Classic Movies: Star Wars Parodies

Movies and the 98%: It's a Wonderful Life

I just finished watching It's a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth year (I try to make it a holiday tradition every December), and like Dickens' A Christmas Carol, as heartwarming and inspirational as the film is, the implicit message of the film seems to echo the political campaign we just experienced this year.
This scene was one that really stood out as local tycoon Henry Potter attempts to shut down the Bailey Building and Loan that has housed many working class families in Bedford Falls. With Peter Bailey recently deceased, Potter looks to dissolve the institution during the Great Depression and at a time when Peter Bailey's son George is hoping to finally leave the small hometown that has been confining his dreams for years. As Potter ridicules the idea of decency and fairness, George Bailey speaks up for the values of his father:

Mr. Potter: Peter Bailey was not a business man. That's what killed him. Oh, I don't mean any disrespect to him, God rest his soul. He was a man of high ideals, so-called. But ideals without common sense can ruin this town. Now, you take this loan here to Ernie Bishop...you know, that fellow that sits around all day on his brains in his taxi, you know. I happen to know the bank turned down this loan, but he comes here and we're building him a house worth five thousand dollars. Why?

George Bailey: Well, I handled that, Mr. Potter. You have all the papers there. His salary, insurance. I can personally vouch for his character.

Mr. Potter: A friend of yours.

George Bailey: Yes, sir.

Mr. Potter: You see, if you shoot pool with some employee here, you can come and borrow money. What does that get us? A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. And all because a few starry-eyed dreamers like Peter Bailey stir them up and fill their heads with a lot of impossible ideas. Now, I say...

George Bailey: Just a minute. Just a... Just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You're right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap penny-ante Building and Loan, I'll never know. But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was... Why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn't that right, Uncle Billy? He didn't save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter. And what's wrong with that? Why...here, you are all businessmen here. Doesn't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers? You...you said that uh...what'd you say just a minute ago... They, they had to wait and save their money before they even thought of a decent home. Wait! Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they're so old and broken-down that they...Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about...they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, it is too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well, in my book, he died a much richer man than you'll ever be.

Mr. Potter: I'm not interested in your book. I'm talking about the Building and Loan.

George Bailey: I know very well what you're talking about. You're talking about something you can't get your fingers on, and it's galling you. That's what you're talking about, I know. Well, I, I, I've said too much. I... You're, you're the Board here. You do what you want with this thing. There's j-just one thing more though. This town needs this measly one-horse institution if only to have some place where people can come without crawling to Potter.

Writing on Christmas Eve 2012 after a brutal election season, Chris Powell gets to the heart of it:
"Of course this is Capra's metaphor for politics and the world: that there is progress when everyone is given a chance, a little capital and credit; when people play by the rules, look out for each other, and don't take too much more than they need; and that selfishness is the ruin of everything. Something like this -- more or less a policy of helping to make middle-class everyone who aspired to it and would indeed play by the rules, a policy of democratizing capital and credit -- made the United States the most prosperous country and the most successful in elevating the human condition. But for a few decades now the price of obtaining and maintaining those "two decent rooms and a bath" and the middle-class life to go with it has risen as real wages have fallen for most, largely under the pressure of government's unrelenting taxes in the name of services that have not really been rendered, a welfare system that has subsidized what somehow is not permitted to be called the antisocial behavior it is, and a plutocracy that has gained control of both major political parties. There seem to be more people who, if too confused or demoralized to be dangerous, are still closer to being a "rabble" than the country saw even during the Great Depression. Even at its best now Christmas is seldom more than an itinerant charity that, necessary as it may seem, tends to suppress the great political question of the day after Christmas, the question of how things can be organized to ensure that everyone has a good chance to earn his way in decency. But the great joy of Christmas is that the answer has been given, that we are not lost, that the country has been shown the way and can recover it -- that society can work for all, that it really can be a wonderful life if enough selfless people make it a political one."

Amen, Chris. Amen.

Cvalda by Bjork from Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Payload (Short film of a dystopian future)

LA Times video profile of a foley artist

Check it out HERE (after the commercial jump).

