Soviet weapons technology: a "Doomsday Machine" which will destroy the entire world if the Russians are attacked. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer

or:

Watch a scene from Dr. Strangelove

"...a film version of Harold Bloom's The Western Canon"

2006-12-06T13:28:00.000-06:00

I'm usually not a fan of lists, especially the ones that are so prevalent at this time of year that attempt to rank a year's worth of films or albums. It seems odd, then, that this blog has been so preoccupied with lists. However, a well-conceived list will accomplish two things: create discussion and educate the reader. The following article by Paul Schrader, which began as "...a film version of Harold Bloom's The Western Canon," accomplishes both. It also explains the history of canons, questions the artistic relevancy of film, posits that films will not be the dominant art form of the 21st century, and generally dismisses the common popularity-driven rankings of art forms. At the end of the article, Schrader lists 60 films in three categories - gold, silver, and bronze - that he considers film masterworks from the past century. Below the citation is a list of the gold-medal winners, with call numbers next to titles that Mabee Library owns.

Canon Fodder
by Paul Schrader
Film Comment
Sep/Oct 2006
Read responses to Schrader's article HERE.

Schrader's Gold List

1. The Rules of the Game / Jean Renoir / 1939

2. Tokyo Story / Yasujiro Ozu / 1953

3. City Lights / Charles Chaplin / 1931 [PN1997 .C56 1992]

4. Pickpocket / Robert Bresson / 1959

5. Metropolis / Fritz Lang / 1927

6. Citizen Kane / Orson Welles / 1941 [PN1997 .C5117 1996]

7. Orphée / Jean Cocteau / 1950

8. Masculin-Feminin / Jean-Luc Godard / 1966

9. Persona / Ingmar Bergman / 1966

10. Vertigo / Alfred Hitchcock / 1958 [PN1997 .V48 1997]

11. Sunrise / F.W.Murnau / 1927 [PN1997 .S855 1996]

12. The Searchers / John Ford / 1956 [PN1997 .S32 1997]

13. The Lady Eve / Preston Sturges / 1941 [PN1997 .L32 1995]

14. The Conformist / Bernardo Bertolucci / 1970

15. 8 1/2 / Federico Fellini / 1963

16. The Godfather / Francis Coppola / 1972 [PN1997 .G5689 1997]

17. In the Mood for Love / Wong Kar Wai / 2000

18. The Third Man / Carol Reed / 1949

19. Performance / Donald Cammell/Nicolas Roeg / 1970

20. La Notte / Michelangelo Antonioni / 1961

Some other articles featuring Paul Schrader:

These are very uncertain times: an interview with Paul Schrader
by Leonard Quart
Cineaste
Winter 1998

Affliction and Forgiveness: An Interview with Paul Schrader
by Michael Bliss
Film Quarterly
Fall 2000

Dialogue on Film; Paul Schrader
American Film
July/August 1989

Remembering Robert Altman

2006-11-30T13:26:00.000-06:00

In commemoration of filmmaker Robert Altman, who died November 20, here is a selection of Altman-related items available from Mabee Library.

Films:

M*A*S*H
PN1997 .M39 2001

Robert Altman's commercial breakthrough after more than 20 years of industrial films and TV work felt like an joyous shout of liberation, not just for its director but for the film industry in general. MASH was proudly, gleefully, gloriously rude as few previous Hollywood films had dared to be, not just in using four-letter words but also in a hilariously casual disrespect for religion, the military, American foreign policy, and authority as a whole. While more than a few war movies had centered on men who served despite personal misgivings, MASH put us in the middle of an Army field hospital in the Korean War, where draftee doctors openly decry the "regular Army clowns" as they try to patch up the butchered bodies of soldiers from both sides. The cynical disrespect and mordant wit of Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould) was a breath of enjoyably foul air, especially at a time when America was knee-deep in the ongoing Vietnam War, the obvious analogue of the movie's Korean conflict. Also, the film's willingness to set its cheerfully vulgar humor (often involving sex and nudity) against the bloody horrors of surgery and the unpleasant realities of war was both brave and appropriate; it gave the film a moral balance that allowed the comic and tragic elements to temper each other. If MASH seems more controlled than much of Altman's later work, his trademark free-floating, catch-things-on-the-sly ambience is very much in evidence, as if he'd been wanting to make this sort of film his whole life and wasn't going to blow his chance. He didn't. Also, if you know MASH as a TV series and not as a film, prepare yourself for a shock; there is nothing warm and fuzzy about this movie, which makes its bitter humor all the more effective. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Nashville
PN1997 .N325 1989

Following 24 characters in the country music capital, Robert Altman's 1975 epic presents a complex, critical portrait of the twin national obsessions with celebrity and power. Culminating Altman's experiments in loose, multi-character narrative structure; mobile wide-screen composition; and layered sound design, the film seamlessly interweaves many stories and moods, even within a single shot, creating a mosaic of "America" on the cusp of the Bicentennial. The improvisational acting enhances the casual feel of events, as does the dense mix of songs, dialogue, and background noise (like the campaign loudspeakers spewing populist bromides). Amid this random ambiance, characters consistently act out of base self-interest, intimating that these are the skewed values of contemporary America. Combining his somber social commentary with a lightly musical and comic atmosphere, punctuated by 27 songs by various cast members, Altman reveals how the worship of entertainment precludes personal relationships and political awareness, even as the film itself seeks to amuse. Critics, especially Pauline Kael, greeted the film as an incisive masterwork, predicting that Nashville would be a blockbuster like Altman's MASH (1970). While not a flop, it did not live up to those financial expectations, as audiences increasingly turned to such lighter diversions as the 1975 blockbuster Jaws. Nashville received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Lily Tomlin's adulterous gospel singer and Ronee Blakely's fragile star, but Joan Tewkesbury's screenplay was ignored; Keith Carradine's seductively folksy "I'm Easy" won the Best Song statuette. With its technical invention, narrative intricacy, provocative insights, and command of entertainment, Nashville still stands as one of Hollywood's most remarkable achievements; Paul Thomas Anderson's multi-character tapestries, Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999), reveal a small measure of its influence. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Books:

Robert Altman : A Guide to References and Resources
by Virginia Wright Wexman and Gretchen Bisplinghoff
PN1998.A3 A5774 1984

Robert Altman : Interviews
edited by David Sterritt
PN1998.3.A48 R6 2000

Persistence of Vision: The Films of Robert Altman
by Neil Feineman
PN1998.A3 A5764 1978

Robert Altman's America
by Helene Keyssar
PN1998.3.A48 K49 1991

Newspaper Articles found using the library's InfoTrac OneFile database:

Robert Altman, Director With Daring, Dies at 81
The New York Times
Nov 22, 2006

Some Are Great and Some Are Slight, but All Are From a Master
The New York Times
Nov 24, 2006

Robert Altman's Long Goodbye
The New York Times
Feb 19, 2006

Mabee Library's Jimmy Stewart Collection

2006-11-15T13:25:00.000-06:00

From his biography on the Turner Classic Movies Web site: "James Stewart was arguably the most loved actor ever to have appeared on screen. Certainly, he was the last of the great men who captured audience hearts in the throes of the Depression and became, in the words of Andrew Sarris, 'the most complete actor-personality in the American cinema.'"

How the West Was Won
PN1997 .H695 1995

Filmed in panoramic Cinerama, this star-studded, epic Western adventure is a true cinematic classic. Three legendary directors (Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall) combine their skills to tell the story of three families and their travels from the Erie Canal to California between 1839 and 1889. Spencer Tracy narrates the film, which cost an estimated 15 million dollars to complete. In the first segment, "The Rivers," pioneer Zebulon Prescott (Karl Malden) sets out to settle in the West with his wife (Agnes Moorehead) and their four children. Along with other settlers and river pirates, they run into mountain man Linus Rawlings (James Stewart), who sells animal hides. The Prescotts try to raft down the Ohio River in a raft, but only daughters Lilith (Debbie Reynolds) and Eve (Carroll Baker) survive. Eve and Linus get married, while Lilith continues on. In the second segment, "The Plains," Lilith ends up singing in a saloon in St. Louis, but she really wants to head west in a wagon train led by Roger Morgan (Robert Preston). Along the way, she's accompanied by the roguish gambler Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck), who claims he can protect her. After he saves her life during an Indian attack, they get married and move to San Francisco. In the third segment, "The Civil War," Eve and Linus' son, Zeb (George Peppard), fights for the Union. After he's forced to kill his Confederate friend, he returns home and gives the family farm to his brother. In the fourth segment, "The Railroads," Zeb fights with his railroad boss (Richard Widmark), who wants to cut straight through Indian territory. Zeb's co-worker Jethro (Henry Fonda) refuses to cut through the land, so he quits and moves to the mountains. After the railway camp is destroyed, Zeb heads for the mountains to visit him. In the fifth segment, "The Outlaws," Lilith is an old widow traveling from California to Arizona to stay with her nephew Zeb on his ranch. However, he has to fight a gang of desperadoes first. How the West Was Won garnered three Oscars, for screenplay, film editing, and sound production. ~Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

It's a Wonderful Life
PN1997 .I87 1995

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
PN1997 .M7 2000

Frank Capra's classic comedy-drama established James Stewart as a lead actor in one of his finest (and most archetypal) roles. The film opens as a succession of reporters shout into telephones announcing the death of Senator Samuel Foley. Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), the state's senior senator, puts in a call to Governor Hubert "Happy" Hopper (Guy Kibbee) reporting the news. Hopper then calls powerful media magnate Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), who controls the state -- along with the lawmakers. Taylor orders Hopper to appoint an interim senator to fill out Foley's term; Taylor has proposed a pork barrel bill to finance an unneeded dam at Willet Creek, so he warns Hopper he wants a senator who "can't ask any questions or talk out of turn." After having a number of his appointees rejected, at the suggestion of his children Hopper nominates local hero Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), leader of the state's Boy Rangers group. Smith is an innocent, wide-eyed idealist who quotes Jefferson and Lincoln and idolizes Paine, who had known his crusading editor father. In Washington, after a humiliating introduction to the press corps, Smith threatens to resign, but Paine encourages him to stay and work on a bill for a national boy's camp. With the help of his cynical secretary Clarissa Sanders (Jean Arthur), Smith prepares to introduce his boy's camp bill to the Senate. But when he proposes to build the camp on the Willets Creek site, Taylor and Paine force him to drop the measure. Smith discovers Taylor and Paine want the Willets Creek site for graft and he attempts to expose them, but Paine deflects Smith's charges by accusing Smith of stealing money from the boy rangers. Defeated, Smith is ready to depart Washington, but Saunders, whose patriotic zeal has been renewed by Smith, exhorts him to stay and fight. Smith returns to the Senate chamber and, while Taylor musters the media forces in his state to destroy him, Smith engages in a climactic filibuster to speak his piece: "I've got a few things I want to say to this body. I tried to say them once before and I got stopped colder than a mackerel. Well, I'd like to get them said this time, sir. And as a matter of fact, I'm not gonna leave this body until I do get them said." ~Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Destry Rides Again
PN1997 .D47 1993

The Naked Spur
PN1997 .N31 1991

The powerhouse combination of star James Stewart and director Anthony Mann score another cinematic bullseye in The Naked Spur. Stewart plays a taciturn frontiersman who loses his home while he's off fighting the Civil War. To raise enough money for a new grubstake, Stewart becomes a bounty hunter in Colorado territory. His first quarry is fugitive, killer Robert Ryan. Stewart's efforts to bring in Ryan and collect the reward are compromised by the presence of Ryan's loyal girl friend Janet Leigh and Stewart's two disreputable sidekicks, wily prospector Millard Mitchell and disgraced Union-officer Ralph Meeker. There's plenty of "cat and mouse" byplay between Stewart and Ryan before the brutal climax; the drama is intensified by the fact that both men are on the outer rim of total insanity. The Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Naked Spur was cowritten by Sam Rolfe, who was later one of the creative forces responsible for the similarly no-nonsense TV western series Have Gun, Will Travel. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer here.

The Philadelphia Story
PN1997 .P521 1992

Playwright Philip Barry reportedly based the central character of The Philadelphia Story on Katharine Hepburn's brittle public persona, so it should be little surprise that she plays the part so well. The film is a quick-witted translation of the play, essentially a parlor drama with witty, Oscar Wilde-like banter and glib repartee from nearly every actor. There are moments of rare beauty in the dialogue, even if director George Cukor rarely uses them to give the film more visual flair or energy. The story both spoofs and plays sly homage to Clifford Odets' earnest socialist dramas, in which kind-hearted socialites learn to love and admire the working poor -- except that, in The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn turns her back on the working-class hero and returns to her own kind, the aristocratic, debonair, completely irresistible Cary Grant (who does a wonderful job of being...Cary Grant). The aristocrats are well-skewered by the delightful screenplay, and James Stewart is excellent as the cynical but smitten reporter, in a performance that won him his only Academy Award. Donald Ogden Stewart's faithful adaptation of the Barry play was also recognized by the Academy. High Society, the 1956 musical version of this story, was moderately successful, but not in the same classic league. ~Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Rear Window
PN1997 .R43 2001

The Shop Around the Corner
PN1997 .S56 1994

The Shop Around the Corner is one of the screen's best romantic comedies, and an excellent example of the subtle humor and wry character interplay that marked the films of director Ernst Lubitsch. The plot -- likeable people (James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan) who are antagonists in real life but also anonymous pen pals are infatuated with each other -- is ripe with comic potential, but Lubitsch takes the material further, including several bittersweet subplots that give the film richness and texture. The supporting performances are first-rate, particularly Frank Morgan and Joseph Schildkraut, and the film has the classy look that was a hallmark of MGM films of this era. The central story has been reused in various films, including Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail. ~Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer here.

Vertigo
PN1997 .V48 1997

The Spirit of St. Louis
PN1997 .S646 1997

Charles Lindbergh was an American icon between the two World Wars, a dashing aviator who made history with the first trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927. Thirty years later, Hollywood snatched up his autobiography and cast James Stewart, himself an icon of American heroism, in the lead role. The film might have been formulaic if not for the combined writing and directorial talents of Billy Wilder, the eccentric Hollywood filmmaker who provided the Lindbergh character with quirky, soul-searching dialogue during the long stretches in which he is alone on his journey. The Spirit of St. Louis is fascinating not just as Americana but as an example of how even the most familiar and pedestrian story can be given a special flavor. Unfortunately, the film nose-dived at the box office; it probably should have been made a decade or two earlier, when Lindbergh's feat seemed more fascinating. ~Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Visit The Jimmy Stewart Museum in Indiana, Pennsylvania

Read more about Stewart from Turner Classic Movies, The Internet Movie Database, and All Movie Guide

Classic Film Noirs

2006-11-08T13:23:00.000-06:00

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines film noir as a "film genre that offers dark or fatalistic interpretations of reality. The term is applied to U.S. films of the late 1940s and early '50s that often portrayed a seamy or criminal underworld and cynical characters. The films were noted for their use of stark, expressionistic lighting and stylized camera work, often employed in urban settings." For more information about film noir, track down the following articles:

Stankowski, R.H. (1986). Night of the Soul: American Film Noir. Studies in Popular Culture, 9(1), 61-83.

