There is a tendency among documentary filmmakers these days – perhaps the cumulative effect of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock – to insert themselves into their work, forcing personal narrative onto a subject that has little or nothing to do with them.

Perhaps the most prominent example is Paul Williams: Still Alive. But there have been countless others over the past few years, including: Finding John Hughes, Winnebago Man, Resurrect Dead, and You’ve Been Trumped. The recurring problem with this approach is that the person directing each film isn’t nearly as interesting as the person or subject he or she has been chronicling.

Herein lies the central issue with Beware of Mr. Baker – a fascinating (albeit mired) documentary about the life and times of legendary drummer Ginger Baker. The film wastes a good 15 minutes or so at the outset dawdling about in unnecessary back story. By the time its first real beat kicks in, Beware has already lost the better part of its audience, having forced viewers to endure a rambling prologue, accompanied by an absolutely frivolous intro courtesy of the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten.

It’s baffling, quite frankly. And it certainly isn’t for want of material.

Beware features extensive on-screen interviews with a who’s who of kick-ass drummers, including (but not limited to): Charlie Watts, Lars Ulrich, Nick Mason, Stewart Copeland, Mickey Hart, Chad Smith … in addition to Baker’s one-time band mates Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, and Steve Winwood. Combine that with the fact you’ve got full access to the modern-day Baker, as well as five decades worth of archival footage, and the question one inevitably keeps coming back to is, “Why on earth not just play the goddamned story as it lays?”

Unfortunately, that’s one of several questions Jay Bulger’s documentary completely fails to address.

(Beware of Mr. Baker opens for a two-week engagement at the Film Forum in New York City this Wedesday, with possible plans for a limited rollout to follow.)  Continue reading →

“To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard. You have to keep them alive in order to tap them. It’s been important to me my whole life not to let go of any of the things that most people would throw in the ashcan. I have to be in touch with my fragility, with the man in me, and the woman in me, the child in me, the grandfather in me … all of these things have to be kept alive. I think I photograph what I’m afraid of … things I couldn’t deal with without the camera – my father’s death, madness, when I was young, women I didn’t understand. It gave me a sort of control over those situations that was legitimate because good work was being done. And by photographing what I was afraid of, or what I was interested in, I explored and learned and laid the ghost. It got out of my system and onto the page.”

Alfred Hitchcock was a brilliant, unpredictable man, cold-brimming with signature style and nuance, much like any number of his films. Hitchcock was also a perfectionist, obsessed with endless layers of tedium. It is this latter element of the Hitchcock persona that has proven so enduring over the years. All of which might explain why the director’s work makes so much more sense when presented in the form of a documentary, or a textbook, or even a traveling exhibit, than it does as a major motion picture.

To that end, Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock feels wanton hollow on the inside. The film is entertaining, to a degree. And Helen Mirren certainly does do Alma Reville justice. But otherwise, there’s very little worth digging one’s claws into here, above and beyond what amounts to a fairly decent caricature by Anthony Hopkins.

Caricature, as we all know, is the bane of any well-meaning actor.

And it stands to reason that the real Alfred Hitchcock, if not such a slow-moving, corpulent fellow these days, might very well see fit to roll spinning in his grave, should he learn that his genius and legacy had been toyed with in this manner.

(Hitchcock arrives in limited release today with a national rollout to follow.)

Continue reading →

(Good Pictures/Bad Camera is a regular feature on IFB.)

On its website, The Innocence Project is described as “a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent further injustice.” In other words, the non-profit utilizes what limited resources it has to reopen major cases in which DNA evidence was either not available or not originally used.

Once each case is reopened, the defense introduces that evidence to convince the court a very grave error has been made. Over the past 20 years, the Innocence Project has exonerated more than 300 inmates who were wrongly convicted in this country, many of them facing life sentences or more.

300+ overturned convictions. With limited resources. All of the cases reopened by a small team of lawyers who were assisted by criminology students from Cardozo School of Law.

What the fuck?

Perhaps the only reason none of the Central Park Five were exonerated by the Innocence Project was that DNA evidence was not only available at the time of their original trial, it was actually used. What’s more? Despite the fact none of that DNA matched any of the teenage boys in question, the defense charged forward anyway.

There were careers on the line, after all; reputations to be made. And the lives of five boys from East Harlem were considered little more than collateral damage – tiny splinters in the bureaucratic ladder that transformed city detectives into sergeants; criminal lawyers into pundits.

As a result, five teenage boys were convicted of a vicious rape – one that gained considerable notoriety given the female victim was a young, attractive finance exec … from the Upper East Side … who’d been attacked in Central Park … by an alleged pack of teens … from the nearby projects … all of whom hailed from minority households.

