Cinema de Gym: 'Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again'

Hello, friends. Kurt here. Boy, oh boy. Where to start? In this very space, I've already been called out for snobbery for sticking it to lowbrow comedy and the people who love it, so I'm gonna try to keep the snark to a minimum. But I definitely stopped dead in my tracks when I walked into the gym this week and saw that the movie du jour was Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again, the straight-to-video sequel to Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie, a feature presentation of below-the-Mason-Dixon comics delivering below-the-belt jokes. My first impulse was to disregard the movie altogether, and just go with another day's title (okay, there was only one other day at the gym this week). Then, the more I thought about it, the more excited I got: this could turn out to be a whole lot of off-the-beaten-path fun, like getting a free glimpse of hell without the threat of damnation.

I exaggerate, but I'm certainly not kidding when I say that the Blue Collar quartet – Jeff Foxworthy, Ron White, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy – generally make my blood run cold. The latter is by leaps and bounds the worst offender, and his “Git-R-Done!” is, no exaggeration whatsoever, my most reviled catchphrase in the English language. That he is very much viewed as a role model in many parts says horrible, horrible things about our country (I happily missed Cars 2, thank you very much). Engvall and Foxworthy seem like nice enough guys, the former boasting the least identifiable, and therefore most benign, schtick (I couldn't even tell you what it is). Foxworthy has surely been the most successful, as he has the savvy to parlay his white-trash brand into big-time crossover appeal (how many TV shows is he hosting now?). His “You Might Be A Redneck If...” gags are Blue Collar's best because they are the most shrewdly self-effacing, at once told from the inside but also distanced from it. Many are made up, sure, but you get the sense that folks back home are regularly pissed for being anonymously exploited, while Foxworthy can always snap back with, “well, at least I made something of myself.”

But no matter how large the grain of salt with which it's taken, all of this promotes a proudly ignorant way of life that very realistically puts people like Michele Bachmann into positions of power. Don't tell me it's just comedy – it's spoon-fed blinders for pig-in-mud fools and bigots. The segment I saw, which followed a healthy string of “You Might Be a Redneck If...” fan favorites (“If your mother can tell off a state trooper without taking the Marlboro out of her mouth...”), was a lengthy bit with Ron White, whose most fascinating characteristic is that he's still alive despite never being without a cigarette or a scotch-filled tumbler. White's jokes slid from the obvious to the obscene. None were funny. Some simply poked fun at the absurdity of his agent's decision to fly him to a gig that was an easy car ride away, but most just underscored a reckless contempt for women. Commenting on recent De Beers campaigns (this film hit shelves in 2004), he observed that the diamonds are basically designed to shut women up (“Take her Breath Away,” etc.), a notion that everything about his delivery endorsed, not condemned. He also went on about boobs in bars and wanting to see every woman naked and then wanting to vomit after looking at the ugly ones.

Ron WhiteI know rudeness is White's M.O., and I know I'm just not the audience for this. But, as I said, we're dealing with some seriously unproductive stuff here, the ripple effects from which don't just linger inside some smoky, small-town Arizona venue. Worst of all was how willfully the females in the audience guffawed at White's cutting humor, conditioned to think that it comes from a place of wink-wink love, and isn't carelessly condescending. The camera kept cutting to jolly ladies bursting out in giggles, and even the woman on the elliptical beside me laughed hard at the De Beers cracks. Wake up, ladies! Don't better yourself at the gym only to give your thumbs up to entertainment that craps all over your gender! Don't laugh at Ron White, whose closing joke invited roars of applause for exalting Texas death penalty laws! Be better than Blue Collar!

Conclusions?

1. If the Blue Collar guys were to be ranked in order of tolerability, it would go like so: Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Ron White, Larry the Cable Guy.
2. This post ain't gonna get me any friends in the Bible Belt.
3. If you walk into a gym and recoil at the sight of a marquee that reads, Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again, you might be a film snob.

Can I get an “Amen” in here?

Something is Golden in the State of Denmark.

Hot off an Oscar win in February for In a Better World, Denmark has announced their follow up contender ...or at least their intention to announce it. The land of my ancestors has narrowed down the past year in Dansk film to three tre: SuperClásico, Martin Zandvliet's Dirch (A Funny Man) and Pernille Fischer Christensen's En familie (A Family). 

En Familie, which my Danish informant Thomas (tak!) predicts will be the selection is a drama about a wealthy family with a dying patriarch. Jesper Christensen stars. You might recognize him from the Daniel Craig Bond films (he plays Mr White) or from the popular Swedish flick Everlasting Moments. He's also in Melancholia this year though I don't know how large his role is there.

