Movie Time - "Here"

 

Back in 1994 the creative team of director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth, and actors Robin Wright and Tom Hanks gave us the multi-Oscar winning (Picture, Director, Screenwriter, and Lead Actor) "Forrest Gump", and this fact has been heavily touted in the publicity for this one, "HERE", wherein that whole creative team has been reunited.

This movie is about one house, one particular room of the house, actually, and the people who have lived there and the events that took place in that room over the course of a hundred years or so, and even many eons ago as well (trust me on that point.).

The cinematic trick that makes this movie unique is that it is filmed with a stationary camera.  People move in and out of the room, but the camera doesn't follow them; it stays on the room. You know that there is a kitchen, a dining room, a back door etc. behind that fourth wall, but you only see the room.  Makes it somewhat like watching a play.

Many families have occupied this house, and one very famous household furniture item was conceived there (per this story), but the focus is on the multi-generational family that lived there from the end of World War II and into the 21st century.  Hanks is the baby-boomer son of the WWII vet and his wife.  People settle in, struggle with jobs, have kids, celebrate marriages, births, birthdays, holidays, illnesses, and deaths.

This movie has not been received well by the critics.  They say the the stationary camera is a cinematic conceit  of Zemeckis, that the CGI "de-aging" of Hanks and Wright is distracting. I thought the single camera angle was different and I liked it.  We all know that Hanks and Wright aren't twenty-somethings  anymore but let Hollywood magic work it's tricks on them.  I found this movie the be warm and human, well acted (I mean, this IS Tom Hanks, amiright?), and it delivers a wonderful message.  That is is not bricks and mortar that should define a house and home.  It is the memories it creates, both good and not so good, and the people with whom we share them is what is important. Corny?  Maybe, but we liked it.

The movie hit both Linda and I in a very visceral and emotional way.  In Linda's case, her daughter and her husband are now living in the same house where Linda and her Mom, Dad, brother, and sister lived.  They moved into the house in 1961. She sees the emotions and memories are what makes this particular room special, even though the room may look very different than it did a generation ago.  In my case, all the memories that can spring up within you when someone special to you dies.  It packed quite a punch for both of us.

Like I say, professional critics haven't loved "Here", and that is too bad in that it will probably keep people away from it, but these two regular movie goers did, and I look forward to watching it again when it hits the streamers. 

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

On Tom Hanks, John Grisham, and Chevy Chase

What, you might ask, could I possibly be writing about three disparate folks listed in the headline? 

Read on....

Tom Hanks

While shopping at Sam's Club a few weeks back, I noticed that actor Tom Hanks had written a novel, and I couldn't resist.

In this rather awkwardly titled novel, Hanks is giving us a fictionalized version of what goes into making a "major motion picture masterpiece."  Sounded intriguing for a movie buff like me and who doesn't love Hanks, right, so I bought the book.  The book is about 400 pages long, and after 200 pages, I threw in the towel.

Why?

First off, it's fiction.  All the names are made up.  For example, the director of the movie being described is named "Bill Johnson."  How's that for a bland and unmemorable character name.  And it goes on from there.  Actors, writers, behind-the-scenes fixers and movers and shakers, agents, production assistants, cinematographers, gophers....there were so many of them that it was hard keeping track of them all.

Next, Hanks used asterisks on almost every page, often times to refer to other fictional movies that these fictional actors, directors, writers et al had previously made.  I found that to be very distracting.

Finally, the "movie" being made in this novel was a comic book/superhero movie, a genre that I just don't care about.  Maybe if the movie was thriller action movie or detective story or even a RomCom, but this one just didn't hold any interest for me.

Libraries and bookstores are filled with books about the "Making of..." actual movies like Casablanca, Wizard of Oz, High Noon, Citizen Kane and any number of others.  I still love Tom Hanks, but read those books instead of this one.

One-half Star from The Grandstander.

John Grisham

John Grisham published his first novel, "A Time To Kill", in 1989.  HIs second novel, "The Firm" (1991), became a #1 best seller, and he has never looked back since.  He has written over 40 books that have sold over 300 million copies, and he continues to churn them out.  I have not read all of his books, but I've read a lot of them, and every one of them has sucked me in from page one until the final sentence.

While shopping at Target two weeks ago (notice that I only shop at upscale  retailers), I spotted his latest novel, "The Boys from Biloxi", which looks good, but instead I bought this newly published paperback.

