SHOLEM ALEICHEM : LAUGHING IN THE DARK

Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich  was born in 1858 in a shtetl in a remote part of Russia that eventually became  Ukraine, and when he grew he eventually became Sholem Aleichem the most celebrated Yiddish writer of all time.  His father was a wealthy merchant who managed to go bankrupt make the family penniless, which was something Sholem would repeat often in his adult life, and he eventually had to be rescued from his irate creditors by an unamused Mother-In-Law who would never speak to him again.

These were interesting times where these Eastern European Jews were starting to break away from the thousand-year-old tradition of somewhat isolated living in schetels and moving out to the modern outside world.  Whilst it may have led to Sholem's financial undoing, it did give him a sense of purpose as after he finished a day gambling on the stock exchange in the city, he would start writing. And what he chose to write about were stories of the old way of life that he had sharply observed for years, and that were now slowly disappearing.  When they were published in Yiddish newspapers they found a very avid readership and his fame spread like wild fire not just throughout the Continent but overseas too.

At the beginning of the next century, broke yet again, leaving their six children behind, Sholem and his wife sailed to the US.  He was welcomed as a great folk hero and mobbed by crowds when he arrived, which gave him great hope.  However, the Jews he found in America had already transitioned to a new way of life, and his first attempts at playwriting were so entrenched in the old life, that they failed miserably and he quickly scurried back to Russia deeply disappointed.

His second foray to the US was when the WW1 broke out and he was forced to flee Europe.... his work had gained so much in popularity by now, that when he died quite soon after, some 200,000 people turned out in New York for the biggest funeral the city had ever seen.  Interestingly enough the crowds contained not just his readers, but every other major Yiddish writer who acknowledged him as the finest of their number.

Joseph Dorman's riveting documentary bears witness not just to the effect of Sholem Aleichem's writings when he was alive, but to the vast and indeterminate consequences it has had on Jewish culture ever since. Sholem Aleichem's most populists stories about Tevye the Milkman were made into the multi-Tony award winning Broadway Show and Oscar winning movie 'Fiddler On the Roof'.

It's a fascinating story, and told well, particulary by Sholem Aleichem's very lively grand-daughter who I swore looked my age, but is actually 101!  

★★★★★★★★

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

Steven Soderburgh's gloriously wonderful biopic would have horrified his subject Mr Showmanship .... if he had still been alive.  Liberace was the most flamboyantly outrageous camp superstar pianist ever, who in the 1950's & 1960's was the highest paid entertainer in the World, but who had unbelievably spent his entire life in the Closet.  He and his multitudes of adoring fans put out this seemingly ridiculous farce that the king of kitsch was not a big Queen at all, and everyone just played along with it.

In 1976 Liberace met Scott Thorson, the latest in a long line of young men that he overwhelmed with expensive gifts in exchange for their company and sexual favors.  Thorson was 17 at the time (although in this film based on Thorson's own book,he is much older). 57 year old Liberace took a real shine to him and so Thorson went from toy boy to live-in lover in no time at all.  It looked like the old man may have finally have found a life partner, but despite their sexual activity together, it seemed that he wanted the younger man to be more like a son than a husband, and demanded that Thorson undergo plastic surgery to be made to look exactly like him.

Thorson, now very spoilt and completely content with his new extravagant and indulgent lifestyle  was looking quite corpulent and he soon took a liking to the diet 'speed' pills which made him slim, but also very mean  spirited and difficult. So soon Liberace took a liking to a newer younger man to be his replacement

The going got rough, Thorson once treated as Liberace's equal and heir was thrown out with just the clothes on his back (and the odd fur coat), so  in 1982 he fired off a lawsuit for Palimony for $113 million but ended up settling for a mere $75000.

Soderburgh captures the man and his era so totally perfectly.  This larger than life ostentatious and quite preposterous character with his voracious appetite for anything and everything 'shiny' and new, was rather brilliantly portrayed by Michael Douglas who imbued his performance with just the right amount of creepiness.  Whether Matt Damon was too old for the part was questionable but he was the consummate foil for Douglas and the chemistry between the two star actors was completely believable.

