Rants and Ruminations

Winter's Bone: Debra Granik

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Director Debra Granik

 

Winter’s Bone Director Debra Granik has delivered one of the year’s best American films – with just her second feature.  Every moment of Winter’s Bone seems absolutely real and absolutely true.  Granik shot in southern Missouri, and used local people, local homes, local clothes and local music – all choices that result in the film’s authenticity. Even the Army recruiter is a real-life Army recruiter.  Similarly, the soundtrack is spare and pure – pretty much just the snapping twigs, chirping birds, barking dogs and sputtering pickups of the Ozarks; the audience feels the gripping story without the filmmaker layering on manipulative music.

Granik’s first feature, Down to the Bone, won acting awards for its star Vera Farmiga as a grocery clerk mom who undergoes drug rehab without support from her husband or employer.  In both Winter’s Bone and Down to the Bone, Granik lets her actors act, most compellingly when they are not talking.  Down to the Bone is available on DVD and Netflix streaming.

Granik and screenwriting partner Anne Rosellini were looking for a story that featured a strong female protagonist ans found it in Daniel Woodrell’s novel.  Here are Granik and Woodrell on NPR’s Fresh Air.

Richard von Busack also has an excellent interview with Granik and Lawrence – click here and scroll below his review.

Thanks to David H. Schleicher of the Schleicher Spin, here is the blog of Marideth Sisco, the musical consultant for Winter’s Bone, and the lead singer in the pickin’ scene.

TCM’s Korean War Marathon

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On June 24 and 25, TCM is showing fourteen straight Korean War movies: The Steel Helmet (1951),  Men In War (1951) , Men Of The Fighting Lady (1954), I Want You (1951), Battle Circus (1953),  Tank Battalion (1958), Mission Over Korea (1953), Battle Taxi (1955), The Bamboo Prison (1955), All the Young Men (1960), Take the High Ground! (1953), Time Limit (1957), The Rack (1956) and  Hell in Korea (1956).

If you’re gonna watch just one, I recommend The Steel Helmet, a gritty classic by the great Sam Fuller, a WWII combat vet who brooked no sentimentality about war.  Fuller and Peckinpah favorite Gene Evans is especially good as the sergeant.

This time, TCM is not showing the three most well-known Korean War movies:   Manchurian Candidate, Pork Chop Hill and M*A*S*H.

Earlier this year, TCM broadcast War Hunt,  a 1962 film about Robert Redford joining a Korean War unit as a new replacement with John Saxon as the platoon’s psycho killer.  Along with Redford, Sidney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola are in the cast, making War Hunt the only film with three Oscar-winning directors as actors.   Don’t blink, or you’ll miss for Coppola as an uncredited convoy truck driver.

Sex and the City 2

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I haven’t seen Sex and the City 2 and don’t plan to, so I am not weighing in on the film itself. But its critical reception can best be described as uniformly venomous.  For each movie, Metacritic.com assigns numeric scores to the reviews of America’s leading critics and averages them into a Metacritic score between 1 and 100.  Generally, really outstanding movies score in the high 70s, and dreadful movies score in the low 30s.  Sex and the City 2‘s Metacritic score is 28.  As a comparison, the worst movies that I have seen this year are Tooth Fairy (Metacritic score of 36) and Leap Year (Metacritic score of 33).   The worst movie that I saw last year was Paul Blart: Mall Cop, which scored a 39.  So we can safely say that Sex and the City 2 is widely reviled and will show up on the Worst of the Year lists.

I keep Best of the Year lists but not Worst of the Year lists.  Because I’m not a professional critic, I’m not required to see every movie.  I try to avoid the bad ones.  Because I repeatedly saw the trailer for Did You Hear About the Morgans?, I skipped that one.  The only reason that I have seen Tooth Fairy and Leap Year is because they were the only movies I hadn’t seen that were showing on very long airplane flights.

I love Metacritic because the critical consensus is generally closer to my taste than that of individual critics.  Click here and check it out for yourself.

Tuesday on TV: A better Avatar from 1970

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A Man Called Horse (1970)

 

This Tuesday, TCM is showing A Man Called Horse (1970).