This was published as a hardback in 2022, and contains three novellas of Grisham's - the longest is 125 pages, the shortest 55 pages - and each one is pure Grisham:  tense, exciting, intriguing, and you don't want to stop reading until the end of the story.  Two of the stories, "Homecoming" and "Sparring Partners" are legal stories involving crime and lawyers, some shady, some honest, and the third, "Strawberry Moon" is about a 29 year old convict on Mississippi's death row, whose execution is scheduled to take place in three hours.  How he spends those hours and one special final request that he has makes for a most haunting tale.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Chevy Chase

While on our trip to Annapolis last week it came out in the conversation that Linda had never seen one particular classic American comedy from Chevy Chase and the good folks at National Lampoon:

Can you believe that?  Better still, can you believe that this movie is now forty (40!!) years old?  I remember that when this was released, it was at  time when everyone was first getting VCR's, so it was easy to record this off of HBO, or to purchase a VHS copy of the movie, and, as a result, "Vacation" was a movie that was watched again and again and again to the point where you could recite the lines as they were being spoken on the screen.  You know, lines like....

"The family Truckster.  You think you hate it now, but just wait until you drive it", or

"Who wants to see the world's second largest ball of twine", or

"The bank's been on me like flies on a rib roast", or

"Dinkums had the shits last night so we kept her in the garage", or

"See that sign that says 'Rib Tips' up ahead? Well, F--- that" or

"Hey, underpants!", or

"Can I have that sandwich from the gas station.  I'm so hungry I could eat a sandwich from a gas station", or...

Well, you get the idea.

I used to watch this movie every year on the day before we left on our own family vacation to the Outer Banks.  However, it had been many years since I had seen it, and the fact that Linda have never  seen it prompted us to pull it out and watch it again.

The verdict after all of these years:  It holds up great and is still as funny as ever, praise be to Marty Moose!

As we are now into summer and your vacations are upon you or soon will be, grab a copy (streaming for free on HBO Max), and ride along with the Griswold Family.  You'll have so much FUN that you'll be whistling Zip-a-Dee-Do Dah out your, well, you know.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Oh, and as a special treat, here are the closing credits from the movie as Clark, Ellen Rusty, and Audrey go Dancin' Across the USA on their way to Wally World to the tune of Lindsey Buckingham.

Looking For Something To Watch? Some Suggestions.....

Some Capsule Critiques of what I've been watching of late....

In this filmed-in-(parts of) Pittsburgh movie, based upon a best selling novel, Hanks plays a crotchety misanthropic curmudgeon - one critic I read calls it "Forrest Grump" - who, seemingly, hates everything and everybody.  Why does he have to pay for six feet of rope, when he's only buying five feet, because that's all he needs, and the home improvement place (Busy Beaver; I didn't know there were any of those around anymore) only sells rope by the yard?  That kind of stuff.  He treats everyone in his neighborhood with a get-off-my-lawn contempt that makes Clint Eastwood from "Grand Torino" look like a pussycat.  

There is a reason for this, of course, which doesn't take too long to figure out, even if, like me, you haven't read the book, and this whole thing becomes a redemption story.  I mean, this is TOM HANKS here.  No movie can end with Tom Hanks being an unlovable old bastard can it?  Of course, Hanks is great in the role, but equally great is Mexican actress Mariana Trevino who plays new neighbor Marisol.  The scene where Otto comes to Marisol's house and asks if he can use her phone is the best one in the movie, I think.

A warning.  A someone who was widowed two years ago, there were a couple of scenes in this one that struck way too close to home for me.  That doesn't make it a bad movie, but since I wasn't expecting it, it sure gave me a jolt, and brought tears to my eyes.

Two and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

Emily, played brilliantly by Aubrey Plaza (who was so good in Season 2 of HBO's "White Lotus"), is a late twenty-something young woman stuck in a shit job with over $70,000 of student debt to pay off.   She can't get a "real" job because of a felony conviction in her past.  One day she gets a text saying that for two hours of her time, she can make $200 cash, but she will be doing something illegal (no, it doesn't involve prostitution).  Thus begins a taut and suspenseful thriller that I cannot recommend highly enough.  I'll say no more other than SEE THIS ONE.  This movie was released in 2022, and while I haven't thoroughly perused all fo the Oscar nominations released yesterday, I don't believe that it received any love from the Motion Picture Academy,  For my money, though, it may well be the best of all the 2022 movies that I have seen thus far.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

This is a sequel to the "Knives Out" movie from two years ago.  Once again, Daniel Craig plays world famous detective Benoit Blanc.  Looks like Craig, after quitting his James Bond gig, has found another franchise character to play in a string of movies.  He's very good at this type of thing.

This is another murder mystery Whodunit, set in a gorgeous locale, and featuring a terrific cast that includes Edward Norton (has ever been bad in anything he's ever done?), Kate Hudson, Janelle Monae, Kathryn Hahn, and Leslie Odom Jr.  All of them have secrets to hide.  One of them ends up dead, and it's up to Blanc to unravel the whole thing.

