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"content": "\u003cp>The new film \u003cem>The Liberator\u003c/em> is an attempt to bring the epic story of Simon Bolivar, the George Washington of Latin America, to international audiences. Directed by Venezuelan filmmaker Alberto Arvelo, it’s one of the most expensive Latin American productions to date and features epic battle scenes, rousing speeches and stunning landscapes in the spirit of historical epics like \u003cem>Braveheart\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bolivar liberated six Latin American countries from Spanish rule in the early 19th century and dreamed of forming a unified Latin America. Although he died almost 200 years ago, Arvelo says his legacy lives on in the politics and artistic life of the continent today: “It’s this energy that people felt that’s still alive. … For me and for all the people behind the film, we didn’t understand at the beginning why we don’t have a film about Simon Bolivar. I mean, that’s incredible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/Ws0xmkOYYVk\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Liberator\u003c/em> was independently financed by Spanish and Venezuelan producers and its wide release speaks to an attempt by the filmmakers to make a global, Spanish-language epic. It stars Edgar Ramirez (an emerging star of both independent and Hollywood cinema), features an international cast and has an original score written by renowned Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edgar Ramirez says the film’s international style reflects Latin America itself: “It’s a film from Latin America that has influences from a lot of different ways of making movies, and that’s fundamentally what Latin America is all about: having different influences from all over the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the U.S., the film will be shown in art-house cinemas in cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as in Spanish-speaking communities in California and Texas. According to\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>film distributor Daniel Battsek, \u003cem>The Liberator\u003c/em> addresses the absence of quality Latin American stories in a country with a growing Hispanic community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know that much about South America and I think that film is a great medium for both entertaining but also giving information,” he says. “And I think \u003cem>The Liberator\u003c/em> does a very good job of sort of being entertaining and giving you an interesting piece of history that is inspiring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/04/13/176783269/enshrined-and-oft-invoked-simon-bolivar-lives-on\">Bolivar biographer Marie Arana\u003c/a> says while the film is certainly beautiful, “there’s the matter of history — the small matter of history!” Arana was invited to introduce the film at the American Film Institute and as she watched the finished version, she was disappointed by what she found to be a shallow reading of Bolivar’s life and legacy. For one, she says lead actor Edgar Ramirez looks nothing like Simon Bolivar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was a physically slight man: He was 5’6″, barely 130 pounds; he had a very meager chest, he had spindly legs, he had hands that were small and delicate like a woman’s almost,” she says. “And the figure that we see on the screen, Edgar Ramirez, is big, handsome, chunky, hunky.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arana says it’s especially important to get Bolivar’s story right because of all the ways in which it’s been wronged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the past 200 years since Bolivar died, his legacy has been manipulated in so many ways. I mean, two Venezuelan presidents exhumed his bones and reburied him and tried to cloak themselves in his glory. … You know, Francisco Franco, who was the right-wing dictator of Spain, and Augusto Pinochet, who was the right-wing dictator of Chile, took him as their hero, and so did the revolutionaries, like Fidel Castro and Che Guevera. So this is a life that has been used for many purposes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the ideas the film gets right, Arana says, is the multiracial face of Bolivar’s revolution. On screen, as in real life, Bolivar sees a colonial system steeped in inequality, racial hierarchy and slavery, and fights to dismantle those divisions. For Edgar Ramirez, that legacy of Bolivar’s liberation still matters because “one of the greatest debates in Latin America will always be the social gap between rich people and poor people and that is something we inherited from colonial times. … There were so many privileges within the colonial system given by social position and racial background. That, I think, has affected how our societies developed and Bolivar was very aware of that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And because of Bolivar’s impassioned campaign for abolition, Ramirez says, his story in South America is connected to the North American story. “Abolition had started, the process had started, already in South America three or four decades before Lincoln’s time,” he says. “But those three generations — Washington, Bolivar and Lincoln — they are probably the greatest generations that this entire continent has ever given. And the values of Enlightenment were completely carried out about by these generations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the film’s imperfections, biographer Marie Arana says she hopes that audiences will see it as an entry point to understand the man and the landscape that made modern Latin America. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Latin+American+Icon+Simon+Bolivar+Gets+Biopic+Treatment+In+%27Liberator%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The new film \u003cem>The Liberator\u003c/em> is an attempt to bring the epic story of Simon Bolivar, the George Washington of Latin America, to international audiences. Directed by Venezuelan filmmaker Alberto Arvelo, it’s one of the most expensive Latin American productions to date and features epic battle scenes, rousing speeches and stunning landscapes in the spirit of historical epics like \u003cem>Braveheart\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bolivar liberated six Latin American countries from Spanish rule in the early 19th century and dreamed of forming a unified Latin America. Although he died almost 200 years ago, Arvelo says his legacy lives on in the politics and artistic life of the continent today: “It’s this energy that people felt that’s still alive. … For me and for all the people behind the film, we didn’t understand at the beginning why we don’t have a film about Simon Bolivar. I mean, that’s incredible.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Ws0xmkOYYVk'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Ws0xmkOYYVk'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The Liberator\u003c/em> was independently financed by Spanish and Venezuelan producers and its wide release speaks to an attempt by the filmmakers to make a global, Spanish-language epic. It stars Edgar Ramirez (an emerging star of both independent and Hollywood cinema), features an international cast and has an original score written by renowned Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edgar Ramirez says the film’s international style reflects Latin America itself: “It’s a film from Latin America that has influences from a lot of different ways of making movies, and that’s fundamentally what Latin America is all about: having different influences from all over the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the U.S., the film will be shown in art-house cinemas in cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as in Spanish-speaking communities in California and Texas. According to\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>film distributor Daniel Battsek, \u003cem>The Liberator\u003c/em> addresses the absence of quality Latin American stories in a country with a growing Hispanic community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know that much about South America and I think that film is a great medium for both entertaining but also giving information,” he says. “And I think \u003cem>The Liberator\u003c/em> does a very good job of sort of being entertaining and giving you an interesting piece of history that is inspiring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/04/13/176783269/enshrined-and-oft-invoked-simon-bolivar-lives-on\">Bolivar biographer Marie Arana\u003c/a> says while the film is certainly beautiful, “there’s the matter of history — the small matter of history!” Arana was invited to introduce the film at the American Film Institute and as she watched the finished version, she was disappointed by what she found to be a shallow reading of Bolivar’s life and legacy. For one, she says lead actor Edgar Ramirez looks nothing like Simon Bolivar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was a physically slight man: He was 5’6″, barely 130 pounds; he had a very meager chest, he had spindly legs, he had hands that were small and delicate like a woman’s almost,” she says. “And the figure that we see on the screen, Edgar Ramirez, is big, handsome, chunky, hunky.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arana says it’s especially important to get Bolivar’s story right because of all the ways in which it’s been wronged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the past 200 years since Bolivar died, his legacy has been manipulated in so many ways. I mean, two Venezuelan presidents exhumed his bones and reburied him and tried to cloak themselves in his glory. … You know, Francisco Franco, who was the right-wing dictator of Spain, and Augusto Pinochet, who was the right-wing dictator of Chile, took him as their hero, and so did the revolutionaries, like Fidel Castro and Che Guevera. So this is a life that has been used for many purposes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the ideas the film gets right, Arana says, is the multiracial face of Bolivar’s revolution. On screen, as in real life, Bolivar sees a colonial system steeped in inequality, racial hierarchy and slavery, and fights to dismantle those divisions. For Edgar Ramirez, that legacy of Bolivar’s liberation still matters because “one of the greatest debates in Latin America will always be the social gap between rich people and poor people and that is something we inherited from colonial times. … There were so many privileges within the colonial system given by social position and racial background. That, I think, has affected how our societies developed and Bolivar was very aware of that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And because of Bolivar’s impassioned campaign for abolition, Ramirez says, his story in South America is connected to the North American story. “Abolition had started, the process had started, already in South America three or four decades before Lincoln’s time,” he says. “But those three generations — Washington, Bolivar and Lincoln — they are probably the greatest generations that this entire continent has ever given. And the values of Enlightenment were completely carried out about by these generations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the film’s imperfections, biographer Marie Arana says she hopes that audiences will see it as an entry point to understand the man and the landscape that made modern Latin America. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Latin+American+Icon+Simon+Bolivar+Gets+Biopic+Treatment+In+%27Liberator%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Joan Rivers, an Enduring Comic Who Turned Tragedy Into Success, Dies",
"headTitle": "Joan Rivers, an Enduring Comic Who Turned Tragedy Into Success, Dies | KQED",
"content": "\u003caside class=\"aligncenter\">\n\u003ch4>Listen to Joan Rivers being interviewed on Forum back in 2010\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2010/05/2010-05-06b-forum.mp3\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/aside>\n\u003caside class=\"alignright\">\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/09/04/joan-rivers-dead-at-81-watch-some-of-her-best-televised-moments/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Joan Rivers Dead at 81: Watch Some of Her Best Televised Moments\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/09/04/joan-rivers-dead-at-81-watch-some-of-her-best-televised-moments/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/files/2014/09/joan-rivers.jpg\" alt=\"\">\u003c/a>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> Comedian Joan Rivers died today and KQED Pop has collected several of her TV appearances that exemplify her amazingly fast, acerbic wit.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>No one transformed bad times into sidesplitting comedy like Joan Rivers, who kept audiences laughing through a 50-year career that included bankruptcy, getting banned from \u003cem>The Tonight Show\u003c/em> and seeing a husband commit suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She even built a standup routine around caring for a handicapped boyfriend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I lived for nine years with a man with one leg,” she told audiences in her 2012 standup special, \u003cem>Don’t Start With Me\u003c/em>. “One leg! He lost it in World War II. … He didn’t lose it, he knew \u003cem>exactly \u003c/em>where he left it. … [And] in my mind, that’s littering.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141883\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-1431x1440.jpg\" alt=\"Joan Rivers in 1965. She began appearing on television variety programs like <em>The Ed Sullivan Show</em>.\" width=\"640\" height=\"644\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141883\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-1431x1440.jpg 1431w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-400x402.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-298x300.jpg 298w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joan Rivers in 1965. She began appearing on television variety programs like \u003cem>The Ed Sullivan Show\u003c/em>.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But Rivers’ talent for rapid-fire jokes and edgy humor was stilled Thursday, when the comic died after complications following throat surgery. She was 81.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in 1933, she ignored her family’s objections to become an actress and comic. She performed in the same New York clubs as Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand, writing lines for more established acts like Phyllis Diller and the puppet Topo Gigio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked whether she felt bad writing for a puppet while starting out, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2012/06/11/154753767/joan-rivers-hates-you-and-everyone-else\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rivers told WHYY’s \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em> in 2012\u003c/a>, “I’ll write for Hitler [for] $500. … When you’re starving and got a car payment due? You go through any door that opens and you don’t know which is gonna be the one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the mid-1960s, she was appearing in front of the camera for variety programs like \u003cem>The Ed Sullivan Show\u003c/em>, where she talked frankly about women at a time when you couldn’t even say the word “pregnant” on TV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A girl, you’re 30 years old, you’re not married, you’re an old maid,” she said in one 1967 \u003cem>Ed Sullivan Show\u003c/em> routine. “A man, he’s 90 years old, he’s not married, he’s a catch. It’s a whole different thing!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141886\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13-1440x956.jpg\" alt=\"Rivers became permanent guest host for <em>The Tonight Show</em> in 1983, a gig that ended when she left to host her own late-night show on Fox. Here she interviews Miss America Suzette Charles in 1984.\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141886\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13-1440x956.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13-400x265.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivers became permanent guest host for \u003cem>The Tonight Show\u003c/em> in 1983, a gig that ended when she left to host her own late-night show on Fox. Here she interviews Miss America Suzette Charles in 1984.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But even though Sullivan and his wife were godparents to her daughter, Melissa, it was late-night host Johnny Carson who would become something of a mentor for Rivers, featuring her regularly on his \u003cem>Tonight Show\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one infamous exchange, Carson asked Rivers if men really liked smart women more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rivers shot back: “No man has ever put his hands up a woman’s dress looking for a library card.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carson made her the show’s permanent guest host in 1983. But their friendship would end a few years later after Rivers called to let him know she would host a rival late-night show on the Fox network.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He hung up on me,” she told the Archive of American Television in an interview. “[I called] and said, ‘Johnny, it’s Joan, and I think I’m leaving the show. I have my own show at Fox,’ and then click. So then I called him back and I said, ‘Johnny!’ And he clicked down again. He would not hear me out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carson would never speak to her again; he died in 2005.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141884\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4-1440x945.jpg\" alt=\"Rivers and Fox Chairman Barry Diller arrive for a news conference in Los Angeles to announce her late-night talk show on Fox.\" width=\"640\" height=\"420\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141884\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4-1440x945.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4-400x262.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4-300x196.