Wednesday Minute
No. 154 | September 8, 2010

Once Is Enough

Our theme this week
Actors who have directed one film only

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —  Marlon Brando:  One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
Tuesday         —  Gary Oldman:  Nil by Mouth (1997)

Morgan Freeman:  Bopha! (1993)

 

Morgan Freeman has appeared in a couple of films set in South Africa:  in 1992, as a prisoner/boxing tutor in The Power of One, and as Nelson Mandela in last year’s Invictus.  For Bopha!, he let others do the acting as he stepped into the director’s role for the only time in his career.

Danny Glover stars as Micah Mangena, a black police sergeant during the apartheid era.  He has found a niche, done well, and is proud of his accomplishments.  But the situation of a black man upholding the white man’s law is not a simple one, and history—not to mention, Micah’s own son—is not on his side.  Zweli, the son (Maynard Eziashi), does not want to follow his father’s footsteps; he is active politically, protesting at first the teaching of Afrikaans at his school (English is preferred, representing freedom), and ultimately, apartheid.  Micah wants just to do his job, but as the situation escalates he is faced with the difficult decision—which side to take.  The protests have become violent but the law of apartheid is cruel and inhuman.   It’s a test of his conscience, and the fate of his family, his job, and his people are on the line.

Bopha! did not make a big impact at the time (well-meaning films often don’t do well at the box office).  The film, however, did earn critical acclaim, with the cast, led by Glover and Alfre Woodard, receiving good notices.  It’s one of a handful of movies that provide insight into life of South Africans during the time of apartheid—and this one, importantly, is told through the eyes of a black man and his family.

Morgan Freeman has not directed another movie to date, but for what it’s worth, he and yesterday’s featured actor-director, Gary Oldman, have both found recurring roles as good guys in the latest incarnation of Batman movies, Christopher Nolan edition (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight). 

---

Bopha! (1993)
Morgan Freeman, director
Percy Mtwa (play), Brian Bird, John Wierick (screenplay), writers
Trailer

---

Quote of note
“If we allow defiance today…tomorrow it becomes violence.”
—Devilliers (Malcolm McDowell), Bopha! (1993)

…58…59…60.

Tuesday Minute
No. 153 | September 7, 2010

Once Is Enough

Our theme this week
Actors who have directed one film only

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Marlon Brando:  One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

Gary Oldman:  Nil by Mouth (1997)

Nil by Mouth is a raw, personal, powerful look at working-class life on the south side of London.  Gary Oldman wrote and directed the film, and it’s hard to say how much of his childhood growing up in public housing made it onto the screen, but it’s a relief to know he survived.  Oldman dedicated the movie to the memory of his father.

The father in the film is a desperate and brutal man named Ray, played by Ray Winstone.  The victim of much of Ray’s abuse is his wife, Valerie, a role for which Kathy Burke won Best Actress at Cannes.  Their young daughter, Michelle, is utterly neglected, not even a concern for the parents, as she witnesses endless streams of profanity and shocking violence.  Billy (Charlie Creed-Miles) is Valerie’s brother, who robs them to feed his drug habit, which leads Ray to seek retribution.  The cycle goes on.  The rage within the family hits a boiling point, with Valerie ending up in the hospital, Ray beaten and semi-conscious in a parking lot, and Billy in jail.

It ain’t a pretty story, but it feels real, too real at times.  Nil by Mouth is like a documentary.  We may not be entertained, in the usual sense of the word, but we get a view of life we don’t get to see very often:  humans living in desperate circumstances, doing desperate things, and like the best of movies, it’s not about them, it’s about us.

---

Nil by Mouth (1997)
Gary Oldman, writer-director
Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke

---

Quote of note
“When you go out, you go out with your mates, and when you are in, you’re pissed out and your brain’s asleep in front of the fucking television.  I turn the television off, go up to bed, you follow me up at three o’clock in the morning stinking of booze.  That’s what I get.  Either that or you’re knocking me about.  I’m 30 today, you know, and I feel so fucking old.  You know, I’m tired, you know, I wanna be able to look back and say, ‘Yeah, I had a bit of fun,’ you know, when I’m old, instead of saying ‘Everyone fucking felt sorry for me!’  I mean, that’s the life I’ve got.  Do you hear what I’m saying?  I just don’t want it.  I’ll, I’ll find somebody else.  You know, someone who can love me.  Someone kind.”
—Valerie (Kathy Burke), Nil by Mouth (1997)

…58…59…60.

Tuesday Minute
No. 148 | August 17, 2010

Hoofing It

Our theme this week
The incomparable Fred Astaire

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   “Cheek to Cheek” / Top Hat (1935)

“Begin the Beguine”

“Begin the Beguine” was one of the most elaborate production numbers of Hollywood’s golden age.  MGM spared no expense for its fourth and final installment in the Broadway Melody series, but the most special of the effects were provided by the two stars, the incomparable Fred Astaire, in his first film after leaving RKO, and the equally extraordinary Eleanor Powell, often considered the finest of female tap dancers, and for good reason.  If you’d like to know why, just watch the clip below.  That may not be the beguine they’re doing, but it’s one hell of a dance.  Powell, by the way, was so good she apparently intimidated Astaire at first.  In his autobiography, Astaire said that she was “in a class by herself.”

