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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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"disqusTitle": "What Were They Thinking: The Most Bizarre Musical Adaptations",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13029\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/carrie1.jpg\" alt=\"carrie\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/carrie1.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/carrie1-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Good news for anyone who loved the Oscar-winning film \u003cem>Shakespeare in Love\u003c/em>: the \u003ca href=\"http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/shakespeare-in-love-adapter-revels-in-rave-reviews-in-london\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recent musical adaptation\u003c/a> of the story of Shakespeare and his muse for \u003cem>Romeo and Juliet\u003c/em> is getting rave reviews in London. If you watched the original movie back in 1998 and thought, \"It's good, but what if the Bard had a power ballad explaining his feelings for Viola?\", then this is the musical for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the past few years, the silver screen has become the go-to source for theater producers looking to create a sure-fire musical hit. It makes sense; if audiences loved the movie, of course they'll love it on stage with a couple of chorus lines and catchy hooks thrown in. Some have been successful (\u003cem>Hairspray\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Producers\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Lion King\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Monty Python's Spamalot)\u003c/em>, while others\u003cem> \u003c/em>sound like SNL parodies or show tune hallucinations. Wouldn't you have loved to have been in the meeting where some brave composer said: \"You know what I could write a killer score for? That Stephen King movie about the girl soaked in pig blood at her prom. Her mother can sing a whole \"Dirty Pillows\" number. And, at the end, the destruction of the gym can be a piece of interpretive dance!\" Seriously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of our favorite odd musical adaptations, from supernatural feminist metaphors (\u003cem>The Witches of Eastwick\u003c/em>) to bungee jumping superheroes (\u003cem>Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark\u003c/em>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Witches of Eastwick\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT43o2uRG8E&list=PLNXSK9RU25sj4Q_AZaW_BCpjWX-GffkRm\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Irving's novel of magical happenings was adapted into a film in 1987 starring Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer as the titular witches. In 2000, composer Dana P. Rowe, lyricist John Dempsey and hit-making producer Cameron Mackintosh decided to take the story to the London stage. Five, six, seven, eight; spell, hex, curse, conjure JAZZ HANDS! This time, the witches were led by Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, with the devilish role portrayed in the film by Jack Nicholson going to \u003cem>Deadwood\u003c/em> actor Ian McShane. Problems surrounded the new production with rewrites, cast changes and special effects challenges, but the show has gone on to tour Europe and Australia (although never really becoming a hit with U.S. audiences). A musical about a polyamorous arrangement of witches and a gossipy small town chorus sounds like a good place to start. Unfortunatley, supernatural/horror elements never really worked in a musical setting, and don't even get us started on the infamous \"cherry-pit puking scene\" that made it into the show. Some things just shouldn't be sung about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Fearless Vampire Killers\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Out of all of Roman Polanski's films, 1967's \u003cem>The Fearless Vampire Killers\u003c/em> is probably the most appropriate for a musical adaptation (not that that means much; it's just a better choice than \u003cem>The Pianist\u003c/em> or \u003cem>Rosemary's Baby)\u003c/em>. The story of a 19th century professor hunting Eastern Europe for proof of vampires (and his eventual encounter with the bloodsuckers) was given a score by Jim Steinman and originally found success in Vienna in 1997. When the team tried to transfer the show to Broadway in 2002 (retitling it \u003cem>Dance of the Vampires\u003c/em>), the trouble began. Temperamental \u003cem>Phantom of the Opera\u003c/em> star Michael Crawford apparently insisted on changes to his Count character, and the horror or spoof question surrounding the tone of the show was never resolved. In the end, the musical looked and sounded like a Meatloaf music video and audiences stayed away. In addition to \u003cem>Dance of the Vampires, \u003c/em> adaptations of \u003cem>Dracula\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Interview with the Vampire\u003c/em> have also famously flopped on stage. Theater makers, take the hint; the undead are not musical material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Heathers\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/Gpad8LUEwsg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 1988 mean teen classic starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty first found its way to the stage in a 2010 concert and is closing off-Broadway this August after a five month run. The show kind of works because it \u003cem>gets\u003c/em> that turning a story about murder via Draino, faked gay suicide pacts and the sinister side of adolescence into a bunch of chipper show tunes is kind of ridiculous; composers and lyricists Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy are totally in on the joke. The original \u003cem>Heathers\u003c/em> was almost operatic in its insanity and songs like \"My Dead Gay Son\" make good use of some of the most quotable lines from the film. That said, it's still a totally absurd premise for a musical, but the score helps keep the irony and darkness front and center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Rocky\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7-qD7oa1K8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 1976 Academy Award-winning boxing classic \u003cem>Rocky\u003c/em> is known for a lot of things: great training montages, an underdog hero and stunning shots of Philly. What it's not known for is a particularly verbal or even enunciation-friendly leading man. The idea of mumbling, taken-one-too-many-punches-to-the-mouth Rocky singing a love ballad to Adrienne is laughable, although we can totally see Apollo Creed busting into song, since he was practically the James Brown of boxing. The adaption, originated in Hamburg in 2012 with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Thomas Meehan, is currently playing on Broadway. What works for the show is the athleticism in the choreography (jump ropes, for crying out loud!) and the fact that we get to hear \"Eye of the Tiger\" onstage. But the idea of Rocky Balboa singing is just too much. If we were going to turn a Stallone movie into a musical, our first choice would be \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105477/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!\u003c/em> \u003c/a>without a doubt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/4hiS2u9QCJg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Superheroes have a troubled history in musical theater (see notorious 1966 show and 1975 television special \u003cem>It's A Bird... It's A Plane... It's Superman\u003c/em>), but that didn't stop \u003cem>Lion King\u003c/em> director Julie Taymor and U2 composer and lyricists Bono and The Edge from trying to wring a few songs out of Spider-Man. The production is one of the most notorious in recent Broadway history; a year before opening, stunt disasters, rewrites, sky rocking budgets and the eventual dismissal of Taymor from the show all made the musical highly anticipated for all the wrong reasons. When the show finally opened in 2011, it had the distinction of having the most previews in Broadway history (182, to be exact) and was also the most expensive show ever produced for the Great White Way. While critics were dazzled by the stunts and Eiko Ishioka's costumes, everything else was blasted. Call me old fashioned, but the Green Goblin is so much less menacing when he's playing the piano.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Carrie\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/sYgRMHv68W4\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 1988, $8 million musical adaptation of \u003cem>Carrie\u003c/em> seems like a really bizarre idea, even in light of the cult status the blood-soaked flop has earned in subsequent revivals. \u003cem>Fame\u003c/em> composer and lyricist Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford wrote the score, Debbie Allen choreographed and legit diva Betty Buckley (the singer of \"Memory\" in \u003cem>Cats\u003c/em>) was cast as Carrie's religious fanatic mom, but not even those pros could turn the musical that never should have been into a hit. Critical response was negative and audiences were bewildered during the short 15 performance run; some performances ended with both boos and standing ovations. Some fun facts from the show: the original actress playing Carrie's mother in previews resigned from the show after nearly being decapitated by a set piece, a song about Carrie's period scare in the locker room was sadly cut in try-outs and the actresses that played Carrie through the productions almost were electrocuted multiple times when their mics shorted out after getting drenched with blood at the prom. No matter what may come, we're betting \u003cem>Carrie\u003c/em> will hold its spot as the most absurd musical adaptation ever (unless I finally get to produce my all-singing tribute to the sexual-compulsive film \u003cem>Shame\u003c/em> sometime in the next few years!).\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13029\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/carrie1.jpg\" alt=\"carrie\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/carrie1.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/carrie1-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Good news for anyone who loved the Oscar-winning film \u003cem>Shakespeare in Love\u003c/em>: the \u003ca href=\"http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/shakespeare-in-love-adapter-revels-in-rave-reviews-in-london\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recent musical adaptation\u003c/a> of the story of Shakespeare and his muse for \u003cem>Romeo and Juliet\u003c/em> is getting rave reviews in London. If you watched the original movie back in 1998 and thought, \"It's good, but what if the Bard had a power ballad explaining his feelings for Viola?\", then this is the musical for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the past few years, the silver screen has become the go-to source for theater producers looking to create a sure-fire musical hit. It makes sense; if audiences loved the movie, of course they'll love it on stage with a couple of chorus lines and catchy hooks thrown in. Some have been successful (\u003cem>Hairspray\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Producers\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Lion King\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Monty Python's Spamalot)\u003c/em>, while others\u003cem> \u003c/em>sound like SNL parodies or show tune hallucinations. Wouldn't you have loved to have been in the meeting where some brave composer said: \"You know what I could write a killer score for? That Stephen King movie about the girl soaked in pig blood at her prom. Her mother can sing a whole \"Dirty Pillows\" number. And, at the end, the destruction of the gym can be a piece of interpretive dance!\" Seriously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of our favorite odd musical adaptations, from supernatural feminist metaphors (\u003cem>The Witches of Eastwick\u003c/em>) to bungee jumping superheroes (\u003cem>Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark\u003c/em>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Witches of Eastwick\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\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/AT43o2uRG8E'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/AT43o2uRG8E'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>John Irving's novel of magical happenings was adapted into a film in 1987 starring Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer as the titular witches. In 2000, composer Dana P. Rowe, lyricist John Dempsey and hit-making producer Cameron Mackintosh decided to take the story to the London stage. Five, six, seven, eight; spell, hex, curse, conjure JAZZ HANDS! This time, the witches were led by Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, with the devilish role portrayed in the film by Jack Nicholson going to \u003cem>Deadwood\u003c/em> actor Ian McShane. Problems surrounded the new production with rewrites, cast changes and special effects challenges, but the show has gone on to tour Europe and Australia (although never really becoming a hit with U.S. audiences). A musical about a polyamorous arrangement of witches and a gossipy small town chorus sounds like a good place to start. Unfortunatley, supernatural/horror elements never really worked in a musical setting, and don't even get us started on the infamous \"cherry-pit puking scene\" that made it into the show. Some things just shouldn't be sung about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Fearless Vampire Killers\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Out of all of Roman Polanski's films, 1967's \u003cem>The Fearless Vampire Killers\u003c/em> is probably the most appropriate for a musical adaptation (not that that means much; it's just a better choice than \u003cem>The Pianist\u003c/em> or \u003cem>Rosemary's Baby)\u003c/em>. The story of a 19th century professor hunting Eastern Europe for