Modern viewers will recognize most of the plot of Avatar herein.  In the early 19th century, Richard Harris is captured by American Indians and becomes assimilated into their culture.  Harris’ initiation into the tribe is one of cinema’s most cringe-worthy moments.  The film still stands up well  today.

A Man Called Horse fits into the subgenre of Westerns that are sympathetic to Native Americans, including  Little Big Man (1970), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Dances With Wolves (1990).   The trend became pronounced with Cheyenne Autumn in 1964 and has stayed healthy through the recent retelling of the Pocahontas story in The New Land.

Of course, even a worthy movie subgenre has its cliches.  Why is it that when the white guy encounters a native girl   –  It’s always the chief’s beautiful, unattached, nubile daughter?

Carell and Fey in "Crazy Night"

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Date Night has been released in France as Crazy Night.  As to the American concept of Date Night, I suspect that the French cannot imagine a planet, let alone a country, where going out to dine with your spouse is a big deal.

Also, we know know that a movie with Steve Carell and Tina Fey is going to be funny.  Note how the French movie poster makes this a little more obvious.

American ad

 

French ad

French Movie Food

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There were no Raisinettes, Milk Duds or (my favorite) Hot Tamales.  But there was a candy section that contained scores of bulk candies.  You could get either Hagen-Daasz or Ben and Jerry’s.  here are some shots of the movie food.

No Milk Duds

 

The only wrapped food in Paris

 

les energy drinks

Going to the movies in France

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Iron Man 2 in the Paris Metro

 

I recently went to the movies in Paris, the world’s greatest movie town.  I bypassed the most famous movie palaces and hit the multiplex – the 20 screen UGC at Les Halles.

The French show American movies in version originale (V.O.), which means in their original English with French subtitles.  The multiplexes were showing Iron-Man 2, Kick-Ass, Green Zone, Greenberg, Alice in Wonderland and I Love You, New York. The metro was full of posters for Iron Man 2, Robin Hood and the latest Freddy horror movie.  And Russell Crowe was shilling the upcoming Robin Hood on French infotainment TV shows.

Robin Hood in the Metro

 

Julie Delpy was directing and starring in La Comtesse, a period drama.   And there were several new French comedies that look interesting.  Unfortunately, my French is only workable enough to order excellent food and wine.

There was a ticket window with humans and also automatic ticket vending machines.

The large theater drew in about 75 viewers for a Monday 2 PM show of Iron Man 2.  The audience sat silently before the film, and then fled the theater rapidly during the closing credits.

Iron Man 2 got lots of laughs from the French crowd, especially when Sam Rockwell was completely baffled by some questions in French and bumbled away cluelessly.  However, the French speakers didn’t seem to get how funny Samuel L. Jackson is, because so much of his humor is in his inflection. “Cheerleaders” was subtitled as “les pompomgirls“.

Funniest character of the decade

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You just can’t top Fred Melamed as Sy Ableman in A Serious Man. Melamed creates a hilariously pompous and blatantly manipulative character. He is the guy who seduces the protagonist’s wife and then expects the hero to bend over backwards to make everything convenient for them.   I’ve never seen such an earnestly self-entitled character.

And here is Fred Melamed discussing Sy Ableman:

Playing right now in Paris

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I’m in Paris, and the multiplexes here are showing Iron-Man 2, Kick-Ass, Green Zone, Greenberg, Alice in Wonderland and I Love You, New York – all in version originale (v.o.), which means in their original English with French subtitles.

Julie Delpy is directing and starring in La Comtesse, a period drama.   And there are several new French comedies that look interesting.  Unfortunately, my French is only workable enough to order excellent food and wine.

And Russell Crowe is shilling the upcoming Robin Hood on French infotainment TV shows.

To the Last Drop – A Movie in Waiting

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Occasionally I read a book and immediately visualize the movie.  That’s the way it was with To the Last Drop, the smart and bitingly funny story of Texas invading New Mexico for its water.   I’m sure that someone is going to pick up this screenplay and deliver a film like Wag the Dog – although the novel has more of the tone of Dr. Strangelove (etc.).

Here’s Wice describing his tale of Lone Star liebestraum – you don’t need to listen to the whole hour to pique your interest