No one will ever call "Glass Onion" a great movie, but it's a good one, and, perhaps more importantly, it's fun to watch and entertaining as all hell.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Were you a fan of "That 70's Show", a sitcom that ran on network TV from 1998-2006?  I was.  It was funny.  It produced Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, the two young actors in the show who became breakout stars in movies and TV.  It brought Tanya Roberts back into our living rooms.  However, the best part of that show were Kurtwood Smith and Debra Jo Rupp who played Red and Kitty Forman, the parents of central teen character Eric Forman, played by Topher Grace.  Well, Netflix has rebooted this series as "That 90's Show", and the even better news is that Red and Kitty are back and are the central part of the show.

In the first episode, Eric and Donna (Laurie Prepon) return to Wisconsin with their teenaged daughter, Leia, and arrangements are made for her, much to Kitty's delight and Red's exasperation, to stay with her grandparents for the summer.  Leia becomes friends with other kids from the neighborhood, including Michael Kelso's son, and the now happy and content empty nester Red sees his nightmare with teenagers beginning all over again, as he calls them "dumbasses" and threatens to put his "foot up their ass."  Hilarity will no doubt ensue.

In episode one, Grace, Prepon, Kutcher, and Kunas all made appearances as their former characters, and previews tell us that Fez will be back, too, but I am guessing that they are not going to be appearing regularly.  As in the '70s, Red and Kitty are going to be the stars here.

Not assigning Grandstander Stars just yet, but this series has a lot of potential.

"Elvis"

We finally got around to seeing "Elvis", the Baz Luhrmann directed biopic on Elvis Presley, as seen though the eyes of his shyster manager, Col. Tom Parker.   The critics reviews on this movie have been, to be kind, mixed, which, combined with the fact that it's two hours and forty minutes long, had pervented me from rushing out to see it, but in the end, I am glad that I saw it, because it was a good movie, quite entertaining, and, despite the long running time, I never once checked my watch as I viewed it.  I highly recommend it.

First off, as the opening title came on and the first twenty or so minutes of the movie played out, my thought was "Yep, this is a Baz Luhrmann movie alright", but soon thereafter, Luhrmann played down the sensory overload (see Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby") and told the story of Elvis and Parker fairly straightforwardly, and, I must say, he hit it out of the park.  As I said, the story is told through the viewpoint of Col. Tom Parker, played by the great Tom Hanks, and he is the narrator of the movie.  Critics have not been kind to Hanks on this one, and he is saddled with some facial prosthetic make-up and a fat suit, a hokey Dutch accent, and he does tend to, shall we say, chew into the role.  It's not vintage Tom Hanks, to be sure, but hey, it is TOM HANKS, so attention must be paid.

The true star here, though, is 30 year old Austin Butler as Elvis.  Butler was pretty much unknown to me.  He came up through he ranks in Disney Channel and Nickelodeon productions, and he had a small but significant role as Manson Family member Tex Watson in "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood", but, his Elvis portrayal can truly be called a breakout role if ever there was one.  Early on in the movie, he brings to mind a young John Travolta, but when the movie takes you to the 1968 Comeback Special and the Las Vegas era Elvis, Butler  becomes Presley and completely carries the movie.  The mixed critical reviews of the movie and the summer release may cause Academy Award voters to overlook or ignore Butler's performance, but if he would manage to snare a Best Actor nomination for this one, it won't be undeserved.

Austin Butler alongside

the genuine article

And Luhrmann chooses to end the movie with a performance from the real Elvis that is both wonderful and sad at the same time.  Of the 2022 release date movies that I have seen thus far this year, I rank this as Number 1 and give it, what the Hell, Four Grandstander Stars.

Old Movie Time - "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990)

 

What, you may well ask, would prompt me to watch this thirty-one year old movie?  A movie that was pretty much panned - it was nominated for Razzie Awards in multiple categories - when it came out, that co-starred an actor for whom I don't especially care, and is generally swept under the carpet when the film oeuvre  of the great Tom Hanks is discussed?  Well, it was a podcast that did it.  Specifically Season 2 of TCM's "The Plot Thickens" podcast.  This one is called "The Devil's Candy", and it is based upon a book of the same name by critic Julie Salamon, who had daily access to the set of "Bonfire of the Vanities" when it was being filmed by director Brian DePalma.

The podcast is a fascinating look into how the sausage gets made on a major motion picture, and back in 1989 when this was being filmed, it was quite a controversial story.  "Bonfire of the Vanities" was a major literary event in the 1980's, a best selling novel by Tom Wolfe (Full disclosure: I have never read it), and Warner Bros. was banking on it being their BIG Oscar bait movie for 1990.  The novel skewered Wall Street, White Priviledge (before that was an actual term), and cast an especially bad light on crime and racism in New York City at the time.  The backlash was immediate from the powers that be in NYC, and it ranged from the producers not being able to gain access to locations in the city, protests and picketing when filming took place, and even the cast and crew being pelted with eggs by residents of the Bronx when some scenes were being filmed.