proof of vampires (and his eventual encounter with the bloodsuckers) was given a score by Jim Steinman and originally found success in Vienna in 1997. When the team tried to transfer the show to Broadway in 2002 (retitling it \u003cem>Dance of the Vampires\u003c/em>), the trouble began. Temperamental \u003cem>Phantom of the Opera\u003c/em> star Michael Crawford apparently insisted on changes to his Count character, and the horror or spoof question surrounding the tone of the show was never resolved. In the end, the musical looked and sounded like a Meatloaf music video and audiences stayed away. In addition to \u003cem>Dance of the Vampires, \u003c/em> adaptations of \u003cem>Dracula\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Interview with the Vampire\u003c/em> have also famously flopped on stage. Theater makers, take the hint; the undead are not musical material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Heathers\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\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/Gpad8LUEwsg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Gpad8LUEwsg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The 1988 mean teen classic starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty first found its way to the stage in a 2010 concert and is closing off-Broadway this August after a five month run. The show kind of works because it \u003cem>gets\u003c/em> that turning a story about murder via Draino, faked gay suicide pacts and the sinister side of adolescence into a bunch of chipper show tunes is kind of ridiculous; composers and lyricists Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy are totally in on the joke. The original \u003cem>Heathers\u003c/em> was almost operatic in its insanity and songs like \"My Dead Gay Son\" make good use of some of the most quotable lines from the film. That said, it's still a totally absurd premise for a musical, but the score helps keep the irony and darkness front and center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Rocky\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\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/f7-qD7oa1K8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/f7-qD7oa1K8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The 1976 Academy Award-winning boxing classic \u003cem>Rocky\u003c/em> is known for a lot of things: great training montages, an underdog hero and stunning shots of Philly. What it's not known for is a particularly verbal or even enunciation-friendly leading man. The idea of mumbling, taken-one-too-many-punches-to-the-mouth Rocky singing a love ballad to Adrienne is laughable, although we can totally see Apollo Creed busting into song, since he was practically the James Brown of boxing. The adaption, originated in Hamburg in 2012 with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Thomas Meehan, is currently playing on Broadway. What works for the show is the athleticism in the choreography (jump ropes, for crying out loud!) and the fact that we get to hear \"Eye of the Tiger\" onstage. But the idea of Rocky Balboa singing is just too much. If we were going to turn a Stallone movie into a musical, our first choice would be \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105477/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!\u003c/em> \u003c/a>without a doubt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\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/4hiS2u9QCJg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/4hiS2u9QCJg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Superheroes have a troubled history in musical theater (see notorious 1966 show and 1975 television special \u003cem>It's A Bird... It's A Plane... It's Superman\u003c/em>), but that didn't stop \u003cem>Lion King\u003c/em> director Julie Taymor and U2 composer and lyricists Bono and The Edge from trying to wring a few songs out of Spider-Man. The production is one of the most notorious in recent Broadway history; a year before opening, stunt disasters, rewrites, sky rocking budgets and the eventual dismissal of Taymor from the show all made the musical highly anticipated for all the wrong reasons. When the show finally opened in 2011, it had the distinction of having the most previews in Broadway history (182, to be exact) and was also the most expensive show ever produced for the Great White Way. While critics were dazzled by the stunts and Eiko Ishioka's costumes, everything else was blasted. Call me old fashioned, but the Green Goblin is so much less menacing when he's playing the piano.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Carrie\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\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/sYgRMHv68W4'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/sYgRMHv68W4'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 1988, $8 million musical adaptation of \u003cem>Carrie\u003c/em> seems like a really bizarre idea, even in light of the cult status the blood-soaked flop has earned in subsequent revivals. \u003cem>Fame\u003c/em> composer and lyricist Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford wrote the score, Debbie Allen choreographed and legit diva Betty Buckley (the singer of \"Memory\" in \u003cem>Cats\u003c/em>) was cast as Carrie's religious fanatic mom, but not even those pros could turn the musical that never should have been into a hit. Critical response was negative and audiences were bewildered during the short 15 performance run; some performances ended with both boos and standing ovations. Some fun facts from the show: the original actress playing Carrie's mother in previews resigned from the show after nearly being decapitated by a set piece, a song about Carrie's period scare in the locker room was sadly cut in try-outs and the actresses that played Carrie through the productions almost were electrocuted multiple times when their mics shorted out after getting drenched with blood at the prom. No matter what may come, we're betting \u003cem>Carrie\u003c/em> will hold its spot as the most absurd musical adaptation ever (unless I finally get to produce my all-singing tribute to the sexual-compulsive film \u003cem>Shame\u003c/em> sometime in the next few years!).\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12995\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-12995\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/800px-Chicago_Comic_Con.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Wikipedia\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/800px-Chicago_Comic_Con.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/800px-Chicago_Comic_Con-400x267.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chicago_Comic_Con.jpg\">Wikipedia\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cstrong>By Kimra McPherson\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003ca href=\"www.comic-con.org\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cspan class=\"Hyperlink__Char\" style=\"color: #0000ff\">\u003cspan class=\"Hyperlink__Char\">Comic-Con International\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\">, the annual celebration of fan culture, is under way in San Diego. From the outside, it looks like a blur of costumes, superhero news, TV and movie gossip, and maybe a graphic novel or two. But there's plenty happening at Comic-Con that you wouldn't necessarily discover unless you entered nerddom's most hallowed halls. As a two-time veteran of Comic-Con (2008 and 2010), I've still only seen a sliver of the sprawling event, which continues to expand beyond the San Diego Convention Center walls and gobble up every hotel ballroom in its sights. But those trips were enough to discover these five essential things about Comic-Con that I wouldn't have known had I not experienced them for myself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-12996\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/comic-con-lines-360x270.jpg\" alt=\"comic-con lines\" width=\"360\" height=\"270\">A lot of Comic-Con is standing in lines.\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\"> Lines to get into the convention center. Lines to get into panel rooms. Lines to get free posters. Lines to buy stale pretzels. Lines to get things signed. Lines to get the shuttle back to the hotel (that is six blocks away). Lines that intersect in such complicated ways that there's a whole system of hallway crossings. Once, when I was trying to get into a \u003cem>Mystery Science Theater 3000\u003c/em> panel, security guards capped the official line — so then there was a line to get in line. But the lines aren't all bad. They're where some of the best socializing happens — since once you get inside a panel room, you're mostly not talking — and there can be a \"we're all in this together\" vibe, a collective realization that waiting for hours to see famous people very far away talk about a movie you haven't seen yet is kind of dumb, but you're all going to do it anyway.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">Comic-Con programming reveals any gulf between something's perceived popularity and its actual fan support.\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\"> Granted, Comic-Con doesn't cater to every audience, so it's not a representative sample. But it's still interesting when something in a smaller room draws three times the crowd that can actually fit inside, or when something in one of the huge rooms barely gets warm bodies in half the seats. It can be a first sign that a once-beloved property is dying or that a previously ignored one has suddenly grabbed a new audience. A couple of years ago, many of the biggest TV shows got showcases in the Con's largest hall, a sign of TV's cultural ascendency (or, just a sign that it wasn't a great year for movies). It's not a perfect cultural barometer, but it's a pretty good survey of those most inclined to be obsessive when they love something.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">You have to sit through a lot of things you don't care about just to get to the one you do. \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\">Let's say the one thing you want to do, more than anything, is to see the panel for \u003cem>True Blood\u003c/em> (this year, Saturday at 5 pm). Because of the aforementioned lines — and because once you're in a room, you've got your seat for the day, since nobody kicks the crowd out between sessions — the only way to guarantee your spot is to get in early. The price of your coveted Ballroom 20 seat? Sitting through panels on things you might not even enjoy, like \u003cem>American Dad\u003c/em> or \u003cem>Grimm\u003c/em>. That said, ballroom-squatting is where some of the best discovery at Comic-Con happens. Since you can't really leave, you might as well find your new favorite thing while you wait for your old favorite thing to take the stage.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-12997\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/klingon-takeover--270x360.jpg\" alt=\"klingon takeover\" width=\"270\" height=\"360\">If you don't know what it is, it's probably marketing. \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\">Foam people floating in the sky? Marketing. Rubber wristbands with mysterious initials on them? Marketing. Guys wearing Secret Service-looking suits and earpieces handing out manilla envelopes with codes in them? Marketing. Street sign in Klingon? Marketing. Random obstacle course in a hotel courtyard? Marketing. Novelty food truck? \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Definitely\u003c/span> marketing. For what? Who knows. By the end of any four-day stint at Comic-Con, I could probably only understand 30% of the stuff that got handed to me on the street.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">There are multiple Comic-Cons within Comic-Con.\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\"> When I was preparing for my first Comic-Con, I encountered a lot of think pieces lamenting the evolution of the Con into a promotional vehicle for television and movies. The cry would come: \"But where are the \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">comics\u003c/span>?\" But oh, the comics are still there. They're just one element of many Cons-within-a-Con: Comics people. Gamers. Cosplay-ers. Fans of all vampire things. Indie artists. Nerd-comedy TV people. Sci-fi TV people. Animated TV people. Steampunks. Gleeks. Everyone's there together in one weird mixed-up soup of fandom — and that's one of the things that makes Comic-Con special.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12995\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-12995\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/800px-Chicago_Comic_Con.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Wikipedia\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/800px-Chicago_Comic_Con.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/800px-Chicago_Comic_Con-400x267.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chicago_Comic_Con.jpg\">Wikipedia\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cstrong>By Kimra McPherson\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003ca href=\"www.comic-con.org\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cspan class=\"Hyperlink__Char\" style=\"color: #0000ff\">\u003cspan class=\"Hyperlink__Char\">Comic-Con International\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\">, the annual celebration of fan culture, is under way in San Diego. From the outside, it looks like a blur of costumes, superhero news, TV and movie gossip, and maybe a graphic novel or two. But there's plenty happening at Comic-Con that you wouldn't necessarily discover unless you entered nerddom's most hallowed halls. As a two-time veteran of Comic-Con (2008 and 2010), I've still only seen a sliver of the sprawling event, which continues to expand beyond the San Diego Convention Center walls and gobble up every hotel ballroom in its sights. But those trips were enough to discover these five essential things about Comic-Con that I wouldn't have known had I not experienced them for myself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-12996\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/comic-con-lines-360x270.jpg\" alt=\"comic-con lines\" width=\"360\" height=\"270\">A lot of Comic-Con is standing in lines.