Schrader, Paul. (1972). Notes on film noir. Film Comment, 8(1), 8-13.

The following are classic noirs that are available at Mabee Library.

The Big Sleep
PN1997 .B544 2000

Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep is one of the most influential detective movies ever to come out of Hollywood, ranking with John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, which also starred Humphrey Bogart. What makes the film's success astonishing is that it had a troubled post-production history, requiring extensive reshooting, and a script that, in its final version, is so filled with blind alleys and red herrings that no one was exactly sure what the movie was about. The original Raymond Chandler novel had one of that author's more impenetrable plots, with a series of murders that constitute more of a web than a chain, and included key details, involving drug use and pornography, that had to be soft-pedalled in the movie. In the final cut of the film and the final draft of the script, no one ever explains who killed chauffeur Owen Taylor, and it's almost impossible to tell why fully a third of the other killings in the movie took place. Moreover, if it is important to the viewer to know what Arthur Gwynn Geiger is selling out of his bookstore, one has to read the book to find out. Hawks breezed past all of these potential problems by letting the dialogue and the action spill out so fast that one barely had time to acknowledge, much less absorb, a new fact or plot element before the next one was upon the viewer. Where he did slow down was in the fiercely sexual repartee between Bogart's Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall's Mrs. Rutledge, one of the most blatant displays of pre-coital jousting in a mainstream Hollywood movie at that time. The irony, for a movie that was ahead of its time, is that it was nearly two years late getting out to the public, as it was pulled and reshot after initial screenings, increasing Bacall's role, among other changes. The result was a mystery that remained mysterious, but also a cutting-edge movie with a razor-sharp sexual edge. And it turned out that this mattered a lot more than finding out who killed Owen Taylor. ~Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Casablanca
PN1997 .C352 1992

There are many people for whom Casablanca is the greatest Hollywood movie ever made, and, while that may be going a bit far, one would be hard-pressed to think of another film in which the pieces fell together with such serendipity. It's hard to imagine a movie in which the leads are better cast: Humphrey Bogart's tough, effortless cool gives Rick the ideal balance of honor and cynicism, Ingrid Bergman's luminous beauty makes it seem reasonable that men would fight for Ilsa's affections, and Paul Henreid's Victor is cold enough that you can imagine Ilsa's being tempted by her old flame. The supporting cast is superb down the line; Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Dooley Wilson, and S.Z. Sakall are all so memorable that one tends to forget that none is onscreen for very long. The screenplay often walks the border of cliché, but the story has just enough twists, and the dialogue so much snap, that it stays compelling throughout. And Michael Curtiz knew just when to turn on the schmaltz and when to cut it off. Casablanca blends romance, suspense, humor, and patriotic drama with such skill that one imagines it must have happened by accident, and the movie looks better with each passing year. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cheer, and the good guys strike a blow against Fascism -- what more could you want from a movie? ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Chinatown
PN1997 .C46 1997

"You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't," warns water baron Noah Cross (John Huston), when smooth cop-turned-private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) starts nosing around Cross's water diversion scheme. That proves to be the ominous lesson of Chinatown, Roman Polanski's critically lauded 1974 revision of 1940s film noir detective movies. In 1930s Los Angeles, "matrimonial work" specialist Gittes is hired by Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to tail her husband, Water Department engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling). Gittes photographs him in the company of a young blonde and figures the case is closed, only to discover that the real Mrs. Mulwray had nothing to do with hiring Gittes in the first place. When Hollis turns up dead, Gittes decides to investigate further, encountering a shady old-age home, corrupt bureaucrats, angry orange farmers, and a nostril-slicing thug (Polanski) along the way. By the time he confronts Cross, Evelyn's father and Mulwray's former business partner, Jake thinks he knows everything, but an even more sordid truth awaits him. When circumstances force Jake to return to his old beat in Chinatown, he realizes just how impotent he is against the wealthy, depraved Cross. "Forget it, Jake," his old partner tells him. "It's Chinatown." Reworking the somber underpinnings of detective noir along more pessimistic lines, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne convey a '70s-inflected critique of capitalist and bureaucratic malevolence in a carefully detailed period piece harkening back to the genre's roots in the 1930s and '40s. Gittes always has a smart comeback like Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but the corruption Gittes finds is too deep for one man to stop. Other noir revisions, such as Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), also centered on the detective's inefficacy in an uncertain '70s world, but Chinatown's period sheen renders this dilemma at once contemporary and timeless, pointing to larger implications about the effects of corporate rapaciousness on individuals. Polanski and Towne clashed over Chinatown's ending; Polanski won the fight, but Towne won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Chinatown was nominated for ten other Oscars, including Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes, and Score. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

D.O.A .

PN1997 .D16 2004

One of the most definitive films noirs, the suspenseful D.O.A. also features one of the greatest conceits in film history: a man trying to solve his own murder. Not many movies can boast the line, "You've been murdered." The existential anxieties lurking in other film noirs are at the forefront of D.O.A.: the "walking dead man" metaphor is no longer merely a metaphor. The underrated Edmond O'Brien was at his finest as the accountant fighting a fatal, slow-acting poison. The film was the first directorial effort from famed cinematographer Rudolph Maté (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr), and would be his most enduring film. Though the production values were in keeping with B-movies of the time, the stylish black-and-white cinematography of Ernest Laszlo was creative even by expressionistic standards. D.O.A. has been remade twice, first as the average Color Me Dead and then as 1988's vapid D.O.A. (1988). ~Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide

You can preview the film by streaming or downloading it from the Internet Archive.

Double Indemnity
PN1997 .D68 1991

Billy Wilder only made one proper film noir, but it was a doozy: Double Indemnity is one of the most unrelentingly cynical films the genre produced, with a pair of career-changing performances from Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray and a script by Wilder and Raymond Chandler every bit as black-hearted as James M. Cain's novel Three of a Kind, on which the film was based. The idiosyncratically attractive Stanwyck, generally thought of as pretty but hardly a bombshell, was rarely as sexy as she was as Phyllis Dietrichson, and never as sleazy; Phyllis knows how to use her allure to twist men around her little finger, and from the moment Walter Neff lays eyes on her, he's taken a sharp turn down the Wrong Path, as Phyllis oozes erotic attraction at its least wholesome. While MacMurray was best known as a "nice guy" leading man (an image that stuck with him to the end of his career), he was capable of much more, and he gave perhaps the finest performance of his life as Walter Neff, a sharp-talking wise guy who loses himself to weak, murderous corruption when he finds his Achilles Heel in the brassy blonde Phyllis. (MacMurray's only role that rivalled it was as the heartless Mr. Sheldrake in The Apartment, also directed by Wilder.) And, while they followed the Hays Code to the letter, Wilder and Chandler packed this story with seething sexual tension; Neff's morbid fascination with Phyllis's ankle bracelet is as brazenly fetishistic as 1940s filmmaking got. Double Indemnity was not a film designed to make evil seem attractive -- but it's sure a lot of fun to watch. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Watch an excerpt from the film:

Gun Crazy
PN1997 .G85 2004

While often compared to Bonnie and Clyde, which it preceded by nearly 20 years, Gun Crazy is in many ways a more daring and disturbing film; while the leads lack the skill and charisma of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and the picture is sometimes betrayed by its obvious low budget, director Joseph H. Lewis gives his story a subversive sexual economy that's more provocative than that of Arthur Penn's later (and bolder) variation, and his bluntly energetic and inventive visual storytelling helped make Gun Crazy one of the most fabled low-budget crime pictures of the 1940s. The doomed romance between weak-willed sharpshooter Bart Tare (John Dall), who loves guns but lacks the courage to kill, and Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins), who is the aggressor in the relationship but can't shoot with the same grace and elan as Bart, can be read on several different levels, none of them especially healthy. While the film satisfied the edicts of 1940s film censorship, lust has rarely seemed more vivid than between Bart and Annie; their relationship is based less on love than on pure animal instinct, and Lewis makes it seem both compelling and unwholesome. Within moments of meeting each other, Bart and Annie seem bound for life and on the fast track to damnation, with no repentance possible or requested; Jim Thompson never imagined a couple as doomed and damaged as these two. And Lewis takes visual chances that one would hardly expect from a 1940s B-movie -- especially the justifiably famous robbery sequence, shot in one take from the back seat of a car -- giving the picture an inventive style that makes the material all the more effective. If Gun Crazy's ambitions sometimes outstrip its means, Lewis got enough of his ideas on the screen to make this one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking crime films of its era. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Watch Robert DeNiro get a little gun crazy:

The Hitch-Hiker
PN1997 .H58 1997

A taut, thrilling B-movie, The Hitch-Hiker features fasten-your-seatbelts, edge-of-your-seat tension from start to finish. Ida Lupino really makes her mark here as a director with a film that is as tough and merciless as anything any of her male counterparts were creating at the time. Edmund O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy are good as regular joes who are on the longest and worst fishing trip of their lives. But it's William Talman as their sadistic kidnapper who is brilliant. This is one of those performances that all future criminal scumball characters can be measured by. Talman's cold-blooded killer personifies America's deepest fears about random crime that can strike anyone anywhere. ~Adam Bregman, All Movie Guide

Mabee Library's Alfred Hitchcock Collection

2006-11-01T13:22:00.000-06:00

Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window
PN1997 .R43 2001

Laid up with a broken leg, photojournalist L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his tiny, sweltering courtyard apartment. To pass the time between visits from his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his fashion model girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), the binocular-wielding Jeffries stares through the rear window of his apartment at the goings-on in the other apartments around his courtyard. As he watches his neighbors, he assigns them such roles and character names as "Miss Torso" (Georgine Darcy), a professional dancer with a healthy social life or "Miss Lonelyhearts" (Judith Evelyn), a middle-aged woman who entertains nonexistent gentlemen callers. Of particular interest is seemingly mild-mannered travelling salesman Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), who is saddled with a nagging, invalid wife. One afternoon, Thorwald pulls down his window shade, and his wife's incessant bray comes to a sudden halt. Out of boredom, Jeffries casually concocts a scenario in which Thorwald has murdered his wife and disposed of the body in gruesome fashion. Trouble is, Jeffries' musings just might happen to be the truth. One of Alfred Hitchcock's very best efforts, Rear Window is a crackling suspense film that also ranks with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) as one of the movies' most trenchant dissections of voyeurism. As in most Hitchcock films, the protagonist is a seemingly ordinary man who gets himself in trouble for his secret desires. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

North by Northwes t

PN1997 .N557 1996

While having lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York, advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) has the bad luck to call for a messenger just as a page goes out for a "George Kaplan." From that moment, Thornhill finds that he has stepped into a nightmare - he is quietly abducted by a pair of armed men out of the hotel's famous Oak Room and transported to a Long Island estate; there, he is interrogated by a mysterious man (James Mason) who, believing that Roger is George Kaplan, demands to know what he knows about his business and how he has come to acquire this knowledge. Roger, who knows nothing about who any of these people are, can do nothing but deny that he is Kaplan or that he knows what they're talking about. Finally, his captors force a bottle of bourbon into Roger and put him behind the wheel of a car on a dangerous downhill stretch. Through sheer luck and the intervention of a police patrol car and its driver (John Beradino), Roger survives the ride and evades his captors, and is booked for drunk driving. He's unable to persuade the court, the county detectives, or even his own mother (Jesse Royce Landis) of the truth of his story, however -- Thornhill returns with them to the mansion where he was held, only to find any incriminating evidence cleaned up and to learn that the owner of the house is a diplomat, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober), assigned to the United Nations. He backtracks to the hotel to find the room of the real George Kaplan, only to discover that no one at the hotel has ever actually seen the man. With his kidnappers once again pursuing him, Thornhill decides to confront Townsend at the United Nations, only to discover that he knows nothing of the events on Long Island, or his house being occupied -- but before he can learn more, Townsend gets a knife in his back in full view of 50 witnesses who believe that Roger did it. Now on the run from a murder charge, complete with a photograph of him holding the weapon plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country, Thornhill tries to escape via train - there he meets the cooly beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who twice hides him from the police, once spontaneously and a second time in a more calculated rendezvous in her compartment that gets the two of them together romantically, at least for the night. By the next day, he's off following a clue to a remote rural highway, where he is attacked by an armed crop-dusting plane, one of the most famous scenes in Hitchcock's entire film output. Thornhill barely survives, but he does manage to learn that his mysterious tormentor/interrogator is named Phillip Vandamm, and that he goes under the cover of being an art dealer and importer/exporter, and that Eve is in bed with him in every sense of the phrase - or is she? ~Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Psycho
PN1997 .P79 1995

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel (hardly a common moment in a major studio film in 1960), Psycho announced that it was taking the audience to places it had never been before, and on that score what followed would hardly disappoint. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is unhappy in her job at a Phoenix, Arizona real estate office and frustrated in her romance with hardware store manager Sam Loomis (John Gavin). One afternoon, Marion is given $40,000 in cash to be deposited in the bank. Minutes later, impulse has taken over and Marion takes off with the cash, hoping to leave Phoenix for good and start a new life with her purloined nest egg. 36 hours later, paranoia and exhaustion have started to set in, and Marion decides to stop for the night at the Bates Motel, where nervous but personable innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cheerfully mentions that she's the first guest in weeks, before he regales her with curious stories about his mother. There's hardly a film fan alive who doesn't know what happens next, but while the shower scene is justifiably the film's most famous sequence, there are dozens of memorable bits throughout this film. The first of a handful of sequels followed in 1983, while Gus Van Sant's controversial remake, starring Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche, appeared in 1998. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Shadow of a Doubt

PN1997 .S53 1999

One of Hitchcock's best films of the 1940s, Shadow of a Doubt is both a fascinating psychological case study and a scathing portrait of the American middle-class family. The film is often considered one of Hitchcock's darkest, and the director himself reportedly claimed it as his favorite. Cynicism underlies all the proceedings, from young Charlie's "miraculous" summoning of her Uncle Charlie (tantamount to calling up the Angel of Death) to Uncle Charlie's chilling exposition of his view on life, relayed to his niece: "You live in a dream. Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?" This is one of Hitchcock's most unsettling films, preoccupied like many other Hitchcock works with good vs. evil, and the capacity for evil that lurks within us all; and it is also one of his most stylized, gorgeously shot by Joseph Valentine. Featuring stellar performances from Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten (as well as Hume Cronyn's comical debut as a dim-witted, self-appointed murder "expert"), Shadow of a Doubt is a memorable experience as both a major Hitchcock film and an enduringly creepy commentary on human nature. ~Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Vertigo
PN1997 .V48 1997

It did middling business and the critics were unimpressed in 1958, but Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo has come to be considered his greatest film for its complex examination of romantic pathology. Seamlessly combining evocative imagery and thematic concerns, Hitchcock structured Vertigo through numerous visual and narrative circles and twists, beginning with Saul Bass's opening title sequence. Steadily drawing the viewer into the figurative whirlpool of Scottie's mind as he investigates Madeleine, Hitchcock then broke the rules of suspense (as he would again in Psycho) with a mid-movie revelation that transforms the film from an eerie mystery into a deeply disturbing story of necrophiliac obsession. Using such visual effects as a track-out/zoom-in to signal Scottie's vertigo, Judy's hazily green-lit reemergence as Madeleine, and a surreal nightmare sequence, Hitchcock reveals Scotty's tortured psyche, belying James Stewart's nice-guy surface. Further ducking convention, Hitchcock allowed a character to get away with murder, while leaving Scottie metaphorically hanging in uncertainty. Admired by the film school generation of Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma but unavailable for years due to rights problems, Vertigo had its critical reputation further burnished by its 1983 reissue. Its 1996 restoration returned the washed-out colors to their original clarity and digitally enhanced Bernard Herrmann's haunting score. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills: The Mabee Library Edition

2006-10-26T13:21:00.000-06:00

This week's post is based on one of the the American Film Institute's popular "100 Years..." lists. Just in time for Halloween, here's AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills: The Mabee Library Edition. The Top 25 is listed below, with call numbers next to films that the library owns. The complete list is available here. Just a reminder: this isn't a list of the 100 scariest films or 100 best horror films, but classic "thrillers." AFI's Web site lists the following criteria for a film's inclusion on the list:

Feature-Length Fiction Film: The film must be in narrative format, typically more than 60 minutes in length.