In fact the whole movie had the benefit of some

excellent casting choices : Debbie Reynolds as Liberace's pushy overbearing mother, the most scary looking Rob Lowe as the Plastic Surgeon who had evidently been practising on his own face, Dan Ackroyd as the Manager, and I failed to recognise Cheyenne Jackson who played one of Liberace's earlier proteges.

The movie was wonderfully camp and great fun as a homage to the man who put kitch on the map should be.  It also had its darker sides covering the moments it appeared that the Great Man may even had a conscience, and of course the great sadness of his death scene and the scandalous way that the Authorities who also were compliant with Liberace's closeted status during his lifetime, now took to unnecessary invading his privacy. 

Roger Ebert hailed it as one of the best movies to come out of Cannes Film Festival last year, which may be a tad exaggerated, but it definitely deserves to be seen by the widest possible audience.  I must confess that I am still having a great deal of trouble accepting the reality that the movie, with its high wattage star power, was considered 'too gay' to be played in movie theaters in 2013. (Thank you HBO for once again stepping up to the plate!)   I'm equally shocked that the respected Huffington Post should join in the media clamour from other more spurious Press and devote a whole column to the bravery of Mr Douglas and Mr Damon for choosing to play these roles.  Brave?  Ridiculous!  They are choice parts that they were both so suited for and for which the Award Nomination gossip tweeting has not stopped since the Broadcast.

★★★★★★★★

THAT GUY WHO WAS IN THAT THING

Sixteen character actors  .... many of which you will (think you) recognize from countless movies and TV shows ... talk disarmingly frank on camera on how tough it is to make anything approaching a living wage from their chosen profession.Without exception, all of them admitted to being a wee bit mad as a reason that they persevere with their careers which mingles success with a great deal of hardship and frustration. 

In this rather wonderful documentary filmmakers Ian Roumain & Michael Schwartz engage their subjects and get them to open up about how tough it is to be constantly auditioning for acting jobs that they never get. If they do land a plum part, such a recurring role in a TV series, then nine times out of ten it will be followed by a dry spell of no work which  ensures that they never get carried away with any level of success.  What all 16 of them possessed, besides their drive and sheer bloodymindedness, was an extraordinary good sense of humor which seemed to shine through even when they talked about what they had to resorted too when the work and money out.

When you hear the facts and statistics about making it as an actor today it makes you realize that you need far more luck than talent just to survive let alone to get to the point where you are so successful that we get to remember you as 'the guy that was in that thing'!

Totally fascinating and completely compelling and I am going to make a real effort to appreciate the lawyer/doctor/cop supporting the star next time as I now have a sense of what they went through to get that part.


★★★★★★★★

Available on www.netflix.com

MUD

This coming-of-age story of two 14 year old boys ... best friends .. who live in rather decrepit houseboats on thee Mississippi River with their families is sadly as slow and boring as their nearest small Arkansas town.  For want of something to do Ellis and Neckbone like to explore the river and the various islands that it leads out too. On one of them they discover an abandoned boat that they are about to reclaim when they realize that they have been beaten to it by an odd looking drifter who calls himself Mud and who charms them into helping him.

It turns out that Mud is both an inveterate liar and a wanted man, not just by the Authorities but also by the father of the man that he killed.  His floozy girlfriend is holed up in a Motel in Town and he cajoles young Ellis to take messages back and forth.

Tough kid that he is, Ellis is a hopeless wee romantic.  Distraught that his parents have fallen out of love and are about to get a divorce, he also rescues the 16 year old girl he loves by fighting off a bigger older boy, and now he becomes the go-between Mud and his moll because he misguidedly believes that they too are love's young dream.

