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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Once Upon a Time in America Is Every Bit as Great a Gangster Movie as The Godfather

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This article contains Once Upon a Time in America spoilers.

The Godfather is a great movie, possibly the best ever made. Its sequel, The Godfather, Part II, often follows it in the pantheon of classic cinema, some critics even believe it is the better film. Robert Evans, head of production at Paramount in the early 1970s, wanted The Godfather to be directed by an Italian American. Francis Ford Coppola was very much a last resort. The studio’s first choice was Sergio Leone, but he was getting ready to make his own gangster epic, Once Upon a Time in America. Though less known, it is equally magnificent.

Robert De Niro, as David “Noodles” Aaronson, and James Woods, as Maximillian “Max” Bercovicz, make up a dream gangster film pairing in Once Upon a Time in America, on par with late 1930s audiences seeing Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney team for The Roaring Twenties or Angels with Dirty Faces. Noodles and Max are partners and competitors, one is ambitious, the other gets a yen for the beach. One went to jail, the other wants to rob the Federal Reserve Bank.

Throw Joe Pesci into the mix, in a small part as crime boss Frankie Monaldi, and Burt Young as his brother Joe Monaldi, and life gets “funnier than shit,” and funnier than their more famous crime films, Goodfellas and Chinatown, respectively. Future mob entertainment mainstays are all over Once Upon a Time in America too, and they are in distinguished company. This is future Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly’s first movie. She plays young Deborah, the young girl who becomes the woman between Noodles and Max, and she even has something of a catch-phrase, “Go on Noodles your mother is calling.” Elizabeth McGovern delivers the line as adult Deborah.

When Once Upon a Time in America first ran in theaters, there were reports that people in the audience laughed when Deborah is reintroduced after a 35-year gap in the action. She hadn’t aged at all. But Deborah is representational to Leone, beyond the character.

“Age can wither me, Noodles,” she says. But neither the character nor the director will allow the audience to see it beyond the cold cream. Deborah is the character Leone is answering to. She also embodies the fluid chronology of the storytelling. She is its only constant.

The rest of the film can feel like a free fall though. Whereas The Godfather moved in a linear fashion, Once Upon a Time in America has time for flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, and detours that careen between the violent and the quiet. It’s a visceral experience about landing where we, and this genre, began.

Growing up Gangster

Both The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America span decades; it’s the history of immigrant crime in 20th century America. But they differ on chronological placement. Once Upon a Time is set in three time-frames. The earliest is 1918 in the Jewish ghettos of New York City’s Lower East Side.

Young Noodles (Scott Tiler), Patrick “Patsy” Goldberg (Brian Bloom), Philip “Cockeye” Stein (Adrian Curran) and Dominic (Noah Moazezi), are a bush league street gang doing petty crimes for a minor neighborhood mug, Bugsy (James Russo). New on the block, Max (Rusty Jacobs) interrupts the gang as they’re about to roll a drunk, and Max makes off with the guy’s watch for himself. He soon joins the gang, and they progress to bigger crimes.

The bulk of the film takes place, however, from when De Niro’s Noodles gets out of prison in 1930, following Bugsy’s murder, and lasts until the end of Prohibition in 1933. Max, now played by Woods, has become a successful bootlegger with a mortuary business on the side. With William Forsythe playing the grown-up Cockeye and James Hayden as Patsy, the mobsters go from bootlegging through contract killing, and ultimately to backing the biggest trucking union in the country as enforcers. They enjoy most of their downtime in their childhood friend Fat Moe’s (Larry Rapp) speakeasy. Noodles is in love with Fat Moe’s sister, Deborah, who is on her way to becoming a Hollywood star. The gang’s rise ends with the liquor delivery massacre.

The final part of the film comes in 1968. After 35 years in hiding, Noodles is uncovered and paid to do a private contract for the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Christopher Bailey… Max by a different name who 35 years on has been able to feign respectability and make Deborah his mistress. An entire life has become a façade.

