Starring Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, and Thomas Mitchell
Screenplay by Sidney Buchman based on a story by Lewis Foster
Directed by Frank Capra
This is my favorite film of all time. I watch it every election eve.
It paints a surprisingly frank picture of the ugly nature of politics and begs for just one honest man to make a difference. James Stewart is flawless and absolutely irreplacable as that man - Jeff Smith. The stellar Capra stable of players from Jean Arthur to Edward Arnold to H. B. Warner are pitch perfect. But my special favorite may in fact be Claude Rains, who plays an honest man gone bad with such conflict and realism that he makes a potentially cartoon "villain" feel all the more palpably plausible. This is why "Mr. Smith" may be the ne plus ultra of idealistic films but it is not unrealistic. And I have yet to see any film sustain a half hour that matches this film's third act - the filibuster - in intensity and exaltation.
It's interesting to see how many amateur reviews reveal the film as a Rorschach test for viewers' political leanings. One sees it as taking a stand against the liberal Democrats in power at the time, another as raising an alarm against Republican business interests controlling corrupt politicians. That's funny, because I always thought the film was FOR something, that it was a monument to the American ideals of truth, justice, equality, and the common good - regardless of party.
One more thing: It disheartens me to hear comments about how "cheesy" this film is and how all the manners and idioms of 1939 make it unwatchable. I think these folks are incapable of appreciating any culture but their own. They would probably go to Spain and make fun of people that speak Spanish. Even though it's set in the US, this movie takes place in a different culture: Depression-era America. Back then, people knew when you were "full of hooey" and called you a "crackpot" to let you know it. That may sound funny to some today but our current slang will probably sound even worse in 70 years.
Final score: A+
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Book - Robert E. Lee: A Biography (A-)
Author: Emory M. Thomas
Thomas is ambitious but ultimately correct in proclaiming his compelling Lee biography a post-revisionist portrait. He attempts (with admirable success) to balance his respect for Lee's character and ability (without Douglas Freeman's blatant worship and apocryphal stories) with honest accounts of his faults and contradictions (minus the carping of Connelly's 'The Marble Man' and Nolan's 'Lee Considered'). In the process, Thomas has captured as much as any writer is able the humanness of Lee.
I was struck throughout the book by events and words that mirror my own aspirations and failures. I think the highest praise I can offer Thomas's book is that this avid Lee fan and Civil War buff felt like he had met Robert E. Lee for the first time.
Final score: A-
Thomas is ambitious but ultimately correct in proclaiming his compelling Lee biography a post-revisionist portrait. He attempts (with admirable success) to balance his respect for Lee's character and ability (without Douglas Freeman's blatant worship and apocryphal stories) with honest accounts of his faults and contradictions (minus the carping of Connelly's 'The Marble Man' and Nolan's 'Lee Considered'). In the process, Thomas has captured as much as any writer is able the humanness of Lee.
I was struck throughout the book by events and words that mirror my own aspirations and failures. I think the highest praise I can offer Thomas's book is that this avid Lee fan and Civil War buff felt like he had met Robert E. Lee for the first time.
Final score: A-
Book - Blue Like Jazz (B+)
Author: Donald Miller
Though I don't see eye-to-eye with Don Miller on everything, I can't help but like the guy. He is so candid about his thought life, his doubts, his shortcomings, his vices, and his all-around goofiness that he's like a favorite cousin you find both cool and amusingly befuddling.
Miller's self-deprecating wit, his conversational style, and his arms-length relationship with his evangelical background are his trademarks. Most of the chapters in "Jazz" are about mini-epiphanies he's had along his spiritual journey. You feel like he's hanging out with you at dusk, sitting on the hood of a car, swapping life stories and wondering about why crap works the way it does. It's like he circles around things in life until it dawns on him that - even though its representatives are often lame and its concepts seem outdated - Christian spirirtuality actually had the answers he was looking for.
Even though he tries to maintain a fairly liberal and liberated life, deep down he's fairly orthodox in his beliefs. He just doesn't dress them up in 19th century traditions, rules and regulations, and both fear- and comfort-based judgmentalism.
Take it out for a spin.
Final score: B+
Though I don't see eye-to-eye with Don Miller on everything, I can't help but like the guy. He is so candid about his thought life, his doubts, his shortcomings, his vices, and his all-around goofiness that he's like a favorite cousin you find both cool and amusingly befuddling.