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivers and Fox Chairman Barry Diller arrive for a news conference in Los Angeles to announce her late-night talk show on Fox.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rivers’\u003cem> Late Show\u003c/em> struggled from its start in 1986. Rivers and her executive producer husband, Edgar Rosenberg, clashed with Fox while she struggled to compete with Carson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year later, Fox canceled the program, leaving Rivers banned from the \u003cem>Tonight Show\u003c/em> and looking like a showbiz pariah. Rosenberg killed himself soon after; Rivers said her daughter Melissa was the one who authorities told first, leaving the then-teenager to tell her mother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she used humor to break the ice with audiences even then, remembering during the standup special \u003cem>An Audience With Joan Rivers\u003c/em> the first joke she told at her first performance after his death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I told the audience, ‘My husband killed himself and it was my fault,’ ” she said. ” ‘We were making love and I took the bag off my head.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rivers told \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em> the toughest thing about old age was seeing loved ones die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The loss is horrific,” she said. “When I go upstairs at night — it sounds so stupid — I always turn to my living room and I say, ‘Good night, Orin’ — he was a man I lived with for nine years — and ‘Good night, Edgar.’ … It’s terribly sad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Rivers kept going through the ’90s, hosting a daytime talk show, developing a line of jewelry for the home shopping channel QVC and teaming with her daughter Melissa to offer biting commentary from the red carpet for Oscar pre-shows on the E! and TV Guide channels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141885\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d-1440x1050.jpg\" alt=\"At the 16th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards on Friday, Jan. 14, 2011, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)\" width=\"640\" height=\"466\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141885\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d-1440x1050.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d-400x291.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d-300x218.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At the 16th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards on Friday, Jan. 14, 2011, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A recent documentary on her life, \u003cem>A Piece of Work\u003c/em>, highlighted her drive to stay relevant and youthful — working at a pace that would tire comics half her age. Its opening featured close-up shots of her face without makeup, revealing the nips and tucks of the countless plastic surgeries she joked about onstage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film also showed how tough she could be, taking on a heckler during a performance who objected to a joke that included a reference to deaf icon Helen Keller.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Comedy is to make everybody laugh at everything and deal with things, you idiot,” she shouted from the stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the controversies kept coming. Rivers was criticized for calling Michelle Obama transgender and saying Palestinian civilians deserved to die in the Gaza conflict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the fuss didn’t stop her from working. In her 80s, Rivers still juggled concert performances, a TV show on fashion, an Internet show and promotion for her 12th book, \u003cem>Diary of a Mad Diva\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141882\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5-1440x1166.jpg\" alt=\"Rivers and mascot Ben arrive at the 10th annual Race to Deliver AIDS Benefit in 2003 in New York City.\" width=\"640\" height=\"518\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141882\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5-1440x1166.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5-400x324.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5-300x243.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivers and mascot Ben arrive at the 10th annual Race to Deliver AIDS Benefit in 2003 in New York City.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>True to form, she had been talking up the book in New York the day before she stopped breathing during a minor procedure in a clinic Aug. 28. She was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors placed her in a medically induced coma, and she breathed with assistance from machines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement announcing her mother’s death, Melissa Rivers said she died peacefully “surrounded by family and close friends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My mother’s greatest joy in life was to make people laugh,” the statement continued. “Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joan Rivers’ attitude about show business was summed up in an appearance on comic Louis C.K.’s FX show \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em>, where she gave him a pep talk after a tough show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Think it’s been easy?” she said. “I have gone up, I’ve gone down; I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve been broke. But you do it. And you do it because … because we love it more than anything else.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Joan+Rivers%2C+An+Enduring+Comic+Who+Turned+Tragedy+Into+Showbiz+Success%2C+Dies&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "NPR's Eric Deggans says the comedian was a show business survivor whose tireless work ethic kept her relevant long after other comics would have faded away. She died Thursday at 81.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"aligncenter\">\n\u003ch4>Listen to Joan Rivers being interviewed on Forum back in 2010\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2010/05/2010-05-06b-forum.mp3\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/aside>\n\u003caside class=\"alignright\">\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/09/04/joan-rivers-dead-at-81-watch-some-of-her-best-televised-moments/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Joan Rivers Dead at 81: Watch Some of Her Best Televised Moments\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/09/04/joan-rivers-dead-at-81-watch-some-of-her-best-televised-moments/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/files/2014/09/joan-rivers.jpg\" alt=\"\">\u003c/a>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> Comedian Joan Rivers died today and KQED Pop has collected several of her TV appearances that exemplify her amazingly fast, acerbic wit.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>No one transformed bad times into sidesplitting comedy like Joan Rivers, who kept audiences laughing through a 50-year career that included bankruptcy, getting banned from \u003cem>The Tonight Show\u003c/em> and seeing a husband commit suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She even built a standup routine around caring for a handicapped boyfriend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I lived for nine years with a man with one leg,” she told audiences in her 2012 standup special, \u003cem>Don’t Start With Me\u003c/em>. “One leg! He lost it in World War II. … He didn’t lose it, he knew \u003cem>exactly \u003c/em>where he left it. … [And] in my mind, that’s littering.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141883\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-1431x1440.jpg\" alt=\"Joan Rivers in 1965. She began appearing on television variety programs like <em>The Ed Sullivan Show</em>.\" width=\"640\" height=\"644\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141883\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-1431x1440.jpg 1431w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-400x402.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-298x300.jpg 298w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap650412040-1731667b61b053d4a9fbd193114eab01dcdbdc3c-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joan Rivers in 1965. She began appearing on television variety programs like \u003cem>The Ed Sullivan Show\u003c/em>.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But Rivers’ talent for rapid-fire jokes and edgy humor was stilled Thursday, when the comic died after complications following throat surgery. She was 81.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in 1933, she ignored her family’s objections to become an actress and comic. She performed in the same New York clubs as Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand, writing lines for more established acts like Phyllis Diller and the puppet Topo Gigio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked whether she felt bad writing for a puppet while starting out, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2012/06/11/154753767/joan-rivers-hates-you-and-everyone-else\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rivers told WHYY’s \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em> in 2012\u003c/a>, “I’ll write for Hitler [for] $500. … When you’re starving and got a car payment due? You go through any door that opens and you don’t know which is gonna be the one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the mid-1960s, she was appearing in front of the camera for variety programs like \u003cem>The Ed Sullivan Show\u003c/em>, where she talked frankly about women at a time when you couldn’t even say the word “pregnant” on TV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A girl, you’re 30 years old, you’re not married, you’re an old maid,” she said in one 1967 \u003cem>Ed Sullivan Show\u003c/em> routine. “A man, he’s 90 years old, he’s not married, he’s a catch. It’s a whole different thing!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141886\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13-1440x956.jpg\" alt=\"Rivers became permanent guest host for <em>The Tonight Show</em> in 1983, a gig that ended when she left to host her own late-night show on Fox. Here she interviews Miss America Suzette Charles in 1984.\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141886\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13-1440x956.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13-400x265.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap139147978964-7704ce2dcd6de2a9a665b224fe7b690f44d30e13-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivers became permanent guest host for \u003cem>The Tonight Show\u003c/em> in 1983, a gig that ended when she left to host her own late-night show on Fox. Here she interviews Miss America Suzette Charles in 1984.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But even though Sullivan and his wife were godparents to her daughter, Melissa, it was late-night host Johnny Carson who would become something of a mentor for Rivers, featuring her regularly on his \u003cem>Tonight Show\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one infamous exchange, Carson asked Rivers if men really liked smart women more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rivers shot back: “No man has ever put his hands up a woman’s dress looking for a library card.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carson made her the show’s permanent guest host in 1983. But their friendship would end a few years later after Rivers called to let him know she would host a rival late-night show on the Fox network.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He hung up on me,” she told the Archive of American Television in an interview. “[I called] and said, ‘Johnny, it’s Joan, and I think I’m leaving the show. I have my own show at Fox,’ and then click. So then I called him back and I said, ‘Johnny!’ And he clicked down again. He would not hear me out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carson would never speak to her again; he died in 2005.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141884\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4-1440x945.jpg\" alt=\"Rivers and Fox Chairman Barry Diller arrive for a news conference in Los Angeles to announce her late-night talk show on Fox.\" width=\"640\" height=\"420\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141884\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4-1440x945.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4-400x262.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap8605061335-6f43fd308168b3f4b8ca18bce361a4aaf19634b4-300x196.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivers and Fox Chairman Barry Diller arrive for a news conference in Los Angeles to announce her late-night talk show on Fox.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rivers’\u003cem> Late Show\u003c/em> struggled from its start in 1986. Rivers and her executive producer husband, Edgar Rosenberg, clashed with Fox while she struggled to compete with Carson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year later, Fox canceled the program, leaving Rivers banned from the \u003cem>Tonight Show\u003c/em> and looking like a showbiz pariah. Rosenberg killed himself soon after; Rivers said her daughter Melissa was the one who authorities told first, leaving the then-teenager to tell her mother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she used humor to break the ice with audiences even then, remembering during the standup special \u003cem>An Audience With Joan Rivers\u003c/em> the first joke she told at her first performance after his death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I told the audience, ‘My husband killed himself and it was my fault,’ ” she said. ” ‘We were making love and I took the bag off my head.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rivers told \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em> the toughest thing about old age was seeing loved ones die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The loss is horrific,” she said. “When I go upstairs at night — it sounds so stupid — I always turn to my living room and I say, ‘Good night, Orin’ — he was a man I lived with for nine years — and ‘Good night, Edgar.’ … It’s terribly sad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Rivers kept going through the ’90s, hosting a daytime talk show, developing a line of jewelry for the home shopping channel QVC and teaming with her daughter Melissa to offer biting commentary from the red carpet for Oscar pre-shows on the E! and TV Guide channels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141885\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d-1440x1050.jpg\" alt=\"At the 16th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards on Friday, Jan. 14, 2011, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)\" width=\"640\" height=\"466\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141885\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d-1440x1050.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d-400x291.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/ap110114040006-a3b816877147533e7a1c5d279d995596080f710d-300x218.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At the 16th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards on Friday, Jan. 14, 2011, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A recent documentary on her life, \u003cem>A Piece of Work\u003c/em>, highlighted her drive to stay relevant and youthful — working at a pace that would tire comics half her age. Its opening featured close-up shots of her face without makeup, revealing the nips and tucks of the countless plastic surgeries she joked about onstage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film also showed how tough she could be, taking on a heckler during a performance who objected to a joke that included a reference to deaf icon Helen Keller.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Comedy is to make everybody laugh at everything and deal with things, you idiot,” she shouted from the stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the controversies kept coming. Rivers was criticized for calling Michelle Obama transgender and saying Palestinian civilians deserved to die in the Gaza conflict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the fuss didn’t stop her from working. In her 80s, Rivers still juggled concert performances, a TV show on fashion, an Internet show and promotion for her 12th book, \u003cem>Diary of a Mad Diva\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141882\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5-1440x1166.jpg\" alt=\"Rivers and mascot Ben arrive at the 10th annual Race to Deliver AIDS Benefit in 2003 in New York City.\" width=\"640\" height=\"518\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10141882\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5-1440x1166.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5-400x324.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/2756090-06b42d947a49aaefffbe61fc315334b8a09d80e5-300x243.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rivers and mascot Ben arrive at the 10th annual Race to Deliver AIDS Benefit in 2003 in New York City.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>True to form, she had been talking up the book in New York the day before she stopped breathing during a minor procedure in a clinic Aug. 28. She was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors placed her in a medically induced coma, and she breathed with assistance from machines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement announcing her mother’s death, Melissa Rivers said she died peacefully “surrounded by family and close friends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My mother’s greatest joy in life was to make people laugh,” the statement continued. “Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joan Rivers’ attitude about show business was summed up in an appearance on comic Louis C.K.’s FX show \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em>, where she gave him a pep talk after a tough show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Think it’s been easy?” she said. “I have gone up, I’ve gone down; I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve been broke. But you do it. And you do it because … because we love it more than anything else.