Recreating a Seedier Side of New York’s Immigrant Past

While The Godfather is an adaptation of Mario Puzo’s fictional bestseller, Once Upon a Time in America is based on the autobiographical crime novel, The Hoods. It was written by Herschel “Noodles” Goldberg, under the pen name of Harry Grey while he was serving time in Sing-Sing Prison.

Coppola’s vision in The Godfather is aesthetically comparable to Leone’s projection. From the opium pipes at the Chinese puppet theater to the take-out Lo Mein during execution planning, the multicultural world of old New York crowds the frames and the players in both films. Most of Once Upon a Time in America was shot at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. The 1918 Jewish neighborhood in Manhattan was a street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which was made to look exactly as it had 60 years earlier.

Leone skillfully, yet playfully, captures the poverty of immigrant life in New York. The first crime we see the four-member gang commit could have been done by the Dead End kids. They torch a newspaper stand because the owner doesn’t kick up protection money to the local mug. And like the Dead End kids, they needle their mark, and joke with each other. At the end of the crime, Cockey is playing the pan pipe, and the very young Dominic is dancing. They are proud of their work and enjoy it. It’s fun to break things for money. And even better when they get a choice between taking payment in cash or rolling it over into the sure bet of rolling a drunk.

Violence without the Cannoli

Gangster films, like Howard Hawks’ Scarface and William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy, were always at the forefront of the backlash to the Motion Picture Production Code. Which might be why gangster pictures were one of the first genres to benefit from the censors’ fall. A direct line can be drawn from the machine gun death which ends Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to the toll-booth execution of Sonny Corleone (James Caan) in The Godfather. Another from when Moe Greene (Alex Rocco) gets one through the glasses and Joe Monaldi gets it in the eye in Once Upon a Time in America.

The Godfather has some brutal scenes. We get a litany of dead Barzinis and Tattaglias, horse heads and spilled oranges. Once Upon a Time in America ups the ante though. The shootings and stabbings are neat jobs compared with the beatings, which allow far more artistic renderings of gore, and pass extreme scrutiny. The one time the effects team balks at a payoff is when it’s not as gruesome as the setup.

“Inflammatory words from a union boss,” corporate thug Chicken Joe asks as he is about to light Jimmy “Clean Hands” Conway O’Donnell on fire. The mobster has such a nice smile, and the union delegate, played by Treat Williams, looks so pathetic while dripping gasoline that it feels like it might even be a mercy killing. It is a wonderful set piece, perfectly executed and timed. When Max and Noodles, and the gang defuse the situation, rather than ignite it, it is a lesson in the dangerous balance of suspense.

Like many specific scenes in Once Upon a Time in America, Conway’s incendiary introduction would’ve worked in any era. This is the turning point for the gang. The end of Prohibition is coming and all those trucks they’re using to haul liquor can be repurposed for a more lucrative future.

“You Dancing?”

Music is paramount in both Leone’s and Coppola’s films. The Godfather is much like an opera, the third installment even closes the curtain at one. Once Upon a Time in America is a frontier film. The score was composed by Ennio Morricone, who wrote the music behind Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The film opens and closes with Kate Smith’s version of “God Bless America.” Though the scene occurs during the 1968 timeframe, the song comes out of the radio of a car seemingly from another point in time.

Morricone’s accompaniment to Once Upon a Time in America is as representational as Nino Rota’s soundtrack in The Godfather. Characters, settings, situations, and relationships all have themes, which become as recognizable as the Prohibition-era songs which flavor the period piece’s ambience. Fat Moe conducts the speakeasy orchestra through José María Lacalle García’s “Amapola” while grinning dreamily to Deborah who is chatting with Noodles. He’s a romantic.

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The music becomes part of the action in Once Upon a Time in America. Individual couples cut their own rugs, doing the Charleston between tables as waiters and cigarette girls glide by. Cockeye, who has been playing the pan pipe since the beginning of the film, wants to sit in with the band.