American Film: The film must be in the English language with significant creative and/or financial production elements from the United States.

Thrills: Regardless of genre, the total adrenaline-inducing impact of a film’s artistry and craft must create an experience that engages our bodies as well as our minds.

Legacy: Films whose "thrills" have enlivened and enriched America’s film heritage while continuing to inspire contemporary artists and audiences.

Here's the Top 25:

PSYCHO [PN1997 .P79 1995]
JAWS [PN1997 .J39 2000 tape 1; PN1997 .J39 2000 tape 2]
THE EXORCIST [Read the novel: PS3552.L392 E9 1971]
NORTH BY NORTHWEST [PN1997 .N557 1996]
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
ALIEN [PN1997 .A32 1997]
THE BIRDS
THE FRENCH CONNECTION [PN1997 .F699 2001]
ROSEMARY'S BABY [Read the novel: PS3523.E7993 R6]
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK [PN1997 .R35 1999]
THE GODFATHER [PN1997 .G5689 1997]
KING KONG [PN1997 .K56 1998]
BONNIE AND CLYDE [PN1997 .B679 1997]
REAR WINDOW [PN1997 .R43 2001]
DELIVERANCE [Read the novel: PS3554.I32 D4]
CHINATOWN [PN1997 .C46 1997]
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE [PN1997 .M396 1996]
VERTIGO [PN1997 .V48 1997]
THE GREAT ESCAPE
HIGH NOON [PN1997 .H54 1992]
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE [Read the novel: PR6052.U638 C55]
TAXI DRIVER [PN1997 .T39 1995]
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA [PN1997 .L39 1995]
DOUBLE INDEMNITY [PN1997 .D68 1991]
TITANIC

Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues

2006-10-18T13:19:00.000-06:00

Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues / by the Masked Marvel [i.e. Charley Patton]
M1630.18.P37 S37 2001

Perhaps the most sumptuous, nay incredible, box set package ever devised for a blues artist, this lavish production contains seven CDs that not only contain everything Patton recorded as a soloist, but a ton of peripheral tracks to which he contributed or was associated. Yes, this has all 54 known extant Patton performances (including four unissued alternate takes), but that is, quite literally, not the half of it. There are also cuts recorded by other acts at Patton's sessions, including Walter Hawkins, Edith North Johnson, Henry Sims, Willie Brown, Son House, Louise Johnson, the gospel quartet the Delta Big Four, and Bertha Lee. Some of these he played on; some of them he might have played on; and some of them he didn't play on, though he knew (or might have known, anyway) the musicians. There are even a couple of test recordings of Paramount talent scout H.C. Speir reading headlines, which takes even this sort of fanaticism to the extreme, but why not the whole nine yards, right? Then there's an entire disc of tracks by other blues artists, spanning 1924 to 1957 (though mostly weighted toward the early years of that period), spotlighting songs that were related to Patton's repertoire, or inspired in some way by songs in his discography. That CD includes some pretty big names, like Ma Rainey, Furry Lewis, Tommy Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Son House, Joe Williams, and even the Staple Singers, though room's also made for unknowns, including one "Blues" by Unidentified Convict. And then there's an entire disc of interviews about Patton with Howlin' Wolf, Rev. Booker Miller, H.C. Speir, and Pops Staples; the Rev. Booker Miller portion is more entertaining than most such spoken recordings, as he occasionally plays some guitar himself to illustrate points. Patton's own tracks are consistently inspired Delta blues, though the sound quality inevitably varies widely, sometimes coming through quite clearly, at other times fighting a wall of static. One's interest in the non-Patton selections, other than those on the solid CD of Patton-related tunes and Patton-inspired performers, might vary. Certainly the Son House 1930 recordings (including "Preachin' the Blues") are classic Delta blues songs in any setting, as are the far more obscure ones by Willie Brown. However, others, such as the ones by Edith North Johnson and the Delta Big Four, bear vaudevillian jazz and gospel influences that Delta blues fans might not take a shine to. The non-Patton tracks, too, sometimes suffer from unavoidably poor sound quality due to the extremely rough shape of the only surviving original copies. On top of all this, the packaging is extraordinary by any measure, and would take a lengthy review in itself to even cursorily summarize. Suffice it to say that if you're a serious Patton fan (and it's hard to imagine you'll get this if you're not), you're in for several hours of entertainment even when the CDs aren't in the stereo. The set is packaged like a vintage, full-sized photo album, in the manner "albums" of discs were assembled prior to the invention of the 33 1/3 RPM LP, with slots for each of the seven CDs. There are 128 pages of portfolio-sized liner notes, including essays on Patton and his records, transcriptions of all of the lyrics, stories behind most of the songs/tracks, a "thematic catalogue" of Patton's music, photos, reproductions of old advertisements for 78s, repros of the labels on the original 78s, even an interview with a noted bluesologist about collecting original releases from the artist. Thrown in is the complete 112-page book that John Fahey wrote about Patton in 1970 (an actual book, separate from the liner notes) as part of a series of monographs for Blues Paperbacks, and a reprint of the liner notes Bernard Klatzko wrote for the first Patton compilation, The Immortal Charlie Patton.Due to the expense and zealous completism of this release, most blues fans will be content to limit themselves to an intelligent single-CD compilation of Patton's work, such as Yazoo's Founder of the Delta Blues. If you have any serious hunger to go beyond that, though, and are wondering whether to splurge on this museum-quality piece — do it. It truly is the last word, and one of the most impressively packaged box sets in all of popular music. ~Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues Disc 1

Listen to excerpts from Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues Disc 2

Listen to excerpts from Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues Disc 3

Listen to excerpts from Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues Disc 4

Listen to excerpts from Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues Disc 5

Listen to excerpts from Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues Disc 6

Listen to excerpts from Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues Disc 7

The Chess Box / Chuck Berry
M1630.18.B49 C4 1988

Over the course of three compact discs, The Chess Box contains most of the highlights from Chuck Berry's career, including all of the hit singles. In addition to the familiar items, which are all included here, there are numerous tracks that are lesser-known but equally as good. That's particularly true on the stellar first two discs, where album tracks, B-sides, and forgotten singles like "Downbound Train," "Drifting Heart," "Havana Moon," "Betty Jean," "Bye Bye Johnny," "Down the Road a Piece," and "The Thirteen Question Method" get equal space with "Maybellene," "Thirty Days," "No Money Down," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Too Much Monkey Business," "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," "School Day," "Rock & Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Johnny B. Goode," and "Carol." Some serious fans, however, also found disc one, and especially the earlier songs on that disc, to be very controversial; part of the intrinsic nature of Berry's music was the sheer noisiness of the songs — tracks like "Maybellene," "Thirty Days," "You Can't Catch Me," and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" insinuated themselves into listeners' consciousness over the radio and on the jukebox with their sheer raucous, in-your-face sound (frequently near overload). But at the time The Chess Box was done, the philosophy about CD mastering was to clean up the noise in original recordings whenever it was too pronounced, lest the "hot" digital sound make the track too harsh. (Note: this "problem" especially afflicted "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos, so much so that the producers of the Clapton box remixed the song). Thus, the first 15 or so tracks on the first disc of The Chess Box may sound too "clean," lacking some of the raw edge from their vinyl editions. On the plus side, the detail revealed — every note, and even the action on the guitar on the opening of "Roll Over Beethoven" — is always interesting, and occasionally fascinating, and it is difficult to complain too loudly about hearing Johnnie Johnson's or Lafayette Leake's piano, or Willie Dixon's upright bass in such sharp relief. Additionally, for many years this set had the only undistorted CD version of "Come On" — a relatively minor Berry song, but one that provided the Rolling Stones with their debut release — that you could find, but potential purchasers should also be aware of the compromise in the sound. That caveat aside, the programming manages to get in most of the best album cuts, including tracks like Berry's hot cover of "House of Blue Lights" and the "Memphis Tennessee" "sequel" "Little Marie," though not quite enough material from 1964-1965. And toward the end of the set, the quality of the material begins to sag a bit, but there are still forgotten gems like "Tulane" that prove Berry's songwriting hadn't completely dried up. The now out of print Great Twenty-Eight collection remains the definitive single CD hits collection, and the audio quality on MCA's two-CD Anthology, released a dozen years later, is superior, but The Chess Box offers a flawed but near essential overview of his work for any serious fan, either of Chuck Berry or rock & roll. ~Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

Watch Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega twist to Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell"

Woody Guthrie: The Asch Recordings Vol. 1-4
M1629.G88 W6 1999

Woody Guthrie's Asch Recordings, Vol. 1-4 is another shining example of Smithsonian/Folkways' ability to create a historically important document that is both fun and enriching. Combining four separate compilations (This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 1, Muleskinner Blues: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 2, Hard Travelin': The Asch Recordings, Vol. 3, and Buffalo Skinners: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 4) into one box, Smithsonian/Folkways presents a fairly complete overview of Guthrie's career. The collection features deep forays into his union songs, political and social issue songs, cowboy and outlaw songs, and early country and frontier ballads, with each CD separated into specific themes. The liner notes are intelligently written but never dry, going through track by track, bringing to light Guthrie's warm contributions to American folksongs. In listening to the set as a whole, the only question left is "where is Guthrie's comedy album?" His biting humor on songs like "Talking Hard Work," "Ladies Auxiliary," "Howdjadoo," and "Mean Talking Blues" tell of a wry and witty side of the activist that would fit alongside his topical children's albums nicely. Each of these CDs are available individually, but purchasing the box set gives the listener a more well-rounded experience and makes more sense economically. ~Zac Johnson, All Music Guide

Listen to Bob Dylan's poem "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie":

Crossroads / Eric Clapton
M1630.18.C56 C7 1988

A four-disc box set spanning Eric Clapton's entire career — running from the Yardbirds to his '80s solo recordings — Crossroads not only revitalized Clapton's commercial standing, but it established the rock & roll multi-disc box set retrospective as a commercially viable proposition. Bob Dylan's Biograph was successful two years before the release of Crossroads, but Clapton's set was a bona fide blockbuster. And it's easy to see why. Crossroads manages to sum up Clapton's career succinctly and thoroughly, touching upon all of his hits and adding a bevy of first-rate unreleased material (most notably selections from the scrapped second Derek and the Dominos album). Although not all of his greatest performances are included on the set — none of his work as a session musician or guest artist is included, for instance — every truly essential item he recorded is present on these four discs. No other Clapton album accurately explains why the guitarist was so influential, or demonstrates exactly what he accomplished. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Watch Clapton perform "Layla" at Live Aid

A Night at the Opera (or at least the Symphony or a Show)

2006-10-11T13:18:00.000-06:00

Jenufa / Leos Janácek
M1500.J32 J42 2002

It says a lot for Janácek's growing presence in the operatic mainstream that Jenufa, which waited more than a decade for its "big city" premiere in Prague, and which existed for many years only in an edited and re-orchestrated version by Karel Kovarovic, now has multiple recordings using the original score — and good ones, at that. This live recording from Covent Garden is truly wonderful, and it joins Charles Mackerras' 1982 recording of his own re-construction as a first choice for anyone interested in the work. Karita Mattila shines in the title role, exploiting every brief moment of lyricism that emerges from Janácek's speech-inflected score. Her suffering and betrayal at the hands of her family, and her eventual forgiveness of those hurts, is extremely moving. Jorma Silvasti is similarly believable as the jealous and rueful Laca. Although the bloom is gone from her voice, Anja Silja is perfectly cast as Jenufa's stepmother; her genuine shame and despair at her murder of Jenufa's child allows their final reconciliation to take on a humanity that it would not if she were played with less sympathy. Jerry Hadley is perfectly unlikable in the role of Steva — a man so shallow that he would forsake the mother of his child over a scar on her cheek; his singing is excellent, as is his handling of the Czech language. Finally, Bernard Haitink deserves complements for leading such a tidy and well articulated performance. His balancing of orchestral colors and attention to pace make the score sound deceptively straightforward; the few moments when the orchestra overbalances the singers are an inevitable problem of live recordings, and shouldn't bother most listeners. The package comes with excellent notes and a full libretto. ~Allen Schrott, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from a recording of Jenufa Part 1

Listen to excerpts from a recording of Jenufa Part 2

Learn more about Jenufa from the composer's Web site

Black Angels / Kronos Quartet
M450.K76 B5 1990

Black Angels is one of Kronos' finest works, a haunting cycle of compositions thematically linked by their relationships to war and brutality. The title piece, composed by George Crumb in response to Vietnam, is marked by its contrasting emotional and dynamic shifts; for effect, the Quartet augments its music with chants, shouts, whispers and the occasional moment of percussion. Multiple overdubs create the vast sound on 16th-century composer Thomas Tallis' 40-part motet "Spem in Alium," a response to Holofernes' siege on the Jewish fortress of Bethulia. The only commissioned work on the record is Istvan Marta's "Doom. A Sigh," based on a pair of Romanian folk songs. ~Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from Black Angels