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Joan+Rivers%2C+An+Enduring+Comic+Who+Turned+Tragedy+Into+Showbiz+Success%2C+Dies&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>When Stephen Spielberg was looking for someone who could make dinosaurs seem plausible in \u003cem>Jurassic Park\u003c/em>, he asked fellow filmmaker Richard Attenborough to do something he hadn’t done in almost 14 years: act. Plenty of performers could look at green screens and convey a sense of wonder. What Attenborough could do while playing the owner of Jurassic Park, figured Spielberg, was flesh out the bigger picture — the why. And when he did, it sounded almost as if he was stating the filmmaking credo he’d lived by all his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I wanted to show them something that wasn’t an illusion,” Attenborough’s park owner tells Laura Dern, as his dream comes crashing down around them. “Something that was real … something they could see and touch.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141119\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/08/ap648973655288-9b6724ca85a0056cbfdc6adc1d7fbf0c6765957a-e1409007174286.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/08/ap648973655288-9b6724ca85a0056cbfdc6adc1d7fbf0c6765957a-e1409007174286.jpg\" alt=\"Director Richard Attenborough won two Academy Awards for his movie, <em>Gandhi</em>.\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10141119\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Director Richard Attenborough won two Academy Awards for his movie, \u003cem>Gandhi\u003c/em>.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That is more or less what Attenborough had been doing for five decades at that point, ever since 1947, when he was so persuasive in a British film noir called \u003cem>Brighton Rock\u003c/em>, that he risked being typecast as a thug when he played a baby-faced but cold-blooded teenager who killed his friends as casually as he killed his enemies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If raising gooseflesh was what Attenborough did at the start of his acting career, raising consciousness was his aim once he stepped behind the camera. He personalized cautionary tales in \u003cem>Oh! What A Lovely War\u003c/em>, and his epic about military miscalculation, \u003cem>A Bridge Too Far\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he spent 20 years and all of his personal fortune, even mortgaging his house, in a struggle to bring a story about non-violence to the screen. It was a story Hollywood was convinced would never sell, about how the British empire was brought virtually to its knees, by a frail wisp of a man named Gandhi who employed passive resistance and hunger strikes to demand “that the fighting will stop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That plea was echoed five years later in \u003cem>Cry Freedom\u003c/em>, when Attenborough engaged audiences in the struggle against apartheid by concentrating his story on the words and personality of South African activist Steve Biko.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Attenborough tackled less weighty subjects, the fire sometimes went out of his film making. His movies \u003cem>Chaplin\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>A Chorus Line\u003c/em> didn’t connect with audiences. \u003cem>Shadowlands\u003c/em> did, although it was arguably a tougher sell — a story of cancer and Christian theology that briefly turned Oxford academic C.S. Lewis into a matinee idol — mostly because Lewis had big ideas\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And big ideas were what fired the imagination of Richard Attenborough — ideas that he could turn into something an audience could see and touch. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Director+Richard+Attenborough+Brought+Intimacy+to+Big+Ideas&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Filmmaker Richard Attenborough took on big subjects in his films — South African apartheid in \u003cem>Cry Freedom\u003c/em>, or Indian independence in \u003cem>Gandhi\u003c/em>. NPR film critic Bob Mondello has this remembrance.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When Stephen Spielberg was looking for someone who could make dinosaurs seem plausible in \u003cem>Jurassic Park\u003c/em>, he asked fellow filmmaker Richard Attenborough to do something he hadn’t done in almost 14 years: act. Plenty of performers could look at green screens and convey a sense of wonder. What Attenborough could do while playing the owner of Jurassic Park, figured Spielberg, was flesh out the bigger picture — the why. And when he did, it sounded almost as if he was stating the filmmaking credo he’d lived by all his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I wanted to show them something that wasn’t an illusion,” Attenborough’s park owner tells Laura Dern, as his dream comes crashing down around them. “Something that was real … something they could see and touch.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10141119\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/08/ap648973655288-9b6724ca85a0056cbfdc6adc1d7fbf0c6765957a-e1409007174286.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/08/ap648973655288-9b6724ca85a0056cbfdc6adc1d7fbf0c6765957a-e1409007174286.jpg\" alt=\"Director Richard Attenborough won two Academy Awards for his movie, <em>Gandhi</em>.\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10141119\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Director Richard Attenborough won two Academy Awards for his movie, \u003cem>Gandhi\u003c/em>.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That is more or less what Attenborough had been doing for five decades at that point, ever since 1947, when he was so persuasive in a British film noir called \u003cem>Brighton Rock\u003c/em>, that he risked being typecast as a thug when he played a baby-faced but cold-blooded teenager who killed his friends as casually as he killed his enemies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If raising gooseflesh was what Attenborough did at the start of his acting career, raising consciousness was his aim once he stepped behind the camera. He personalized cautionary tales in \u003cem>Oh! What A Lovely War\u003c/em>, and his epic about military miscalculation, \u003cem>A Bridge Too Far\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he spent 20 years and all of his personal fortune, even mortgaging his house, in a struggle to bring a story about non-violence to the screen. It was a story Hollywood was convinced would never sell, about how the British empire was brought virtually to its knees, by a frail wisp of a man named Gandhi who employed passive resistance and hunger strikes to demand “that the fighting will stop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That plea was echoed five years later in \u003cem>Cry Freedom\u003c/em>, when Attenborough engaged audiences in the struggle against apartheid by concentrating his story on the words and personality of South African activist Steve Biko.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Attenborough tackled less weighty subjects, the fire sometimes went out of his film making. His movies \u003cem>Chaplin\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>A Chorus Line\u003c/em> didn’t connect with audiences. \u003cem>Shadowlands\u003c/em> did, although it was arguably a tougher sell — a story of cancer and Christian theology that briefly turned Oxford academic C.S. Lewis into a matinee idol — mostly because Lewis had big ideas\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And big ideas were what fired the imagination of Richard Attenborough — ideas that he could turn into something an audience could see and touch. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Director+Richard+Attenborough+Brought+Intimacy+to+Big+Ideas&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>It might seem hard to describe \u003cem>The Giver\u003c/em> without revealing some of those plot points that touchy suspense fans call “spoilers.” But this brisk, deftly art-directed parable is basically unspoilable. Even viewers who know nothing of its source, Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel, will be able to anticipate every development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because Lowry’s vision of a serene but secretly corrupt future society offers little that wasn’t imagined decades earlier in \u003cem>1984\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Brave New World\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Fahrenheit 451\u003c/em>. Lowry just cooked such books down for a pre-teen audience that hasn’t read them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of trying, producer and star Jeff Bridges finally got \u003cem>The Giver\u003c/em> made because of the success of \u003cem>The Hunger Games\u003c/em> and similar tales of noble teens in a world run by manipulative adults. So the first task was aging the novel’s protagonist (Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites) from 12 to 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/oYZxZups06w\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jonas lives in a community, called “the community,” that’s any high schooler’s vision of Hell: It’s run by guidance counselors. Where in \u003cem>Divergent\u003c/em> the kids were separated into different castes upon graduation, in \u003cem>The Giver\u003c/em> they’re given specific assignments. None is more specific than Jonas’. He’s the new receiver, assigned to learn the real history of humanity from the bearded, avuncular title character (Bridges, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the many questions the movie barely attempts to answer is, why do the positions of giver and receiver exist? The elders, led by an often holographic Meryl Streep, don’t want anyone else to know about the bad old days of war, famine and hatred. So why not assign Jonas to flip burgers for the rest of his life, and send the Giver on a long walk off a short pier?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because, of course, there is violence just beneath the community’s veneer of calm. That’s one of the alarming if unsurprising things Jonas learns once he starts receiving — and stops taking his daily dose of mood controller. As in the substantially more macho \u003cem>Equilibrium\u003c/em>, ingestion of a Valium-like drug is required. This relaxant suppresses emotion and individuality, and even its users’ ability to distinguish color. So the first part of \u003cem>The Giver\u003c/em> is in black and white, like \u003cem>Pleasantville\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the movie hits ominous notes, they’ve all been heard many times before: There are no books or music in the futuristic planned community, human reproduction is controlled by the state, kissing is unknown and families are not genetically related. Jonas has merely been assigned to his father (Alexander Skarsgard) and mother (a drawn-faced Katie Holmes).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make it less of a kiddie story, director Philip Noyce and scripters Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide have added romance (Jonas has the unauthorized hots for a classmate played by Odeya Rush) and boosted the action. There are chase scenes — including one on a bike path that’s lighted even though people aren’t allowed to go out at night — and confrontations. Also modestly exciting are the fragmentary flashbacks to a former receiver, played by Taylor Swift. (She and the community broke up, and they are never ever getting back together.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Jonas must make a choice, and leave his sterile home for the forbidden outback. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that he finds a refuge there. Or that this new abode offers the sort of picture-postcard coziness that could have been simulated by his former community’s devious elders. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27The+Giver%27+Strikes+Old+And+Ominous+Notes+About+The+Dark+Side+Of+Serenity&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It might seem hard to describe \u003cem>The Giver\u003c/em> without revealing some of those plot points that touchy suspense fans call “spoilers.” But this brisk, deftly art-directed parable is basically unspoilable. Even viewers who know nothing of its source, Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel, will be able to anticipate every development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because Lowry’s vision of a serene but secretly corrupt future society offers little that wasn’t imagined decades earlier in \u003cem>1984\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Brave New World\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Fahrenheit 451\u003c/em>. Lowry just cooked such books down for a pre-teen audience that hasn’t read them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of trying, producer and star Jeff Bridges finally got \u003cem>The Giver\u003c/em> made because of the success of \u003cem>The Hunger Games\u003c/em> and similar tales of noble teens in a world run by manipulative adults. So the first task was aging the novel’s protagonist (Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites) from 12 to 16.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/oYZxZups06w'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/oYZxZups06w'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Jonas lives in a community, called “the community,” that’s any high schooler’s vision of Hell: It’s run by guidance counselors. Where in \u003cem>Divergent\u003c/em> the kids were separated into different castes upon graduation, in \u003cem>The Giver\u003c/em> they’re given specific assignments. None is more specific than Jonas’. He’s the new receiver, assigned to learn the real history of humanity from the bearded, avuncular title character (Bridges, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the many questions the movie barely attempts to answer is, why do the positions of giver and receiver exist? The elders, led by an often holographic Meryl Streep, don’t want anyone else to know about the bad old days of war, famine and hatred. So why not assign Jonas to flip burgers for the rest of his life, and send the Giver on a long walk off a short pier?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because, of course, there is violence just beneath the community’s veneer of calm. That’s one of the alarming if unsurprising things Jonas learns once he starts receiving — and stops taking his daily dose of mood controller. As in the substantially more macho \u003cem>Equilibrium\u003c/em>, ingestion of a Valium-like drug is required. This relaxant suppresses emotion and individuality, and even its users’ ability to distinguish color. So the first part of \u003cem>The Giver\u003c/em> is in black and white, like \u003cem>Pleasantville\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the movie hits ominous notes, they’ve all been heard many times before: There are no books or music in the futuristic planned community, human reproduction is controlled by the state, kissing is unknown and families are not genetically related. Jonas has merely been assigned to his father (Alexander Skarsgard) and mother (a drawn-faced Katie Holmes).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make it less of a kiddie story, director Philip Noyce and scripters Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide have added romance (Jonas has the unauthorized hots for a classmate played by Odeya Rush) and boosted the action. There are chase scenes — including one on a bike path that’s lighted even though people aren’t allowed to go out at night — and confrontations. Also modestly exciting are the fragmentary flashbacks to a former receiver, played by Taylor Swift. (She and the community broke up, and they are never ever getting back together.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Jonas must make a choice, and leave his sterile home for the forbidden outback. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that he finds a refuge there. Or that this new abode offers the sort of picture-postcard coziness that could have been simulated by his former community’s devious elders. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27The+Giver%27+Strikes+Old+And+Ominous+Notes+About+The+Dark+Side+Of+Serenity&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Agatha Christie's Detective Poirot Solves his Last TV Mystery",
