On the road ...

... for the next three weeks, so not much blogging. Regular schedule will resume Sunday March 8 (the day Daylight Savings Time resumes, a sure sign of spring).

"The Wrestler"

A lot has been written about Darren Aronofsky's THE WRESTLER lately. Most of it has focused, rightly so, on Mickey Rourke's Oscar-nominated performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a battered-but-not-quite-beaten '80s wrestling star. I finally caught up with the film this week and it's really stuck with me the last few days. Some quick notes:

+ Excellent and evocative use of New Jersey locations. As bleak and depressing as they appear in this winterset drama, they're immediately recognizable to anyone who's spent much time in the state. A handful of scenes were shot on the Asbury Park boardwalk (see photo above) and neighboring streets. Due to redevelopment efforts, the area looks a lot better now than it did when the film was shot, though that's not saying much (there's also a scene inside the gutted structure that was once the Casino's carousel house). You see a lot of Garfield, Elizabeth, Linden and Rahway as well - not exactly the most attractive spots of the Garden State, but perfect for the film. When the Ram gets out of the hospital after his heart attack early in the film, it's Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. Aronofsky's from Brooklyn, but you wouldn't know it. He chose his Jersey locations like a native.

+ An authentic feel to the backstage scenes among the wrestlers, many of whom are played by actual pros. One of the wonderful things movies can do is take you behind the scenes into worlds you wouldn't normally have access to, and THE WRESTLER is one of the best examples of this. The camaraderie among the wrestlers, the respect they show each other as fellow performers, even in the dingiest of venues, feels real.

+ There is not a second in the film when you doubt Rourke's performance. He brings a lot of life experience to the role and it shows. From the pumped-up physique to his battered and distorted face, Rourke has clearly gone the distance for this. Cliches aside, it is the role of lifetime. And if he doesn't take home the Oscar for it, there is no justice in the world.

+ The unnaturally pale Evan Rachel Wood (seen above), as the Ram's estranged daughter Stephanie, doesn't have a lot of screen time, but she goes toe-to-toe in her scenes with Rourke and meets the challenge every time. She shifts from dismissive coldness to second-thought skepticism to grudging affection to vulnerability in a way that never seems forced. And she brings it all home in a display of white-hot female anger that's almost frightening.

+ Which brings us to the other main female role, Marisa Tomei as a stripper and single mom with the stage name of "Cassidy." Complex, charming, troubled, sexy and conflicted as they come, Tomei's Cassidy is possibly the most true-to-life representation of a stripper in a major film ever. She works hard in the role, and she looks great doing it (the strip club scenes, filmed at Cheeques in Linden, are also dead-on accurate). To judge from some of her other recent films, such as FACTOTUM and BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD, Tomei, at 44, has no qualms about getting naked on screen physically as well as emotionally. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

+ And of course, there's the Bruce Springsteen song which plays over the closing credits, and which you can hear in the trailer below.

In its last 30 minutes, THE WRESTLER almost seems like it's going to turn into a hokey sports movie. And then it doesn't. Its slightly ambiguous ending may bother some, but in retrospect it feels like the only way it could have ended. This film - and those characters - linger in your mind long after you've left the theater.

Big Apple Time Capsule Pt. 3: SHAFT

The third in an occasional series of posts about New York City in the 1970s as seen through the prism of that decade's shot-on-location crime dramas ...

SHAFT (1971) isn't a great film by any means. Its reputation rests mostly on the fact it was one of the earliest entries in the 1970s blaxploitation cycle and that, quality-wise, it's miles above the films that followed it. Based on Ernest Tidyman's 1970 novel, SHAFT is really a straightforward private eye/action film, albeit one featuring an aggressive African-American hero (Richard Roundtree in a tentative but star-making performance) facing down white villains, with black militants and Harlem gangsters as secondary characters (Tidyman was white, as was the film's co-writer, John D.F. Black). The direction, by Gordon Parks Sr., is inconsistent, the film's pacing erratic, and a lot of the performances aren't quite up to par. It's also marred by what was obviously a limited budget. What it does have, of course, is Isaac Hayes' Oscar-winning score and some great New York locations circa 1970.