In the end, these boys served various sentences of 7-13 years in prison … sentences that have since been vacated after the fact, despite no admission of wrongdoing on the part of the NYPD, nor any similar concession of wrongdoing from the City of New York.

While I rarely delve into this type of thing during a film review, it probably bears mentioning that I happened to see The Central Park Five for the first time a little over a month ago, at a small press screening in Midtown Manhattan. There were less than 30 people in the room at the time, four of the Central Park Five among them.

Over the course of two hours, I sat and watched those four boys – all of them now full-grown men – relive that godforsaken event from late April, 1989 – detectives pressuring them, media outlets vilifying them, citizen assholes clamoring for their blood. I watched one of the accused look down into his lap time and again, for abject fear of looking at the screen. I watched another wiping tears from either eye. I sat for several minutes afterward and listened to Yusef Salaam very calmly explain how all five of them simply wanted vindication from the very institutions that had failed them.

And the entire way home, I simply could not seem to shake the fact that it is STILL so unbelievably easy to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in this country, and have your entire world turned upside down for little more than your impoverished station in life. Well, that and the unfortunate – if not all-important – color of your skin.

(The Central Park Five, which was co-directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, opens Friday in limited release around the country.)  Continue reading →

“A philosopher: a person who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if from without; as if from above and below; as if by his kind of events and thunder-claps; who is himself perhaps a storm and pregnant with new lightnings; a fateful man around whom snarling, quarreling, discord and uncanniness is always going on. A philosopher: alas, a creature which often runs away from itself, is often afraid of itself, but which is too inquisitive not to keep coming to itself again.” 

If there is one thing David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook gets absolutely correct it is Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Speaking from the perspective of a native Delconian (albeit one who has since renounced the place on principle), I can absolutely assure you this is the very same small town – and obligatory mindset – I grew up with.

Robert De Niro’s character? That was my father. Jacki Weaver’s character? That was my mother. That grizzled dude in the DeSean Jackson jersey? I used to get blind drunk with that souse. The good-natured friend with a miserable wife? I knew that guy. In fact, I know that guy. I know his wife. I hate his wife. And you’d hate her too.

The point is Silver Linings nails the whole sordid Delco vibe, right down to the ailing notion every poor schlub’s lifelong fortune is somehow tied to a professional football team.

And yet, if there’s one place Silver Linings breaks its stride – and please forgive me for saying this – it would have to be Brad Cooper. I mean, don’t get me wrong … Cooper does an outstanding job of playing the less-than-average Joe from a South Philly suburb, which is – of course – exactly what he was for half his life. But he struggles to make you buy it in every scene during which he is forced to play bipolar … or manic … or desperate … or any one of a thousand other dark-end places People‘s Sexiest Man Alive has never known.

Other than that, Silver Linings is a really heartfelt story that audiences can both relate to and enjoy.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. But it’s not better than Cats.

(The Silver Linings Playbook arrives in limited release this weekend with a national rollout to follow.)

All of this was occurring during the final week of September – a bittersweet time of any year throughout the Wildwoods, characterized by less work, thinning crowds, and the sudden, drastic changing of seasons.

That particular September, the town was abuzz with news surrounding the fallout from a seven-alarm fire that had decimated an entire section of the boardwalk. That fire began during the dwindling hours of Labor Day – an act of arson that had claimed half-a-dozen of businesses, including a 50-year old chapel.

Down at the courthouse, Robert Golden – a 48-year old dishwasher who’d been set on fire in an unrelated incident while sleeping on his porch one afternoon in June – had filed suit against the parents of his assailants, asserting they had, “negligently and carelessly permitted their teenagers to go to Wildwood without arranging for competent supervision.” The accused hailed from Delaware County, Pennsylvania – the same South Philly suburb I hailed from.

Mariner’s Landing remained open throughout the weekends, but Surfside Pier had shuttered its doors. Bill Salerno elected to open The Dime Pitch every Saturday and Sunday, insisting there was decent money to be earned. Bill assembled a crew, calling upon me to supervise while he skipped town to attend a destination wedding.

The idea – suggested shortly after we opened on Saturday – was to purchase a quarter-keg and stash it in a freezer behind Anna’s. Only we let the goddamned thing sashay away from us, and by sundown, the entire crew was dipsy-doodled. Around 3 PM, I had been threatened with a lawsuit by the friend of a woman who’d been pelted in the chest with a polyester pick-up truck. Around 4, a pier maintenance man had set a bat loose in the Dime Pitch, where it flapped its desperate wings until I struck it with a broom.

When it came time to close, I had a co-worker pull his car up to the ramp at 25^th Street. We loaded the quarter-keg into his trunk and transported it to a house on East 18^th Street, where we subsequently planned to bleed it dry.