Miller's self-deprecating wit, his conversational style, and his arms-length relationship with his evangelical background are his trademarks. Most of the chapters in "Jazz" are about mini-epiphanies he's had along his spiritual journey. You feel like he's hanging out with you at dusk, sitting on the hood of a car, swapping life stories and wondering about why crap works the way it does. It's like he circles around things in life until it dawns on him that - even though its representatives are often lame and its concepts seem outdated - Christian spirirtuality actually had the answers he was looking for.
Even though he tries to maintain a fairly liberal and liberated life, deep down he's fairly orthodox in his beliefs. He just doesn't dress them up in 19th century traditions, rules and regulations, and both fear- and comfort-based judgmentalism.
Take it out for a spin.
Final score: B+
Sunday, July 08, 2007
DVD - Little Miss Sunshine (B+)
Starring Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano, and Alan Arkin
Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
R for pervasive profanity, drug use, adult subject matter
Buy it
Up front: If you don't like quirky indie films, or if you believe the perfect family is even remotely attainable in this lifetime, you'll hate this.
The biggest strike against this movie is its hype. Nothing can live up to the expectations Fox Searchlight has set Little Miss Sunshine up with. It is not a crazy, non-stop laugh riot but rather a whimsical, persistent little movie that often charms its way into your heart and drops a huge lesson in your lap - before falling apart at the end.
The finale was a unusual idea (and turned the inappropriateness of the Jon Benet circuit on its head) but flirted with pervish-ness in itself. And it sort of devolved into an overlong, indulgent mess when everyone pitched in.
Still, it's a thinker. And I like thinkers.
Final score: B plus
Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
R for pervasive profanity, drug use, adult subject matter
Buy it
Up front: If you don't like quirky indie films, or if you believe the perfect family is even remotely attainable in this lifetime, you'll hate this.
The biggest strike against this movie is its hype. Nothing can live up to the expectations Fox Searchlight has set Little Miss Sunshine up with. It is not a crazy, non-stop laugh riot but rather a whimsical, persistent little movie that often charms its way into your heart and drops a huge lesson in your lap - before falling apart at the end.
The finale was a unusual idea (and turned the inappropriateness of the Jon Benet circuit on its head) but flirted with pervish-ness in itself. And it sort of devolved into an overlong, indulgent mess when everyone pitched in.
Still, it's a thinker. And I like thinkers.
Final score: B plus
Friday, July 06, 2007
DVD - The Best of Janet Paschal (A-)
I'm not a huge fan of the genre but I have a genuine appreciation for Southern Gospel, not least because of my childhood exposure to it. Well, in my limited experience, one of the greatest vocalists ever across any style is Janet Paschal. She has been a favorite of mine since the early 1980s when she toured with tenor John Starnes in Jimmy Swaggart's band. Within a few years she went entirely solo and soon became (and remains) a fixture in uberproducer Bill Gaither's series of video specials. This DVD is a collection of Paschal's most popular moments from those shows over the past two decades.
Paschal has always been a much better performer live than she is in the studio. The audience and the opportunity to physically embody the song for them energize her in ways that a sound-proofed room could never do. And at the half-century mark, she still has the broadest smile and her eyes still have the brightest sparkle I've ever seen onstage.
Between songs, Gaither and Pashcal discuss her feelings for each song and they share memories of the Homecoming tours. Gaither reiterates her reputation as a perpetually positive and thoughtful person and she giggles in response. In an understated moment, Janet also recounts her recent battle with breast cancer and her tortuous rounds of intensive chemotherapy. She has been cancer-free for a year or so and is now touring again.
Here, in a low-quality version of a highlight from the early '90s, Janet floors George Younce, Jessy Dixon, Vestal Goodman and a host of other Gospel legends with a gotta-shout, gotta-dance rendition of "Born Again". If this don't light your fire, your wood's wet!
In this clip, she acts as worship leader to the Homecoming team and ends in a moving duet with gospel pioneer Vestal Goodman.
If I have any complaint, it's that the second half of the disc contains virtually no uptempo numbers and this breaks up the rhythm of the package.
Final score: A minus
Saturday, June 09, 2007
TV - Drumming Fun
Three of my favorite things: Cheap Trick's Bun E. Carlos, a cute brunette (aka, Torry Castellano of The Donnas, who's usually blonde), and good drumming.
Hey, I was told honesty was the best policy!
Hey, I was told honesty was the best policy!