These begin with the film's opening credits, which play out over a crane shot of Times Square that then pans down 42nd Street, past movie marquees (THE SCALPHUNTERS and LITTLE FAUSS AND BIG HALSEY are two of the films advertised) and picks up John Shaft (Roundtree) as he comes up the stairs from the subway. He then casually strolls into the middle of the intersection, dodging cabs and flipping drivers the bird. It's a wintry New York (January 1971 according to a calendar we see), as shot by cinematographer Urs Furrer, and Shaft's breath clouds in front of him as he makes his way to his office off Times Square (46th and Sixth in the novel, above "the offices of second-rate lawyers, small show-business types (and) a couple of novelty-merchandise jobbers"). Along the way, he passes posters for Broadway's HAIR and LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS, and a movie theater showing BARBARELLA. Later in the film, he buys roasted chestnuts from a vendor outside the Victoria Theatre at Broadway and 46th, showing a double-bill of COTTON COMES TO HARLEM and THEY CALL ME MISTER TIBBS. A cab ride takes him past marquees for GET CARTER and a double-feature of PATTON and M*A*S*H.

The action eventually moves uptown, after a gangboss (Moses Gunn) hires Shaft to find his kidnapped daughter. Shaft walks the Harlem streets accompanied by Hayes' bluesy "Soulsville," and passes under the Apollo Theatre marquee on 125th Street, this time advertising a performance by Edwin Starr. There's even a cameo by Antonio Fargas as a street informant named "Bunky."

It isn't until about halfway through the film that we get to see Shaft's West Village digs. His bachelor pad is an airy, book-lined studio on Jane Street, complete with hardwood floors, spiral staircase and fine art on the walls. It's across from the now-defunct No Name Bar on Hudson Street, Shaft's hangout, where he outwits a pair of gangsters on his trail. We also get a walking tour of the neighborhood that includes Cafe Wha?, the recently closed Minetta Tavern and the still-operating Cafe Reggio on MacDougal Street, where Shaft sips espresso.

SHAFT does have other pleasures. In addition to Hayes' score (which, beyond the classic title theme, is quite extensive and jazzy), it has great supporting performances by Gunn as Bumpy Jonas ("Knocks Persons" in the novel) - yet another movie character based on real-life Harlem mobster Bumpy Johnson - and Drew Bundini Brown, then best known as Muhammad Ali's cornerman, as Jonas' sidekick, Willy.

Like all cinematic time capsules, SHAFT sometimes feels painfully dated. And though Tidyman went on to win an Oscar for writing THE FRENCH CONNECTION (and pen six more Shaft novels), the screenplay feels choppy. Part of this is probably due to the rewrite process, during which, according to Tidyman's son Nathaniel Rayle, Black was brought in to embroider the script with "white Hollywood's concept of black dialect." Either way, the film was a huge hit and spawned two sequels, the first of which found Shaft battling for survival in a dangerous and alien world rarely seen on the big screen - Queens.  




NEXT TIME: "Shaft's Big Score"

Thought for the day ...

... from an unlikely source.

"You have to create your life. You have to carve it, like a sculpture."

- William Shatner, quoted in Esquire, Feb. 2006

Big Apple Time Capsule Pt. 2: ACROSS 110th STREET

The second in an occasional series of posts about New York City as seen through the prism of 1970s shot-on-location crime dramas ...

"You don't know what you'll do until you're put under pressure/Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester." - Bobby Womack

Though it's sometimes lumped into the blaxploitation genre, 1972's ACROSS 110th STREET is actually a straightforward New York crime drama, albeit one featuring major black characters and dealing head on with racial issues. It's also a cinematic record of Harlem in the early '70s (110th Street being the informal boundary back then) - bleak and burned out and the perfect setting for a grim, existential crime story.

When three black holdup men rob a mob bank in Harlem of $300,000 - and kill a bunch of people in the process - both the cops and the wiseguys are soon in pursuit. The cops are represented by grizzled oldtimer Sgt. Mattelli (Anthony Quinn) and the principled Lt. Pope (Yaphet Kotto). Mattelli wants to break heads, Pope wants to calm the situation before Harlem goes up in flames. The mob dispatches Nick D'Salvio (Anthony Franciosa), an ambitious low-level crook, to recover the money and make an object lesson of those who took it.


