The Westerner (1940)

I saw The Westerner as a part of a series of Gary Cooper films they were showing on the Criterion Channel. I sort of hated it. Its chief redeeming quality is supposed to be Walter Brennan's third Oscar-winning performance in five years (he won in '37, '39, and in '41) as Judge Roy Bean. But Brennan pretty much does his usual shtick here. Nothing is of much interest in this early William Wyler western. There are some cool sequences – the entire prairie catches on fire at one point, and the whole thing is shot gorgeously – but mostly I thought The Westerner was really boring.

The Big Country (1958)

The Big Country – which William Wyler directed one year before Ben-Hur – looks like a giant, epic western. It's actually more of a melodrama. It does this very well, though, and Burl Ives, who won an Oscar, is really fantastic in this film. His first scene is clearly Oscar-worthy, but actually every scene he's in is amazing.

The most interesting thing about The Big Country, though, is the nominal non-violence it appears to preach. But, much like 1957's Friendly Persuasion (starring Gregory Peck's contemporary pretty-boy Gary Cooper), the non-violent man at the film's center proves his masculinity through violence after all. I am not sure why filmmakers were doing this non-violent thing during this period, but one does wish they actually believed in the product they were selling.

Charlton Heston: hot. (Listen. To each his own. He's sexy in this movie. I don't care what you say.)

Carroll Baker: the worst.

The Memphis Belle: a Story of a Flying Fortress

The Memphis Belle is fairly conventional pro-war, anti-German propaganda, but the footage is awesome and the whole thing feels very personal and exciting. I especially like the animated sequences that are incorporated into this and other documentaries from this period during the War.

I watched it, remastered, at a Veterans Day situation at school with mostly military folks in attendance. That was a decidedly weird situation, let me tell you. All of that nationalism really makes me uncomfortable. But I was grateful for the opportunity to see the film.

Ace in the Hole

I previously wondered aloud why Kirk Douglas wasn't nominated for the Best Actor Oscar in 1952 for his excellent work in William Wyler's film Detective Story, but I got my answer today.

That's because I finally watched his other film from the 1951 awards season: Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. Kirk Douglas clearly gave two of the best performances of 1951, because he is fucking brilliant in Ace in the Hole. The film also happens to be stellar: bold, unforgiving, beautifully filmed in a film noir style even though it follows a newspaper man, not the typical leading man for a noir film. Ace in the Hole is an extremely intelligent satire of media and reportage. Except that it isn't funny. Ever.

Instead it's pointed and smart, skewering sensationalist news media, their corrupt tactics, and the people who buy into their kind of journalism. The DVD of Ace in the Hole was only recently released by the Criterion Collection, so this gem of Billy Wilder's oeuvre has gone largely unseen. Now is the time to check it out. It's a great film with some great performances.

You Can't Stop the Beat

Adam Shankman's new film version of Marc Shaiman's 2002 musical Hairspray starts by quoting Robert Wise's West Side Story. The opening shot, coming out of the clouds (a nod to The Sound of Music?) is an arial view of Baltimore, the city where Hairspray is set. The opening number, which is called "Good Morning Baltimore" also contains a cameo by John Waters himself and a clear nod to yet another famous movie musical: William Wyler's Funny Girl.

The camp doesn't really let up in this film, and I didn't much mind. Hairspray is ridiculous, silly nonsense. It's fun and cute and has a good heart. It doesn't push the envelope at all, but it boasts some sweet performances and at it's best it had me grinning broadly.

John Travolta is miscast if you ask me. Watching him in a dress was a little like watching a wrecking ball hit a house. He's just looks so, well, awkward in this film. Queen Latifah (in some kind of weird twist) rather phones in her performance. You know I love the Queen and I feel like she usually tears through films and steals scenes like crazy, but in Hairspray she's seriously de-clawed. I liked everyone else in the movie: James Marsden is gorgeous and steely, Christopher Walken is his usual unusual self. Elijah Kelley is superb as Seaweed (that boy can siiing). And I loved Nikki Blonsky, the new Tracy Turnblad.
One question, though: Who is this Zac Efron person? Am I supposed to recognize him? IMDb tells me this is his second feature and that he's done a lot of television. He's strange looking.

Also, I heard Adam Shankman being interviewed on Fresh Air and he sounds really amazing. He started dancing late (like eighteen) and then he auditioned for all of the top dance programs in the country and got into all of them including Juilliard! He started dancing for Paula Abdul and then choreographing and has been working choreographing for movies for about ten years. This guy has had a heck of a career!

