Paolo here again. Referring to the question above I wonder if any of the readers here have seen Beats, Rhymes and Life in the few big cities where it's already on.
It's strange how, in watching this documentary about the hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest, I realized I knew less about them and more about the film's director Michael Rappaport. He of course is in True Romance and eventually ended up in one of those yearly Vanity Fair photo shoots where they name the next batch of great actors. You might remember him from "The War at Home," a passable sitcom. He also happens to be a guy from Brooklyn who grew up as part of the first hip hop generation.
What I knew about ATCQ was more about mixing them up with De La Soul, or their reluctant front man of a rapper Q-Tip. He released a song called "Vivrant Thing," which had more in common with flashy club music of the late 90's than the conscious hip hop he created with the disbanded group a decade or so earlier.
Rappaport and his editors Lenny Messina and AJ Schnack spent three years to find and compress a lot of material about ATCQ. The film tackles their origins - the group's four members are childhood friends. Q-Tip revisits his high school and reminisce about banging on his classroom tables the same way kids in my high school did. We also see him at the studio sifting through his old vinyls, admitting to being a fan of 1970's jazz and disco chanteuses.
Since we have a great roster of erratic contributors here at TFE, we should use them more often, right? What has Team Experience been watching?
What's the best and/or worst thing you saw this week?
Kurt (Cinema de Gym): The best thing I saw this week was Page One: Inside the New York Times, a doc that filled a little empty spot in my soul. Of course it's slanted so as to exalt the Gray Lady, but so what. It's thus far the most comprehensive film we have to address where we stand in the world of media, and thank GOD for the invaluable David Carr, a shut-up-and-listen voice of reason who defends the fundamentals amidst legions of people blindly barrelling toward an all-digital climate of media without merit. The worst thing I saw was Bad Teacher (my review) which couldn't even appeal to my sinful love of hating on goody-two-shoe types ("Bad Santa" this is not) and it contains the year's worst character in Lucy Punch's Amy Squirrell. She's unwatchable.
Robert G: Best: Noriko's Dinner Table--so many questions, so few answers. How could Suicide Club become more confusing and addictive with a sequel? Worst Thing: 8213: Gacey House--I have a high tolerance for bad horror. This overloaded my circuits.
JA: I'm sort of completely and totally obsessed with Adrien Brody's brief bit as Dali in Midnight in Paris right now. I can't stop hearing him pronounce "RHINOCEROS" inside my head. He says it so many times that the word loses all meaning and becomes this jumble of sound, all nonsense, which is obviously the point - hysterical nonsense.
Robert (Distant Relatives): I caught up with the 1962 samurai film Hara-Kiri. It's always great to have even high expectations exceeded and see an old film that still feels modern and poignant.
Craig (Take Three): The best thing I saw this week, cinematically, was Bridesmaids, which was a daftly hilarious experience. (Yes, there categorically should be Oscar nods for Wiig and McCarthy. I ain't kidding.); worst thing, sadly, was Dario Argento's The Card Player (2004) apart from a ludicrous scene involving a life-or-death poker match played on train tracks to a pounding techno score.
Alex "BBats" The best thing I saw this week was a documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival called Salaam Dunk about a group of Iraqi female students playing college basketball. I love sports docs (ESPN's 30 for 30 was amazing) and the concept of one focusing on women in the middle east was too interesting to pass up. It was a well balanced film about positive changes that are coming to the region while keeping the problems and challenges in clear perspective (I always forget that Iraqis call the war "The Invasion") The girls are all so wonderful and their coach is hilarious and so caring towards his students. Definitely check it out when you get a chance. Didn't see any terrible things this week, but will say that Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur, while having great moments and acting, was a very emotional confusing movie. It's like a revenge drama where revenge is taken within and often against oneself.
Andreas (Mix Tape): The best movie I watched was John Ford's unduly obscure Two Rode Together, which is essentially Jimmy Stewart & Richard Widmarkreenacting The Searchers. The film is dripping with moral ambiguity & gets really emotionally intense toward the end; also, the usually lovable Stewart plays a total scumbag. It works. I loved the movie.
REGARDING CARS 2 I (Nathaniel) meant to write a review but every time I sat down to do so I was just angry. I hated -- and I do mean h-a-t-e-d -- the decision to make Pixar's absolute worst character "Mater" the lead of a nearly two hour movie. I figured I had to ask if there was anything salvagable in the concept of anthropomorphic cars.
Which movie car would you willingly spend two hours with?
Jose: The Phantom Carriage so I could grab Cars 2 and send it to hell where it escaped from! (*sob* I really tried to like it.)
RobertG: What could be better than a ride on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? A ride where the flying car lets you know how to avoid the Child Catcher and just have a good time.
Michael (Unsung Heroes): I would like to see a full length feature starring the second hand police car driven by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in The Blues Brothers. It would have a nice deadpan sense of humor, its radio would play nothing but great rock and roll, and unlike the insufferable Mater it would be a car of few words.
JA: My first thought was Sam Raimi's 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, which has made an appearance in all of his films. It could star in its own documentary - I bet it's got stories to tell. Like, I've always wanted to know what having a 23 year old Bruce Campbell sitting on you was like.
This is where we get off."
