I really enjoyed this film for the excellent performances by Sinatra, Grayson and Durante. There are also many many great musical scenes that go from Bach to boogie woogie and back again. Lawford was, as usual, little more than eye-candy, but it was fun watching him wiggle and bluster his way through a jive song! As a native Brooklynite, I expected the cringeworthy moments, and in this I was not disappointed. The borough itself is name-checked at least 100 times in the script and the depictions are duly corny, but Sinatra singing a love song to the Brooklyn Bridge did the trick - not exactly Tony Bennett in San Francisco but still excellent. I loved it.
Reviews
7 Reviews
It Happened in Brooklyn
(1947)
Likable, musical silly romp through Brooklyn, Hollywood style.
17 November 2017
It's Hard to Be Nice
(2007)
The wear and tear of life in Sarajevo
4 December 2008
The film "It's Hard to be Nice" directed by Srdjan Vuletic, looks at the postwar emotional landscape of Bosnia, where a collective post traumatic stress disorder has taken hold and defined the normal relations between people. The main character, Fudo, and his friends treat each other with utter contempt, cheating and violently confronting each other at the slightest offense. The outside world is seen with equal hostility, as robbers scan the home addresses of foreigners on extended stay in Sarajevo, targeting their home apartments in Germany and Holland for burglary by accomplices. He wants to be at peace with the world, but that's not so easy, when he is being beaten down by the people and circumstance around him. Almost at the breaking point, in the final scenes he stands bloody and enraged, and stares into the eyes of a young child, deciding what to do.
Sasa Petrovic's performance as Fudo is effective, and he won the best actor award in Sarajevo in 2007 for this role. This is not surprising, considering this is just the type of role that goes over especially well at Sarajevo. Daria Lorenci also does well as his wife Azra. The story is fairly simple, a week-in-the-life formula, and the conflict is on-going and essentially unresolved in the end. This works well, because it reflects the reality of life in Bosnia where an uncertain surreal peace fails to totally mask the wounds. Whether those wounds are healing or festering is still anyone's guess. Bosnian audiences respond positively to a story like this, because it brings these questions out into the open and suggests the possibility that this torn nation will heal through sheer force of reason. It is a pleasant film, but it doesn't really break any new ground. Worth seeing, but don't expect an epiphany.
Sasa Petrovic's performance as Fudo is effective, and he won the best actor award in Sarajevo in 2007 for this role. This is not surprising, considering this is just the type of role that goes over especially well at Sarajevo. Daria Lorenci also does well as his wife Azra. The story is fairly simple, a week-in-the-life formula, and the conflict is on-going and essentially unresolved in the end. This works well, because it reflects the reality of life in Bosnia where an uncertain surreal peace fails to totally mask the wounds. Whether those wounds are healing or festering is still anyone's guess. Bosnian audiences respond positively to a story like this, because it brings these questions out into the open and suggests the possibility that this torn nation will heal through sheer force of reason. It is a pleasant film, but it doesn't really break any new ground. Worth seeing, but don't expect an epiphany.
Before the Fall
(2008)
The end is near! So stay alive so you can die.
3 December 2008
The 72 hours before a comet strikes is just enough time to launch a cult film about the struggle of good versus evil. This film may not go far with the Euro-Film-Fest Seventh-Art crowd, but it will definite have legs to stand on for a long time.
3 Días or Three Days (US title) or Before the Fall, (international title), examines the actions of a man stressed almost to the breaking point by outrageous fortune. It is directed by F Javier Guttiérez, and written by him and Juan Velarde. This is a period of three days before the end of the world, in a small town in Spain. What would the general population do if they knew the Earth would be destroyed in three days? You'll have to do most of the imagining yourself, because the film only gives a glance at what is happening in the outside world. This film focuses on one man's efforts to save his family from evil of others in the microcosmic environment of an isolated area of the Spanish interior.
The film is very well made, but the philosophical incongruities of this film's premise undercut the experience for me. It is an odd study of human nature, that this man has no time to ponder his own life, his own personal disappointments and philosophy, but must spend the last 72 hours of existence in this primitive struggle against evil. However, despite the peculiarity and perhaps improbable behavior of the protagonist, it is filmed with subtlety. The land seems timeless, the sun searingly close and the wind explosive. The direction is also excellent, not only for the major characters but for everyone that comes before the camera, and the people are dangerous and inscrutable and very cinematic. In keeping with the apocalyptic theme, there are some bloody scenes, though none are particularly gruesome. The scenes of violence against young children, however, are difficult to take.