\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\"> Lines to get into the convention center. Lines to get into panel rooms. Lines to get free posters. Lines to buy stale pretzels. Lines to get things signed. Lines to get the shuttle back to the hotel (that is six blocks away). Lines that intersect in such complicated ways that there's a whole system of hallway crossings. Once, when I was trying to get into a \u003cem>Mystery Science Theater 3000\u003c/em> panel, security guards capped the official line — so then there was a line to get in line. But the lines aren't all bad. They're where some of the best socializing happens — since once you get inside a panel room, you're mostly not talking — and there can be a \"we're all in this together\" vibe, a collective realization that waiting for hours to see famous people very far away talk about a movie you haven't seen yet is kind of dumb, but you're all going to do it anyway.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">Comic-Con programming reveals any gulf between something's perceived popularity and its actual fan support.\u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\"> Granted, Comic-Con doesn't cater to every audience, so it's not a representative sample. But it's still interesting when something in a smaller room draws three times the crowd that can actually fit inside, or when something in one of the huge rooms barely gets warm bodies in half the seats. It can be a first sign that a once-beloved property is dying or that a previously ignored one has suddenly grabbed a new audience. A couple of years ago, many of the biggest TV shows got showcases in the Con's largest hall, a sign of TV's cultural ascendency (or, just a sign that it wasn't a great year for movies). It's not a perfect cultural barometer, but it's a pretty good survey of those most inclined to be obsessive when they love something.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"Normal\" style=\"color: #000000\">\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">You have to sit through a lot of things you don't care about just to get to the one you do. \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\">Let's say the one thing you want to do, more than anything, is to see the panel for \u003cem>True Blood\u003c/em> (this year, Saturday at 5 pm). Because of the aforementioned lines — and because once you're in a room, you've got your seat for the day, since nobody kicks the crowd out between sessions — the only way to guarantee your spot is to get in early. The price of your coveted Ballroom 20 seat? Sitting through panels on things you might not even enjoy, like \u003cem>American Dad\u003c/em> or \u003cem>Grimm\u003c/em>. That said, ballroom-squatting is where some of the best discovery at Comic-Con happens. Since you can't really leave, you might as well find your new favorite thing while you wait for your old favorite thing to take the stage.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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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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"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. 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",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\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>\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/38ugyccL5zU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/38ugyccL5zU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\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>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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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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"content": "\u003cp>Fittingly, one of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performances is in a movie about role-playing. The masterly actor mutters and growls his way through \u003cem>A Most Wanted Man\u003c/em> as a spy who’s simultaneously fighting two losing wars: against the West’s enemies as well as his own putative allies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Further deepening the movie’s ambiguity, the American actor plays a German in a story whose payoff is pungently anti-American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although set in Hamburg rather than London, this is familiar turf for John le Carre, whose 2008 novel is the movie’s source. Dutch-British director Anton Corbijn’s adaptation of \u003cem>A Most Wanted Man\u003c/em> is thematically linked to, and almost as good as, Tomas Alfredson’s film of Le Carre’s \u003cem>Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy\u003c/em>. Both are painstaking, rueful accounts of men who try to outthink a poisonously irrational world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/OUyYBrlF_W8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Le Carre placed the story in Hamburg because that’s where the 9/11 attacks were planned. The city has been on “high alert” ever since, an opening note explains. So the people who pay attention to mysterious newcomers are intrigued when a desperate-looking Chechen, Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), slinks out of the Elbe River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Word of his arrival quickly reaches Gunther Bachmann (Hoffman), who runs a secret counterintelligence unit whose operations are ostensibly banned by German law. In the mode of Peter Falk’s Columbo, Gunther is disheveled and seemingly impulsive, yet actually methodical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gunther begins by speaking German but quickly switches to accented English, an old Hollywood trick that works here because Hoffman and the movie’s other native Anglophones — notably Rachel McAdams and Willem Dafoe — don’t overplay the Teutonic inflections. Their tones never clash with those of Nina Hoss and Daniel Bruhl, actual German stars in supporting roles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The assumption is that Issa wants to contact Islamic terror cells in Hamburg. Instead, he moves in with some new acquaintances, who refer him to a human-rights lawyer, Annabel Richter (a blonde McAdams). After seeing Issa’s scars from Russian torture, Annabel begins an application for political asylum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out that Issa has the key to unlock a multimillion-euro inheritance from his hated father. The money is in a bank, run by Tommy Brue (Dafoe), whose operations are not strictly legal — just like Gunther’s. Issa wants to give the tainted legacy to respected Muslim pundit and philanthropist Dr. Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi). But Faisal himself may not be entirely legit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gunther plans to, as they say in paranoid thrillers, follow the money. But Berlin-based Dieter Mohr (Rainer Bock), who runs the country’s officially acknowledged counterterrorism group, would rather arrest Issa straightaway. Somewhere in between, it appears, is icy CIA agent Martha Sullivan (a brunette Robin Wright).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Gunther would prefer not to deal with American spies, Martha’s presence gives him more time to track Issa and Faisal. And Gunther and Martha develop a grudging rapport, illustrated by the way each offers the same half-ironic explanation for why they do the jobs they do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Condensed by Australian scripter Andrew Bovell (who’s probably best known for \u003cem>Lantana\u003c/em>), \u003cem>A Most Wanted Man\u003c/em> retains a cogent narrative and le Carre’s weary outlook. Rather than choke the narrative with details, the filmmakers keep the story lean while adding evocative visual and aural details.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corbijn, a former Brit-rock video maker, has a little fun by dropping Gang of Four’s “To Hell With Poverty” into a bar scene and giving a small role to soundtrack composer Herbert Gronemeyer. But the look of the movie, shot in Hamburg and Berlin locations by the great Benoit Delhomme, is serious and authentic. If \u003cem>A Most Wanted Man\u003c/em> is a parable, it’s one placed firmly in the real world. \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=%27A+Most+Wanted+Man%27%3A+A+Parable+Grounded+In+The+Real+World&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Fittingly, one of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performances is in a movie about role-playing. The masterly actor mutters and growls his way through \u003cem>A Most Wanted Man\u003c/em> as a spy who’s simultaneously fighting two losing wars: against the West’s enemies as well as his own putative allies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Further deepening the movie’s ambiguity, the American actor plays a German in a story whose payoff is pungently anti-American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although set in Hamburg rather than London, this is familiar turf for John le Carre, whose 2008 novel is the movie’s source. Dutch-British director Anton Corbijn’s adaptation of \u003cem>A Most Wanted Man\u003c/em> is thematically linked to, and almost as good as, Tomas Alfredson’s film of Le Carre’s \u003cem>Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy\u003c/em>. Both are painstaking, rueful accounts of men who try to outthink a poisonously irrational world.\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/OUyYBrlF_W8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/OUyYBrlF_W8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Le Carre placed the story in Hamburg because that’s where the 9/11 attacks were planned. The city has been on “high alert” ever since, an opening note explains. So the people who pay attention to mysterious newcomers are intrigued when a desperate-looking Chechen, Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), slinks out of the Elbe River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Word of his arrival quickly reaches Gunther Bachmann (Hoffman), who runs a secret counterintelligence unit whose operations are ostensibly banned by German law. In the mode of Peter Falk’s Columbo, Gunther is disheveled and seemingly impulsive, yet actually methodical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gunther begins by speaking German but quickly switches to accented English, an old Hollywood trick that works here because Hoffman and the movie’s other native Anglophones — notably Rachel McAdams and Willem Dafoe — don’t overplay the Teutonic inflections. Their tones never clash with those of Nina Hoss and Daniel Bruhl, actual German stars in supporting roles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The assumption is that Issa wants to contact Islamic terror cells in Hamburg. Instead, he moves in with some new acquaintances, who refer him to a human-rights lawyer, Annabel Richter (a blonde McAdams). After seeing Issa’s scars from Russian torture, Annabel begins an application for political asylum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out that Issa has the key to unlock a multimillion-euro inheritance from his hated father. The money is in a bank, run by Tommy Brue (Dafoe), whose operations are not strictly legal — just like Gunther’s. Issa wants to give the tainted legacy to respected Muslim pundit and philanthropist Dr. Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi). But Faisal himself may not be entirely legit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gunther plans to, as they say in paranoid thrillers, follow the money. But Berlin-based Dieter Mohr (Rainer Bock), who runs the country’s officially acknowledged counterterrorism group, would rather arrest Issa straightaway. Somewhere in between, it appears, is icy CIA agent Martha Sullivan (a brunette Robin Wright).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Gunther would prefer not to deal with American spies, Martha’s presence gives him more time to track Issa and Faisal. And Gunther and Martha develop a grudging rapport, illustrated by the way each offers the same half-ironic explanation for why they do the jobs they do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Condensed by Australian scripter Andrew Bovell (who’s probably best known for \u003cem>Lantana\u003c/em>), \u003cem>A Most Wanted Man\u003c/em> retains a cogent narrative and le Carre’s weary outlook. Rather than choke the narrative with details, the filmmakers keep the story lean while adding evocative visual and aural details.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corbijn, a former Brit-rock video maker, has a little fun by dropping Gang of Four’s “To Hell With Poverty” into a bar scene and giving a small role to soundtrack composer Herbert Gronemeyer. But the look of the movie, shot in Hamburg and Berlin locations by the great Benoit Delhomme, is serious and authentic. If \u003cem>A Most Wanted Man\u003c/em> is a parable, it’s one placed firmly in the real world. \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=%27A+Most+Wanted+Man%27%3A+A+Parable+Grounded+In+The+Real+World&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "revisiting-an-endless-summer-50-years-later",
