Hollywoodland. And other anniversaries today

On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

1793 Jean-Paul Marat is born in Prussia. Goes on to become a famous political activist and journalist during the French Revolution. His murder is dramatized in the famous play Marat/Sade (also known as The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade which was made into a film in 1968 starriing Patrick Macgee and Ian Richardson. I once saw a production of this play in Harlem and it was just fascinating.
1863 British Egyptologist, "Grandmother of Wicca" and proto-feminist Margaret Alice Murray is born in India. I only mention this because so many fascinating, influential and controversial women exist in history but we only ever get biopics of men. Why doesn't she have a biopic? It could be great.
1923 The iconic HOLLYWOOD sign is officially dedicated in California. It originally says "Hollywoodland" but the "land" is dropped twenty-six years later.

more after the jump

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Q&A: Oscar-Free Dames, Supporting Shortlists, Disney Renaissance

Just answering six reader questions this afternoon for time constraints so we'll do another handful later in the week. Thanks for all the great Qs, readers! Here we go.

GSHAQ: Do you feel the gap is widening between the stories told in mainstream movies and contemporary issues? Oops, that might be an essay. 

NATHANIEL: This question hurts my brain but I'll try. I do fear for the health of cinema which directly addresses contemporary issues. For a long time the movies have preferred past-tense filters for social and political issues, once it's safer since history has sorted out consensus. The best of those past-tense films also address the here and now through their resonant power (see: Selma). And there's something to be said for the facility that good genre films have in addressing the way we live via metaphor (The Babadook, Bridesmaids, and Melancholia are MUCH better films about depression than some earnest dramas that directly take it on) Even superhero films can be reflective of the here and now in spite of (or maybe because of) all their mixed messages and contradictory 'have it both ways' politics. I don't think it's an accident that Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War, whatever their disparate qualities, are asking the same questions about Might Equalling Right and whether we have the right checks and balances in place for those in power. These are issues that we're facing in very real ways all over the world. But, that said, we do need a reenergized contemporary cinema. If we can only think about tough issues through metaphor or by dwelling on the past, we have some maturation to do as a society!

It's true that movies made in the right-now about the right-now can age quickly (see movies we've recently discussed like Working Girl)  but if they're any good -- and sometimes even when they aren't -- they make great time capsules about the way we were, the things we valued, and the issues that laid claim to our collective mental real estate.  

BVR: Rank the animated movies from the Disney Renaissance (1989-1999). Extra: which is the most underrated?

NATHANIEL: This is cheating and asking for a top ten list but here's a NON commital answer after the jump...

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Best Shot(s): Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Commence squealing. For what could be more delightful than an evening with two perfect musical comedy performances? It's time to talk Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. The film, currently streaming on Netflix, was the runner up in our Readers Choice polling for Hit Me With Your Best Shot.

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
20th Century Fox. Released on July 15th, 1953 in New York
Director: Howard Hawks; Cinematographer: Harry J Wild 
Starring: Jane Russell as 'Dorothy', Marilyn Monroe as 'Lorelei', Charles Coburn as 'Piggy', Elliott Reid as 'Malone', Tommy Noonan as 'Esmond Jr'

Howard Hawk's classic was not the first iteration of the story. It was based on the stage musical which itself was based on a book which had already spawned two non-musicals. The 1949 stage musical, a huge hit on Broadway, had introduced Carol Channing to the world. New star Marilyn Monroe got Channing's  star-making "Lorelei" role for the screen. (The same thing would happen to Channing sixteen years later with her other signature role Hello Dolly) But sometimes a movie turns out so spectacularly well that it's impossible to imagine it existing in any other shape than the one it's in, all other versions prior or subsequent feel like faint cultural echoes. 

Best Shots after the jump...

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Boyz n the Hood Turns 25

Lynn Lee revisits the John Singleton classic on its 25th anniversary.

Four young boys walk along a railroad track, idly chatting but in search of something specific.  They find what they’re looking for: a dead body.  A group of older boys arrives and harasses them.  The most pugnacious of the younger group fights back in a way that foreshadows his destiny as an adult.

Stand by Me?  No, Boyz n the Hood, which opened in theaters 25 years ago today.  And the parallels are no mere coincidence. Writer and drector John Singleton was intentionally referencing the earlier Rob Reiner film – perhaps as much for the differences as the similarities between the two narratives of boyhood and the cultural spaces they occupy...

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Doc Corner: 'Zero Days' is One of the Year's Best

Glenn here with our weekly look at documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand.

Alex Gibney works with such ferocious regularity that it’s sometimes hard to keep track. Last year alone he had three films released following two the year before that. His latest, Zero Days, falls into the camp of Gibney films in which he most excels - those like Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room that allow him to exercise his skills at investigative journalism and dig deep into exposing organizations and those who surround them. While it lacks the pop fancies that made Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief such a success, Zero Days is Gibney’s best documentary in years.

Told with all the propulsive, thrilling excitement of a Hollywood spy blockbuster, Zero Days lifts the lid on a series of cybercrimes (reportedly - the film certainly makes a valiant case for it) committed by the US government in alignment with Israel against Iran and their potentially dangerous nuclear program. The crimes backfired drastically and exposed America and the world to a future of uncertain technological warfare...

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