Forsythe almost steals Once Upon a Time in America. He cries what look like real tears at the mock funeral for Prohibition and drinks formula from a baby bottle during the maternity ward scene. The blackmail scheme, which involves swapping infants, plays like an outtake from a Three Stooges movie, something Coppola would never dare for The Godfather. The ruse is choreographed to the tune of Gioachino Rossini’s “The Thieving Magpie,” which elicits the youthful thuggery celebrated in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

Devils with Clean Faces

One ironic difference between the two films is whimsy. The Godfather, which glorifies crime as corporate misadventure, is a serious movie with no time for funny business. Once Upon a Time in America, which is an indictment of criminal life, has moments of innocence as syrupy as in any family film (of the non-crime variety) and can be completely kosher. It’s sweeter than the cannoli Clemenza (Richard Castellano) took from the car, or the cake Nazorine (Vito Scotti) made for the wedding of Don Vito’s daughter.

The scene where young Patsy brings a Charlotte Russe to Peggy in exchange for sex is a masterwork of emotive storytelling. He chooses a treat over sex. On one level, yes, this is a socioeconomic reality. That pastry was expensive and something he could never afford to get for himself. But as Patsy sneaks each tiny bit of the cream from the packaging, he is also just a child, a kid who wants some cake. He learns he can’t have it and eat it. It is so plainly laid out, and so beautifully rendered.

The Corleone family never gets those moments, not even in the flashbacks to Sicily or as children on the stoop listening to street singers play guitars. We know little of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) or Sonny as youngsters, much less teenagers, and are robbed of their happier moments of bonding. We know they are close, they are family. But Michael has his own brother killed while Noodles balks at the very idea. Twice, as it turns out.

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“Today they ask us to get rid of Joe. Tomorrow they ask me to get rid of you. Is that okay with you? Cos it’s not okay with me,” Noodles tells Max after the gang delivers on a particularly costly contract, double-crossing their partners in a major diamond heist. They are not blood family, but from the moment Max calls Noodles his “uncle” to fool a beat cop, they are all related.

Noodles then does what young men in coming-of-age movies have done since Cooley High: Something really stupid. An indulgence the Corleones could never enjoy. He speeds the car into the bay. The guys can’t believe it. It adds to his legend. The scene could have been in Diner, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or even Thelma & Louise. It is hard to dislike the gangsters in these moments. We know them too well, even as they do such horrible things.

How Women are Really Treated by an Underworld

The Godfather is told from the vantage point of one of the heads of the five established crime families; organized crime is as insular as the Corleone mall on Long Beach. That motion picture reinvigorated the “gangster film,” long considered a ghetto genre, but its perspective is insulated. By contrast, no matter how far they climb, Leone’s characters never really get off the block. They are street savages, even in tuxedos. Once Upon a Time in America whacked the gangster film, and tossed its living corpse into the compactor of a passing garbage truck.

The Godfather doesn’t judge its gangsters. The Corleones are family men who keep to a code of ethics and omerta. They dip their beaks in “harmless” vices like gambling, liquor, and prostitution. While there are scenes of extreme domestic violence, and a general dismissal of women, the film stops short of challenging the image of honorable men who do dishonorable things. Leone offers no such restraint. His history lesson is unabridged.

Long before Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman stripped gangster lore to a tale of toxic masculinity, Once Upon a Time in America robbed it of all glamor. There is a very nonchalant attitude toward violence and other demeaning acts against women in Leone’s film, from the very opening scene where a thug fondles a woman’s breast with his gun in order to humiliate her civilian date.

This is deliberate. The director, best known for Spaghetti Westerns, wants to obliterate any goodwill the gangsters have accumulated through their magnetic antiheroism. One scene between Max and his girlfriend Carol (Tuesday Weld) is so hard to sit through, even the other members of the gang squirm in their chairs.

Noodles sexually assaults two women over the course of the film. While there is some motivational ambiguity in the scene during the jewel heist attack, the rape of Deborah is devastatingly direct. It kills any vestige of romance the gangster archetype has in film. The camera does not look away, and the scene lingers with terrifying ferocity and traumatic intimacy. There is a visible victim, and Noodles’ wealth and pretensions of honor are worthless.