The podcast also confirmed that (a) Bruce Willis was, and probably still is, an jerk, (b) Melanie Griffith was, and probably still is, foul mouthed, and (c) that Tom Hanks REALLY is the nice guy that we all know him to be.  He's about the only person in the whole shebang who comes off as a decent human being.  Oh, and Morgan Freeman, who has a juicy role as a judge, has a great quote in the podcast.  Remember, this was 1989, and Freeman wasn't nearly as ubiquitous then as he is now.  He was appearing in Shakespeare in the Park in New York when this was being filmed, and much of his background was on the stage.  In an interview with Salamon he said that unlike the other principals in the film, he wasn't a "movie star", and he wasn't sure he wanted to be one because "when you get to be a movie star, you don't have to worry about having to act anymore."

The Podcast is really good stuff, and I highly recommend it if you love movies.

So, all of the above is a long way of saying that I became curious to actually watch this movie, which Mrs. Grandstander and I did yesterday.  The opening scene is a five minute single take tracking shot that, from a pure movie-making standpoint, is outstanding.  The rest of the film? Meh.  

Actually, I went into the movie expecting to revel in the sheer awfulness of it all, but that didn't happen.  A contemporary review of the movie by Roger Ebert, which I read afterwards, was semi-complimentary but said that if you read and liked the Wolfe novel, you would no doubt hate the movie, and that appears to be the consensus of other reviews that I found on line.  DePalma apparently took some bones from the book and crafted a very different movie.  Not the first time that's been done, and it surely hasn't been the last time, either.

I thought the movie was somewhat overdone, and the performances were over the top by just about everybody (e.g., F. Murray Abraham as a conniving and politically ambitious District Attorney).  It was a bit jarring to see Hanks as a Heel in this one, but he was, well, Tom Hanks, and this movie was a break away for him from the comedy roles that he had been playing up to that time.  Griffith chewed scenery as Hanks' southern bell malaproping mistress, although she looked amazing in not one but two separate scenes where she wore nothing but a bra-and-panties set.  Both Willis and his character were unlikable.  About the only decent character in the whole movie was Freeman's judge.

Oh, and if you like seeing actors who were no big deal then but who went on to other things later....Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) played Hanks' wife, a then seven year old Kirsten Dunst played their daughter, and Rita Wilson (Mrs. Tom Hanks, although I'm not sure if she was at the time) played a P.R. aide early in the movie. Also, in that opening tracking shot I mentioned, Brian DePalma himself appeared as a security guard.  It was the only way he could actually direct the scene as it was being filmed.  Learned that fact from the podcast.

So, if I were to watch "Bonfire of the Vanities" cold, having no idea of all of it's historical baggage and having not read the book, what would I say?

Not great, somewhat entertaining, and it did hold my interest.  Two Stars from The Grandstander.

Book Review - "I'll Have What She's Having" by Erin Carlson (2017)

 

The sub-title of this book says it all: "How Nora Ephron's Three Iconic Films Saved The Romantic Comedy."

If you are fan of the three movies in question, When Harry Met Sally (written by Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner), Sleepless in Seattle, and You've Got Mail (both written and directed by Ephron), this is a book that you should read.  It is also one that you should read if you are interested in knowing all the details into how films get made.  The book really tells you how the sausage gets made.  It's never an easy process, and there is never a guarantee that the movie that hundreds of people are pouring their hearts and souls into will be accepted by the movie-going public.

It is also the story of Nora Ephron as the early chapters give a brief biography of the famed reporter and essayist who turned to screenwriting and directing, about how a oft-times cynical New York twice divorced, thrice married journalist turned out to be a complete sucker for love and romance, as evidenced by these three movies.

Lots of great gossip and stories about the people involved in the making of these movies - Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks, Rob Reiner especially and all of the many other actors, writers, producers, and "production weenies" (Hanks' term) involved in making these three great movies.  If you like inside Hollywood stuff, this is for you.  The story of a nervous and embarrassed  Reiner directing his mother, who played the lady in the deli, in the now classic "I'll have what she's having" scene is alone worth reading book.