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"content": "\u003cp>Agatha Christie published her first novel, \u003cem>The Mysterious Affair at Styles, \u003c/em>in 1920. It featured fussy Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who proved the most popular of all her mystery-solving characters. Hercule made his final appearance in 1975, in the novel \u003cem>Curtain — \u003c/em>and this month, nearly a century after he first appeared in print, the mystery series completes its lengthy run as a TV series, still starring David Suchet in the title role. But as the final episodes of television’s \u003cem>Poirot \u003c/em>provide closure, they are, for the moment, somewhat of a mystery themselves. In this case, though, it’s not a whodunit. It’s a where-are-they?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because for the 13th and final season of Agatha Christie’s\u003cem> Poirot, \u003c/em>the show’s producers and distributors have staged a sort of new-media bait and switch. Suchet began playing Poirot, with his waxed mustache and elegant walking stick, on the PBS \u003cem>Mystery! \u003c/em>series way back in 1989. Suchet has been playing the detective ever since — referring to himself in the third person, always referring to his brain power as his “little grey cells,” and invariably holding court at the end of each episode to both solve and explain the mystery at hand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year’s final season of \u003cem>Poirot \u003c/em>presents the last five of the 70 episodes produced for TV, a video canon covering virtually all of Christie’s major Hercule Poirot novels and short stories. This season’s last hurrah began, as usual, on PBS. But after two episodes were shown, the series vanished earlier this month. The final three appear, beginning this week, not on broadcast TV, or even on cable — but on a streaming site called Acorn TV. Later this fall, the last three stories in the series will indeed show up on broadcast television, distributed to local public TV stations. But if you’re impatient — especially if you’re a loyal fan who has watched and enjoyed this series for a quarter century, enjoying it as I do as the TV equivalent of comfort food — the only way to get satisfaction, for now, is to seek out \u003ca href=\"http://www.acorn.tv/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">www.Acorn.TV\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10140552\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/08/agatha-christie-s-poirot-series-13_acorn.tv__2703_custom-0f4c5d23142b1afbca0ff934966f9fc35f369461-e1407973619446.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/08/agatha-christie-s-poirot-series-13_acorn.tv__2703_custom-0f4c5d23142b1afbca0ff934966f9fc35f369461-e1407973619446.jpg\" alt=\"David Suchet has been playing Poirot since 1989. The actor has grown into the role, including perfecting the twinkle in his eye\" width=\"600\" height=\"901\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10140552\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Suchet has been playing Poirot since 1989. The actor has grown into the role, including perfecting the twinkle in his eye\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What you’ll get, once you get there, are these three stories, unspooled weekly. \u003cem>Elephants Can Remember, \u003c/em>available now, features Zoe Wanamaker, making her sixth and final appearance as crime novelist Ariadne Oliver, Agatha Christie’s thinly veiled version of herself. \u003cem>The Labors of Hercules \u003c/em>has Hercule fighting depression after failing to catch a killer. And the final episode, called \u003cem>Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, \u003c/em>is precisely that. It features the return of Hugh Fraser as Captain Arthur Hastings, who basically served as Dr. Watson to Poirot’s Sherlock Holmes for the TV show’s first eight seasons. They reunite at the same estate, at Styles, where they solved their first case together — but this time both men are decades older, and Poirot is in a wheelchair, in ill health. But he still has enough fire to complain, when being steered on a stroll around the grounds, about the lodgings, the food, and even the way his old friend pushes Poirot’s wheelchair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Poirot’s Last Case \u003c/em>ends like any other, with the detective patiently and proudly explaining the facts and exposing the murderer. The key difference, in this episode, is that he’s doing it from beyond the grave. And if you think I should have prefaced that with some sort of 40-year-old spoiler alert, we have very different ideas about how long a mystery should be kept a secret.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But since these are, absolutely, the last TV episodes featuring Suchet as Poirot, they do provide a satisfying conclusion to a very long-running viewing experience. The actor has grown into the role, sporting wrinkles to match the wisdom, and perfecting the twinkle in his eye whenever, as the detective himself would put it, Poirot has finally solved the case as only Poirot can. And think of it: The actors of the current movie \u003cem>Boyhood \u003c/em>have gotten lots of praise for filming and playing their roles over a 12-year period. David Suchet, as Hercule Poirot, has done the same thing for twice as long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s done it so long, in fact, that he’s ending his run on a medium that didn’t even exist when he started. Wrap your little gray cells around \u003cem>that. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>David Bianculli is founder and editor of the website \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://www.tvworthwatching.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TV Worth Watching\u003c/a>\u003cem> and teaches TV and film history at Rowan University in New Jersey.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Case+Closed%3A+Agatha+Christie%27s+Detective+Poirot+Solves+His+Last+TV+Mystery&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Agatha Christie published her first novel, \u003cem>The Mysterious Affair at Styles, \u003c/em>in 1920. It featured fussy Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who proved the most popular of all her mystery-solving characters. Hercule made his final appearance in 1975, in the novel \u003cem>Curtain — \u003c/em>and this month, nearly a century after he first appeared in print, the mystery series completes its lengthy run as a TV series, still starring David Suchet in the title role. But as the final episodes of television’s \u003cem>Poirot \u003c/em>provide closure, they are, for the moment, somewhat of a mystery themselves. In this case, though, it’s not a whodunit. It’s a where-are-they?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because for the 13th and final season of Agatha Christie’s\u003cem> Poirot, \u003c/em>the show’s producers and distributors have staged a sort of new-media bait and switch. Suchet began playing Poirot, with his waxed mustache and elegant walking stick, on the PBS \u003cem>Mystery! \u003c/em>series way back in 1989. Suchet has been playing the detective ever since — referring to himself in the third person, always referring to his brain power as his “little grey cells,” and invariably holding court at the end of each episode to both solve and explain the mystery at hand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year’s final season of \u003cem>Poirot \u003c/em>presents the last five of the 70 episodes produced for TV, a video canon covering virtually all of Christie’s major Hercule Poirot novels and short stories. This season’s last hurrah began, as usual, on PBS. But after two episodes were shown, the series vanished earlier this month. The final three appear, beginning this week, not on broadcast TV, or even on cable — but on a streaming site called Acorn TV. Later this fall, the last three stories in the series will indeed show up on broadcast television, distributed to local public TV stations. But if you’re impatient — especially if you’re a loyal fan who has watched and enjoyed this series for a quarter century, enjoying it as I do as the TV equivalent of comfort food — the only way to get satisfaction, for now, is to seek out \u003ca href=\"http://www.acorn.tv/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">www.Acorn.TV\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10140552\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/08/agatha-christie-s-poirot-series-13_acorn.tv__2703_custom-0f4c5d23142b1afbca0ff934966f9fc35f369461-e1407973619446.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/08/agatha-christie-s-poirot-series-13_acorn.tv__2703_custom-0f4c5d23142b1afbca0ff934966f9fc35f369461-e1407973619446.jpg\" alt=\"David Suchet has been playing Poirot since 1989. The actor has grown into the role, including perfecting the twinkle in his eye\" width=\"600\" height=\"901\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10140552\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Suchet has been playing Poirot since 1989. The actor has grown into the role, including perfecting the twinkle in his eye\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What you’ll get, once you get there, are these three stories, unspooled weekly. \u003cem>Elephants Can Remember, \u003c/em>available now, features Zoe Wanamaker, making her sixth and final appearance as crime novelist Ariadne Oliver, Agatha Christie’s thinly veiled version of herself. \u003cem>The Labors of Hercules \u003c/em>has Hercule fighting depression after failing to catch a killer. And the final episode, called \u003cem>Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, \u003c/em>is precisely that. It features the return of Hugh Fraser as Captain Arthur Hastings, who basically served as Dr. Watson to Poirot’s Sherlock Holmes for the TV show’s first eight seasons. They reunite at the same estate, at Styles, where they solved their first case together — but this time both men are decades older, and Poirot is in a wheelchair, in ill health. But he still has enough fire to complain, when being steered on a stroll around the grounds, about the lodgings, the food, and even the way his old friend pushes Poirot’s wheelchair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Poirot’s Last Case \u003c/em>ends like any other, with the detective patiently and proudly explaining the facts and exposing the murderer. The key difference, in this episode, is that he’s doing it from beyond the grave. And if you think I should have prefaced that with some sort of 40-year-old spoiler alert, we have very different ideas about how long a mystery should be kept a secret.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But since these are, absolutely, the last TV episodes featuring Suchet as Poirot, they do provide a satisfying conclusion to a very long-running viewing experience. The actor has grown into the role, sporting wrinkles to match the wisdom, and perfecting the twinkle in his eye whenever, as the detective himself would put it, Poirot has finally solved the case as only Poirot can. And think of it: The actors of the current movie \u003cem>Boyhood \u003c/em>have gotten lots of praise for filming and playing their roles over a 12-year period. David Suchet, as Hercule Poirot, has done the same thing for twice as long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s done it so long, in fact, that he’s ending his run on a medium that didn’t even exist when he started. Wrap your little gray cells around \u003cem>that. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>David Bianculli is founder and editor of the website \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://www.tvworthwatching.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TV Worth Watching\u003c/a>\u003cem> and teaches TV and film history at Rowan University in New Jersey.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Case+Closed%3A+Agatha+Christie%27s+Detective+Poirot+Solves+His+Last+TV+Mystery&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Romantic comedies didn’t always carry with them the air of immediate dismissal, that eye-rolling weariness born of dozens of interchangeable boy-meets-girl plots and posters featuring stars playfully leaning into or on one another. Romance at the movies wasn’t always overfilled with cliches, stuffed with safe jokes heard a hundred times before. The rom-com can be a place for actual characters instead of cardboard theater-lobby displays, right? People you actually want to see get together for reasons other than the fact that that’s what’s supposed to happen in these movies?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What If\u003c/em> doesn’t ask “what if” that were true. It just answers with a confident “yes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film was originally titled \u003cem>The F Word,\u003c/em> and it still carries that title in most markets that aren’t the U.S., making one wonder just how easily offended the distributor thinks we are (the F-word in question is “friends”). Fortunately, the newer, blander title is really the only thing generic about \u003cem>What If\u003c/em>. Adapted and expanded by screenwriter Elan Mastai from a fringe festival play by Canadian playwrights TJ Dawe and Mike Rinaldi, the film manages a neat trick of sticking close to formula while still being unexpectedly fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of that is just how self-aware Mastai’s script is, without really wandering into self-referential navel-gazing. Everything is familiar, but slightly off-kilter, like walking into your home to find all the furniture shifted a few inches from where it normally sits. Daniel Radcliffe plays Wallace, a med school dropout who meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan) at a party and falls for her quickly; only to find out after he walks her home that she lives with her boyfriend and is just looking for new friends, though the connection between them is undeniable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes a long time to reveal that boyfriend, and when we do finally meet up with Ben (Rafe Spall), we’re treated to a quick moment of (not so) irrational jealousy before we discover that despite being the long-term boyfriend we’re supposed to be rooting against, he’s actually not really a bad guy. The film keeps teasing us with moments where it might make him into a cheater, a neglecter, a monster of some sort; and then director Michael Dowse refuses to let us off the hook. It has to be just as hard for us to hate Ben as it is for Chantry to throw him over for Wallace, no matter how charming he is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he’s plenty charming, as is she, as we’re treated to their lengthy, quirky, noncourtship courtship through the streets and storefronts of Toronto. The two are almost impossibly cute together — setting their second meeting at a screening of \u003cem>The Princess Bride\u003c/em> basically puts their adorability factor off the charts. It might border on too twee for some, but Radcliffe and Kazan’s chemistry is too endearing to write off that easily, and the film cuts the sweetness by giving the pair a slightly gross shared sense of humor centered on discussions of peanut butter, jelly, and bacon sandwiches and celebrity feces. It still plays on the cuter side of disgusting, but just try to imagine, say, McConaughey and Parker having anything remotely like this banter in something like \u003cem>Failure to Launch\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wallace’s best friend (and Chantry’s cousin) Allan (Adam Driver, riffing effectively in the same awkward oddball territory as his role on \u003cem>Girls\u003c/em>) also provides alternate programming for those averse to the gentler interactions of the central pair. At the same party where those two meet-cute, Allan has more of a meet-carnal with Nicole (Mackenzie Davis), and their horny romance hilariously provides the sexual spark that Wallace and Chantry’s can’t have. But their love is also genuine, giving their characters a depth that goes beyond silly (but great) jokes like Allan’s overriding love of post-intercourse nachos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What If\u003c/em> doesn’t escape common tropes — tragicomic misunderstandings getting in the way, a poignant wedding sequence, grand romantic gestures gone both right and wrong — but it also isn’t really trying to get away from them. The film recognizes and sticks close to the comforting romantic comedy blueprint while remaining aware that the best romantic comedies have their own personalities. The resulting movie gives us what we need from a romantic comedy instead of what the averaged opinions of a focus group might claim we want from one. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27What+If%27+Brings+Flair+And+Fun+To+The+Rom-Com+Formula&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "\u003cem>What If,\u003c/em> starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan, may not be exactly new in its presentation of an impossibly adorable love story, but it introduces some genuine pleasures of its own.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Romantic comedies didn’t always carry with them the air of immediate dismissal, that eye-rolling weariness born of dozens of interchangeable boy-meets-girl plots and posters featuring stars playfully leaning into or on one another. Romance at the movies wasn’t always overfilled with cliches, stuffed with safe jokes heard a hundred times before. The rom-com can be a place for actual characters instead of cardboard theater-lobby displays, right? People you actually want to see get together for reasons other than the fact that that’s what’s supposed to happen in these movies?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What If\u003c/em> doesn’t ask “what if” that were true. It just answers with a confident “yes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film was originally titled \u003cem>The F Word,\u003c/em> and it still carries that title in most markets that aren’t the U.S., making one wonder just how easily offended the distributor thinks we are (the F-word in question is “friends”). Fortunately, the newer, blander title is really the only thing generic about \u003cem>What If\u003c/em>. Adapted and expanded by screenwriter Elan Mastai from a fringe festival play by Canadian playwrights TJ Dawe and Mike Rinaldi, the film manages a neat trick of sticking close to formula while still being unexpectedly fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of that is just how self-aware Mastai’s script is, without really wandering into self-referential navel-gazing. Everything is familiar, but slightly off-kilter, like walking into your home to find all the furniture shifted a few inches from where it normally sits. Daniel Radcliffe plays Wallace, a med school dropout who meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan) at a party and falls for her quickly; only to find out after he walks her home that she lives with her boyfriend and is just looking for new friends, though the connection between them is undeniable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes a long time to reveal that boyfriend, and when we do finally meet up with Ben (Rafe Spall), we’re treated to a quick moment of (not so) irrational jealousy before we discover that despite being the long-term boyfriend we’re supposed to be rooting against, he’s actually not really a bad guy. The film keeps teasing us with moments where it might make him into a cheater, a neglecter, a monster of some sort; and then director Michael Dowse refuses to let us off the hook. It has to be just as hard for us to hate Ben as it is for Chantry to throw him over for Wallace, no matter how charming he is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he’s plenty charming, as is she, as we’re treated to their lengthy, quirky, noncourtship courtship through the streets and storefronts of Toronto. The two are almost impossibly cute together — setting their second meeting at a screening of \u003cem>The Princess Bride\u003c/em> basically puts their adorability factor off the charts. It might border on too twee for some, but Radcliffe and Kazan’s chemistry is too endearing to write off that easily, and the film cuts the sweetness by giving the pair a slightly gross shared sense of humor centered on discussions of peanut butter, jelly, and bacon sandwiches and celebrity feces. It still plays on the cuter side of disgusting, but just try to imagine, say, McConaughey and Parker having anything remotely like this banter in something like \u003cem>Failure to Launch\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wallace’s best friend (and Chantry’s cousin) Allan (Adam Driver, riffing effectively in the same awkward oddball territory as his role on \u003cem>Girls\u003c/em>) also provides alternate programming for those averse to the gentler interactions of the central pair. At the same party where those two meet-cute, Allan has more of a meet-carnal with Nicole (Mackenzie Davis), and their horny romance hilariously provides the sexual spark that Wallace and Chantry’s can’t have. But their love is also genuine, giving their characters a depth that goes beyond silly (but great) jokes like Allan’s overriding love of post-intercourse nachos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What If\u003c/em> doesn’t escape common tropes — tragicomic misunderstandings getting in the way, a poignant wedding sequence, grand romantic gestures gone both right and wrong — but it also isn’t really trying to get away from them. The film recognizes and sticks close to the comforting romantic comedy blueprint while remaining aware that the best romantic comedies have their own personalities. The resulting movie gives us what we need from a romantic comedy instead of what the averaged opinions of a focus group might claim we want from one. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27What+If%27+Brings+Flair+And+Fun+To+The+Rom-Com+Formula&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Old Shells, New 'Turtles': Tinkering with the Insides of a Famous Franchise",
