My Annual Top 12 Shows List

My Big Top 12 TV Shows of the Year has been an Annual Tradition since 2009

Credit: IGN

1. Daredevil (Netflix)-After giving up on season 2, I couldn’t have been more surprised by how transfixed I was here. In terms of technical elements, the color palate is carefully selected, and the fights are a combination of camera virtuosity and choreography that blows most CGI out of the water. Like Christopher Nolan’s films, the story easily transcends the trappings of the superhero genre with a villain whose relationship to his suit is transitive: A means to get things done and can be dropped if need be. The season wrestled with questions of faith and friendship (the bond between Murdoch and his two closest allies drove the show’s emotional push) with a villain (Vincent D’Onofrio) that could provoke genuine anger and fear in an era of superhero glut (not to mention the actual news) where it’s more common to see villains as showcases for actors to ham it up. And then there was Bullseye who took the complexity of the plot (he’s a doppelganger of sorts) to another level.

2. Sneaky Pete (Amazon Prime)-Created by Bryan Cranston and David Shore ("House"), "Sneaky Pete" built on a nail-biter of a first season and continued to find new ways to expand its core cast. As sacrilegious as it is to unfavorably compare "Breaking Bad" to an up-and-coming show, I'm going to go there: This show has a lot to offer that "Breaking Bad" didn't in terms of characters that are honest with themselves over exactly how evil they are and cop characters who don't fall under broad cliches. With the development given this season to Carly (Libe Bearer) and Taylor (Shane McRae), "Sneaky Pete" has earned its stripes as a family melodrama without losing site of the serialized con storyline. Jane Adams also provides great contrast as a psychic threatening to drive Marius/Pete crazy

3. Silicon Valley (HBO)-This show had a distinctive tone in its first season but it didn’t necessarily have a laugh-out-loud cadence with the exception of the twist ending at the end or the occasional gag like the “pros and cons of killing Blake” board). By the fifth season, the character beats are solid enough that the laugh-per-minute humor and overall plot are now on par with Mike Judge’s brilliant screen comedies. The fifth season is even more incredible considering that the group dynamic survived the departure of the show’s funniest stand-alone character Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller) while characterization continued to march on with Richard developing a harder edge. The show treaded so much in tragedy initially that it’s refreshing to see Pied Piper net a win or two.

4. Crashing (HBO)-The adorably naive Pete Holmes continues his evolution into late adulthood as he finds himself further down the road towards his stand-up dreams and faces increased pressure to decide between personal integrity and fast money (not to mention, all the other dangers that come with being friends with Artie Lange). Also, he somehow lands a girlfriend that looks remarkably like his ex-wife (Lauren Lapkus) in an uncanny bit of casting. TV shows about comics playing themselves are a dime a dozen but few celebrate the joy of mutual creation and camaraderie as well as this, and fewer yet are as thematically thoughtful.

5. Another Period (Comedy Central)-Think “Downton Abbey” crossed with trashy reality show. The show has tremendous fun satirizing historic mores of the aughts and key figures: Sigmuend Frued’s misguided psychotherapy theories are turned into a cringey orgy; Scott Joplin (Cedric the Entertainer) becomes a fill-in for Kanye West;  Eleanor Roosevelt’s feminist leanings get turned into full-on seduction, and yes they even take a shot at sweet pre-teen Hitler because why not? This is a show that, more often than not, goes low-brow and doubles down on low-hanging fruit (lots of incest, an ugly duckling sibling, etc.) but it’s also supremely clever and boasts well-developed comic characters (even the incestuous ones).

Caption: Indiewire

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6. Maniac (Netflix)-The likely one-off season by genius director Cary Fukunaga (“Beasts of No Nation” “Sin Nombre”) takes place in a quasi-futuristic world (a la “Black Mirror”) emphasizing the disconnect between humans (friends are for sale here). A story of mutual healing of two damaged souls (Emma Stone and Jonah Hill) and unlikely friendship (sorry shippers!) becomes a trippy exploration of subsconscious desire, the elusive search for the magic silver bullet that will cure our problems, and the elasticity of trauma.

7. The Mick (Fox)-Lately, I’m finding myself measuring the quality of a comedy through an imaginary decibel meter that records my laughs. “The Mick” isn’t particularly innovative and it’s not even the only place on TV you can see Kaitlin Olson debasing herself, but that doesn’t take away how much I looked forward to this show every week before it’s unceremonious axing. The comedy works through the clash between the snootiness of spoiled children (Thomas Barbusca and Sophia Black-D’Ella) and their unfiltered white trash live-in aunt, but let’s not underestimate the wild cards in wildly overconfident Alba (Carla Jimenez) and Jimmy (Scott MacArthur) who is always dishing inappropriate wisdom to any takers.

8. Marvelous Mrs Maisel (Amazon Prime)-The challenge of following up a hit with a sophomore season that builds upward and maintains the novelty is not easy and “Maisel” came through. The second season had some refreshing location changes (I’ve never wanted to visit the Catskills so badly), a very organic new romance for Midge, bigger arcs for side characters (Joe becoming sympathetic? imagine that!), and a hinting that Midge could become a star down the road. Perhaps the smartest move of the second season was lampshading (particularly, through a frustrated coworker who’s wedding was ruined through Midge’s showboating) how Midge is annoyingly on all the time.

9. Trial and Error (NBC)-The uber-eccentric  small-town comedy traded in aloof bisexual professor John Lithgow for haughty socialite Kristin Chenoweth. Like before, there was no shortage of sight gags (shout out to whoever thought up the daily cannon ball), eccentric characters, and rare illnesses for Sheri Shephard’s character to contract. The podcaster who gets entangled into a love triangle with Josh didn’t do much for me but it allowed Josh to run and duck like Jack Tripper and it strengthened the romance between Carol Anne and Josh which was quite sweet. The show took a while to reach last year’s levels of sublime mania (perhaps the change from defending to prosecuting Lavinia midway broke up the flow?) but it finished strong enough to make this year’s list again.

Courtesy: NBC

10. The Good  Place (NBC)-Mike Schur’s hybrid ethical manifesto/long-form sitcom is still one of the best things on TV but the transition into the third scene took a dive in immediacy as the gang was stranded a little too long in Australia. Even off-episodes still had great content to offer and “The Ballad of Donkey Doug” and “A Fractured Inheritance” provided comic highlights as they combined the “Very Special episode” sitcom format with Jason and Tahini’s ridiculous back stories. Towards the end of the year the show started accelerating fast into game changing twists but unlike the first season, our preconceptions haven’t been shattered so it’s still holding steady.

Courtesy: Variety

11. Ozark (Netflix)-Much of the first two seasons here were spent squeezing the protagonist between various characters, capable of inflicting death or worse, who exact opposite demands on him like “Malcolm in the Middle” with psychotic thugs. The tension on this show has gone from satisfying to an adrenaline high but there’s a point when you start to wonder if credibility gets sacrificed. Don’t blame this show: It’s been the template of much of peak TV since “Breaking Bad” and “The Americans”: The more implausible obstacles your antihero is faced with, the better the show. “Ozark” has some great characters, even better acting, and a strong sense of place but it really started to distinguish itself towards the latter half of the season when Marty tried to actively look for a way out (as any sensible character would do) which made his moral conflicts so much more interesting.

