Uh OH ... this is a serious subject ...
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Friday, August 21, 2015
Throwback Thursday : it was me and Ingrid superstar and Gerard Malanga and.Andy Warhol
Throwback Thursday : it was me and Ingrid and Gerard and.Andy was behind the movie camera .. footage at the Andy Warhol Museum.. I was studying with Lee Strasberg .and doing plays at Cafe Cino and La MaMa . and really would have preferred at the time to be working with Kazan.. I did not consider Warhol superstars actors .. Viva was the exception, and I have always thought she could have been a huge success if she had wanted it.(Watch Agnes Vardas' Lions Love) My friends Tom Baker, Sylvia Miles and Louis Waldron were all SAG members with training and film, television and Broadway credits (Waldron and Miles) were the exceptions. The others were playing exhibitionistic exaggerations of themselves.. and yes that was often exciting to watch but it was not acting as the craft I was learning .. hearing Marlon Brando in the recent documentary Listen to Me Marlon http://filmforum.org/film/listen-to-me-marlon-film-page… based on his personal aural documentation addresses in a way the craft of acting unlike any other actors recollection that I know .. a must see for any actor at any stage of v carrer (thanks for to Laura Levine for digging this up from the archives of a photographer she had been friends with when he passed
Sunday, August 16, 2015
REVIEW: the Wolfpack Director Crystal Moselle
The Wolfpack
Director Crystal Moselle
Moselle is a young critic’s darling. This movie made me see red at Sundance. A young college student who wants to be a filmmaker sees on the street five long-haired young men walking in a pack and is fascinated by them, secretly following them to where they live in public housing. She continues to follow them whenever she hears they are out, which is extremely rare, as they have been kept inside by their parents sometimes for a full year.
Why is not ever made clear—nor is much actual information given to the viewer in order to understand who these boys are. We are titillated with some “facts.” They are home-schooled by their mother; they learn most of their social skills by play acting out Quentin Tarantino films. (Got that!) There is a sister, but we never learn anything about her. In fact, we never learn much about any of them except what we see.
This film should have stayed a film school project where Moselle could have benefited from scholastic critique. Instead, the film was snatched up at Sundance and the director, rather than learning from the mistakes she has made, becomes a festival celebrity. Oy!
Friday, August 14, 2015
GLORIA GRAHAM: BLOND AMBITION :Film Society of Lincoln Center is September 4-8 a retrospective directors Vincente Minnell, Fritz Lang, Joan Micklin Silver , Robert Wise, Edward Dmytryk Nicholas Ray, Josef von Sternberg, Fred Zinnemann
OMG ,,, GLORIA GRAHAM one of my favorite actors amanof the World's Most Accomplished directors is having a retrospective at Lincoln Center 4-8 September 2015
Gloria Grahame: BLONDE AMBITION FILMS, SCHEDULE & amp; DESCRIPTIONS
The Bad and the Beautiful
Vincente Minnelli, USA, 1952, 35mm, 118m
Vincente Minnelli supposedly drew on the lives of a handful of notorious, iconic Hollywood Producers, Including Val Lewton and David O. Selznick, to create the caustic figure at the center of The Bad and the Beautiful, one of His richest melodramas. But the film is less an exposé inside-Hollywood than a grim tragedy About a man driven to appalling ends by a mixture of hubris and sheer malice. We learn, across three extended flashbacks, why three prominent Hollywood figures, Including an actress (Lana Turner) and to writer (Dick Powell) detest the famous producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), WHO made Both Their Lives and Their careers ruined. Grahame won an Oscar for her supporting role as Powell's flighty unforgettable Southern belle wife.
Friday, September 4 4:00 pm
Monday, September 7 6:00 pm
The Big Heat
Fritz Lang, USA, 1953, 35mm, 90mm
Monday, September 7 4:00 pm
Chilly Scenes of Winter
Joan Micklin Silver, USA, 1979, 35mm, 92mm
The third of Joan Micklin Silver's criminally under-seen includes features one of Grahame's end screen performances as an eccentric matron Given to sudden outbursts and occasional gusts of affection. The mood of the rest of Chilly Scenes of Winter , Which Took three years to find a theatrical release in STI current version, is gentler and more melancholic: a dissatisfied Salt Lake City civil servant (John Heard) goes to desperate, threatening lengths in His Attempts to recover the love of His Life (Mary Beth Hurt) after she returns to her husband. It's a tonally deft, sensitive, and wise movie That Launched the careers of Its two stars, even as it September the closing note for Grahame's.