The Ultimate Gangster Epic

Once Upon a Time in America brings one other element to the genre which The Godfather avoids, a lingering mystery. Coppola delivers short riddles, like the fate of Luca Brasi, which are revealed as the story warrants. But the 35-year gap between the slaughter of Noodles’ crew and the introduction of Secretary Bailey is almost unfathomable. How did Max go from long-dead to a man with legitimate power?

What happens to Noodles in those years is fairly easy to guess, without any specifics. He got by. The gang’s shared secret bankroll was empty when he tried to retrieve it as the last surviving member. He put his gun away and eked out a quiet life. But even as the details spill out on the true fate of Max, it is unexpectedly surprising, as much for the audience as Noodles.

“I took away your whole life from you,” Max/Bailey says. “I’ve been living in your place. I took everything. I took your money. I took your girl. All I left for you was 35 years of grief over having killed me. Now why don’t you shoot?” This final betrayal, and Noodles’ inert revenge, take Once Upon a Time In America into almost unexplored cinematic depths.

Max has gone as low as he could go. The joke is on Noodles, everyone’s in on it, including “Clean Hands,” who is tied in to “the Bailey scandal.” The cops are in on it, and so is the mob. Max admits even the liquor dropoff was a syndicate set-up. He’d planned this all along. Just like Michael Corleone had a long term strategy to make his family legitimate.

This is an ambitious story. Beyond genre, this bends American celluloid into European cinema. By sheer virtue of being outside of Hollywood, Leone transcends traditional boundaries. He has a far more limitless pallet to draw from. He can aim a camera at De Niro’s spoon in a coffee cup for three minutes and never lose the audience’s rapt attention. Leone can pull the rug out from everything with a last minute reveal. Coppola bent American filmmaking for The Godfather, but stayed within proscribed parameters. He never gets as sweet as a Charlotte Russe nor as repulsive as the back seat of a limo.

Once Upon a Time in America ripped the genre’s insides out and displayed them with unflinching veracity and theatrical beauty. It is a perfect film, gorgeously shot, masterfully timed, and slightly ajar.

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expshared · 5 years ago

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some fun nuggets from the interviews in the booklet included in the Princess Principal special edition release:

they hired two spy researchers on the show before they even hired a writer

the initial idea was about “high school girls taking over Japan by changing voting laws”. The Victorian, steampunk, and spy elements didn’t come in until later

once they settled on a pitch, the real story began with the question “how realistic can we make a group of teenage spies?”

the screenwriter would bring in a script and the researchers would tell him “a spy wouldn’t do this” or “a spy would do it this way” and sometimes he’d listen and other times he wouldn’t

the steampunk aspect allowed them to “lie”—the staff could bend the rules for Rule of Cool, but those big lies were supported by little truths. They could pull off the bigger, showier aspects because the nitty-gritty of it was based in actuality

for example, the cars in the series are steam-powered, but in reality steam-powered cars are very quiet, which “wasn’t very impressive” on screen. So, instead of just having them make noise anyway, they added a turbine supercharger to get the “turbine” sound effects and to make a bigger impression on the screen

Ange uses a Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver

the Duke of Normandy’s car is a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost and the prop designer specifically requested that his hood ornament be Nike of Samothrace

Dorothy is a favorite on the staff and while boarding episodes they often thought, “I don't want to make Dorothy go through this!” The morgue episode was apparently very difficult for them to finish, but they thought it was essential for Dorothy’s character

the debt collectors from the morgue episode and the laundry episode were meant to be different characters, but they both ended up being Franky because they didn’t have enough resources to model another character

for the laundry episode, the prop designer did the layout for the mill the correct way first, and then thought about how to organize it in the least efficient way possible

a lot of the staff talk about the laundry episode and how it was the most challenging in terms of prop creation and research, and that it might be the most “spy-like” and realistic episode, even though it ends up being kind of a “fluff” episode

the lighting designer talks about how the lighting in the series was inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lynden, wherein all the lighting is natural sunlight or candlelight

Ayaka Imamura (Ange): “I think this about all the PriPri characters, but they’re really not cut out to be spies. Ange especially.”