Based on Wally Ferris' now long-out-of-print 1970 novel, titled simply ACROSS 110th, the film was directed by Barry Shear, a TV veteran whose previous film was WILD IN THE STREETS, co-starring a young Richard Pryor. It was Ferris' only published novel. He spent his career as a television cameraman, working for the DuMont Network in the 1950s and then for WNEW/Metromedia in New York, up until the FOX takeover in 1986.

Under the opening credits, set to Bobby Womack's now-famous title song (reprised in Quentin Tarantino's JACKIE BROWN 25 years later), we follow a mobster's black Cadillac on its trek uptown, with lots of footage of Harlem street scenes on Lenox Avenue, 125th Street and environs along the way (the Apollo Theatre marquee advertises an appearance by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and Jr. Walker and the All-Stars). The action then picks up in a decrepit brownstone off St. Nicholas Place, where the robbery and shoot-out occur (one of the gangsters is played by a pre-CHINATOWN, pre-ROCKY Burt Young).

Quinn co-produced the film and does a good job as Mattelli, though he's not too convincing in some of the action scenes and sometimes a little over-the-top in the dramatic ones. But Kotto, in one of his earliest roles, is terrific. Pope grudgingly admires Mattelli while at the same time being repulsed by his racist and violent ways. He could easily have morphed into Lt. Al Giardello, the character Kotto played on TV's HOMICIDE 20 years later. Gravel-voiced character actor Richard Ward portrays a black gangster named Doc Johnson, another homage of sorts to real-life Harlem ganglord Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson. Moses Gunn had played a similar role in SHAFT the year before, as Harlem kingpin "Bumpy Jonas" (in Ernest Tidyman's original novel, the character is named "Knocks Persons").

Though it never lapses into the fantasy world of blaxploitation, ACROSS 110th STREET is full of '70s stylings, from the pimped-out clothes and hats to red-lit nightclubs with velour walls and tiger-print booths. And the getaway driver is played by "Huggy Bear" himself, Antonio Fargas. The entire movie appears to be shot in found locations, from paint-peeling Harlem apartments to a lived-in looking local precinct house and the empty-windowed tenement in which the finale plays out.

ACROSS 110th STREET isn't a great film. Some awkward performances and choppy editing keep it from that, as well as a little too much gratuitous violence, nudity, zooms and freeze frames. But it's still way above average, especially in how it portrays the doomed hold-up men and their leader, Jim Harris (Paul Benjamin, in a stand-out performance), who realizes he's had his one shot at the big time - and blown it. It's Harlem itself that's destined to take him down, as surely as any mobster's bullet.



NEXT TIME: "Shaft"

Basiltov

And when he wasn't fencing, he knew how to relax, with a bottle of Cleveland's finest.

Big Apple Time Capsule Pt. 1: THE SEVEN-UPS

Not long ago, Reed Farrel Coleman and I were discussing how New York City as we knew it growing up (he in Brooklyn, me in N.J.) for the most part no longer exists. Crime and poverty-ridden, with a stratospheric murder rate and a perpetual fiscal crisis, New York in the 1970s - pre-Disney, pre-Giuilani, pre-homeless shelters - was a very different place.

Where that New York still survives, of course, is in the movies made during that period. In the late '60s and throughout the '70s, N.Y.-set films tended to get out of the studios and into the streets, often making a character of the city itself. This was especially true of shot-on-location crime dramas (though that path was blazed by Mark Hellinger and Jules Dassin's NAKED CITY back in 1948). Unlike valentines such as Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, these films usually featured unadorned, often grim (at times overly grim) visions of the city. In the years since, they've become evocative time capsules of the way things were.