I won't begin to detail any of the good stuff herein except for this: Tom Hanks REALLY is the Good Guy that everyone perceives him to be, although his liberal use of, shall we say, salty language in his conversations with the author might unnerve you a bit.  Here's an example.  After the post-premier party for cast and crew at an elegant New York City venue, Hanks was leaving the party with his entourage when he made it a point walk up to one of the lowly production people, who brought his mother as his date to the party, to thank him for all his help, especially to him, Tom Hanks!, in the course of the making of the movie.  "He did it because he knew that my mother would hear it" the production guy said.  That really is a nice guy.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

"Greyhound"

Anytime that you have the chance to watch Tom Hanks in a movie, you gotta take it.  So it was that Mrs. Grandstander and I settled in to watch "Greyhound" tonight on Apple TV (which I got for free for one year when I bought my new iPhone last month).   I believe that this is a movie that was supposed to  be a theatrical release this summer, because I'm sure I remember seeing a trailer for it way back when we were able to go to the movin'  picture shows in an actual the-a-ter.  Looks like the producers gave up on that idea and decided to send it to a streamer, so here we are.

In this one, Hanks plays a US Navy Captain in charge of a convoy of cargo and other military ships crossing the Atlantic during WW II.  At some point, ships would enter a "no man's land" of sorts where they were too far at sea to be able to have aerial cover.  This tells the story of one such crossing and how the ships dealt with continued attacks from German U-boats during their fifty unprotected hours.  

The movie opens with Hanks meeting his girlfriend in a hotel lobby in San Francisco just before he ships out.  That took  all of about five minutes and from that point on, this was one slam-bang, non-stop, action filled movie.  The movie is only 93 minutes long, and it pretty much never stops with the sounds things like "hard right rudder" and "I've got the conn" and "deploy depth charges" and "Captain's on the bridge" and, well, you get the idea.

As always, Hanks is terrific, and he alone makes this one well worth seeing (he also wrote the screenplay; talented guy!).  If I have one quibble with the movie it's that it was very dark, and that made it hard to make out some of what you were seeing.  Also, about halfway through, we switched to closed captions, and that helped a great deal in following the movie.   The sea battle scenes, which I assume were mostly CGI, were terrific, and there was one very touching moment in it that brought Mrs. G. to tears.

The Grandstander gives this one Two and One-Half Stars.  Marilyn would probably give it at least Three.

"A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood"

We saw the long awaited "A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood" earlier this week, and we were not disappointed.  As no doubt everyone knows by now, the movie stars Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers, and Hanks is, as he usually is, terrific in the role.  What people may not realize is that this is not a biopic about Fred Rogers.  Nor is it, as my friend Maryellen has pointed out on a Facebook post, a movie to which you would bring your little children in hopes of  them becoming avid viewers of "Mister Rogers Neighborhood".   

It does, rather, tell a very specific story about about writer Tom Junod (identified as "Lloyd Vogel" in the movie, and wonderfully played by Matthew Rhys), who is assigned to interview Fred Rogers by Esquire Magazine for a piece on Heroes.  The hard-bitten and jaded writer, who is experiencing some familial relationship problems of his own, falls under the spell of Rogers' universal lessons of kindness and the unique person-ness (a world that I just made up) that resides in each and everyone of us.  In seeing the effect that Fred Rodgers has had on this one specific person, we also see how he as affected every single person with whom he came in contact, either in person or through "Mister Rogers Neighborhood".  

In a country and a world where kindness seems to be in short, very short, supply, "A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood" gives us a  lesson on what it is to be kind.  That alone makes seeing this movie important and worth seeing.

Director Marielle Heller has made a movie that will no doubt garner multiple Oscar nominations.  She made a decision to shrink the screen to a 4-by-3 aspect ratio whenever the movie depicts the Rogers television show, which is really cool, and the use of miniatures to depict not only Mister Rogers Neighborhood, but the cities of Pittsburgh and New York, are wonderfully whimsical.  This should get Oscar noms for both Heller and for the production designers.  Rhys and Hanks should pull down nominations as well, although Hanks' nomination might very well come in the Supporting Actor category.

This movie gets Three and one-half Stars from The Grandstander.

One comment about Tom Hanks, and it is not an original thought from me.  Have you noticed how Hanks seems to now be portraying only real people in his films these days?  Fred Rogers, Ben Bradlee, Sully Sullenberger, the guy who  negotiated for the spies in "Bridge of Spies"?  Not sure what this means, but it just seems interesting.  Whatever the role, Tom Hanks is no doubt the Actor of Our Times, much like James Stewart and Spencer Tracy were in another time.

"Toy Story 4"

I am not going to give a lengthy review or plot synopsis to "Toy Story 4", but I will tell you this much:

Of the movies that I have seen in 2019, it is my favorite one thus far.  It unhesitatingly gets Four Stars from The Grandstander.

"Toy Story 3" of a few years back was a wonderful movie (it won two Oscars), and it seemed to bring the story of Woody, Buzz, and their friends full circle.  You didn't think that there was anything left to tell.  The cynics among us might have suspected that a fourth movie in the series would be just another attempt by the Disney/Pixar to wring more dollars out of the pockets of the movie going public.  Not that Hollywood would ever do something like that, right?

