Some Came Running

Department of Self-Promotion

It's something I'm going to have to get a little better at, I'm told.

So, in keeping with that sentiment....did I mention that while at Cannes I joined the indefatigable Matt Singer from the 6th-etage balcony at 6 la Croisette to do a play-by-play of the red carpet action for Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona? It was a great deal of fun—I felt like John Madden reincarnated as a cinephile—and Matt and I both think the IFC "Cannes Cam" episode that resulted turned out pretty well. Click the blue letters to check it out.

My buddy Matt Carr, who was shooting the actual festivities, squeezed off a snap of Mr. Singer and myself in action:

Also, I recently spoke with another pal, the great James Rocchi of Cinematical, in what some (but not me) would call a Cannes-stylee. Here you may find the post that links to the podcast.

Early Monday evening I'm scheduled to participate in what may be the most intriguing of these "cast" projects, an episode of the infamous "'Live' From Grassroots Tavern," hosted by John Lichman and Vadim Rizov and featured on the exemplary House Next Door website. In this series, Lichman and Rizov and guests discuss the state of cinema whilst ensconced in one of St. Mark's Place's most ingratiating dives. I'll be guesting along with SpoutBlog's Karina Longworth, who bids fair to claim the title of The Dorothy Parker of Blogospheric Film Critics. I'm wondering just how far I'll be able to push my Foster Brooks impersonation whilst staying within the boundaries of a family-friendly format? Or is it really an impersonation? And is it really family-friendly? We'll keep you posted.

That's HEDLEY...

I'm pretty much ready to pass out from exhaustion, so a fuller appreciation of the fascinating Mr. Korman, recently shuffled off this mortal coil, will have to wait until I feel wefweshed. In the meantime, let us all heed his urging, and go do that voodoo...

UPDATE: Was there ever a movie role quite as eccentrically particular as uber-villain Hedley Lamarr in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, and if ever there was, could anyone besides Korman have played it? It's probably the broadest comic role ever—Lamarr is never not ridiculous, no, not for a second—and hence has to be played by someone who a) is not afraid of being broad and has the energy to keep it up and b) is broad in a way that won't exhaust the audience. Korman had no inhibitions and quite possibly the most impecabble timing of any comic actor of his generation. (Hence, my friend Joe Failla notes, "he would not have been out of place in the classic comedies of the '30s and '40s.") And so every single thing he does in Saddles is funny. "My mind is a raging torrent," "Right as usual sir," "Schmucks!", "Kinky!", "Just let me have a little feel...." Everything. Really.

Saddles was something like his eighth film role, and his sixth credited one—his first was as a down-at-heels photographer in Living Venus, Herschell Gordon Lewis' faux film a clef about a Hefneresque entrepreneur. Here he is as never-had-a-chance school principal Weldon Emmett, facing off against the indomitable Tuesday Weld, in George Axelrod's immortal 1966 Lord Love A Duck:

It's for Duck, Saddles and his subsequent work with Brooks (as vulgar, outrageous baddies in High Anxiety and History of the World Part Part 1) that most of us refined cinephiles revere Korman, but if I'm channel surfing and I happen upon Herbie Goes Bananas, I will stop. And of course who doesn't adore Korman's work on "The Carol Burnett Show," particularly his interacting with Tim Conway. If television ever produced a latter-day Laurel and Hardy, those were the guys. The Burnett ensemble, and particularly Korman, could break character like nobody's business—and not only didn't you mind, you kind of loved it, and it actually made you laugh harder.

Korman will be missed.

Also: FREE "THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL"!!!

One perk of unemployment...

...at least for the moment, is that I am under zero obligation, professional or personal, to care about Sex and the City, the movie. Zip-ah-dee-doo-dah, indeed. Although the thing is giving our friend Mr. Wells such aneurysms that I'm almost curious...

All the colors of "Bagdad"

"How do you do; my name is Sabu..."

Over at the exemplary DVD-rating website DVD Beaver, some readers chime on Beavermeister Gary W. Tooze's review of the new Criterion edition of Korda, Powell and company's fabulous 1940 The Thief of Bagdad, expressing disappointment over the screen caps from the new version. Part of the controversy stems from Gary's inability to get screen grabs from the 2002 MGM disc of the same film, which some of Gary's correspondents feel has more vivid Technicolor. Reader Thomas says: "...compared to your screen captures of the Criterion, the MGM looks much more vibrant, like Technicolor looked in the forties, in the way of (albeit 1939) Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind. The Criterion in your captures looks much more muted, almost as if it was a colorized black and white image. In the MGM, the scene were June Duprez looks into the pool is a lovely shot, with fresh colors in her face and a vibrant lush background. The look of the Criterion disappoints me as looking rather drab..."

Hmm. Dave Kehr, in his review of the Criterion Bagdad in yesterday's New York Times, avers that the new edition is "a striking improvement over the out-of-print MGM disc of 2002, with tighter, brighter colors and improved definition." Now reasonable people can disagree about matters of visual taste, but Dave Kehr's eye is second only to that of Dr. James Xavier's in its prime. (I was once foolhardy enough to take minor issue with him over Fox's botched DVD rendition of The Gang's All Here, in part due to my boyish enthusiasm over the fact that it had made it to DVD in the first place. Fox is now redressing its error with a new master of the Busby Berkeley mindblower for inclusion in an upcoming Carmen Miranda box.)

In any case, I can get screen caps from the MGM edition. I've made a one-shot comparison with the Criterion, below the jump.