Meanwhile, I was off to Meghan’s father’s house on East 19^th Street, where she was scheduled to call me at 9:45. Meghan was away with her family, but she had lent me a spare set of keys along with her bicycle, thereby allowing me to look after her dogs. And so I arrived and lay in wait on Meghan’s bed, staring blankly at the shade-frame of a window on the wall.

Minutes passed, and the slow-ticking silence lulled me off into a sleep. When I came to, Meghan’s telephone was ringing. I felt around; I located the receiver. Meghan and I spoke at length for the better part of an hour.

The sudden period of sleep had left me groggy, and so I bypassed East 18^th Street and headed south toward Magnolia. I was homeward-bound now, coasting free along Surf Avenue. Around 21^st Street, I swerved head-on into a street sign. From that point forward, Meghan’s bike kept plowing forward, then veering off toward the curb.

As I neared the intersection at 23^rd Street, it was clear a North Wildwood patrol car had fallen in behind me. I made a right. The squad car followed suit – headlight shadows stretching long on either side. I made a break across Atlantic. An unsuspecting motorist blared his horn. Meghan’s sprocket sparked like phosphorous. My torso scraped the ground with searing burns.

Several minutes later I sat planted on the asphalt, listening to a pair of officers crack wise about how I must have “broken the fall with [my] face.”

Meghan’s bike looked like a scrap heap. The left side of my cheek was packed with gauze. There were red and blue flash lights reflecting off the nearby deck of a motel. Yet the only thing that I could think about – the only thing that mattered – was that my girlfriend and employer had seen fit to trust me. No one else who’d known me ever had.

Day 328

***

(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB)

©Copyright Bob Hill

“If you have a golf-balled sized consciousness, then when you read a book, you’ll have a golf-ball sized understanding; when you look out, a golf-ball sized awareness; and when you wake up in the morning, a golf-ball sized wakefulness. But if you could expand that consciousness, then you read the book, more understanding; you look out, more awareness; and when you wake up, more wakefulness. It’s consciousness. And there’s an ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness inside each of us. It’s right at the source and base of mind, right at the source of thought, and it’s also at the source of all matter. And Maharishi Mahesh Yogi teaches a technique called Transcendental Meditation that’s a simple, easy, effortless technique, yet supremely profound that allows any human being to dive within, experiencing subtler levels of mind and intellect, to transcend and experience this ocean of pure consciousness, which is called by modern physics ‘The Unified Field’. And modern science now says that all of matter – everything that is a thing – emerges from this field. This field has qualities, like bliss, intelligence, creativity, universal love, energy, peace. And it’s not the intellectual understanding of this field, but the experiencing of it, that does everything. You dive in – experiencing this field of pure consciousness – and you enliven it; you unfold it. It grows. And the final outcome of this growth of consciousness is called enlightenment. And enlightenment is the full potential of all of us as human beings.”

• Fact: For a while there, Liam Neeson was attached to play the role of Abraham Lincoln.
• Fact: At the red-carpet premiere of Lincoln, Steven Spielberg told Access Hollywood he would not consider directing Disney’s upcoming Star Wars film.
• Fact: Daniel Day-Lewis became so immersed in the role of Lincoln, he would sometimes sign off on emails and texts using the president’s trademark “– A“.
• Fact: The names of several Senators who voted against the 13th Amendment were changed in Spielberg’s film in deference to their descendants.
• Fact: Daniel Day-Lewis will win the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln.

• Opinion: Tony Kushner’s script feels extremely hunkered down, as if it were specifically written to be performed upon a stage (and may very well end up there).
• Opinion: James Spader’s performance is very good. Tommy Lee Jones’ performance is even better.
• Opinion: After two remarkably miscast roles in The Amazing Spider-Man and Lincoln, it may be time to set Sally Field back in mothballs.
• Opinion: Daniel Day-Lewis’s transformation into Lincoln is so complete that, more often than not, audiences will find themselves hard-pressed to spot the slightest hint of an actor hiding underneath all that pallor.
• Opinion: You can feel the able hand of Steven Spielberg throughout, inserting feel-good elements to keep the entire film from veering into darkness.
• Opinion: Lincoln will be nominated for AT LEAST five academy awards – Score, Costumes and Make-up among them.
• Opinion: We used to look to textbooks as a means of rewriting history. Now we look to movies.
• Opinion: Forget everything you might’ve heard about states’ rights. The major point Spielberg’s film seems intent upon driving home, time and again, is that the Civil War begins and ends with the struggle to abolish slavery.
• Opinion: Politicians have been using God as justification for their own prejudices since the dawning of mankind.
• Opinion: Daniel Day-Lewis will win the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln.

(Lincoln is currently open in limited release, with a national rollout to follow this Friday.)