Tag: Lincoln

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Film Features Film/TV

The Sweet Thereafter

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Memphis Flyer (our first quarter quell, as it were), I have chosen my personal favorite film from each year since the Flyer began publication. Then, for each of those films, I unearthed and have excerpted some quotes from the review we ran at the time. — Greg Akers

1989: #1 Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch (#2 Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee)

“While all the scenes in Mystery Train are identifiable by anyone living west of Goodlett, their geographical relationship gets altered to a point where we start to trust Jarmusch more than our own memories.” — Jim Newcomb, March 8, 1990

“Filmed primarily at the downtown corner of South Main and Calhoun, Jarmusch does not use the Peabody Hotel, the Mississippi River, Graceland, or most of the other locations that the Chamber of Commerce would thrust before any visiting filmmaker. His domain concerns exactly that territory which is not regularly tread by the masses, and his treatment of Memphis is likely to open a few eyes.”
— Robert Gordon, March 8, 1990

1990: #1 Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese (#2 Reversal of Fortune, Barbet Schroeder)

“This may not be De Niro’s best-ever performance, but he’s got that gangster thang down pat. His accent is flawless, his stature is perfect, and, boy, does he give Sansabelt slacks new meaning.”
— The Cinema Sisters, September 27, 1990

1991: #1 Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron (#2 The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme)

“Terminator 2 is an Alfa Romeo of a movie: pricey, sleek, fast, and loaded with horsepower. By comparison, the first Terminator was a Volkswagen. On the whole, I’d rather have a Volkswagen — they’re cheap and reliable. But, hey, Alfas can be fun too.” — Ed Weathers, July 11, 1993

1992: #1 Glengarry Glen Ross, James Foley (#2 The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann)

“Mamet’s brilliantly stylized look at the American Dream’s brutality as practiced by low-rent real estate salesmen who would put the screws to their mothers to keep their own tawdry jobs doesn’t relax its hard muscle for a moment. In the hands of this extraordinary cast, it is like a male chorus on amphetamines singing a desparate, feverish ode to capitalism and testosterone run amuck.”
— Hadley Hury, October 15, 1992

1993: #1 Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater (#2 Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg)

“Dazed and Confused is a brief trip down memory lane. The characters are not just protagonists and antagonists. They are clear representations of the folks we once knew, and their feelings are those we had years and years ago. Linklater doesn’t, however, urge us to get mushy. He is just asking us to remember.”
— Susan Ellis, November 4, 1993

1994: #1 Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino (#2 Ed Wood, Tim Burton)

“Even though Tarantino is known for his bratty insistence on being shocking by way of gratuitous violence and ethnic slurs, it’s the little things that mean so much in a Tarantino film — camera play, dialogue, performances, and music.”
— Susan Ellis, October 20, 1994

1995: #1 Heat, Michael Mann
(#2 Toy Story, John Lasseter)

“I’m sick of lowlifes and I’m sick of being told to find them fascinating by writers and directors who get a perverse testosterone rush in exalting these lives to a larger-than-life heroism with slow-motion, lovingly lingered-over mayhem and death, expertly photographed and disturbingly dehumanizing.”
— Hadley Hury, December 21, 1995

1996: #1 Lone Star, John Sayles
(#2 Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Although Lone Star takes place in a dusty Texas border town, it comes into view like a welcome oasis on the landscape of dog-day action films … Chris Cooper and Sayles’ sensitive framing of the performance produce an arresting character who inhabits a world somewhere between Dostoevsky and Larry McMurtry.”
— Hadley Hury, August 8, 1996

1997: #1 L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson (#2 The Apostle, Robert Duvall)

L.A. Confidential

“L.A. Confidential takes us with it on a descent, and not one frame of this remarkable film tips its hand as to whether we’ll go to hell or, if we do, whether we’ll come back. We end up on the edge of our seat, yearning for two protagonists, both anti-heroes … to gun their way to a compromised moral victory, to make us believe again in at least the possibility of trust.”

