The Long Hot Summer

A candy-covered, technicolor "Tennessee-Williams Lite" movie about a southern con-man/barn burner (Paul Newman) who visits a small southern town and impresses the town patriarch (Orson Welles) and his spinster daughter (Joanne Woodward).  Enjoyable on its on terms, this silly movie has something from everyone.  There's  the Newman-Woodward romance for the ladies,  Lee Remick (who deserved more screen time) for the men, and Welles and Angela Landsbury for those who care about acting.  As for the  story,  its set in the mythical Hollywood Deep South (home of crude cigar chomping patriarchs, Greek column mansions, and hot steamy southern sex) and  bears little relationship to Faulkner or  reality. But if you want to see Paul Newman with his shirt off or Orson Welles playing Burl Ives playing Big Daddy its OK.  Rating **1/2

Other Views:

Manny Farber:  "The fooler in the peepshow is that the jolts are conspicuous waste effects: the beguilement comes from a certain chicanery and crochet like precision.  A counterfeit graphic-ness - that fact that Orson Welles storms a plantation on a jeep, talks fast in clogged-mattress Southernese and carries a lapel-pocket filled with Japanese garden of choice Ever sharps - is obvious in every scene of the likable precious "The Long hot Summer".  The fantastic note is not in the hokey naturalism, but in the exquisite  speed-writing that arranges the spots and collides them with steel writing clarity."

Bosley Crowther:  "There are those who would like to rate this picture, produced by Jerry Wald for Twentieth Century-Fox, alongside that same producer's (and studio's) "Peyton Place." Both of them tell stories of tensions in American towns. There is one noticeable difference. "Peyton Place" started weakly and got strong. "The Long, Hot Summer" starts superbly and ends in a senseless, flabby heap."

Hell's Angels (1930)

Plot:  Two brothers (one good and one bad) leave Oxford and join in the British Royal Flying Corps in World War I.  One brother falls  for Jean Harlow.

Great old fashioned war film with some of the greatest air-to-air combat scenes ever filmed. The plot is standard and the acting often wooden but it held my interest. Most memorable wartime scenes: the beautifully photographed aerial dogfight skirmishes, German zeppelin raids over London, and the red-tinted and two-color Technicolor scenes. Jean Harlow further perks things up as a sexy, but untrustworthy, "good time girl" who utters the immortal words "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?"  I even enjoyed the "Cornball dialogue" and "Melodramatics" as a nice change of pace from constant 21st century cynicism & sophistication. Rating ***

The Descendants (2011)

Plot: After his wife is injured in an accident, a wealthy Hawaiian Landowner (George Clooney) tries both to reconnect with his daughters and confront his wife's lover.

The Descendants has its heart in the right place along with a wonderful supporting cast, especially Beau Bridges and Robert Forester.  A generally somber film -  its nothing spectacular, just a good, solid story with identifiable characters.  Obviously aimed at the aging boomers,  I  loved the films over-all message about family and preference for community over mere money.  Too bad the script wasn't deeper, less vulgar and more challenging.  Like Woody's "Midnight in Paris" the story seems somewhat "dumbed-down" to ensure greater popularity.  Case-in-point is a jarring opening narration that tells us dummies that people in  paradise (aka Hawaii) have problems too. Duh, really?  But Hawaii still looks beautiful.   Rating ***

Monte Walsh (1970)

Lee Marvin and Jack Palance star in this leisurely character study of two old cowboys facing the end of the Old West. While the entire cast is excellent,  both Marvin and Palance are perfect as regular likable guys caught up in circumstances beyond their control.  A nice little movie, with some good moments, but needing more energy and better action scenes.  The movie often seems so intent on being "low-key" and "realistic" that it forgets to be entertaining.  Rating ***

Manny Farber - Evenings-In take

http://evenings-in.blogspot.com/2005/04/manny-farber-film-critic-as-art-hunk.html

But to whom do tracts championing Hawks or the French New Wave sound radical now? Farber and film began to break apart in the post-60's era, and his late reviews sound puzzled by the advent of movies built by men educated on his precepts, but not his scruples. “Taxi Driver”? Farber's late career piece dedicated to this Scorcese/Shrader celebration of murder is ambivalent, appearing very near the end of "Negative Space," dripping palpable discomfort now as he witnesses his criticism's big influence on these guys, an influence as responsible for the bad parts in the flick as the good. Must have been bracing.

