April 2008 Archives

As a fan of documentary film, I have long admired the work of writer/director Doug Pray. His 2001 film, Scratch is still the best documentary on DJing I've ever seen, and Infamy, his feature-length documentary about graffiti culture was utterly fascinating. So, when I read a little blurb about Surfwise in Vanity Fair (the magazine's editor Graydon Carter, is one of the film's producers), I was easily intrigued.

This time Pray turns his camera on Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, his wife Juliette and their nine children. Now 85, Doc is largely credited with introducing surfing to Israel. It was only after two failed marriages and an unhappy experience pursing a traditional career that Doc decided to take a different path in life. He met and married Juliette and decided that there's would be a life on the road. Juliette was pregnant when the couple married, and she spent much of the next decade having children. David, Jonathan, Abraham, Israel, Moses, Adam, Salvador, Navah and Joshua were all born in an effort to, "repopulate the world with Jews."

As a long time music collector, it is always impossible for me to come up with one of those "Twenty-Five Best Albums of All Time," type lists that magazines, blogs and other media outlets are so fond of creating. While I could never put my favorite albums of all time in any sort of numeric order, there are half a dozen that always pop into my mind, no matter the time or place; Are You Experienced by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones, Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder and Tapestry by Carole King. While those six choices run the gamut from rock to jazz to soul and musical genres in-between, they all have one thing in common: no matter how many times you listen to each album, the music seems fresh and you always hear something new.

When Juno was released in December of 2007, I paid very little attention. Knee deep in the throes of yet another Christmas season, a movie about a pregnant teenager wasn't registering very high on my must-see list. Though I was thoroughly amused by director Jason Reitman's 2005 film, Thank You For Smoking, I just didn't think the topic of teenage pregnancy lent itself very well to the kind of high-minded, snappy wit that made Thank You For Smoking such a successful film. Oh, how wrong I was. Juno was perhaps the smartest, wittiest and most touching comedy of 2007.

Growing up, The Waltons was always a television favorite around my house. I'm not really sure why; After all we were kids living in the disco crazed, polyester draped seventies. Yet, every week, we would turn off the music to see what the gang on Walton's Mountain was up to. As simplistic as the show could be at times, there was something fun about the prospect of having an entire mountain to yourself. At a time when America was still reeling from the effects of Vietnam, there were long lines at the gas pumps and the country was moving faster than ever before, there was something soothing about going back to a simpler place and time for one hour each week.

In over one hundred years of film making, Hollywood has seen a lot of stars come and go. A lot of them burst on to the scene, make a few films and fade away as quickly as they appear. That's how celebrity works a lot of the time; we worship someone for a few years and replace them when someone more exciting comes along.

While male stars were certainly interchangeable, female stars often had an even shorter shelf life than their male counterparts. In the 1950's, male box office stars in their fifties and sixties like Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Cary Grant could still get leading roles in films, while actresses in there forties were already expected to play mothers, grandmothers or old maids.

The fourth season of a series can sometimes be the danger zone. Even great shows have a tendency to, as the phrase goes "jump the shark" as they begin to approach that one hundred episode milestone. Actors get restless, jokes get stale and the same scenarios get repackaged as fresh, new episodes.

However, some shows have good enough talent to throw in a few so-so episodes and still remain a consistently funny experience. Though the fourth season of Laverne and Shirley had a couple of weak episodes, the show still remained one of television's best comedies. Laverne & Shirley entered its fourth season number one show in the Nielsen ratings.

After being nominated for a for a Best Actor in 2007 for his role as Dan Dunne in Half Nelson, no one would have been surprised if Ryan Gosling took the opportunity to cash in and make a series of big budget blockbusters. At only 27, with boyish good looks, the Canadian-born actor could no doubt be a matinee idol for the 21st century.

Instead, Gosling has proven himself to be a versatile actor who prefers to take chances and explore new territory with each role he takes. While he has had major box office success with traditional romantic films like The Notebook, it is less financially successful films such as True Believer (2001) Half Nelson (2006) and Fracture that spotlight Ryan Gosling's talent as a performer.

I found this clip of Dusty Springfield singing the classic Temptations hit "Get Ready" and had to post it. Someone emailed me recently asking if her version of "Get Ready" was available on CD. I haven't been able to find that anywhere, but her performance of the song on British TV is available on the Dusty Springfield Live at the BBC DVD. Please let me know if this is available on CD somewhere.