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"content": "\u003cp>Jonathan Liebesman’s \u003cem>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u003c/em>, a reboot of the franchise following three live-action movies from the ’90s and 2007’s computer-animated \u003cem>TMNT\u003c/em>, courted controversy in 2012 when the film’s producer, Michael Bay, announced the title of the film would be reduced to the simpler \u003cem>Ninja Turtles\u003c/em>. Much of the ensuing criticism became part of a wider denunciation of another comment by Bay indicating that Liebesman’s turtles would be members of an alien race rather than unnaturally evolved reptiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The less remarked upon but equally disastrous possibility, though, was losing the “teenage” element. According to a \u003ca href=\"http://mentalfloss.com/article/30862/complete-history-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent history\u003c/a> of the Ninja Turtles published by \u003cem>Mental Floss\u003c/em>, series creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman originally imagined\u003cem> \u003c/em>their heroes as fearsome and violent. But the Ninja Turtles in popular culture have always tended toward the goofy, unfocused and juvenile. The ’90s films, hardly masterpieces, are at least unabashedly childish. The original 1990 film featured not only teenage turtles, after all; it also populated the villainous Foot Clan, also the enemy in Liebesman’s movie, with delinquent, runaway youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new \u003cem>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u003c/em> is removed from such a youth-oriented universe. Liebesman and Bay ultimately dropped the truncated title and the more radical plot changes, but the resulting film still reflects a shift from the first films\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong> Its origin story, while not launched into outer space, has been recast to fit a familiar world domination plot. Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), Leonardo (played by Pete Ploszek and voiced by Johnny Knoxville), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), and their rat sensei Splinter (Danny Woodburn, voiced by Tony Shalhoub) are now the products of experiments carried out by Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) and Dr. O’Neil (Paul Fitzgerald) in order to create a mutagen that would heal humans’ injuries and cure diseases. Of course, by the time the story really kicks off,\u003cem> \u003c/em>the mutagen’s positive properties are being used for more nefarious purposes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u003c/em> takes place decades after the experiments, with Dr. O’Neil dead from a fire at Sacks’ laboratories and survived by his daughter, April (Megan Fox), a budding journalist tracking the story of the Foot Clan that is tormenting New York City. It’s April who first catches sight of the Turtles when they repel a Clan attack, ultimately realizing that they are the same turtles and rat that she saved from her father’s lab years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m hesitant to subscribe to any notion of origin stories as sacrosanct, particularly since \u003cem>Ninja Turtles \u003c/em>is an uninspired but not offensively bad film. The changes, though, do remove one of the more charming elements of the Turtles, at least as they appeared in the original movies. The Turtles have always been urban vigilantes, but when their mutation was a result of bathing in a pool of discarded radioactive ooze they also tapped into an essential aspect of city life: the filthiness. Emerging from the sewers, the Turtles were products of urban waste disposed with little worry of its consequences. Now they’re just another science experiment gone wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liebesman’s rebranding also shifts the franchise into a slightly more serious register: the Foot Clan are now a well-armed militia, with their leader, Shredder (Tohoru Masamune), resembling a cross between Darth Vader and a Swiss-Army-knife-inspired Transformer. The stakes are impossibly high (“the entire course of human history depends on it,” says Sacks at one point in reference to the mutagen) and the Turtles have turned from pizza-obsessed surfer-types who speak of “dudes and dudettes” to steroid-pumped bros: from stoners to the kind of turtles you might expect to find at a Skrillex concert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This doesn’t mean the Turtles have gone full Dark Knight. Stupid remarks about cat videos courtesy of Michelangelo and a random sing-along are just some of the token reminders of the Turtles of old. There’s also one scene focused on pizza and the obligatory, but heavily restrained, use of the word “cowabunga.” None of these elements is a defining characteristic anymore, though. They’re just traits that Liebesman and the film’s trio of writers (Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Evan Daugherty) were loath to completely remove from the script, but which, as employed here, bear little of their original appeal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That leaves the film resting not quite at dark and brooding but having strayed too far from foolish fun. Ultimately, there’s a generic blandness to this incarnation of the Ninja Turtles, a derivative quality that the film’s self-aware pop culture references (one Turtle’s gruff voice is described as “his Batman voice”) only underline. The positive aspects of the movie are only those where less forgivable mistakes were avoided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compared to other bloated action movies, Liebesman keeps things going at a relatively quick pace. And even while deploying adrenaline-pumped cinematography, with a hyperkinetic camera continuously zooming, retreating, and spinning in circles, he doesn’t let scenes devolve into incoherence. There’s no lack of craft here, but there’s certainly an absence of character. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Old+Shells%2C+New+%27Turtles%27%3A+Tinkering+With+The+Insides+Of+A+Famous+Franchise&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The new take on \u003cem>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles \u003c/em>is competent enough, but it lacks some of the goofy fun that it had back when the sewers were responsible for making all the trouble.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Jonathan Liebesman’s \u003cem>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u003c/em>, a reboot of the franchise following three live-action movies from the ’90s and 2007’s computer-animated \u003cem>TMNT\u003c/em>, courted controversy in 2012 when the film’s producer, Michael Bay, announced the title of the film would be reduced to the simpler \u003cem>Ninja Turtles\u003c/em>. Much of the ensuing criticism became part of a wider denunciation of another comment by Bay indicating that Liebesman’s turtles would be members of an alien race rather than unnaturally evolved reptiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The less remarked upon but equally disastrous possibility, though, was losing the “teenage” element. According to a \u003ca href=\"http://mentalfloss.com/article/30862/complete-history-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent history\u003c/a> of the Ninja Turtles published by \u003cem>Mental Floss\u003c/em>, series creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman originally imagined\u003cem> \u003c/em>their heroes as fearsome and violent. But the Ninja Turtles in popular culture have always tended toward the goofy, unfocused and juvenile. The ’90s films, hardly masterpieces, are at least unabashedly childish. The original 1990 film featured not only teenage turtles, after all; it also populated the villainous Foot Clan, also the enemy in Liebesman’s movie, with delinquent, runaway youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new \u003cem>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u003c/em> is removed from such a youth-oriented universe. Liebesman and Bay ultimately dropped the truncated title and the more radical plot changes, but the resulting film still reflects a shift from the first films\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong> Its origin story, while not launched into outer space, has been recast to fit a familiar world domination plot. Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), Leonardo (played by Pete Ploszek and voiced by Johnny Knoxville), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), and their rat sensei Splinter (Danny Woodburn, voiced by Tony Shalhoub) are now the products of experiments carried out by Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) and Dr. O’Neil (Paul Fitzgerald) in order to create a mutagen that would heal humans’ injuries and cure diseases. Of course, by the time the story really kicks off,\u003cem> \u003c/em>the mutagen’s positive properties are being used for more nefarious purposes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u003c/em> takes place decades after the experiments, with Dr. O’Neil dead from a fire at Sacks’ laboratories and survived by his daughter, April (Megan Fox), a budding journalist tracking the story of the Foot Clan that is tormenting New York City. It’s April who first catches sight of the Turtles when they repel a Clan attack, ultimately realizing that they are the same turtles and rat that she saved from her father’s lab years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m hesitant to subscribe to any notion of origin stories as sacrosanct, particularly since \u003cem>Ninja Turtles \u003c/em>is an uninspired but not offensively bad film. The changes, though, do remove one of the more charming elements of the Turtles, at least as they appeared in the original movies. The Turtles have always been urban vigilantes, but when their mutation was a result of bathing in a pool of discarded radioactive ooze they also tapped into an essential aspect of city life: the filthiness. Emerging from the sewers, the Turtles were products of urban waste disposed with little worry of its consequences. Now they’re just another science experiment gone wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liebesman’s rebranding also shifts the franchise into a slightly more serious register: the Foot Clan are now a well-armed militia, with their leader, Shredder (Tohoru Masamune), resembling a cross between Darth Vader and a Swiss-Army-knife-inspired Transformer. The stakes are impossibly high (“the entire course of human history depends on it,” says Sacks at one point in reference to the mutagen) and the Turtles have turned from pizza-obsessed surfer-types who speak of “dudes and dudettes” to steroid-pumped bros: from stoners to the kind of turtles you might expect to find at a Skrillex concert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This doesn’t mean the Turtles have gone full Dark Knight. Stupid remarks about cat videos courtesy of Michelangelo and a random sing-along are just some of the token reminders of the Turtles of old. There’s also one scene focused on pizza and the obligatory, but heavily restrained, use of the word “cowabunga.” None of these elements is a defining characteristic anymore, though. They’re just traits that Liebesman and the film’s trio of writers (Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Evan Daugherty) were loath to completely remove from the script, but which, as employed here, bear little of their original appeal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That leaves the film resting not quite at dark and brooding but having strayed too far from foolish fun. Ultimately, there’s a generic blandness to this incarnation of the Ninja Turtles, a derivative quality that the film’s self-aware pop culture references (one Turtle’s gruff voice is described as “his Batman voice”) only underline. The positive aspects of the movie are only those where less forgivable mistakes were avoided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compared to other bloated action movies, Liebesman keeps things going at a relatively quick pace. And even while deploying adrenaline-pumped cinematography, with a hyperkinetic camera continuously zooming, retreating, and spinning in circles, he doesn’t let scenes devolve into incoherence. There’s no lack of craft here, but there’s certainly an absence of character. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Old+Shells%2C+New+%27Turtles%27%3A+Tinkering+With+The+Insides+Of+A+Famous+Franchise&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "When All Your Steaks Have Hot Sauce: A Case Against 'Nebraska' in Color",
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"content": "\u003cp>The latest indignity seemingly imposed by commerce upon art is \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/color-version-of-nebraska-to-show-on-epix-that-alexander-payne-hoped-would-never-be-seen-20140805\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the news\u003c/a> that the cable movie channel Epix would air, in addition to the original black-and-white version, a color version of Alexander Payne’s \u003cem>Nebraska\u003c/em>, which was nominated for Best Picture earlier this year and stars Bruce Dern and Will Forte as a father and son on a somewhat discursive road trip nominally aimed at retrieving a cash payout to which the father believes he’s entitled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not a colorized version ginned up after the fact; \u003ca href=\"http://variety.com/2013/film/news/alexander-payne-hopes-no-one-ever-sees-nebraska-in-color-1200861306/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">it’s existed all along\u003c/a> as a contractual necessity facilitated by digital shooting, according to a \u003ca href=\"http://variety.com/2013/film/news/alexander-payne-hopes-no-one-ever-sees-nebraska-in-color-1200861306/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Variety\u003c/em> interview\u003c/a> with Payne last fall, in which he openly hoped it would never be seen. There’s not necessarily anything \u003cem>wrong\u003c/em> with the color version of the film — it’s not the optimal way to appreciate what the director and the rest of the creative team were going for, but “suboptimal” doesn’t mean “terrible.” It’s hard to imagine why anyone other than perhaps those with challenges seeing black and white images would want to watch a movie in what its creator considers an inferior form when the superior form is equally convenient. But if that were all this story suggested, that might not be such a big deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The real threat of this kind of thing, though, might be the way that digital presentations of content in general make it a lot easier to deliver things in lots and lots of different ways. It’s good to have flexibility, but it also means there might be a point where it becomes almost impossible to make your vision available to people without agreeing in advance to make it customizable to the point where it ceases to be art at all. You can imagine a future in which films are released from the outset in PG and R versions, or in black-and-white and color versions, or in longer and shorter versions, or in versions with two different scores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s something to be said for choosing your own adventure, as it were, but there’s also something to be said for leaving the creative decisions to the creator of the piece, and accepting that that surrender of control is part of immersing yourself in somebody else’s work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An analogy: If you order a steak and you want hot sauce on it, I am the last person to say you can’t have hot sauce, but I also believe it might be to your benefit \u003cem>not \u003c/em>to demand hot sauce by default on every steak you ever eat. And I believe it is to your benefit — our benefit — that a restaurant focused on the creativity of chefs not announce on the menu, “Did you want hot sauce? Did you want an egg on top? Did you want a peanut butter sandwich instead?” It is one thing to grant special requests when you can; it is another to present the creative choice of a creative person as something to take or leave casually, according to what you think you already want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If we are at a point where we cannot allow directorial choices to stand, even in films not intended to be \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/inside-a-hollywood-studio-movie-marketers-playbook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">four-quadrant blockbusters\u003c/a>, even with things that take up no more of our time, don’t require us to read subtitles, don’t make our lives harder, but simply \u003cem>feel\u003c/em> different — like black and white — then we are, in a word, hosed. And goosing people to consider a more familiar-feeling alternative instead of trusting them to deal with the piece as it was composed seems a bit cynical and sad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s particularly true, and this is all particularly puzzling, since anyone not prepared to deal with a black and white film is going to have trouble with \u003cem>Nebraska\u003c/em> on many fronts. If a black and white movie makes you feel like you’re being forced to endure something inadequately modern, you’re not going to enjoy this particular film’s patient, contemplative tone anyway. Most people are not that afraid of black and white, in my experience, and addressing them as if they are has a whiff of condescension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its best, digital filmmaking makes it possible for directors to be more agile and mobile, to shoot more cheaply, and to try more things. But it also makes it easier to undo those choices, or re-present them to audiences like everything you ever see has to come with an on-screen menu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a certain thrill to how helpless you are in a theater when it’s dark and you get the first flicker; there is always, for me, a moment in which I think, “Here we go.” Even now, even after all this time, “Here we go.” I’m happy to be a passenger. I’m happy not to be driving. I’m happy to be looking out the window. I don’t want to be offered black and white or color, classical or jazz, 120 minutes or 150. I want everybody sitting there to take the same ride, and when I’m at home, I may not be able to get the theater ride, but I certainly don’t want to be building the movie myself. That’s what the director is for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crowdsourcing is wonderful. Interactivity is wonderful. But I’m not looking for a line-item veto, and I’m not sure it’s beneficial to offer one. