Picture Me Big Time

Believe it or not (add Jack Palance-esque rasped ellipsis here), there is a whole cinema classification called “age-changing films” (aka “body-swapping”). Because I grew up in the 1970s, the classic of the genre will always be the original Freaky Friday (1976), but the 1980s* brought a slew of young-and-old-switch-bodies movies. There was the magic potion that switched Kirk Cameron and Dudley Moore in Like Father Like Son (1987), the oriental skull that switched Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold in Vice Versa (1988), and the (creaky) George Burns vehicle 18 Again! (1988). There was also Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) in which Kathleen Turner wakes up and is back in high school (a terrifying thought).

One variation on this theme was an Italian film called Da Grande (1987) in which 9-year-old Marco, smitten with his teacher, wishes he could be a grown-up...and, when he wakes up in the morning, finds himself in the body of a 40-year-old.

If that last film sounds a wee bit familiar, it’s because it was believed to be the inspiration for the mega-hit Big (1988), with Tom Hanks starring as a 13-year-old who wakes up in the body of a 30-year-old.

Big will be screened at the Saratoga Film Forum, Saturday, February 11, at 7:30 p.m. as part of the Film Forum Family Flick series. In keeping (vaguely) with the theme of Big, the Family Flick screenings are run entirely by kids who choose the film, man the projection booth, sell the concessions, and generally run the show. The Family Flick series is sponsored by the Nordlys Foundation and all proceeds will be donated to charity. If you happen to know any kids who might be interested, let us know at films@saratogafilmforum.org.

*The genre was revived in the 2000s.

Film Forum Screening Like Crazy

No, that doesn’t mean that the Saratoga Film Forum is feverishly screening movies 24/7 (or, for that matter, screening its calls). Rather, it means they will be screening the movie Like Crazy this weekend. Sorry for the mix-up.

Like Crazy has earned its share of accolades (74% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and produce doesn’t lie), as well as a brace of Sundance awards (the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film as well as a Special Jury Prize for Felicity Jones). Young director Drake Doremus made the most of a small budget (under $250,000)—it was shot on a Canon EOS 7D DSLR digital camera (you can snag one for under $1500 at Amazon). Said Doremus in an interview: “We shot on this consumer camera called the 7D, the Canon 7D. It’s a still camera, but it takes videos, and you put film lenses on it, and it looks great.” The actors also did their own hair and makeup, and the dialogue was improvised. Doremus was clearly influenced by his French New Wave forebears (Godard’s Breathless, e.g.). (More and more “films” today are being shot on consumer or prosumer grade digital cameras. And, yes, in case you’re wondering, the first cinematic feature to be shot on an iPhone has already been released.) 

The story itself, about a love affair forced into transatlanticism by an expired student visa, is based on Doremus’ own experiences when his then-wife was having visa issues and was sent back to Austria.

Even without a lavish budget, the movie has a lot of texture—and texting, as the two young lovers are separated for the bulk of the movie. 

The film is unabashedly romantic—and anyone who has ever endured a long-distance relationship (and/or been in their 20s) can sympathize. By the way, is there anyone you want, need, love, and/or miss like crazy? You can customize the movie poster for Like Crazy using your own photos. Check out the movie’s “poster creator” over on Facebook.

Screening times are Thursday and Friday, February 9 and 10, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, February 12, at 3:00 p.m.

“What we’ve got on our hands...is a dead shark”

1977’s Annie Hall was a turning point for Woody Allen as a filmmaker, marking as it did the transition between his “early funny films” and the more serious (but often no less funny) later “relationship” movies. (Allen’s previous film was 1975’s Love and Death, a broad satire of 19th-century Russian literature that, among other things, involved a plot to assassinate Napoleon. A more jarring juxtaposition of films there has never been.) Annie Hall was also a turning point in that it was Allen’s first Oscar nod, winning Best Picture, as well as Best Screenplay and Best Director.

 

Allen’s original title for Annie Hall had been Anhedonia, a psychoanalytic term that means “the inability to experience pleasure from activities usually found enjoyable.” It’s hard to imagine why United Artists had a hard time coming up with a marketing plan for that! Interestingly, what became Annie Hall was originally planned to be a murder mystery, although that element was jettisoned in favor of a straight romantic comedy. It was revived almost 20 years later for Allen’s 1993 film Manhattan Murder Mystery which re-teamed Allen with Diane Keaton (the titular Annie Hall).