Yo Taichi (Dorothy) usually wears casual clothing to record, but to record Dorothy’s lines, she wore dresses. When the sound director asked her why, she replied “Because I’m the sexy one.”

When Ayaka Imamura read Princess’ line “I really hate you,” she turned to Akira Sekine (Princess), and said “Do you really mean that?!?”

Akari Kageyama (Beatrice): “Beatrice’s heart is always pounding really hard but she never lets it show.”

#princess principal #reading through this booklet took me like four hours it's so BEEFY #chitchat paddywhack

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lescentvisages · 4 years ago

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Stanley Tucci

Born : November 11, 1960 (age 60) Peekskill, New York, USA

Occupation : Actor, Writer, Producer, Director

Stanley Tucci is an American actor, writer, producer, film director and former fashion model. Involved in acting from a young age, he made his film debut in John Huston’s Prizzi’s Honor (1985), and continued to play a variety of supporting roles in films such as Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997), Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition (2002) and Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal (2004). In 1996, he made his directorial debut with the cult comedy Big Night which he also co-wrote and starred in alongside Tony Shalhoub. He also played Stanley Kubrick in the television film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Tucci is also known for his collaborations with Meryl Streep in films such as The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and Julie & Julia (2009). Tucci gained further acclaim and success with such films as Easy A (2010), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Margin Call (2011), The Hunger Games film series (2012-2015), Spotlight (2015), and Beauty and the Beast (2017).He has won three Emmy Awards; one for Winchell (1998), one for a guest appearance on the comedy series Monk, and one for being a producer of the web series Park Bench with Steve Buscemi. Tucci was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Lovely Bones (2009). He was also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2003),[3] and a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, for The One and Only Shrek! alongside Meryl Streep.[4]Tucci also starred in numerous television series such as the legal drama Murder One (1995–96), the medical drama 3 lbs (2006), the docudrama Feud (2017) and the drama Limetown (2018). Since 2020, Tucci has voiced Bitsy Brandenham in the animated series Central Park.

#stanley tucci #actor #director #writer #producer #male

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the-picked-last-club · 7 years ago

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NOW PLAYING AT THE MULTIPLEX! SUMMER OF 1987

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likeitis93 · 5 years ago

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Interview-Klassiker von 2005

#interview #stuttgart #franky kubrick #rap #hip hop #kopfnicker #0711 #0711stuttgart #karibik frank

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filmnoirfoundation · 5 years ago

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Join FNF prez and Noir Alley host Eddie Muller at the Alamo Drafthouse Austin Ritz for the final screenings of #NoirCityAustin: THE CRIMSON KIMONO (4:45) and BLAST OF SILENCE (7:15). http://bit.ly/NCAustin2019

THE CRIMSON KIMONO(1959, Columbia [Sony Pictures]. 82 min.) Scr. & Dir. Samuel Fuller

As the classic noir era waned, director Sam Fuller came out blasting with the first of a series of wildly original crime thrillers. This one starts as a pulpy policier, with a pair of L.A. cops (Glenn Corbett, James Shigeta) hunting the killer of a stripper. It twists into a heated romantic triangle with both cops falling for a key witness (Victoria Shaw). The rare film to explore the nisei experience in America, featuring a compassionate take on the Japanese cop's torment at falling for a Caucasian. As usual, Fuller's kinetic inspirations sometimes collide with stilted exposition--watch out for flying shrapnel.

Presented in 35mm courtesy of Sony Pictures Cast: James Shigeta (Joe Kojaku), Glenn Corbett (Charlie Bancroft), Victoria Shaw (Christine Downs), Anne Lee (Mac), Paul Dubov (Casale)

BLAST OF SILENCE(1961, Universal. 77 min.)Scr. & Dir. Allen Baron

This maverick independent production from the end of the classic noir era, shot entirely on location in New York, tracks a stoic hit-man (played by director Baron himself) returning to his home turf for what's meant to be a quick, efficient assignment. Fate, guilt, and double-crosses intervene. One of the bleakest crime films ever, highlighted by a unique, omniscient "second person" voice-over narration. Like Kubrick's “The Killing” and Wendkos' “The Burglar”, this represented the transition from studio noir to independently produced "neo-noir."

