"MOVIE MAD" by Michael van den Bos

Here's a pair of marvelous movie screenings in Vancouver hosted by your "Movie Mad" man, Michael van den Bos, in August and September 2010 - DOUBLE INDEMNITY and CHUCK BERRY HAIL! HAIL! ROCK 'n' ROLL:

Take a break from the Vancouver summer heat at 1:00 P.M. on  Tuesday 17 August 2010 to bask in the sordid heat of Double Indemnity, one the greatest film noirs from the 1940s,  playing in the air-conditioned theatre of the Pacific Cinematheque.  I will be introducing this classic 1944 Billy Wider directed film noir and talking about its fascinating production stories and explaining what makes this wicked, nihilistic crime drama the quintessential noir of the silver screen.   

Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck (as the Queen Bee-bitch of all femme fatales) and Edward G. Robinson,  is presented by the Pacific Cinematheque's "Silver Screen" series where once a month a classic Hollywood movie from the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s is projected from a 35mm print onto a big screen, as these movies were meant to be seen! 

Prizes donated by Dead Write Crime & Mystery Books  (http://www.deadwrite.com/dw.html) and Videomatica Sales & Rentals (the greatest video store in Canada: http://www.videomatica.bc.ca) will be given away before the start of the movie.  A post-screening cinema chat will follow with complimentary coffee and cookies served in the Cinematheque lobby.

Double Indemnity trailer - "It's Murder!"

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Directed by Taylor Hackford, Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll is at once an entertaining overview of rock legend Chuck Berry's life and career and an electric concert film to commemorate Berry's 60th birthday at the time of the movie's release.  Included in  the documentary are interviews with- and performances by some of rock 'n' roll's royalty and blues barons, such as Eric Clapton, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Roy Orbison, The  Everly Brothers, Willie Dixon, Robert Cray, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt and Bruce Springsteen.  Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was the producer of the concert celebration and you won't believe your eyes when you see Richards skirmish with his idol Berry, trying to exert some measure of control over the man who made the duck-walk cool! 

Serai Social Club is located at 1660 Cypress Street (between West 1st Avenue and York Street) in beautiful Kitsilano, Vancouver.  They have a fully licensed bar and a kitchen that serves delectable dishes as prepared by Chef Alonso.  Visit the Serai Social Club website: www.seraisocial.com.

Clip from Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll (1987)

I hope to go "Movie Mad" with you at these two special screenings.  See you there!

~ Michael

RADIO DAYS (1987), written & directed by Woody Allen

Radio Days is Woody Allen’s droll paean to the 1940s radio of his youth. It’s a warm, strongly evocative journey back to a time when listening to the radio at home was the most popular form of free mass entertainment. Radio Days follows no linear plot; like its Italian cousin, Fellini’s Amarcord (1973), Allen’s film is a series of reminiscences. He doesn’t appear in Radio Days, but he does narrate the nostalgic episodes as experienced and imagined onscreen by his 10-year-old doppelganger, Joe Needleman (Seth Green), who lives with his very large family under one roof in Rockaway Point, New York.

The episodes of family life are keenly and comically observed. Julie Kavner and Michael Tucker are the bickering parents whom Joe imagines on a radio program receiving marriage advice. The show’s host declares that they deserve each other; the mother responds, “I love him, but what did I do to deserve him?” The heart of Radio Days is the magnificent Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway) who radiates a quiet charm and endearing pathos as the husband-hunting Aunt Bea. 

Though Radio Days brims with spirited imagination, joy and belly-laughs, it is composed with some dark tones too, as when a nationwide radio audience is galvanized by a live news report about a little girl who has fallen into a well and the minute-by-minute byplay of the frantic attempts to rescue her.  This brief but haunting segment is based on an actual incident from the movie's time period and it is a reminder of how the power of radio could bind millions of listeners together by entering the collective conscious.

Along with its feast of songs, Radio Days is a treat for the eyes. Santo Loquasto’s production design is sumptuous and Carlo Di Palma’s lush cinematography glows like a radio vacuum tube, enhancing Woody Allen's romantic and moving tribute to a bygone era.