Already it is dusk: string quartet No. 1, Op. 62 ; Quasi una fantasia: string quartet No. 2, Op. 64 / Henryk Górecki
M452 .G6724 op.62 1993

Already It Is Dusk: String Quartet No. 1, Op. 62

It took Polish composer Henryk Górecki thirty-five years to get around to his first string quartet; but, when he finally set about it he created a work of great energy and originality. The music draws on the folk traditions of the region in the south of Poland where Górecki spent a good deal of time. The title, "Already It Is Dusk," comes from a sixteenth-century church song by Polish composer Waclaw z Szamotul, the melody of which Górecki had already used in his orchestral work, Old Polish Music, from 1969. In this piece, he uses it as a sort of refrain, played very quietly, but harmonized in a chromatic, quasi-serial fashion. The piece proceeds in a single movement that divides perceptibly into discreet sections. The opening "chorale" is played three times, each time interrupted by fierce, dissonant chordal gestures, derived in part from the harmonization of the chorale, and in part from the open-string fifths characteristic of folk music (though here superposed chromatically to create a harsh sonority). After the third interruption of the church-song material, the dense open-fifth chords open into a circular progression, retaining the tension of the stacked dissonance but introducing a melodic element. After a brief return to the quiet chorale, the quartet breaks quite suddenly into a rollicking dance, with the group split into two — one pair carrying on an ostinato and the other a harmonized modal melody. The dissonances contained in both elements contribute a certain "roughness" to the music that conveys well the "village-dance" character of the material. The pairs trade off and then gradually die away on a series of exposed open fifths that are finally shorn of their chromatic context. The piece returns to the quiet church-song chorale of the first section before closing with an extraordinary statement of sonorous triads, quite Beethovenian in character. With a final twist, though, Górecki allows the sound to die away with a dissonant note sounding above. Perhaps, given the suffering and oppression the composer witnessed through his lifetime, along with his own struggles with debilitating illness, it wasn't quite possible to end the piece with a full resolution. Without knowing it, perhaps, Górecki was also looking to his next string quartet, which carries on where this one leaves off.

Quasi una Fantasia: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 64

At the end of his first string quartet, Henryk Górecki planted a brief reference to sonorous triads strongly reminiscent of Beethoven. For his second quartet, which followed only a few years later, Górecki paid more explicit homage to the master. The title, Quasi una Fantasia, derives from Beethoven, though none of the material does, at least not directly. The model appears more on the level of large-scale design and the predilection for extremes of expression. The quartet is organized into four movements, lasting close to forty minutes. Each movement breaks out of its primary character or material to include sections that refer to the others, in some fashion or other. The first, a lament, presents a grief-filled melody, built from melodic fragments that tend to fall by half-step, a traditional gesture of "affect." This is heard over a slowly pulsing pedal, placed in dissonant relationship to the melody. There is one point in the middle where the falling motive is inverted, rising to a major third above the pedal, a ray of light in the midst of gloom. At the end, a radiant progression of major chords appears, suddenly transporting the music to another world. "Deciso-Energico," the second movement resembles a march. The beats are marked with heavy down bows sounding a minor third, and the more active melodic fragments are set at a dissonant relationship to these. The melody unfolds in fragments, or gasps, finally unleashing a flowing line harmonized in thirds in the upper range of the violins. There are various interruptions, though, and eventually, a luminous reappearance of the "Beethoven" chords. The dark dance carries on, gradually faltering, intercut more and more with silences, to lapse into the lament of the first movement. However, Górecki relents and moves into sonorous major chords, leading directly to the lyrical outpouring of the third movement. The Arioso is much more elevated in tone than the previous movements. The first section alternates between F and C triads, with B flat minor used for expressive coloration. The passionate melody that unfolds above is not set in the same key, but the points of dissonance and resolution are exploited for maximum expressive intent. There is a striking point in the middle where the supporting harmony falls away, leaving only the two violins carrying on, harmonized in minor ninths. This leads to a brief reference to the second movement, then another statement of the Beethoven chords. One more echo of the Arioso theme gives way to chorale-like material to close. The fourth movement begins as a rather joyous dance. The rhythmic patterns shift unpredictably between duple and triple meters, and the ostinato harmonies shift at key points. These lend a certain off-balance character to the dance. But Górecki trades off the melody between low and high and builds intensity until at last he brings all four instruments together in the middle register. From there, the music begins to hint at a return to the transcendent chorale heard earlier. It eventually arrives, as does an enigmatic reference to the Christmas hymn Silent Night! The piece closes with a combination of the pulsing low E of the opening and a sustained B flat triad derived from the chorale. The transformations and re-combinations of materials throughout this quartet are indeed masterful, worthy of its homage. ~Jim Harley, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from Gorecki's String Quartets

War Requiem / Benjamin Britten
M2010 .B838 op.66 1999

Benjamin Britten spent most of the 1950s adding to a string of successful operas that had begun with Peter Grimes in the mid-1940s. Though he took a brief sojourn from opera to write the War Requiem, it is clear that the dramatic spirit that fueled his operatic efforts carried over into this work, his most monumental effort. While the Requiem is in its own way even more overtly theatrical than Verdi's well-known Requiem (described by Hans von Bülow as "an opera in ecclesiastical guise"), it cannot properly be thought of as an opera without staging. The musical procedures of Britten's operas were quite well established by 1961, and the War Requiem really has little to do with them. The work instead relies on simple, sectional musical means to convey a pattern of thought that even listeners unfamiliar with the often confusing realm of mid-twentieth century music can follow with little trouble. Indeed, such an immediately accessible idiom was one of the composer's basic goals when he set himself to interpolating the anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen (killed in action just one week before the Armistice of 1918) into the traditional requiem scheme. The War Requiem is by no means pure music, nor could its various sections conceivably stand alone. It is a work with a basic human message, simple and uncontrived and utterly reliant on the distribution of textual materials (separate instrumental and vocal forces are assigned to the two disparate bodies of text) to achieve its impact. The work attained an almost immediate rapport with English-speaking audiences around the world after its May 9, 1962, premiere at the new Coventry Cathedral, and to many it remains Britten's supreme achievement. On a structural level, the War Requiem is massive, its six large movements, each comprising several smaller sections, of some 90 minutes' total duration. From the bells and chantlike chorus in the opening bars of the Requiem aeternam, Britten's use of the tritone as a basic unifying device is obvious. A boys' choir breaks in with the Te decet hymnus, only to be interrupted by Owen's poem "What passing-bells" set as a tenor solo. (The solo tenor and baritone sing all the poetic texts.) The restless tritone gives way to a moment of temporary repose at the end of this first movement, which resolves on an F major chord. The Dies Irae, containing no fewer than ten separate subsections, is the longest of the six movements, while the following Offertorium and Sanctus together comprise only six sections of music. The Dies Irae closes with a quiet choral Pie Jesu, while the Sanctus is the only movement to end with one of Owen's poems, the grim baritone solo "After the blast of lightning." Chillingly, the closing Dona nobis pacem (Grant us peace) of the following Agnus Dei is sung not by the chorus, as might be expected, but rather by the anguished tenor soloist. At the end of the final Libera me, however, some peace, or at least rest, is reached at last as the unaccompanied chorus finds the strength, after a lengthy and tortured tumult, to resolve the burdensome tritone to the sonorous F major chord of the final "Amen." ~Blair Johnston, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from War Requiem Part 1

Listen to excerpts from War Requiem Part 2

Monty Python's Spamalot: original Broadway cast recording / book & lyrics by Eric Idle ; music by John Du Prez & Eric Idle
M1500.D94 M66 2005

While millions of fans have made a hobby out of repeating Monty Python bits for the amusement of themselves and others over the years, Spamalot may be the first example of folks going pro with this pastime — though Eric Idle's participation at least gives this the advantage of also being an official product. Spamalot is, of course, the stage musical loosely based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and while the original cast album only provides part of the experience, listening to the album will give many fans a very curious sense of deja vu — some of these songs are drawn from the movie, albeit with a great deal more polish (such as "Brave Sir Robin" and "Knights of the Round Table"), and others translate business from the film into musical terms ("He Is Not Dead Yet" and "Run Away"), while "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life" from Life of Brian is also thrown in for good measure. The score does manage a good bit of original silliness, though, including a number of amusing parodies of show tune clichés ("The Song That Goes Like This") and one truly inspired new laugh-generator, "You Won't Succeed on Broadway" ("...if you don't have any Jews"). In many respects, the Spamalot recording favors Broadway over Python; the material lacks the sharp edge of Python's best material, and the level of polish seems nearly antithetical to those old television shows and the low-budget film that inspired all this. But the songs are sprightly, the material is genuinely witty, and the cast is in fine fettle, especially David Hyde Pierce as Sir Robin and Sara Ramirez as the Lady of the Lake. In short, this won't replace your copy of Another Monty Python Record, but Python fans will have fun with it, and it's a great trailer for the stage show. ~Mark Deming, All Music Guide

Watch a performance from Spamalot at the Tony Awards:

Once Upon a Time in the West

2006-10-04T13:16:00.000-06:00

Destry Rides Again
PN1997 .D47 1993

Tom Destry (James Stewart), son of a legendary frontier peacekeeper, doesn't believe in gunplay. Thus he becomes the object of widespread ridicule when he rides into the wide-open town of Bottleneck, the personal fiefdom of the crooked Kent (Brian Donlevy). His detractors laugh even louder when Destry signs on as deputy to drunken sheriff Wash Dimsdale (Charles Winninger). But the laughter subsides when Destry casually proves himself a crack shot, despite his abhorrence of firearms. Later, when saloon chanteuse Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich), Kent's gal, takes umbrage at Destry's indifferent reaction to her charms, she vows to make a fool of the new deputy. A huge moneymaker, Destry Rides Again served as a spectacular comeback for Marlene Dietrich, who two years earlier had been written off as "box office poison."~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

High Noon

PN1997 .H54 1992

This Western classic stars Gary Cooper as Hadleyville marshal Will Kane, about to retire from office and go on his honeymoon with his new Quaker bride, Amy (Grace Kelly). But his happiness is short-lived when he is informed that the Miller gang, whose leader (Ian McDonald) Will had arrested, is due on the 12:00 train. Pacifist Amy urges Will to leave town and forget about the Millers, but this isn't his style; protecting Hadleyburg has always been his duty, and it remains so now. But when he asks for deputies to fend off the Millers, virtually nobody will stand by him. Chief Deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges) covets Will's job and ex-mistress (Katy Jurado); his mentor, former lawman Martin Howe (Lon Chaney Jr.) is now arthritic and unable to wield a gun. Even Amy, who doesn't want to be around for her husband's apparently certain demise, deserts him. Meanwhile, the clocks tick off the minutes to High Noon -- the film is shot in "real time," so that its 85-minute length corresponds to the story's actual timeframe. Utterly alone, Kane walks into the center of town, steeling himself for his showdown with the murderous Millers. Considered a landmark of the "adult western," High Noon won four Academy Awards (including Best Actor for Cooper) and Best Song for the hit, "Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darling" sung by Tex Ritter. The screenplay was written by Carl Foreman, whose blacklisting was temporarily prevented by star Cooper, one of Hollywood's most virulent anti-Communists. John Wayne, another notable showbiz right-winger and Western hero, was so appalled at the notion that a Western marshal would beg for help in a showdown that he and director Howard HawksHigh Noon with Rio Bravo (1959). ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Now watch a mash-up between High Noon and the Green Day song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" titled "High Noon of Broken Dreams":

My Darling Clementine
PN1997 .M889 1992

One of the greatest movie Westerns, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is hardly the most accurate film version of the Wyatt Earp legend, but it is still one of the most entertaining. Henry Fonda stars as former lawman Wyatt Earp, who, after cleaning up Dodge City, arrives in the outskirts of Tombstone with his brothers Morgan (Ward Bond), Virgil (Tim Holt), and James (Don Garner), planning to sell their cattle and settle down as gentlemen farmers. Yet Wyatt, disgusted by crime and cattle rustling, eventually agrees to take the marshalling job until he can gather enough evidence to bring to justice the scurrilous Clanton clan, headed by smooth-talking but shifty-eyed Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan). Almost immediately, Wyatt runs afoul of consumptive, self-hating gambling boss Doc Holliday (Victor Mature, in perhaps his best performance). When Doc's erstwhile sweetheart, Clementine (Cathy Downs) comes to town, Earp is immediately smitten. However, Doc himself is now involved with saloon gal Chihauhua (Linda Darnell). The tensions among Wyatt, Doc, Clementine, and Chihauhua wax and wane throughout most of the film, leading to the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral, with Wyatt and Doc fighting side-by-side against the despicable Clantons. Its powerful storyline and full-blooded characterizations aside, My Darling Clementine is most entertaining during those little "humanizing" moments common to Ford's films, notably Wyatt's impromptu "balancing act" while seated on the porch of the Tombstone hotel, and Wyatt's and Clementine's dance on the occasion of the town's church-raising. Based on Stuart N. Lake's novel Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshall (previously filmed twice by Fox), the screenplay is full of wonderful dialogue, the best of which is the brief, philosophical exchange about women between Earp and Mac the bartender (J. Farrell MacDonald). The movie also features crisp, evocative black-and-white photography by Joseph MacDonald. Producer (Daryl F. Zanuck) was displeased with Ford's original cut and the film went through several re-shoots and re-edits before its general release in November of 1946. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Wild Bunch

PN1997 .W54 1999

"If they move, kill 'em!" Beginning and ending with two of the bloodiest battles in screen history, Sam Peckinpah's classic revisionist Western ruthlessly takes apart the myths of the West. Released in the late '60s discord over Vietnam, in the wake of the controversial Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and the brutal "spaghetti westerns" of Sergio Leone, The Wild Bunch polarized critics and audiences over its ferocious bloodshed. One side hailed it as a classic appropriately pitched to the violence and nihilism of the times, while the other reviled it as depraved. After a failed payroll robbery, the outlaw Bunch, led by aging Pike Bishop (William Holden) and including Dutch (Ernest Borgnine), Angel (Jaime Sanchez), and Lyle and Tector Gorch (Warren Oates and Ben Johnson), heads for Mexico pursued by the gang of Pike's friend-turned-nemesis Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan). Ultimately caught between the corruption of railroad fat cat Harrigan (Albert Dekker) and federale general Mapache (Emilio Fernandez), and without a frontier for escape, the Bunch opts for a final Pyrrhic victory, striding purposefully to confront Mapache and avenge their friend Angel. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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Unforgiven
PN1997 .U535 2002