I am happy to say that those cynical thoughts are wrong, wrong, WRONG.  TS4 is a charming story that delivers a great message, has animation that is positively stunning (much of the action takes place in a dusty old antique shop and in a seedy carnival, and the detail is absolutely amazing), and the acting of the characters voiced by Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Joan Cusack, Key and Peele, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves and others is fabulous.  Yes, I did say the "acting" of the animated characters.  They were great!

Bring a tissue or two for like Mrs. Grandstander, and yes, me too, you will tear up a time or two during the show.  And stay for the credits.  I mean until the VERY END of the credits.  You will be glad that you did.

Like I said, Four Stars from The Grandstander.

Two Movies and a Blackout

It was an interesting 36 or so hours this past Thursday and Friday that saw us seeing two movies and experiencing one significant inconvenience.

Let's take them in chronological order.

Thursday afternoon we saw the newest from director Steven Spielberg, "The Post".

For those of you too young to remember, or who have just plain forgotten about it, vey simply stated this is the story of the top secret documents back in 1971 that were leaked to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, the documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.  The Papers discussed the mishandling and misleading (a nice word for "lying") by four Presidential administrations about the conduct of the United States in the Viet Nam war, and the conduct of a fifth Administration in subverting the first amendment.

Ellsberg first leaked the papers to the Times, and the Times published them.  The Nixon Administration then enjoined the Times from continuing to publish them.  At the same time the Washington Post came into possession of the Papers, and they had to make a decision as to whether or not to publish them themselves.  This was at a critical time for the Post, which was in the process of going from a privately owned family business to a publicly traded company.  It fell upon publisher Katherine Graham and editor Ben Bradlee

The real Ben Bradlee and Katherine Graham

to make the decision:  Inform the public and defend the first amendment of the Constitution, or knuckle under to a bullying  President and all of his men.  The whole issue went before the Supreme Court, who ruled in favor of the Times and the Post, and, it might be argued, the American people.

The movie is well made and suspenseful, even though you know how it is going to end.  And it gives a great feeling for how it is, or at least how it used to be, to work at a newspaper (the building would literally shake when the presses that produced the newspaper would begin to run).  We attended this movie with friend Barb Vancheri, retired Film Critic for the Post-Gazette, and she said seeing the stories being written, the editorial meetings, and the actual production of the paper made her miss her job!

Attention must be paid to the terrific performances of Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in the roles of Graham and Bradlee.

Is it a surprise to anyone that they were both terrific in their roles?  A scene where Streep as Graham is talking on the phone and wrestling with the publish-or-not-publish decision is worth the price of the movie and is probably why she will get yet another Oscar nomination.  As for Hanks, he may suffer by comparison to Jason Robards, Jr. who played Bradlee in "All The President's Men", which is certainly understandable, but also unfair to him.  

The issues underlined in "The Post" are, sadly, still all too relevant in 2018, which makes this movie almost mandatory viewing for the civic minded among us, but it is also an exciting and dramatic bit of movie making.  And it also might compel one to rewatch the great "All The President's Men", never a bad thing.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

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"The Post" was pretty much going to be our movie going activity for the week, but along about midnight, electric power for much of McCandless and Franklin Park, about 2,500 homes, was lost.  Have any idea of just how dark  it gets when all of the various nightlights and luminescent clock dials in you home suddenly go out?  Or how cold it gets inside when it is subfreezing outside?

Well, the public utility that serves us told us that power would be restored by 1:00 PM, then it was 4:30, then it was 6:30, then it ws 8:30.  We were this close to packing up and heading to a local hotel when at 7:17 PM, we heard the fridge click on, and an instant later the lights came on and the furnace began running.  It was an unpleasant experience, but it made us grateful for how we live, and appreciative of what we have and sad knowing that there are folks out there who don't have such everyday conveniences at their disposal.

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So what do you do when it's too cold to stay in your home.  We went out for breakfast.  We had separate lunch dates with friends, Marilyn went to the Mall, and then we decided to go to another movie.  

The choice:

If you were around in 1994, what became known as the "Harding-Kerrigan Affair" is well known to you, but it can be shocking to think that for people under the age of thirty or so, the story told in "I, Tonya" is probably completely unknown to them.

Tonya Harding came up through a hard scrabble upbringing in Oregon to become a world class figure skater.  She competed in the 1992 Olympics, became the first woman to ever perform a triple axle in competition, became the American Champion, and on her way to competing in the 1994 Olympics, her chief competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, was knee-capped at the behest of her husband and some of the gang-that-couldn't-straight entourage that surrounded her.  Was Harding complicit in the attack?  She still says, no, but even after seeing the movie, you still don't know whether to believe her or not.