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"content": "\u003cp>“This is Bruce Brown, thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed my film.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That line, sounding a little like a proud eighth-grader closing out a book report he felt was particularly insightful, is the last piece of narration in the landmark 1964 surfing film \u003cem>The Endless Summer \u003c/em>(which didn’t receive its nationwide theatrical release until 1966). It’s a little amateurish, eye-rollingly hokey, and yet irresistibly endearing in its aw-shucks wholesome sincerity. It’s those qualities that have allowed the film to improbably endure as the most influential adventure sports documentary ever made, and warrant another \u003ca href=\"http://www.montereymedia.com/theatrical/contracts/endlesssummer/contracts/endlesssummer_locations.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">limited theatrical run\u003c/a> in a few dozen theaters nationwide to celebrate a half-century since it first screened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139529\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 710px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946.jpg\" alt=\"After the film's success,<em> </em>director Bruce Brown (pictured above during filming) directed four additional documentaries, including a sequel<em> </em>-- <em>The</em> <em>Endless Summer II</em>.\" width=\"710\" height=\"532\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139529\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946.jpg 710w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946-400x299.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 710px) 100vw, 710px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After the film’s success,\u003cem> \u003c/em>director Bruce Brown (pictured above during filming) directed four additional documentaries, including a sequel\u003cem> \u003c/em>— \u003cem>The\u003c/em> \u003cem>Endless Summer II\u003c/em>. \u003ccite>(Monterey Media Inc)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Documentaries about sports like surfing, skiing, snow and skateboarding, or mountain climbing are a niche market, often screened only at specialized film festivals before living out their existences being played in the background at ski lodges or in the homes of enthusiasts. \u003cem>Endless Summer\u003c/em> didn’t invent the genre, but it was unique in its huge crossover appeal, sparking popular interest in surf culture that has endured at the movies ever since, whether in direct descendants like the 2003 documentary \u003cem>Step into Liquid\u003c/em> (directed by Brown’s son, Dana), or Keanu Reeves’ undercover surfing “EFF…BEE…EYE…Agent!” in 1991’s \u003cem>Point Break\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the surfing movies that rode \u003cem>Endless Summer\u003c/em>‘s wake presented surfing as the apotheosis of living-on-the-edge cool, with ripped dudes and lean ladies speaking a language all their own while devoting their days to the romantic pursuit of the perfect wave. (Spoiler alert: Brown & Co. found it while filming the movie in 1963, and it’s in South Africa.) But \u003cem>Endless Summer\u003c/em> has none of that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Its primary subjects, Mike Hynson and Robert August — the two world-class surfers Brown takes on a trip around the world trying to follow summer all year round — are as clean-cut and full of all-American innocence as Wally and the Beaver. They’re about as dangerous as Cub Scouts. In one sequence, they’re so nervous and clumsy around a bikini-clad surfer in Australia that they can barely keep upright on their boards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The image of laconic stoner cool surrounding surf culture — as inescapable as the cloud of smoke inside Jeff Spicoli’s van — is nowhere to be found in the film either. Mike and Robert are unreserved enthusiasts, though we never get to hear them speak. Brown only had cash enough for reels and reels of 16mm film and for travel, room and board for the minimal production. Sound recording was an unnecessary luxury for a film that was all about the visual wonder of people doing their best real-world approximation of walking on water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make up for the lack of location audio, Brown fills the film with two sounds. The first is the wall-to-wall music, mostly prototypical sunny surf rock from a band called The Sandals, along with a smattering of jazz, brassy fanfares (usually for the more dangerous beaches), and some local African music during the portions on that continent. The second is Brown himself, delivering a nonstop narration that veers from the stiff tone of ’60s educational reels to filling in the dialogue we can’t hear being said onscreen, to corny jokes that only a dad could be proud of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there’s anything hopelessly dated about the film, it’s that narration. At best, Brown imparts a solid background on surfing terms and techniques. More cringe-worthy are his references to a flotation device worn by one young boy as a growth on his back, or the exaggerated winking behind calling a bikini top a “chest protector.” Worst of all is the mortifying treatment of the locals in Senegal and Ghana, which includes an unironic and gleeful fascination with their perceived primitivism, and lines like, “Being good Africans, they threw a few rocks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139530\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 769px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339.jpg\" alt=\"Robert August hits some waves off the coast of South Africa in <em>The Endless Summer </em>(1966). The film went on to inspire surfing communities all over the world.\" width=\"769\" height=\"577\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339.jpg 769w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 769px) 100vw, 769px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robert August hits some waves off the coast of South Africa in \u003cem>The Endless Summer \u003c/em>(1966). The film went on to inspire surfing communities all over the world. \u003ccite>(Monterey Media Inc)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Brown is so affable that it’s tempting to endure such offenses the way one does with a sweet older relative with an unfortunate tendency to spout off occasional casual bursts of racism. You mumble something uncomfortably to the friend you brought home with you for Christmas about how she grew up in a different time, and then shift the conversation as quickly as possible to how good her snickerdoodles are. The moment is still an uncomfortable one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cookies here would be all the fantastic footage of Mike and Robert catching waves at beaches from Hawaii to Africa to Australia, to Tahiti, to California. While it might not be as crisp or close-up as more modern efforts, Brown has an eye for making beach-bound shots of the surfers mesmerizing, and is especially adept at employing magic-hour lighting to enhance the romance of his wandering, globe-hopping project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Endless Summer\u003c/em> serves as an effective template for adventure sports docs for decades to follow by effectively rendering his soundtrack irrelevant. As with a great silent film, one gets the picture just by watching the pictures, and the film is as good with the sound off as it is with it on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the key to its endurance; it’s part surfing film, part travelogue, occasionally even anthropological study and wildlife film, but ultimately it visually taps into the wanderlust that sends us to far-flung beaches in search of an escape from life that we can’t find at home. We don’t have to be surfing experts who can appreciate Mike and Robert’s technique, or know which new part of the globe they’re wave-hunting in. But when they balance on a board on a perfectly curling wave, they’re a portrait of the balance and serenity we all seek from the ideal summer vacation. \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=Revisiting+An+%27Endless+Summer%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "While corny and dated and even offensive in places, the seminal surfing film \u003cem>The Endless Summer, \u003c/em>now getting a 50th anniversary re-release, remains a rich visual exploration of the freedom of a wave.",
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"title": "Revisiting an 'Endless Summer' 50 Years Later | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“This is Bruce Brown, thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed my film.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That line, sounding a little like a proud eighth-grader closing out a book report he felt was particularly insightful, is the last piece of narration in the landmark 1964 surfing film \u003cem>The Endless Summer \u003c/em>(which didn’t receive its nationwide theatrical release until 1966). It’s a little amateurish, eye-rollingly hokey, and yet irresistibly endearing in its aw-shucks wholesome sincerity. It’s those qualities that have allowed the film to improbably endure as the most influential adventure sports documentary ever made, and warrant another \u003ca href=\"http://www.montereymedia.com/theatrical/contracts/endlesssummer/contracts/endlesssummer_locations.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">limited theatrical run\u003c/a> in a few dozen theaters nationwide to celebrate a half-century since it first screened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139529\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 710px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946.jpg\" alt=\"After the film's success,<em> </em>director Bruce Brown (pictured above during filming) directed four additional documentaries, including a sequel<em> </em>-- <em>The</em> <em>Endless Summer II</em>.\" width=\"710\" height=\"532\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139529\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946.jpg 710w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946-400x299.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-1-e1d352d361c49d67b75e8f9b9f6ec74f64dec946-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 710px) 100vw, 710px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After the film’s success,\u003cem> \u003c/em>director Bruce Brown (pictured above during filming) directed four additional documentaries, including a sequel\u003cem> \u003c/em>— \u003cem>The\u003c/em> \u003cem>Endless Summer II\u003c/em>. \u003ccite>(Monterey Media Inc)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Documentaries about sports like surfing, skiing, snow and skateboarding, or mountain climbing are a niche market, often screened only at specialized film festivals before living out their existences being played in the background at ski lodges or in the homes of enthusiasts. \u003cem>Endless Summer\u003c/em> didn’t invent the genre, but it was unique in its huge crossover appeal, sparking popular interest in surf culture that has endured at the movies ever since, whether in direct descendants like the 2003 documentary \u003cem>Step into Liquid\u003c/em> (directed by Brown’s son, Dana), or Keanu Reeves’ undercover surfing “EFF…BEE…EYE…Agent!” in 1991’s \u003cem>Point Break\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the surfing movies that rode \u003cem>Endless Summer\u003c/em>‘s wake presented surfing as the apotheosis of living-on-the-edge cool, with ripped dudes and lean ladies speaking a language all their own while devoting their days to the romantic pursuit of the perfect wave. (Spoiler alert: Brown & Co. found it while filming the movie in 1963, and it’s in South Africa.) But \u003cem>Endless Summer\u003c/em> has none of that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Its primary subjects, Mike Hynson and Robert August — the two world-class surfers Brown takes on a trip around the world trying to follow summer all year round — are as clean-cut and full of all-American innocence as Wally and the Beaver. They’re about as dangerous as Cub Scouts. In one sequence, they’re so nervous and clumsy around a bikini-clad surfer in Australia that they can barely keep upright on their boards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The image of laconic stoner cool surrounding surf culture — as inescapable as the cloud of smoke inside Jeff Spicoli’s van — is nowhere to be found in the film either. Mike and Robert are unreserved enthusiasts, though we never get to hear them speak. Brown only had cash enough for reels and reels of 16mm film and for travel, room and board for the minimal production. Sound recording was an unnecessary luxury for a film that was all about the visual wonder of people doing their best real-world approximation of walking on water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make up for the lack of location audio, Brown fills the film with two sounds. The first is the wall-to-wall music, mostly prototypical sunny surf rock from a band called The Sandals, along with a smattering of jazz, brassy fanfares (usually for the more dangerous beaches), and some local African music during the portions on that continent. The second is Brown himself, delivering a nonstop narration that veers from the stiff tone of ’60s educational reels to filling in the dialogue we can’t hear being said onscreen, to corny jokes that only a dad could be proud of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there’s anything hopelessly dated about the film, it’s that narration. At best, Brown imparts a solid background on surfing terms and techniques. More cringe-worthy are his references to a flotation device worn by one young boy as a growth on his back, or the exaggerated winking behind calling a bikini top a “chest protector.” Worst of all is the mortifying treatment of the locals in Senegal and Ghana, which includes an unironic and gleeful fascination with their perceived primitivism, and lines like, “Being good Africans, they threw a few rocks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139530\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 769px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339.jpg\" alt=\"Robert August hits some waves off the coast of South Africa in <em>The Endless Summer </em>(1966). The film went on to inspire surfing communities all over the world.