Spike Lee's Dolly Shot Montage

I prefer to think of them as "moving sidewalk" shots. The Keital-Bicycle one at 1:18 is probably my favorite, especially in the context of the movie. (Keital, a tough NY detective, is trying to help the kid on the bicycle, who shot a neighborhood thug to death. As Keital suggests a story to commit to testimony that would get the boy off the hook, the imaginary scene plays out with Keital as floating narrator; seriously badass.) Another top clip is the stoned Leguizamo clip from Summer of Sam; the woman in the nightclub scene (from The 25th Hour) is fantastic as well.

Scorsese on Taxi Driver

Watched this film again recently and really appreciate what a great film it is. Martin Scorsese has some great insights in this interview:







"Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere...in bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man... "

Pulp Shakespeare

Pulp Fiction Scene in Elizabethan English:

Robot Drones Play James bond Theme

These miniature flying drones move with incredible precision. I think my memories of The Terminator's Skynet would have me take a baseball bat to these things. The future seems wondrous and terrifying, as always, I suppose.

Ralph McQuarrie

[click to enlarge illustrations]
Artist/visual designer Ralph McQuarrie recently passed away. He is best known as an artist who gave vision to George Lucas' Star Wars stories, though he also worked on design for other sci-fi productions as well. Check out this gallery of his Star Wars conceptual design work, which George Lucas has praised as critical to realizing his vision. It's interesting to see the differences between the original imagining and the final product. In the painting above, the jedi (Luke?) wearing a breathing apparatus above makes for a colder, less hospitable, more dangerous sense of place than the version realized in the film. I find many f McQuarrie's painting striking and evocative, much in the way great sci-fi fantasy artwork can totally captivate the imagination.

A brilliant thing about the original film was its design that made the world of Star Wars seem futuristic but also well worn. McQuarrie produced detailed, dramatic work that seemed to bridge the fantasy world of sci-fi Heavy Metal comics and cinematic dreams of Lucas.

"George Lucas said he was saddened by McQuarrie's passing, calling him a visionary artist and a humble man.

"Ralph McQuarrie was the first person I hired to help me envision Star Wars," Lucas said. "His genial contribution, in the form of unequaled production paintings, propelled and inspired all of the cast and crew of the original Star Wars trilogy.

"When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph's fabulous illustrations and say, 'Do it like this.'"

From the Washington Post:

“Ralph McQuarrie was the first person I hired to help me envision ‘Star Wars,’ ” Lucas said in a statement posted online. “When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph’s fabulous illustrations and say, ‘Do it like this.’ ”

Mr. McQuarrie, for instance, designed the Samurai-inspired helmet and black caped-outfit worn by arch nemesis Darth Vader. (It was Mr. McQuarrie’s idea to put a breathing apparatus on Vader’s mask, so that he could survive in the vacuum of space, which led to the villain’s raspy voice in the films.)

Mr. McQuarrie’s pens, pencils and brushes brought lush color, dramatic scenery and lifelike characters to stunning vibrancy in film classics such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Cocoon,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “E.T.”

He was part of a team that won the 1985 Academy Award for best visual effects for his work on “Cocoon,” about aliens who can pass on the gift of immortality.

As an artist for all three episodes of the original “Star Wars” films, Mr. McQuarrie was widely credited with shaping Lucas’s far, far away galaxy.

Mr. McQuarrie had been fascinated with flight and outer space exploration since his days building model airplanes as a youngster.

As a technical artist for Boeing in the 1960s, he drew diagrams for a manual on constructing the 747 jumbo jet and later worked as an illustrator animating sequences of the Apollo space missions for NASA and CBS News.

Through two artist friends, Mr. McQuarrie was introduced to Lucas in the mid 1970s.

At the time, Lucas’ tale of a interplanetary civil war between a loose band of rebels and a Naziesque empire, had been rejected by United Artists and Universal.