The film that spurred this discussion was 1973's THE SEVEN-UPS, a movie that brought back vivid memories for both of us. A follow-up of sorts to 1971's THE FRENCH CONNECTION (both featured Roy Scheider as a hard-edged undercover cop), THE SEVEN-UPS was a gritty urban crime drama played out in the wintry streets of New York circa 1972 ("That's the New York I remember," Coleman said). In addition to Jersey guy Scheider's broken-nosed charisma and unaffected Everyman persona, the film featured lyrically stark camerawork by Urs Furrer and location shooting that ranged from the Bronx to lower Manhattan (he showed off the city to similar effect in SHAFT and SHAFT'S BIG SCORE!). And, like any '70s movie worth its salt, it features an appearance by Joe Spinell.

But what THE SEVEN-UPS is most remembered for, of course, is its chase scene, one of the best ever, as Scheider's character, in a Pontiac Ventura hatchback, pursues a pair of cop killers in a Bonneville (one of the killers is played by famed stunt driver Bill Hickman, who coordinated the action, as he had previously for BULLITT and THE FRENCH CONNECTION).

You see a lot of the city during the chase, from downtown to Washington Heights, but don't try to follow the geography. The cars cross the George Washington Bridge into Jersey, chase each other up the Palisades Parkway, then magically reappear back across the river on the Saw Mill River Parkway and eventually onto the Taconic for a bruising finish. Does the geography matter? Probably not. Enjoy.

NEXT TIME: "Across 110th Street"

Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008

I've been remiss. Various end-of-2008, beginning-of-2009 things kept me away from blogging for the last couple weeks, not to mention Dec. 31's long goodbye at The Star-Ledger.

I did miss out on the chance to post about Donald E. Westlake, who died New Year's Eve and whom readers of this blog know as a writer I admired greatly, particularly in his incarnation as "Richard Stark," creator of the single-named - and single-minded - professional thief known as Parker. I've written a lot about Westlake/Stark in the past, and last year chose his 1967 novel THE RARE COIN SCORE as my pick for one of Patti Abbott's Forgotten Book Fridays. I also used a passage from his BUTCHER'S MOON as a Random Readings selection, and had some related thoughts about PAYBACK: STRAIGHT UP, the much-improved director's cut of the Mel Gibson film adapted from the first Stark novel, 1962's THE HUNTER.

There have been plenty of Westlake tributes since his death, almost all of them mentioning what a gracious and charming guy he was, in addition to being a phenomenally talented and prolific (more than 100 books) writer. I certainly found that be true when I interviewed him by phone in 1986 for The Asbury Park Press, on the release of his novel GOOD BEHAVIOR, the sixth in his comic series about bumbling crook John Dortmunder. For me, the interview was especially memorable in that, after spending an entertaining hour and a half on the phone with Westlake, I discovered that, just the day before, the paper had upgraded to a computerized phone system that blocked standard recording methods. What I actually had on tape was 90 minutes of electronic buzz. In a panic, I called him back the next day - he'd given me his home number - and he very generously submitted to another session, to fill in the gaps of what I couldn't remember.

GOOD BEHAVIOR began with the cryptic dedication "In Memoriam: P., 1961-73." In the interview, Westlake told me the "P" stood for Parker, and that since the novel used an idea he'd once planned for a Stark book, he was acknowledging there weren't going to be any more. "The character just kind of died for me," he told me.

Of course, Parker did return, in 1997's COMEBACK, and kept coming back, most recently in last year's DIRTY MONEY. He was a marginally kinder, gentler Parker by then, but still at heart the same relentless, remorseless professional. Of those later books, I think 2002's BREAKOUT and 2006's ASK THE PARROT both stand out as among the best in the series.

I met Westlake in person only once, at an ABA convention in Las Vegas in 1990 with James Ellroy, and I certainly can't claim to have known him. But his work - the majority of which I consumed in my most impressionable years - will be with me forever. For a brief period in the late '90s, he and I shared the same agent, the legendary Knox Burger, who, while an editor at Fawcett Gold Medal in the 1960s, had worked on the Parker books. While reading a draft of my first novel, THE BARBED-WIRE KISS, Burger called me out of the blue to criticize my tendency to write overly terse, in a manner he found inappropriate for the story. "You're trying to write like Richard Stark," he told me. "Don't!"

But who could, even if they wanted to? Westlake and Stark were one of a kind. We'll never see their like again.

A Christmas treat ...

... courtesy of Francis Ford Coppola, Joseph Conrad and MadTV:

Happy Holidays!

