Mickey Rooney is terrific in Boys Town!!!

This is a well-known classic, and deservedly so. The subject is one of the highest social importance, and it's needless to say that is as relevant today as it was then; but my point is, the directing work is great: there's no "sentimental garbage" about the treatment of the homeless kids issue, unlike one of the characters points at regarding Father Flanagan's (Spencer Tracy) enterprise. The film remarks the honesty with which the seemingly utopian idea of such a community -- a true town of little men -- comes to life, and identifies with it all the way.

Tracy plays Flanagan, the moral center, as a deeply charismatic man. His acting is actually reacting; the great actor's best features as a human being are on display when the camera just focuses in his eyes. On the other hand, there is Mickey Rooney's antics as Whitey Marsh: bold gestures and speeches, all in the most histrionic fashion. However, what on the paper might look bad (or dated, for a better word), it turns out to be the key performance of the movie. Whitey is a comic and almost tragic figure at the same time. He looks up to his elder brother, who is a hoodlum, and so smokes cigars and dresses as a 12-year-old grown-up. And he is protecting himself from others, in this tough-kid disguise, for he really is a damaged, vulnerable, sensitive boy. At first, he is cocky and thoroughly arrogant, like a shorter version of James Cagney. Rooney seems to have had also the same kind of energy and electricity. As a matter of fact, he infuses these elements into Boys Town, yet improving upon its smoothly delivered pace and finely orchestrated melodramatic moments. Rooney's not only is a scene-stealer role, but a dramatic work that is real, timeless and epiphanic.

RIP Mickey Rooney (1920-2014)

Rough Draft: The Dirk Diggler Story (1988)

This amateurish production was the first work of Boogie Nights and Magnolia's director P.T. Anderson. Boogie Nights discovered his undeniable skill for cross-over, interweaving dramatic narrative, while Anderson's attachment to each of his ever lonely and singularly moving characters was perfected and even dared to take a more in-depth look into their existentially-challenged lives within the equally epic frame of the lyrical Magnolia.

Kind of a homage to the all too brief "golden age" of '70s porn cinema, the large scaled and somewhat overblown melodrama that Boogie Nights effortlessly made the audiences care for was first rehearsed in the half hour-long Dirk Diggler Story. Exclusive focus on the main character, his rise and fall, is a major difference between the two versions; we are supposed to catch a glimpse of the real human being behind the big star mostly through interviews with the recently deceased Dirk's close friends and collaborators, who are basically the same people in the 1997 film, and flashback images. Anderson's inventively makes it up for the lack of any actual production values, taking advantage on the obvious limitations in the making of the short feature to give it the appearance of a false documentary or rather a home-made movie, both of which types are some of the most recognisable traits in the video-based adult industry style. 

Also, Anderson's sense of humour, his wit and his powers of persuasion as a storyteller are already here in a way; still not enough in order to relating this title to the misfits odyssey of Boogie Nights without embarrassing afterthoughts. Its significance lies in the context that has its writer and director as one of the most promising figures of American cinema since 1996.

Lee Strasberg

He and protégé Al Pacino appeared together in two films: The Godfather: Part II (1974) and ...And Justice for All (1979)

Famed acting teacher Lee Strassberg was born in Budzanov, Austria-Hungary (now Budanov, Ukraine). Brought to America as a child, he had a brief acting career, before becoming one of the founders of the Group Theatre in 1931, directing a number of plays there. His greatest influence, however, was through the Actors Studio, where he became director in 1950. A proponent of Method acting, which he adapted from the System brought to America by Konstantin Stanislavski's disciple --and Marlon Brando's mentor-- Stella Adler, he influenced several generations of actors, from Jimmy Dean to Dustin Hoffman. Film audiences would know him best as gangster Hyman Roth in The Godfather: Part II.

Some musings regarding Atonement (2007)

Atonement reminds me of that masterpiece of a movie called Blow Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. As in Blow Up, in Atonement we have this dynamic between reality and fiction, which is the most haunting thing about them. In Blow Up (based on one of the best short stories you would read, Julio Cortazar's "Las babas del Diablo"), a fashion photographer happens to discover a crime while taking pictures in a park --or that's what he thinks up until the amazingly ironic, metafiction-related end.