One thing you know for sure is that she was the victim of an abusive mother.  Played by Allison Janney (a sure fire Oscar nominee), this lady brings new dimensions to the term "evil stage mother" and also to the term "foul-mouthed", for that matter.  She is just an awful person, almost hard to watch, but Janney is brilliant in the role.  Harding was also victimized and abused by her husband Jeff Gillooly, played by Sebastien Stan, whose name became a verb, as in, "to Gillooly someone".  Also terrific in this movie is actor Paul Walter Hauser who plays Shawn Eckert, Gillooly's loser friend who "masterminds" the whole Kerrigan attack.

But the real star of the movie is Margot Robbie who plays Tonya Harding.

Robbie as Harding (L) and 

Harding herself (R) in competition

She plays Harding as both a victim and a victimizer.  She pulls off the skating sequences, which were brilliantly filmed, very well.  She was brilliant in this role.  Watch the changes in her eyes and her face in one scene where she applies her own make-up prior to skating.  A simply marvelous performance.

At times this movie was hard to watch, and as far as language is concerned, it is for sure hard to listen to at times, but great performances by Robbie and Janney, and a terrifically written and filmed story (directed by Craig Gillispie) make this well worth seeing.

Four stars from The Grandstander.

By the way, both Harding and Gillooly were interviewed by screenwriter Steven Rogers in preparation for this movie, so one would think that what we are seeing is authentic.  And we know for sure that Robbie and Harding were in touch with each other, at least at various red carpets in relation to the release of the movie, as evidenced below.

Harding and Robbie on the red carpet

Upcoming Movie - "The Papers"

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  carried a feature article in is entertainment magazine this morning that previewed the upcoming "Fall Movies" scheduled for release in the months ahead.  Summaries of sixty movies were included, many of which will fall into the "don't wanna see it" category for me.  

However, there was one movie, scheduled to be released around Christmas time, of which I had never heard, and it really grabbed my attention.  It's called "The Papers" and it is about the legal wranglings over the release of The Pentagon Papers back in the early 1970's.  All you youngsters out there can Google that, but here is the synopsis from IMDB: 

"A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between journalist and government. Inspired by true events."

IMDB also refers tells you that the name of this movie is "The Post", so apparently the actual title is still up in the air.

It stars Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katherine Graham of the Washington Post, and it is directed by Steven Spielberg.  It also includes such interesting actors as Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Matthew Rhys, but is the pedigree of Hanks-Spielberg-Streep that will make this one Must See movie going for The Grandstander.

Mark your movie going calendars for this one, folks.

Movie Review: "Bridge of Spies"

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's film critic Barbara Vancheri began her review of "Bridge of Spies" with this simple sentence:

"No one does decency like Tom Hanks."

That, in a nutshell, is why this movie from director Steven Spielberg works so well and is so good.  Tom Hanks.

Of course, there is more to it than that.  There is a terrific story.  In the height go the Cold War, insurance lawyer Jim Donovan (Hanks) is selected to defend a man accused of being a Soviet spy.  Everyone, including the judge in the case, wants a perfunctory trial, a quick conviction, and, it is hoped, and even quicker execution.  Donovan, of course, thinks that a trial should be just that - a fair and impartial hearing in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.   As a result of his stand, Donovan becomes a pariah of sorts to his colleagues, his government (great line from a CIA agent: "Don't go boy scout on me, Counselor."), the people with whom he takes the morning train, and even his own family.

But everything changes when an American, U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers, is shot down over Soviet airspace, paraded before the world, and tried and convicted as a spy and sentenced to ten years of USSR-style imprisonment.  Just as Donovan predicted, a plan is hatched to exchange Rudolf Abel, the spy that Donovan defended, for Powers, and to whom does the CIA turn but lawyer and negotiator Jim Donovan to make the deal.  The whole process of the Powers-Abel exchange is complicated when Donovan learns that an American student who was in the wrong place at the wrong time has been arrested in East Berlin and charged with espionage by the East German government.  Donovan thinks that this kid should be a part of the deal, too, and I will say no more.

For all you youngsters out there, this is a true story based on actual events.  I am old enough to remember the "U2 incident", as it came to be known, and the Cold War paranoia of those times.  No one can create a mood and paint a picture of an era better than Spielberg, and his images of a cold and snowy East Berlin in 1961, still devastated by the damages of World War II bombings, really bring home the bleakness and fear of that era.  

And as for Hanks, well, he delivers again.  He is a Cold War version of Attticus Finch in this one, doing what he knows to be right while all the while realizing the horrors of the situation that circumstances have thrust upon him.  Plus, he has this damn cold and all he really wants is to get home and sleep in his own bed.  Who can't relate to that?