\" width=\"769\" height=\"577\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339.jpg 769w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/endless-5-71dda1600b8aed1ee3d7e447756e7d6416fee339-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 769px) 100vw, 769px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robert August hits some waves off the coast of South Africa in \u003cem>The Endless Summer \u003c/em>(1966). The film went on to inspire surfing communities all over the world. \u003ccite>(Monterey Media Inc)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Brown is so affable that it’s tempting to endure such offenses the way one does with a sweet older relative with an unfortunate tendency to spout off occasional casual bursts of racism. You mumble something uncomfortably to the friend you brought home with you for Christmas about how she grew up in a different time, and then shift the conversation as quickly as possible to how good her snickerdoodles are. The moment is still an uncomfortable one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cookies here would be all the fantastic footage of Mike and Robert catching waves at beaches from Hawaii to Africa to Australia, to Tahiti, to California. While it might not be as crisp or close-up as more modern efforts, Brown has an eye for making beach-bound shots of the surfers mesmerizing, and is especially adept at employing magic-hour lighting to enhance the romance of his wandering, globe-hopping project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Endless Summer\u003c/em> serves as an effective template for adventure sports docs for decades to follow by effectively rendering his soundtrack irrelevant. As with a great silent film, one gets the picture just by watching the pictures, and the film is as good with the sound off as it is with it on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the key to its endurance; it’s part surfing film, part travelogue, occasionally even anthropological study and wildlife film, but ultimately it visually taps into the wanderlust that sends us to far-flung beaches in search of an escape from life that we can’t find at home. We don’t have to be surfing experts who can appreciate Mike and Robert’s technique, or know which new part of the globe they’re wave-hunting in. But when they balance on a board on a perfectly curling wave, they’re a portrait of the balance and serenity we all seek from the ideal summer vacation. \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=Revisiting+An+%27Endless+Summer%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Ripped From the Headlines at S.F. Jewish Film Festival",
"headTitle": "Ripped From the Headlines at S.F. Jewish Film Festival | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The Gaza war is a tragedy, a pointless and destructive clash whose only lasting effect will be to increase the suffering of civilians. That’s my perspective; you have yours. This isn’t a political blog, clearly, but I have to acknowledge what’s happening in the real world before I can talk about filmic representations of reality and our responses to those representations. Now imagine the meetings in the last week among the programmers of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The SFJFF, opening tonight and continuing through August 10 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Oakland and San Rafael, is the first, largest and most liberal Jewish film festival in the country. Although it’s not as willfully provocative as it was in its radical youth, SFJFF consistently maintains the progressive values of compassion and justice that the Bay Area has long embodied. One way that shows up onscreen is the perennial inclusion of movies that acknowledge Palestinians are human beings with rights. That’s a radical attitude to some people — a provocation — and the SFJFF has taken a good deal of heat for it over the years. Even in “peaceful” years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I would think the SFJFF brain trust would prefer that the festival not take place in the middle of a war, a crisis that compels bystanders to take sides and to question the loyalty of anyone who remains in the rational, reasonable middle (or expresses empathy for the losses endured on the other side). On the other hand, this festival has always held itself up as a place of discussion and debate, where views beyond the American Israel Public Affairs Committee mission statement get a hearing. (That’s one reason the festival has attracted a following among Jews who aren’t connected to synagogues and other Jewish institutions. I almost said “traditional” Jewish institutions, but after 34 years the SFJFF has achieved the status of an institution.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The upshot is that the war will impel audiences to engage with the films on a more visceral and more meaningful level, and the festival brass will welcome (or at least accommodate) the rise in temperature. The stakes are higher, if you will; real life trumps academic and hypothetical arguments. That’s human nature. But let’s not forget that the “normal” state of affairs between Israel and the Palestinians is anything but placid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, can we talk about movies now? You can see more about the films or buy tickets by clicking on the film titles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139464\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince.jpg\" alt=\"The Green Prince; Photo courtesy Music Box Films/San Francisco Jewish Film Festival\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139464\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>The Green Prince\u003c/i>; Photo courtesy Music Box Films\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>In the opening night slot, where festivals typically seek out un-challenging, crowd-pleasing narratives to set an innocuous tone, SFJFF programmed Nadav Schirman’s nonfiction nail-biter, \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82375~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>The Green Prince\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Based on the memoir \u003cem>Son of Hamas\u003c/em>, the documentary recreates the clandestine dealings between the son of a Hamas leader and the Israeli intelligence agent who he funneled information to about imminent suicide bombings and other attacks. The relationship between the two men came to transcend their respective loyalties, and this feel-good aspect, presumably, persuaded programmers to make it the curtain raiser. Alas, peaceful coexistence is a remote concept at the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139465\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation.jpg\" alt=\"Zero Motivation; Photo courtesy Zeitgeist Films\" width=\"640\" height=\"357\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139465\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation-400x223.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation-300x167.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Zero Motivation\u003c/i>; Photo courtesy Zeitgeist Films\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Date Film\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Israeli filmmaker Talya Lavie developed her acerbic and piercing debut, \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82409~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Zero Motivation\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, at the Sundance Lab, and it boasts a stronger structure and more coherent vision than most indies. With a sharp intelligence, the film depicts the escapades and rivalries of the low-level female desk jockeys at a nowheresville military base. Lavie zings darts at sacred cows and underdogs alike, pitching her movie somewhere between a smart chick flick and a satire of military intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139467\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky.jpg\" alt=\"Watchers of the Sky; Photo courtesy Music Box Films\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139467\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Watchers of the Sky\u003c/i>; Photo courtesy Music Box Films\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Your Conscience Is Calling\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>The most important film in the entire lineup, hands down, is \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82408~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Watchers of the Sky\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Edet Belzberg’s meditative documentary about the “inventor” of genocide (Viennese Jew Raphael Lemkin, who developed the concept, invented the word and lobbied and labored the UN for years to codify its legal ramifications) and his contemporary successors in the thankless field of bringing mass murderers to justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139468\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen.jpg\" alt=\"Magic Men\" width=\"640\" height=\"422\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139468\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen-400x263.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen-300x197.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Magic Men\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Fathers and Sons\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Israeli directors Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor combine a couple of every filmmaker’s favorite subjects, estranged families and road trips, in the enjoyable, picturesque and occasionally moving \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82386~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Magic Men\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. A widowed baker returns to his Greek birthplace after many years, accompanied against his will by his despised Hasidic son. This soulful film largely evades the potholes of clichés, including the hooker with a heart of gold (and a young son).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139470\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies.jpg\" alt=\"A Life in Dirty Movies\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139470\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>A Life in Dirty Movies\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Sex On Camera\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Joseph W. Sarno wrote and directed dozens of arty soft-core movies in the 1960s and ‘70s before hardcore and home video killed off the grindhouses. Peggy Steffans horrified her upper-middle-class Jewish parents by acting in a few of those films and marrying the director. Swedish filmmaker Wiktor Ericsson’s \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82384~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>A Life In Dirty Movies\u003c/em>\u003c/a> profiles an uncommonly candid couple, and fills in a fascinating chapter in film history. David Cairns and Paul Duane do the same for Bernard Natan, a Romanian Jew who became a leading producer of French silent films and turned Pathé into a major studio in the 1930s before the bottom fell out. \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82389~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Natan\u003c/em>\u003c/a> introduces and rehabilitates a profoundly tragic figure, whose reputation continues to be sullied by the charge that he performed in pornographic films in the ‘20s. (\u003cem>Natan\u003c/em> actually contains more explicit images than \u003cem>A Life in Dirty Movies\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139471\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico.jpg\" alt=\"El Critico\" width=\"640\" height=\"256\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139471\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico-400x160.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico-300x120.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>El Critico\u003c/i>; Photo courtesy Music Box Films\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Everyone’s a Critic\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82370~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>El Critico\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, another title of special interest to film lovers yet accessible to all, follows a divorced, morose Argentine film critic through his dreary existence, which consists mostly of watching and eviscerating insipid mainstream Hollywood movies. First-time director Hernán Guerschuny has fun mocking the conventions of romantic comedies before employing them to portray the critic’s own out-of-the-blue love affair. Perfectly passable entertainment, even if it flags in the middle and only contains one fleeting bit of Jewish relevance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139472\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie.jpg\" alt=\"Soft Vengeance\" width=\"640\" height=\"453\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139472\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie-400x283.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie-300x212.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Justice League\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>East Bay filmmaker Abby Ginzberg, an attorney turned documentary maker, delivers her most accomplished work to date with \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82397~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. This deeply inspiring film profiles the principled, primary legal mind of the African National Congress, who eventually became one of the original justices of the Constitutional Court created after apartheid. If you think lawyers aren’t compelling enough to carry a movie, consider that he was targeted for assassination by car bomb (he lost an arm) by the South African government while in exile in neighboring Mozambique. Sachs’ response at the time couldn’t be more applicable to the Israeli-Palestinian situation: “An eye for an eye, and an arm for an arm. Is that what freedom means? The idea fills me with anguish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139473\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba.jpg\" alt=\"Havana Cuba\" width=\"640\" height=\"425\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba-400x265.