Tuesday, September 8 6:30 pm
The Cobweb
Vincente Minnelli, USA, 1955, 35mm, 134m
MGM spared none of Its legendary gloss on Vincente Minnelli's star-studded melodrama, a sort of Grand Hotel variant adapted from the novel by playwright William Gibson ( The Miracle Worker ) and Set in a psychiatric hospital. The patients of the clinic deluxe Where The Cobweb Takes place are more stable, on the whole, than STI dysfunctional staff. Richard Widmark plays the psychiatrist tasked dedicated With putting out the fires of the philandering medical officer (Charles Boyer), while His Wife (Grahame), Whose choice to order new drapes for the hospital library-in Minnellian Typically focus on set design-throws everyone from the administrator (Lillian Gish) to an artist-patient (John Kerr) into turmoil. Lauren Bacall, as Widmark's widowed colleague and possible love interest, is the movie's sole oasis of sanity, but Grahame is Among ITS MOST electric presences.
Sunday, September 6, 6:30 pm
Tuesday, September 8 8:30 pm
Crossfire
Edward Dmytryk, USA, 1947, 35mm, 86mm
Robert Ryan Grahame Both Launched Their careers Their first-and earned Oscar nominations-with supporting roles in this absorbing whodunit. a sequence of piecemeal testimonies surrounding the murder of a Jewish war veteran by a former fellow soldier Adapted from Richard Brooks's novel The Brick Foxhole , Which Dealt With An even riskier controversy of the time (homophobia Instead of anti-Semitism), Crossfire September off to wave of "social problem" noir films in Its wake. But it is stranger and more visually daring than most of the films inspired it: a sinister, claustrophobic chamber drama Filled With intimations of buried trauma and unspoken desires. Largely That atmosphere is the result of performances like Those of Grahame, as an embittered bar hostess, and Paul Kelly as the troubled Man Who calls himself her husband.
Friday, September 4 2:00 pm
Monday, September 7 8:30 pm
Human Desire
Fritz Lang, USA, 1954, 35mm, 91mm
Fritz Lang was the second-after master filmmaker Jean Renoir film-to Emile Zola's 1890 novel La Bête humaine . Transposing the book's story of murder, infidelity, seduction, and revenge from the world of French engine drivers to That of New Jersey railroad workers, Clearly I relished the chance to stage complex action scenes in cramped corridors and darkened train rail yards. The film's centerpiece, however, is Grahame's towering performance as the dissatisfied, vengeful wife of a brutish driver she AIMS To have killed-preferably by His co-worker, an upright war veteran played by Glenn Ford. Shrill, desperate, savvy, imploring, ferocious: Grahame May Have Never dominated a movie the way she dominates Human Desire . Which further cemented her image as a doomed, tragic femme fatale
Friday, September 4, 8:30 pm
Saturday, September 5, 4:00 pm
In a Lonely Place
Nicholas Ray, USA, 1950, 35mm, 94mm
Grahame Began one of her finest performances in Nicholas Ray's masterpiece of moral and psychological ambiguity, With One of her most memorable entrances. "Because I've noticed him Looked interesting," she tells a police captain She Had To Explain why her eyes on cynical screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) the night I's Alleged to Have Committed to murder. "I like His face." His character, she discovers over the course of the film, is cloudier and more sinister than she INITIALLY Sensed, not to mention-possibly-murderous. One of the eeriest and MOST suspenseful products of noir's golden age, In a Lonely Place is Also a masterful takedown of Hollywood politics and a deeply Affecting depiction of a romantic relationship for Either partner too intense to bear.
Friday, September 4, 6:30 pm
Monday, September 7 2:00 pm
Macao
Josef von Sternberg / Nicholas Ray, USA, 1952, 35mm, 81mm
Tuesday . September 8 4:30 pm
Naked Alibi
Jerry Hopper, USA, 1954, 35mm, 86mm
At the time of Its French release, François Truffaut wrote That Naked Alibi "perfectly Corresponds to the need for a drug That any lover of American films irresistibly experiences." Much of the narcotic allure of this stripped-down, hard-hitting B-noir About a virtuous police officer (Sterling Hayden) heading off-radar to catch a psychotic cop killer (Gene Barry) is due to Grahame's magnetic performance as the killer's put -upon bar-singer mistress. As in Crossfire and The Big Heat , Grahame Finds surprising, unexpected emotional registers in what Could have been a stock role-Whenever she Appears onscreen, the film Seems to rearrange itself around her.