Although Annie Hall would mark a departure for Allen (more fully realized in his next film, 1978’s Bergman homage Interiors), it doesn’t lack for comedy. The Marshall McLuhan cameo, the lobsters, the “spider the size of a Buick,” “a large, vibrating egg”...Annie Hall is still one of the funniest movies ever made. But, like the old joke that ends the film—“two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions’”—there is a more serious message lying below the surface.

See what you think. The Film Forum will be screening Annie Hall Monday night, February 6, at 7:30 in the Spring Street Gallery (110 Spring Street) as part of the Monday night “Countdown to Oscar” Best Picture Winners series. 

Marginal Revolution

There has been no shortage of documentaries about the 2008 financial meltdown and related issues. Inside Job, which the Saratoga Film Forum screened last year, was perhaps the highest-profile of these. 2009’s Collapse was another, and the Enron-collapse doc The Smartest Guys in the Room dates from 2003. But “financial dramas”—let alone financial thrillers—have tended to be few and far between. 2010’s The Company Men was a bit of a flop and got mixed reviews (including only a 67% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer). HBO’s Too Big to Fail, based on the nonfiction book by Andrew Ross Sorkin, has been described as a dramatized version of Inside Job. (Metacritic has a pretty thorough roundup of recession-themed films here.) Speaking of HBO, one of my favorite “finance films” was 1993’s Barbarians at the Gate, which, though not without its suspense, was played more as a black comedy, thanks to a screenplay by the late great Larry Gelbart. There is also Trading Places, speaking of dark financial comedies. (Wall Street and Boiler Room round out the master list of Wall Street flicks.)

The idea of a “financial thriller” may sound somewhat oxymoronic, although in the book world, it is a growing genre. One of the challenges of this genre, is grokking the lingo. Even after reading the explanation of a margin call, it’s still a bit of a mystery. So the challenge of a good financial thriller is to ramp up the suspense while keeping exposition sounding less like an MBA thesis.

About 20 minutes into Margin Call, Peter Sullivan, a fairly junior member of an investment bank (loosely based on Lehman Brothers), begins the initial explanation of what is happening that will end up triggering the financial meltdown. “It’s fairly complicated,” Sullivan begins. “Simplify!” urges trading floor head Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), who no doubt speaks for the viewer. That Sullivan is played by Zachary Quinto, whose most famous role (arguably) is that of Mr. Spock in the 2009 Star Trek reboot, perhaps lends a tone of “technobabble” to the proceedings, but it gives us just enough to let us know what’s happening without offering “too much information.” Emerson then tries to further explain to his boss Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who says, “Just talk to me in English,” a sentiment repeated by the Boss of All Bosses John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) in an early morning meeting. “Speak as you might to a small child or a golden retriever.”

“Look at these people,” says Sullivan, as he and his colleague Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) drive through the streets of Manhattan, “wandering around with no idea what’s about to happen.”

And that’s the issue with movies like Margin Call, particularly post-Occupy Wall Street. With the effects of the 2008 financial crisis still profoundly affecting many of us, is it too soon to accept moral ambiguity on the part of the folks that helped cause it? Can the bankers be humanized?

Director J.C. Chandor wrote Margin Call in the days after Lehman’s dramatic failure, and, as he told the New York Times, wanted to understand the human side of a financial crisis, or “the decision-making process that got us into this mess....Everything in my gut said don’t lie here.” Chandor’s father was a Merrill Lynch investment banker, and he got to see the human side of the “Wall Street banker” firsthand, the ups and the downs. Thus, Margin Call is not intended to condemn the system, and if nothing else, it aims for a calm, realistic portrait of the industry. From the Times:

“A lot of what our film is really exploring is that it’s easy to vilify, it’s easy to moralize and judge and blame people for what happened,” Mr. Quinto said. “And not inappropriately, completely! But there’s also a whole swath of people who were just doing their jobs, who weren’t complicit in the decision-making process that led to all of this.”

That is, do we paint everyone in a large industry with the same brush?

Oh, Oscar!

This year's Oscar nominees were announced earlier this week. In February, the Film Forum is screening the Oscar-nominated short films. Check out the updated roster here.