12. Disenchantment (Netflix)-Matt Groening mined the genre of futuristic tropes for an anachronistic playground in “Futurama”, and he does the same here with medieval Europe. The visual details are rich in a way that humor can be mined out of all the Easter eggs in the backdrop. John DiMaggio doesn’t do much with King Zog to make him interesting but the rest of the cast is pretty solid and like Groening’s two other creations, there’s already an array of solid side characters. To give an idea, Zog’s second wife is a salamander who talks like Eva Gabor and one of the red shirt knights is named Mortimer the Expendable.  It’s not a finished product yet but it’s a good bet that this show will get significantly richer in future seasons.

Honorable Mention:
Baroness von Sketch Show, IFC-These four seasoned ladies continue to kill it with innovative sketches that vary by length and consistently deliver fresh and original commentary on human nature. Meredith MacNeill, in particular, is a great physical comedian who will bend and contort in any which way for a laugh. 
BoJack Horseman, Netflix-#1 last year, "Bojack" felt like it was treading through familiar beats to some extent but there were several positive developments to show character growth including BoJack maintaining a relationship with Hollyhock, going through both ends of the #metoo movement with a determination to cure himself of alcoholism. and holding down a job (harder than it looks for BoJack). The show found avenues for everyone's arc to continue to be worthwhile five seasons in (although Dianne has a ways to go, we'll be pulling for you next season).  On the humor front, it was hard to top Henry Fondle and on the experimantation front, the show batted one for two in my book (the episode with four Halloweens was the season's MVP to me although some prefer "Free Churro") 
Camping, HBO-Co-written by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, this show feels like a spiritual successor to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff" if the party size was doubled and extended to an entire weekend camping trip. Jennifer Garner stars as Kathryn, an uptight mother in a sexless marraige, who's good graces belie her deep insecurities. Juliette Lewis plays the free-spirited Jandice who is the perfect foil to Kathryn's facade and the season is a slow burn to watching Kathryn unravel. In between these two are a ragtag group who collectively demonstrate that adulting isn't always as complete a process as it seems.
Derry Girls, Channel 4/Netflix-This Irish import found a distinctive voice (quite literally with the thick brogues) and plot format rather quickly. It's rooted in a strong sense of place and a point of view that adolescence is cruel but has moments of rose-tinted nostalgia here and there.
Impractical Jokers, TruTV-On the surface, this looks like four goofballs laughing too hard at their own shennanigans, but this show involving four Staten Island men daring each other to say and do absurd things with strangers involves highly skilled improv packaged in a format that encourages edge-of-your-seat escalation.
Me Myself and I, CBS-A family comedy starring recent SNL alum Bobby Moynihan and John Larroquette that has two things going for it. The gooey morality fables found in the TGIF sitcoms of old, and labyrinthine Sienfeldesque plotting that takes place across the past, present and future of a man's life. Unfortunately the sitcom was cancelled but burned-off episodes are available online. 
Orange is the New Black, Netflix-One of the best ensemble shows in the television history, there are high points and storylines that work in every season. The new dynamic with the two fueding sisters and the moral shading of the guards based on their varying stopping points to a sadistic game of fantasy prisoner were this year's highlights. The tour de force that had the power to get the audience angry enough to want to take action (hello criminal justice reform bill?) was the show's focus on the trial of Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson in all its rawness. The show might have cracked the top 12 if it didn't feel like such a hard reset from last season. 
Rise, NBC-The show was flawed by a protagonist who had such tunnel vision in directing his school play that he was willing to put a not-yet-out gay student in the crosshairs of his conservative family, deny the primadonna her lead role, and screw with the football team's winning formula for the sake of his precious vision. And that's to say nothing of the dues-ex-machinas that continually saved him. But what can I say, somehow this show really worked for me. It hit the right timbre in its emotional relationships (think "Glee" without the whiplash) and has a very strong sense of economically margainalized Red State America
Succession, HBO-There’s not much to write here beyond “spoiled rich family schemes and quibbles and schemes some more” and it’s a lot of fun. A murderer’s row of character actors—Jeremy Strong, Matthew McFayden, Kieran Culkin, Brian Cox, Alan Ruck—lend slightly different shades of nasty to their characters and they’re largely attending a lot of formal events where they’re acting inappropriate.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Netflix-The 4th season regained some of the mojo that the show has had with it's stronger runs when the characters had a consistent thru-line. Kimmy's three supporting characters have come out of the gate more self-assured: Titus had a more definite arc forward in contrast to Jackie's newfound stability. Meanwhile, Lily had much more opportunity to be a wild card that could break an episode open on the humor front as she caused a sexual revolution in nerdom in "Kimmy Breaks the Paradigm." And Xanthippe made another appearance! If the show had more than six epsiodes, it could have really found a groove.

Others Shows I Watched That Didn't Make the List:
9-1-1, Fox*; 13 Reasons Why, Netflix; ACS: Versace, FX; Adam Ruins Everything, TruTV; Alex Inc, ABC*; AP Bio, NBC*; Arrested Development, Netflix; Barry, HBO; Billy on the Street, Lyft; Big Mouth, Netflix; BoJack Horseman, Netflix*; The Break with Michelle Wolff, Netflix; Brockmire, IFC; Comedy Knockout, TruTV, Corporate, Comedy Central*; Casual, Hulu%; Camping, HBO; The Cool Kids, Fox; Corporate, Comedy Central; Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, CW; The Flash, CW; Derry Girls, Channel 4/Netflix; Electric Dreams, Amazon%; Empire, Fox*; Family Guy, Fox; Gifted, Fox; Glow, Netflix; God Friended Me, CBS; Good Girls, NBC; Great News, NBC; It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, FXX; I Feel Bad, NBC%; Jack Ryan, Amazon*; Jessica Jones, Netflix; Kidding, Showtime%, Killing Eve, BBC; Last Man on Earth, Fox;  LA to Vegas, NBC; Last Week Tonight, HBO; Late Night with Seth Meyers, NBC; Lost in Space, Netflix; Modern Family, ABC; Mom, CBS; No Activity, CBS All-Access; Once Upon a Time, ABC: Queer Eye, Netflix*; Mozart in the Jungle, Amazon; Norm McDonald Has a Show, Netflix; Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO; Schitt's Creek, Pop TV; Sick Note, Netflix; SNL, NBC; Superstore, NBC; Timeless, NBC%;  A Very British Scandal, Amazon;  Westworld, HBO%

*=Considered for honorable mention
%=Didn't see more than one or two episodes

The 25 People That Most Impacted the Year of 2018

For a short period of time in the late 90s to about 2003, I would read People Magazine's 25 people that defined our year list. Today I am going to play Fantasy People Magazine editor (which probably I'm the only person in the world to play because I'm weird into lists like that). Feel free to add, subtract, or debate with this in any way you see fit. I'm going to go with the Harry Potter route and leave the person who has the most impact on our lives and is using it to do evil (the president) the "he who shall not be named" treatment. Also Robert Mueller strikes me as a 2019 person so he's off too:

1. Jeff Flake-Senator-I personally like the guy, but I am trying to make this a subjective list of who's had impact and he has been a humongous swing vote and to some degree a true voice of independence
2. Beto O'Rourke-Congressman-Currently has the most thunder on the democratic side
3. Kendrick LaMarr-rapper-The People's list included a musician or two and this guy is the first rapper to win a Pullitzer Prize. He's also, I believe the first musician outside of jazz to win a Pullitzer
4. Stan Lee-comic book artist-Almost our entire movie calendar and I suspect the next generation's literary hallmarks based around this guy.
5. Christine Blasey Ford/Brett Kavanaugh-Stanford Professor/Supreme Court Judge-Depending on who you believe, I guess you can take your pick. The country couldn't agree on which one was the significant personhere
6. The Parkland Survivors-Activists-No one has been more history-changing or kicked more ass then these people. I would have made them Time's Person of the Year but Times is always a whimp about that
7. Nancy Pelosi-Congressman-She's probably also Ms. 2019 but she's held steady in what must be the most difficult job in Washington
8. Michael Cohen-Former fixer-No one has pierced Trump's armor more than this guy. He taped everything, he has Giuliani and Trump on tape saying great things about him, he turned on a dime.
9. Sarah Huckabee Saunders-WH Press Seceretary-The face of the Trump administration, the origin of much of our spin, and the heart of much debate about civility
10. Jon Krasinski-Director/Actor-Breakthrough actor with Jack Ryan and breakthrough director with Quiet Place
11. Ryan Coogler-Director-Black Panther. He's #6 on Time's Man of the Year list.
12. Nick Foles-Athlete-Broke the Patriots stronghold
13. Bradley Cooper-Director/Actor-Like Krasinski and Coogler, big big breakout with Star is Born
14. Ronan Farrow-Journalist-Big pioneer in the metoo movement and continues that quest with integrity (vetting false accusations in his reporting) also wrote another book about Seceretaries of State in which he got inside access to Rex Tillerson saying some dirty stuff about Trump, it's mad juicy
15. French Soccer Team-Because someone's gotta win the WC and they were all very multi-cultural and wonderful
16. Emmanuel Macron-French President-The president we wish we had
17. Cardi B-Rapper or musician or something. Love her re-invented words
18. Pete Davidson-Comedian/SNL Cast Member-Has made more headlines than anyone else which has been odd for a 3rd year SNL cast member and has made me really want to watch the show to see how he'll comment on his own life.
19. John Mulaney-Comedian-I've been thinking a lot about comedic voice of the year and I think John Oliver has a place here too but Mulaney has been able to create a really strong brand for himself this year without a talk show or anything, and that his escapism is a hit says a lot. I heard about his comedy special (also his show about puberty) A LOT this year.
20. Tiffany Haddish-Actress/Comedian-Officially the next big thing
21. Chloe Kim-Snowboarder-Why not include someone from the 2018 Olympics. Korean-American was a hero to both sides and a millenial icon
22. Theresa May-British prime minister-Really significant things are happening in England. We should be paying attention, guys!
23. Jose Andreas-CelebrityChef-Been a major voice in activism and charitable efforts
24. Rachel Brosnahan-Actress-I think it's fair to say that no one has ever gone from such an unknown to Emmy winner (although possibly America Ferrara of Ugly Betty) in the span of one year
25. Megan Markle-Princess of whatever-Throwing a bone to the kind of celebrities People Magazine likes to cover

A few others I was considering: Sandrah Oh, Claire Foy, Alyssa Milano, Lindsey Graham, Scott Pruitt, Kamala Harris, LeBron James, Rihanna, Angela Merkel

How many films of Blake Edwards have you seen?

Background: This might be a bold statement for a director who’s not even listed in my college history of film text book, but I would like to make the case that Blake Edwards ruled the 60s or at least epitomized it.

This was very much a transitory decade as the studio system was collapsing and the new wave of American auteurs who would re-invigorate cinema would only arrive at the tail end of the decade and many of those directors would take a while to develop their style and gain the capital for their dream projects. There were a few masters at the top of their game like Stanley Kubrick and David Lean and some of the live TV generation like Sidney Lumet, Norman Jewison, and John Frankenheimer would hit the ground running.

When I look through my experiences with 60s films (that doesn’t include the early efforts of the new wave or the last remnants of those studio masters), I often think of this as the era of sophisticated comedy: If Lubitsch had a travel budget that let him shoot in Europe, fewer code restrictions and had the luxury of color, that’s the 60s. The color palate of films in this era ranging from West Side Story to Sweet Charity are rich and span the rainbow (in the case of Adam West’s “Batman” they were oversaturated but that’s the general idea). An inordinate number of films (Topkapi, Gambit, Charade, Marnie, The Thomas Crown Affair) I’ve seen involve art or jewel twists which reads as more sexy and sophisticated to movie audiences than it does gritty as far as crimes go. Even prostitution became sophisticated in the hands of Billy Wilder’s Irma la Douce which is so innocent, it’s family-friendly. This was the era where Europeans Gina Lollobrigida, Melina Mercouri, Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren, and Lila Kedrova became stars without having to subvert their identities to the Midwestern ideal. It was also the era of Bond which certainly would not have been popular if they went for an Atomic Blonde/Jason Bourne look.

All you need to know about how Edwards epitomized this finesse was to look at the poster to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn (another exotic European) has a posh dress a mouth-wateringly opulent diamond necklace and a cigarette that doesn’t look like it was bought at a local pharmacy.

Blake Edwards’s films were visually polished and he was equally adept at black-and-white as he was with color. I also feel that when it comes to comedy auteurs, people point to Woody Allen and Mel Brooks but tend to leave Blake Edwards out. Is it because Peter Sellers gets more credit? At the same time, a film like Days of Wine and Roses showed a capacity for dramatic material with a Serksian flair.

Blake Edwards was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1922 and was a child of divorce. Edwards made his way to Hollywood through good old-fashioned nepotism. His stepfather was a mid-level producer at 20th Century Fox and his stepfather only got that job because Edwards’ step-grandfather was J. Gordon Edwards , a big-time silent director who was most famous for his work with Theda Bara. Edwards’s step-family got him extra work which led to small roles and eventually writing credits in the early days of TV. He married Julie Andrews and had no natural children of his own, instead adopting two and inheriting a stepchild, so way to go on population control. He was also the inaugural visiting scholar at Arizona State’s film school.

What Most People Agree are the Essentials: Days of Wine and Roses, Victor/Victoria, Pink Panther

Number I’ve seen: About 5 1/4: I’ve seen What did You do in the War Daddy?, Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark, Revenge of the Pink Panther, The Great Race and some of Days of Wine and Roses (it was playing on TCM and I didn’t have the DVD).

Favorite: I’m pretty much writing this entry because of The Pink Panther which I think is one of the greatest comedic films ever made. There’s no better way to punctuate the cozy obliviousness of the jet set than to make them glaringly blind to the guilt of a debonair thief (David Niven) and unaware of just how incapable the bumbling detective (Peter Sellers) is who’s trailing him. The brilliance of Inspector Clouseau is that it’s not entirely far-fetched that he could have held onto his job after all those years through bureaucratic glitches, dumb luck, and persistence.  I’ve watched this film at multiple ages and it always holds up.