Dedicated to his mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar-winner examines the mythic violence of the Western, taking on the ghosts of his own star past. Disgusted by Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett's decree that several ponies make up for a cowhand's slashing a whore's face, Big Whiskey prostitutes, led by fierce Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher), take justice into their own hands and put a $1000 bounty on the lives of the perpetrators. Notorious outlaw-turned-hog farmer William Munny (Eastwood) is sought out by neophyte gunslinger the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) to go with him to Big Whiskey and collect the bounty. While Munny insists, "I ain't like that no more," he needs the bounty money for his children, and the two men convince Munny's clean-living comrade Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to join them in righting a wrong done to a woman. Little Bill (Oscar-winner Gene Hackman), however, has no intention of letting any bounty hunters impinge on his iron-clad authority. When pompous gunman English Bob (Richard Harris) arrives in Big Whiskey with pulp biographer W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) in tow, Little Bill beats Bob senseless and promises to tell Beauchamp the real story about violent frontier life and justice. But when Munny, the true unwritten legend, comes to town, everyone soon learns a harsh lesson about the price of vindictive bloodshed and the malleability of ideas like "justice." "I don't deserve this," pleads Little Bill. "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it," growls Munny, simultaneously summing up the insanity of western violence and the legacy of Eastwood's Man With No Name. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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Ballads of the Midwest

2006-09-27T13:12:00.000-06:00

Badlands
PN1997 .B2452 1992

"He wanted to die with me and I dreamed of being lost forever in his arms." A young couple goes on a Midwest crime spree in Terrence Malick's hypnotically assured debut feature, based on the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate murders. Fancying himself a rebel like James Dean, twentysomething Kit (Martin Sheen) takes off with teen baton-twirler Holly (Sissy Spacek) after shooting her father (Warren Oates) when he tries to split the pair up. Once bounty hunters discover their riverside hiding place, Kit and Holly head towards Saskatchewan, leaving dead bodies in their wake. As the Law closes in, however, Holly gives herself up -- but Kit doesn't hold it against her, as he basks in his new status as a momentary folk hero. Inaugurating the use of voiceover narration that he would continue in Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick juxtaposes Holly's flat readings of her flowery romance novel diary prose with the banal and surreal details of their journey. Singularly inarticulate with each other, Kit and Holly are more intrigued by mythic celebrity gestures, as Holly peruses her fan magazines and Kit commemorates key moments before orchestrating a properly dramatic capture for himself (complete with the right hat). The sublime visuals lend a dreamlike beauty to the couple's trip even as their actions are treated casually; Malick neither glamorizes Kit and Holly nor consigns them to the bloody end of their fame-fixated predecessors in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). With the couple's opaque dialogue and Holly's fanzine dream narration, Malick further denies an easy explanation for their crimes. Made for under $500,000, Badlands debuted at the 1973 New York Film Festival, along with Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, and was released within months of two other outlaw couple road movies, Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. Although Badlands did not make an impression at the box office, its pictorial splendor and cool yet disquieting narrative established Malick as one of the most compelling artists to come out of early '70s Hollywood. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Bonnie and Clyde
PN1997 .B679 1997

Producer/star Warren Beatty had to convince Warner Bros. to finance this film, which went on to become the studio's second-highest grosser. It also caused major controversy by redefining violence in cinema and casting its criminal protagonists as sympathetic anti-heroes. Based loosely on the true exploits of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker during the 30s, the film begins as Clyde (Beatty) tries to steal the car of Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway)'s mother. Bonnie is excited by Clyde's outlaw demeanor, and he further stimulates her by robbing a store in her presence. Clyde steals a car, with Bonnie in tow, and their legendary crime spree begins. The two move from town to town, pulling off small heists, until they join up with Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman), his shrill wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), and a slow-witted gas station attendant named C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard). The new gang robs a bank and Clyde is soon painted in the press as a Depression-era Robin Hood when he allows one bank customer to hold onto his money. Soon the police are on the gang's trail and they are constantly on the run, even kidnapping a Texas Ranger (Denver Pyle) and setting him adrift on a raft, handcuffed, after he spits in Bonnie's face when she kisses him. That same ranger leads a later raid on the gang that leaves Buck dying, Blanche captured, and both Clyde and Bonnie injured. The ever-loyal C.W. takes them to his father's house. C.W.'s father disaproves his son's affiliation with gangsters and enters a plea bargain with the Texas Rangers. A trap is set that ends in one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history. The film made stars out of Beatty and Dunaway, and it also featured the screen debut of Gene Wilder as a mortician briefly captured by the gang. Its portrayal of Bonnie and Clyde as rebels who empathized with the poor working folks of the 1930s struck a chord with the counterculture of the 1960s and helped generate a new, young audience for American movies that carried over into Hollywood's renewal of the 1970s. Its combination of sex and violence with dynamic stars, social relevance, a traditional Hollywood genre, and an appeal to hip young audiences set the pace for many American movies to come. ~Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

Director Arthur Penn talks about the film:

The Grapes of Wrath
PN1997 .G73 1996

The adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of dirt-poor Dust Bowl migrants by 4-time Oscar-winning director John Ford starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, who opens the movie returning to his Oklahoma home after serving jail time for manslaughter. En route, Tom meets family friend Casey (John Carradine), a former preacher who warns Tom that dust storms, crop failures, and new agricultural methods have financially decimated the once prosperous Oklahoma farmland. Upon returning to his family farm, Tom is greeted by his mother (Oscar-winner Jane Darwell), who tells him that the family is packing up for the "promised land" of California. Warned that they shouldn't expect a warm welcome in California--they've already seen the caravan of dispirited farmers, heading back home after striking out at finding work--the Joads push on all the same. Their first stop is a wretched migrant camp, full of starving children and surrounded by armed guards. Further down the road, the Joads drive into an idyllic government camp, with clean lodging, indoor plumbing, and a self-governing clientele. When Tom ultimately bids goodbye to his mother, who asks him where he'll go, he delivers the film's most famous speech: "I'll be all around...Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat...Whenever there's a cop beating a guy, I'll be there...And when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build. I'll be there too." ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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The Jayhawkers
PN1997 .J394 1991

Set in the Kansas territory during the middle of the 19th century, this is a visually evocative but conventional western. The story deals with Darcy (Jeff Chandler), a ruthless man, one of the raiders known as "Jayhawkers" who wants more than what life is willing to offer. Starting out as anti-slavery activists, the Jayhawkers' origins are barely mentioned in the story, as Darcy uses them to support his growing power. Opposing his unscrupulous bid for control of the region is Cam (Fess Parker, of Davy Crockett fame on American TV) an ex-convict. Cam knows that Darcy is responsible for the death of his wife while he was in prison and he plans to bring him down. ~Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Learning Tree
PS3566.A73 L42 1987
Filmed in Fort Scott

Gordon Parks' adaptation of his own novel The Learning Tree stars Kyle Johnson as Newt, a black teenager living in 1920s Kansas. He is an intelligent even-tempered young man who meets the many racial prejudices he faces with composure and pride. His best friend Marcus (Alex Clarke) is hot-headed and prone to react emotionally when confronted with life's problems. Newt gets into a difficult situation when he witnesses a murder and must decide if he should come forward to clear the man being framed for the crime. Doing so would forever change his own life, as well as Marcus'. In 1989, the film was selected to the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress. ~Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Ninth Street

PN1997 .N5231 1999
Filmed in Topeka and Kansas City, MO

A dramatic comedy about life in the African-American community in the late 1960s, Ninth Street take place in Junction City, Kansas, a town that in 1968 looked to the nearby Fort Riley Army base for most of its economic support. Junction City's Ninth Street was home to a string of black-owned bars, clubs and strip joints, and the film follows a crew of Ninth Street regulars, including a tart-tongued nightclub owner (Queen Bey), a pair of philosophical winos (Don Washington and Kevin Willmott), a widowed and emotionally troubled bag lady (Kaycee Moore) and a young prostitute eager to get out of the life (Nadine Griffith). Shot on a shoestring budget over a period of seven years, Ninth Street features a cameo appearance from Martin Sheen as a priest who tends a flock in the ghetto, and a supporting performance from soul music legendIsaac Hayes, who also contributes to the score. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Picnic
PN1997 .P53 1989
Filmed in Hutchinson, Halstead, Salina, and Sterling

One of the biggest box-office attractions of the 1950s, Picnic was adapted by Daniel Taradash from the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Inge play. William Holden plays Hal Carter, a handsome drifter who ambles into a small Kansas town during the Labor Day celebration to look up old college chum Alan (Cliff Robertson, in his film debut). Hoping to hit up Alan for a job--or a handout--Hal ends up stealing his buddy's fiancee Madge Owens (Kim Novak). Hal also has a catnip effect on spinster schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney (Rosalind Russell), so much so that Rosemary makes a fool of herself in front of the whole town, nearly driving away her longtime beau Howard Bevans (Arthur O'Connell). Persuaded by his friends and family that Hal is no damn good, Madge is prepared to break off her relationship. As anyone who remembers the film's famous overhead closing shot knows, however, Madge is ultimately ruled by her heart and not her head. For a film set in Kansas, there's an awful lot of New York talent in the supporting cast (Susan Strasberg and Phyllis Newman come immediately to mind); still, the Midwestern ambience comes through loud and clear, especially during the perceptively detailed Labor Day picnic sequence. Broadening the film's appeal is its George Duning-Steve Allen title song, a variation of the old standard "Moonglow". Two sidebars: The original Broadway production of Picnic starred Ralph Meeker and Paul Newman; for the film version of Picnic, William Holden was obliged to shave his chest, lest his hairy torso cause the female moviegoers to conjure up impure thoughts. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Ride with the Devil
PN1997 .R53 2000
Filmed in Doniphan, Leavenworth, Miami, and Ellis Counties and Kansas City, MO

A complex tale of uneasy alliances along the Kansas/Missouri border during the Civil War, Ride with the Devil concerns Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), a proud son of the South ready to fight for the Confederate cause after his father is killed by Union troops. Chiles's best friend, Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire), joins the Bushwhackers, a group of renegade Southerners aligned with the Confederate Army, even though his family supports the Union cause. The two young men, used to the slow pace and gracious lifestyle of the South's privileged class, are soon confronted with the chaos of battle. Their comrades include valiant leader Black John (James Caviezel), paranoid madman Pitt (Jonathan Rhys Myers), Southern gentleman George (Simon Baker), and Daniel (Jeffrey Wright), a slave from George's plantation. The Bushwhackers hide out in a barn near the home of Sue Lee (singer/songwriter/poet Jewel, in her film debut), a pregnant widow whose husband died in battle three weeks after their marriage. Roedel and Sue Lee begin a chaste romance, but it remains to be seen if the war will permit them to stay together. Adapted from the novel Woe to Live On by Daniel Woodrell, Ride with the Devil was directed by Ang Lee, whose previous project was a very different look at America's past, the 1970s domestic drama The Ice Storm (1997). ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Sarah, Plain and Tall
PN1997 .S28 1998
Filmed in Lyndon and Topeka

The made-for-television film Sarah, Plain & Tall is a Hallmark Hall of Fame production about a single New England schoolteacher (Glenn Close) who responds to an advertisement by a Midwestern widower (Christopher Walken), who is asking for a bride to help him raise his two children. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

I couldn't find any excerpts from Sarah, Plain and Tall, but I couldn't pass up a chance to include a Christopher Walken clip. Here's his monologue from Pulp Fiction:

Life During Wartime

2006-09-20T13:09:00.000-06:00

The Best Years of Our Lives
PN1997 .B47 1991

When Samuel Goldwyn decided to make The Best Years of Our Lives, Hollywood was running away from World War II-related scripts as though the subject itself had the plague--movies about men in uniform had been box-office poison since early 1945. The assumption was that returning veterans would be even less willing than those who'd stayed on the home front to shell out money to be reminded of their service. Goldwyn, director William Wyler, and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood (working from MacKinlay Kantor's blank verse novel Glory For Me), and a cast from heaven (some of them, like Dana Andrews and Virginia Mayo, giving the greatest performances of their careers) proved the industry wrong, and they opened up a whole new subject area by focusing on the men giving up their uniforms, the women and children around them, and even the men who hadn't served. They ended up with a 170-minute movie whose every shot was dramatically and psychically spellbinding, embracing the relief, anxiety, pain, joy, and doubts that Americans could now express. The setting of the movie in a small city somewhere in the middle of the country gave it a Norman Rockwell veneer, while the script melded that background with some healthy cynicism and emotional honesty borne out of the movie world's new awareness of modern psychology. Thus, the film had its feet in both pre-war and post-war consciousness, appealing to two generations of filmgoers (or even three, as the World War I-era audience was still around and had hardly been served well in its own time). It not only set new standards for maturity in mainstream movie-making, showing that you could please crowds even as you showed a few unpleasant truths about who and what we were, but also did a lot to ease audiences into the Hollywood era that produced such serious, topical dramas as Gentleman's Agreement, Crossfire, City Across the River, Home of the Brave, The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me), The Wild One, On the Waterfront, and Goldwyn's own Edge of Doom. ~Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

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Watch a clip from the film

Watch another clip from the film

Das Boot
PN1997 .B6799 1997

Das Boot is among the most realistic of all World War II films and one of the most spectacular object lessons in manipulating and choreographing the space on the screen. Director Wolfgang Petersen manages to convey the long periods of boredom for the crew of a submarine while making that boredom interesting for the audience. The film is largely unconcerned with the issues surrounding World War II, instead focusing on the individual sailors aboard the sub. Cinematographer Jost Vacano is continually creative in finding new things to reveal aboard the cramped quarters of the sub, and the film's intensity is impressive. The scene in which the sub's captain (Jürgen Prochnow) sinks what he thinks is an unoccupied enemy ship, only to find that it isn't, is among the most memorable scenes in any war film. There are few films that can maintain interest for such a lengthy running time with so few sets to work with, but Das Boot does exactly that for all 210 minutes of the expanded, post-release director's cut. ~Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer courtesy of The Internet Movie Database (so is the advertisement)

Grand Illusion
PN1997 .G681 1990

A "poetic realist" masterpiece, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937) eloquently revealed the absurdity of war in a story about escape from a World War I German prison camp. One of the first sound film masters of the mobile camera, Renoir structured his film through a series of long takes in deep focus, moving gracefully yet subtly among the characters to embed them in rather than isolate them from their environments. With this observational style, Renoir examined the "grand illusions" threatening Europe in the 1930s and humankind in general: war and the artificial distinctions of class and nation that drive it. Each of the four main characters stands for a particular social stratum, with their metaphorical places revealed through realistic details of conversation and quotidian behavior. This emphasis on the reality of daily life in prison camps, complete with dialogue in several languages and easygoing camaraderie between prisoners and guards, suggests the core of humanity shared by all, regardless of class, language, and cultural divisions. The poetic final image of an invisible border hidden beneath an expanse of white snow punctuates Renoir's benevolently humanist stance. Grand Illusion was a hit in the U.S. as well as in France, even receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Picture; it also received a special prize at the 1937 Venice Film Festival despite being banned in Italy and Germany. Regularly listed as one of the best films ever made, Grand Illusion's power remains undiminished, while the impact of Renoir's audacious style can be seen from the work of Orson Welles to the French New Wave. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Watch a clip from Grand Illusion