Earle Hagen, 1919-2008

You wanted eclectic, composer Earle Hagen could give you eclectic. On the one hand, the down-home lope of The Andy Griffith Show theme, which, although best known as whistled by Earle himself, DID have words ("come on take down your fishing pole/and meet me at the fishing hole" etc.), on the other, the faux (and therefore thoroughly seductive) noir stylings of "Harlem Nocturne" (the lyrics to which, by one Dick Rogers, are heard even more rarely than those of the Griffith theme), which we present here in a version by Ray Anthony, who you may remember from The Girl Can't Help It...

(Not for nothing, but from where we're sitting right about now, the '50s look better and better, no?) Most accounts of Hagen paint him as a happy journeyman, which means, among other things, that whatever great stories are in his memoir, he took quite a few more with him...

Sydney Pollack, 1934-2008

Like Alan J. Pakula, he apotheosized the intelligent mainstream of Hollywood moviemaking. Trained in theater and television, Pollack was neither an easy rider nor a raging bull, although in his early work—the surreal Castle Keep, the corruscating They Shoot Horses, Don't They?—there are streams that feed into a certain...bullishness.

Pollack's position became harder to maintain as a new generation of suits began running Hollywood—the kids with the notes. "What happened to this guy," I remember thinking, while watching the largely unwatchable The Firm, in 1993. But look hard in that film's margins—I'm thinking of Holly Hunter and Gary Busey, the picture's unfussy appreciation of Memphis, Hackman's quieter moments, and such—and you can see that the problem wasn't Pollack, but them—the army of execs who can focus-group a director's integrity out of existence. Hence, for his best work, you've got to go backward from Out of Africa. One suspects that a reason he became more active in producing in recent years was that it represented a new and possibly more viable way for him to get the films he wanted made, made.

An exemplary director of actors, he was a terrifically engaging performer himself, frequently playing hard-asses with deceptively mensch-like exteriors, as in Eyes Wide Shut and, most recently, Michael Clayton.

The below cap is from '69's Castle Keep...one of Pollack's rare trompe l'oeil shots!

Cannes Award Winners: A User's Guide

Break it down:

PALME D'OR: Entre Les Murs (The Class), directed by Laurent Cantet

As Dave Kehr points out, the first French film to take Cannes top prize in 21 years, and surely a less controversial pick than the last one, Pialat's Under the Sun of Satan. With such films as Time Out, Human Resources, and Heading South, all of which got some American distribution and were largely well-received by critics, Cantet has shown a knack for tackling socially relevant subject matter without coming off too didactic. This picture is an unusual fiction/reality hybrid: based on a book by Francois Begaudeau about his experiences as a teacher in a French equivalent of an inner city, it stars Begaudeau as himself and a cast of non-professionals as his charges. A comment by juror Marjane Satrapi sheds some light on the rationale for the prize: "There is almost nothing I believe in anymore. But if there is something I believe in, it is culture and education." Kent Jones, in the comments section of Dave's site, reveals himself to have been less impressed by the picture: "if you’ve seen it, it’s impossible to avoid a comparison with the fourth season of The Wire, which is not flattering to the Cantet...[it's not] a bad film, but it seemed like small potatoes compared with Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale or a Lucrecia Martel’s startling The Headless Woman."

As I noted in a post below, I missed Entre les Murs; I look forward to seeing it, but I'm with Kent on the Desplechin and look forward to a chance to see the Martel again, as my initial viewing of it took place under less-than-optimum circumstances...

Well, never put ME in charge of a Sports Book...

...because, in a switcheroo familiar to many Cannes veterans (didn't this happen with Rosetta, too?), the Palme D'or went to the last film in the Competition, Laurent Cantet's fact-based The Class, the last film shown in the comp but one that I could have seen had I not been blogging to the point of time-distraction into its noon Friday screening. Damn. I heard it was actually good, too.

Zip for Waltz With Bashir, although in fairness (condolences is maybe the better word) to myself, I wasn't the only one betting. I'm about to leave the house now (I know, that's a Jonah Goldberg excuse, but it's actually true and I could be actually killed if I don't move my butt), but my indieWIRE buddies have got all the awards covered.

I said it in the print version of Premiere, and I'll say it again: Never, ever try to predict what a Cannes jury will do. More later, including gratification over the recognition of Gomorra and head-scratching over the recognition of Il Divo. Is Italian cinema back?

"Kenny, affecting a perhaps Germanic severity..."

My buddy Matt Carr, photog supreme, bemoaned the lack of portrait-taking opportunities afforded him at Cannes this year, thus soft-soaping me into sort-of sitting for him. Stern result is below the fold.

Parasitism isn't a profession, it's an activity: In which A.O. Scott is subjected to the Instapundit one-two

A couple of days back, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott filed one of his typically thoughtful dispatches from the Cannes Film Festival, this one treating Steven Soderbergh's epic Che. Like a few other critics, this one included, he noted that the film's two-part, mirror-image structure, in which the successful Cuban revolution and Che's botched attempt at launching a whole "Latin American Revolution" are chronicled, conveniently allows the filmmakers to elide the period of Che's life in which he acted most monstrously, that is, his early co-governing of Cuba with Castro. This bothers Scott (it bothers me, too, but not nearly as much—not because I'm a tyranny-loving Commie, or anything, but because I'm, like, a formalist), and he's not afraid to say so, and he says so with typical eloquence and clarity.

Over at the National Review Online, John J. Miller, one of the "hipper" conservatives out there (he compiled, you may recall, a rather, um, contentious list of "conservative" rock songs, and more recently no doubt broke NRO editor Kathryn Jean Lopez's heart by avowing a preference for a Drive-By Truckers show to a Bill Bennett charity ball), takes note of Scott's objections without having the courtesy to mention Scott himself.