Friday, March 4, 2011 at 12:03PM The Windy City is celebrating it's 174th birthday today. Happy Day to all our Chicago readers! Party safe today if you're partying. Chicago is awesome. Not only does it have plentiful good film critic peoples, it's got good cinematic songs!
Which is it for you? Calamity Jane, Norma Cassady, Sufjan Stevens, The Blues Brothers or the Merry Murderesses of Cook County Jail?
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:30PM Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.
Why can't the English learn to speak?
Yes, yes, learning to enunciate properly and overcoming a stutter aren't exactly the same thing. In fact, these two films don't have to both be about issues of speech and speech therapy. One of them could be about learning to play darts or cribbage. It's just to our benefit that they do tread such similar ground that it throws light on the more important similarities between them. As for the less important, but still interesting, similarities: both take place in England, both feature alliteratively named speech therapists, both are Best Picture Oscar winners. So what is the important similarity? Both are about class. Both feature an individual of one class, tasked with helping an individual of another class, and by doing so the great divide between the classes shrinks just a bit.
In the unusual case that anyone doesn't know the details of these films’ plots, despite one having achieved cultural significance and the other bloggospherific over-analysis here they are: In My Fair Lady, the lady or lady-to-be is Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), a poor cockney flower girl who is taken in by snobbish Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) as party of a wager with the promise of being taught to speak and made in to a proper Englishwoman. In The King's Speech, Prince Albert or Bertie later to be King George (Colin Firth), needing to overcome a debilitating stammer and become a proper monarch, enlists the help of unconventional speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). While I stand by my assertion that the skill requiring improvement could be anything, one reason why speech makes for such a compelling story (as opposed to cribbage) is that it is unavoidably tied into our self image and identity. We are, to the outside world, a combination of sight and sound. While the control we have over our physical beauty is to an extent limited, the control we have over our speech and the impression that it makes is endless. If the impression is poor, we personally bear the blame. Both My Fair Lady and The King's Speech are essentially stories about makeovers (the former being more obvious thanks to the pretty dresses), or at least stories about makeovers as macguffins.
You've got a friend in me
Really they’re stories about love and friendship, and they revolve around characters who we find exceedingly easy to empathize with. Eliza with her brazen boisterousness not at all befitting her humble situation and her unwillingness to be bullied by Higgins gives her a populist punch. Bertie, poor Bertie who lacks confidence and trembles in fear and embarrassment gets our sympathy quite easily too. As Albert Brooks pines in Broadcast News “Wouldn’t this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive?” But to audiences, they do make a character attractive. We can see in them the parts of us we fail to share with each other. So Eliza and Bertie win us over and quickly, as does Lionel Logue, the man who seems to have his life in order but occasionally has to deal with his own failings and mediocrities too. Henry Higgins takes some time to cozy up to. I’d say in this internet age, his frustration at all less cultured than he is pretty recognizable, though I’m not sure that the original intent was for it to invoke our sympathies.
So it is that insecure, desperate Bertie and Eliza, with their closest familial relations swept up by somewhat less genuine and more manipulative love and friendship must find their confidence by venturing out of their class. Here it is that the films start to become flipped mirrors. Eliza is that of the lower class venturing up. Bertie is of the upper (very upper) class venturing downward. In this latter case our path is easy. If Lionel can help Bertie it will be a triumph of the sincerity of the humble man helping a king cut through the shelter of royal aristocratic fog and become a great leader. Yes, it is feel good and it is timely in that it reflects a reality we so long for. For Eliza it has to be a little more difficult. Pompous Professor Higgins helping little Liza do good is no desirable message to take home. Not unless she changes him too by injecting a bit of plain charm into his stuffy world.
And they all lived...
There are other backward reflections among the films as well. In My Fair Lady it is an act of friendship (a friendly bet) that sets in motion the seeds of love. In The King’s Speech it is an act of love (the determination of a dedicated spouse) that sets in motion the seeds of great friendship. Both films play off the idea that the classes are closer than we believe, that our decency can transcend them, the lower may need the upper for the opportunity to excel but the upper needs the lower more to be renewed of their humanity. It may be a fantasy, but the one thing The King’s Speech has that My Fair Lady does not is that label “based on a true story” If anything has changed in the forty-five years between the films it may be our need to see that label to believe it.