Underrated: The Great Race is like a cross between Around the World in 80 Days and Wile E. Coyote vs the Road Runner. One of the most glaring things about the film is a complete lack of character exposition. Two professors (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) have a rivalry that extends to destructive pranks and the film opens on their prank war without telling the audience the who and why of what we’re seeing. It’s a film that revels in cartoonish immaturity but also has a playful sweetness: Natalie Wood adds quite a bit to the film as an prim and proper reporter who plans to cover this around-the-world car race (again, this isn’t a film that makes logical sense) a la Nelly Bly and she serves as a love interest for Tony Curtis. Don’t feel bad for Jack Lemmon’s character: He has Peter Falk as a companion.

Overrated: There are no films of Edwards to date that I regret watching and that I wouldn’t recommend. Trail of the Pink Panther attempted to cobble together a film from left-over footage of the Peter Sellers post-mortem (reportedly in a manner that wasn’t cleared with Peter Sellers’ estate) and it’s rightfully panned so I can’t call it overrated. I will suggest A Shot in the Dark isn’t as good as the original. The element of surprise is hard to replicate in the original and the ironic ending that Clouseau is right after all is the perfect ending to his character arc.

Blind Spots: I really should try to find a copy of Days of Wine and Roses rather than waiting for it to come back on TCM to see the second half.  I remember turning it off at some point because I didn’t want to watch a darker film about alcoholism and I regret that. I can’t really speak about his expertise with drama if I haven’t seen anything of his in that field. Victor/Victoria, in which he collaborated with wife, Julie Andrews, could be another interesting take on gender politics and perhaps cover what Tootsie (which I critiqued last week) was missing. S.O.B. was nominated for a Golden Globe but its plot—a director decides to do a topless scene with his lead actress—doesn’t seem like much to make a movie about. There’s also an 80’s movie called Blind Date and in the same way that seeing Billy Wilder try to tailor his style to later times in his final films, it might be interesting to see Edwards navigate 80s mores (I imagine his film would be significantly more showing than dancing around in a Lubitschesque way).

Filmography as director (39 films):

Blake Edwards’ Son of the Pink Panther (1993)

Switch (1991)

Skin Deep (1989)

Peter Gunn (1989)

Justin Case (1988)

Sunset (1988)

Blind Date (1987)

That’s Life! (1986)

Fine Mess, A (1986)

Micki & Maude (1984)

Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)

Man Who Loved Women, The (1983)

Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)

Victor/Victoria (1982)

S.O.B. (1981)

10 (1979)

Revenge of The Pink Panther (1978)

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

Return Of The Pink Panther, The (1975)

Tamarind Seed, The (1974)

The Carey Treatment (1972)

Wild Rovers (1971)

Darling Lili (1970)

The Party (1968)

Gunn (1967)

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966)

The Great Race (1965)

A Shot in the Dark (1964)

The Pink Panther (1964)

Experiment in Terror (1962)

Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

High Time (1960)

Operation Petticoat (1959)

The Perfect Furlough (1959)

This Happy Feeling (1958)

Mister Cory (1957)

He Laughed Last (1956)

Bring Your Smile Along (1955)

How Many Vincente Minnelli Films Have You Seen?

How Many Vincente Minnelli Films Have You Seen?

Overview: Growing up in the era before TCM without a humongous ambition to seek out old films until age 16, my introduction to the classics was mostly guided by my parents’ tastes. My mother loved Gene Kelly and so I watched nearly every musical of his as child. I didn’t even know who Fred Astaire was growing up and when I watched my first Astaire film I was prepared to knock it down as if anyone could dare top Kelly. What I didn’t know growing up was that Kelly was supported by a large studio system with a musical department that was run by producer Arthur Freed (I suspect the R.F.  in “Singin and the Rain”) and an array of directors: George Sidney (Showboat) and Charles Walters (Barkleys of Broadway, Summer Stock) were in the mix and Busby Berkley was hired a little but the three people who really made a mark were Gene Kelly himself, Stanley Donen (first paired with Kelly than achieving some entirely original films on his own), and Vincente Minnelli.

It’s a little difficult to separate Minnelli’s accomplishments from that of the studio but it’s not an exaggeration to say that he bought a strong sense of exoticness to his films. Whether it was the Parisian streetscapes of “An American in Paris”, the luscious Scottish hills of “Brigadoon”, the turn of the century Victorian-style American family home dripping with nostalgia in “Meet me in Saint Louis” or the romance of Arabian Night-era Baghdad in “Kismet”, Vincente Minnelli would take you to enchanted far off worlds. If there was a specific Oscar category that epitomized what Minnelli did best, in my opinion, it would be art direction/set design which makes sense because that’s where he got his start. If his biography was any indication, one of his big regrets was not being able to shoot on location as he wanted to do with Scotland in “Brigadoon” and Paris in “American in Paris.” Of course, some of the most unforgettable musical numbers of the era came through Vincente Minnelli such as Gene Kelly singing “I’ve Got Rhythm” with Parisian school kids, Lena Horne’s “Stormy Weather” or Gene Kelly whisking Cyd Charisse away on the Sottish landscapes to “Almost like Being in Love.” And of course, the decision to end “American in Paris” on a fantasy ballet that was mimicked in “La La Land.”

However, Minnelli’s career expanded beyond musicals. Somewhere in the realm of 14 films towards the back end of his filmography were not musicals, highlighted by “Some Came Running” “The Sandpiper” and “Lust for Life” (which must have been a treat for a man who was an aspiring artist). These films are described by IMDB as melodramas which might make sense that after so many years with musicals, he wanted to explore a darker (at the very least, less fluffy) side of human relationships. Leonard Maltin noted that Minnelli loved dream sequences and flights of fanc such as the berserk carnival in ”Some Came Running”, the “Halloween Sequence” (which, now that I think of it seems like an alligator-lipped moment as TV Tropes calls it) in Meet me in Saint Louis, and the Mythical Boar Hunt in “Home from the Hill” in addition to the ballet sequence mentioned above.

Biography:  Minnellli was born in 1903 (coincidentally, the same year his most famous musical, “Meet me in Saint Louis” begins) in Chicago to a theatrical family. His parents and uncle operated a tent show that toured the Midwest. His first job was painting show-window displays as a kid. He was then a costume director and set designer for the Balaban and Katz theater chain in Chicago. Minnelli then moved to New York in 1935 where he directed three Broadway plays: “At Home Abroad” “The Show is On” and “Hooray for What!”

He was recruited as a producer to Paramount Studios first but was unsuccessful there at advancing up the ranks so went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer under Arthur Freed. According to his obituary, his contract for MGM was until 1966 so that would (as far as I know) be the dividing line between when he was a studio hand and an independent producer which means that many of his other non-musicals such as “Father of the Bride” and “Lust for Life” were under the studio.

Minnelli directed two Oscar-winning films: “American in Paris” and “Gigi” though he didn’t win the actual Best Director prize for the former and the latter just went to the studio (AFAIK).  Also, does anyone remember “Gigi”?

Minnelli also had a famous wife in Judy Garland who he met on the set of “Meet me in Saint Louis” and the pair produced another famous Hollywood triple threat in Liza Minnelli. In 2007 when AFI did a series of YouTube videos asking stars their favorite films, I thought Minnelli gave the best answer: “Meet me in St Louis because it’s where my mom met my dad so I owe my existence to it.” Minnelli had four marraiges but his three other wives weren’t famous and his other daughter isn’t famous, and I’m too lazy to look them up so we’ll skip that. He was also likely to be bisexual or veering significantly more gay than straight on the Kinsey scale. Lorna Luft (Garland’s daughter) speculated that Judy entered the marriage because “her mother was unable to distinguish between friendship and romantic relationships with her gay companions.” Either way, the marriage took a lot out of Minnelli who was married to Garland while she was going through the worst of her addictions.