Director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich introduces Grand Illusion for Turner Classic Movies' The Essentials

Apocalypse Now
PN1997 .A66 2000

One of a cluster of late-1970s films about the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now adapts the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness to depict the war as a descent into primal madness. Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen), already on the edge, is assigned to find and deal with AWOL Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), rumored to have set himself up in the Cambodian jungle as a local, lethal godhead. Along the way Willard encounters napalm and Wagner fan Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), draftees who prefer to surf and do drugs, a USO Playboy Bunny show turned into a riot by the raucous soldiers, and a jumpy photographer (Dennis Hopper) telling wild, reverent tales about Kurtz. By the time Willard sees the heads mounted on stakes near Kurtz's compound, he knows Kurtz has gone over the deep end, but it is uncertain whether Willard himself now agrees with Kurtz's insane dictum to "Drop the Bomb. Exterminate them all." Coppola himself was not certain either, and he tried several different endings between the film's early rough-cut screenings for the press, the Palme d'Or-winning "work-in-progress" shown at Cannes, and the final 35 mm U.S. release (also the ending on the video cassette). The chaotic production also experienced shut-downs when a typhoon destroyed the set and star Sheen suffered a heart attack; the budget ballooned and Coppola covered the overages himself. These production headaches, which Coppola characterized as being like the Vietnam War itself, have been superbly captured in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Despite the studio's fears and mixed reviews of the film's ending, Apocalypse Now became a substantial hit and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Duvall's psychotic Kilgore, and Best Screenplay. It won Oscars for sound and for Vittorio Storaro's cinematography. This hallucinatory, Wagnerian project has produced admirers and detractors of equal ardor; it resembles no other film ever made, and its nightmarish aura and polarized reception aptly reflect the tensions and confusions of the Vietnam era. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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Watch Martin Sheen discuss the film in a clip from Inside the Actors Studio:

The Deer Hunter
PN1997 .D44 2001

Realizing that the three-hour film would need to be a prestige event to draw public interest, Universal followed Grease producer Allan Carr's advice and opened The Deer Hunter for one week for Academy Award consideration in December 1978, putting off the national opening until February 1979. The gambit succeeded. The film won the Best Picture prize from the New York Film Critics' Circle and got nine Academy Award nominations as it went into national release, including Best Picture, Best Director, and acting nods for Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep. The movie went on to beat Coming Home for Best Picture and Best Director and also picked up Oscars for Walken's performance, Sound, and Editing. As the film's acclaim grew, it also aroused objections to the depiction of the Vietcong as racist from, among others, Coming Home star Jane Fonda, as well as criticisms from numerous Vietnam reporters that director Michael Cimino was ill-informed about real Vietnam experience, not having served in the war himself. Regardless of the disputes over the veracity of the Russian roulette scenes, they create an indelible metaphor for warfare and its atmosphere of sudden, random violence. While the press notes suggest that the final song was meant to be affirmative, the searing sense of loss that builds up throughout the film renders it profoundly ambiguous. This combination of ambivalence, brutality, and controversy echoed American culture's experience of Vietnam, making The Deer Hunter an even more telling cultural artifact than may have been intended. The film's awards and acclaim manifested Hollywood's willingness finally to reckon one way or another with a war that had been all but absent from movie screens while it was happening, leading the way for such later films as Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). With the prizes and dissension, The Deer Hunter became a popular hit, enabling Cimino to have full artistic freedom for his next film, the financially disastrous Heaven's Gate. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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Five Album Favorites on the Edge of the Top Ten

2006-09-13T13:05:00.000-06:00

Only the Lonely / Frank Sinatra
M1630.18.S57 O6 1998

Originally, Frank Sinatra had planned to record Only the Lonely with Gordon Jenkins, who had arranged his previous all-ballads album, Where Are You. Jenkins was unavailable at the time of the sessions, which led Sinatra back to his original arranger at Capitol, Nelson Riddle. The result is arguably his greatest ballads album. Only the Lonely follows the same formula as his previous down albums, but the tone is considerably bleaker and more desperate. Riddle used a larger orchestra for the album than he had in the past, which lent the album a stately, nearly classical atmosphere. At its core, however, the album is a set of brooding saloon songs, highlighted by two of Sinatra's tour de forces — "Angel Eyes" and "One for My Baby." Sinatra never forces emotion out of the lyric, he lets everything flow naturally, with grace. It's a heartbreaking record, the ideal late-night album. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Watch Old Blue Eyes sing "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry" at Carnegie Hall in 1980

The Shape of Jazz to Come / Ornette Coleman
M1366.C65 S53 1980z

Ornette Coleman's Atlantic debut, The Shape of Jazz to Come, was a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course and throwing down a gauntlet that some still haven't come to grips with. The record shattered traditional concepts of harmony in jazz, getting rid of not only the piano player but the whole idea of concretely outlined chord changes. The pieces here follow almost no predetermined harmonic structure, which allows Coleman and partner Don Cherry an unprecedented freedom to take the melodies of their solo lines wherever they felt like going in the moment, regardless of what the piece's tonal center had seemed to be. Plus, this was the first time Coleman recorded with a rhythm section — bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins — that was loose and open-eared enough to follow his already controversial conception. Coleman's ideals of freedom in jazz made him a feared radical in some quarters; there was much carping about his music flying off in all directions, with little direct relation to the original theme statements. If only those critics could have known how far out things would get in just a few short years; in hindsight, it's hard to see just what the fuss was about, since this is an accessible, frequently swinging record. It's true that Coleman's piercing, wailing alto squeals and vocalized effects weren't much beholden to conventional technique, and that his themes often followed unpredictable courses, and that the group's improvisations were very free-associative. But at this point, Coleman's desire for freedom was directly related to his sense of melody — which was free-flowing, yes, but still very melodic. Of the individual pieces, the haunting "Lonely Woman" is a stone-cold classic, and "Congeniality" and "Peace" aren't far behind. Any understanding of jazz's avant-garde should begin here. ~Steve Huey, All Music Guide

Listen to "The Music of Ornette Coleman: A Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio with Ed Bradley Featured Program" (requires RealPlayer)

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Listen to excerpts from The Shape of Jazz to Come

The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve, 1945-1959 / Billie Holiday
M1630.18.H64 C6 1992

This is a rather incredible collection: ten CDs enclosed in a tight black box that includes every one of the recordings Verve owns of Billie Holiday, not only the many studio recordings of 1952-57 (which feature Lady Day joined by such jazz all-stars as trumpeters Charlie Shavers and Harry "Sweets" Edison, altoist Benny Carter, and the tenors of Flip Phillips, Paul Quinichette and Ben Webster). Also included are prime performances at Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts in 1945-1947, an enjoyable European gig from 1954, her "comeback" Carnegie Hall concert of 1956, Holiday's rather sad final studio album from 1959, and even lengthy tapes from two informal rehearsals. It's a perfect purchase for the true Billie Holiday fanatic. ~Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

Watch Billie Holiday perform "Fine and Mellow" with Lester Young on television's "The Sound of Jazz":

Watch her sing "Farewell to Storyville" with Louis Armstrong:

2112 / Rush
M1630.18.R87 A12 1976

Whereas Rush's first two releases, their self-titled debut and Fly By Night, helped create a buzz among hard rock fans worldwide, the more progressive third release, Caress of Steel, confused many of their supporters. The band knew it was now or never with their fourth release, and they delivered just in time — 1976's 2112 proved to be their much sought-after commercial breakthrough and remains one of their most popular albums. Instead of choosing between prog rock or heavy rock, both styles are merged together to create an interesting and original approach. The whole entire first side is comprised of the classic title track, which paints a chilling picture of a future world where technology is in control (Peart's lyrics for the piece being influenced by Ayn Rand). Comprised of seven "sections," the track proved that the trio was fast becoming rock's most accomplished instrumentalists. The second side contains shorter selections, such as the Middle Eastern-flavored "A Passage to Bangkok" and the album-closing rocker "Something for Nothing." 2112 is widely considered by Rush fans as their first true "classic" album, the first in a string of similarly high-quality albums. ~Greg Prato, All Music Guide

Synchronizing Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz is old news. How about Rush's 2112 and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory?

Here's where he got the idea

Anthology of American Folk Music / edited by Harry Smith
M1629 .A66 1997

Originally released in 1952 as a quasi-legal set of three double LPs and reissued several times since (with varying cover art), Anthology of American Folk Music could well be the most influential document of the '50s folk revival. Many of the recordings that appeared on it had languished in obscurity for 20 years, and it proved a revelation to a new group of folkies, from Pete Seeger to John Fahey to Bob Dylan. The man that made the Anthology possible was Harry Smith, a notoriously eccentric musicologist who compiled 84 of his favorite hillbilly, gospel, blues, and Cajun performances from the late '20s and early '30s, dividing each into one of three categories: Ballads, Social Music, and Songs. Smith sequenced the three volumes with a great amount of care, placing songs on the Ballads volume in historical order (not to be confused with chronological order) so as to create an LP that traces the folk tradition, beginning with some of the earliest Childe ballads of the British Isles and ending with several story songs of the early 20th century. The cast of artists includes pioneers in several fields, from the Carter Family and Uncle Dave Macon to Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, and the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers. Many of the most interesting selections on the Anthology, however, are taken from artists even more obscure, such as Clarence Ashley, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and Buell Kazee. After the Anthology had been out of print for more than a decade, Smithsonian/Folkways reissued the set in a six-disc boxed set, with the original notes of Harry Smith, as well as a separate book of new reminiscences by artists influenced by the original and a wealth of material for use in CD-ROM drives. ~John Bush, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from and learn more about the Anthology of American Folk Music box set at the Smithsonian Folkways Web Site

Five Film Favorites on the Edge of the Top Ten

2006-09-08T13:02:00.000-06:00

Eraserhead
PN1997 .E73 2002

Filmed intermittently over the course of a five-year period, David Lynch's radical feature debut stars Jack Nance as Henry Spencer, a man living in an unnamed industrial wasteland. Upon learning that a past romance has resulted in an impending pregnancy, Henry agrees to wed mother-to-be Mary (Charlotte Stewart) and moves her into his tiny, squalid flat. Their baby is born hideously mutated, a strange, reptilian creature whose piercing cries never cease. Mary soon flees in horror and disgust, leaving Henry to fall prey to the seduction of the girl across the hall (Judith Anna Roberts). An intensely visceral nightmare, Eraserhead marches to the beat of its own slow, surreal rhythm: Henry's world is a cancerous dreamscape, a place where sins manifest themselves as bizarre creatures and worlds exist within worlds. Interpreting the film along the lines of Lynch's claims that it's the product of his own fears of fatherhood may make Eraserhead easier to digest on a narrative level, if need be. ~Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

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Take a look at the following Web sites:

The Official David Lynch Site

The Eraserhead Wikipedia Entry

The City of Absurdity

It's a Wonderful Life
PN1997 .I87 1995

This is director Frank Capra's classic bittersweet comedy/drama about George Bailey (James Stewart), the eternally-in-debt guiding force of a bank in the typical American small town of Bedford Falls. As the film opens, it's Christmas Eve, 1946, and George, who has long considered himself a failure, faces financial ruin and arrest and is seriously contemplating suicide. High above Bedford Falls, two celestial voices discuss Bailey's dilemma and decide to send down eternally bumbling angel Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers), who after 200 years has yet to earn his wings, to help George out. But first, Clarence is given a crash course on George's life, and the multitude of selfless acts he has performed: rescuing his younger brother from drowning, losing the hearing in his left ear in the process; enduring a beating rather than allow a grieving druggist (H.B. Warner) to deliver poison by mistake to an ailing child; foregoing college and a long-planned trip to Europe to keep the Bailey Building and Loan from letting its Depression-era customers down; and, most important, preventing town despot Potter (Lionel Barrymore) from taking over Bedford Mills and reducing its inhabitants to penury. Along the way, George has married his childhood sweetheart Mary (Donna Reed), who has stuck by him through thick and thin. But even the love of Mary and his children are insufficient when George, faced with an $8000 shortage in his books, becomes a likely candidate for prison thanks to the vengeful Potter. Bitterly, George declares that he wishes that he had never been born, and Clarence, hoping to teach George a lesson, shows him how different life would have been had he in fact never been born. After a nightmarish odyssey through a George Bailey-less Bedford Falls (now a glorified slum called Potterville), wherein none of his friends or family recognize him, George is made to realize how many lives he has touched, and helped, through his existence; and, just as Clarence had planned, George awakens to the fact that, despite all its deprivations, he has truly had a wonderful life. Capra's first production through his newly-formed Liberty Films, It's a Wonderful Life lost money in its original run, when it was percieved as a fairly downbeat view of small-town life. Only after it lapsed into the public domain in 1973 and became a Christmastime TV perennial did it don the mantle of a holiday classic. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Listen to a jazzy rendition of Auld Lang Syne:

Wings of Desire
PN1997 .W563 2003

Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are angels who watch over the city of Berlin. They don't have harps or wings (well, they usually don't have wings) and they prefer overcoats to gossamer gowns. But they can travel unseen through the city, listening to people's thoughts, watching their actions and studying their lives. While they can make their presence felt in small ways, only children and other angels can see them. They spend their days serenely observing, unable to interact with people, and they feel neither pain nor joy. One day, Damiel finds his way into a circus and sees Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a high-wire artist, practicing her act; he is immediately smitten. After the owners of the circus tell the company that the show is out of money and must disband, Marion sinks into a funk, shuffling back to her trailer to ponder what to do next. As he watches her, Damiel makes a decision: he wants to be human, and he wants to be with Marion, to lift her spirits and, if need be, to share her pain. Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire is a remarkable modern fairy tale about the nature of being alive. The angels witness the gamut of human emotions, and they experience the luxury of simple pleasures (even a cup of coffee and a cigarette) as ones who've never known them. From the angels' viewpoint, Berlin is seen in gorgeous black-and-white — strikingly beautiful but unreal; when they join the humans, the image shifts to rough but natural-looking color, and the waltz-like grace of the angels' drift through the city changes to a harsher rhythm. Peter Falk appears as himself, revealing a secret that we may not have known about the man who played Columbo, and there's also a brief but powerful appearance by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Wings of Desire hinges on the intangible and elusive, and it builds something beautiful from those qualities. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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Preview the entire film:

Wings of Desire Part 1 of 2

Wings of Desire Part 2 of 2

Annie Hall
PN1997 .A47 1991

One of the greatest pleasures of Woody Allen's early work is his ability to skewer himself while skewering the conventions of the comedy genre. Annie Hall is perhaps the best example of this: a blend of slapstick, fantasy, and bittersweet romantic comedy, it is not so much about two people falling in love as about two brains trying to negotiate a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. The neurotic, self-obsessed commentary on display in Annie Hall is pointed but relatively gentle, free of the bitterness that sometimes marked Allen's later work. The film is a series of insightful musings that leave the viewer feeling strangely optimistic—or at least very amused—about human nature. Much of this is due to Alvy and Annie themselves—unlike the oddly but perfectly matched couples fated to walk off into the sunset in the majority of romantic comedies, Alvy and Annie are consigned to further introspection, obsessive analysis, and bittersweet reflection. Part of the appeal of Annie Hall is that there are no pat answers: in watching the struggles of the characters, we see a reflection of our own struggles, without the condescending message that everything will be fine in the end. Annie Hall elevated Allen to the forefront of contemporary filmmakers, promoting him from a comedian who happened to make films to a comic filmmaker. The film also set a new standard for romantic comedies, its name alone becoming synonymous with the sub-genre of the intelligent, New York-based romantic comedy. On a less far-reaching scale, it also launched a fashion trend, with Diane Keaton's baggy menswear providing a welcome alternative to polyester pantsuits and flared trousers, anticipating the craze for androgynous clothing by almost twenty years. ~Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

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Cool Hand Luke
PN1997 .C664 1997

Paul Newman created one of the most indelible anti-authoritarian heroes in movie history with his dynamic portrayal of the title character in 1967's Cool Hand Luke. It's some of the best work of Newman's career, and he's ably backed by the excellent Strother Martin — whose "What we've got here is a failure to communicate" speech took on a life of its own in popular culture — and George Kennedy, who won an Oscar for the role of Dragline. Luke creates a rich portrait of prison life and the people on both sides of the corrections department. Co-writer Donn Pearce spent time on a chain gang for safe-cracking, and the work has an unmistakable authenticity. The story is ultimately about the senseless righteousness of authority, and about Luke, a man who manages to win even when he loses. The film would usher in a wave of unconventional heroes, from Bonnie and Clyde that same year to Jack Nicholson's McMurphy in 1975's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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Watch George Kennedy describe filming his big fight scene with Paul Newman

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: Touch of Evil

2006-08-21T15:01:00.000-06:00

Touch of Evil
PN1997 .T68 2000

This baroque nightmare of a south-of-the-border mystery is considered to be one of the great movies of Orson Welles, who both directed and starred in it. On honeymoon with his new bride Susan (Janet Leigh), Mexican-born policeman Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) agrees to investigate a bomb explosion. In so doing, he incurs the wrath of local police chief Hank Quinlan (Welles), a corrupt, bullying behemoth with a perfect arrest record. Vargas suspects that Quinlan has planted evidence to win his past convictions, and he isn't about to let the suspect in the current case be railroaded. Quinlan, whose obsession with his own brand of justice is motivated by the long-ago murder of his wife, is equally determined to get Vargas out of his hair, and he makes a deal with local crime boss Uncle Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) to frame Susan on a drug rap, leading to one of the movie's many truly harrowing sequences. Touch of Evil dissects the nature of good and evil in a hallucinatory, nightmarish ambience, helped by the shadow-laden cinematography of Russell Metty and by the cast, which, along with Tamiroff and Welles includes Charlton Heston as a Mexican; Marlene Dietrich, in a brunette wig, as a brittle madam who delivers the movie's unforgettable closing words; Mercedes McCambridge as a junkie; and Dennis Weaver as a tremulous motel clerk. Touch of Evil has been released with four different running times — 95 minutes for the 1958 original, which was taken away from Welles and brutally cut by the studio; 108 minutes and 114 minutes in later versions; and 111 minutes in the 1998 restoration. Based on a 58-page memo written by Welles after he was barred from the editing room during the film's original post-production, this restoration, among numerous other changes, removed the opening titles and Henry Mancini's music from the opening crane shot, which in either version ranks as one of the most remarkably extended long takes in movie history. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Watch the film's famous extended opening-shot

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: This Is Spinal Tap

2006-08-21T13:00:00.000-06:00

This is Spinal Tap
PN1997 .T552 2000

If there has ever been a funnier and truer film about rock music than This Is Spinal Tap, no one has had the courage to show it in public. Rob Reiner's hilarious mockumentary chronicle of the misadventures of a group of intellectually challenged British rock musicians touring the U.S. manages to laugh at and with its protagonists at the same time. While the unending cluelessness of Spinal Tap's core members, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean, Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), is a marvel to behold (especially the scene in which Nigel is baffled by the miniature pumpernickel on the deli tray), the leading characters also exude a goofy charm. As we watch their career slowly collapse around them, it's difficult not to feel a certain sympathy while laughing at their travails (it helps that they've seen enough of this coming to be more annoyed than despairing about their careers). Guest, McKean, and Shearer, who improvised most of the film's material, all did time in rock bands in the 1960s and 1970s, and it seems as if they didn't forget a thing; no one who has ever been in a band, no matter how lowly, will fail to recognize the arguments at rehearsal, the on-stage screwups, the frustration of getting lost en route to a show, the thrill of hearing yourself on the radio, the chore of playing for an audience that doesn't care, and the excitement of a show that goes over. While This Is Spinal Tap takes deadly (and wildly funny) aim at the absurdities of the music business and the pompous excesses of the Heavy Metal scene, it's also made by people who understand the kick of a good rock show (for both performer and audience), and much of the humor comes from the fact that this seemingly absurd tale is not far at all from the truth. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

But these go to 11...

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: Favorite Martin Scorsese Films

2006-08-21T12:59:00.000-06:00

Mean Streets
PN1997 .M4 2003

Mean Streets was not Martin Scorsese's first film, but it was the first one that really mattered, an alternately troubling and exhilarating look at one man's obsessions and at a subculture that other movies rarely examine beneath the surface. Scorsese's fascination with sin, redemption, guilt, and crime first bore real fruit in Mean Streets, and in many ways Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is the ultimate Scorsese character: a sincere Catholic who, as a low-level gangster, has chosen to live outside the laws of God and Man, and who tries to find a penance and personal moral code that will mean something to him. Charlie's inner turmoil underscores the film's every movement, as his loyalties are torn among the church, his boss Giovanni (Cesare Danova), his irresponsible best friend Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro), and his epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson). Meanwhile, Scorsese and his camera revel in the details of Charlie's world, finding a dizzying excitement and strange beauty in the violence, drunkenness, and intrigue of life along the criminal margins. Charlie seems to have one foot in the present and the other in turn-of-the-century Sicily, and the soundtrack, which combines the rickety Italian folk melodies of the Feast of Gennaro with classic jukebox rock-and-roll (drawn from records in Scorsese's own collection, complete with scratches), plays this duality for all it's worth. Mean Streets is packed with superb performances (it made Keitel and DeNiro major names overnight, and deservedly so) and remarkable moments that stick in the memory long after the film is over: the drunken welcome home party, the fight in the pool hall, Johnny Boy's strange little dance while Charlie is trying to get him out of town. If Scorsese's first two films were about refining his ideas and learning his craft, Mean Streets was where he first put the pieces together properly, and the result was the first great work from one of the most important filmmakers of his generation. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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Raging Bull
PN1997 .R34 1991

Martin Scorsese's brutal character study incisively portrays the true rise and fall and redemption of middleweight boxer Jake La Motta, a violent man in and out of the ring who thrives on his ability (and desire) to take a beating. Opening with the spectacle of the over-the-hill La Motta (Robert De Niro) practicing his 1960s night-club act, the film flashes back to 1940s New York, when Jake's career is on the rise. Despite pressure from the local mobsters, Jake trusts his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) to help him make it to a title bout against Sugar Ray Robinson the honest way; the Mob, however, will not cave in. Jake gets the title bout, and blonde teenage second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarity), but success does nothing to exorcise his demons, even as he channels his rage into boxing. Alienating Vickie and Joey, and disastrously gaining weight, Jake has destroyed his personal and professional lives by the 1950s. After he hits bottom, however, Jake emerges with a gleam of self-awareness, as he sits rehearsing Marlon Brando's On the Waterfront speech in his dressing room mirror: "I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody." Working with a script adapted by Mardik Martin and Paul Schrader from La Motta's memoirs, Scorsese and De Niro sought to make an uncompromising portrait of an unlikable man and his ruthless profession. Eschewing uplifting Rocky-like boxing movie conventions, their Jake is relentlessly cruel and self-destructive; the only peace he can make is with himself. Michael Chapman's stark black-and-white photography creates a documentary/tabloid realism; the production famously shut down so that De Niro could gain 50-plus pounds. Raging Bull opened in late 1980 to raves for its artistry and revulsion for its protagonist; despite eight Oscar nominations, it underperformed at the box office, as audiences increasingly turned away from "difficult" films in the late '70s and early '80s. The Academy concurred, passing over Scorsese's work for Best Director and Picture in favor of Robert Redford and Ordinary People, although De Niro won a much-deserved Oscar, as did the film's editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. Oscar or no Oscar, Raging Bull has often been cited as the best American film of the 1980s. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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Or watch a clip from The Flintstones with dialogue from Raging Bull (contains profanity):

Taxi Driver
PN1997 .T39 1995

"I'm God's lonely man," says Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro in one of his finest and most memorable performances. Travis, the protagonist and focal point of Taxi Driver, is severely out of his element in New York City, though it's hard to imagine where else he would fit in; he goes through life as if the world speaks a dialect unknown to him. He seems incapable of relating to anyone beyond superficial pleasantries or casual violence, and when he does attempt to reach out to others — to beautiful campaign manager Betsy (Cybil Shepherd), to philosophical cabbie Wizard (Peter Boyle), or to teenage runaway-turned-prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster) — he runs into a brick wall despite his best intentions, as he can't fully comprehend others and they can't fathom him. Screenwriter Paul Schrader and director Martin Scorsese place this isolated, potentially volatile man in New York City, depicted as a grimly stylized hell on Earth, where noise, filth, directionless rage, and dirty sex (both morally and literally) surround him at all turns. When Travis attempts to transform himself into an avenging angel who will "wash some of the real scum off the street," his murder spree follows a terrible and inevitable logic: he is a bomb built to explode, like the proverbial gun which, when produced in the first act, must go off in the third. While De Niro's masterful performance brings Travis to vivid life, it's Scorsese's dynamic, idiosyncratic visual storytelling (given an invaluable assist by cinematographer Michael Chapman) that provides the perfect narrative context. Capturing New York's underbelly with a palate of reds and yellows that burn with an evil glow, Scorsese fills the story with tiny details and offhand moments that form the fully rounded reality of Travis' fallen world. If De Niro produced one of film's most troubling portraits of a lost soul, Scorsese created a painfully vivid purgatory for him to live in, and, alongside Raging Bull, Taxi Driver marks the finest work of this actor/director team. ~Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: Don't Look Back

2006-08-21T12:57:00.000-06:00

Don't Look Back
ML420.D98 D95 1967

Bob Dylan is one of the most important figures of 20th century America and 1965-1966 was his most prolific period. Within this short time he wrote, recorded, and released three masterpieces (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde), plugged in and got booed at the Newport Folk Festival, toured Europe twice, and changed the face of rock & roll. The first European tour was chronicled in Don't Look Back, a documentary by D.A. Pennebaker, who was wise enough to give very little screen time to stage performances. Instead, he turned the camera on inside limos, hotel rooms, and backstage, giving us the man behind the music. Seeing performers behind the scenes is common today with Behind the Music and similar programs, but in 1965, the idea that someone could be just as interesting off-stage as on was radical thinking. The film captures a critical time in Dylan's career, having just released Bringing It All Back Home, his first "electric, rock &amp; roll" record; he is changing so quickly that he literally can't even keep up with himself. When he booked the tour, he didn't assemble a band, because at that time, he was still a solo performer. Now, he clearly wants to move past the old material, but can not due to the fact no one is backing him up. His frustration runs so deep that at one point in the film when a mic cuts out while he's performing, he keeps playing despite the fact he can't be heard. He's annoyed with journalists who want him to explain what his impact has been when he just wants to keep going, and not look back. Much is made of his savage treatment of the press in this film, but it's the smaller moments that make this a must-see. These include an impromptu hotel room performance of "Lost Highway", a view of Bob working out a song on a piano, and a hysterical conversation where Dylan and his manager, Albert Grossman, try to figure out why the English press is calling him an anarchist. Other treats include very rare footage of Dylan at 19 performing for a small group of blacks in the Deep South and the famous "Subterranean Homesick Blues" clip. Don't Look Back is an uncompromising look at an artist dealing with the burdens of fame while trying to grow, and is required viewing for all music fans. ~Scott Engel, All Movie Guide

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Watch a clip from the film (contains profanity):

Watch two student-filmmakers who are obsessed with Don't Look Back travel to N.Y.C. to find Bob Dylan:

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: Miles Davis Trifecta

2006-08-21T12:56:00.000-06:00

Birth of the Cool / Miles Davis
M1366.D38 B57 2001

So dubbed because these three sessions — two from early 1949, one from March 1950 — are where the sound known as cool jazz essentially formed, The Birth of the Cool remains one of the defining, pivotal moments in jazz. This is where the elasticity of bop was married with skillful, big-band arrangements and a relaxed, subdued mood that made it all seem easy, even at its most intricate. After all, there's a reason why this music was called cool; it has a hip, detached elegance, never getting too hot, even as the rhythms skip and jump. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about these sessions — arranged by Gil Evans and featuring such heavy-hitters as Kai Winding, Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, and Max Roach — is that they sound intimate, as the nonet never pushes too hard, never sounds like the work of nine musicians. Furthermore, the group keeps things short and concise (probably the result of the running time of singles, but the results are the same), which keeps the focus on the tones and tunes. The virtuosity led to relaxing, stylish mood music as the end result — the very thing that came to define West Coast or "cool" jazz — but this music is so inventive, it remains alluring even after its influence has been thoroughly absorbed into the mainstream. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Kind of Blue / Miles Davis
M1366.D38 K5 1987