SuperClásico is a divorce comedy which actually takes place in Buenos Aires. No word yet on whether that naked bum on the poster is Argentinian or Dane in origin ;). It's from the director of Flame & Citron, a film that got a healthy festival run a few years back. Important Note: Paprika Steen headlines and you'll recall that she was the Film Bitch Silver Medalist right here in last year's "best" celebrations. It'll be nice to see her smile this time around!

Nathaniel's Favorite Danes: Paprika Steen (SuperClásico) and Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Dirch)

The final contestant, Dirch or A Funny Man is a biopic about a famous Danish comedian. It stars Nikolaj Lie Kaas who you may have seen in Lars von Trier's The Idiots or famous Scandinavian films like Reconstruction or Brothers (he originated the role that later housed Jake Gyllenhaal). He's only recently started to branch out into English language films (something many Scandinavian giants do albeit usually in minor supporting roles) so you might have also seen him in Angels & Demons or in Whistleblower, Rachel Weisz's Oscar bid, which recently opened here in the States. You might think that Dirch would be too homegrown specific for Oscar submission but you never know. There are always a few biopics in the 60+ wide submission list of people who are infinitely more famous in their home countries than abroad.

IN DARKNESS, Poland's Holocaust Themed Oscar EntryMore Best Foreign Film News
GREECE, which up until last year's Dogtooth, hadn't been nominated since 1977 (and has never won), will submit Attenberg, which you'll recall won the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival last fall. 

POLAND, 8 nominations / zero wins, will submit Agnieska Holland's In Darkness which In Contention made the following funny about. 

Poland... appears to have intensively focus-grouped the Academy’s foreign-language branch and subsequently created their Oscar entry in a purpose-built lab: a true-life Holocaust drama about a Leopold Socha, a reformed petty criminal who heroically helped numerous Jewish refugees hide in the sewers of Nazi-occupied Lvov.

Holland was previously nominated for best screenplay for her arthouse hit Europa Europa in the early nineties, also a Holocaust drama.

What does all this mean? That I've got to start building the Oscar Foreign pages again. (My work is never done!) In case you missed it... here's the discussion about what Norway might submit.

Review: "The Help"

The first storyteller is Aibilene (Viola Davis), a black maid raising her 17th white baby in the Jim Crow south. She can't answer the question of what it feels like to raise another woman's baby when you've left yours behind at home. It's an overwhelming opening inquiry to be sure. Though it's immediately clear Aibilene is being interviewed, we don't know why and for what purpose as The Help begins. This type of prologue is common in movies as you get a peek at what's to come before stepping back to the beginning, but the introduction is important: Abilene is the first person we meet and the narrative voice of the movie. 

Viola Davis even listens with dramatic depth!

Though mainstream Hollywood has proven time and again that they're constitutionally incapable of telling black stories without a white frame --  in this case Emma Stone's frizzy haired provocateur "Skeeter" who is secretly writing a book about the experience of maids in Jackson, Mississippi -- The Help, however subtlely (and perhaps accidentally), suggests with its Davis-centric opening and closing passages that Abilene is capable of creating frames of her own, thank you very much. In fact, she'd rather write her own story than tell it to another writer.

So she does.

Mm-hmm. It's Octavia Spencer as Minny, a surefire Oscar nominee.If Tate Taylor's adaptation or Kathryn Stockett's bestseller were confident enough in Aibilene's voice to downplay Skeeter's this would be a much more revelatory movie, and surely a more painful one, but we're dealing with the movie we've got which is essentially both of theirs.

The story, or, more accurately, stories of The Help are passed like batons throughout the movie. Deep breath now: Skeeter who wants to be writer has a starter job as a cleaning advice columnist which leads her to conversations with (baton pass); Aibilene who is dealing with personal grief and a weak-willed bad-mommy employer; Elizabeth (Ahna O'Reilly) who is continually pushed towards racist actions by local queen bee; Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) who loves lording her power over her mother, local girls, maids and the town outcast; Celia (Jessica Chastain) who is loud and 'trashy' but really loves her maid; Minny (Octavia Spencer), the best cook in town and Aibilene's BFF, who has a sharp tongue and is at war with Hilly.