Aside from that, Minnelli was known to have a lot of nervous tics and feel more socially awkward outside of his creative collaborators. He was also quite good with Gene Kelley’s psychotic perfectionism.

How Many Films Have I Seen:  7. Meet me in Saint Louis, The Pirate, American in Paris, Brigadoon, Kismet, Band Wagon, The Sandpiper

Favorite: American in Paris If musicals exemplify escapist entertainment, what’s more meta than a character who’s  escaping the aftermath of the war by staying in Paris (the ultimate tourist’s city) on an eternal vacation of sorts. Gene Kelly’s character of Jerry Mulligan is living the most quixotic of existences but American in Paris is a movie about him slowly getting sucked into reality once he gets invested in love with a person. The object of his affections, Leslie Caron’s Lise Bouvier, is on the wrong side of a love triangle. She’s indebted to a man who saved her from the war and it looks on the outside like love but it’s clear she never had much choice in it. There’s a tragedy in it and Mulligan really has no chance so the film ends in a ballet followed by an ending that I’m comfortable considering is just fantasy or possibly real.

Favorite Musical Number: I’ll add this bonus category. The Trolley Song in “Meet me in St Louis.” It’s not just an earworm but it’s got so much going for it. It works actual trolley bells into the music and has so much going for it orchestration-wise with strings and brass doing all sorts of riffs and counter melodies. I also like the interchange between chorus and the lead singer (Judy Garland doesn’t even start singing until 85 seconds into the song). But what I love most about this is that it’s not just singing and dancing but she’s expressing the emotion—in this case the excitement of seeing her crush board the train—of the song as she’s singing. It’s like a sing-acting I haven’t seen.

Underrated:  Brigadoon. Yes, the idea of a town thinking they’ll be safer (rather than run into a nuclear war or encroaching sprawl at the very least) by sleeping every 100 years is one of the most casually absurd movie plots in existence. But it is a very charming film and a sincere love story with a very solid chemistry between Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. There’s also Van Johnson who is such a wonderful deadpan foil, he seems to be five decades ahead of his time (a spiritual godfather to Aubrey Plaza, perhaps). The film is set in Scotland but filmed entirely on sound stages that I personally found quite impressive (especially the musical number through the heathers in “Almost like Being in Love.” There’s also a lot of fun organic songs like “Go Home to Bonnie G.”

Overrated: Band Wagon Movies about show business stars attempting a comeback are part of an overstuffed genre and this seems like an entirely unimaginative entry considering so much of the output. I’m wondering if this film was meant to give Fred Astaire material that was a little more weighty (like, say Billy Crystal in “Mr Saturday Night”) but he doesn’t really treat the material (of a man facing a midlife crisis) any differently so by all standards he fails here. Nothing is particularly memorable about the music either.

Blind Spots: “Lust for Life” sounds like an interesting one. “Cabin in the Sky” the first all-black musical in MGM’s stable also seems interesting.  “Gigi” did win a Best Picture Oscar so that could potentially be worth it?

Derry Girls review

Credit: Belfast Telegraph

Debuting on Netflix after a successful run on Britain's Channel, "Derry Girls" piqued my interest because its set in the North Irish town of Derry which I visited in 2000 and the series itself is set in the 1990s. I have also visited Ireland in 2016 and the island is significantly different these days as it moves further away from its North-South conflicts; and since the once-homogoneous island has been infused with Eastern Europeans thanks to the European Union.

Whether a sitcom can only teach you so much cultural history through a sort of narrative osmosis I'm not sure, but this show wouldn't do it for you if the only reason you're watching it is because you want to experience Northern Ireland in the 2000s.

It's also possible that being set in the town of Derry during the 1990s might ve the only truly novel thing about the show since there's such a big littany of influences at play: The free-wheeling character of Michelle feels like "Broad City"'s protagonists at her more extreme but mostly Britt Robertson in "Girl Boss" (and we all know how much of a chance that show was given by Netflix). One might also equate her to the puberty monster in "Big Mouth" in the way she tries to lull her three friends to give into their impulses. There's also a bit of "The Goldbergs" and "Fresh off the Boat" as it waxed nostalgic about the 90s although it doesnt work nearly as well in this nostalgic context since we as Americans have less of a basis of reference. There's also a little bit of "Bunheads" as this fenale quarter representing the four humors continually fall into and out of trouble.

The biggest cultural touchstone that comes to mind here is "Malcolm in the Middle": Through Erin's brutal nostalgia, youth is treated like an inhumane sort of prison where a) you are constantly misunderstood and constrained by your elders, and b) the network of peers, family and school officials you must navigate to keep ypur head above water is a never-ending source of strain.

Another source of this is that the show's humor feels thoroughly steeped in British irony. Dark comedies like "Seinfeld" or less famously "The Life and Times of Tim" (a show whose moral was pretty much "the universe has it out for Tim") come into play, but to this show's credit, "Derry Girls" has a bit more of a classist angle. It's as a direct result of their overextended family and the socio-economic circumstamces that Erin and cousin Orla have a less-than-ideal adolescence.

In addition to the quartet of girls, there is also a wildcard of sorts that adds some of the series' best and most absurd bits of humor: Michelle's cousin James has to go to the same all-girls Catholic school as Erin, Orla, Michelle and Claire because he's British or bullied or just plain unfit for the men's school (or some combination of the three) and he's treated as trash by everyone else on screen. As sociopolitical commentary (presumably because he's British in a pro-Irish town) he's not particularly well-explained but watching him navigate a school that's not designed for him and a family that doesn't want him is hilarious.

The Romanoffs Review

Getting into a good anthology show can be satisfying but also undermine the reason I want to use my time budget on TV instead of movies or other forms of passive entertainment. Television is an opportunity to follow a story as it unfolds over several distinct episodes. Instead, an anthology with little strain of connection can feel like I’m watching a lot of abridged movies without the satisfaction of being able to tally it up towards the list of films I watched (I’m a film nerd like that, don’t judge). In short, even if a series has state-of-the-art storytelling, it’s the connective tissue that makes an anthology feel worthwhile.

“The Romanoffs” tells a series of extremely long vignettes of disparate parties who are related to one another through shared lineage to the famed Romanoff dynasty.  One of the keys to this connectivue tissue is the very en vogue idea of white privilege expanded to look at a sort of aristocratic privilege that intersects with history in a very interesting way as it relates to the Romanoff family.

The Romanovs (Weiner chose to name the substitute the "ff" in place of the "v" to connote phoniness) were gunned down at the end of the Bolshevik revolution in uncertain enough terms that many people (most notably Anastasia) have claimed to be descendants of the royal family. In an interview, Weiner discussed the show as one "about people who used to be great."

He expands a little more:

In a weird way, it used to be completely untraceable and you could brag your way into a kind of status, especially in the United States, where there is no royalty.

There was a guy who ran a restaurant here in Los Angeles called Romanoffs, which was a big Hollywood hangout, and he claimed to be related to the family but was not. There are 200,000 people in Russia alone who have this last name. It’s not like everyone in the family was killed that day, but the number of people who claim to be from this family and the number of people who actually are is a bit disparate. But we all have that when we go looking for our roots, right? The things these stories have in common is that they’re about inheritance and adoption—am I special, am I adopted. 