Kind of Blue isn't merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it's an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence. Why does Kind of Blue posses such a mystique? Perhaps because this music never flaunts its genius. It lures listeners in with the slow, luxurious bassline and gentle piano chords of "So What." From that moment on, the record never really changes pace — each tune has a similar relaxed feel, as the music flows easily. Yet Kind of Blue is more than easy listening. It's the pinnacle of modal jazz — tonality and solos build from the overall key, not chord changes, giving the music a subtly shifting quality. All of this doesn't quite explain why seasoned jazz fans return to this record even after they've memorized every nuance. They return because this is an exceptional band — Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb — one of the greatest in history, playing at the peak of its power. As Evans said in the original liner notes for the record, the band did not play through any of these pieces prior to recording. Davis laid out the themes before the tape rolled, and then the band improvised. The end results were wondrous and still crackle with vitality. Kind of Blue works on many different levels. It can be played as background music, yet it amply rewards close listening. It is advanced music that is extraordinarily enjoyable. It may be a stretch to say that if you don't like Kind of Blue, you don't like jazz — but it's hard to imagine it as anything other than a cornerstone of any jazz collection. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Watch a clip from 1958 of Miles Davis and John Coltrane performing "So What":

The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions / Miles Davis
M1366.D38 B582 1998

Columbia's continuing summation of the career of Miles Davis through lavish box-set reissues resumed in 1998 with The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, a four-disc set including all the music from the original 1970 double-album Bitches Brew plus over two additional hours of music from the six-month period during which the album was recorded. (Some of those tracks were previously released on compilations like Big Fun and Circle in the Round, but almost one-third of the material lay unissued until this release.) The music is simply fabulous — the simultaneous birth and peak of jazz-rock/fusion, with a host of major players (John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, Jack DeJohnette) and many innovations. There is a bit more evidence of tape hiss than in Columbia's last American remastering of the album, but the revelations of depth and timbre more than make up for it. Though the unreleased selections are distinctly inferior to those released on Bitches Brew, "Yaphet," "Corrado," and "Trevere" are intriguing jam sessions that reveal much about the creative process between Davis and producer Teo Macero during recording. Unlike Columbia's previous sets in the series (one treating Miles' period of collaboration with Gil Evans and one featuring the music of his second classic quintet), the Bitches Brew sessions lend themselves well to a box set of this type — presenting the music in chronological order does no harm to original LP configurations as it did on previous sets, and the music here is another glowing testament to Miles' importance to the development of jazz in 1969, as in 1949. ~John Bush, All Music Guide

Listen to the title track from the album Bitches Brew

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: Mighty-Fine Old-Timey Music

2006-08-21T12:54:00.000-06:00

O Brother, Where Art Thou? [original soundtrack]
M1527 .O2 2000

The critical consensus at the end of 2000 was that it had been one of the weakest film years in recent memory. Which may have been true, despite O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen brothers' delightfully warm and weird Depression-era re-telling of Homer's Odyssey. But for music lovers, 2000 was an amazing year at the movies, and it produced several excellent soundtrack compilations including Almost Famous, Dancer in the Dark, Wonder Boys, and High Fidelity. Even with such steep competition, the soundtrack album for O Brother, Where Art Thou? may be the best of the year. In order to capture the sound of Mississippi circa 1932, the Coens commissioned T-Bone Burnett, a masterful producer whose work with artists like Elvis Costello, Sam Phillips, Joseph Arthur, and Counting Crows has earned him a special place in the folk-rock hall of fame, to research and re-create the country, bluegrass, folk, gospel, and blues of the era. The Coens were so taken with Burnett's discoveries that the film became a unique sort of musical revue. There are no original compositions here (though Burnett is given a "music by" credit usually reserved for composers), and the characters do not generally break into stylized song and dance numbers (as they do in, say, Everyone Says I Love You). But nearly every scene in O Brother is set to a period song, and the music frequently drives and defines the action. With two exceptions — a stunning 1955 Alan Lomax recording of a black prison chain gang singing "Po Lazarus", and Harry McClintock's "Big Rock Candy Mountain" — every song was recorded for the film by an impressive assembly of old-time country veterans (Fairfield Four, Ralph Stanley, the Whites) and talented newcomers (Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris). These recordings, which were made without the meddling clarity of digital technology, give the film much of its power and authenticity. A significant segment of the plot hinges on the (utterly plausible) notion that Dan Tyminksi's ebullient rendition of "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" could be a runaway hit. A memorable sequence involving three riverside sirens centers around an eerie version of "Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby." And Stanley's a cappella performance of "O Death" sets a chilling tone for a climactic struggle at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Throughout, Burnett's steady guiding hand is evident. This soundtrack is a powerful tribute not only to the time-honored but commercially ignored genres of bluegrass and mountain music but also to Burnett's remarkable skills as a producer. ~Evan Cater, All Music Guide

The Soggy Bottom Boys perform "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow":

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: In C

2006-08-21T12:53:00.000-06:00

In C / Terry Riley
M1470.R44 I5 2001

If ever there were a popular work of minimalism, one that stated its purpose so clearly it could not be mistaken, Terry Riley's legendary composition In C is the one. It is a work that needs no explanation for its pulsing sequences of pitch all centering around the note and its performances have been numerous if not recordings. The Bang on a Can all-stars have recorded perhaps the most definitive version of the work so far, after Riley's own, which was issued in the 1960s on Columbia's long defunct Odyssey label. This version reads minimalism as popular music and popular music as, finally, classical. The Bang on a Can version is something that is so outrageously wonderful that no one else need ever bother recording it again. This single repeated note, meditatively engaged and then played upon in modulation, is taken by Bang on a Can and torn apart, with gritty, urban vision, rock & roll energy, and pure New York street smarts. Using a wide array of instruments (from piano, vibes, glockenspiel, cello, Wu man's pipa, clarinet, mandolin, soprano saxophone, electric guitar, marimba, chimes, and bass) for 45 minutes, this mind-flexing composition is moved through the sequence of all these instrumentalists, each coloring it just a bit, moving it a tad further outside and into the future, the dynamics shift subtly and change, direction becomes fluid, and the drama becomes white-knuckle tense after such a meditative beginning and then releases again. This is the creation of language, tonal, timbral, and spatial. There is an architecture at work in this version that erects small towers of meaning in sound and piles them atop each other until a sonic Tower of Babel is finally fully erected. The pulse never stops; it never disengages no matter which instrument or group of instruments enters or leaves the fray. It is there, constant, always being born and always dying and being transformed, reincarnated as some other sound, some other phrase, but always identified by the pulse. This is more hypnotic than any rock & roll, and more powerful than any Beethoven symphony is taken in with openness. This is music — ultimately made by a truly gifted and disciplined ensemble that share a singularly optimistic vision for modern music — that can, and will, change your life. ~Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

Listen to an excerpt of Terry Riley's original recording of In C (requires RealPlayer)

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Listen to an excerpt of In C performed by Bang On A Can:

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Soundtracks

2006-08-21T12:52:00.000-06:00

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring / music composed, orchestrated, and conducted by Howard Shore
M1527.S56 L671 2001

Appropriately enough for the film adaptation of one fantasy literature's most enduring favorites, Howard Shore's score for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings is traditional and majestic, using sweeping strings, brass, and choral sections to create moments of fire-and-brimstone menace as well heroic triumph. An ominous, bombastic feel runs through much of the score, particularly on pieces like "A Journey in the Dark," "Flight to the Ford," and "A Knife in the Dark," but Shore also includes respites such as the sweetly elfin, Celtic-tinged "Concerning Hobbits" and the stately "Many Meetings." The vibrant "Bridge of Khazad Dum" and "Amon Hen" combine the score's major themes into dazzling climaxes, while Enya's contributions, "Council of Elrond" and "May It Be," add a subtle serenity that gives the score balance. While it's not a particularly melodic score, Lord of the Rings nevertheless does an excellent job of conveying the film's moods through music and has more than enough presence to be appreciated outside of the film's context. ~Heather Phares, All Music Guide

Watch the video for Enya's song "May It Be":

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers / music composed, orchestrated, and conducted by Howard Shore
M1527.S56 L672 2002

Like the second installment of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Howard Shore's score is big, bold, dark, and majestic. This is fitting as the movie is more action-oriented than the first, The Fellowship of the Rings, which — necessarily — spent more time on exposition and character development. It's also a good value for the money, as it features over 70 minutes of music, both instrumentals and vocal tracks (concentrated on the second half of the disc). These include "Evenstar" with the Canadian Opera Company's Isabel Bayrakdarian (who also contributed to Mychael Danna's Ararat soundtrack), "Breath of Life" with Sheila Chandra (formerly of Monsoon), "Forth Eorlingas" with Ben Del Maestro, "Isengard Unleashed" with Del Maestro and Elizabeth Fraser (the Cocteau Twins), and "Gollum's Song" with Emiliana Torrini. The latter is a British vocalist of Icelandic and Italian extraction, who has worked with Tears for Fears' Roland Orzabal and Iceland's Gus Gus. "Gollum's Song" is a tribute, of sorts, to the half-CGI, half-actor-created character (Andy Serkis provided his distinctive voice and physical movements) who handily walks away with the film. The affecting song ("We are lost/We can never go home"), which plays during the end credits, was written by Jackson's wife, Fran Walsh, and sets things up nicely for The Return of the King, the final book in J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy. Despite the critical and commercial success of The Two Towers, the strong orchestral work, and the more inspired selection of vocalists, the soundtrack was not nominated for an Oscar, whereas Shore took home the gold statuette (his first) for his work on The Fellowship of the Rings. ~Kathleen C. Fennessy, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from The Two Towers

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King / music composed, orchestrated and conducted by Howard Shore
M1527.S56 L673 2003

The monumental task of scoring — in rapid succession — three of history's most anticipated films has done little to temper the fire that fuels composer Howard Shore's vision and enthusiasm. With each installment of New Line Cinema's Lord of the Rings trilogy, his seemingly bottomless cauldron of memorable motifs and affecting character themes washes over Peter Jackson's Middle Earth like a coat of varnish, bending each frame to its will. If The Fellowship of the Ring was its heart and The Two Towers its body, then The Return of the King is the series' soul. Opening with a Brahms-like veil of strings that deftly segues into a solo violin variation on the main melody, Shore begins by re-revisiting themes from the previous films. By the time he reaches the devastating "Steward of Gondor" — featuring a heartbreaking tune sung by Hobbit (Billy Boyd) — the mood has shifted from nostalgia to urgency, channeling the protagonists' desperation to complete their harrowing journey. "Twilight and Shadow" uses the gorgeous voice of soloist Renee Fleming to add weight to Arwen's (Liv Tyler) decision on whether or not to choose love over immortality, and "Shelob's Lair," with its dissonant bursts of percussive brass, cements Shore as this generation's Bernard Herrmann. The real magic begins with "The Black Gate Opens," a nervous breath and the calm before the storm, anchored by James Galway's tin whistle. That breath is needed, as what follows is the culmination of nearly five years of work. "The End of All Things" explodes with a variation on the choral arrangement that normally accompanies the Ringwraiths, and inter-cuts it with the voice of the ring — a boy soprano — before launching into the ten-minute "Return of the King." Like a Wagner opera, Shore methodically places familiar themes within the context of emotional turmoil, avoiding the forgettable nonstop dissonance that others apply to battle scenes with sweeping, often nightmarish melodies that linger for days. It's this dedication to memorable composition that makes "The Grey Havens" — the film's epilogue — so compelling. With its soft, bittersweet strings, it packs an emotional impact that would have resonated only on the surface had he taken a by the book approach to scoring the action sequences. Shore and Jackson are visionaries for whom this was a labor of love, and these films are a testament to their nearly inhuman resolve and tenacity. Despite the inclusion of a lovely yet unnecessary song by Annie Lennox, The Return of the King marks the end of an extraordinary collaboration that's destined to be celebrated and studied for generations to come. ~James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide

Listen to excerpts from Return of the King

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: City of God

2006-08-21T12:48:00.000-06:00

City of God
PN1997.2.C53 2003

Fernando Meirelles' City of God starts with a bang, and it doesn't just unfold quickly -- it flies at the audience like it was shot out of a cannon. Based on the novel by Paulo Lins, it's a vibrantly hyperkinetic, hyperstylized gangster-drug saga in the tradition of Goodfellas and Trainspotting, complete with jump cuts, whip pans, split screens, freeze frames, elliptical leaps back and forward in time, and wry, self-conscious narration. But City of God has its own unique soulfulness as it explores a vortex of intense poverty and violence that sucks in young men and boys of varied temperaments, who grow up more cynical and violent with each successive generation. Based on actual events and well-cast with nonprofessional young actors pulled from Cidade de Deus, a government-built slum outside Rio de Janeiro, the film exposes a shadow world just miles from a tourist paradise. Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), a good-natured boy who comically learns that he's not cut out to be a hoodlum, decides to become a photojournalist. He's the film's audience/author surrogate, narrator, and moral center. Lil' Dice (Douglas Silva), meanwhile, is a natural-born killer, a sociopath who craves power and loves violence. He grows up, changes his name to Lil' Zé (Leandro Firmino da Hora), and takes over most of the city's drug trade. They're surrounded by an assortment of colorful, well-drawn characters, each of whom eventually have to confront the consequences of their violent lifestyle. While Lil' Zé is the closest the film comes to a real villain, he's shown to be fully human, winning a little bit of audience sympathy when he confronts the fact that he can't find a girlfriend, before again veering off into psychotic mayhem. City of God is a thrilling, sardonically witty, vital, and disturbing cinematic tour de force. ~Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Watch the trailer:

The All-Time Mabee Top Ten: The Complete Hank Williams

2006-08-21T12:46:00.000-06:00

The Complete Hank Williams / Hank Williams
M1630.18.W52 C65 1998

Between 1986 and 1987, Mercury launched its first effort to chronicle Hank Williams' complete recorded works, releasing a series of eight double albums/single CDs which were later collected as a box set. Both the individual compilations and the box set were pulled from the market in the '90s, clearing the way for The Complete Hank Williams, a ten-disc box set which purported to contain all of Williams' recordings. Mercury, however, played it a little loose with their terms, deciding that "complete" covers the studio recordings, demos, and selected live performances, leaving overdubbed tracks and many live cuts (including much of The Health and Happiness Shows, which was released as a separate collection) in the vaults. This is bound to frustrate some collectors, but it makes for a better listen, actually. Instead of piling all the recordings into an impenetrable chronological trawl through Williams' recording life, the compilers logically devoted specific discs to the studio sessions, live cuts, and demos. In particular, the studio discs are quite compelling, but for hardcore fans, the previously unheard live performances (including several songs that Williams only performed in concert) are the real treasures. Then again, only hardcore fans will invest in such a lavish, extensive box set as The Complete Hank Williams, and there's little question that they'll be quite pleased with it. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Watch a video for the Hank Williams song "Honky Tonk Blues":

Here's a clip from 1964 of Hank singing "Your Cheating Heart":