(from l. to r.) Wallace Shawn, Mia Farrow, Tony Roberts on the roof of the King Cole Room

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WHERE TO RENT RADIO DAYS ON DVD IN VANCOUVER:

If you live in the Greater Vancouver area, you can rent the DVD of RADIO DAYS from the greatest video store in Canada, Videomatica - located at 1855 West 4th Avenue (phone: 604-734- 0411) in fabulous Kitsilano.  Website: www.videomatica.ca

DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS, directed by Jay Roach; starring Steve Carell and Paul Rudd.

The title Dinner for Schmucks promises a fabulous feast of funny, but what is served on screen is stale leftovers.  My Dinner with Andre, the Louis Malle directed 1981 cerebral talk-fest, has more laughs than this half-baked meal for morons from director Jay Roach, the man who made the Austin Powers and the Fockers franchises. 

Paul Rudd is Tim, a middle management executive craving to climb the corporate ladder.  Tim manages to convince his corporate boss, Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood), that he can attract a new investor to the firm in the likes of a Swiss millionaire named Müeller (David Walliams).  Fender is impressed and invites Tim to an exclusive monthly dinner he throws at his mansion for his elite executives who must bring a buffoon to the dinner in the guise that their “unique” – read, delusional – talents will be celebrated.   The executive with the most entertaining idiot is the winner of the night.  Tim finds his dope for dinner when he literally runs into sweet ‘n’ stupid Barry (Steve Carell), an IRS auditor and an amateur taxidermist (get it . . . IRS; taxidermist! Oh, the comedy!) who creates whimsical dioramas featuring dead mice (which is the best part of this movie – I want to see a stop-motion animated film based on these amazing dioramas that were created by the Chiodo Brothers).  What Tim doesn’t count on is that Barry, through his naiveté and his imbecilic good intentions, will be a destructive force in Tim’s relationship with his art gallery agent girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak), potentially pushing her into the arms of an eccentric artist, Kieran (Jemaine Clement), and wrecking the deal with the Swiss millionaire that will jeopardize Tim’s career in high finance.

Plot is secondary for the kind of comedy Dinner for Schmucks aspires to be, which is to throw two characters together who are at extreme odds to one another – usually one person of pretense and superficiality and the other who lives with wild abandon or displays dangerous counterculture behaivour – in order to pierce the bubble of vanity and arrogance and bring about humble humanity.  The Marx Brothers did this at their anarchic best in their absurdist comedies of the 1930s.  In the 1980s, directors Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme made some terrific black comedies touching on similar themes of chaotic or unbridled human forces that upset the conventional, banal order of its protagonists: Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, starring Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis, and After Hours, starring Griffin Dunne; along with Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild, starring Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith, are all examples of edgy, inventive, Kafkaesque films doused in a dark, wicked humour.  The odd coupling of Paul Rudd and Steve Carell in Dinner for Schmucks is mostly obnoxious, lacking the bite of the aforementioned comedians and directors. 

Comedian Steve Carell in Dinner for Schmucks is following in a long line of actors who have portrayed simpletons in the movies: Harry Langdon from the silent era, Stan Laurel teamed with Oliver Hardy, Jerry Lewis with Dean Martin or solo, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey and even Elmer Fudd.  But what those actors had that Carell is sorely missing is either a child-like sensibility or an edge of craziness that leavens the buffoonery.  Carell – generally a fine comic actor – is either too childish or too sentimental (this is also the fault of the screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman) as Barry, who could possibly be diagnosed as autistic.  Dinner for Schmucks is missing that certain edge of insanity to make it comically memorable.  Comedy thrives on danger, but Carell is mostly safely silly and awash with too much cute pathos.  And Paul Rudd’s character never feels like he is going to lose his mind.  His character is a man whose life is all about order and building his career, and he should be running off the mental rails as Barry turns Tim’s life inside out, but Rudd plays his reactions to all the chaos as if annoyed by receiving an unsolicited phone call from a telemarketer.