— Hadley Hury, October 2, 1997

1998: #1 Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg (#2 The Big Lebowski, Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Spielberg is finishing the job he began with Schindler’s List. He’s already shown us why World War II was fought; now he shows us how. … Spielberg’s message is that war is horrifying yet sometimes necessary. And that may be true. But I still prefer the message gleaned from Peter Weir’s 1981 masterpiece, Gallipoli: War is stupid.” — Debbie Gilbert, July 30, 1998

1999: #1 Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson (#2 The End of the Affair, Neil Jordan)

“Magnolia is a film in motion; there’s a cyclical nature where paths are set that will be taken. It’s about fate, not will, where the bad will hurt and good will be redeemed.”
— Susan Ellis, January 13, 2000

2000: #1 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee (#2 You Can Count On Me, Kenneth Lonergan)

“Thrilling as art and entertainment, as simple movie pleasure, and as Oscar-baiting ‘prestige’ cinema. Early hype has the film being compared to Star Wars. … An even more apt comparison might be Singin’ in the Rain, a genre celebration that Crouching Tiger at least approaches in its lightness, joy, and the sheer kinetic wonder of its fight/dance set pieces.”
— Chris Herrington, February 1, 2001

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

2001: #1 A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg (#2 Amélie,
Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

“What happens when Eyes Wide Shut meets E.T.? What does the audience do? And who is the audience?”
— Chris Herrington, June 28, 2001

2002: #1 City of God, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund
(#2 Adaptation., Spike Jonze)

“The mise-en-scène of the film is neorealist, but the cinematography, editing, and effects are hyper-stylized, as if The Bicycle Thief had been reimagined through the post-CGI lens of Fight Club or The Matrix.”

— Chris Herrington, April 3, 2003

Lost in Translation

2003: #1 Lost in Translation, Sofia
Coppola (#2 Mystic River, Clint Eastwood)

“Lost in Translation is a film short on plot but rich with incident; nothing much happens, yet every frame is crammed with life and nuance and emotion. … What Coppola seems to be going for here is an ode to human connection that is bigger than (or perhaps just apart from) sex and romance.”
— Chris Herrington, October 2, 2003

2004: #1 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry
(#2 Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino)

“This is the best film I’ve seen this year and one of the best in recent memory. Funny, witty, charming, and wise, it runs the gamut from comedy to tragedy without falling into either farce or melodrama. Its insights into human loss and redemption are complicated and difficult, well thought out but with the illusion and feel of absolute spontaneity and authentic in its construction — and then deconstruction — of human feelings and memory.”
— Bo List, March 25, 2004

2005: #1 Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee (#2 Hustle & Flow, Craig Brewer)

“The film is a triumph because it creates characters of humanity and anguish, in a setup that could easily become a target for homophobic ridicule. Jack and Ennis are a brave challenge to the stereotyped image of homosexuals in mainstream films, their relations to their families and to each other are truthful and beautifully captured.” — Ben Popper, January 12, 2006

2006: #1 Children of Men,
Alfonso Cuarón (#2 The Proposition, John Hillcoat)

“As aggressively bleak as Children of Men is, it’s ultimately a movie about hope. It’s a nativity story of sort, complete with a manger. And from city to forest to war zone to a lone boat in the sea, it’s a journey you won’t want to miss.”
— Chris Herrington, January 11, 2007

2007 #1 Zodiac, David Fincher
(#2 There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson)

“[Zodiac is] termite art, too busy burrowing into its story and characters to bother with what you think.”
— Chris Herrington, March 8, 2007

2008: #1 Frozen River, Courtney Hunt (#2 The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan)

“Frozen River is full of observations of those who are living less than paycheck to paycheck: digging through the couch for lunch money for the kids; buying exactly as much gas as you have change in your pocket; popcorn and Tang for dinner. The American Dream is sought after by the dispossessed, the repossessed, and the pissed off.”
— Greg Akers, August 28, 2008

2009: #1 Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze (#2 Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron)

“I know how ridiculous it is to say something like, ‘Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best kids’ movies in the 70 years since The Wizard of Oz.’ So I won’t. But I’m thinking it.”
— Greg Akers, October 15, 2009

2010: #1 Inception, Christopher Nolan (#2 The Social Network,
David Fincher)

“Nolan has created a complex, challenging cinematic world but one that is thought through and whose rules are well-communicated. But the ingenuity of the film’s concept never supersedes an emotional underpinning that pays off mightily.”
— Chris Herrington, July 15, 2010

2011: #1 The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick (#2 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tomas Alfredson)