Kurt: I have a soft spot for the Batmobile from the 60s TV show/movie, which actually just made an appearance at my favorite local theater (alas, I missed it). The car reminds me, of course, of watching the show (Pow! Thwack!), but also of being dragged to auto shows with my dad, which I hated in the moment but now think of fondly. They always had cars like the Batmobile at those things. I imagine the Batmobile and I would discuss chasing Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt, how it was ever able to sleep with all those Batcave gadgets buzzing, and if there's any competition among the other Bat vehicles (that Batsub will cut you!).
Alex "BBats": I wish the car from The Car (1977) would follow Mater across a bridge...
YOUR TURN, READERS... What have you been watching and which movie car would you gladly see anthropomorphized for a couple of hours?
The Lost Boy Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams is just a few days away from joining the top gro$$ing documentaries club. JobMob check out what some celebrity acting resumes look like Sociological Images Some off flick backstory on that DDT spray scene in The Tree of Life. I wanted to soak in that scene, didn't you? Tom ShoneTerminator 2 turns 20 years old this week. What a stroke of genius casting Robert Patrick was. Old Hollywood great my-how-time-changes-things quote from Kim Novak on the initial failure of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Movie|Line Remember those omnibus films celebrating Paris and New York. It's official: Sydney, I Love You plans to move ahead in early 2012 The Wrap looks at the reasons that the superhero crop of 2011 isn't really delivering as expected at the box office.The last sentence, though, is an unintentionally hilarious negation of the 'there's too many of these' thesis statement. It goes like so...
The good news for the box office: New installments of Batman and Spider-Man are due out next summer, with fresh incarnations of Superman and Iron Man following soon after.
off cinema The Daily Beast backstage at Men's Fashion Week Low Resolution ranking the hotness of Wimbledon men Slant reviews Björk's new single "Crystalline". I love this bit:
Bjork's most esoteric album to date, 2004's Medúlla, is also among her best, and so my policy is to indulge Mrs. Matthew Barney in all pretensions so long as the music works.
On this, the day of Boy George's 50th birthday, we propose a biopic. After all, Hollywood is quite fond of musician biopics what with their formulaic three act story beats: rise from talent-individuality-chutzpah, fall from drugs and debauchery, miniature or major comebacks as the performer finds themselves again.
So why is it that someone as fab and movie-character ready as Boy George doesn't have his own biopic? He's already written all of the wittiest lines for some future screenwriter, being one of the quippiest of '80s icons. He's already conjured the movie's most memorable costumes. He's already even provided a rough draft blueprint with his own autobiographical musical, Taboo (2004).
Now, Taboo was historically not a success on Broadway but we chalk this up to its difficult developmental period, clashing egos and press animosity (sometimes the media just turns on something and there's only a war zone from there). It's not that the show wasn't entertaining enough to be a success. It was actually a fierce show, just an intermittently clumsy overstuffed one. But my oh my the music was good. In addition to Boy George's own discography (formidable, duh) he wrote new songs for the bifurcated musical, which managed to be two biopics in one by juxtaposing Boy's rise with the life of performance artist Leigh Bowery .
The pop star did star in his own biopic but he cheekily played Leigh Bowery instead, so here's a press clip below of the show and his title track performance. [Note: I meant to write about the documentary about this very lively Broadway season Showbusiness: The Road to Broadway (2007) which also charts behemoths Wicked and Avenue Q and the wondrous Caroline or Change but the DVD didn't arrive in time, damnit.]
I remember sitting in the audience in a very cramped Broadway house. The tourist to my left turned towards me at intermission.: "IT'S OVER?!?!?" she said, panicking, clearly new to seeing live theater and there for Boy George himself (she was wearing an old Culture Club t-shirt). I pulled her back from the edge "there's more Boy to come."
For all of Boy George's personal problems, he's a smart enough star to understand his own rise and fall. There's a heartbreaking number in the show called "Out of Fashion" and, yes, Boy George still is. But in this Age of Gaga, maybe pop culture out to rediscover the gonzo theatrical originals that paved the way? There's a long line of "what will they look like next?" superstars before her: Bowie, Boy, Madonna, etcetera...
For extro-music here's Boy's video from pop culture / Oscar milestone The Crying Game (1992).
(That would've have so won the Oscar for Best Original Song had it not been a cover of an oldie.) I haven't seen The Crying Game in far too long, how about you?
In the annals of showbiz history few one night events are as seismic as "Judy Judy Judy" the night Judy Garland hit Carnegie Hall, 50 years ago at this very moment, for her comeback performance. She was called many things during her legendary career: Hurricane Judy, The World's Greatest Entertainer, Ms. Showbiz and a lot of those titles coincide or funnel right into or through this big night. There's not really any concert footage of this event though it was famously recorded live to fulfill her record contract and eventually became her most important album.
I can't for the life of me remember how that Garland miniseries with Judy Davis covered the event but they must have done so given that it was one of those 'from cradle to grave' bios. Garland died just 8 years after this concert at the age of 47. Do you think the proposed Anne Hathaway as Judy Garland film will stretch this far into Judy's career? Or maybe it will never get made?
Hathaway is 28 years old at the moment, just ten years younger than Judy was on this big night...
Lots more after the jump including four melodic videos because I couldn't help myself. I do get carried away with the mythic actresses, don't I?
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 3:00PM 
Paolo here again. Referring to the question above I wonder if any of the readers here have seen Beats, Rhymes and Life in the few big cities where it's already on.
