by Dean | Nov 10, 2015 | General
Matthew Weiner, the creator of the series Mad Men, is probably more politically liberal than conservative, and yet a final-season episode of his show acknowledges that Nixon, in 1969, was trying to end the Vietnam War, something leftists all over the country strongly doubted. It is the Republican politician Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), not Nixon, who receives a jab for mendaciously saying he supports the President’s objective instead of the war effort, but such dishonesty emanates from pols on both the Right and the Left. And it emanates from the basically liberal but oversensitive and scurvy Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), involved with a new girlfriend in the final season after his nice wife spurned him for his adultery.
The Mad Ave master, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), makes no political pronouncements but merely adheres to his religion of Coming Out On Top. What he quietly realizes, however, is that without family he is too often on the bottom. His physical separation from wife Megan (Jessica Pare), whom he can love (but does he?), parallels his separation from his children and, to be sure, his first wife. Don cannot afford to let HIS religion trump family love, and an episode persuading us to believe this ends with daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka) flatly but sincerely telling Don, “Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you.” It is one of the many scenes that demonstrate how much Mad Men concentrates on the human heart.
Mad Men (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Nov 8, 2015 | General
Needless to say, the computer-animated The Peanuts Movie (2015) contains a lot of humor. What it lacks is the excellent wit of Charles Schulz‘s A Charlie Brown Christmas and, of course, the comic strip, although this is not to say it completely lacks wit. No, sir.
Scriptwriters Craig Schulz (Charles’s son) and Bryan Schulz (grandson) purvey a Charlie Brown who causes problems for others as much as for himself, albeit one who is assuredly spared is the sad sack’s love interest. The movie’s central element is C.B.’s hope of impressing The Little Red-Haired Girl, a newcomer to the neighborhood and, here, a lass whose face is very slowly revealed in full. Amid all the slapstick, Chuck keeps his distance from her—but, withal, he does make progress and so a certain sunny vision arises in the flick.
No, it isn’t quite what Charles Schulz gave us, but I agree with the critic who said the movie feels like “the return of an old friend.”
by Dean | Nov 3, 2015 | General
I wish the creators of Jane the Virgin hadn’t made Luisa a lesbian because, as far as I’m concerned, Yara Martinez, who plays her, is too lovely to be one. (Lipstick lesbians are too lovely to be lesbians.) But, well, make her one they did; and so what we have is some curious comic action involving a lively beauty who’s uninterested in men. What a drag. At any rate, the comic action is there: While Jane fusses with the baby, poor Luisa gets kidnapped by men who handle her with kid gloves until they unfeelingly whack her in the leg. (What’s up with that?) Luisa is a SOMEWHAT engaging character—she’d be more engaging in the arms of a man—and Martinez portrays her skillfully. I fear the actress might be boring in serious moments, but in comic ones she can do funny desperation. Counts for a lot.
by Dean | Nov 1, 2015 | General
Rambling Rose (1991), starring Laura Dern, pretends to be consequential but isn’t. It’s as trivial as that 1984 flick with Sally Field, Places in the Heart, which at least features a nice slice of Christianity. Rose has no real interest at all in Christianity and no good reason to exist. If its nonexistence were a fact, we would be spared Elmer Bernstein‘s saccharine music and a slight adolescent vulgarity.
Cover of Rambling Rose
by Dean | Oct 29, 2015 | General
Preston Sturges based his script for The Lady Eve (1941) on a story by one Monckton Hoffe and then directed what was one of the best screwball comedies of the Hollywood-studio years. In it, a father-and-daughter con artist team attempts to bamboozle a wealthy young snake expert (Henry Fonda) but, as it happens, a cynic, the daughter (Barbara Stanwyck), falls for a non-cynic, the young man. She never misses a beat. Imperturbably she aimed to cheat him at cards, now she imperturbably likes the fellow and says no to cheating him—except that he soon breaks up with her.
The old charmer, Sturges, is at it again—teasing us with hard reality before proving once more that he’s in a romantic mood. The hard reality is Stanwyck’s elaborate plot to—get even?—with Fonda, who does need to learn a little lesson.
Even more fun than The Great McGinty, Eve is a farce of manners, an unfrothy romp. Stanwyck is fine in her juicy role, but I like Sturges’s The Palm Beach Story a bit more because Claudette Colbert looks more feminine than Stanwyck.
The Lady Eve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
