Spanning over seven decades from Sunrise to Breakfast at Tiffany's to Beetlejuice

Yes, it was a weekend filled with variety and not a television series in the batch. There is really something for everyone in this group of movies.

6/7/14 Sunrise, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Cinematography, Best Unique and Artistic Production, 1927 (awarded 1929), #82 on AFI Top 100 Films, National Film Registry

It's been a while since I have reached back into the archives, but I thought it was time. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (very melodramatic) was released in 1927, but due to the different scheduling for the early years of the Academy Awards, it did not receive its three awards until 1929. Two of the three awards have since been changed: originally the Best Actress and Actor Awards were for an actor's performance for that year, so Janet Gaynor won for her performances in Sunrise, Seventh Heaven and Street Angel. Best Unique and Artistic Production was only awarded for the first Academy Awards. So, now that the history lesson is over, on to the movie. German director. F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu) directed this film that starred Janet Gaynor and George O'Brien, known only as The Wife and The Man, respectively. The movie opens with The Man stepping out on The Wife with The Woman from The City (the lack of character names is not uncommon in silent films, and in this case is meant to show the universality of the characters and the story). The Man is smitten by this woman of easy virtue and is almost persuaded to help his wife accidentally drown. The Man goes through various emotions, lust, love, regret among them, as he and his wife get reacquainted and fall in love again. The Man and Wife are from the country, which seems like an idyllic and pure place which has been 'contaminated' by The Woman from The City and her loose ways. Some of the drama or melodrama seems very over the top, very exaggerated, which is another common theme in silent movies; in this movie there are actually very few intertitles used, the viewer must rely on the emoting of the characters to infer the what is going on and move the story along. This was a little hard for me at first, but it works, and the climax of the movie was very gripping and I was surprised by the ending. It was very good storytelling. Also, this wasn't really silent, there is actually sound that was recorded as part of them film, horns honking, crowds yelling, wind blowing, but no talking among the characters. Silent films are not for everyone, and while there are others I would recommend (Gold Rush, City Lights, Seventh Heaven) before this one, this still deserves a look.

6/7/14 Beetlejuice, Best Makeup, 1988

I may be the only person in America in my age group who had never seen Beetlejuice, just not my thing, I guess. I have heard about it, seen clips, heard "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice", but really had no idea. I find I have this ambiguous feeling quite a bit with Tim Burton movies, when he is good, I think he is really good, and then, when he is not, well, kiss 90 minutes and $10 goodbye. Michael Keaton stars as Beetlejuice an annoying, 'i-want-to-punch-you-in-the-face' kind of character; Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are Adam and Barbara Maitland, recently passed over into the next world, also known as 'recently deceased'. Adam and Barbara are not having an easy time in their new lives, still living in their dream house as ghosts, while a new family, the Deetzes (Catherine O'Hara, Jeffrey Jones and Winona Ryder) move in and take over. The movie is mostly about Adam and Barbara's attempts to get rid of the Deetzes and then get rid of Beetlejuice. There are some great scenes here, one of my favorite is the dancing scene, with the living humans being made to dance to 'Dayo'. It's pretty funny. Michael Keaton is crazy as Beetlejuice (if this was made ten years later, it might have been played by Jim Carrey); he totally owns the makeup, crazy hair and costume. He is obnoxious, which is exactly the point. The movie won for Best Makeup and there wasn't really a lot of competition for this year (that's not taking away from it, but usually there is something you can compare it too and the two others in the category didn't have a chance: Coming to America and Scrooged).

6/7/14 The Prince of Egypt, Best Original Song, 1998

I'm a sucker for a good Exodus story, seriously, the story of Moses was one of my favorites growing up (that and Solomon, but I digress). The Prince of Egypt is about Moses, his relationship with Rameses, and the eventual exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. Val Kilmer is the voice of adult Moses, Ralph Fiennes is Rameses, Patrick Stewart is the voice of Rameses and Moses's father, Seti (Moses's adoptive father); Sandra Bullock and Jeff Goldblum are Moses's sister and brother, so definitely an all-star cast. There are not a lot of surprises, I mean the story is several thousands of years old, how many surprises could there be? But I thought focusing on the relationship of Moses and Rameses was different than in The Ten Commandments, and Kilmer and Fiennes were really good. I enjoyed the movie and if you haven't watched it with your kids (or without kids), it might be fun to put on around Passover time. It's old school animation, as in hand drawn and not CGI, so I liked it for that fact. It won the award for Best Original Song ("When you Believe" sung most notably by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston), and while not a lot of the other songs stick in my head, I guess my personal favorite would have been "That'll Do Babe" by Randy Newman, sung by Peter Gabriel.