Despite the exceptional fine performances by the two young actors playing Ellis  & Neckbone, the plot is thin and the script stilted, and there are times when it's all just like watching paint dry.  Correction, sometimes it wasn't even as exciting as that.  The frustration is compounded by the two main adult actors who seemed dreadfully miscast.  Matthew McConagahy, a tad too keen to show off the perfect buff chest he had for 'Magic Mike', adopted the most oddest of accents to play Mud in a most unconvincing performance.  And I still cannot fathom out what Oscar winner Reece Witherspoon was doing playing the small role of the abused girlfriend which would have been so more suitable for a much younger and newer actress.

All in all a disappointing third feature from filmmaker Jeff Nichols, especially after his rather excellent 'Take Shelter'. Mud tries to redeem himself by saving Ellis's life but that, and the gun battle at the end, did little to save the film, but it did at least thankfully mean it was over.

★★★

SCATTER MY ASHES AT BERGDORF'S

Bergdorf Goodman has been a New York institution for the past 111 years.  Stretching a whole block of Fifth Avenue between 57th & 58th Streets it is the high temple of fashion's elite that has the very best for the very well-heeled Manhattans. Right from day one the Store has only carried the cream of the crop, and along the way has been responsible for the launching of some of the industry's most successful designers. As Issac Mizrahi summed it up "if your clothes are not at that place then they have no future."  It is maybe a tad exaggerated but then again everything about this excitable fawning tribute is rather hyperbolic.

The best parts of the movie are with three of the key players in the Store today. Linda Fargo, the indefatigable and powerful Fashion Director who decides which collections are 'in' and which are 'out'; David Hoey who manages an extraordinary team who set out about doing the visionary window displays with more care and seemingly the same budget as a Broadway show, and finally the legendary Betty Halbreich the veteran personal shopper with impeccable taste, razor sharp wit, and no-nonsense approach to dealing with customers with suspect taste.  Ms Halbreich stole all her scenes and so deserves a film totally to herself.

The ancedotes about the excesses of the past make entertaining viewing i.e. when Elizabeth Taylor ordered white mink ear muffs for her entire Christmas gift list, or the Christmas Eve Yoko Ono asked that they bring some fur coats over to her apartment that night, and John Lennon snapped up 80 of them there and then.

In a 93 minute movie filmmaker Matthew Miele squeezes in some 175 interviews which tell the history of the establishment right up to the current day with designers who still have yet to be chosen and an assortment of celebrities who like having their clothes picked out for them.  With such a wealth of information the editing of the piece left a lot to be desired BUT for me the subject matter was so fascinating I eventually over-looked the fact that the movie could, and should, have been so much better.

It's a light frothy fun film and less I get carried away and insist that I too should be scattered there when I am just a pile of ashes, I quickly remind myself of the rather fabulous quote that Joan Rivers contributes to this whole homage 'people who take fashion too seriously are idiots'.  

★★★★★★

THE MAKIOKA SISTERS

This highly stylised melodrama reverently covers an elegant period in Japanese society in the late 1930's when wealthy m erchants families revelled in all the steeped traditions of courtship and marriage.  With both parents dead Tsuruko the eldest Makioka sister is the head of the family and as she and Satchiko (the second eldest) are already married they share the responsibility of trying to find a suitable husband for Yukiko the next sister.  The trouble is she's very picky and refuses most potential matches much to the annoyance of Taeko the youngest in particular as custom insists that she cannot take a husband until Yukiko does.

The four sisters .... all stunningly beautiful ... are complex characters and all completely different. Tsuruko in particular cannot let go of the past and believes it is her somewhat sacred duty to maintain the high standing of the Makioka name as one of the leading families in Osaka. Satchiko is the most generous and unselfish one and she invites the two younger sisters to live with her and her husband, who then becomes an obstacle in the marriage stakes as he takes more than a brotherly shine to Yukiko himself. Taeko feels neglected as everyone is so focused on suitor hunting for Yukiko so she embarks on a series of unsuitable liaisons just to rock the boat.