Enjoy the clip. Nobody had a voice quite like Dusty!

Before Tell Me You Love Me debuted on HBO in September of 2008, the show got a lot of press for the amount of explicit sex the series contained. While that is indeed true, Tell Me You Love Me is geared at an adult audience, to call it simply a show about sex, misses the entire point. Arriving on the heels of mega-hits like The Sopranos and Sex and the City, Tell Me You Love Me definitely represents a departure for the network. The series lacks the tough machismo of Tony Soprano and doesn't allow for the humorous look at sex relationships and Manolo Blahniks Carrie Bradshaw and her girlfriends gave viewers each week.

Based on a true story, Charlie Wilson's War brings together three top stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The script was written by The West Wing and A Few Good Men scribe Aaron Sorkin, a man who has made a very successful career out of exposing the underbelly of Washington's political machine. Directing the picture is Mike Nichols, once known for his comedy but with so-so political dramas like Primary Colors under his belt, has shown a fondness for taking on Washington.

Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) is a single, East Texas congressman with a fondness for alcohol, drugs and woman. The film begins in 1980, just after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a poor nation woefully unequipped to fight the superpower. For whatever reason, Charlie feels compelled to help out. Using his position on the House Appropriations Committee, the liberal Democrat Wilson travels to Pakistan, making deals to obtain high-tech weaponry for the Afghans with some encouragement from his lover Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts). Herring was a right-wing Houston millionaire socialite who hated the Communists and wanted them to stop killing the brave Afghans.

Beverly Hills, CA - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in association with the Film Department of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will present "A Centennial Tribute to Bette Davis" on Thursday, May 1, at 8 p.m. in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Hosted by Robert Osborne, the program will honor the legendary actress with an evening featuring clips of her indelible screen performances as well as onstage discussions with several of her colleagues, friends and family, including Joan Leslie, James Woods, Kathryn Sermak, Gena Rowlands, and Davis's son, Michael Merrill.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is based on the Tony Award-winning musical with a book by Hugh Wheeler and words and music by Stephen Sondheim. The Broadway show originally opened on March 1, 1979. Len Cariou won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd. Angela Lansbury took home Best Actress honors for her portrayal of Mrs. Lovett. The show also took the award for Best Musical among others. After its initial run of 557 performances, Sweeney Todd has been done by countless touring companies and even had an award winning Broadway revival in 2005.

With an aggressive marketing campaign, Cloverfield was poised to make a splash on the theatrical scene. Like The Blair Witch Project and Snakes on a Plane before it, the buzz started in earnest on the internet. For awhile, the film was simply known as 1-18-08 in cyberspace and clues, theories and plot points were showing up on web sites and being talked about on film forums everywhere.

If you believed the hype, the film eventually known as Cloverfield was destined to be one of the greatest suspense films ever made. Produced by Lost creator J.J. Abrams and written by Lost writer Drew Goddard, fans of the show had reason to be excited. The amateur trailers circulating around online gave fans reason to hope for an old school monster movie. Unfortunately, Cloverfield falls well short of those expectations.

Doris Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon James Buchannan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman. When Doris' father died in 1925, he left roughly $100 million (about $1 billion in 2005 dollars), to Doris. This lead to her being referred to as the "richest girl in the world," a name she deeply resented.

HBO decided to take on the task of telling the story of the last six years of the tobacco heiress' life and her unconventional relationship with her butler, Bernard Lafferty. Part of the story is based on fact, the audience is told at the beginning, "some of it is not." This caveat gives the network leeway to take a story that attracted loads of headlines in real life and embellish it for art's sake. The teleplay has impressive star power with Oscar winner Susan Sarandon as Duke and Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes as Lafferty. Bernard and Doris introduces us to an aging but still feisty woman, who manages her staff and her finances with an iron hand. In the opening scene, Duke fires her current butler for serving her cantaloupe to cold.

My schedule doesn't allow me to watch the evening news shows much anymore, but I'm old enough to remember Walter Cronkite's last couple of years as CBS news anchor. After Cronkite left the anchor chair back in 1981, I remember watching ABC's World News Tonight with my parents. While Jennings could never take the place of Walter, he seemed like a dedicated newsman who took his job seriously and always did his best.