Fiction exists to complete reality, to make justice and give us --the readers, the viewers-- freedom (and not only for the duration of the movie). Appearances have a reality of their own whenever you think of how different they can get from every different person that approaches the same object/subject. It's like all those female teens who read Twilight, and then, out of the many smart ones who didn't dig the screen adaptation at all, they are still so different from each other because at the end it's not about the outside reality --not even of a novel or a flick--, but about who they are as individuals. And that affects everything we touch with our minds. The subjectivity in regards to fiction and the "real" world is the central theme to Atonement, and it is just fascinating to reckon.

requiem

Is it any worthy approaching women I don’t like just because there are no approachable beautiful women at all in this city (or that’s what it seems to be happening for ages here)? Is it any worthy just to approach for the very sake of approaching, when it actually truthfully feels like an awfully hopeless warm-up to the nothingness of it all? Am I a Buñuel born a whole century before cinema was invented, the double of Casanova that proves Raskolnikov’s theory of two Napoleons: one the superman and the other just his mere useless excuse for a shadow?

Beauty is life, not a lie, and I’m so tired of breathing. I never even did that right.

P.S. Chelsea: you were my only muse, my only wish. Remember me. It was worthy.

P.P.S. I leave all my money to my mother, Rosa, and all my books to my sister Jackeline.

~Christian D.

Editor’s Note: These are the last words still known to have been said by the man who hanged himself at the corner of *** and *** Street, in this city with a very forgettable name. In our newspaper’s case, we endorse the opinion that a soul seemingly as sensitive as his couldn’t survive the dreadful atmosphere created by the competition and their utterly unfair advantage over our much better sense of journalism any longer. We salute this man of our time, this lost samurai, this Quixote who betrayed himself and fell, his own Judas and savior. Rest in peace, at last away from the paranoia of all the security guards and the angry boyfriends of the very few and very gorgeous ladies you were able to know in your wasted existence, away from the so cruelly ugly women you couldn’t touch with a mile-stick and yet did with your idealistic imagination and compassion --a holy fool’s tragic soberness. Kudos, (high-fives), hats off to your doing of the things we guys everywhere usually can only dream of doing when we have the fine taste of even thinking about it --and no, I’m not talking of your approaches done out of existential defiance, let alone the ones that occurred out of your metaphysical, almost divine desperation. It’s game over, but you were a real artist, and your legacy will live on wherever and whenever beauty and women go together. (H.H.)

June 2, 2012

CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD CHALLENGE

01- Five films you’d pick as the TCM Guest Programmer
Viva Zapata! (Elia Kazan, 1952)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
The Philadelphia Story (George Cuckor, 1940)
The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931)
Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933)
  
 02- Film that got you interested in Old Hollywood
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) and From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953)
  
 03- Favorite Actor
Marlon Brando 

04- Favorite Actress
Greta Garbo
  
05- Actor or Actress you think is underrated
Debbie Reynolds

06- Favorite movie from your favorite Actor
A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951)
  
07- Favorite movie from your favorite Actress
Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939) 

08- Favorite Old Hollywood couple
Cary Grant & Randolph Scott 

09- Old Hollywood stars you wish had worked together
Peter Lorre & Lillian Gish
  
10- Favorite movie
Out of the Past (Jacques Torneur, 1947)
  
11- Team Bette or Team Joan
Team Joan 

12- Favorite Barrymore
Ethel 

13- Classic movie you just couldn’t get into
Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954)
  
14- A legend everyone appreciates, but you can’t personally stand
Currently, Dolores del Río
  
15- An Actor or Actress you’ve been meaning to give a chance, but haven’t gotten around to it yet
George Raft --Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932) and Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) aside
  
16- Favorite director
Elia Kazan 

17- Favorite line from a film
"This is Eddie Bartlett. He used to be a big shot."
  
18- Actor or Actress who should have won an Oscar
Anthony Perkins 

19- Who’d you like to party it up with in the afterlife
Jean Harlow 

20- Favorite Silent film star
Lon Chaney 

21- Old Hollywood couple you’d watch a sex tape of
Next! xD
  
22- If you could go back in time and trade places with an Old Hollywood star, who would it be
Fred Astaire

23- A film you think is underrated
Vengeance Valley (Richard Thorpe, 1951) 

24- Favorite film from Hollywood’s greatest year, 1939
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra) 

25- Which character from a film do you fantasize about being
Van Heflin as David Sutton from Possessed (Curtis Bernhardt, 1947)
  
26- Which unsolved scandal would you most like the answer to
Robert Wagner's freedom 

27- Who’s death hit you the hardest and why
Brando's. I must be his biggest fan. 

28- A movie you never expected yourself to enjoy
Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953)
  
29- Who’s private lifestyle shocked you the most
Rin Tin Tin 

30- Which 5 Old Hollywood stars would you invite to dinner
Charlie Chaplin
Maureen O'Sullivan
Joan Blondell
James Cagney
Natalie Wood

Year of the Dragon Movie Poster

This poster conveys so much of the Cimino/Rourke classic it represents with so little, with so precise and bold simplicity. Much, much, much more than the tagline (rather cliche), it is the image (from the climactic scene, and the Chinese letters) which made this poster a memorable one.