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Havana Curveball\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Suitable for Children, and Everyone Else\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>As his bar mitzvah approached, San Franciscan Mica Jarmel-Schneider decided to collect and send baseball equipment to Cuba as a social-justice project. \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82377~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Havana Curveball\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (a world premiere) follows his ever-expanding campaign, which ultimately led to the island to guarantee delivery of the gear. Mica’s savvy filmmaker parents, Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider, go beyond simplistic platitudes to convey the disappointments that can accompany doing the right thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139474\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele.jpg\" alt=\"Mamele\" width=\"640\" height=\"494\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139474\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele-400x308.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele-300x231.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Mamele\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>You Say Schlemiel, I Say Shlemazel\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Even if you know nothing about Yiddish culture, here are words to live by: Anything with Molly Picon is worth seeing. \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82387~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Mamele\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Joseph Green’s marvelous comic melodrama finds the vastly talented actress taking care of her underemployed, unappreciative siblings and father. Made in Poland in 1938, when life was terrible for Jews and about to get unimaginably worse, \u003cem>Mamele\u003c/em> screens in a new restoration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139475\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel.jpg\" alt=\"Theodore Bikel\" width=\"640\" height=\"423\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139475\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel-400x264.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel-300x198.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Theodore Bikel: In the Footsteps of Sholem Aleichem\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>A Little Night Music\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>The singer and actor Theodore Bikel, who played Tevye in hundreds of performances of \u003cem>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/em>, comes to town to receive the SFJFF’s annual Freedom of Expression Award. The 90-year-old legend is going to sing a tune and perhaps recite a poem or text, showcasing the gifts on display in \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82403~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Theodore Bikel: In the Footsteps of Sholem Aleichem\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. John Lollos’ performance-packed doc, receiving its world premiere at the festival, is destined to have a long life — as long or longer than Bikel’s, God willing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139477\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond.jpg\" alt=\"Above and Beyond\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139477\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond-400x266.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Above and Beyond: The Birth of the Israeli Air Force\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Politically Incorrect\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Somehow I’ve managed to get this far without mentioning the films that are likely to provoke the most complicated responses from audiences. Local filmmakers Judith Montell and Emmy Scharlatt’s \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82379~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>In the Image: Palestinian Women Capture the Occupation\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (receiving its world premiere) shows us the occupied West Bank and the indefensible behavior of settlers and soldiers. Our guides are ordinary women, whom we may have assumed in a patriarchal society only take care of the household and the children. Provided with camcorders and training by an Israeli human-rights organization, they discover their power, and the cost. Infuriating and tough to watch at times, \u003cem>In the Image\u003c/em> represents the strongest indictment of the occupation in the festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another world premiere, Peter Cohn’s \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82378~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Holy Land: A Year in the West Bank\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, is less incendiary for the simple reason that it doesn’t expose an injustice or advance a particular point of view. Its Palestinian and Israeli subjects, although inevitably political, are primarily interested in raising their families and pursuing their ambitions without violence or disruption. As a result, this always-interesting but only occasionally controversial four-season slice of life should have a life beyond the war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unabashed, unambiguous supporters of Israel will have an unreservedly good time at \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82362~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Above and Beyond: The Birth of the Israeli Air Force\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Roberta Grossman’s immensely well-crafted follow-up to \u003cem>Hava Nagila\u003c/em>. This vivid, adventure-steeped doc is propelled by colorful and occasional bawdy anecdotes by (mostly) Jewish-American World War II vets who stepped up when the newly declared state of Israel needed to defend itself from its Arab neighbors in 1948. (The late father of Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, was one of those stalwart pilots.) Although their film evokes a strong sense of pride in Jewish viewers, Grossman and producer Nancy Spielberg pointedly mention that Israel’s War of Independence was the Palestinians’ Al-Nakba (Catastrophe). Somehow I don’t think AIPAC will be happy about that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139478\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie.jpg\" alt=\"Little White Lie\" width=\"640\" height=\"358\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139478\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie-400x223.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie-300x167.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Little White Lie\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Some of My Best Friends Are Jewish\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>It goes without saying that Jewish identity, in all its forms, is one of SFJFF’s overriding themes. The world premiere of Lacey Schwartz’s first-person documentary, \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82385~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Little White Lie\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, closes the festival with an utterly unique angle on the topic. Raised Jewish by Jewish parents in Woodstock, New York, Schwartz didn’t suspect until high school that she had a black parent. It’s pretty obvious to the viewer from all the childhood pictures the filmmaker includes, so the film becomes an investigation of two mysteries: Who is her father, and why didn’t her parents talk about it for most of Schwartz’s life? \u003cem>Little White Lie\u003c/em> is a bizarrely fascinating tale (truth is stranger than fiction, yet again) but only superficially considers how Jewish and black (respectively) culture and identity manifest themselves in one individual. The bigger missed opportunity, though, is expanding the scope of the film to bridge the black and Jewish communities. Then again, perhaps I have an unusual craving at the moment for amity, understanding and alliance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 24 through August 10, 2104 at various Bay Area locations. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfjff.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit sfjff.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The Gaza war revives the perpetual conundrum: Do movies help us face reality? Or avoid it? ",
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"title": "Ripped From the Headlines at S.F. Jewish Film Festival | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Gaza war is a tragedy, a pointless and destructive clash whose only lasting effect will be to increase the suffering of civilians. That’s my perspective; you have yours. This isn’t a political blog, clearly, but I have to acknowledge what’s happening in the real world before I can talk about filmic representations of reality and our responses to those representations. Now imagine the meetings in the last week among the programmers of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The SFJFF, opening tonight and continuing through August 10 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Oakland and San Rafael, is the first, largest and most liberal Jewish film festival in the country. Although it’s not as willfully provocative as it was in its radical youth, SFJFF consistently maintains the progressive values of compassion and justice that the Bay Area has long embodied. One way that shows up onscreen is the perennial inclusion of movies that acknowledge Palestinians are human beings with rights. That’s a radical attitude to some people — a provocation — and the SFJFF has taken a good deal of heat for it over the years. Even in “peaceful” years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I would think the SFJFF brain trust would prefer that the festival not take place in the middle of a war, a crisis that compels bystanders to take sides and to question the loyalty of anyone who remains in the rational, reasonable middle (or expresses empathy for the losses endured on the other side). On the other hand, this festival has always held itself up as a place of discussion and debate, where views beyond the American Israel Public Affairs Committee mission statement get a hearing. (That’s one reason the festival has attracted a following among Jews who aren’t connected to synagogues and other Jewish institutions. I almost said “traditional” Jewish institutions, but after 34 years the SFJFF has achieved the status of an institution.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The upshot is that the war will impel audiences to engage with the films on a more visceral and more meaningful level, and the festival brass will welcome (or at least accommodate) the rise in temperature. The stakes are higher, if you will; real life trumps academic and hypothetical arguments. That’s human nature. But let’s not forget that the “normal” state of affairs between Israel and the Palestinians is anything but placid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, can we talk about movies now? You can see more about the films or buy tickets by clicking on the film titles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139464\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince.jpg\" alt=\"The Green Prince; Photo courtesy Music Box Films/San Francisco Jewish Film Festival\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139464\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/greenprince-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>The Green Prince\u003c/i>; Photo courtesy Music Box Films\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>In the opening night slot, where festivals typically seek out un-challenging, crowd-pleasing narratives to set an innocuous tone, SFJFF programmed Nadav Schirman’s nonfiction nail-biter, \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82375~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>The Green Prince\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Based on the memoir \u003cem>Son of Hamas\u003c/em>, the documentary recreates the clandestine dealings between the son of a Hamas leader and the Israeli intelligence agent who he funneled information to about imminent suicide bombings and other attacks. The relationship between the two men came to transcend their respective loyalties, and this feel-good aspect, presumably, persuaded programmers to make it the curtain raiser. Alas, peaceful coexistence is a remote concept at the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139465\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation.jpg\" alt=\"Zero Motivation; Photo courtesy Zeitgeist Films\" width=\"640\" height=\"357\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139465\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation-400x223.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/zeromotivation-300x167.