One thing I love about blogging here is the sense of a real conversation developing with readers.  Several weeks ago, I wrote about Laurel and Hardy’s first talkie, UNACCUSTOMED AS WE ARE, and the comments to that post inspired me to explore the larger story of the transition from silent to sound—and that post’s comments were so wide-ranging and inspiring I have my work cut out for me to just keep up.  I’m not surprised that readers challenged my off-hand references to Buster Keaton’s talkies—and next week I’ll pick that thread back up—but I was surprised (read: thrilled) that the comments then spurted off in an unexpected tangent about Westerns.

Duke Roberts specifically asked: “Could you research why exactly the western died the way it did? The one western a year, or every other year, does not satisfy.”

Why have Westerns spiffled out as a genre?  Well, I don’t want to just toss out half-baked ideas, so let me work through these things over the course of several posts.

I’d like to start off by taking a look at one particular issue: how Westerns portray Native Americans.  The Cowboys ‘n’ Injuns storylines of a lot of older Westerns weren’t meant to have the kind of deep cultural complexity that they now do—and that means that modern Westerns either have to mostly ignore the native peoples, or directly address the complicated politics involved.

If scientists were to announce tomorrow that astronomers suddenly discovered that, y’know, outer space really doesn’t exist, and in fact all those things we call stars are just sparkly lights in a solid firmament located immediately in the sky, just like the ancients believed… well, that would have ramifications for people making SF movies, and we might be sitting here talking about why nobody makes films like STAR WARS anymore.

So, what I’d like to do is take you through a mirror world of Westerns from a parallel universe that has a wholly different take on the relationship between white settlers and natives—and may help shine a light on how universal the Western genre actually is.

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Our friend David Konow is subbing in for me today to mark the birthday on January 3 of legendary Hollywood editor Thelma Schoonmaker.  David’s talk with Thelma was published originally in the defunct trade magazine ScreenTalk in 2003. READ MORE

Peter Sellers was one of the most talented character actors and comedians of his generation. Many of his best roles were improvised and he used his quick wit, Chaplinesque finesse and chameleon-like abilities to transform modern comedy. Although his career really began in the 1950s, Sellers seemed to embody the rebellious and hedonistic spirit of Swinging London but he was more than just a talented performer. Sellers was a “Happening” that everyone wanted to take part in. He partied with rock stars and slept with a bevy of beautiful women. But in the end he seemed to burn out as quickly as the generation that spawned him. By 1980 Peter Sellers was dead but he left behind an incredible legacy that reached its peak in 1979 while making Hal Ashby’s seminal film Being There. In Being There Sellers is no longer just the insightful clown or bumbling ne’er-do-well that made him an international superstar. As Chance the Gardener, Sellers became the sparkling reflection of everything that audiences had invested in him during his brilliant and brief career. It was an astonishing farewell and one of the finest curtain calls an actor could possibly offer his critics.

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Happy New Year!

You may wish to begin the year by vowing to lose weight, (how original!…and welcome to the club), mastering the arcane intricacies of Farmville, (is it a game or a cult?), spending more quality time with your pet iguana, or finishing War and Peace–or at least cracking open the first, mischievous volume of The Autobiography of Mark Twain that Santa left behind for you. My personal mountain to climb in 2011 will be the nagging desire to finally conquer my mental block when it comes to knitting. Yes, “knit one, purl two” is a phrase that conjures up feelings of frustration, self-contempt and the urge to fling the needles and gnarled yarn across the room. Persistence, of course usually pays off. Unfortunately, for this chronically challenged crafter, the glamorous world of interweaving lamb’s wool into something useful and colorful has been a bust…so far.