In one of the episodes the false allure of dynasty is treated literally: Andrew Rannells plays a shifty piano teacher who, in fact, steals the Romanoff story from one of his clients.

The individual stories are pretty unacceptably long (see previous complaint about not wanting to watch full-length movies that don’t count as full-length movies) but they are all uniformly of a very high caliber so far and that’s very hard to pull off. None of them rely on soft comedy (of the kind that creates so much categorization confusion at the Golden Globes). They all hook you very early on with conflict that’s easily readable but elusive enough to elicit curiosity and draws you in through a loose foreshadowing. 

If the episodes start off strong, their undoing is often their ending. It was initially tempting to write that this series is similar to the “Twilight Zone” or “Black Mirror” in that the stories rely on twists but there’s quite a range here. The first three episodes play out well along those parameters with sharp turns at the end that shape the meaning of the story and justify the decisions to stick it out to the end. After, that, however, we have an episode with Amanda Peete that feels like the natural conclusion to the story. The Radha Mitchell episode set in Mexico City ends on a bit of a fourth wall break as a number of historical figures march across the plaza like "Chariots of Fire." It seems like in this case, that there was a void where the twist should have gone.  The Andrew Rannells story (one that is often cited as the worst episode of the series), the twist is a moral step backwards and leaves us with a sense of dissonance as it fades to the credits. The last episode I saw (with Kathyn Hahn) didn’t have as much of a twist so much as but a visual cue (the husband making eye contact with the unfortunate baby they rejected for adoption) is a potent image that allows us to foreshadow what’s to come.

As someone who’s seen very little “Mad Men”, I’m struck by the power of the story telling both on the script and in the visual language. The running times are unacceptably long which strained nearly every story but there’s a worthy seed of ambition in nearly every episode. The only outliar on the ambition front is the Amanda Peete episode where a stressed-out single mother mulls over whether or not to reveal her true birth father to her daughter. The episode has a great sense of tense energy for such a mundane set of events, but it seems like the sole outliar in terms of being about something bigger.

One of the great ways to interact with the show is to look for the historic easter eggs. Here are two great guides by Refinery29 and The Week,

Wait Until Dark (1967)

Audrey Hepburn is such a sweet, precious concoction that it's hard to imagine her in a thriler. That is, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill her. In "Charade" (a widely available hybrid romcom-thriller that epitomizes the 60s), the villains are so quirky and even cute in a Looney Tunes kind of way that you never really feel like she's in danger.

In contrast, "Wait Until Dark" is a thriller that pushes that line. Audrey Hepburn plays a blind woman, Susy, who's husband becomes implicated in a drug-trafficking scheme when a doomed mule passes him a doll with a stash in it. Like a Hithcock film, "Wait Until Dark" comes with its own meaningless McGuffin. A cold-blooded criminal (a young Alan Arkin fresh off his first Oscar nomination) enlists two fellow thugs to weasel the doll out of Suzy.

With Suzy's impaired sense of sight, the film is simultaneously a psychological thrill ride while maintaining a light tone as the two parties (Suzy is aided in part by an adolescent neighbor) engage in a battle of wits. The film wrings out a certain dramatic irony to the situation as we are privy to more than Suzy's point of view but she is still the character we are most emotionally attached to.

Adapted from a play by Frederick Knott, director Terrence Young milks the tension through keeping the play almost entirely in her apartment.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and the many types of dark storytelling

Like much of Joel and Ethan Coen's repertoire, the anthology film "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is masterfully crafted but devoid of a soul. 

The Coens dabble in a lot of tragedy and their joy is in inverting the familiar notion that tragedy has to have a larger point. If the point of tragedy is to absorb a deeper truth about human nature, the Coens often delight in having you learn as little as possible.

Four of the vignettes of the film end in tragedy and each of them are dark in a way that could take away one's enjoyment of the episode as a whole. What I find most interesting is how this is based on differing views of what one views as tragedy.

The vignette "Meal Ticket" has been cited as the darkest. A scruffy entrepeneuer played by Liam Neeson peddles around a limbless orator (Harry Helping) as entertainment and reaps the monetary rewards. As the crowds dwindle, the limbless man is eventually discarded into a river and replaced by a chicken.

This one wasn't as dark because the entertainer didn't have much to live for in the first place. He had no free agency in a very literal sense but in a broader sense, he was treated as nothing more than property. In that sense, he was put out of his misery.

The titular and first vignette, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" , personally negatively resonated the most with me. Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) is a simpleton of a caricature who roams the West alternatively singing jaunty tunes and brutally murdering people. What was bothersome here is that Buster Scruggs is so casually removed from the pain he inflicted on others. It's true that much of his shooting was in self-defense but at least a couple of his kills (like the bartender in the first bar) were not necessary and one was pretty gratuitous (shooting off every finger). Other people might not mind this as much because violence on this level happens in film all the time. Personally, I'm the guy who watches a James Bond movie and thinks, "hmmm, did Bond absolutely need to kill that henchman? What does it say about us as an audience that we don't care?" But I'm not sure if that makes it any easier; it's just more common place.

The vignette "The Gal Who Got Rattled" was the second most tragic to me because Alice (Zoe Kazan) haracter was so close to surviving. What's more, Alice is the most tragic because she doesnt belong in a Western in the sense that the other tragic characters have more forgivable deaths because they signed up for the risk. Alice is in the mold of a Shakespearean tragedy with maximum irony being wringed out: If fate had gone a hundred different ways, she would have still been alive.

Lastly, there's  "Near Agadones." A bank robber (James Franco) is caught and miraculously saved from hanging by a man who has been illegally rustling cattle. He ends up heing put on the gallows twice in one day and the second time he's not so lucky. To keep things from getting completely bleak, the outlaw dies with a smile because he spotted a pretty girl moments before his death and took a moment to relish in her beauty. But that's just a tad of sweet that's up against A LOT of bitter.

The character's fate was dark in a poignant and somewhat disturbing sense. Athough he did sign up for the risk of a torturous ending when he elected to rob a bank, there's the irony of getting hanged for the wrong crime. Still, what's disturbing about his story is that in the Old West (as portrayed here) the methods of execution are harsher than any other code we live by or know of (theft is not punishable by murder anywhere I know of) and this reality is laid bare in extreme detail. Watching Franco's character hang by a thread is somewhat excruciating.

How Many Tim Burton Films Have You Seen? (Originally Published at The Solute)

Originally Published at The Solute

Overview: I’m a fan of Tim Burton but I can’t unequivocally say I’m a fan of the Gothic art that inspires Burton himself. In other words, if Tim Burton and I were to walk through an art gallery, I’m sure we’d be drawn to different paintings, but I would still want to see the world through Tim Burton’s eyes. Burton’s visual style can best be described as if a city’s architecture were modelled on the interior of a Halloween haunted house with a dash of German Expressionism thrown in.
Burton is one of the most visually distinctive directors of moviedom today. He is apologetically drawn to the same thematic and stylistic territory through roughly thirty years and counting, and his fans have mostly been onboard. Thematically, Burton loves stories of outsiders and estrangement. Negligent or completely absent parents are a common theme. In terms of source material, he’s chosen a comic series about a superhero filling in the hole of his dead parents (Batman), an orphanage for children (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children), a girl named Alice who must have some pretty free range parents if they leave her alone to her own devices so much (Alice in Wonderland), and Willy Wonka whose emotionally distant dad (Christopher Lee in one of his best roles) is posited as the source for his loopiness. On top of that, Big Fish is about a man who can’t separate the fact and fiction of his father which is sufficient meta-commentary on the emotional distance between a kid and his father.