Lucas enlisted Mr. McQuarrie’s help to show movie executives his story. Using Lucas’ script for inspiration, Mr. McQuarrie drew scenes of a space battle between laser-shooting fighter planes and lightsaber-wielding warriors.

Lucas, armed with the images, quickly won funding from 20th Century Fox and “Star Wars” was born, beginning with “Episode IV: A New Hope,” in 1977.

Artist Iain McCaig, who worked on the “Star Wars” prequels, Episodes I, II, and III, called Mr. McQuarrie a pioneer of film conceptual art. Before him, McCaig said, few directors called on artists to help visualize their projects.

“He didn’t just draw a picture of Darth standing in a neutral pose,” McCaig said in an interview, “he did a scene of Darth lashing out at Luke Skywalker. You could feel the power and the pathos going on in that moment. He did more than just design costumes. . . . He helped capture the the story-telling moments in really dazzling pictures.”

Doug Chiang, who worked with McCaig as an artist on Episode I, said that Mr. McQuarrie’s artwork was “cinematic.”

“He painted and designed with a camera’s point of view,” Chiang said in an interview. “Most science fiction art at the time were for posters and book covers. But his looked like images you could see on the big screen.”

He designed the porcelain armor of the Imperial storm troopers, the shiny gilt frame of the humanoid robot C-3PO and the droid R2D2, which resembled a motorized trashcan.

Anthony Daniels, the British actor who portrayed C-3PO, initially turned down the part, unimpressed by his proposed character’s lack of depth.

Then he saw an expressive drawing of the robot painted by Mr. McQuarrie.

“He had painted a face and a figure that had a very wistful, rather yearning, rather bereft quality, which I found very appealing,” Mr. Daniels said in 2010. He took the job.

Ralph Angus McQuarrie was born June 13, 1929, in Gary, Ind., and grew up on a farm outside Billings, Mont.

He saw combat with the Army during the Korean War and survived a bullet to the head. The round punctured his helmet, bloodying his skull. After the war he attended what is now known as the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

He worked as an illustrator for a dental business drawing teeth and dentist’s tools before his work in films. His art for “Star Wars” led director Steven Spielberg to tap Mr. McQuarrie to draw space ships for his movies “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T.” (1982). Survivors include his wife of 29 years, Joan, of Berkeley.

In “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), Mr. McQuarrie makes a cameo appearance in a scene inside a hanger on the icy planet Hoth.

On the 30th anniversary of “Star Wars,” a collectible action figure was released of his character, rebel Gen. Pharl (a play on Ralph) McQuarrie, complete with blaster pistol.

Home Video Commentaries

Two brothers (comedian John Ramsey and his filmmaker brother Richard Ramsey) watch old home videos and decide to add DVD commentaries; a deadpan gem ensues:

Dance in Cinema

Daughter of ‘Dirty War,’ Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents

One of the many horrible stories of Argentina's "Dirty War."

NYT

October 8, 2011
Daughter of ‘Dirty War,’ Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

BUENOS AIRES — Victoria Montenegro recalls a childhood filled with chilling dinnertime discussions. Lt. Col. Hernán Tetzlaff, the head of the family, would recount military operations he had taken part in where “subversives” had been tortured or killed. The discussions often ended with his “slamming his gun on the table,” she said.

It took an incessant search by a human rights group, a DNA match and almost a decade of overcoming denial for Ms. Montenegro, 35, to realize that Colonel Tetzlaff was, in fact, not her father — nor the hero he portrayed himself to be.

Instead, he was the man responsible for murdering her real parents and illegally taking her as his own child, she said.

He confessed to her what he had done in 2000, Ms. Montenegro said. But it was not until she testified at a trial here last spring that she finally came to grips with her past, shedding once and for all the name that Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife had given her — María Sol — after falsifying her birth records.

The trial, in the final phase of hearing testimony, could prove for the first time that the nation’s top military leaders engaged in a systematic plan to steal babies from perceived enemies of the government.

Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the military during Argentina’s dictatorship, stands accused of leading the effort to take babies from mothers in clandestine detention centers and give them to military or security officials, or even to third parties, on the condition that the new parents hide the true identities. Mr. Videla is one of 11 officials on trial for 35 acts of illegal appropriation of minors.