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Movie - Spider-Man 3 (C+)
Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard
Directed by Sam Raimi
PG-13 for intense action violence, adult themes, profanity
I had such low expectations going into this movie that it had nowhere to go but up in my book. I am a firm believer in comic book movies having only one villain - two at the most if it's handled exceptionally well. Beyond that the story always becomes a muddled mess with no character development and therefore no emotional stakes in the outcomes of the battles. The multiple villain approach helped kill the Batman franchise in the 1990s and it comes perilously close to killing this one. It has four: The Sandman, Venom, the New Goblin, and a symbiotic goo from space that makes Spidey evil.
But what really killed the Batman series was campiness - and it rears its ugly head in full force right smack in the middle of Spider-Man 3. Director Sam Raimi flirted with silliness in Spider-Man 2, when he built a Peter Parker montage around B.J. Thomas' "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", replete with a goofy freeze-frame finish that reeked of 70s TV shows. But the rest of the film shook that bit of misjudgment off as though it were just a momentary in-joke. This time around, Raimi indulges in a protracted sequence of events over several scenes that becomes more and more incredible and painful to watch as it goes on.
In this story, Parker is gradually transformed into a mean-spirited jerk by an alien life-form that has attached itself to him and feeds off his negative emotions. As this progresses, Parker becomes more selfish, narcissistic, and sadistic. It starts off with a believably uncomfortable callousness towards his girlfriend Mary Jane and a vengeful, murderous battle with Sandman.
But it immediately veers off into the ridiculous, starting with an extreme makeover of expensive European suits and an Adolf Hitler haircut (no lie), proceeding to Parker jive-walking down the street winking at women who are openly disgusted with him - all set to funky music rejected from a blaxploitation film. This goes on for some time. Then he blows off a one-ended phone conversation with exaggerated, cliche-riddled preening (and more winking) for a gawky girl. Then he goes to a nightclub and commandeers the piano, dances on the bar with super-powered computer-generated swings and flips right out of The Mask, and the crowd goes wild. Well, the crowd in the nightclub did. The crowd in the theater said, and I quote, "Boy, that was lame," and "This is getting stupid," and "That sucked." My wife had covered her eyes. She couldn't watch it anymore.
The rest of the movie was a B flirting with a B minus. But that sequence yanked it down to a
Final score: C+
Directed by Sam Raimi
PG-13 for intense action violence, adult themes, profanity
I had such low expectations going into this movie that it had nowhere to go but up in my book. I am a firm believer in comic book movies having only one villain - two at the most if it's handled exceptionally well. Beyond that the story always becomes a muddled mess with no character development and therefore no emotional stakes in the outcomes of the battles. The multiple villain approach helped kill the Batman franchise in the 1990s and it comes perilously close to killing this one. It has four: The Sandman, Venom, the New Goblin, and a symbiotic goo from space that makes Spidey evil.
But what really killed the Batman series was campiness - and it rears its ugly head in full force right smack in the middle of Spider-Man 3. Director Sam Raimi flirted with silliness in Spider-Man 2, when he built a Peter Parker montage around B.J. Thomas' "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", replete with a goofy freeze-frame finish that reeked of 70s TV shows. But the rest of the film shook that bit of misjudgment off as though it were just a momentary in-joke. This time around, Raimi indulges in a protracted sequence of events over several scenes that becomes more and more incredible and painful to watch as it goes on.
In this story, Parker is gradually transformed into a mean-spirited jerk by an alien life-form that has attached itself to him and feeds off his negative emotions. As this progresses, Parker becomes more selfish, narcissistic, and sadistic. It starts off with a believably uncomfortable callousness towards his girlfriend Mary Jane and a vengeful, murderous battle with Sandman.
But it immediately veers off into the ridiculous, starting with an extreme makeover of expensive European suits and an Adolf Hitler haircut (no lie), proceeding to Parker jive-walking down the street winking at women who are openly disgusted with him - all set to funky music rejected from a blaxploitation film. This goes on for some time. Then he blows off a one-ended phone conversation with exaggerated, cliche-riddled preening (and more winking) for a gawky girl. Then he goes to a nightclub and commandeers the piano, dances on the bar with super-powered computer-generated swings and flips right out of The Mask, and the crowd goes wild. Well, the crowd in the nightclub did. The crowd in the theater said, and I quote, "Boy, that was lame," and "This is getting stupid," and "That sucked." My wife had covered her eyes. She couldn't watch it anymore.
The rest of the movie was a B flirting with a B minus. But that sequence yanked it down to a
Final score: C+
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