Filmed in 1983, it's all like a pre-cursor to a Daytime Soap with its exaggerated acting complete with long lingering poses although it is extremely sophisticated and is so rich in style and eloquence that it makes for such compelling viewing.   Everything about it is so exquisitely graceful : from the smallest mannerisms to the most spectacularly beautiful costumes ..... and when the sisters take their annual pilgrimage to Kyoto to see the cherry blossoms it is the most perfect visual treat (as cliched as it maybe).

This was the end of one era in Japan and the start of another ....it's a slow transformation seen through the lives of these fascinating women. The story that unfolds is almost like a Japanese take on a Jane Austen except they don't get quite so fazed when Yukiko rejects so many of her possibilities.

Based on a novel of the same name, the movie was the highpoint of prolific filmmaker Kon Ichikawa's long career which spanned some 89 movies.  The DVD was issued in 2010 from a remastered print but I simply cannot remember how it ever appeared on my to-watch list  ....... but i am so thrilled it did.  It is an extraordinary irresistible treat.  Only one 'but' ..... and that is the heavily synthasized peculiar soundtrack which really throws you at first at it so unsuitable.

★★★★★★★★★

PARIS MANHATTAN

Alice is obsessed with Woody Allen.  She has a giant poster of him in her bedroom which she pours her heart too every night even though she is an intelligent woman and a successful pharmacist too boot. Even in the Drugstore she runs with her father in Paris she hands out DVD's of her favorite Allen movies instead of medicine to fix many people's ailments.  Even after a cack-handed attempt at robbing the Store goes wrong, she thrusts some movies in the fleeing burglar's hands telling him it will change his life.

This very sweet but extremely lightweight French 'boulevard comedy' is hard to swallow if you don't share a love of Allen and his bon-mots that litter the script throughout.  Newbie writer/director Sophie Lellouche tries to emulate her idol by making this about layers of different sophisticated relationships within this one family, but falls far short.  Alice's family's clumsy attempts at getting her wed when their own marriages are full of holes doesn't gel until she actually meets Victor, a burglar alarm engineer who is the only one who actually see and say it for what it is. The fact that he is played by veteran actor Patrick Bruel uplifts the film to make it a tad more amusing than the frothy piece it was heading to be.

I'm a big fan of French moviemakers who cast big rugged men with their lived-in faces for the romantic leads unlike the pretty boys that Americans always cast.  On the other hand, I am so over seeing bumbling old US Director/Actors still in front of the camera ...that would be you Mr Allen, Mr Redford and Mr Eastwood in particular.

I will totally confess that I saw this movie by accident.  When we arrived at the Multiplex after a sudden change of plans, about 17 of the 18 screens where showing Iron Man 3 in 3D, HD,2D etc etc. This was (almost) the only alternative  (a Diane Keaton movie DOESN'T count!) and we thought 'how bad can an unknown French comedy be?'  The answer : really not bad at all, and in my book, a lot more fun than Robert Downey Jnr putting that ridiculous metal suit on again to save the World and Gwyneth Paltrow (in that order).

★★★★★★

BEYOND THE HILLS

If I had to summarise Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu's latest movie in one word, it would unhesitatingly be 'bleak'.  From the isolated Monastery with no running water or electricity nestling in the hills beyond a remote village where even the summers look cold and uninviting, to the plot which is about an ex-orphanage girl who is either epileptic or schizophrenic or just possessed by the Devil.

Evidently based on a true event about an exorcisim that went horribly wrong this dark dismal story is as much about this patriarchal society where even the Head Nun is not much more than unpaid servant to the lone priest in their midst, and where being bottom of the social heap in a communist country even these days is a pretty miserable existence.  Especially if you are a woman.

The story line starts to get a tad monotonus as poor Aline has yet another outburst but frankly I was more interested in the visual imagery of life in the Monastery and its desolate setting.  As bleak as it was, it was still totally compelling.

It was all much easy to stomach than Muguio's breakthrough movie, the Cannes Palme D'Or Winner '4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days' about two teenagers trying to get illegal abortions which depressed me for weeks, but frankly as good as this latest one is, its not in the same league.