Sunday, September 6, 4:30 pm
Odds Against Tomorrow
Robert Wise, USA, 1959, 35mm, 96mm
A castaway from the police force (Ed Begley) recruits two men (Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte), one white and one black, to help carry out a bank robbery. The tagline of this acutely socially conscious noir about the perfect heist gone wrong- "Money Brought them together. Racism tore them apart" -suggests what happens next. Odds Against Tomorrow was Among the last of a Certain stripe of hard-boiled, rough- edged noirs film (it was shot on location in New York City and Hudson, New York), and it's fitting That It Also contains one of Grahame's last great performances-as a lonely, alluring neighbor of Ryan's character intrigued by His aggressive cool.
Sunday, September 6, 9:15 pm
Oklahoma!
Fred Zinnemann, USA, 1955, DCP, 145m
A plastic surgery fiasco, a mishap at the Academy Awards, stirrings About a possible affair with her husband's teenage are: by the time she was cast as the single-minded, unfashionable Ado Annie in Fred Zinnemann's massive screen adaptation of Oklahoma! , Grahame's public image was battered. Not a trained singer, she gave the role an awkward hesitancy miles away from the commanding presence of her femme fatales, but entirely Appropriate to her farm girl worked over by baffling new passions. In a film full of wide, graceful gestures and panoramic visual effects, her clumsy performance of "I Can not Say No" strikes the surest emotional note.
Sunday, September 6, 1:30 pm
A Woman's Secret
Nicholas Ray, USA, 1949, 35mm, 84mm
It was this During the production of murder mystery genre-blurring That Became close with Grahame Nicholas Ray, Whom she would go on to marry soon after the film wrapped. The couple's first collaboration is hard to peg: Is it a whodunit? A performance backstage melodrama? A glamorous Pygmalion riff? Whatever else it Might Be, A Woman's Secret is definitely a showcase for magnificent performances by Maureen O'Hara, as a famous singer cast out of the spotlight after losing her voice early, and Grahame, the Struggling young singer as she insists on molding in her own image. Herman Mankiewicz's screenplay made enough of an impression on His Brother Joseph used That Latter an eerily like the story as the basis for All About Eve .
Saturday, September 5, 2:00 pm
Tuesday, September 8 2:30 pm
GLORIA GRAHAM: BLOND AMBITION
Gloria Grahame: BLONDE AMBITION FILMS, SCHEDULE & amp; DESCRIPTIONS
The Bad and the Beautiful
Vincente Minnelli, USA, 1952, 35mm, 118m
Vincente Minnelli supposedly drew on the lives of a handful of notorious, iconic Hollywood Producers, Including Val Lewton and David O. Selznick, to create the caustic figure at the center of The Bad and the Beautiful, one of His richest melodramas. But the film is less an exposé inside-Hollywood than a grim tragedy About a man driven to appalling ends by a mixture of hubris and sheer malice. We learn, across three extended flashbacks, why three prominent Hollywood figures, Including an actress (Lana Turner) and to writer (Dick Powell) detest the famous producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), WHO made Both Their Lives and Their careers ruined. Grahame won an Oscar for her supporting role as Powell's flighty unforgettable Southern belle wife.
Friday, September 4 4:00 pm
Monday, September 7 6:00 pm
The Big Heat
Fritz Lang, USA, 1953, 35mm, 90mm
Grahame Spends much of Fritz Lang's bleak, noir thrilling with half her face hidden behind a bandage or a layer of prosthetic makeup, yet she is unmistakably the film's center of gravity. Her role as a gangster's moll caught Between her luxurious life of crimes "most of the time, it's a lot of fun "-and her affections for a rigidly honest cop (Glenn Ford) confirmed and deepened her reputation as a sinister seductress, beyond giving her some of the finest lines of her career. ("You're about as romantic as a pair of handcuffs. ") But This reputation never fully captured the scope of Grahame's emotional range in films like The Big Heat , Where She projects a magnificent combination of pride, fear, restlessness, confidence, and doubt.
Saturday, September 5, 6:00 pm Monday, September 7 4:00 pm
Chilly Scenes of Winter
Joan Micklin Silver, USA, 1979, 35mm, 92mm
The third of Joan Micklin Silver's criminally under-seen includes features one of Grahame's end screen performances as an eccentric matron Given to sudden outbursts and occasional gusts of affection. The mood of the rest of Chilly Scenes of Winter , Which Took three years to find a theatrical release in STI current version, is gentler and more melancholic: a dissatisfied Salt Lake City civil servant (John Heard) goes to desperate, threatening lengths in His Attempts to recover the love of His Life (Mary Beth Hurt) after she returns to her husband. It's a tonally deft, sensitive, and wise movie That Launched the careers of Its two stars, even as it September the closing note for Grahame's.