As ever, the nominees were not without controversy. Feel free to use the Comments section to share your thoughts—which nomination was deserved? Who got robbed?

Speaking of Oscar, in February, the Saratoga Film Forum is presenting a countdown to Oscar night. Each Monday night the Film Forum will screen a past Best Picture Oscar winning film. See the schedule here. All Monday night screenings are at 7:30 at the Spring Street Gallery, 110 Spring Street, and are free and open to the public.

Milling Around

Calling all art lovers. After the Saratoga Film Forum’s Friday evening screening of The Mill & The Cross, Rachel Seligman, Associate Curator at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, will lead a discussion about the film. “I have taught Bruegel in the past and have always loved his work,” Rachel tells us. “The conceit for this film is such an unusual one that I was very intrigued and curious about it. And the more I’ve read about it, the more excited I am to see it.”

Rachel and the Film Forum go a long ways back—and in fact she was the Film Forum’s first paid employee. Friday’s screening starts at 7:30 p.m. For more information, please visit the Saratoga Film Forum’s Web site or Facebook page.

While You Were Art

Those of you who may have been fans of the old 1960s TV show Wild Wild West no doubt recall the episode where the evil Dr. Loveless invents a device that lets people travel inside paintings. The device is used for nefarious purposes (inhabited paintings placed in royal houses were designed to facilitate the theft of royal jewels, etc.), but having seen the episode at an impressionable age, I have always thought it would be pretty cool to travel inside a painting (of course, this would depend on the painting...). While those of us who require glasses often have the experience of being in an Impressionist painting, generally, though, we can only imagine what the oil-on-canvas-based life would be like.

Now, however, Polish filmmaker Lech Majewski takes moviegoers inside a painting, specifically, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1564 painting The Way to Calvary. The movie is The Mill & The Cross, which will screened at the Saratoga Film Forum this Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. This is not a first for Majewski, who is himself a painter; his 2004 film The Garden of Earthly Delights involved reenactments of scenes from the titular triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, which sounds like it would put the “trip” in “triptych.”

The Mill & The Cross goes even further than simply reenacting a painting—it uses computer graphics and heavy-duty compositing to simulate Bruegel’s visual style and place the actors within extrapolations and interpolations of what is on the canvas, in some ways “finishing” Bruegel’s work. The film brings the 16th-century Flemish master into the 21st century, and this “bringing Bruegel forward” is not just visual, but thematic as well.

Bruegel the Elder (so-called in retrospect to distinguish him from his son, also a painter, who became known, cleverly enough, as Bruegel the Younger) was known for what has been called “genre” painting; his works often featured peasants and the daily life of a fairly typical village. This was quite rare at the time, and Bruegel’s works have been important documents of 16th century Flanders. Part of this “everyday” life also unfortunately involved torture and execution, and the painting—and film—depict victims strapped to Catherine wheels, ravens pecking away at them. At the time, Flanders was occupied by Spain, and by all accounts it was a brutal occupation. As a result, the crucifixion of Christ depicted in the painting is performed not by the Romans, but by the Spanish. Bruegel invented a style of painting perhaps known as “protest art.”

Bruegel's The Way to Calvary

And yet if you look at the painting (click here for a higher-resolution version), you’ll notice the milling crowd (as it were) going about their business blind to many of the horrific events around them, as if they have become immune to them.

Majewski spoke about Bruegel’s attitude toward the subjects of his painting in a recent interview:

[H]e is a realist in looking at human conditions. He is a profound observer. I feel a lot of compassion in his paintings, a softening for Flanders and its people. He is compassionate in his depiction, but realistic…it is the inbred condition of human beings, that’s the way it is…to be cynical you have to be on purpose, so to say.

...

His message is timeless, anything important happens, you most likely won’t see it because you just don’t see beyond your own nose…the foreground is less important…Bruegel’s attitude is truthful, I mean people go after the incidents that catch their eyes, but that’s not necessarily the most important thing happening around them.

Times have changed, but not too much:

People have to be particularly stronger today as we are attacked by many aggressive disruptions, whether we like it or not. Disruptions to our train of thought are constant; if you want to communicate with yourself there will be constant interference – radio, TV etc.

And, above everything, the mill. For Majewski, the mill is the primary symbol of both the painting and the film, representing the divine. There is a scene in the film when the blades stop and the world stands still. What should we make of this?