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=When+All+Your+Steaks+Have+Hot+Sauce%3A+A+Case+Against+%27Nebraska%27+In+Color&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The latest indignity seemingly imposed by commerce upon art is \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/color-version-of-nebraska-to-show-on-epix-that-alexander-payne-hoped-would-never-be-seen-20140805\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the news\u003c/a> that the cable movie channel Epix would air, in addition to the original black-and-white version, a color version of Alexander Payne’s \u003cem>Nebraska\u003c/em>, which was nominated for Best Picture earlier this year and stars Bruce Dern and Will Forte as a father and son on a somewhat discursive road trip nominally aimed at retrieving a cash payout to which the father believes he’s entitled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not a colorized version ginned up after the fact; \u003ca href=\"http://variety.com/2013/film/news/alexander-payne-hopes-no-one-ever-sees-nebraska-in-color-1200861306/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">it’s existed all along\u003c/a> as a contractual necessity facilitated by digital shooting, according to a \u003ca href=\"http://variety.com/2013/film/news/alexander-payne-hopes-no-one-ever-sees-nebraska-in-color-1200861306/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Variety\u003c/em> interview\u003c/a> with Payne last fall, in which he openly hoped it would never be seen. There’s not necessarily anything \u003cem>wrong\u003c/em> with the color version of the film — it’s not the optimal way to appreciate what the director and the rest of the creative team were going for, but “suboptimal” doesn’t mean “terrible.” It’s hard to imagine why anyone other than perhaps those with challenges seeing black and white images would want to watch a movie in what its creator considers an inferior form when the superior form is equally convenient. But if that were all this story suggested, that might not be such a big deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The real threat of this kind of thing, though, might be the way that digital presentations of content in general make it a lot easier to deliver things in lots and lots of different ways. It’s good to have flexibility, but it also means there might be a point where it becomes almost impossible to make your vision available to people without agreeing in advance to make it customizable to the point where it ceases to be art at all. You can imagine a future in which films are released from the outset in PG and R versions, or in black-and-white and color versions, or in longer and shorter versions, or in versions with two different scores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s something to be said for choosing your own adventure, as it were, but there’s also something to be said for leaving the creative decisions to the creator of the piece, and accepting that that surrender of control is part of immersing yourself in somebody else’s work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An analogy: If you order a steak and you want hot sauce on it, I am the last person to say you can’t have hot sauce, but I also believe it might be to your benefit \u003cem>not \u003c/em>to demand hot sauce by default on every steak you ever eat. And I believe it is to your benefit — our benefit — that a restaurant focused on the creativity of chefs not announce on the menu, “Did you want hot sauce? Did you want an egg on top? Did you want a peanut butter sandwich instead?” It is one thing to grant special requests when you can; it is another to present the creative choice of a creative person as something to take or leave casually, according to what you think you already want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If we are at a point where we cannot allow directorial choices to stand, even in films not intended to be \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/inside-a-hollywood-studio-movie-marketers-playbook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">four-quadrant blockbusters\u003c/a>, even with things that take up no more of our time, don’t require us to read subtitles, don’t make our lives harder, but simply \u003cem>feel\u003c/em> different — like black and white — then we are, in a word, hosed. And goosing people to consider a more familiar-feeling alternative instead of trusting them to deal with the piece as it was composed seems a bit cynical and sad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s particularly true, and this is all particularly puzzling, since anyone not prepared to deal with a black and white film is going to have trouble with \u003cem>Nebraska\u003c/em> on many fronts. If a black and white movie makes you feel like you’re being forced to endure something inadequately modern, you’re not going to enjoy this particular film’s patient, contemplative tone anyway. Most people are not that afraid of black and white, in my experience, and addressing them as if they are has a whiff of condescension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its best, digital filmmaking makes it possible for directors to be more agile and mobile, to shoot more cheaply, and to try more things. But it also makes it easier to undo those choices, or re-present them to audiences like everything you ever see has to come with an on-screen menu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a certain thrill to how helpless you are in a theater when it’s dark and you get the first flicker; there is always, for me, a moment in which I think, “Here we go.” Even now, even after all this time, “Here we go.” I’m happy to be a passenger. I’m happy not to be driving. I’m happy to be looking out the window. I don’t want to be offered black and white or color, classical or jazz, 120 minutes or 150. I want everybody sitting there to take the same ride, and when I’m at home, I may not be able to get the theater ride, but I certainly don’t want to be building the movie myself. That’s what the director is for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crowdsourcing is wonderful. Interactivity is wonderful. But I’m not looking for a line-item veto, and I’m not sure it’s beneficial to offer one. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=When+All+Your+Steaks+Have+Hot+Sauce%3A+A+Case+Against+%27Nebraska%27+In+Color&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Reckless immaturity in young people is generally diagnosed across generations, most often by parents worried about their supposedly underachieving kids. That makes the premise of Joe Swanberg’s \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> relatively refreshing, even as it covers well-known ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film opens with Jeff (Swanberg) and Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) preparing for the arrival of Jeff’s sister, Jenny (Anna Kendrick), who is moving into their basement after breaking up with her boyfriend. Jeff and Jenny are of the same generation, only years apart in age, but clearly standing on separate sides of a line we might, for convenience’s sake, call “responsible adulthood.” On her first night living with Jeff and Kelly — who have a 2-year-old son named Jude (played by Swanberg’s son, also named Jude) — Jenny goes to a party with her friend Carson (Lena Dunham), blacks out from drinking too much, and requires Jeff to come drag her home in the middle of the night. The next day, a disappointed Kelly rejects Jeff’s argument that they may have been equally reckless at that age: “I had some semblance of propriety,” she scoffs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/njsI7SZGom8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s most interesting at first about \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> is that the differences between Jeff and Kelly on one hand and Jenny and Carson on the other are obviously recent and superficial.\u003cem> \u003c/em>Jenny is not adamantly making a case for never growing up; life, rather, just seems to not have given her a reason to do so yet. Still, she is a perfect foil for Jeff and Kelly, who are both only beginning to get comfortable with their adult lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across such a flimsy divide, it’s only a matter of time before shared sentiments emerge. The film’s best scene occurs shortly after Jenny has successfully babysat Jude for the first time. Kelly joins her and Carson for a beer and begins opening up about her dissatisfactions with her marriage, particularly the fact that she has had to give up her writing completely while Jeff continues to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the film’s most compelling scenes are those where Swanberg lets the dialogue flow, his camera panning from character to character with relatively few cuts. With \u003cem>Happy Christmas, \u003c/em>Swanberg has again relied on improvisation to flesh out the script. The charm of the technique as Swanberg, Dunham, Kendrick and Lynskey pull it off here is its easygoing execution and the empathy that underlies it (whether or not it also feels “real,” as many like to argue when discussing Swanberg’s approach, is beside the point). This is a comedy that, at its best, eases you into its comfort zone and massages laughs out of you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> also, if fitfully, belongs to a class of romantic comedy that filmmakers like Swanberg and Lynn Shelton have helped define. Romantic fulfillment is a central worry and theme in these films, but only as it relates to the characters’ individual self-actualization. Swanberg’s previous film \u003cem>Drinking Buddies\u003c/em> worked particularly well within such a context; it was an alternate version of \u003cem>When Harry Met Sally\u003c/em>, one in which no one declares off the top that men and women can’t be friends, leaving the options for its characters and relationships confusingly but also liberatingly more open.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em>‘s characters and conflicts are generic compared to \u003cem>Drinking Buddies\u003c/em>. The problem is largely with the script, and offers a warning about the central risk that comes with Swanberg’s improvisational method: not so much that individual scenes will meander (none here do), but that they won’t propel the plot forward in any meaningful way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the middle of \u003cem>Happy Christmas \u003c/em>is taken up by Jenny and Kelly’s attempts at writing an erotic novel they half-jokingly hope will bring Kelly instant riches, through which the two bond after their initial conflict. The scenes where they brainstorm ideas and discuss the best words to use when writing sex scenes are as funny as any in the movie, but they are freestanding — more sketch comedy than part of a narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So as the film shifts back to focusing on Jenny’s supposed immaturity and her cautious steps at dating a friend of Kelly and Jeff’s, the more dramatically charged scenes that result feel rushed and forced rather than organically produced. Jenny, it seems, is supposed to have been emotionally disconnected throughout the movie, but we only realize that when Kelly points it out. Similarly, it’s only when Jenny relapses into immature behavior that we remember that this was the crux of her character to begin with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swanberg has said that \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> grew out of conversations between him and his wife about the difficulties of balancing parenting and their careers, which only raises the question of why the film ultimately focuses on Jenny rather than Kelly, a more finely drawn character who demands greater attention. That the decision is even there to be made, though, indicates the slow shift that has been occurring in Swanberg’s movies recently. Jenny is a recognizable personality from many of Swanberg’s films. Kelly, meanwhile, hints at terrain that he has only just begun to explore. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Maturity+And+Improvisation+In+%27Happy+Christmas%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Reckless immaturity in young people is generally diagnosed across generations, most often by parents worried about their supposedly underachieving kids. That makes the premise of Joe Swanberg’s \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> relatively refreshing, even as it covers well-known ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film opens with Jeff (Swanberg) and Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) preparing for the arrival of Jeff’s sister, Jenny (Anna Kendrick), who is moving into their basement after breaking up with her boyfriend. Jeff and Jenny are of the same generation, only years apart in age, but clearly standing on separate sides of a line we might, for convenience’s sake, call “responsible adulthood.” On her first night living with Jeff and Kelly — who have a 2-year-old son named Jude (played by Swanberg’s son, also named Jude) — Jenny goes to a party with her friend Carson (Lena Dunham), blacks out from drinking too much, and requires Jeff to come drag her home in the middle of the night. The next day, a disappointed Kelly rejects Jeff’s argument that they may have been equally reckless at that age: “I had some semblance of propriety,” she scoffs.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/njsI7SZGom8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/njsI7SZGom8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>What’s most interesting at first about \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> is that the differences between Jeff and Kelly on one hand and Jenny and Carson on the other are obviously recent and superficial.\u003cem> \u003c/em>Jenny is not adamantly making a case for never growing up; life, rather, just seems to not have given her a reason to do so yet. Still, she is a perfect foil for Jeff and Kelly, who are both only beginning to get comfortable with their adult lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across such a flimsy divide, it’s only a matter of time before shared sentiments emerge. The film’s best scene occurs shortly after Jenny has successfully babysat Jude for the first time. Kelly joins her and Carson for a beer and begins opening up about her dissatisfactions with her marriage, particularly the fact that she has had to give up her writing completely while Jeff continues to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the film’s most compelling scenes are those where Swanberg lets the dialogue flow, his camera panning from character to character with relatively few cuts. With \u003cem>Happy Christmas, \u003c/em>Swanberg has again relied on improvisation to flesh out the script. The charm of the technique as Swanberg, Dunham, Kendrick and Lynskey pull it off here is its easygoing execution and the empathy that underlies it (whether or not it also feels “real,” as many like to argue when discussing Swanberg’s approach, is beside the point). This is a comedy that, at its best, eases you into its comfort zone and massages laughs out of you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> also, if fitfully, belongs to a class of romantic comedy that filmmakers like Swanberg and Lynn Shelton have helped define. Romantic fulfillment is a central worry and theme in these films, but only as it relates to the characters’ individual self-actualization. Swanberg’s previous film \u003cem>Drinking Buddies\u003c/em> worked particularly well within such a context; it was an alternate version of \u003cem>When Harry Met Sally\u003c/em>, one in which no one declares off the top that men and women can’t be friends, leaving the options for its characters and relationships confusingly but also liberatingly more open.