“The Tree of Life encompasses a level of artistic ambition increasingly rare in modern American movies — Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood might be the closest recent comparison, and I’m not sure it’s all that close. This is a massive achievement. An imperfect film, perhaps, but an utterly essential one.”
— Chris Herrington, June 23, 2011

2012: #1 Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow (#2 Lincoln, Steven Spielberg)

“Zero Dark Thirty is essentially an investigative procedural about an obsessive search for knowledge, not unlike such touchstones as Zodiac or All the President’s Men. And it has an impressive, immersive experiential heft, making much better use of its nearly three-hour running time than any competing award-season behemoth.”
— Chris Herrington, January 10, 2013 

2013: #1 12 Years a Slave, Steve
McQueen (#2 Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón)

“Slavery bent human beings into grotesque shapes, on both sides of the whip. But 12 Years a Slave is more concerned with the end of it. McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley are black. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t be notable but is. If you consider 12 Years a Slave with The Butler and Fruitvale Station, you can see a by-God trend of black filmmakers making mainstream movies about the black experience, something else that shouldn’t be worth mentioning but is.”
— Greg Akers, October 31, 2013

Categories
Opinion

Fact Checking “Argo,” “Lincoln,” Steinbeck, and Who Knows?

01_argo_ipad.jpg

According to various reports, the government of Iran is considering suing Hollywood over the movie “Argo.”

No surprise there. These days everyone’s a fact checker, and news stories, blogs, books, movies, and famous authors are all fair game.

The Iran and Argo story was reported recently in the CBS News and Huffington Post among others. That car-chases-plane scene at the end was pretty over-the-top, got to admit, but you would think Iran would have bigger things to worry about.

Earlier this year, a congressman from Connecticut pointed out inaccuracies in “Lincoln” about the vote for 13th Amendment. Joe Courtney spotted something strange in the movie’s depiction of the landmark vote. He found out that the Connecticut congressmen depicted in the film — and two more who weren’t portrayed — were for, not against, passage of the amendment.

“How could congressmen from Connecticut — a state that supported President Lincoln and lost thousands of her sons fighting against slavery on the Union side of the Civil War — have been on the wrong side of history?” Courtney wrote in a letter to the movie studio DreamWorks.

Former journalist Bill Steigerwald has written a good book about John Steinbeck called “Dogging Steinbeck” in which he exhaustively fact checks the eminent author’s 1960 road trip (which Steigerwald duplicated) with his French poodle that was the subject of the book “Travels With Charley.” Turns out Steinbeck made up some interviews and other stuff.

Not all errors are intentional. Last week a Memphis publication put the Front Street Deli at the corner of Front and Main, which are parallel streets. The deli is at Front and Union. The error was corrected.

There but for the grace of God go I, I thought. I have become convinced that sometimes reporters simply cannot catch their own errors no matter how much they proofread. I once reported that a living person was dead, and I have misspelled many a name I should know. A friend, also from the North, topped me though. He interviewed a sheriff in North Carolina and reported that he had a degree in “farms and bums.” A sharp-eyed editor took note, and it turned out the sheriff said “firearms and bombs.”

Flyer stories in the paper are read by the author and three other people before they are published. Blog posts go online without a second set of eyes looking at them. Comments, of course, are often anonymous and sometimes full of bogus statements of “fact” that get recycled even if they are corrected.

Plagiarism and factual errors are only going to get worse as daily and weekly newspapers and magazines like “Time” fight for their lives in the digital age and reporters and bloggers publish without a net. Whatever you think of them, old media put a lot of effort into editing stories and fact-checking.

Are you willing to cut Hollywood some slack but do you still want the facts right in your news? Be prepared to pay someone, some way, somehow.

Categories
Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Herrington & Akers on the Oscars, Day 2: Screenplays

We’re back with Day 2 of our four-day lumberjack match over this year’s Oscar nominations. Yesterday, Greg and I split on Best Supporting Actor picks while throwing some attention to under-recognized performers such as Ann Dowd and David Strathairn.

Today, we wade into the written word with the two screenplay categores:

Best Original Screenplay
Nominees: Amour, Django Unchained, Flight, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty.