The two least Burtonesque films outside of the ones done as studio favors (Planet of the Apes, Mars Attacks) were rich biographical examinations of artists that inspired the director: Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood and Margaret Keane in Big Eyes. Unlike his Planet of the Apes remake, which no one really thinks of as a necessary installment in Tim Burton’s filmography, these two films epitomize Burton’s vision but in a more personal way.

What makes Burton worth watching isn’t just his visual prowess or his singular vision, but he deserves credit for handling human relationships as well. Whether it’s relationships between people and their found families, romance, mentor-protége relationships or father-son, there’s a certain sugary sweetness that the fantastical nature of his stories can give him leeway to pull off.

A Brief Biography: Tim Burton was born to a murderous barber and a the Queen of Hearts—okay, seriously, Tim Burton was born in Burbank to a father who was a minor league player before settling to work in the parks and recreation department (probably not as fun as the 2009 NBC show) and a mother who owned a cat-themed gift shop (that sounds pretty interesting). Just like many of his characters, he found his suburban life bland, felt disconnected from his father, and was very much a withdrawn loner in school. He did play water polo at Burbank High School, however (anyone know where that places you on the social food chain in Southern California high schools?). Another commonality that he has with the protagonist from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was that from age ten to his high school graduation the left his parents to live with his grandmother.

Burton watched a lot of old-school horror films, B-movies, German expressionist films, and was especially intrigued by Vincent Price. He first gained notice for his artistic talent through winning a local contest by designing an anti-litter poster. After high school, he was accepted on scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts which was dubbed by the LA Times as the “Harvard Business School of animation.” Although the CIA has turned out directors like Sofia Coppola and James Mangold, the vast majority of its alumni are animators and a lot of them (at least at the time Burton graduated) went straight to work for Disney. Despite not having a style that meshed with Disney’s family-friendly vision, Burton took advantage of the job placement and worked at Disney. As one would expect, Burton clashed with colleagues but contributed to a couple of Disney features in the 80s and still impressed them enough with his talent that he got the green light to make “Vincent” with a $60,000 budget. “Vincent” is about a young kid who was obsessed with Vincent Price which, again, is pretty autobiographical. He then made his first live-action short, “Frankenweenie,” which was turned into a 2012 film. Then Paul Ruebens came along and eventually Beetlejuice and Batman and that gave him box office clout.

Throughout his filmography, Burton would be careful to keep an eye on pre-existing intellectual properties so he could justify big budgets because those ornate gothic visions don’t come cheap. Today, Tim Burton lives in Ojai and although he hasn’t spoken with his father since high school (although it’s possible that his father died since I read this), he has a younger brother, Danny, who’s a working artist and supposedly is more avant-garde than Tim. He’s also associated romantically with Helena Bonham Carter who he’s not technically married to (as far as my research shows). He is often recognized in public with his disheveled hair and dark sunglasses.

A couple more interesting bits of trivia: Burton revealed on the Batman DVD commentary that he was “banned” from comic con for his film deviating from the canon. Also, Joel Schumacher who many believe to have ruined what Tim Burton built with Batman is good friends with Burton. For two people with such different styles, who'd have thunk?

How many have I seen: Thanks to a Tim Burton discussion I attended at DC’s Cinema Lounge in which I was forced to up my game, I’m up to 8. It’s also possible that I saw Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure as a kid and don’t remember it. The others are Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Ed Wood, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland, and Big Eyes.

My Favorite: There are three films on this list I think are absolutely brilliant, but I’ll stick with the one that’s his most highly praised film (though I’m sure there will always be debate): Ed Wood. The concept  portraying history’s worst film maker as a success story because the man never knew who bad he was – is gold which gives the film a solid headstart. The execution is even better: There’s the scene in which he gets advice from Orson Welles and the decision to stop the film as they’re walking into the premiere (a la Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). As previously stated, this is a film with less visual showmanship, but the film still has its touches. One thing that’s a little disappointing on a rewatch I had a few years ago: Johnny Depp doesn’t really show as much range here as he usually does and his overeager naivette is a little overly reminiscent of the way he chose to portray Willy Wonka.

Underrated: I’m going to break my rule and go with a tie. I’m sorry! Because it was released on Christmas day of 2014 by the Weinstein Company, Big Eyes got a fair amount of Oscar hype but its bad box office cooled the movie’s awards season hopes significantly although it got some love at the Golden Globes. Too bad because this is a very unique experience. It’s a can-do story of underdog artists that pulls the wool over our eyes midway through as it morphs into a full-on domestic horror film. Christophe Waltz goes from sly opportunist to the husband from Hell and the culminating courtroom finale is a great female empowerment moment.

Batman Returns is a film I felt somewhat frightened of as a child, but as I’ve grown older and have seen more Burton films, I’ve come to see it as the most quintessentially Burtonesque work and a triumph of the man to be able to meld his style beautifully with a pre-existing story. The 1989 Batman suffers from the same problem that The Dark Knight did (at least in my eyes): The Joker is a villain that lends itself to actor bravado. Batman Returns, in contrast, (and the rest of Nolan’s trilogy) has a much more balanced story that allows the director to be more of the star. The film is fantastical, absurdist and strangely grounded in two origin stories that seem like more than just excuses to get the film from the first to second acts. Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer really own their parts but the exposition for Cat Woman and the slow creep of The Penguin into the scene are both delicious. (The Penguin is first revealed after the prologue, as a deformed hand jutting out of a sewer grate as a newspaper alludes to him in its headline. Later you see his lair and minions before seeing the Penguin in the flesh.) The design of Wayne manor and the playful villainy of the Red Triangle Gang are also highlights. The film ends on a tragic note but with its artistry, it’s a tragedy of epic proportions.

Overrated: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’ve always found the source material weird and kind of a misguided allegory, and the Gene Wilder version creeped me out as a child, so I might not have been the ideal audience for this. Burton handles the adaptation kind of well and properly highlights the holes the novel doesn’t really explore: Willy Wonka is kind of a cruel and weird person that children might not want to idolize so much just because he has candy. However, the visual scheme didn’t really do it for me. The bright colors looked kindergartenish, the army of identical little people was more aggressive-looking than charming, and I couldn’t tell if the film was trying to make commentary on Michael Jackson (who was kind of hated by the public at the time) and felt the film should have gone one way or another with it.

Blind spots: The three most acclaimed films I haven’t seen are Big Fish, Sweeney Todd, and Beetlejuice. My idea for this entire feature (the blind spots part) came about because a movie theater usher gave me one of those “You haven’t seen ____?! How can you call yourself a movie person without seeing ___” when I told him I didn’t see Beetlejuice. I think I’ll forever proudly define myself as the guy who has never seen Beetlejuice just to piss off my usher friend now. Sweeney Todd – the story of a murderous barber – sounds like the exact opposite of what I’m looking for in a musical. Other than that: I just saw the trailer for Mars Attacks! and that looks really interesting. The film apparently flew under the radar because Independence Day eclipsed it at the box office and gobbled up the “weird alien movie” press that year. Big Fish, I hear is a great great film, and I’m happy agreeing with that assessment without having watched it. I just have a hunch based on what I’ve read. I’d watch it too, but if I have to pick one, I would go with Mars Attacks!