We are in that time of the year when Hollywood releases what it deems to be its best pictures, the ones that will rack up all the Oscar nominations and awards.  Not sure how many nominations, if any, "Bridge of Spies" will receive, but I can tell you that both Hanks and Spielberg, multiple Oscar winners and nominees in the past, remain at the top of their games in this one.

Four stars from The Grandstander on this one.

A Movie and A Book from 1999

In recent days I have aught up with an old book and an old movie, both of which hit the marketplace, coincidentally, in 1999.

The first was the following movie...

My long aversion to prison movies long outweighed my liking of Tom Hanks, so I had never seen this Academy Award nominated movie (it didn't win).  However, at the urging of my friend Bill Montrose - he loaned me his DVD of the flick - I finally watched this, and, yes, I liked it.  It was long and leisurely (three hours), and well acted.  Like "The Shawshank Redemption" (another prison movie that I finally got around to watching thanks to Mr. Montrose), it was directed by Frank Darabont and based on a story by Stephen King.

I thought Shawshank was a better movie.  Green Mile leaned a bit too heavily on mystical or supernatural elements for my tastes, but that's Stephen King for you, and I've never been a fan of his.

Still, the movie featured Tom Hanks and that can never be a bad thing.

After one has seen an older movie like this one, it is interesting to go on line and read reviews off the movie that came out when the movie did.  "The Green Mile" was far from a unanimous hit with the critics back in 1999.  It has, however, stood the test of time fairly well, thanks in large part, I believe, to the performance of Tom Hanks.

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The book that I read was "Majic Man" by Max Allan Collins. This was another in his series featuring private eye Nate Heller, and if you read this Blog, you know I love these stories.  

This one takes place in 1949, and finds Nate working for real life Secretary of Defense James Forrestal.  Along the way, Nate also gets involved with muck-raking Washington DC columnist Drew Pearson, the supposed UFO landing at Roswell, NM in 1947, has dinner with Harry Truman, gets beat up and kidnapped by the Air Force, almost gets killed, has sex with a beautiful woman (of course, he does!), meets up with several other real life historical figures, and offers an alternative theory to Mr. Forrestal's suicide in 1949, and a theory of what REALLY happened in Roswell.  Like all of the other Heller novels, it's a really fun and terrific read.

Max Allan Collins has written fifteen Nate Heller novels, and, I am sad to say, that only one, "Chicago Confidential" (2002), remains for me to read.  I think I will put of reading that one for awhile, because I know that there will be no more Heller stories left once that one is done.  

The Academy Awards

The Academy Award nominations have been known for several weeks now, and the ceremony will take place at the end of February.

Nine movies have been nominated for Best Picture of the year.  I have seen five of them - American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Gravity, Her, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Of the remaining four, I very much want to see Nebraska and Philomena, bit of which played on Pittsburgh area movie screens for about ten minutes earlier in the month, so unless they actually win Oscars, it looks like I'll have to wait until they are released on DVD.  I will probably not see see 12 Years a Slave.  Don't think I can watch two plus hours of man's inhumanity to man, no matter how well it is presented.  I will also probably pass on Dallas Buyer's Club, simply because Matthew McConaughey rubs me the wrong way.  Yeah, it's an irrational reason on my part, but there it is.  I may end up relenting on that one, though, because McConaughey appears to be a front runner for Best Actor and Jared Leto looks like he will be a lead pipe cinch for Best Supporting Actor.

And speaking of the Best Actor category, this year's biggest injustice is the exclusion of Tom Hanks as a nominee.  If his performance in Captain Phillips was not worth a nomination, then it somewhat taints the nominations of the others in the field.  I admit that I have only seen two of the other five nominated performances, but I still can't believe Hanks got left out.  This makes Tom Hanks the Ben Affleck of 2014.  You will recall how Affleck  was passed over for a Best Director nomination last year.  How Hanks got snubbed this year is a mystery to me.

In the Best Actress category, Cate Blanchett appears to be an early favorite for her role in Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine".  I won't argue that one.  It is well deserved, but I wouldn't be upset if Amy Adams snuck in and won the Oscar, simply because I love Amy Adams.

Getting back to the Best Picture, here is how I would rank the five nominated movies that I have seen:

1. Captain Phillips
2. American Hustle
3. The Wolf of Wall Street
4. Gravity
5. Her

Each of these movies' directors, with one exception, have been nominated for the Best Director Oscar.  The exception is Paul Greengrass of "Captain Phillips", which probably means that "Captain Phillips" will not win.  Too bad.

I will probably have more to say on the Oscars in the weeks ahead, including my much anticipated Oscar Predictions as the ceremony date approaches.