Chris Herrington

Zero Dark Thirty

  • Zero Dark Thirty

Will Win: This is where the apparent Zero Dark Thirty backlash confuses me most. My minimal contact in Oscar handicapping suggests this is the category where the film is most likely to win, but shouldn’t Mark Boal’s CIA-aided screenplay be the aspect of the film that most troubles the film’s opponents? Would a win here while Kathryn Bigelow goes unnoticed for director be dissonant? Just misogynist? In my confusion, I’m calling it for Michael Haneke for Amour, which has arguably the most overall strength of the nominees. And screenplay seems like the area where artier faves are more likely to prosper.

Should Win: A close call among five really good films. I think Moonrise Kingdom is dependent on Wes Anderson’s visual sense and Django Unchained runs out of ideas down the stretch. Amour, I think, is rooted most strongly Haneke’s precise direction and his melded performances of his two great leads. Flight is a ballsy screenplay, opening with a bang and then burrowing into something darker and more personal. But even though I question the degree to which it privileges a CIA perspective, my vote goes to Boal for his relentless, reported screenplay for Zero Dark Thirty.

Got Robbed: Lots of good candidates here: The surprisingly adult sex comedy undercut by mediocre direction in Hope Springs. The daring, beat-of-its-own-drummer campus comedy Damsels in Distress. Ira Sachs’ Keep the Lights On, at once diaristic and sweeping up a whole subculture. The weighty, mysterious The Master. But I’ll place my vote for Looper, which renews and elevates a popcorn subgenre while dreaming up one of the screenplay moments of the year by putting Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt at a table together, where they avoid talking about time-travel shit.

Categories
Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Argo Leads Southeastern Film Critics Association’s Annual Awards

The Southeastern Film Critics Association, which comprises 47 members in nine Southern states, including, locally, myself and the Commercial Appeal‘s John Beifuss, has announced its winners for 2012.

Argo leads the way, topping the overall Top Ten and winning Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Second place Zero Dark Thirty, scheduled to open in Memphis on January 11th, finished second in the Best Picture race and was runner-up in three other categories — Director (Kathryn Bigelow), Actress (Jessica Chastain), and Original Screenplay.

Ben Afflecks Argo tops the Southeastern Film Critics awards for 2012.

  • Ben Affleck’s Argo tops the Southeastern Film Critics awards for 2012.

Third place finisher Lincoln also took top honors for Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Best Ensemble, while finishing second in Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones) and Supporting Actress (Sally Field), as well as Adapted Screenplay.

The Louisiana-set indie Beasts of the Southern Wild, which finished sixth overall, won the organization’s annual Wyatt Award for best Southern-themed film.

I’m going to hold off on revealing my SEFCA ballot until after my own year-end picks are revealed at the end of the month, but for now I will say that I voted for exactly half of the SEFCA Top Ten.

Full results:

2012 SEFCA AWARD RESULTS
TOP TEN

1.    Argo 
2.    Zero Dark Thirty 
3.    Lincoln 
4.    Moonrise Kingdom 
5.    Silver Linings Playbook 
6.    Beasts of the Southern Wild 
7.    The Master 
8.    Les Misérables 
9.    Life of Pi 
10.    The Dark Knight Rises

Categories
Opinion

Based on Actual Events

This is the season when blockbuster movies are released, and movies based on actual events are among the most popular.

There’s The Sessions, about a man in an iron lung’s encounters with a sex therapist. Watching other people have therapeutic sex in this film is not to be confused with watching other people have sex for prurient reasons.

There’s Argo, about Hollywood’s semi-comic caper to get some Americans out of Iran right under the noses of the bamboozled Iranians, who were holding 52 other Americans hostage for 444 days. I knew nothing about this historical footnote until I saw the movie, although CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite ended each broadcast in 1980-1981 with “And that’s the way it is, the [whatever] day of captivity for Americans in Iran.”

And there’s Lincoln, by director Steven Spielberg, which raised my appreciation for the 1990 Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War, and the helpful commentary of historian Shelby Foote. Lincoln deserves an “R” rating for “Restricted: Under 17 not allowed without parent, tutor, and copy of the U.S. Constitution.”

Actual quote from a review in The Boston Globe: “It’s possible you may think Lincoln is too talky — too full of characters and ideas, too taxing to our Twitter-pated attention spans. Consider, then, that it may not be the movie that’s unworthy of your time. You may not be worthy of it.”