At this point in our Nation's cinematic life, Manny retreated from the critic's battle to inform and confront. He claims, believably, the break came when the public started embracing the mythic in earnest. The grand visions being manufactured by the New Hollywood (the old New Hollywood, of Coppola, Lucas, etc.), turned him off—and just when he thought film would break from the strictly small-time commercial, and give us the vast universe of the personal intelligence! Instead it decided to sell tickets, lots of tickets, and in unlocking this route to the mega-commercial with fake venerations of the commonly mythic, or mythically common, Hollywood lost Manny forever. More interesting to the Farb Man at the end were Herzog and Snow and Chantal Akerman (the names become less and less familiar the further we progress toward the end of his critical career, don't they? Wouldn't most "film fanz" of today shout, "Manny, lighten up! It's a story about a killer kabbie! Lean back and enjoy the ride!"). "

Was the problem that Hollywood started succeeding with brutal machines inspired in some perverse way by his own ideals? Or did he just lose interest, or get old? I think he recognized his interests had veered off into a scorched field of commercially useless art films, and he didn't like the idea of becoming irrelevant, "that old kook, that artist, Farber." It was great to play the prophet for a while, and then an apostle—but when nobody converts, you gotta change jobs fast. Becoming yet another irritating academic championing unseen art must not have appealed, so logically he gave up writing his elaborate criticism/poems for an audience so small and refined. He must have missed the bright lights, big city of the earlier days, and ultimately, he couldn’t stand to surrender all traces of populism. The goose was cooked once he saw "the public" wasn't going to follow him into these formalist art films and their aesthetic determinism. The fun for him must have always come in creating these masterpiece meditations with oodles of high art appeal as mere adornments for mass-media popular entertainments—a Marlowe-like detective, bent on discovering the transcendent art in the transient and commercial.

Rich Man, Poor Man (1976)

Plot: We follow two NY small-town brothers and their girlfriend from 1946-1965
Stars: Nick Nolte (Tom), Peter Strauss (Rudy) Susan Blakely (Julie)

Pros: Falconitti character, Nolte, action scenes, supporting actors, Susan Blakely is hot
Cons: Peter Strauss and the Rudy character, too long, mediocre story and writing

Rich Man, Poor Man was as enormous hit on American TV in 1976, leading the Networks to produce other famous min-series such as The Winds of War and nighttime soaps like “Dallas” and Falcon Crest. Nolte is the main reason to see the show. The series comes alive whenever he’s onscreen and he fits his character perfectly. Blakely is effective and sexy - but asked to do too much as her character goes through wild/unrealistic changes of emotion and attitude. Strauss is a disappointment. While his part is dull, he does nothing to improve it, and is charisma-free. The supporting actors are good - especially Smith as the unforgettable villain “Falconitti”. The overrated Asner is adequate as the father.

Based on the Irwin Shaw novel, the story isn’t art but a glorified soap opera. Starting out strong it falters in the last third. The series (and novel) try to make a grand statement about “Post war America” but accomplish nothing more than: "America is corrupt, everything stinks and unracist good guys should move to France."

Summary: Not as good as I remember but still OK. Fast-forward when Strauss appears without Blakely or Nolte. Rating **1/2

The Help (2011)

Plot: In 1963 Mississippi, a white society girl turns everyone's lives upside down when she interviews the black maids/nannies working for prominent families.

Pros: Acting by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer.  Houses lovely to look at
Cons: Predictable story and characters, Direction, Black characters given too little screen time

A dumb chick flick movie about segregation, black maids, and their white bosses in 1963 Mississippi. While Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer are excellent as the black maids, (if only the movie had been just about them!) the main focus is on the white actresses, especially our heroine "Skeeter" (Emma Stone). Everyone is a predictable caricature; the snobby cold-hearted racist, the pure-at-heart heroine who KNOWS racism is wrong, the over-controlling boyfriend who's put in his place, etc.

 Another variation on the great boomer morality play where we get to boo the evil white segregationists, cheer the noble (mostly) underdog blacks, and identify with our plucky, white, proto-feminist, liberal heroine. The direction adds to the air of unreality by making 1963 Mississippi so colorful, bright, and clean it seems like Disneyland. Are white liberals ever going to tire of revisiting those great wonderful days of Segregation? I hope so. Of course, I'm not the target audience for the film and only saw it as a favor. Rating **