Tuesday, September 8 6:30 pm
The Cobweb
Vincente Minnelli, USA, 1955, 35mm, 134m
MGM spared none of Its legendary gloss on Vincente Minnelli's star-studded melodrama, a sort of Grand Hotel variant adapted from the novel by playwright William Gibson ( The Miracle Worker ) and Set in a psychiatric hospital. The patients of the clinic deluxe Where The Cobweb Takes place are more stable, on the whole, than STI dysfunctional staff. Richard Widmark plays the psychiatrist tasked dedicated With putting out the fires of the philandering medical officer (Charles Boyer), while His Wife (Grahame), Whose choice to order new drapes for the hospital library-in Minnellian Typically focus on set design-throws everyone from the administrator (Lillian Gish) to an artist-patient (John Kerr) into turmoil. Lauren Bacall, as Widmark's widowed colleague and possible love interest, is the movie's sole oasis of sanity, but Grahame is Among ITS MOST electric presences.
Sunday, September 6, 6:30 pm
Tuesday, September 8 8:30 pm
Crossfire
Edward Dmytryk, USA, 1947, 35mm, 86mm
Robert Ryan Grahame Both Launched Their careers Their first-and earned Oscar nominations-with supporting roles in this absorbing whodunit. a sequence of piecemeal testimonies surrounding the murder of a Jewish war veteran by a former fellow soldier Adapted from Richard Brooks's novel The Brick Foxhole , Which Dealt With An even riskier controversy of the time (homophobia Instead of anti-Semitism), Crossfire September off to wave of "social problem" noir films in Its wake. But it is stranger and more visually daring than most of the films inspired it: a sinister, claustrophobic chamber drama Filled With intimations of buried trauma and unspoken desires. Largely That atmosphere is the result of performances like Those of Grahame, as an embittered bar hostess, and Paul Kelly as the troubled Man Who calls himself her husband.
Friday, September 4 2:00 pm
Monday, September 7 8:30 pm
Human Desire
Fritz Lang, USA, 1954, 35mm, 91mm
Fritz Lang was the second-after master filmmaker Jean Renoir film-to Emile Zola's 1890 novel La Bête humaine . Transposing the book's story of murder, infidelity, seduction, and revenge from the world of French engine drivers to That of New Jersey railroad workers, Clearly I relished the chance to stage complex action scenes in cramped corridors and darkened train rail yards. The film's centerpiece, however, is Grahame's towering performance as the dissatisfied, vengeful wife of a brutish driver she AIMS To have killed-preferably by His co-worker, an upright war veteran played by Glenn Ford. Shrill, desperate, savvy, imploring, ferocious: Grahame May Have Never dominated a movie the way she dominates Human Desire . Which further cemented her image as a doomed, tragic femme fatale
Friday, September 4, 8:30 pm
Saturday, September 5, 4:00 pm
In a Lonely Place
Nicholas Ray, USA, 1950, 35mm, 94mm
Grahame Began one of her finest performances in Nicholas Ray's masterpiece of moral and psychological ambiguity, With One of her most memorable entrances. "Because I've noticed him Looked interesting," she tells a police captain She Had To Explain why her eyes on cynical screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) the night I's Alleged to Have Committed to murder. "I like His face." His character, she discovers over the course of the film, is cloudier and more sinister than she INITIALLY Sensed, not to mention-possibly-murderous. One of the eeriest and MOST suspenseful products of noir's golden age, In a Lonely Place is Also a masterful takedown of Hollywood politics and a deeply Affecting depiction of a romantic relationship for Either partner too intense to bear.
Friday, September 4, 6:30 pm
Monday, September 7 2:00 pm
Macao
Josef von Sternberg / Nicholas Ray, USA, 1952, 35mm, 81mm
Nicholas Ray was Brought on to finish this atmospheric crime yarn after the movie's producer, Howard Hughes, Josef von Sternberg forced off the project But Macau still shimmers With its initial Director's signature textures and tones: dresses and gloves sheathed in glitter, an Escher like casino , a pier-set finale That recalls The Docks of New York . It was, by all accounts, an unpleasant, tumultuous production. The end movie, though, is surprisingly buoyant-a shimmering cinematic vacation. As a gangster's moll entangled in the lives of an American runaway (Robert Mitchum) and a singer (Jane Russell), Grahame circles around the edges of the movie, occasionally sending off a flash of light from the shadows.
