Civil Rights are Human Rights

Films: Malcolm X
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

For a long time, I’ve said that my favorite Spike Lee movie is Do the Right Thing. I like the questions it raises, and I like even more the fact that rather than answering them, it just asks more questions. It’s a movie that creates conversation rather than trying to end one, and I respect the hell out of the decisions that Lee made with it. A number of people have told me that my opinion is based on the fact that I hadn’t yet seen Malcolm X. Well, now I have. I think I still like Do the Right Thing better, but I completely understand why I needed to see this.

As with any biopic, there are going to be things here that going to deviate from the truth. However, I also think that’s less of an issue with this film than it is with many others. Much of this comes from the fact that Lee came under a great deal of fire while filming from many people who were concerned that he would damage the story of Malcolm X in some way, or focus too much on negatives. Interestingly, this was exactly the same criticism that forced Norman Jewison off the project years earlier. So, while I’m certain there are some amalgamated characters and scenes created for dramatic purposes, I’m also pretty convinced that Lee stuck to the truth as much as he could.

Wednesday Horror: Pin

Films: Pin
Format: Internet video on laptop.

There aren’t a lot of movies quite like Pin. Actually, that’s not quite true; there’s quite a bit of Psycho in Pin. It is a very unusual horror movie, though, one that doesn’t seem like it belongs in 1988. Aside from some very brief nudity, it’s close to bloodless. It seems very much like it belongs to an earlier time in film history, and yet it’s surprisingly progressive in certain ways.

At first blush, the Linden family seems completely normal. Dr. Linden (Terry O’Quinn) is a typical doctor. His wife (Bronwen Mantel) has a few issues, though. Specifically, she’s a germaphobe and a clean freak. The Lindens also have two children, Leon (played respectively by Jacob Tierney, Steven Bednarski, and eventually for most of the film by David Hewlett) and Ursula (played by Michelle Anderson, Katie Shingler, and finally by Cynthia Preston). The fifth member of the family is Pin (voiced by Jonathan Banks, "Pin" being short for "Pinocchio"), an anatomical dummy used by Dr. Linden in his practice. Dr. Linden, we soon learn, is accomplished as a ventriloquist, and speaks for Pin to the children.

Bear Market

Films: Margin Call
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I don’t pretend to understand financial markets. Watching the financial markets collapse a decade ago affected me less than it did a lot of other people because I don’t tend to play in markets, but it was scary nonetheless. For those of us who don’t work on Wall Street, the greatest frustration of the destruction of the housing market was probably the fact that virtually no one who caused the problem suffered any real consequences, or at least suffered the consequences that we thought they should have. Margin Call tells this story with the sort of cold dispassion that it seems to require.

Margin Call takes place over two consecutive days at an unnamed trading firm that seems to have been based on Lehman Brothers. The film starts with a huge percentage of the staff on one floor being let go. Included in that culling is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), who works in risk management. Eric tells the people who are letting him go that he’s been working on something that he’d like to finish. They send him off anyway, and on his way out, he hands a flash drive to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), telling him to finish his work and to be careful.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2007

The Contenders:

Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men (winner)
There Will Be Blood

Casting Decisions

Films: Othello (1965)
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on rockin’ flatscreen.

When one looks at the 1965 version of Othello, there are a lot of places one can start. Kind of. In reality, there’s a single place to start, and that’s the fact that the title character is portrayed by Laurence Olivier. If you know anything about the play, you may well be aware of the problem. Olivier was about as white as I am. Othello, the Moor of Venice, is a black man. This means that this film is 159 minutes of blackface. Honestly, that’s not an easy thing to overcome mentally.

How did this come about? This version of Othello is a production of the National Theater Company, and evidently Olivier performed the role on stage. It still seems like a very strange choice, especially since there are other options for Olivier. When Kenneth Branagh filmed a version of this play in 1995, he got Laurence Fishburne to play the title role, while he took on the role of Iago. It’s a complete distraction. Olivier doesn’t look like anything other than a white man in black makeup. Even the color chosen for his skin doesn’t look natural.

Down with the Ship

Films: Titanic (1953)
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

When it comes to movies, Titanic typically means the 1997 James Cameron film. The 1953 film that covers the same ship sinking is pretty much forgotten these days despite its winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay that year. While this version doesn’t have the tremendous special effects of Cameron’s epic, it does have many of the same beats, and of course it also has a huge ship sinking in the northern Atlantic. It also does this in a spare 98 minutes, almost 100 fewer than Cameron’s film.

We’ll get to the ship sinking by the end of the movie, of course. Since we as the audience know that the ship is going down, it lends that same aura of tragedy and inevitability over everything else that happens. There’s one main drama aboard the ship and a few others that dip in now and then as minor distractions. That main drama concerns Julia Sturges (Barbara Stanwyck), who has boarded the ship with her daughter Annette (Audrey Dalton) and her young son Norman (Harper Carter). She meets a few friends as the ship boards who question why her husband is not traveling with them.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1980

The Contenders:

Brubaker
Fame
Melvin and Howard (winner)
Mon Oncle d’Amerique
Private Benjamin