Victor Clavijo plays the part of Alejandro with amazing energy and emotional involvement. This is acting that is worthy of award attention, but although the film was considered in the pre-selection for the European Film Awards in 2008, it did not make it to the final round. It is the kind of acting that usually gets ignored at the European Film Awards: physicality and pathos don't play well across the European cultural divide. It was also produced by Antonio Banderas, an important figure in international cinema with the smell of Hollywood about him, not exactly considered an eau de cologne at EFA. Add to that its aura of genre film, kind of sci-fi, fantasy and El Mariachi cultish. It is easy to see why the film has been totally ignored for EFA awards in 2008.
The screenplay, written by the director Guttiérez and Juan Velarde, won the Best First Screenplay award at the Málaga Film Festival, and that, I would say, is about as far as the awards should go for this script, since the script is probably one of the weakest elements here. It effectively sets up the situation and develops the tension in an exciting way, but there are the usual lapses of logic that occur when a European auteur film has not gone through a thorough review. Who are the violent criminals in the early scenes? Why does the grandmother wander away? Why would the children accept this situation without question? These are irritating problems that could have easily been fixed with some more careful scripting.
In general, it is a satisfying genre film, an action-slash-slasher film in an unusual setting, and it serves to introduce Clavijo, a well known Spanish TV actor, to the international cinema. Though it is not my cup of tea, I think this film will continue to attract viewers for years to come as it spreads beyond Europe just below the radar.
3 Días or Three Days (US title) or Before the Fall, (international title), examines the actions of a man stressed almost to the breaking point by outrageous fortune. It is directed by F Javier Guttiérez, and written by him and Juan Velarde. This is a period of three days before the end of the world, in a small town in Spain. What would the general population do if they knew the Earth would be destroyed in three days? You'll have to do most of the imagining yourself, because the film only gives a glance at what is happening in the outside world. This film focuses on one man's efforts to save his family from evil of others in the microcosmic environment of an isolated area of the Spanish interior.
The film is very well made, but the philosophical incongruities of this film's premise undercut the experience for me. It is an odd study of human nature, that this man has no time to ponder his own life, his own personal disappointments and philosophy, but must spend the last 72 hours of existence in this primitive struggle against evil. However, despite the peculiarity and perhaps improbable behavior of the protagonist, it is filmed with subtlety. The land seems timeless, the sun searingly close and the wind explosive. The direction is also excellent, not only for the major characters but for everyone that comes before the camera, and the people are dangerous and inscrutable and very cinematic. In keeping with the apocalyptic theme, there are some bloody scenes, though none are particularly gruesome. The scenes of violence against young children, however, are difficult to take.
Victor Clavijo plays the part of Alejandro with amazing energy and emotional involvement. This is acting that is worthy of award attention, but although the film was considered in the pre-selection for the European Film Awards in 2008, it did not make it to the final round. It is the kind of acting that usually gets ignored at the European Film Awards: physicality and pathos don't play well across the European cultural divide. It was also produced by Antonio Banderas, an important figure in international cinema with the smell of Hollywood about him, not exactly considered an eau de cologne at EFA. Add to that its aura of genre film, kind of sci-fi, fantasy and El Mariachi cultish. It is easy to see why the film has been totally ignored for EFA awards in 2008.
The screenplay, written by the director Guttiérez and Juan Velarde, won the Best First Screenplay award at the Málaga Film Festival, and that, I would say, is about as far as the awards should go for this script, since the script is probably one of the weakest elements here. It effectively sets up the situation and develops the tension in an exciting way, but there are the usual lapses of logic that occur when a European auteur film has not gone through a thorough review. Who are the violent criminals in the early scenes? Why does the grandmother wander away? Why would the children accept this situation without question? These are irritating problems that could have easily been fixed with some more careful scripting.
In general, it is a satisfying genre film, an action-slash-slasher film in an unusual setting, and it serves to introduce Clavijo, a well known Spanish TV actor, to the international cinema. Though it is not my cup of tea, I think this film will continue to attract viewers for years to come as it spreads beyond Europe just below the radar.