As December winds down ...

... a song (and a sentiment) for the New Year, courtesy of The Hold Steady:

A dark month for journalism

My thoughts go out to the 2,000 Gannett employees who lost their jobs over the last two weeks, in what is certainly the largest single layoff in the history of American newspapers, and especially to my former co-workers at The Asbury Park Press who were let go without warning Dec. 2, some after decades of service. That following week, the Tribune Company, which publishes The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, among other properties, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, ceasing severance payments to employees who had agreed to take buyouts or were laid off. This week will likely bring more grim news, as The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News float a plan to end home delivery on most days of the week, publishing truncated newsstand-only editions and possibly leading to more large-scale layoffs. And this is also the month that sees the departure of the remainder of The Newark Star-Ledger employees who took buyouts (including myself), depleting the newsroom by nearly 50%.  To quote another N.J. native, these jobs are going, boys, and they ain't coming back.

And while we're at it ....

.... and the Tyrone Power controversy rages on, a little more Rathbone:

And on the same subject ...

... Hollywood's greatest real-life fencer, Basil Rathbone, in a much more realistic bout with Tyrone Power in 1940's THE MARK OF ZORRO:

Random Readings, Vol. 6

This installment of Random Readings is courtesy of one of my favorite writers, Rafael Sabatini, and features one of the great opening lines in literature, from his swashbuckling 1921 novel SCARAMOUCHE:


He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it. Those simple Brittany folk were not so simple as to be deceived by a pretended relationship which did not even possess the virtue of originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent reason, announces himself the godfather of an infant fetched no man knew whence, and therafter cares for the lad's rearing and education, the most unsophisticated of country folk perfectly understand the situation. And so the good people of Gavrillac permitted themselves no illusions on the score of the real relationship between Andre-Louis Moreau - as the lad had been named - and Quintin de Kercadio, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the big grey house that dominated from its eminence the village clustering below.


****

Despite the archaicness of its style, that paragraph is actually a model of succinctness. It provides backstory, tone, exposition and character information all in a single graph. (Sabatini was one of Norman Mailer's favorite authors as well. In 1963, Mailer told The Paris Review "I never enjoyed a novel more than CAPTAIN BLOOD.... Some years ago, I was asked by a magazine what were the ten most important books in my development. The book I listed first was CAPTAIN BLOOD. Then came DAS KAPITAL.")

SCARAMOUCHE was filmed twice, once in 1923 with Ramon Novarro and Lewis Stone, and again in 1952 with Stewart Granger and New Jersey native Mel Ferrer, who died earlier this year at age 89. The latter film included one the screen's great duels, with Granger and Ferrer athletically crossing swords in a crowded theater. Realistic? Ehhhh, not so. But brilliant all the same.

QUANTUM mechanics Pt. 2 (spoilers)

Spoilers ahead for the new Bond film QUANTUM OF SOLACE, so if you haven't seen it yet, STOP READING...

After seeing an advance screening a couple weeks back, I posted that, although I enjoyed the movie and think Daniel Craig is the best Bond yet, I found the whole thing way too action heavy and lacking exposition that properly set up what was going on.

So here are my questions for those of you who've seen it:

+ Is M shot during the interrogation in Italy? It appears she is, but she then seems fine in the next scene. What happened?

+ After Bond engages Mathis' help, they're traveling overnight on what? A boat? A plane? How does Mathis - a CIA contact with a shady past - merit a private plane complete with sleeper compartments and private bartender?

+ Is Agent Fields naked under that trenchcoat when she meets Bond at the airport? If so, why?

+ What exactly is Greene's plan? Did the Bolivian government not know there was a huge lake in the middle of the desert? If not, how did the Quantum people know? And what exactly were they doing? Damming up the lake to reroute the water to where?

+ I get that the painting-a-woman-in-oil bit is an homage to GOLDFINGER, but in the context of this film, what's the point? What message are they trying to send? Why kill her in the first place? And why oil? And what exactly are the logistics of drowning a full-grown woman in crude oil, painting her with it head to toe and then successfully depositing her body in a room in a luxury hotel with no one seeing it, and no traces left of how she got there?