6/8/14 Breakfast at Tiffany's, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, National Film Registry, 1961

I have some mixed feelings about this classic film starring the elegant Audrey Hepburn, and I think they are of my own making. I read the book by Truman Capote only a day before I watched the movie. Usually it's years or months between reading the book and seeing the movie or vice versa, so everything was pretty fresh in the old noggin. Breakfast at Tiffany's is an iconic movie, people who have not seen it have heard of Holly Golightly (Hepburn's character), heard the song "Moon River" (the movie won for Best Original Song with "Moon River" which was written by Johnny Mercer and Cleveland's own, Henry Mancini), are familiar with the fashion of the film, but I remember watching it for the first time years ago and not liking it, not liking Holly, not understanding the fuss (sometimes when a film is so "locked" into a period it does not translate well to a generations after it). I only wanted to watch it again so I could give a fair report to you, and then I thought, hell, I should read the book, a novella really, by Capote. Briefly, Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, a woman of some sophistication and dubious income; Holly is really all about Holly and only casually concerned about those around her, she's flighty and impetuous. Holly encounters her new neighbor, whom she calls 'Fred' but his name is Paul Varjak, played by George Peppard (younger audiences may know him as Hannibal Smith from "The A-Team"). The other major character is Manhattan (it may seem odd that I keep including cities as characters, but sometimes, they really are), but it's hard to imagine this story taking place anywhere else. The movie follows Holly and her somewhat mysterious background and friendships with a variety of men, her perplexing relationship with Paul, and Paul's relationship with Emily Failenson (played by Patricia Neal). Blake Edwards (of Pink Panther fame as well as The Great Race and many others) directed and injected some of his humor into the film by using Mickey Rooney in the role of one of Holly's other neighbors, Mr. Yunioshi and greatly exaggerating stereotypical traits of someone of Japanese heritage (in the book, I did not get the sense that there was any of that and the role of Yunioshi was pretty minimal). Fifty years later, Rooney's portrayal seemed so obviously out of touch and offensive, but at the time of filming, Edwards said he didn't think of it like that and just wanted to be funny. As Holly and Paul's friendship evolves, they also have quarrels because Paul must be the practical one and not so loosey-goosey. There are several times the story and the movie diverge and once or twice, they are pretty big divergences, in fact, the ending in the movie is SO different from the book (I was told by a friend of mine this is actually a Seinfeld episode). Here is my struggle: I actually really liked the novella so much better than the movie (and the other short stories in this collection), but I love Hepburn as well. Can glamour ooze? Is that oxymoronic? Because she just walks onto the screen and nothing else matters. I didn't dislike the movie as much as I did the first time, I think I had a better understanding of Holly's personality and her motivation for doing things. You can probably watch the movie and not read the book and be perfectly content, but because Capote's writing is so good, watch the movie and then wait a few months and read the book.

6/8/14 Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, Best Documentary, 2000

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport is a very powerful and moving documentary about the 10,000 children from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia who were sent to England in the late 1930s to escape the grasp of the Nazis and almost guaranteed annihilation. The movie interviews almost a dozen 'kinder' about their experience, leaving Europe and their families, where they were ostracized, harassed and threatened to a country where they didn't speak the language, had to learn about a new culture, and sometimes still harassed but not to the extent they were in their homeland, they also faced the burden of trying to get their parents out, and later knowing that their parents were in danger. These survivors (and they are survivors) are older now, many in their 70s and 80s, but their memories are clear and vivid as they tell about the last time they saw their parents, how they felt when they met their first (sometimes not the last) foster families, what it was like to learn English. Very often stories from the Holocaust stories focus on the camps and life in the ghettos, there are not very many movies about these children and the people who took them in (perhaps most famous among them is Sir Richard Attenborough's family who took in two sisters), so this is definitely worth your time to hear this part of history. The stories have one thing in common, the children were sent to England, but after that and before that, their narratives are unique: the orphan who pretty much raised himself, then was deported, then came back to fight for Britain; the young girl who was sent from family to family, and later was able to bring her parents to England; the sister and brother who convinced their uncle to bring their baby sister over; the young girl whose father was so desperate not to be separated from his daughter that he pulled her off of the train, almost guaranteeing she would be sent to a concentration camp. I will say - this one made me cry.

Post script: Monuments Men is now available on DVD, and as a reminder, that movie looks at the US-led efforts to recover works of art stolen by the Nazis. I recently finished a book that examines the period when the art was stolen, focusing on a particular piece of art by Gustav Klimt, known as "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer" or "The Lady in Gold" (this is also the name of the book by Anne-Marie O'Connor). The book transports us back to late 19th century and early 20th century Vienna, Austria, and the art movement known as "The Secessionist Movement", and the intellectual salons and gatherings hosted and supported by the Viennese Jewish community, focusing on Klimt's painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer and her family. O'Connor traces the lineage of several of Klimt's paintings as they went from being part of the Bloch-Bauer family to being confiscated or forcibly donated to the state of Austria. O'Connor follows the fortunes or misfortunes of the Bloch-Bauer family as some were able to emigrate to America or neutral or Allied countries, and others were not so lucky. There is a great twist at the end, and since this is a true story, the ending is even more moving. What I liked about this book as a bookend to Monuments Men is that it tells the story of the people who had the art, and it wasn't just about paintings, it was about how the paintings or sculptures were taken and that there were people at the other end of those paintings, not some immobile institution (it seems to me that there was only a very vague nod to the people who had the art stolen from them in the movie when Matt Damon returns a painting to an empty house), it adds a level of humanity that wasn't quite there in the movie (that wasn't its purpose, so I'm not criticizing, just pointing it out).