My decision to follow the stony, humbling path of learning to knit began again at a recent trip to the movies when I spied a fellow theater goer knitting merrily away–in the dark! Impressive, especially since the movie was the rather loud (at times) and visually amusing Gulliver’s Travels (2010), though the intricate work of this knitting fiend in the next row never seemed to falter. After this, I decided to make a greater effort to psyche myself up, gird my loins and bite the bullet while admitting my many shortcomings face-to-face with the accomplished instructors at a local yarn shop. I’ve also begun to notice that some of the glamourpusses of the silver screen were demon knitters, and they don’t get more dazzling than Cary Grant in Mr. Lucky , do they?
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Hideko Takamine, who passed away on Dec. 28th at the age of 86, had a face worth puzzling over. In her films with director Mikio Naruse, she engineered an impassive, barely perceptible sag to her delicate kewpie doll features,  embodying the spiritual toll post-WWII deprivations had inflicted on her indomitable Japanese women. She expresses the sag with supreme subtlety in Floating Clouds (1955), and later, When A Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) (both available on this BFI box). But this reduces her accomplishments to my limited view of what I’ve seen of her work, as she had a long career before and after the masterpieces I associate her with.

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I love the camaraderie among movie lovers who live to share discoveries of forgotten classics, overlooked new releases, and unsung foreign films. Movie lovers are an eclectic group who are diverse in age, race, and class but are united in their passion for watching films from any era, genre, or country. Recently, when I was stewing over what to write about for this blog, my cousin Britain Callen suggested I pen something on Irene Dunne. Brit is an intelligent twenty-something currently studying criminal justice in grad school. While most members of her generation have never heard of Dunne—let  alone want to read something about her—Brit  is a classic-movie buff and a diehard fan of TCM. At the mention of Dunne’s name, I thought of Theodora Goes Wild, which is my favorite film starring the Golden Age actress. Theodora Goes Wild was the film that made me a true fan of Dunne’s. Prior to watching it, I was appreciative of her but not particularly interested in her star image as the prim and slightly priggish woman too proper to let her hair down. However, when fellow cinephile and film historian Stephen Reginald presented Theodora Goes Wild for the midnight movie series at Facets Multi-Media, I was influenced by his passion for this unsung screwball comedy, which helped me see the appeal of Dunne’s star image and her talent for this type of material. In the spirit of spreading the word about a great film, I share this discovery with Brit and other movie lovers who are always in search of a cinematic adventure.

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I celebrated the new year by proofing a final mock-up of my Spring arthouse calendar film series program. It will screen about 50 films. Some new. Some old. The selection usually nets an equal amount of praise and criticism. I put out a sneak preview of coming attractions on my FaceBook page the other day and within a few minutes received one enthusiastic remark from a reader looking forward to the latest Steven Soderbergh documentary about Spalding Gray (that one called And Everything Is Going Fine) while simultaneously getting one smack-down from a reader wanting to know why I won’t be screening González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, or Charles’ Ferguson’s excellent documentary regarding the details of our recent financial collapse, Inside Job, or even something so obviously winning as L’illusionist, which displays the latest animation of Sylvain Chomet of The Triplets of Belleville fame – especially as it is working from an unpublished screenplay by Jacques Tati. What could be more perfect for an arthouse theater? For those curious how this particular film curator made his final choices, here are my answers. READ MORE

A few weeks ago I was bloviating self-importantly about Laurel and Hardy’s debut talkie, Unaccustomed As We Are, and how I felt it demonstrated the ability of silent-era comedians to weather the transition to sound without losing a step.  Some of the replies in the comments section addressed the central question directly:

“What’s strange to me is that, to judge from most of the histories I’ve heard, people suddenly stopped being interested in the kind of comedy they’d loved for decades, silent comedy in the style rather than the technical sense, as soon as sound showed up. People watch that kind of comedy now- Mr. Bean is an internationally popular figure, and Mr. Hulot was one before him, both of them fundamentally silent comedians dropped into a sound world a la Modern Times. So what killed it back then? Why did people suddenly want all Grouchos and no Harpos?”

That’s a superb question, Tom S., and very carefully phrased at that.  It’s a question I’ve been thinking about for many years, and while I can’t pretend to have a definitive answer, I do have some ideas.

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