Detective Story by Sidney Kingsley

Why aren't there any anthologies of the plays of Sidney Kingsley out there?

Someone needs to get on this A.S.A.P.--like, the Library of America or something. He would be perfect for the Library of America, actually. They could publish his complete works in one of their beautiful anthologies. I don't know why no one is doing this.
Anyway, I am excited about the playwright again, and I assume a lot of other people are as well, what with the revival of Kingsley's Dead End this year at the Ahmanson Theatre. I have a renewed interest because this morning I watched William Wyler's film of Kingsley's play Detective Story. It's a hard-nosed look at a day in the life of a detective who only sees things black and white. It's such an interesting portrait of a "good" man. Kirk Douglas plays the main detective, Jim McLeod and Eleanor Parker plays his wife. The whole thing takes place in the office of the 21st precinct in New York. It's all very familiar territory for Kingsley, it felt like to me. Kingsley's brushstroke is wide: he is concerned with people of all classes and all walks of life and so there are far more characters than there ever ought to be in a play and yet it works. There are also very small cameos by people who are really very influential characters. You know what I mean if you saw or if you've read Dead End. Characters who are all-important in the drama or the story appear on stage only for a single seven- or eight-minute scene. Other characters, often characters not totally essential to the story itself, remain on stage the entire length of the show: in Dead End it's the street boys, who act as makeshift narrators to the drama. Because of this, there are a lot of great roles in the show. Detective Story is the same, with the location remaining the same, but the people and stories moving in and out of the container with seamless fluidity.

The amazing thing about Kingsley, though, is his understanding of character. The Ahmanson revival of Dead End was all about production, so it does me no good to cite it as an example of Kingsley's understanding of human nature, but if you've ever seen the film with Humphrey Bogart and Joel McRea, you know that the play itself is all about character. Kingsley pushes his characters to the brink and then asks them to pick up and go on with their lives. His portrait of Detective McLeod is masterful and tragic and Kirk Douglas's portrayal so intense that I find it simply unbelievable that the Academy didn't nominate him in 1952. He would get nominated in 1953 for The Bad and the Beautiful, but these folks should have been paying better attention to Detective Story. What Kingsley does here with character is simply astounding. He takes a man and builds him up before our eyes: makes us respect him, like him a great deal, and show us all the great noble things about him. Then he turns on his character ever so slightly and turns on us as well: slowly we realize, not that our hero doesn't belong on a pedestal, but that we've put him there because of our own rigidity. It is we, the audience, who is prejudiced, and we never knew it. But Mr. Kingsley isn't done. After our hero falls and we know it, he mercifully lets McLeod realize his own folly and the floodgates open. McLeod has failed and after we've judged him and ourselves, Kingsley asks us to pity him, as we ought to have done all along.
It is a beautiful, clever American play that has a profound understanding of human nature.

*

Oh yeah, and I saw Chicken Little last night. It's fucking horrible. I put it at the bottom of my list for '05: barely above Revenge of the Sith. Spare yourselves and avoid this Disney piece of shit.

Smoked Applewood Bacon and Gorgonzola

This weekend, I achieved what I always attempt: a slower perspective. I smoked hooka on Friday with Scott, Aaron and Julie, while they told me how much they will miss me if I go. I did this until very late while drinking cosmopolitans from a highball. Nice.

Saturday I woke up leisurely and watched Howard Hawks and William Wyler's Come and Get It and was very pleasantly surprised by (mostly) the acting. Howard Hawks is not usually my thing, but Come and Get It has interesting themes of mortality and anti-Capitalism and I think Joel McRea is cute. Then I did laundry and finished last week's crossword.
After that, Wahima met me at my house and then we picked up Mike Steger in Hollywood and headed out to see Laundry & Bourbon at Ultimate. We ended up being at the theatre for four hours (which I had planned on, but which I think was unplanned by my companions) and then we just hung out talking for a few hours. It was Danny, Ashley, Elizabeth, Justin, Aaron, Kim, Mike, Wahima and me, and it was a nice, relaxing time.

Today after sleeping very late I awoke, did some scheduling for the show, updated my Netflix queue, watched an old Charles Boyer/Hedy Lamarr flick: Algiers. Then I watched all of the extras on my copy of Maurice (back to my Merchant Ivory obsession.)

I leisurely headed out to rehearsal around 4:30p, stopping for a chopped salad at CPK and getting in a good bit of reading. It was so nice outside today and I soaked up the fresh air like a dry sponge.