One last thing that hasn’t changed in forty-five years, and a post-script I’m only too delighted to delve into is cursing. Yes cursing, the great common equalizer, which plays an important role in both films. The first time we hear Bertie curse it’s a delight. It brings him down to our level. It’s funny. It’s charming. And when Eliza Doolittle curses at the races, we (not to mention some of the aristocracy) fall for her too, because we sense she’s real and she will always be what she is. Those melodic tones are a declaration of the working class winning out, pushing the stilted aristocracy forward, or aside if need be. “Move your bloomin’ arse!”
Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 2:32PM 
Betty Garrett, aka "Hildy" the female cabbie from On the Town, passed away yesterday at 91. She was a comic star of stage, tv and, however briefly, big screen musicals. The Hollywood blacklist of the 50s, which sadly destroyed so many careers at their prime, derailed hers, but at least she had charming musicals like Neptune's Daughter, My Sister Eileen and two Frank Sinatra pairings in On The Town and Take Me Out to the Ball Game under her dance belt before that sorry turn of events. Her career got a second wind of sorts on television in the 70s in sitcoms like Laverne and Shirley and All in the Family.
Is there anything more contagiously cheerful than a good musical comedy star? ♪ They're awful....awful good to look at, awful nice to be with, awful sweet to have and hold... ♫
Here's a fun video that apparently played before her 90th birthday bash.
Betty Garrett, Frank Sinatra, RIP, musicals Monday, January 24, 2011 at 11:50AM 
Nastassja Kinsi by Richard Avedon
Editors note: For Nastassia Kinski's 50th birthday, I asked Glenn to write up a bit on her appearance in "One From the Heart" since it's a movie I know he loves (even more than me and I like it quite a lot) and also because I like to mark the big milestones for actresses and films. If you haven't seen this movie rent it. If you're too young to know Kinski's work, other must sees include Roman Polanski's Oscar nominee "Tess", the horror remake "Cat People" and Wim Wenders "Paris Texas". Here's Glenn from the great blog Stale Popcorn.
I’m going to commit what must be one of the ultimate cinephile no-no’s and go on the record as stating One from the Heart is my favourite Francis Ford Coppola film. Yes, moreso than The Conversation or Apocalypse Now, even moreso than The Godfather parts one and two, Coppola’s One from the Heart is a personal favourite that, to be sappy and pun-tastic at the same time, I hold very dear to my heart. I don’t have time to get into the hows and the whys, because I’m here to discuss Nastassja Kinski!
Is she for real?
Kinski’s Leila first enters the picture over 30 minutes in, her hair slicked back, waving a sparkler, wearing a beaded yellow one-piece costume and draped with a cape. When Frederick Forrest asks “Is she real?” you have to wonder the same thing. This was Kinski’s first American production and her film following her breakthrough in Roman Polanski’s Tess and she couldn’t have a more eye-popping entrance.
Before long she’s romancing Forrest by performing a dance routine in a neon-lit martini glass to the bluesy trumpet of Tom Waits’ Oscar-nominated music. Coppola himself has said that he envisioned Kinski’s Leila as a "Felliniesque circus performer to represent the twinkling evanescence of Eros,” whatever that means, but her sexy gymnastic routine around the rim of this giant, novelty prop remains the film’s most lasting, and seductive, image. Coppola didn’t exactly make Kinski stretch herself by casting her as an exotic, German goddess, but in the mean time he cemented the image that we all still have of her. And then, poof, “like spit on a grill” Leila is gone; the perfect encapsulation of Las Vegas’ intoxicating, but short-lived high.
But didn’t she leave quite the impression?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 7:07PM Boston Globe Wesley Morris looks back at Todd Haynes's defiant Poison, now 20 years old but still strong.
Antagony & Ecstasy chooses the 100 Best Films of All Time
Scanners "Moments out of Time" for 2010
Critical Condition Mark shares his dream Oscar ten.
Playbill Another award for Annette Bening. I'd never heard of this one though "The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association's Dorian Awards"
Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, James McAvoy (and others) in X-MEN FIRST CLASS
Hero Complex first photos from the star-studded X-Men: First Class
Movie|Line, prepping for Sundance, reminds us of 13 films that broke out in a big way at the snowy festival.
Boy Culture prompted by Jane Fonda's return has an On Golden Pond flashback.
Everything I Know names the best stage musicals of 2010 ...and the worst.
Natasha VC The inimitable Natasha has some words for Robert DeNiro in regards to his Globe speech.
The Wrap f/x epic John Carter of Mars is coming three months earlier than expected: March 2012.