Revanche
(2008)
The Bauer at the brothel, the peasant and the prostitute
3 December 2008
Revanche. Written and directed by Götz Spielmann. The look of the film is thoroughly authentic, and the Austrian milieu very convincing. Johannes Krisch is fabulous as Alex, the peasant brute with a broken heart and an uncontrollable sex drive. Andreas Lust is very good as well, as Robert, Alex's police officer nemesis. Caught in the middle is Ursula Strauss, who plays Susanne, Robert's wife.
The story starts out in the squalid world of Viennese prostitution, at a tacky brothel on the periphery. Alex works for the local prostitution boss and he has fallen in love with one of the Eastern European streetwalkers, Tamara, played by Irina Potapenko. When Tamara is recruited for a promotion to call-girl, she decides instead to run away with Alex. Here the story moves to the countryside where Alex's father lives in a miserable cabin on the outskirts of modern Austrian society. But if the surrounding become simpler, the interaction does not, as Alex becomes entangled in the lives of the small town police office and his wife.
The film is satisfying on many levels. It is a veritable ethnographic study of the interface between post-modern Central European human trafficking and pre-industrial Austrian bauern culture. Alex and his father speak to each other in what has been described to me as a rich and authentic peasant dialect rarely represented in film. Not only does it look and sound authentic, but the story makes perfect sense, too. And that's saying a lot for a European "written and directed by" film, where narrative logic doesn't often get more than cursory consideration. The name "revanche" has a double meaning in German, both revenge and a return match or a second chance, and it seems that both of these ideas are being developed throughout the story, as characters juggle their need to get even with their desire to secure their own futures. The tragic consequences of their every action lead them further and further down a path not of their own choosing. We get a taste of this feeling of predestination when the camera stops still at a forested point in the road, a spot that will take on fatal significance later in the story. Yet, if fate controls the characters' destinies, it is the strength of willpower that will decide who survives and who will fade into insignificance.
Revanche did not get nominated in any categories for the EFA awards in 2008, but it is Austria's entry for the Oscar Foreign Language film nomination in 2009.
The story starts out in the squalid world of Viennese prostitution, at a tacky brothel on the periphery. Alex works for the local prostitution boss and he has fallen in love with one of the Eastern European streetwalkers, Tamara, played by Irina Potapenko. When Tamara is recruited for a promotion to call-girl, she decides instead to run away with Alex. Here the story moves to the countryside where Alex's father lives in a miserable cabin on the outskirts of modern Austrian society. But if the surrounding become simpler, the interaction does not, as Alex becomes entangled in the lives of the small town police office and his wife.
The film is satisfying on many levels. It is a veritable ethnographic study of the interface between post-modern Central European human trafficking and pre-industrial Austrian bauern culture. Alex and his father speak to each other in what has been described to me as a rich and authentic peasant dialect rarely represented in film. Not only does it look and sound authentic, but the story makes perfect sense, too. And that's saying a lot for a European "written and directed by" film, where narrative logic doesn't often get more than cursory consideration. The name "revanche" has a double meaning in German, both revenge and a return match or a second chance, and it seems that both of these ideas are being developed throughout the story, as characters juggle their need to get even with their desire to secure their own futures. The tragic consequences of their every action lead them further and further down a path not of their own choosing. We get a taste of this feeling of predestination when the camera stops still at a forested point in the road, a spot that will take on fatal significance later in the story. Yet, if fate controls the characters' destinies, it is the strength of willpower that will decide who survives and who will fade into insignificance.
Revanche did not get nominated in any categories for the EFA awards in 2008, but it is Austria's entry for the Oscar Foreign Language film nomination in 2009.
Maria
(2003)
A true story in more ways than one
14 August 2008
The story of Maria, the impoverished wife of a factory worker with seven kids, is based on a true story. However, after watching the film, I felt that I had seen the story of millions of women throughout the post-communist world and elsewhere wherever urban poverty exists. The details are crystal clear, the obstacles scorchingly real, but the overarching struggle, to put food on the table for her seven children, is the story that involves the viewer.
Besides that, we see the husband and his best friend, a sort of Sancho Panza type, as they stumble their way through life, irresponsibly leaving their families to drink, gamble and drift away. The husband is an enigma, being reduced to yet another obstacle in Maria's life. I think the film would have much more depth if we could understand the husband a bit better. He represents the other side of urban, post-industrial society, the loss of a role for the unemployed father.
In all, it is a beautifully written story, with some excellent acting from all the main cast. A truly worthwhile film to see.