Saturday, September 5, 8: 00 pm Tuesday . September 8 4:30 pm
Naked Alibi
Jerry Hopper, USA, 1954, 35mm, 86mm
At the time of Its French release, François Truffaut wrote That Naked Alibi "perfectly Corresponds to the need for a drug That any lover of American films irresistibly experiences." Much of the narcotic allure of this stripped-down, hard-hitting B-noir About a virtuous police officer (Sterling Hayden) heading off-radar to catch a psychotic cop killer (Gene Barry) is due to Grahame's magnetic performance as the killer's put -upon bar-singer mistress. As in Crossfire and The Big Heat , Grahame Finds surprising, unexpected emotional registers in what Could have been a stock role-Whenever she Appears onscreen, the film Seems to rearrange itself around her.
Sunday, September 6, 4:30 pm
Odds Against Tomorrow
Robert Wise, USA, 1959, 35mm, 96mm
A castaway from the police force (Ed Begley) recruits two men (Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte), one white and one black, to help carry out a bank robbery. The tagline of this acutely socially conscious noir about the perfect heist gone wrong- "Money Brought them together. Racism tore them apart" -suggests what happens next. Odds Against Tomorrow was Among the last of a Certain stripe of hard-boiled, rough- edged noirs film (it was shot on location in New York City and Hudson, New York), and it's fitting That It Also contains one of Grahame's last great performances-as a lonely, alluring neighbor of Ryan's character intrigued by His aggressive cool.
Sunday, September 6, 9:15 pm
Oklahoma!
Fred Zinnemann, USA, 1955, DCP, 145m
A plastic surgery fiasco, a mishap at the Academy Awards, stirrings About a possible affair with her husband's teenage are: by the time she was cast as the single-minded, unfashionable Ado Annie in Fred Zinnemann's massive screen adaptation of Oklahoma! , Grahame's public image was battered. Not a trained singer, she gave the role an awkward hesitancy miles away from the commanding presence of her femme fatales, but entirely Appropriate to her farm girl worked over by baffling new passions. In a film full of wide, graceful gestures and panoramic visual effects, her clumsy performance of "I Can not Say No" strikes the surest emotional note.
Sunday, September 6, 1:30 pm
A Woman's Secret
Nicholas Ray, USA, 1949, 35mm, 84mm
It was this During the production of murder mystery genre-blurring That Became close with Grahame Nicholas Ray, Whom she would go on to marry soon after the film wrapped. The couple's first collaboration is hard to peg: Is it a whodunit? A performance backstage melodrama? A glamorous Pygmalion riff? Whatever else it Might Be, A Woman's Secret is definitely a showcase for magnificent performances by Maureen O'Hara, as a famous singer cast out of the spotlight after losing her voice early, and Grahame, the Struggling young singer as she insists on molding in her own image. Herman Mankiewicz's screenplay made enough of an impression on His Brother Joseph used That Latter an eerily like the story as the basis for All About Eve .
Saturday, September 5, 2:00 pm
Tuesday, September 8 2:30 pm
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Danceteria television commercial 1984
I was sent this commercial for Danceteria .. it comes from an ugly period. I had been locked out of the club on 21st and my average normal business accounts were frozen because my business partner had accept the offer of Alex Delorenzo of the son of mobster and real estate mogul offer to work with his protege John Argento who he had invested over a million dollars into a failed club that was to replicate the Original Danceteria . It ws called Interferon. (good grief) .It failed . Delorenzo called me and I brought putting to the meeting . I forgot the history of putting Germans and Italian together (sorry) , Argento and Delorenzo's son-in-law had cleared a block of rent regulated tenants in the East 50's so Delorenzo could raze and build. They had used every kind of intimadation to frighten the hell out of the tenants. Delorenzo wanted to reward them and Argento said he wanted to open a club on 21st in a building Delorenzo owned (it was a dead street at the time). He did . It failed We made a deal and one of the points was Argento was not to be involved .; Delorenzo wanted to protect his other business realtons and insisted Argento be icharge of all the day deliveries .. including liquore , napkins, etc the cash items and the cleaning and removal of the trash. We agreed once it was agreed the Argento would have nothing to do with the club other than his janitorial job I sued Delorenzo for contract violation (yes sued Godfather like business family ) and sued Rudolf for fiduciary betrayal.. it ws a nightmare for six years . This commercial was to establish Rudolf as Danceteria honcho.. he had been telling people I had AIDS .. and that is why I wasn't there . The real reason was greed .. i was told I was paying talent too much money .. and the club when I was they was a hige hit. Trust me I would neve have approved a commercial .. we did nto need it ..and my door policy insured a fabulous safe mix of people and my bookings were the best in the universe (ok hyperbole) ... this is nto the place to go into just what a nightmare of lies and intimadation .. but since this video has turnes up ... I wanted to put it in context... and no i did not nor do have AIDS or am I HIV +. ... Jim Fouratt
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