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em>‘s characters and conflicts are generic compared to \u003cem>Drinking Buddies\u003c/em>. The problem is largely with the script, and offers a warning about the central risk that comes with Swanberg’s improvisational method: not so much that individual scenes will meander (none here do), but that they won’t propel the plot forward in any meaningful way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the middle of \u003cem>Happy Christmas \u003c/em>is taken up by Jenny and Kelly’s attempts at writing an erotic novel they half-jokingly hope will bring Kelly instant riches, through which the two bond after their initial conflict. The scenes where they brainstorm ideas and discuss the best words to use when writing sex scenes are as funny as any in the movie, but they are freestanding — more sketch comedy than part of a narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So as the film shifts back to focusing on Jenny’s supposed immaturity and her cautious steps at dating a friend of Kelly and Jeff’s, the more dramatically charged scenes that result feel rushed and forced rather than organically produced. Jenny, it seems, is supposed to have been emotionally disconnected throughout the movie, but we only realize that when Kelly points it out. Similarly, it’s only when Jenny relapses into immature behavior that we remember that this was the crux of her character to begin with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swanberg has said that \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> grew out of conversations between him and his wife about the difficulties of balancing parenting and their careers, which only raises the question of why the film ultimately focuses on Jenny rather than Kelly, a more finely drawn character who demands greater attention. That the decision is even there to be made, though, indicates the slow shift that has been occurring in Swanberg’s movies recently. Jenny is a recognizable personality from many of Swanberg’s films. Kelly, meanwhile, hints at terrain that he has only just begun to explore. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Maturity+And+Improvisation+In+%27Happy+Christmas%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The worst thing about making a post-\u003cem>Avengers \u003c/em>Marvel movie is how far ahead of the game you are when you start. Your film will be marketed with brute force, treated as arguably the biggest opening of the summer, reviewed everywhere, and very likely to land among the most commercially successful films of the year, whether or not you do anything interesting with it. From a professional development standpoint, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to describe your task as “don’t screw up.” There’s no reason for that \u003cem>not \u003c/em>to inspire cautious tiptoeing, for it \u003cem>not \u003c/em>to motivate a precise tonal copy of what’s worked in films like \u003cem>Iron Man \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Avengers\u003c/em>, and ultimately for it \u003cem>not \u003c/em>to lead to a zillion-dollar effort to ensure a solid, uninteresting base hit, creatively speaking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s particularly surprising how often \u003cem>Guardians Of The Galaxy\u003c/em> feels very unlike other Marvel movies and other comic-book movies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/89q_HH-3ghk\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Directed by James Gunn (who also directed the offbeat superhero comedy \u003cem>Super\u003c/em>) and written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman, \u003cem>Guardians \u003c/em>introduces us to Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), a capable and ambivalent wisecracking thief still working for the aliens who abducted him from Earth as a little boy, shortly after the death of his mother. As wisecracking thieves always do, Quill finds himself in a jam, and not long after, he’s in jail with the mysterious and fearless Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the grief-stricken and huge Drax (Dave Bautista), a big walking tree named Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and the particularly mercenary Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper). They soon find a common purpose, and we’re off. There’s an orb – oh, there’s \u003cem>always\u003c/em> an orb – and there’s a preening and pronouncing bad guy (Lee Pace) who speaks at all times as if he’s an action figure being waved around and given voice by a growling kid who’s just recently discovered comics, and there’s a message about the importance of friendship and teamwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What distinguishes \u003cem>Guardians Of The Galaxy \u003c/em>is its tone, which arrives early in the form of the ’70s mixtapes that Quill got from his mom, which he still blasts on his adored Sony Walkman. After the brief prologue, we first find him kicking and cool-guy-dancing through the puddles of a faraway planet while Redbone’s “Come And Get Your Love” plays. He’s very much a Marvel hero, but Pratt – a tremendously charismatic actor whose work as the huge-hearted and slightly foggy-headed Andy Dwyer on \u003cem>Parks And Recreation\u003c/em> foreshadowed some of what he’s doing here – gives him both a shaggier charm and a much more specifically comedic carriage than most Marvel heroes. This is not the suave, swaggering wit of Tony Stark; it is a much more uncertain and blithely goofy thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The simple fact that \u003cem>Guardians Of The Galaxy \u003c/em>is closer to a pure comedy is what distinguishes it most. \u003cem>Iron Man \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Avengers \u003c/em>certainly are witty, but they’re not comedies, and this is. Where those films largely depend on well-timed ironic understatement and the occasional Hulk-on-Loki beatdown for their chuckles, this movie has \u003cem>jokes\u003c/em>. Lots of jokes. Plain old jokes. Laugh lines. Punchy cuts between serious action sequences and bone-dry, deadpan takes. It has wonderful face-pulling. It has mechanical-eyeball comedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What comes through so delightfully is a balance between the weary, sometimes skeptical but deeply affectionate good will of adults who love an enjoyable blockbuster and the campy, self-serious exploration of good and evil that kids can happily bathe in before they start to think of comics as fundamentally a capitalist enterprise. You could see this movie and then have a long debate over exactly what Pace is doing, how in on the joke he is, and how much he knows that intensity-wise, he’s doing Release The Kraken MULTIPLIED by Emperor Palpatine TIMES Loki PLUS everybody who gets a mask pulled off his head at the end of a Scooby-Doo cartoon. It’s not that he’s not doing a real villain, but he’s also doing \u003cem>the \u003c/em>villain, the \u003cem>idea \u003c/em>of a comic-book villain. While he’s giving it all he’s got when it comes to menace, his delicious super-ferocity is meant to work hand-in-glove with the more obviously comedic stuff that Quill’s team is doing. (Interestingly, the constantly joke-cracking Rocket is probably the least successful invention on the team; Groot’s limited capacity for comedy – he’s a tree, remember – becomes the funniest bit of all.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s plenty of heart in \u003cem>Guardians\u003c/em>, but it gets its emotional heft largely from the warmth that this kind of comedy inherently contains. Genuinely funny people engender sympathy (see the witty Hans in \u003cem>Die Hard\u003c/em>), so comedy isn’t just for giggles, it’s also for resonance. But here’s the thing: it’s fun. F-U-N. Remember F-U-N? The thing that blockbusters used to be before they started crushing cities full of innocent people and seemingly forgetting all about them? The thing that the Richard Donner \u003cem>Superman \u003c/em>was? The thing that used to at least be \u003cem>one \u003c/em>of the most important big-money-movie elements, alongside bloodletting, franchising, and an unrelenting, ashen grimness that could be rounded off to approximate seriousness of purpose?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. Fun! I missed it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the downside, \u003cem>Guardians \u003c/em>is probably least inventive in its aesthetic: it doesn’t play like a Marvel movie, but its visuals sure look like one. Orbs, explosions, huge spacecraft … all of this has been seen. There are a handful of very pretty shots – Gunn seems to have a fondness for floating and uses it in several places to lovely effect – and there’s a nicely manic fight sequence between Quill and Gamora early on. But the branding of the Marvel Universe is certainly more consistent and more easily felt visually than tonally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That music, on the other hand, is deftly chosen. Everybody from Stanley Kubrick to Michael Moore has done the bit where you play upbeat music over downbeat images for a kick of irony, but there are a few places in \u003cem>Guardians \u003c/em>where songs, including “Hooked On A Feeling” (admittedly a well-worn weapon at this point), create a more complex sensation than the expected orchestral soundtrack would have. And while the other Marvel movies are similarly contemporary, they’re also much more Earth-bound; it’s a funny feeling – in a good way – to see people having epic battles over ancient artifacts in space and have the music create such a temporal link to this particular man’s lost life on Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy to create a clean break between the satisfaction of popular entertainment and the rewards of great art, and that divide, while not quite as easy to define as it seems, is certainly genuine. What’s much shakier is the idea that the satisfaction of popular entertainment is valueless while the rewards of great art matter. There’s always been a place for F.U.N. – it’s always been one of the reasons people seek out culture. To see it done really, really well, with purpose and energy and wit, is itself awfully rewarding. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Guardians+Of+The+Galaxy%27%3A+Let%27s+Hear+It+For+F.U.N.&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The worst thing about making a post-\u003cem>Avengers \u003c/em>Marvel movie is how far ahead of the game you are when you start. Your film will be marketed with brute force, treated as arguably the biggest opening of the summer, reviewed everywhere, and very likely to land among the most commercially successful films of the year, whether or not you do anything interesting with it. From a professional development standpoint, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to describe your task as “don’t screw up.” There’s no reason for that \u003cem>not \u003c/em>to inspire cautious tiptoeing, for it \u003cem>not \u003c/em>to motivate a precise tonal copy of what’s worked in films like \u003cem>Iron Man \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Avengers\u003c/em>, and ultimately for it \u003cem>not \u003c/em>to lead to a zillion-dollar effort to ensure a solid, uninteresting base hit, creatively speaking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s particularly surprising how often \u003cem>Guardians Of The Galaxy\u003c/em> feels very unlike other Marvel movies and other comic-book movies.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/89q_HH-3ghk'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/89q_HH-3ghk'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Directed by James Gunn (who also directed the offbeat superhero comedy \u003cem>Super\u003c/em>) and written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman, \u003cem>Guardians \u003c/em>introduces us to Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), a capable and ambivalent wisecracking thief still working for the aliens who abducted him from Earth as a little boy, shortly after the death of his mother. As wisecracking thieves always do, Quill finds himself in a jam, and not long after, he’s in jail with the mysterious and fearless Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the grief-stricken and huge Drax (Dave Bautista), a big walking tree named Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and the particularly mercenary Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper). They soon find a common purpose, and we’re off. There’s an orb – oh, there’s \u003cem>always\u003c/em> an orb – and there’s a preening and pronouncing bad guy (Lee Pace) who speaks at all times as if he’s an action figure being waved around and given voice by a growling kid who’s just recently discovered comics, and there’s a message about the importance of friendship and teamwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What distinguishes \u003cem>Guardians Of The Galaxy \u003c/em>is its tone, which arrives early in the form of the ’70s mixtapes that Quill got from his mom, which he still blasts on his adored Sony Walkman. After the brief prologue, we first find him kicking and cool-guy-dancing through the puddles of a faraway planet while Redbone’s “Come And Get Your Love” plays. He’s very much a Marvel hero, but Pratt – a tremendously charismatic actor whose work as the huge-hearted and slightly foggy-headed Andy Dwyer on \u003cem>Parks And Recreation\u003c/em> foreshadowed some of what he’s doing here – gives him both a shaggier charm and a much more specifically comedic carriage than most Marvel heroes. This is not the suave, swaggering wit of Tony Stark; it is a much more uncertain and blithely goofy thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The simple fact that \u003cem>Guardians Of The Galaxy \u003c/em>is closer to a pure comedy is what distinguishes it most. \u003cem>Iron Man \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Avengers \u003c/em>certainly are witty, but they’re not comedies, and this is. Where those films largely depend on well-timed ironic understatement and the occasional Hulk-on-Loki beatdown for their chuckles, this movie has \u003cem>jokes\u003c/em>. Lots of jokes. Plain old jokes. Laugh lines. Punchy cuts between serious action sequences and bone-dry, deadpan takes. It has wonderful face-pulling. It has mechanical-eyeball comedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What comes through so delightfully is a balance between the weary, sometimes skeptical but deeply affectionate good will of adults who love an enjoyable blockbuster and the campy, self-serious exploration of good and evil that kids can happily bathe in before they start to think of comics as fundamentally a capitalist enterprise. You could see this movie and then have a long debate over exactly what Pace is doing, how in on the joke he is, and how much he knows that intensity-wise, he’s doing Release The Kraken MULTIPLIED by Emperor Palpatine TIMES Loki PLUS everybody who gets a mask pulled off his head at the end of a Scooby-Doo cartoon. It’s not that he’s not doing a real villain, but he’s also doing \u003cem>the \u003c/em>villain, the \u003cem>idea \u003c/em>of a comic-book villain. While he’s giving it all he’s got when it comes to menace, his delicious super-ferocity is meant to work hand-in-glove with the more obviously comedic stuff that Quill’s team is doing. (Interestingly, the constantly joke-cracking Rocket is probably the least successful invention on the team; Groot’s limited capacity for comedy – he’s a tree, remember – becomes the funniest bit of all.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s plenty of heart in \u003cem>Guardians\u003c/em>, but it gets its emotional heft largely from the warmth that this kind of comedy inherently contains. Genuinely funny people engender sympathy (see the witty Hans in \u003cem>Die Hard\u003c/em>), so comedy isn’t just for giggles, it’s also for resonance. But here’s the thing: it’s fun. F-U-N. Remember F-U-N? The thing that blockbusters used to be before they started crushing cities full of innocent people and seemingly forgetting all about them? The thing that the Richard Donner \u003cem>Superman \u003c/em>was? The thing that used to at least be \u003cem>one \u003c/em>of the most important big-money-movie elements, alongside bloodletting, franchising, and an unrelenting, ashen grimness that could be rounded off to approximate seriousness of purpose?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. Fun! I missed it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the downside, \u003cem>Guardians \u003c/em>is probably least inventive in its aesthetic: it doesn’t play like a Marvel movie, but its visuals sure look like one. Orbs, explosions, huge spacecraft … all of this has been seen. There are a handful of very pretty shots – Gunn seems to have a fondness for floating and uses it in several places to lovely effect – and there’s a nicely manic fight sequence between Quill and Gamora early on. But the branding of the Marvel Universe is certainly more consistent and more easily felt visually than tonally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That music, on the other hand, is deftly chosen. Everybody from Stanley Kubrick to Michael Moore has done the bit where you play upbeat music over downbeat images for a kick of irony, but there are a few places in \u003cem>Guardians \u003c/em>where songs, including “Hooked On A Feeling” (admittedly a well-worn weapon at this point), create a more complex sensation than the expected orchestral soundtrack would have. And while the other Marvel movies are similarly contemporary, they’re also much more Earth-bound; it’s a funny feeling – in a good way – to see people having epic battles over ancient artifacts in space and have the music create such a temporal link to this particular man’s lost life on Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy to create a clean break between the satisfaction of popular entertainment and the rewards of great art, and that divide, while not quite as easy to define as it seems, is certainly genuine. What’s much shakier is the idea that the satisfaction of popular entertainment is valueless while the rewards of great art matter. There’s always been a place for F.U.N. – it’s always been one of the reasons people seek out culture. To see it done really, really well, with purpose and energy and wit, is itself awfully rewarding. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Guardians+Of+The+Galaxy%27%3A+Let%27s+Hear+It+For+F.U.N.