The only real sense of danger in Dinner for Schmucks comes in a scary psycho-sexual blonde Tasmanian She-Devil named Darla, who has been stalking Tim over the internet since one drunken sexual escapade they shared several years ago before he met Julie.  Like Pandora’s Box, Barry pretends to be Tim when replying to Darla in a little bit of dirty web chat and releases this hellion in high heels into Tim’s world.  Lucy Punch plays Darla with such a sociopathic sexual intensity that she ignites Dinner for Schmucks into a momentary blazing, out-of-control barbeque while she is on screen.  Punch is fearless and hysterically funny, driving the movie into much welcome and unexpected dark territory leaving Carell and Rudd wiped out in the ditch.

A few of the other character actors bring some much needed big laughs to the movie, such as Zach Galifianakis as Therman, Barry’s IRS dickie-wearing co-worker who truly believes he can bend minds to his will and who possesses a strange hold on Barry, forcing him to utter the seemingly innocuous line, “Eat my pudding”, which we learn has a painfully private and perverse meaning for Barry.  And Jemaine Clement as the goat loving, egocentric superstar artist, Kieran (arguably a goofy variant on real-life artist and film director Julian Schnabel), nicely underplays the eccentricities of his character while revealing an underlying and endearing “schmuckness” about him.

Dinner for Schmucks does culminate in its titular dinner party where the financial executives each bring an “idiot” to the table.  This lengthy sequence does deliver on some well played slapstick and surprisingly dark gags, and the film reveals who the real schmucks are and who the real people truly are, but you know how this dinner will turn out ten minutes into the movie and, by the fade out, you are left with only the memory of a couple of tasty morsels overwhelmed by a burning indigestion.

"MOVIE MAD" MAN ABOUT TOWN

I have been negligent in writing and posting new movie reviews and essays for the last couple weeks.  My only excuse is that I have been swamped with other movie related activities, like teaching three different film courses around Vancouver (a Film Theory course and a Visual Storytelling course at the Vancouver Film School; and a Film History course at the Pacific Audio Visual Institute).  These courses have been going through some alterations, so my time gets eaten up by redesigning the lesson plans and film playlists, as well as marking and grading student’s assignments and exams. 

I am also making several live guest appearances at various events around Vancouver.  On Thursday 10 June, I emceed a celebration for Studio B Productions, western Canada’s largest animation studio, at the Vancity Theatre.  This animated event was presented by the City of Vancouver Archives and Studio B.

I am a recurring host of Pacific Cinematheque’s “Silver Screen” series and I will be introducing various great films in this series during the upcoming months.  Every third Tuesday of the month at 1:00 p.m., the Cinematheque runs a classic Hollywood movie – always projecting a 35mm print onto a big screen – with a host giving an introduction to the film, talking about its production history and its legacy; after the movie, free refreshments are offered as an informal cinema chat takes place with the guests and the host.  It is a wonderful way for movie lovers and cinephiles to spend an afternoon.  In the past, I have been privileged to introduce Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO; Douglas Sirk’s MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION; George Cukor’s THE PHILADELPHIA STORY; and Howard Hawks’s TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT.  On Tuesday 15 June at 1:00 p.m., I will be back at the Pacific Cinematheque to introduce one of the best loved classic Hollywood movies, CASABLANCA (1942), directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains. 

On Sunday 20 June, I will be introducing the 1982 animated feature film, THE SECRET OF N.I.M.H., at the Cinematheque’s “Cinema Sunday” series.  This hand-drawn animated feature, directed by Don Bluth, is open to all ages and my introduction starts at 1:00 p.m. sharp.

Other 35mm film titles that I will be introducing at the Pacific Cinematheque over the next few months are RAGING BULL, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, DOUBLE INDEMNITY and the witty, delightful 1952 MGM musical, THE BAND WAGON, directed by master musical stylist, Vincente Minnelli, and starring the peerless Fred Astaire and “beautiful dynamite", Cyd Charisse.

On Wednesday 16 June, I will be presenting Howard Hawks’s 1944 sexy action-drama, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall – in her first movie role and in the film that started Bogart and Bacall’s great real life love story – at the casually elegant Serai Social Club, located at 1660 Cypress Street in exotic Kitsilano.  Prizes donated by the Pacific Cinematheque and Videomatica – the greatest video store in Canada – will be given away at this screening.  You can enjoy the movie while sipping on a tasty cocktail or a glass of vino, and you can order delicious dishes prepared by Serai’s outstanding Chef Alonso.   Serai Social opens its doors at 7:00 p.m. and I start my introduction to the movie at 8:00 p.m. sharp.