Though it's easy to take potshots at The Help  -- we might discuss those soon -- it's also somewhat ungenerous since The Help is well meaning and entertaining and best of all affords us the rare opportunity of seeing several watchable actresses chewing on a meaty multi-course feast together. Sometimes they mistake the scenery for another course (Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain may both provoke heated arguments about the line betweena "type" and a caricature) but this was bound to happen. Chief among the delights in the acting arena is watching the dependable Viola Davis (Doubt, Far From Heaven) take the reins of a movie for once instead of stealing the whole thing in one scene or two.

The interplay between the characters makes up the bulk of the entertainment value, since with its sometimes candy color glossiness and very brief detached asides to actual history (usually on television sets), it's obviously not going for a deep historical rendering of the violent racist south. The movie would have done well to jettison much of Skeeter's story, both for pacing (it's far too long) and thematic strength, but Stone is such an engaging actress that it feels strange to object to having more of her around. Her storyline does eventually return, movingly, to the subject at the heart of The Help.

In the end where The Help wins over its audience, provided that they're okay with a surface take on a deep troubling subject, is with its trio of central performances. The intertwining still relevant topics of civil rights struggles, labor and racism are so large and overwhelming that it can be hard to breathe in their vicinity. What potency The Help does achieve it gets from its entertaining actresses sharing the thick pressure cooker air: Davis inhales, Stone fumes, Spencer erupts.

One final exasperated exhale from Aibilene is just the right cathartic move to end with. The audience breathes with her. And isn't this her story after all?

Related:
Oscar Discussion With Katey 
Review Index 

Unsung Heroes: The Cinematography of 'Once Upon a Time in the West'

Michael C. here with the second season finale of Unsung Heroes. A recent obsession with the music of Ennio Morricone led me to the perfect subject, which manages the tricky feat of being both a landmark achievement and the work of an artist who is still somehow underappreciated. 

When Orson Welles finished Citizen Kane he was so grateful for Gregg Toland’s contributions to the film that he took the largely unprecedented step of sharing his title card with his cinematographer. I think it can be argued that the subject of this week’s episode of Unsung Heroes, cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, was worthy of similar recognition. Delli Colli shot all of Sergio Leone’s famous spaghetti westerns climaxing in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), which many, myself included, consider their masterpiece. Yet I rarely, if ever, hear recognition extended past Leone the way I do with the cinematographers of other great auteurs, even though Delli Colli played a large role in creating one of the most iconic and influential visual styles in film history.

Has anyone ever photographed sunlight to such powerful effect as Delli Colli? The heat and light in his westerns is infinite, baking everything to a dry, brown crisp. I wonder if his name is not as renown as other greats like Vittorio Storaro or Gordon Willis because they used darkness and shadow so memorably, while Delli Colli painted almost entirely with brightness. Even the shadows in Once Upon a Time appear scorching. I’ve read people credit the arid, flat Spanish landscape for the distinctive feel of Leone’s westerns, yet scenes in Once Upon a Time are shot in the heart of John Ford’s legendary Monument Valley and Delli Colli manages the same harsh, parched feel there as in the rest of the film.

Leone was a perfectionist when it came to making sure the images on the screen exactly matched those in his imagination, and he preferred to work repeatedly with the same collaborators, like Delli Colli, whom he could count on to operate at a high level without fail. There is a wonderful moment in the DVD documentary on Once Upon a Time where a now elderly Claudia Cardinale begins, “Tonino Delli Colli…” then gets a distant look in her eyes, smiles and says simply “He knew how to light me.”

(On a side note, I think Delli Colli was worthy of the Oscar in ’69 for West if only for his lighting of Cardinale whom he pushes into serious Marilyn Monroe territory in the film. I mean wow.)

I suppose my idea here isn’t to call attention the visuals in Once Upon a Time in the West, which need no help from me being recognized as a monumental achievement, so much as it is to draw a big red circle around Delli Colli’s name. His work with Leone represents one of the great director-cinematographer partnerships along with the likes of Kubrick-Alcott or Coens-Deakins or Powell-Cardiff. No list of the greats is complete without his name.

Season Two of Unsung Heroes: Minority Report, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Glengarry Glen Ross, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Zodiac, Oldboy, The Iron Giant, I’m Not There, The Hustler, The Royal Tenenbaums, This is Spinal Tap, and Amelie 

Slave 4 Glee

Maybe it was the air conditioning. Maybe it's that there's nothing on TV lately and I miss Glee (which makes me crazy but is also appointment television). But fact: I had a good time at GLEE: THE 3D CONCERT MOVIE even though it was kind of like skipping chapters on the DVDs for the most famous performances.

Brittany S Pierce!

READ THE REVIEW @ TOWLEROAD
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