&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Viewers of earnest sci-fi dramas like \u003cem>I Origins\u003c/em> are required to suspend disbelief, but the scripters of such movies have responsibilities, too. They can’t introduce ideas so ridiculous, or suddenly twist their premises so illogically, that audiences are fatally distracted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take, for example, \u003cem>Snowpiercer\u003c/em>, set on a frozen future Earth. While a home nestled in the warm bedrock would be the logical place to wait out an ice age, let’s accept that the few surviving humans are instead circling the globe on a “high-speed” train. But then the filmmakers throw in the notion that it takes a year to make a complete circuit. That means, if the train is tracing the Earth’s widest circumference, it’s moving a little under 3 MPH. A snowpiercing bicycle could beat that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Dawn of the Planet of the Apes\u003c/em>, great care is taken to show that the CGI apes follow genuine simian psychology. So when one chimp challenges another, the two fight for dominance. But then the loser skulks off and does what he wanted to do anyway, which negates the whole setup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/Mk4briOLrTQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writer-director Mike Cahill’s \u003cem>I Origins\u003c/em> is even more cavalier about its own ground rules, although not until its second hour. In the first part, bio-researcher Ian (Michael Pitt) tries to disprove Intelligent Design proponents’ claim that the human eye is too complex to be a result of evolution. So he tinkers with the genes of blind worms, hoping to demonstrate how easy it is to give the critters sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Always obsessed with eyes, Ian has taken many photos of complexly colored and patterned irises. Naturally, when he encounters the Latin-French beauty who will seduce him from his lab-rat lifestyle, she’s wearing a mask, so just her eyes are visible. Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) is drawn to Ian as well, but their encounter is fleeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How to find her? Of course she’s a model whose eyes are displayed on a billboard, to which Ian’s own peepers are drawn by the lucky number “11,” which is sort of “ii.” (Puns are the movie’s essential logic.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ian and Sofi relocate temporarily to an European art film and enjoy a half-dressed idyll, sensuously shot by cinematographer Markus Forderer. They’re almost perfect together, and this section of the film is a pleasant tumble of gently erotic images. But he’s a scientist and she’s a mystic, which might seem to be the conflict that will animate the movie’s second half.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A closer look, however, reveals trouble right at the lab. Her name is Karen, and she’s dedicated, brilliant and utterly rational — the first assistant Ian has ever taken seriously. Yes, it’s Brit Marling in another one of her too-good-to-be-true roles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marling didn’t co-write \u003cem>I Origins\u003c/em>, as she did the equally solemn and nutty \u003cem>Another Earth\u003c/em>, the previous feature by Cahill, her Georgetown University classmate. But she plays the figure who will, coolly and methodically, lead the movie from science-y fiction into barking-mad nonsense, complete with an after-the-credits scene set in Crazytown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out that “I” not just rhymes with “eye,” but also indicates the eternal identity some call the soul. For the story’s conclusion, Sofi exits, Karen moves in and Ian eventually goes to India, home of an actual national iris-recognition ID program that may have inspired the film. It’s also a place, by the way, where a lot of people believe in reincarnation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the film’s plot is loonier than a mainstream movie would dare, the essential trajectory is one of Hollywood’s favorites: from skepticism to faith. There’s a “i” in “believe,” which is just the sort of empty happenstance \u003cem>I Origins \u003c/em>tries to spin into a mind-blowing epiphany. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27I+Origins%27%3A+There%27s+More+Than+One+%27I%27+In+%27Ridiculous%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Viewers of earnest sci-fi dramas like \u003cem>I Origins\u003c/em> are required to suspend disbelief, but the scripters of such movies have responsibilities, too. They can’t introduce ideas so ridiculous, or suddenly twist their premises so illogically, that audiences are fatally distracted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take, for example, \u003cem>Snowpiercer\u003c/em>, set on a frozen future Earth. While a home nestled in the warm bedrock would be the logical place to wait out an ice age, let’s accept that the few surviving humans are instead circling the globe on a “high-speed” train. But then the filmmakers throw in the notion that it takes a year to make a complete circuit. That means, if the train is tracing the Earth’s widest circumference, it’s moving a little under 3 MPH. A snowpiercing bicycle could beat that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Dawn of the Planet of the Apes\u003c/em>, great care is taken to show that the CGI apes follow genuine simian psychology. So when one chimp challenges another, the two fight for dominance. But then the loser skulks off and does what he wanted to do anyway, which negates the whole setup.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Mk4briOLrTQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Mk4briOLrTQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Writer-director Mike Cahill’s \u003cem>I Origins\u003c/em> is even more cavalier about its own ground rules, although not until its second hour. In the first part, bio-researcher Ian (Michael Pitt) tries to disprove Intelligent Design proponents’ claim that the human eye is too complex to be a result of evolution. So he tinkers with the genes of blind worms, hoping to demonstrate how easy it is to give the critters sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Always obsessed with eyes, Ian has taken many photos of complexly colored and patterned irises. Naturally, when he encounters the Latin-French beauty who will seduce him from his lab-rat lifestyle, she’s wearing a mask, so just her eyes are visible. Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) is drawn to Ian as well, but their encounter is fleeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How to find her? Of course she’s a model whose eyes are displayed on a billboard, to which Ian’s own peepers are drawn by the lucky number “11,” which is sort of “ii.” (Puns are the movie’s essential logic.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ian and Sofi relocate temporarily to an European art film and enjoy a half-dressed idyll, sensuously shot by cinematographer Markus Forderer. They’re almost perfect together, and this section of the film is a pleasant tumble of gently erotic images. But he’s a scientist and she’s a mystic, which might seem to be the conflict that will animate the movie’s second half.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A closer look, however, reveals trouble right at the lab. Her name is Karen, and she’s dedicated, brilliant and utterly rational — the first assistant Ian has ever taken seriously. Yes, it’s Brit Marling in another one of her too-good-to-be-true roles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marling didn’t co-write \u003cem>I Origins\u003c/em>, as she did the equally solemn and nutty \u003cem>Another Earth\u003c/em>, the previous feature by Cahill, her Georgetown University classmate. But she plays the figure who will, coolly and methodically, lead the movie from science-y fiction into barking-mad nonsense, complete with an after-the-credits scene set in Crazytown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out that “I” not just rhymes with “eye,” but also indicates the eternal identity some call the soul. For the story’s conclusion, Sofi exits, Karen moves in and Ian eventually goes to India, home of an actual national iris-recognition ID program that may have inspired the film. It’s also a place, by the way, where a lot of people believe in reincarnation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the film’s plot is loonier than a mainstream movie would dare, the essential trajectory is one of Hollywood’s favorites: from skepticism to faith. There’s a “i” in “believe,” which is just the sort of empty happenstance \u003cem>I Origins \u003c/em>tries to spin into a mind-blowing epiphany. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27I+Origins%27%3A+There%27s+More+Than+One+%27I%27+In+%27Ridiculous%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "in-mood-indigo-a-luscious-and-literal-feast-of-feeling",
"title": "In 'Mood Indigo,' A Luscious And Literal Feast Of Feeling",
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"content": "\u003cp>About halfway through \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em>, a film of inexhaustible creativity directed by Michel Gondry, the apartment that Colin (Romain Duris) and Chloé (Audrey Tautou) call home begins to change dramatically — the ceiling starts closing in, and a thick layer of cobweb starts covering the walls and windows. “My place is doing the same thing, but I think it’s an illusion,” says a friend when she drops in for a visit. “As you go through life, places seem smaller.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effect is an illusion in the cinematic sense, of course — one of many that Gondry brilliantly creates in this film using visual effects (stop motion, puppetry, scale models and plain old dress-up) that hearken back more to the birth of cinema and the Méliès brothers than to \u003cem>Transformers\u003c/em>. But the illusion of shrinking rooms and changing worlds is also familiar to almost all of us from everyday life; it takes little more than a hangover, after all, for us to realize that physical spaces can appear to mutate according to our moods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/38ugyccL5zU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gondry’s appreciation and insight into this phenomenon lends his special effects work more significance than mere playfulness. Adapted from a Boris Vian novel, \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em> begins with the wealthy Colin discovering that both his best friend, Chick (Gad Elmaleh), and his chef/assistant/friend/lawyer, Nicolas (Omar Sy), have recently fallen in love. “I demand to fall in love, too,” Colin exclaims, and so he does, shortly after, when he meets Chloé, with whom he embarks on an idyllic love affair: Their first date takes place on a cloud-shaped saucer that gets lifted by a crane to give them panoramic views of Paris, where the film is set.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cute factor of Gondry’s invented world at first threatens to overwhelm the movie, as does the sheer number of effects that he unleashes, which make the project appear like a mere excuse for him to show off his visual talents. That threat is only heightened by the fact that there’s little drama at first in the story. Chloé and Colin’s love suffers no hurdles as Colin’s wealth allows him to fix any problems that he or his friends might encounter. Everything is splendid, and the whole world, as Colin puts it later, “seems to smile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only as Colin and Chloé’s lives begin to unravel do the pieces of Gondry’s story start falling into place. Shortly after their wedding, the story takes a darker turn. It’s just beyond this point that their apartment begins to contract, and the color begins to fade from Gondry’s world. The film’s first half, it turns out, was just a particularly naïve fantasy within a world of make-believe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shift connects \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em> to Gondry’s otherwise wildly different, but just as fantastic, previous film, \u003cem>The We and the I\u003c/em>. That movie was set entirely on a Bronx public bus filled with students on their way home from high school. Apart from the sheer length of the trip, the film was a visually understated work of realism. Its journey, however, also took us from artifice to authenticity: It was only as some of the students began to vacate the bus, and social pressures slackened, that the remaining kids revealed their individuality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em>, Gondry is more interested in the physical plane than social relations. The world’s transformations in the film signal a shift from the feverish high of finding first love to the desperation of watching it pass away. The changes also, more specifically, reflect the depletion of Colin’s wealth. His money is represented in part by objects — by the inventions he builds and the extravagant meals he can afford — but Gondry is just as interested in how we imagine spaces differently depending on levels of affluence — wealth is open expanses and sunny days, poverty is cramped living and grey tones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much like Wes Anderson, particularly the recent Anderson of \u003cem>Moonrise Kingdom\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Grand Budapest Hotel\u003c/em>, Gondry here uses larger-than-life visuals to embellish and fill out one-dimensional characters, not as a form of compensation but as conscious choice in style. Their work shares a children’s-book quality, a sense of wonder, and a firm belief that there’s no metaphor that isn’t better off literal. In \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em>, Colin builds a pianocktail, a machine that fashions a unique cocktail based on whatever song you play on piano. And at one point, Nicolas ages eight years before our eyes from stress. It’s a universe that’s both rudimentary and futuristic: You get the sense that if this world had mobile phones, they would just be rotary phones that followed you around on wheels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gondry and Anderson are among the most creative directors making movies today, both working at the peak of their powers. There is a fundamental difference between the two artists, though. If Anderson’s movies are pristine, precise and methodically arranged, \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em> thrives on clutter and near-total loss of control. And that, in turn, is reflected in their differing worldviews. Like \u003cem>Moonrise Kingdom\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em> is at heart a moving love story, but it’s one with a markedly different underlying sentiment, one where the return of things to their natural order is never preordained. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. 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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only as Colin and Chloé’s lives begin to unravel do the pieces of Gondry’s story start falling into place. Shortly after their wedding, the story takes a darker turn. It’s just beyond this point that their apartment begins to contract, and the color begins to fade from Gondry’s world. The film’s first half, it turns out, was just a particularly naïve fantasy within a world of make-believe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shift connects \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em> to Gondry’s otherwise wildly different, but just as fantastic, previous film, \u003cem>The We and the I\u003c/em>. That movie was set entirely on a Bronx public bus filled with students on their way home from high school. Apart from the sheer length of the trip, the film was a visually understated work of realism. Its journey, however, also took us from artifice to authenticity: It was only as some of the students began to vacate the bus, and social pressures slackened, that the remaining kids revealed their individuality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em>, Gondry is more interested in the physical plane than social relations. The world’s transformations in the film signal a shift from the feverish high of finding first love to the desperation of watching it pass away. The changes also, more specifically, reflect the depletion of Colin’s wealth. His money is represented in part by objects — by the inventions he builds and the extravagant meals he can afford — but Gondry is just as interested in how we imagine spaces differently depending on levels of affluence — wealth is open expanses and sunny days, poverty is cramped living and grey tones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much like Wes Anderson, particularly the recent Anderson of \u003cem>Moonrise Kingdom\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Grand Budapest Hotel\u003c/em>, Gondry here uses larger-than-life visuals to embellish and fill out one-dimensional characters, not as a form of compensation but as conscious choice in style. Their work shares a children’s-book quality, a sense of wonder, and a firm belief that there’s no metaphor that isn’t better off literal. In \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em>, Colin builds a pianocktail, a machine that fashions a unique cocktail based on whatever song you play on piano. And at one point, Nicolas ages eight years before our eyes from stress. It’s a universe that’s both rudimentary and futuristic: You get the sense that if this world had mobile phones, they would just be rotary phones that followed you around on wheels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gondry and Anderson are among the most creative directors making movies today, both working at the peak of their powers. There is a fundamental difference between the two artists, though. If Anderson’s movies are pristine, precise and methodically arranged, \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em> thrives on clutter and near-total loss of control. And that, in turn, is reflected in their differing worldviews. Like \u003cem>Moonrise Kingdom\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Mood Indigo\u003c/em> is at heart a moving love story, but it’s one with a markedly different underlying sentiment, one where the return of things to their natural order is never preordained. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+%27Mood+Indigo%2C%27+A+Luscious+And+Literal+Feast+Of+Feeling&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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