Besides that, we see the husband and his best friend, a sort of Sancho Panza type, as they stumble their way through life, irresponsibly leaving their families to drink, gamble and drift away. The husband is an enigma, being reduced to yet another obstacle in Maria's life. I think the film would have much more depth if we could understand the husband a bit better. He represents the other side of urban, post-industrial society, the loss of a role for the unemployed father.
In all, it is a beautifully written story, with some excellent acting from all the main cast. A truly worthwhile film to see.
Hârtia va fi albastra
(2006)
This film is a good first step in beginning to make sense of the last days of the Ceausescu regime.
7 September 2007
This is a film about one of the most iconic and fateful events of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the liberation of Romania in December, 1989. It was the most brutal confrontation of that historical period, and the one that is perhaps least understood.
The film opens with a scene of senseless violence, a case of confusion and wild gunfire in the dawn hours of December 23, 1989. This serves as the context and creates the mood of panic, confusion and deadly danger of this film.
The film takes us inside an armored militia vehicle as it patrols the streets of Bucharest on the darkest night of revolution. The soldiers are confused, unsure of even the most basic truths about their job: Who are they protecting? What are they defending and who are they fighting? Who are they serving? What country is this? The soldiers have no idea,and they prefer not to think about it.
This is the story of revolution. What seems to us such heroic activity guided by higher ideals of liberty and justice, is often unimaginable confusion and wasteful carnage.
The performances are very good, the characterizations low keyed and hemmed in, just as these soldiers are hemmed in by the circumstances they find themselves in. The dialog is terse and chattering, in nervous counterpoint to the deadly serious events. But the events are at times mercilessly confusing, and this tends to decrease the impact of some of the key scenes. Just because the characters are confused doesn't mean that the film viewers should be as well! This is especially true at the television station when it is quite difficult to tell which side the soldiers there are defending.
In general, the film is quite successful in that it brings the viewer into that time and place, and makes the madness come alive. I think there is room for further development of some of the characters, as there is so much irony in their predicament that is only obliquely alluded to. As for the ending, I was a bit disappointed that the filmmaker chose not to show the final scene that we are left to imagine. It seems like a choice of modesty that does not give full impact to the pathological nature of war.
The film opens with a scene of senseless violence, a case of confusion and wild gunfire in the dawn hours of December 23, 1989. This serves as the context and creates the mood of panic, confusion and deadly danger of this film.
The film takes us inside an armored militia vehicle as it patrols the streets of Bucharest on the darkest night of revolution. The soldiers are confused, unsure of even the most basic truths about their job: Who are they protecting? What are they defending and who are they fighting? Who are they serving? What country is this? The soldiers have no idea,and they prefer not to think about it.
This is the story of revolution. What seems to us such heroic activity guided by higher ideals of liberty and justice, is often unimaginable confusion and wasteful carnage.
The performances are very good, the characterizations low keyed and hemmed in, just as these soldiers are hemmed in by the circumstances they find themselves in. The dialog is terse and chattering, in nervous counterpoint to the deadly serious events. But the events are at times mercilessly confusing, and this tends to decrease the impact of some of the key scenes. Just because the characters are confused doesn't mean that the film viewers should be as well! This is especially true at the television station when it is quite difficult to tell which side the soldiers there are defending.
In general, the film is quite successful in that it brings the viewer into that time and place, and makes the madness come alive. I think there is room for further development of some of the characters, as there is so much irony in their predicament that is only obliquely alluded to. As for the ending, I was a bit disappointed that the filmmaker chose not to show the final scene that we are left to imagine. It seems like a choice of modesty that does not give full impact to the pathological nature of war.
Carefree
(1938)
One bad turn after another.
2 January 2007
I think this is my least favorite Astaire-Rogers film! The story is dreadful, and gets in the way of my enjoyment of the goings-on. Astaire's character is about the most unprofessional shrink imaginable, and an even worse friend to Ralph Bellamy. There is one point where Fred Astaire thinks it's a good idea to punch Ginger in the face in order to get her to listen to him, he checks himself at the last moment put she gets punched by mistake. It is almost as gruesome as the scene in the park where she is trying to shoot Astaire with a rifle, and sends dozens of people running for their lives. The dancing is lackadaisical, though there is one sequence where Astaire and Rogers dance marvelously fast arm in arm that is delight to watch. There is one absolutely superb song in this grim romp through hell, "Change Partners", but it can't save this clunker.
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