Tosca

November 5, 2014 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | AUSTRALIANIA, MUSIC, Opera, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

(Melbourne, 2010)

What on earth were alleged professionals thinking with this? A set from Rebus or The Wire and a finale where Floria, rather than hurtle over the parapet, has her brains blown out by Spoletta? It is such textual vandalism that renders Joseph Kerman’s sneer (a ‘shabby little shocker’) as true.

Grumbles with setting and textual vandalism aside, Nicole Youl was a fine leading lady and the incomparable John Wegner a formidable, ferocious and frightening Baron Scarpia.

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Thirteen Days

(by Robert Kennedy)

(film directed by Roger Donaldson)

This matter-of-fact monograph of the Cuban missile crisis by a central figure is very readable and, considering it was probably whipped up ahead of RFK’s tilt at the Presidency, quite fair (note, by contrast, that in the vivid film of the same name, a key, in fact, critical adviser, Llewellyn ‘Tommy’ Thompson, an Eisenhower appointee, is nowhere to be seen).

Kennedy needs and wields no purple prose: his writing is clear, taut and free of cant.  For a career politician, this is singular in itself; for an account of a moment on the precipice, it is welcome.

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“a triumph for the next generation…”

We add, the absence of key man ‘Tommy’ Thompson aside, that the film of Thirteen Days, by Australian director Roger Donaldson, is a tight, gripping, wonderful modern history film, doubling as doco and war thriller.  Whilst tendentious (ignoring Republican voices and slandering them as hawks, venerating Adlai Stevenson) it suggests the tension, nay hysteria, that would have prevailed with most modern politicos..

The missile crisis was JFK’s finest hour, far away from the cameras, far from posturing on the stump or at the Berlin Wall.  He faced an existential challenge on behalf of the Free World, and we should thank his memory for it.

What would Barack do?

What would Barack do?

Aesthetically, the production is superb, with ingenious but un-showy touches.  TVC’s favourite directorial moment: After an intimate chat in the Oval Office, key aide Kenny O’Donnell advises the President to wear something nice for the TV, “Make sure Jackie picks it.”  The President leaves the room and Kenny shuts the door, turning to face a full cast of crew and Kennedy preparing to address the nation.  Simple, elegant, concise and inspired.

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Sweet Smell of Success

November 5, 2014 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | Classic Film, Drama Film, FILM, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

(dir. A MacKendrick) (1957)

Great late melodrama, Lancaster rarely better, Tony Curtis never better. “I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” The sparse camera direction would gladden David Stratton’s heart, only producing the odd flourish where it enhances the scene (e.g. in “21”, where the camera’s eye swings from Manny Davis to Miss James and cuts back to J.J. Hunsecker, who is saying that every hep person knows that “ This one is toting that one around for you.” ).

Sweetsmell

[NB: Vale Martin Milner, R.I.P. 6/9/2015, who was stout but dull as Steve Dallas in Sweet Smell of Success but nevertheless radiated the stony integrity necessary to the plot (as JJ Hunsecker observed, “Serious as a deacon, I like it – I like it fine.”)  Marty did not, alas, go on to better things – he was adequate as Wyatt Earp’s brother in Gunfight at O.K. Corral but after Sex Kittens Go To College and Valley of the Dolls, he wisely wound up the film career and went profitably into TV.]

This online article by Louis Morgan is worth a look:

Alternate Best Actor 1957: Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success

Tony Curtis did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success.

Sweet Smell of Success is an excellent film about a columnist J.J. Hunsecker who gets an ambitious press agent to break up Hunsecker’s sister’s relationship with a musician.

Tony Curtis portrays the press agent who will be doing the job for Hunsecker. I considered reviewing Lancaster as well, but watching the film again I would put him in the supporting category. It is an oppressive character so it is easy to see why one could see him as lead as well though. The greater focus of the film though goes onto Tony Curtis’s performance as the conniving Sidney Falco. Falco very much is the lackey henchmen of Hunsecker in the film, although it has nothing to do with loyalty, the only reason he follows Hunsecker’s demands is to further his own career.