Well, excuse me for feeling confused and clueless.

Here are some other movie concepts “based on actual events” that should soon be in production.

The Moviegoer: a fresh take on the 1961 Walker Percy novel of the same title. This one’s about a man with no discernible talent, training, or aptitude for, like, actual work, who finds employment going to movies and writing about them.

The Secessions: historical docu-drama, filled with political intrigue, about suburbanites in a Southern town who take matters into their own hands when a lame-duck school board surrenders its charter and consolidates school systems.

Denial: a political consultant, trailed by reporters and camera crews from Fox News, storms state capitals on December 17th, the day the Electoral College ratifies the results of the 2012 presidential election, and urges electors to go rogue. He insists that the results from Florida are not conclusive, Phythagoras only had a theory, math is suspect, and the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line.

The Good Husband: a spinoff from the television series The Good Wife, this one’s about a man married to a politician who has affairs with David Petraeus, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Bill Clinton, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Dallas Cowboys. Kim Kardashian stars as a Tampa socialite.

Requiem for a Heavyweight, II: The 1962 original starred Anthony Quinn as an aging and overweight boxer who takes up wrestling. The remake is about an aging and overweight football coach in a Southern state who is forced to resign, then rehired after the two pretty boys who succeed him flop. Filmed in Knoxville.

Black Like Me, Too: Reporter John Howard Griffin wrote the original in 1959 about his adventures as a white man disguised to look like a black man. This adaptation, heavy on cutting-edge medical advancements and neurology, features a Southern congressman who one-ups Griffin and undergoes the first-ever racial transplant to become an African-American.

Bovina: Taking its cue from head-scratching one-word titles such as Avatar, this surefire smash is about a perky actress and the hardships she suffers as a flying nun, union organizer, wife of cross-dressing comedian, and neurotic first lady to find fulfillment as television spokeswoman for the poor, put-upon, and misunderstood pharmaceuticals industry.

The Hangover Four: A straight-arrow college basketball coach goes a little crazy and indulges in a super-sized Coke and an order of fries after winning the national championship over his former mentor, the evil Coach Caligula, and cannot remember a gosh darn thing the next day.

Cupcake: a nostalgic musical about America through the eyes of a worker at a bakery that makes sugary treats. When evil bosses threaten to close the factory, a divided town finds something everyone loves and rallies around the Twinkies.

Elvis, the Golden Years: Based on a 2007 Flyer story by Greg Akers and Chris Herrington, a cheeky look at the King and what might have been if he had survived to his 77th birthday this year.

The Club From Hell: I am not making this up. Ten squash players, including me, team up to write a group novel. Sex, athletes, athletic sex, exotic locations, and more loose ends than a cheap mohair sweater. You may not be worthy of it.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

The Stax Music Academy is selling former Grizzly Shane Battier’s Blackhawk Lincoln Mark VI on eBay. Sure, Battier plays for the Rockets now, but the car has leopard-print upholstery, a $5,000 stereo system, flashy rims, and autographed headrests.

Now you won’t have to go on MTV’s Pimp My Ride.

A lawyer for Anna Mae He’s foster parents presents a pretend conversation between the 8-year-old girl in the long-running custody battle and a Juvenile Court judge.

We hoped “the dialogue” might shed some light on what the little He is going through, but with “Anna Mae” talking about how “litigation was protracted,” all we know now is that she’ll make a fine attorney someday.

Greg Cravens

Hundreds of bags of ice — purchased by FEMA — are left to melt outside a warehouse on East Parkway. Ostensibly bought and warehoused in 2005 for future hurricane victims, the ice was dumped because FEMA bought too much.

Apparently, even if portions of the country are experiencing a heat wave, it’s better to throw your extra ice away. All we can say is that’s one way to liquefy your assets … and solidify your reputation. Heckuva job!

A WWII veteran is attacked and mugged in the basement bathroom of the local Veterans Medical Center. The 80-year-old Dyersburg man went to the hospital to pick up a new hearing aid. The device was initially lost in the struggle — the man grappled with his attacker — but was later found.

The hospital doesn’t know how a mugger slipped past security. Might we suggest they get new hearing aids, too?