★★★★★★★★

STARBUCK

42 year old David Wozniak is one of life's underachievers who simply manages to get by day to day.  He drives a delivery truck for his family's butcher business and then at night  tries to keep one step ahead of some dangerous looking types who are trying to collect on the gambling debts he has run up. Valerie his long-standing, and normally sensible, policewoman girlfriend looks enviously at David's married brothers and their families knowing that she should really cut and run as her man is never going to step up to the plate and give her the life that she wants.  And then one day David's past catches up on him, and life will never ever be the same for either of them.

To keep himself in funds (and it turns out, to pay for a treat for  his dying Ma) when he was in his 20's he  made several trips to the Sperm Bank to make deposits.  Some 693 times.  He was after all a big spender.  Unbeknown to him the crooked Owner of the 'Bank' only ever used David's sperm and it turned out to be exceptional fertile. So much so that it fathered some 533 children, and since the news of Owner's trickery at the Sperm Bank became public knowledge, 142 of these children filed a suit in Court to try and uncover the real identity of their donor dad who was only known by the code name 'Starbuck'.

Totally petrified about being exposed, a very broke David could only afford to hire his bumbling old friend, an ex-Lawyer, to try and ensure that not even one of the kids .....now young adults .... would ever get to call him Daddy.  Despite being in total denial about the whole situation, David's curiosity peeked enough to sneak a look at the portfolio the Court had supplied that contained the profiles of his off-springs.  The first one turned out to be a professional footballer, something that David himself would have loved to have been, and this encouraged him to check out more of them.  This he does by surreptitiously stalking them so that he doesn't get found out. They include a barman/aspiring actor, supermarket worker, subway busker, manicurist, lifeguard etc etc and even one who's a heroin addict.

Whilst this is unfolding, Valerie totally unaware of David's colorful past announces that she is pregnant, but tells him that she is going to have the child on her own, as he is totally unfit to be a father. Somehow he/we discover he actually is more than fit as the more he sees of his 144 children the more he realizes that he strangely actually has the makings of a very good dad after all.  

This delightful French/Canadian comedy is a gentle touching story that is about one man discovering the joys that can come from making family ties. It awakens a passion and a confidence in this very likable charmer  who has been so self-centered up till now and just drifting somewhat aimlessly. The story is far fetched but the humor in which it unfolds is both tender and infectious. The fact that it is quite so captivating is mainly due to actor Patrick Huard perfectly cast as David/Starbuck who makes us believe so convincingly that even a loser like him can turn out to be a hero in the end.

A sweet funny movie full of humanity for anyone who has never ever donated sperm!

P.S. Hollywood always short of original ideas of its own is already planning to re-make its version of this story starring Vince Vaughan. You can just imagine how crass and crude this will be!  Urgh!

★★★★★★★★

  

THE SEMINARIAN

For a closeted gay man with little experience of any sexual relationships Ryan does a great deal of theorising about 'love'.  As a final year seminarian he's even chosen it as a topic for his thesis to gain entry into an Ivy League College : 'The Divine Gift of Love'.   He has an online flirtation with Bradley that lasts a year and when they do eventually hook up their fling peters out after being no more than a one night stand as Bradley has even more unresolved issues about coming out than love-lorn Ryan.

Whilst he is busy working out what God's take on it all could be, Ryan will not even risk his mother's love as he strings along with her relentless quest that he finds himself a nice girl and breeds. But then again he so fixed on trying to find a rationale that if love equals God but also equals great suffering and what a fine mess that will all lead too, that he fails to spot that a fellow gay student has been drooling over him since the first day.

Ryan is a tad too sanctimonious to be likeable and when the virgin that he is takes it upon himself to try and sort out a friend's relationship problems its a wonder that the pompous wee prig didn't get slapped. And hard.

I guess it was a well-intentioned effort by writer/director Joshua Lim, but I have trouble enough thinking of God and love in the same sentence, but God and Gay .... no way.  Too preachy and too patronising.

P.S. the fact that it has an almost obligatory naked full frontal scene at the beginning lulls you into a sense of false security that this could be a fun movie. It's not.

★★★★