Filmography as Director (20 films)
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Big Eyes (2014)
Dark Shadows (2012)
Frankenweenie (2012)
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride (2005) (Co-Director)
Big Fish (2003)
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Mars Attacks! (1996)
Ed Wood (1994)
Batman Returns (1992)
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Batman (1989)
Beetlejuice (1988)
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
“Frankenweenie” (1984)
“Vincent” (1982)

How many David Lean films have you seen?

Originally Published at The Solute

Towards the end of the century, the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute released lists of the top 100 films of the 20th Century. He’s the most honored director on the British Film Institute list with Brief Encounter at #2, Lawrence of Arabia at #3, Great Expectations at #5, Bridge on the River Kwai at #11, Doctor Zhivago at #27, Oliver Twist at #46, and In Which We Serve at #92. Additionally, he has three films on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 epics list with Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai. 

It’s not surprising that astute British cinemaphiles might have missed some of Lean’s earlier films because to many Americans and casual movie goers, Lean is known for the glorious epics that he made over the latter half of his career. None of the six films he made from 1957 to 1984 clocks in at less than two hours and forty minutes. 

In a way, Lean is one of the most avant-garde directors I have watched because of the sheer length of his films. Although Lean appears to be a traditionalist in terms of narrative, there is something uncompromising about going to a studio and declaring “I’m going to make a film about a relatively obscure World War I general, it will have no women, and it will be three and a half hours long!” I watched Lawrence of Arabia as a high school freshman for a history assignment on Lawrence. I remember thinking “hmmm, shouldn’t this movie have ended by now?” but I certainly thought it was interesting. Perhaps, it was the novelty of seeing a different kind of film that was clearly a product of its period. The next year, our European History teacher decided to show the film in class over several periods and our reaction was, “yes it’s a pretty movie, but seriously, it’s this long?!”

A couple weeks ago, I was visiting my father at his swimming pool when he was conversing with some friends. I was reading a book review on the Russian Revolution from the Sunday newspaper and asked him what the Russian revolution was and his friends started telling me I should watch Doctor Zhivago. I mentioned that although I liked some of David Lean’s films, some of them like Lawrence of Arabia are excruciatingly long and one of them said “yes, but there’s not a wasted minute in it.”

This past week, I watched the first half of Doctor Zhivago (I plan on watching the second) and I have to agree with his assessment. The film isn’t bloated but narratively ambitious in a way that few are. Like his other epics, it’s a film that’s uninterested in telling a simple three-act narrative to get one to a happy ending: Lean is somewhat Altmanesque in weaving a tapestry but in a more linear fashion towards an end goal. It’s a film that meanders but it builds up story and character as it veers away from the main arc. The imagery in David Lean’s films are often striking and not simply in terms of cinematography. Watching Doctor Zhivago, I’m struck by the way Pasha (Tom Courtenay) is framed with his scarred face or of the scene in which Yevgraf (Alec Guiness ) trails the titular character through dark alleyways or the military march in which Pasha loses his gun or the image of Yuri being bombarded by peasants who have cordoned off his own home or…well, you get the point.
Additionally, Lean directed a whole slew of praised films before his epic phase that were largely adaptations of beloved literary works. His first three films he directed solo were adaptations of Noel Coward plays. He followed this by two Charles Dickens novels—Great Expectations and Oliver Twist—that are considered two of the best and most faithful cinematic adaptations of Dickens’ work.  Ironically, some critics would take issue with his later deviation from the source material in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.

Brief Biography:
Lean was born in Croydon, England in 1930. He was raised in a Quaker household where he was not allowed to see movies due to his religious upbringing. At Quaker School, Lean was a mediocre student but he displayed a passion for photography though his parents discouraged him from making a career out of it. After working for his father’s accounting firm, he was convinced by a friend to follow his passion to be a cinematographer and worked from Gaumont British Studios in 1927.  He eventually worked his way up a series of jobs to editor before Noel Coward himself invited him to co-direct and eventually direct solo his productions. He was known for being autocratic (closed off to outside input) on sets but not overly difficult on actors. Another Oscar-winning director. Kevin Costner, was inspired by his films in thinking that an epic was ideal.

In addition to directing, he was also the founder of the production company CineGuild with Roland Neame. In addition to 28 Academy Awards being awarded to his films, he was knighted in 1984 and received an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award a year before his death in 1991 at the age of 83. Another interesting distinction: In 1970, he was Hollywood’s all-time top directorial grosser (adding the money made from all his films; a title Spielberg holds today). He did plan an eventual retirement in Tuscany but he was working until the day he died on the unfinished film Nostromo. He asked for his ashes to be buried in the three places he loved most: Tahiti, Tuscany, and India.

Films I’ve Seen:
I’m making my way through my 5th. I’ve seen Summertime, Lawrence of Arabia, Passage to India, Bridge on the River Kwai, and Doctor Zhivago.

Favorite:
Bridge on the River Kwai – My favorite war film. It’s lush, it’s rich in story, and conveys the senseless tragedy of war with just one scene that has remained etched in my mind. It also has a quartet of indelible characters: William Holden pulls on the charisma as a soldier roped in for one last mission, Geoffrey Horne plays a green-eyed private with a palpable sense of fear and naiveté about killing another person; Alec Guinness is a morally complex man with an ironclad sense of integrity that leads him astray ever so gradually, and Sessue Hayakawa is a worthy sparring partner.

Underrated:
Passage to India – A story about the grandeur of India (circa 1928) and the racial prejudice, conflicts in national loyalty and sexual repression that lurks underneath. For a film that starts out centering around one character—a stuffy British magistrate played by Nigel Havers– almost entirely irrelevant by the end of the story, this is a film that’s extremely fluid and doesn’t feel draining time-wise.

Overrated:
I am ok with leaving this section blank if I don’t think anything’s overrated. I thought Summertime was uneventful and lackluster but I was assuming that film was panned. TCM.com classified  it as a hit, though, so yes, Summertime. It’s basically Katharine Hepburn having a Connecticut socialite’s version of a spring break experience in Venice with a hot local. The film has its moments and there’s something slightly interesting about just how unapologetic the film is at hewing so closely to the Latin lover archetype with the male lead.

Blind spots:
If Brief Encounter is the #2 all-time film according to the BFI, who am I to doubt them? One of David O Russell’s favorite films (or at least in in 2016) is Hobson’s Choice. Ryan’s Daughter is another epic but one that even the critics felt didn’t justify its long running time, so maybe?

Filmography as Director (17 films)

A Passage to India (1984)

Ryan’s Daughter (1970)

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Summertime (1955)

Hobson’s Choice (1954)

The Sound Barrier (1952)

Madeleine (1950)

The Passionate Friends (1949)

Oliver Twist (1948)

Great Expectations (1946)

Blithe Spirit (1945)

Brief Encounter (1945)

This Happy Breed (1944)

In Which We Serve (1942)

Major Barbara (1941)