Curtis who usually portrayed good guys before this performance, or at least in some way charming fellow takes on entirely different method here as Sidney Falco. It is a fascinating performance that particularly works well in comparison to Burt Lancaster’s superb performance. Both are very much similar men in their amorality, and power waving or seeking, but Lancaster and Curtis take greatly different methods in their performance. Where Lancaster’s portrayal of the amorality is very much like forceful brick wall that cannot be surpassed, Curtis though portrays it as something constantly in motion.

Falco is always a man in some sort of motion, and Curtis is excellent in portraying that Falco is constantly playing for some sort of gain. Interestingly enough Curtis always portrays Falco in some sort of motion even when he is standing still or sitting usually blinking at a rapid rate. Curtis puts just the right amount of animation into his role to be able to bring across the idea of how Falco is always a man thinking of the next move during every point of the story, but as well he never does it to the point in which it seems like something flamboyant. It is instead entirely something natural to Falco as a person.

One of the most important lines for Curtis’s character is when Hunsecker describes Falco as a man of forty faces not one. This in itself is quite a bit of a challenge to be lived up to, but Curtis is more than capable of doing so. Curtis face is particularly expressive here and quite apt at bringing about the various facades that Falco puts on to move forward in his business. One scene in which Curtis portrays this especially well is when he approaches Hudsecker for the first time in the film. In the scene Hudsecker insults Falco, and Curtis’s expression is brilliant. There is a very forced upon slight smirk the entire time, but Curtis so well portrays the incredible hate and venom he does feel Hudsecker in the moment.

Really one of Curtis’s greatest assets in this performance are actually his boyish good looks. He plays Falco brilliantly in every scene but especially when he is working his job. There are many who are already put off by him due to previous experience, but there are just as many who do not know the truth about him. Curtis is excellent in every moment of portraying Falco’s method as he does not really portray him as the slickest man at all. In fact when some of his angry costumers confront him Curtis is good in showing that quick annoyance and anger Falco comes to right away when confronted being unable to really explain himself.

Curtis though does portray Falco’s abilities just as well particularly in showing his abilities to so quickly put wool over people’s eyes to meet his demands. Curtis is excellent in bringing across the intelligence in Falco. He never loses a beat and he makes it entirely believable that he could work his way through all of his success. What is so important though is that even when the others doubt him Curtis all brings an incredible degree of determination within Falco that never seems to cease when he is putting one over on someone. There is always a drive in him that keeps him prodding and pushing until he gets his way, or at least gets the person to hate him.

Although Curtis never takes an easy route to be likable in the traditional sense, he does well in adding just the slightest bit of a conscience to his character. Of course Curtis really is terrific here becuase of just how little morality he does give him, making the moments where he does show it quite powerful. Curtis never makes it an overt moment or two as he does the most wretched of things for Hudsecker but there are just the smallest moment of hesitations when doing the worst. Curtis though shows that even the moments of conscience only press for a a slight reaction, but his want for success always shifts to a slight smile of immorality.

Tony Curtis gives a great performance here as Sidney Falco because he never for a moment gives up on that Falco really is only opportunist as Hudsecker calls him. Even in the final showdown between the two Curtis still stays firm that it is not really for goodness sake that he reveals the truth to Hudsecker’s sister, he portrays it almost as an accident because it really comes only for his hatred for Hudsecker who betrayed him. He never is overwhelmed by the dialogue or over shadowed by Lancaster, he stands firm in his fascinating depiction of this unscrupulous man.

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Sweet Dreams

(by Michael Frayn)

Highly original and amusing satire of a bespoke heaven for boyish, middle management men of early middle age and their moral crises as the right hands of god.  You can see the influence cast by this book on, for example, Douglas Adams.