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Zero Motivation\u003c/i>; Photo courtesy Zeitgeist Films\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Date Film\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Israeli filmmaker Talya Lavie developed her acerbic and piercing debut, \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82409~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Zero Motivation\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, at the Sundance Lab, and it boasts a stronger structure and more coherent vision than most indies. With a sharp intelligence, the film depicts the escapades and rivalries of the low-level female desk jockeys at a nowheresville military base. Lavie zings darts at sacred cows and underdogs alike, pitching her movie somewhere between a smart chick flick and a satire of military intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139467\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky.jpg\" alt=\"Watchers of the Sky; Photo courtesy Music Box Films\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139467\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/watchersofsky-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Watchers of the Sky\u003c/i>; Photo courtesy Music Box Films\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Your Conscience Is Calling\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>The most important film in the entire lineup, hands down, is \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82408~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Watchers of the Sky\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Edet Belzberg’s meditative documentary about the “inventor” of genocide (Viennese Jew Raphael Lemkin, who developed the concept, invented the word and lobbied and labored the UN for years to codify its legal ramifications) and his contemporary successors in the thankless field of bringing mass murderers to justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139468\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen.jpg\" alt=\"Magic Men\" width=\"640\" height=\"422\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139468\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen-400x263.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/magicmen-300x197.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Magic Men\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Fathers and Sons\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Israeli directors Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor combine a couple of every filmmaker’s favorite subjects, estranged families and road trips, in the enjoyable, picturesque and occasionally moving \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82386~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Magic Men\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. A widowed baker returns to his Greek birthplace after many years, accompanied against his will by his despised Hasidic son. This soulful film largely evades the potholes of clichés, including the hooker with a heart of gold (and a young son).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139470\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies.jpg\" alt=\"A Life in Dirty Movies\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139470\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/dirtymovies-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>A Life in Dirty Movies\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Sex On Camera\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Joseph W. Sarno wrote and directed dozens of arty soft-core movies in the 1960s and ‘70s before hardcore and home video killed off the grindhouses. Peggy Steffans horrified her upper-middle-class Jewish parents by acting in a few of those films and marrying the director. Swedish filmmaker Wiktor Ericsson’s \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82384~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>A Life In Dirty Movies\u003c/em>\u003c/a> profiles an uncommonly candid couple, and fills in a fascinating chapter in film history. David Cairns and Paul Duane do the same for Bernard Natan, a Romanian Jew who became a leading producer of French silent films and turned Pathé into a major studio in the 1930s before the bottom fell out. \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82389~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Natan\u003c/em>\u003c/a> introduces and rehabilitates a profoundly tragic figure, whose reputation continues to be sullied by the charge that he performed in pornographic films in the ‘20s. (\u003cem>Natan\u003c/em> actually contains more explicit images than \u003cem>A Life in Dirty Movies\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139471\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico.jpg\" alt=\"El Critico\" width=\"640\" height=\"256\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139471\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico-400x160.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/elcritico-300x120.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>El Critico\u003c/i>; Photo courtesy Music Box Films\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Everyone’s a Critic\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82370~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>El Critico\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, another title of special interest to film lovers yet accessible to all, follows a divorced, morose Argentine film critic through his dreary existence, which consists mostly of watching and eviscerating insipid mainstream Hollywood movies. First-time director Hernán Guerschuny has fun mocking the conventions of romantic comedies before employing them to portray the critic’s own out-of-the-blue love affair. Perfectly passable entertainment, even if it flags in the middle and only contains one fleeting bit of Jewish relevance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139472\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie.jpg\" alt=\"Soft Vengeance\" width=\"640\" height=\"453\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139472\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie-400x283.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/albie-300x212.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Justice League\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>East Bay filmmaker Abby Ginzberg, an attorney turned documentary maker, delivers her most accomplished work to date with \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82397~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. This deeply inspiring film profiles the principled, primary legal mind of the African National Congress, who eventually became one of the original justices of the Constitutional Court created after apartheid. If you think lawyers aren’t compelling enough to carry a movie, consider that he was targeted for assassination by car bomb (he lost an arm) by the South African government while in exile in neighboring Mozambique. Sachs’ response at the time couldn’t be more applicable to the Israeli-Palestinian situation: “An eye for an eye, and an arm for an arm. Is that what freedom means? The idea fills me with anguish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139473\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba.jpg\" alt=\"Havana Cuba\" width=\"640\" height=\"425\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba-400x265.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/micacuba-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Havana Curveball\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Suitable for Children, and Everyone Else\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>As his bar mitzvah approached, San Franciscan Mica Jarmel-Schneider decided to collect and send baseball equipment to Cuba as a social-justice project. \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82377~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Havana Curveball\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (a world premiere) follows his ever-expanding campaign, which ultimately led to the island to guarantee delivery of the gear. Mica’s savvy filmmaker parents, Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider, go beyond simplistic platitudes to convey the disappointments that can accompany doing the right thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139474\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele.jpg\" alt=\"Mamele\" width=\"640\" height=\"494\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139474\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele-400x308.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/mamele-300x231.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Mamele\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>You Say Schlemiel, I Say Shlemazel\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Even if you know nothing about Yiddish culture, here are words to live by: Anything with Molly Picon is worth seeing. \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82387~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Mamele\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Joseph Green’s marvelous comic melodrama finds the vastly talented actress taking care of her underemployed, unappreciative siblings and father. Made in Poland in 1938, when life was terrible for Jews and about to get unimaginably worse, \u003cem>Mamele\u003c/em> screens in a new restoration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139475\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel.jpg\" alt=\"Theodore Bikel\" width=\"640\" height=\"423\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139475\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel-400x264.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/bikel-300x198.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Theodore Bikel: In the Footsteps of Sholem Aleichem\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>A Little Night Music\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>The singer and actor Theodore Bikel, who played Tevye in hundreds of performances of \u003cem>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/em>, comes to town to receive the SFJFF’s annual Freedom of Expression Award. The 90-year-old legend is going to sing a tune and perhaps recite a poem or text, showcasing the gifts on display in \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82403~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Theodore Bikel: In the Footsteps of Sholem Aleichem\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. John Lollos’ performance-packed doc, receiving its world premiere at the festival, is destined to have a long life — as long or longer than Bikel’s, God willing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139477\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond.jpg\" alt=\"Above and Beyond\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139477\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond-400x266.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/aboveandbeyond-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Above and Beyond: The Birth of the Israeli Air Force\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Politically Incorrect\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>Somehow I’ve managed to get this far without mentioning the films that are likely to provoke the most complicated responses from audiences. Local filmmakers Judith Montell and Emmy Scharlatt’s \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82379~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>In the Image: Palestinian Women Capture the Occupation\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (receiving its world premiere) shows us the occupied West Bank and the indefensible behavior of settlers and soldiers. Our guides are ordinary women, whom we may have assumed in a patriarchal society only take care of the household and the children. Provided with camcorders and training by an Israeli human-rights organization, they discover their power, and the cost. Infuriating and tough to watch at times, \u003cem>In the Image\u003c/em> represents the strongest indictment of the occupation in the festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another world premiere, Peter Cohn’s \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82378~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Holy Land: A Year in the West Bank\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, is less incendiary for the simple reason that it doesn’t expose an injustice or advance a particular point of view. Its Palestinian and Israeli subjects, although inevitably political, are primarily interested in raising their families and pursuing their ambitions without violence or disruption. As a result, this always-interesting but only occasionally controversial four-season slice of life should have a life beyond the war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unabashed, unambiguous supporters of Israel will have an unreservedly good time at \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82362~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Above and Beyond: The Birth of the Israeli Air Force\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Roberta Grossman’s immensely well-crafted follow-up to \u003cem>Hava Nagila\u003c/em>. This vivid, adventure-steeped doc is propelled by colorful and occasional bawdy anecdotes by (mostly) Jewish-American World War II vets who stepped up when the newly declared state of Israel needed to defend itself from its Arab neighbors in 1948. (The late father of Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, was one of those stalwart pilots.) Although their film evokes a strong sense of pride in Jewish viewers, Grossman and producer Nancy Spielberg pointedly mention that Israel’s War of Independence was the Palestinians’ Al-Nakba (Catastrophe). Somehow I don’t think AIPAC will be happy about that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139478\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie.jpg\" alt=\"Little White Lie\" width=\"640\" height=\"358\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10139478\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie-400x223.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/littlewhitelie-300x167.