+ Why does that hotel in the finale go up like it's made of gunpowder and gasoline, all from a single motor vehicle accident in the underground parking garage? And what are those "Hydro" canisters on the walls?

And finally:

+ Who shot Mr. Greene?

Answers, more questions, and general opinions welcomed. What did you all think?

****
And as an addendum, this illustration, commissioned by Ian Fleming in 1957 and representing his vision of what Bond looked like. It was done as preparation for a series of London Daily Express comic strips adapting the novels, though this particular art was never used, and was dismissed by the eventual strip artist. John McLusky, as being too "outdated" and "pre-war."

The new economic blues

Composing my thoughts for a Friday posting on QUANTUM OF SOLACE, but in the meantime, here's a perfect little character-driven crime drama - with guitar - courtesy of the great Dave Alvin:

QUANTUM mechanics Pt. 1

Although the new James Bond film QUANTUM OF SOLACE has opened throughout much of the world (and is breaking box office records in Britain), it doesn't open in the U.S. until Nov. 14. So although I saw it at an early screening last week, and have much to say about it - and questions for others who've seen in - I'm going to stay spoiler-free and hold off on writing about it at length until it opens here.

In the meantime, a few quick thoughts:

+ This is the shortest Bond film ever, at one hour and forty-six minutes. And though many of the films have suffered from bloated running times (the otherwise-excellent CASINO ROYALE being a good example), this one feels like it could have used another good 15-20 minutes of story. Not only are the plot and various location changes hard to follow, it's so packed with action sequences - shot in hyperkinetic BOURNE style - that you never get a breather. The action is almost non-stop, with characterization, style and humor sacrificed along the way (and just what is the villain's plan after all?). Most of the dialogue in the film is actually contained in the most recent trailer. And though the chases, fight scenes, shoot-outs, etc. are well-choreographed, the editing is so ADD-addled that it's hard to parse exactly what's going on, where the combatants are in relation to one another, and who's doing what to whom.

+ Daniel Craig is - again - great. And I say now without reservation, best Bond ever. Though he has little dialogue in this one, he seems weary and battle-hardened, as if he's feeling the psychological toll of all that's going on around him. With that battered face and laser-blue eyes, he communicates a lot while saying hardly anything at all.

+ It has one of the best main title sequences of a Bond film since the days of Maurice Binder,  miles above the one in CASINO ROYALE. The new title song, "Another Way to Die" from Jack White and Alicia Keys, is serviceable, although it still makes one curious what the Amy Winehouse track sounds like.

+ The Aston Martin DBS returns briefly in the opening chase sequence and, unfortunately, is left much the worse for wear by its end.

More soon.

Happy Halloween ...

... from The Jersey Devil.

Mad moments

Now that Season Two of MAD MEN has come to a very satisfying - if somewhat soap-operay - conclusion, I will once again direct viewers to the best MM discussion on the net, courtesy of my Star-Ledger colleague Alan Sepinwall. He also has a lengthy and exclusive Q&A with MM creator Matthew Weiner, talking about the series as a whole and the finale in particular.

My favorite moments from tonight's episode:
+ Don finally giving Pete the fatherly attention and approval he's sought for so long. I've always thought of Pete as a soul in the balance, looking for guidance from various father figures, only to be rebuffed by Don at every turn.
+ The merger of the Don/Dick personalities at the same time as Sterling Cooper itself is facing a merger. Don seemed to return from California with the best qualities of both his personas, plus a desperate realization of what he stood to lose if things continued as they were. And along with that ...
+ ... Don's letter to Betty, written with his characteristic adman's skill, but with an emotionally wrenching sincerity at its heart ... "you won't be alone for long, but I'll be alone forever."

All that said, I'm still hoping for the Freddy Rumsen spinoff series next year.

And, for those who missed it, one of the finer moments from this weekend's Saturday Night Live, courtesy of Jon Hamm.

Speaking of finales, in case any of you have been following the news about The Star-Ledger, the other shoe did indeed drop Friday. The short version being that I and 150 of my colleagues - about half of the newsroom staff - will be leaving the paper by the end of the year.

But enough about that, go read Sepinwall. And don't worry, he's staying.