When Jennings died in August of 2005, I couldn't help but wonder who would fill his shoes. After nearly eight months of speculation, ABC announced that Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas would take over the anchoring duties at World News Tonight. On January 29, 2006, just 27 days after being given the coveted co-anchoring job, Woodruff was injured while reporting in Iraq. At the time of the attack, Woodruff was embedded with the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, traveling in an Iraqi MT-LB. Woodruff had his head sticking up out of the hatch when a roadside bomb exploded. Bob suffered multiple shrapnel wounds and a massive traumatic brain injury.

Sophie Dahl, granddaughter of writer Roald Dahl and actress Patricia Neal, has her second book, Playing With the Grown-ups: A Novel debuting in the United States tomorrow. Publishers Weekly describes the novel this way: "The full-length debut by the granddaughter of Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal centers on a dreamy, romantic English woman who hasn't quite escaped the thrall of her fabulous mother, Marina. When Kitty, now married, pregnant, and living cozily in New York City with her financier husband, receives the call that her mother has been hospitalized after a breakdown, Kitty flashes back to her magical youth, revolving around her Swedish grandparents' Never-Neverland of a country home, Hay House, shared by her mother and aunts. When Marina's guru insists Marina move to New York City to pursue her painting, Kitty eventually joins her on Park Avenue, and her mixed-up adolescence begins. Wearing her mother's clothes, flirting with her handsome boyfriends and swept into parties where her mother chops the cocaine, Kitty comes through a number of charming yet troubling moments, as well as foreshadowings of Marina's future breakdown. There's plenty of texture to Kitty's remembrances, but the result reads more like a fictional memoir than fully plotted novel."

Sharks are generally thought of as very dangerous creatures. Hollywood films such as Jaws have only cemented the sharks reputation as a human killing machine. While Jaws is a classic thriller, the story has no basis in fact and serves as another piece of propaganda in the attempt to paint sharks as the oceans biggest enemy. Rob Stewart, a Toronto based marine biologist, underwater photographer and first time filmmaker has made it his life's mission to reeducate the public about sharks.

Loosely based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel, Oil!, directed, produced and written by Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood is the story of one man's fervent need for money and power; A need to control everyone and everything he comes in contact with. A boy he raised from infancy as his own son and a man who claims to be his brother eventually experience his wrath. The people don't matter to Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) only the power. As he builds an oil empire over the ensuing decades, it becomes clear that even money is of little interest to Daniel. Every breath he takes is motivated by the need to gain more power and control over others.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Family members say actor Charlton Heston has died. He was 84.

Article in the Los Angeles Times.

Read his entry in the IMDB.

Beverly Hills, CA - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present a 40th anniversary screening of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" on Friday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Tom Hanks, whose career and interests were markedly influenced by "2001: A Space Odyssey," will host this special screening, presented in 70mm 6-track stereo, as was the original release. Following the screening, Hanks will be joined onstage by actor Keir Dullea, Oscar®-nominated visual effects wizard Douglas Trumbull and special effects artist Bruce Logan to discuss their work on the film.

A cure is in reach for the world's most primal force of fury: THE INCREDIBLE HULK. We find scientist Bruce Banner, living in shadows, scouring the planet for an antidote. But the warmongers who dream of abusing his powers won't leave him alone, nor will his need to be with the only woman he has ever loved, Betty Ross. Upon returning to civilization, our brilliant doctor is ruthlessly pursued by The Abomination -- a nightmarish beast of pure adrenaline and aggression whose powers match The Hulk's own. A fight of comic-book proportions ensues as Banner must call upon the hero within to rescue New York City from total destruction. One scientist must make an agonizing final choice -- accept a peaceful life as Bruce Banner or the creature he could permanently become: THE INCREDIBLE HULK. (thx Babak A.)

Pauly Shore was born into a comedy family. The son of Mitzi Shore who founded the legendary Los Angeles club The Comedy Store and comedian Stan Shore, Pauly spent his formative years around a lot of different comics. After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1986, Shore landed a series of bit parts in films such as 18 Again! and guest spots on television shows including Married With Children, 21 Jump Street and St. Elsewhere. Pauly became an MTV phenomenon when he landed his own show on the network in 1989. Totally Pauly, hosted by Shore with sidekick Jeff Leiber ran on the network until 1994. Pauly was sort of like the networks eternal fifteen-year-old. Clad in colorful bandanas, looking like a poster boy for stoner culture, Pauly was famous for hosting MTV's annual spring break parties. Having coined the phrase "weeeeee..zell!," Shore road his wave of to a couple of successful comedy albums and a series of hit movies during the nineties.