Those of you living in the Greater Vancouver area, I am hoping you can attend some of the classic movies I am presenting.  I’d love to see you there and make sure you come up to me, say hello, chat about the movie and you can buy me a martini after the show (I like them very dry).  Stay tuned, as I will post more details about the screening dates of the movies I will be hosting around Vancouver.

Robert Downey Jr. needing a little body work in IRON MAN 2

IRON MAN 2 – directed by Jon Favreau

Robert Downey Jr. returns to the screen as Marvel Comics’ man in the iron mask, Tony Stark, the brilliant and brainy billionaire who built himself a flying suit of armour to escape his Middle East terrorist captors and becoming an all-American iron-clad superhero wielding a wicked sense of humour in director Jon Favreau’s spry 2008 Iron Man.  Unfortunately, this Marvel movie franchise is quickly developing a bad case of rust as evident in Iron Man 2, which suffers from its story gears seizing up.

Tony Stark finds himself confronted by a myriad of antagonists and problems in Iron Man 2: the United States government wants to take control of the Iron Man technology; Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a power-hungry weapons developer, is out to undermine Tony; Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), the son of a Soviet physicist, holds an overwhelming ugly grudge against the Stark family legacy and is out for high-tech revenge on Tony; and Tony’s health is failing due to his inability to find a more powerful substitute for the element that keeps his blood toxicity low.  Meanwhile, Tony is being secretly assessed for his possible induction into a superhero law enforcement agency by a hot and kick-ass agent (Scarlett Johansson) and he’s trading barbs – and sexual tension – with his frustrated personal assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). 

That’s a lot of plot for an escapist piece of Hollywood entertainment and Iron Man 2 can’t manage to handle the heavy load.  The first act is flashy and exciting, but the movie seriously bogs down for most of its second act.  Mickey Rourke, as the vengeful and vodka fuelled Russian villain, is a gritty and powerful presence when he horsewhips Iron Man with his long ropes of electric energy early in the movie.  However, after this charged introduction, Rourke is sorely underused as he spends too much of the movie either sitting in a prison, sitting at a dinner table with Sam Rockwell or sitting at a laptop computer punching keys to control an army of attacking Iron Men drones before he finally comes back to violent life at the tail end of the movie’s climax; but it is too little, too late.  Rourke sits a lot in Iron Man 2, which doesn’t make for a very active villain in an action movie.

On a technical level, Iron Man 2 is slick, good-looking and has excellent visual effects, but Jon Favreau’s direction is blandly serviceable, at best.  He misses on fulfilling the comic and ironic visual potential in several scenes.  One example is when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the director of the mysterious agency, S.H.I.E.L.D., dressed in black leather and sporting a cool eye-patch, and a hung-over and depressed Tony, wearing his Iron Man suit, have a revelatory meeting sitting in a doughnut shop.  The banal setting for these extreme characters dressed in their superhero duds is clever, but the filmmakers miss a funny opportunity by not showing any employees or customers reacting to this unlikely sight.  Also, the climatic battle seemingly takes place in a Japanese-style garden, but director Faverau unimaginatively downplays the ironic incongruity of the scene.

Scarlett Johansson as sexy S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Natasha Romanoff is physically alluring, amply filling out her tight black action suit, but her performance is flat and dreadfully too serious; though she does have one terrific spinning fight scene that shows off her killer legs – literally. 

What prevents Iron Man 2 from landing in the scrapheap is Robert Downey Jr.’s (looking more and more like Al Pacino) lively performance.  He is wonderfully sardonic with an agile comic delivery that is reminiscent of the elegant Cary Grant and the incisive Groucho Marx.  Screenwriter Justin Theroux’s script may be leaden story-wise, but his dialogue is filled with crisp and witty patter.  The chemistry between Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow is delicious; they share a Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man movie series) dynamic that is missed whenever they are not on screen together.  They would be right at home in a comedy directed by past masters like Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder.  Come to think of it, buried deep inside Iron Man 2 is a romantic screwball comedy aching to bust out of this tin can.