The trial is also revealing the complicity of civilians, including judges and officials of the Roman Catholic Church.

The abduction of an estimated 500 babies was one of the most traumatic chapters of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The frantic effort by mothers and grandmothers to locate their missing children has never let up. It was the one issue that civilian presidents elected after 1983 did not excuse the military for, even as amnesty was granted for other “dirty war” crimes.

“Even the many Argentines who considered the amnesty a necessary evil were unwilling to forgive the military for this,” said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch.

In Latin America, the baby thefts were largely unique to Argentina’s dictatorship, Mr. Vivanco said. There was no such effort in neighboring Chile’s 17-year dictatorship.

One notable difference was the role of the Catholic Church. In Argentina the church largely supported the military government, while in Chile it confronted the government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and sought to expose its human rights crimes, Mr. Vivanco said.

Priests and bishops in Argentina justified their support of the government on national security concerns, and defended the taking of children as a way to ensure they were not “contaminated” by leftist enemies of the military, said Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Nobel Prize-winning human rights advocate who has investigated dozens of disappearances and testified at the trial last month.

Ms. Montenegro contended: “They thought they were doing something Christian to baptize us and give us the chance to be better people than our parents. They thought and felt they were saving our lives.”

Church officials in Argentina and at the Vatican declined to answer questions about their knowledge of or involvement in the covert adoptions.

For many years, the search for the missing children was largely futile. But that has changed in the past decade thanks to more government support, advanced forensic technology and a growing genetic data bank from years of testing. The latest adoptee to recover her real identity, Laura Reinhold Siver, brought the total number of recoveries to 105 in August.

Still, the process of accepting the truth can be long and tortuous. For years, Ms. Montenegro rejected efforts by officials and advocates to discover her true identity. From a young age, she received a “strong ideological education” from Colonel Tetzlaff, an army officer at a secret detention center.

Read the full story HERE.

See also the excellent film The Official Story.

Music Professor Stephen Shearson Critiques Ken Burns' Use of Music in his 2011 Prohibition Documentary

The following is an excellent letter Prof. Stephen Shearson faxed to Ken Burns' production company after viewing Burns' new Prohibition documentary. Thanks to Prof. Shearson for permission to repost this, which originally appeared on the Society for American music listserv.

Mr. Ken Burns
Florentine Films
Walpole, NH 03608
fax: (603) 756-4389

Dear Mr. Burns,
Last night I (along with many others, I'm sure) finished watching your documentary Prohibition. It's another very fine and informative production. As a music historian, however, I'd like to provide some feedback about the music used.

You should know first that, when I heard you had used Wynton Marsalis for much of the music, my heart sank. Mr. Marsalis is a brilliant musician, but he's not a brilliant historian, and when you ask him (or Dan Morgenstern, for that matter) a musical question, his answer is likely to be, "Jazz." Thus we had in Prohibition the use of jazz idioms covering almost everything like a smothering blanket. Last night, for example, I kept hearing what sounded like a recording by Sidney Bechet associated with various figures (Al Smith being one) who probably never listened to or, if he did, probably didn't care about Bechet. The musical message of the documentary was that just about everyone of that time listened to and associated themselves with jazz. Not so. Although Fitzgerald labeled the 1920s "The Jazz Age," I think we need to recognize that he was referring primarily to the part of society and the generation that he knew best and that was a very limited group.

I also noticed the absence of any recognizable Temperance songs—-in a documentary about Prohibition. Perhaps you know that American publishers, especially sacred-music publishers, issued numerous collections of Temperance songs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But we heard none of them (that I could tell). Nor did I hear any recognizable gospel songs—and by "gospel" here I refer to the songs published primarily between the 1870s and 1920s by northern and midwestern publishers and written by the likes of Fanny Crosby, Sankey, Doane, Root, etc. These songs were immensely popular and influential in American society, especially among those who supported the Temperance movement. Just hearing a group singing one or two Temperance songs and gospel songs would have added much to our understanding of those who promoted Prohibition. I'm almost certain there are contemporaneous recordings of both.

