Two Movies and a Book About Movies

First the book....

Thanks to my movie maven pal Barb Vancheri for recommending and then lending me the book you see to your left. It was published in 2005, but it is not all that dated, and it tells, as its ponderous subtitle indicates, about high times and dirty dealings backstage at the Academy Awards (whew!).

I enjoyed this book a lot because you do get a lot of inside scoop about the people that you see when you go to the movies and watch the Academy Awards show.

One name mentioned throughout the book was that of Harvey Weinstein.  The first significant mention of Weinstein in the book refers to him thusly: "The (Weinstein) brothers, particularly the corpulent, flamboyant Harvey, were known for abusing staffers, bullying filmmakers, throwing tantrums, driving hard bargains, and a host of other sins both common and uncommon in the movie business...."  Other mentions of Harvey throughout the book are usually made with reference to his bullying tactics and borderline shady business dealings in the industry that we generically define as "Hollywood".  Not mentioned in the book were the now very well known sexual proclivities of Weinstein, which have been reported to run the gamut of sexual harassment to full on sexual assault.  I am guessing that Weinstein's sexual appetites were well known at the time this book was written, but for some reason were not mentioned in the book.

Anyway, as I said, lots of fun inside stuff in here.  A few takeaways of mine:

• The egos of the "talent" in the movie business are beyond belief.  How the production people, who probably have some large egos themselves, deal with it is beyond me.
• The Academy Awards show is just that - a show, more specifically, a TV show.  The money that ABC pays for the rights to televise that show finances much of what the Academy does.
• In the eleven Academy Awards shows covered in this book, five different producers ran the show, each vowing to bring a "different" look to the show, to make it snappier, more relevant, and, above all, shorter.  In the end, all the shows ended up looking pretty much the same.  In the fourteen years that have happened since this book was published, the show still looks pretty much the same.
• In the end, what makes the show memorable are the moments that can't be planned or scripted: Jack Palance doing one armed push ups, Michael Moore making an overtly political speech and getting booed off the stage, Denzel Washington and Halle Berry winning Oscars the same night, or, more recently, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway being given the wrong envelope and announcing the wrong Best Picture winner.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Now, the movies....

Woody Allen's 2017 release, "Wonder Wheel", was generally panned by critics.  If it even opened in Pittsburgh at all, it was here and gone in about five minutes, so we finally caught up with it via streaming (I feel so hip when I say that!) last Saturday.

As Allen movies go, it was not that great, but it had some things going for it, mainly Kate Winslet and some photography and lighting that was just gorgeous.  Working against it was Jim Belushi as one of the male leads.  Justin Timberlake and Juno Temple as secondary leads were okay. It was no comedy, and was a bit dark in tone.  Like I say, I don't think it was as bad as some critics said, but you do expect more from Woody Allen.

Kate Winslet

Oh, and for fans of "The Sopranos" also appearing in the cast were Tony Sirico (Paulie Walnuts) and Steven Schirripa (Bobby Bacala).  They played, not surprisingly, a couple of Mafia hoods.

Two and one-half stars.

The second movie is the current "Red Sparrow".

This is a rather convoluted set-in-the-present spy thriller.  It has some rather gruesome scenes involving Russian interrogation techniques that are hard to watch, and at 139 minutes, it is about thirty minutes too long, and I am still not sure which side Jennifer Lawrence ends up being on, so this was no great shakes.  

However, it does star the aforementioned Jennifer Lawrence,

as Dominika, the Russian prima ballerina turned spy, who is trained to use her beauty and powers of seduction to become a "sparrow", a spy who will get all sorts of secrets from those bastard Americans.  All so her mother can continue to receive proper health care from the Russian government (told you it was convoluted).  Anyway, Lawrence is terrific given the part she had to play in this potboiler.  She's a wonderful actress, and she does kinda sorta make it worth seeing the movie.  But that's about it.

And be prepared to turn your head away from the screen during the interrogation scenes (there are at least three of them in the movie).  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Two stars.