Keep an eye on the fellow that joins them at the end of the routine.  That’s future senator of California, George Murphy.  Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger followed his lead, jumping from movies to politics, though  Murphy was likely the only pol ever who could keep step with Astaire and Powell.

---

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)
Norman Taurog, director
Jack McGowan, Dore Schary (story), Leon Gordon, George Oppenheimer (screenplay), writers
“Begin the Beguine”
Cole Porter, words and music
Bobby Connolly, Albertina Rasch, choreographers
Fred Astaire & Eleanor Powell

---

Quote of note
“You know, you can wait and hope, but I’ll tell you:  you’ll never see the likes of this again.”
—Frank Sinatra, on the tap dancing of Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, That’s Entertainment! (1974)

…58…59…60.

Monday Minute
No. 147 | August 16, 2010

Hoofing It

“Can’t sing.  Can’t act.  Balding.  Can dance a little.”  Whoever wrote those legendary words about a certain Hollywood hopeful has long been forgotten.  Fred Astaire, whose screen test prompted the report, is, on the other hand, a name you may remember.

In fact, the name needs no introduction.  Let’s get right to it then.  Shall we dance?

Our theme this week
The incomparable Fred Astaire

“Cheek to Cheek”

Top Hat is the quintessential Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film.  It was Astaire’s fourth film and his fourth with Rogers, who was twelve years his junior but had been making movies for half a decade before their propitious pairing.  They made ten films altogether, nine of them musicals, and sprinkled among them some of the most magical moments of movie history.  Their films include The Gay Divorcee, Roberta, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance.  Not a bad career—and most of their work together was squeezed into a few short years during the ’30s.

In Top Hat, Astaire plays a dancer who falls for Dale, a hotel guest played by Rogers.  She mistakes him for the husband of a friend—if not, they’d have had a much shorter movie—and lucky for us, she holds him off as he chases her from London to Venice.  The film features several celebrated tunes, including “Isn’t It a Lovely Day?” (sung during a pouring rainstorm, of course) and “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails.”  That describes Astaire’s outfit in this and other films, as he unfailingly brought class to the affair.  If that seems out of place for the middle of the Depression, that was the point.  Audiences had a chance, for a couple of hours, to sit in the dark and forget their troubles.  (At least one future filmmaker was paying attention.)

By the time we get to “Cheek to Cheek,” no one’s holding anyone off any longer.  (”Well, if Madge doesn’t care, I certainly don’t.”)  Irving Berlin wrote the song in a single day.  Fred and Ginger made it immortal.

---

Top Hat (1935)
Mark Sandrich, director
Allan Scott, Dwight Taylor, writers
“Cheek to Cheek”
Irving Berlin, words & music
Fred Astaire, Hermes Pan, choreographers
Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

---

Quote of note
“He gives her class and she gives him sex.”
—Katharine Hepburn, on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

…58…59…60.

Friday Minute
No. 146 | August 13, 2010

All About Evelyn

Our theme this week
Evelyns at the movies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Evelyn Salt, Salt (2010)
Tuesday         —   Evelyn Harper, Caged (1950)
Wednesday    —   Evelyn Draper, Play Misty for Me (1971)
Thursday        —   Evelyn “Billie” Frechette, Dillinger (1973), Public Enemies (2009)

Evelyn Mulwray

Whatever she may say, Evelyn Mulwray is a tough customer.  The trouble starts when Mrs. Mulwray hires Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) to investigate her husband.  But when Gittes’s photos show up in the newspaper, he finds out he was duped by an imposter pretending to be Mrs. Mulwray.  The real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), not at all pleased at the public attention, pays him a visit.  “I don’t get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes.  My lawyer does.”

The plot of Chinatown takes one labyrinthine, disturbing twist after another.  Mulwray hires Gittes, but when her husband’s body turns up at the morgue, she pays the p.i. to drop the case.  By then Gittes is in too deep.  He needs to find out what’s going on.  Why is the mysterious woman who hired him, and with whom he falls in love, lying to him?  He feels betrayed, and near the end arranges to turn over Mrs. Mulwray to the police.  But then he learns the secret of her past, a shocker that’s hard for even the worldly-wise, unsentimental Gittes to accept.  Noah Cross, the rich and rotten figure who is Evelyn’s father, had warned him:  “You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but believe me, you don’t.”

Cross is played by John Huston, in his most indelible performance onscreen.  Nicholson and Dunaway were never better, which is saying a lot.  The film, directed by Roman Polanski, from a script by Robert Towne, is a scathing look at the power, politics, and corruption behind Los Angeles, a city itself with a past.  No surprise, at the heart of the story is a tragic woman named Evelyn.

---

Chinatown (1974)
Roman Polanski, director
Robert Towne, writer
Trailer

---

Chinatown (1974)
Faye Dunaway, as Evelyn Mulwray

---

Quote of note
Jake:  There’s something black in the green part of your eye.
Evelyn:  Oh, that.  It’s a—it’s a flaw in the iris.
Jake:  Flaw?
Evelyn:  Yes, it’s a sort of birthmark.
—Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), Chinatown (1974)

…58…59…60.