As someone who self-identifies as a white southerner, I was also sensitive to the music associated with southerners (white and otherwise) and also westerners or midwesterners, such as Willebrandt. All I recall hearing were unimaginative uses of solo banjo and slide guitar or dobro. I recall, at one point, looking at images of Willebrandt while hearing a barely recognizable tune being plunked on a solo banjo and thinking, "This woman probably never listened to banjo music and would have wondered why anyone would have associated her with such." Others you represented in Prohibition would have listened to early country or Old Time recordings; it's very likely that recordings exist in that idiom celebrating both drink and Temperance, but we heard none of those. And you could have represented Teetotaling southern African Americans by some of the highly entertaining recordings of sermons by the likes of the Rev. J. M. Gates.

I could go on in this vein, but here's the bottom line: I think you're an excellent documentarian, and I very much enjoy watching your productions, but you're overlooking a strong resource when it comes to the use of music on American topics. The Society for American Music (SAM) is a thriving professional society of music historians specializing in American music, and I can think of a number of persons you could contact who are very familiar with the music of the nineteenth and early twentieth century—individuals who could help you provide a much-more-nuanced and historically, socially, and culturally accurate set of musical associations. Many of those same people are involved in other professional societies as well, but SAM is probably where I'd start. They, furthermore, have access to or control archives (a la Morgenstern) that can provide recordings of the era.
Please consider these constructive comments as you continue your work in the future.

Most sincerely,

Stephen Shearon
Professor of Music

Angie Dickinson Performs Steve Reich's "Clapping Music" While Beating Up Lee Marvin

Great editing (nerds only)!

Film Scenes: Brooks in Shawshank Redemption

Great writing and acting. The look on James Whitmore's face while he rides the bus and Morgan Freeman's face after hearing the end of his letter, perfection; it's acting that looks and feels like real life.

Planet of the Apes Dance Mix

Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, glow sticks, disco ball, turntables, DJ...you know you want to watch:



Directed, Edited, Concept by Brad Hasse (www.bradhasse.com)
Visual Effects and Design by EP*Vision (www.epvision.tv)
East Pleasant Pictures (www.eastpleasant.com)

Deductive Reasoning with Black Dynamite

From the 2008 Blaxploitation homage/parody Black Dynamite. Using deductive reasoning (sorta!) Black Dynamite connects the dots to uncover the devious truth behind The Man pushing Anaconda malt liquor in the ghetto (NSFW language but without the "reveal" scene whereupon they discover their pal Gunsmoke has consumed too many Anacondas):

Remembering Actor J.C. Quinn, Plus a Scene from Vision Quest

For some reason I thought of this guy today, actor J.C. Quinn. In the 1990s he used to come listen to my Latin jazz sextet, an ideal audience member nursing a drink and really listening through the surrounding din. He introduced himself as "J.C., you know, like John Coltrane." He always wanted to talk music on breaks while I wanted to ask him about cinema. He had great stories, and thinking back I don't know why I didn't ask him twice as many questions; I was on the job and too damn busy, I suppose. He fell into acting late but went on to study at Strasberg's Actor's Studio. He possessed a face and voice oozing with character. This scene from Vision Quest (1985) with Matthew Modine isn't particularly well written, but the dude is totally committed and just owns it; he makes it art. I miss ya, J.C.

Concussion Indiophones: Beer Bottles-(1979 Film The Warriors)

Concussion idiophones: sub-group of idiophones that consists of two or more similar non-flexible objects that are struck together to make sound.

I remember seeing this in a theater back in the day, and no one watching knew what that sound was when it began. Everyone tripped out seeing the beer bottles both in terms of surprise at the sound source and admiration for the inventiveness. Combined with the increasingly twisted call of "Warriors....come out to play-hay" was a perfect blend of over-the-top menacing insanity (especially after watching the protagonists running for their lives for over an hour) and cleverness.