The chaps, all from Cambridge naturally, are no longer scholars but creators, and they have an easy, breezy, Ian Fleming style way with women and imagine themselves to be radicals, even the lukewarm Head Man, in that smug, cosy, implacable bourgeois way, a la J. P. Sartre.  The heavenly staples – taramasalata, gigot aux haricots and apple crumble, seem more like hell to me (which perhaps is the point).  Staccato, episodic, naughty; good allegorical fun.

 

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The Sorrow and the Pity

(dir. M Ophuls) (1969)

A leisurely pace prevails, as diverse men chat about France under German occupation.  This casual approach belies the serious and vital theme that slowly works into the brain and heart:  courage and conscience under duress and in crisis.

Un collaborateur

Un collaborateur

 

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Something Happened

(by Joseph Heller)

The best review of this amusing, desolate book was by Kurt Vonnegut in the NYTRB, reproduced in his collection, Palm Sunday, where he nails the essential bleakness of Heller’s worldview: “that many lives, judged by the standards of the people who live them, are simply not worth living.”

'Everyone seems pleased with the way I've taken command.'

‘Everyone seems pleased with the way I’ve taken command.’

 

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Snooty Baronet

(by Wyndham Lewis)

Lewis was an incendiary hater and this savage and hilarious trifle is worth a read for his acrid scenes involving his literary agent, ‘Humph’, including the delightful dispatching thereof.

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The Sistine Chapel

November 5, 2014 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | ART, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS, TRAVEL |

Unless you have some Papal credentials, see the Vatican City with a proper guide. Not merely to jump queues but to navigate the treasures within. Giotto’s triptych; Caravaggio’s Entombment; the Laocoon; Raphael’s Transfiguration, Liberation of St Peter and School of Athens…some of the greatest mythical painting ever made and there it all is, before you, towering over the tourist hurly-burly, busy taking selfies.

Alternate Universe: panel display

Blessed with a bit of height, the Varnished Culture could stake out some wall space and gaze over the sea of baseball caps. Down sparse casements and through subterranean galleries of truly hellish ‘modern’ art, up a noisy narrow stairway and finally into the Sistine Chapel. You first see these unexpected transept frescoes by the likes of Botticelli, fresh and dazzling. Then, follow the celery-stalked necks of the throng, the washed out colours of the ceiling.

Finally, amid the ‘shooshing’ of the attendants and surreptitious photo snaps that will never be worth downloading, your sight is drawn to the wall with The Last Judgment, which Michelangelo did a generation after he completed the ceiling. Goethe said in a letter that until you have seen the Sistine Chapel, you can have no adequate conception of what one man is capable of accomplishing. In a gloomy mood one might say that of Michelangelo’s á Pieta, in the interior of St Peter’s, with its arm hacked off by a madman. Just when wounds from the colourisation war over Michelangelo’s frescoes have been licked clean, the Vatican offers The Vatican Museums 3D.  TVC advises art lovers to go to the source instead.

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Judgment Day

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Silver Linings Playbook

November 5, 2014 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | Drama Film, FILM, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

(dir.D.O. Russell) (2012)

Mad boy goes home to live with Mom and Dad (Jacquie Weaver and Robert De Niro, with little to do) finding love with a fellow screwball.  You shouldn’t bet, but you can bet on this – the outcome is a fix from go to whoa.

TVC saw this with mother. For a film about mental illness, it would have been nice to feature some authentic craziness but nooooo. Not a trace of subtlety or credibility – but Mum liked it!

'This is as bad as "The Fan", isn't it?'

‘This is as bad as “The Fan”, isn’t it?’

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The Screwtape Letters

(by C.S. Lewis)

Lewis was unsurpassed in winkling out a small dark corner of the soul and blowing it into toxic glasswork.  Here we have one-way correspondence from a demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood: a how-to manual for those who would catch our souls.  Exquisite, even for those without the gift of faith.

My favourite lesson concerns the lady who quails at that offered, wheedling for “all I want…”.  Screwtape’s comment: “Because what she wants is…less…than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others.”

This delicious little book is now adapted as a short theatrical two-hander, to be reviewed here.

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