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ci>Little White Lie\u003c/i>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>Some of My Best Friends Are Jewish\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>It goes without saying that Jewish identity, in all its forms, is one of SFJFF’s overriding themes. The world premiere of Lacey Schwartz’s first-person documentary, \u003ca href=\"http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=82385~a70858c6-cd47-4e92-968c-c94c12db6b1c&epguid=6c605fc2-2bc7-421f-85de-c2343380f3f1&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Little White Lie\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, closes the festival with an utterly unique angle on the topic. Raised Jewish by Jewish parents in Woodstock, New York, Schwartz didn’t suspect until high school that she had a black parent. It’s pretty obvious to the viewer from all the childhood pictures the filmmaker includes, so the film becomes an investigation of two mysteries: Who is her father, and why didn’t her parents talk about it for most of Schwartz’s life? \u003cem>Little White Lie\u003c/em> is a bizarrely fascinating tale (truth is stranger than fiction, yet again) but only superficially considers how Jewish and black (respectively) culture and identity manifest themselves in one individual. The bigger missed opportunity, though, is expanding the scope of the film to bridge the black and Jewish communities. Then again, perhaps I have an unusual craving at the moment for amity, understanding and alliance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 24 through August 10, 2104 at various Bay Area locations. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfjff.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit sfjff.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Back in 1964, movie audiences were treated to three hit musicals. Two of them — \u003cem>Mary Poppins\u003c/em> and \u003cem>My Fair Lady — \u003c/em>won scads of Oscars. But it was the third that announced the future, and it did so from its \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHas50cupCA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">opening chord\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What followed from that chord was what we call The Sixties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To celebrate the 50th anniversary of \u003cem>A Hard Day’s Night\u003c/em>, there’s a spectacular new restoration that you can now see in theaters in its Janus Films release or buy on DVD and Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. The black-and-white photography is so gorgeous, you’ll swoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHas50cupCA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movie is not half bad either. It was directed by Richard Lester, a filmmaker as underrated as he was influential. Lester took what was designed to be a promo film for the Beatles and — along with screenwriter Alun Owen — crammed it with ideas from the French New Wave and his own slapstick short, \u003cem>The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film\u003c/em>, which is on the DVD. The result is a pop artifact that still crackles with freshness and energy. In Lester’s verite, hyperkinetic approach to the musical sequences — and, boy, are the songs good — you’ll find the template for a million later music videos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movie’s title came from a malapropism by Ringo Starr that, in its paradoxical poetry, felt as inevitable as a folk saying. It fit perfectly a film that purported to capture a typical day in the life of the Beatles, who spend 87 minutes singing, clowning, hanging around a TV station, and, crucially, fleeing hysterical fans. You see, this isn’t just a movie about rock stars but about rock stars playing themselves in a movie that’s riffing on rock stardom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, even as the Beatlemaniacs sob and shriek, one of the movie’s conceits is that people over 30 don’t get it. On a train ride, the four are joined in a car by a stuffy, blimpish, mustachioed businessman who closes the window they’ve just opened and, when they turn on the radio, clicks it off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139456\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c-972x1440.jpg\" alt=\"Criterion Collection is selling the movie on DVD and Blu-ray.\" width=\"640\" height=\"948\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10139456\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c-972x1440.jpg 972w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c-400x592.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c-202x300.jpg 202w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c.jpg 1013w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Criterion Collection is selling the movie on DVD and Blu-ray. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Criterion Collection)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Watching \u003cem>A Hard Day’s Night\u003c/em> today, our perceptions are shot through with historical awareness. The Beatles now seem astonishingly innocent in their neat suits and ties, and it’s hard not to laugh at how the older characters harrumph at their long hair and cheekiness, for the boys are lovable mop tops — well-scrubbed, unprofane, decidedly nonthreatening. They’re so spiffy that in these days of hip-hop and piercings, parents might be delighted to have such nice young men for their sons. Yet the harrumphers \u003cem>weren’t\u003c/em> wrong. As that businessman on the train grasped, the Beatles and their followers were taking over the cultural train.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Hard Day’s Night\u003c/em> brims with Marx Brothers’ irreverence, if not anarchy, and like the brothers, each Beatle has a clear persona. John’s the barbed, ironical one who carries himself like a pop genius. Paul’s the handsome nice guy you wouldn’t guess was a pop genius. George is the dark horse, the quiet young one with secrets. And Ringo — the most popular back then — was the gentle, sad-eyed one. In hindsight, such personas almost predict their destinies. Even as Ringo is still having a laid-back good time into his 70s, Paul now revels in his living landmark status — he’s now photographed hanging out with Warren Buffett. With his hit records, mysticism and humanitarian work, George would become the triumphant dark horse before dying, at 58, from cancer. As for John, if any of the Beatles was fated to be murdered, it was always him — \u003cem>he\u003c/em> was the lightning rod.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But all this would come later. A few months before \u003cem>A Hard Day’s Night \u003c/em>opened, the Beatles had landed in an America shattered by the Kennedy assassination not even three months earlier, an America yearning for something alive and optimistic. The band was the ideal antidote to such grief, for the Beatles themselves had risen from an even longer, deeper darkness, the shabby funk of a postwar, post-imperial Britain with a calcified establishment, a frustrated working class, and little future to offer the young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the unmistakable alchemy of their sound — and in their authentic laughter as they run from shrieking fans during the film’s opening credits — the Beatles embodied the hope and vitality the world was looking for then and still loves to this day. Like Louis Armstrong, they created music that, even when sad, is bursting with joy. All those hard days and nights paid off, for more than any band I can think of, they captured the yeah-yeah-yeah of happiness. \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=%27A+Hard+Day%27s+Night%27%3A+A+Pop+Artifact+That+Still+Crackles+With+Energy&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Back in 1964, movie audiences were treated to three hit musicals. Two of them — \u003cem>Mary Poppins\u003c/em> and \u003cem>My Fair Lady — \u003c/em>won scads of Oscars. But it was the third that announced the future, and it did so from its \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHas50cupCA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">opening chord\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What followed from that chord was what we call The Sixties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To celebrate the 50th anniversary of \u003cem>A Hard Day’s Night\u003c/em>, there’s a spectacular new restoration that you can now see in theaters in its Janus Films release or buy on DVD and Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. The black-and-white photography is so gorgeous, you’ll swoon.\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/OHas50cupCA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/OHas50cupCA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The movie is not half bad either. It was directed by Richard Lester, a filmmaker as underrated as he was influential. Lester took what was designed to be a promo film for the Beatles and — along with screenwriter Alun Owen — crammed it with ideas from the French New Wave and his own slapstick short, \u003cem>The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film\u003c/em>, which is on the DVD. The result is a pop artifact that still crackles with freshness and energy. In Lester’s verite, hyperkinetic approach to the musical sequences — and, boy, are the songs good — you’ll find the template for a million later music videos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movie’s title came from a malapropism by Ringo Starr that, in its paradoxical poetry, felt as inevitable as a folk saying. It fit perfectly a film that purported to capture a typical day in the life of the Beatles, who spend 87 minutes singing, clowning, hanging around a TV station, and, crucially, fleeing hysterical fans. You see, this isn’t just a movie about rock stars but about rock stars playing themselves in a movie that’s riffing on rock stardom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, even as the Beatlemaniacs sob and shriek, one of the movie’s conceits is that people over 30 don’t get it. On a train ride, the four are joined in a car by a stuffy, blimpish, mustachioed businessman who closes the window they’ve just opened and, when they turn on the radio, clicks it off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10139456\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c-972x1440.jpg\" alt=\"Criterion Collection is selling the movie on DVD and Blu-ray.\" width=\"640\" height=\"948\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10139456\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c-972x1440.jpg 972w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c-400x592.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c-202x300.jpg 202w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cta1113_original_custom-aa135c04ff8deef32599a1a57286e2f1a923fe3c.jpg 1013w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Criterion Collection is selling the movie on DVD and Blu-ray. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Criterion Collection)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Watching \u003cem>A Hard Day’s Night\u003c/em> today, our perceptions are shot through with historical awareness. The Beatles now seem astonishingly innocent in their neat suits and ties, and it’s hard not to laugh at how the older characters harrumph at their long hair and cheekiness, for the boys are lovable mop tops — well-scrubbed, unprofane, decidedly nonthreatening. They’re so spiffy that in these days of hip-hop and piercings, parents might be delighted to have such nice young men for their sons. Yet the harrumphers \u003cem>weren’t\u003c/em> wrong. As that businessman on the train grasped, the Beatles and their followers were taking over the cultural train.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Hard Day’s Night\u003c/em> brims with Marx Brothers’ irreverence, if not anarchy, and like the brothers, each Beatle has a clear persona. John’s the barbed, ironical one who carries himself like a pop genius. Paul’s the handsome nice guy you wouldn’t guess was a pop genius. George is the dark horse, the quiet young one with secrets. And Ringo — the most popular back then — was the gentle, sad-eyed one. In hindsight, such personas almost predict their destinies. Even as Ringo is still having a laid-back good time into his 70s, Paul now revels in his living landmark status — he’s now photographed hanging out with Warren Buffett. With his hit records, mysticism and humanitarian work, George would become the triumphant dark horse before dying, at 58, from cancer. As for John, if any of the Beatles was fated to be murdered, it was always him — \u003cem>he\u003c/em> was the lightning rod.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But all this would come later. A few months before \u003cem>A Hard Day’s Night \u003c/em>opened, the Beatles had landed in an America shattered by the Kennedy assassination not even three months earlier, an America yearning for something alive and optimistic. The band was the ideal antidote to such grief, for the Beatles themselves had risen from an even longer, deeper darkness, the shabby funk of a postwar, post-imperial Britain with a calcified establishment, a frustrated working class, and little future to offer the young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the unmistakable alchemy of their sound — and in their authentic laughter as they run from shrieking fans during the film’s opening credits — the Beatles embodied the hope and vitality the world was looking for then and still loves to this day. Like Louis Armstrong, they created music that, even when sad, is bursting with joy. All those hard days and nights paid off, for more than any band I can think of, they captured the yeah-yeah-yeah of happiness. \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=%27A+Hard+Day%27s+Night%27%3A+A+Pop+Artifact+That+Still+Crackles+With+Energy&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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"order": 8
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},
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"order": 1
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
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"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
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"order": 9
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"source": "NPR"
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"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"hyphenacion": {
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"jerrybrown": {
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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