Presented in 35mm courtesy of Universal Pictures Cast: Allen Baron (Frankie Bono), Molly McCarthy (Lori), Larry Tucker (Big Ralph), Peter H. Clune (Troiano), Milda Memenas (Troiano's girl), Danny Meehan (Petey), Charles Creasap (contact man on ferry), Don Saroyan (Lori's boyfriend), Ruth Kaner (building superintendent), Lionel Stander (narrator)

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damedarcy · 7 years ago

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Tune in every Thursday folks, for the next excerpt of Hi Jax & Hi Jinx! A costume drama DD Autobiography to be published by Feral House fall 2018 thanks @AdamParfrey @DameDarcy ___________________________ MOVIES Act 1 Just a little back story of my experiences contacting the directors I loved, (or on second thought, was this a gentle form of stalking them?) Costume dramas? Hell yes to a delicious brocade delight. Then next in order of love, surrealist and I guess horror then art movies. Like Eraserhead, The Forbidden Zone by Richard Elfman, Superstar by Todd Haynes, and Careful by Guy Madden were all huge influences on me while I was in Art school as a film major, and after. I had the good fortune to meet all of these directors. I love Matthew Barney’s movies, particulary the Cremaster Cycle, and met him Once Upon a Time at his art studio in the Meat Packing District He revealed to me he is also from Idaho and was a fashion model, and afterwards we partied. I like silent films. Pandora’s Box, Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, and Metropolis being good examples. Barry Lyndon by Kubrick and anything by Kubrick. Anything by Werner Herzog, anything by Wes Anderson, but particularly of course The Life Aquatic. I know I will meet Wes one day. Anything by Terry Gilliam, Brazil being the best. Michel Gondry does good contempory work, Spike Jonze has right on social commentary. The movies, Spider Baby, and Daisies are like my life with Lisa “Suckdog” Carver. And Skidoo is the best role Carol Channing ever played, and wins for best cast, having Groucho Marx as God, Donyale Luna, Mickey Roonie, Frankie Avalon, Slim Pickins , Jackie Gleason and many more. I love those really Da Da Betty Boop cartoons from the 20's that cab Callaway sings on, the 30's being the 20's dark and sad twin. The best time in the world was 1927. Marie Antoinette movie by Girly Copula looks great but is less filling on plotline. Isabelle Doll loves it though. She doesn't care about stuff like intellectual content, she's just a Rococo fetishist. Another movie Isabelle loves is Interview With A Vampire, which she thinks is a romantic comedy. Isabelle is also never going to die and sleeps in a little pink coffin too, so finally she saw something in her reality portrayed in a movie, plus pushing all the other dolls around. She thinks it’s funny that the little girl Dunst character uses a pile of dolls as a fridge in which to keep her dead nanny for a snack. Five Stars in doll land: Whatever happened to Baby Jane. And Night Of The Hunter, where Lillian Gish plays an old Christian lady battling a demented preacher with a shotgun while she sings a hymn in Harmony with him. I now realize this is an analogy to life in the South. Isabelle thinks the dolls are the stars of these movies, that’s why she loves them, and the sad little song the little girl, Pearl, sings in the boat. Isabelle also loves Death Becomes Her because the ladies in that movie become dolls. Also, because Isabelle Doll is a flapper from the 20’s she likes the Isabella Rossellini character playing the hottest 20's flapper that lives eternally and has hundreds of hot male sex slaves. Wow! Back to what I like: Beauty and The Beast, by Jean Cocteau. It has a scene where Beauty glides ethereally down the corridor, the wall sconces made of men’s arms holding candles move to light her way. So sexy, and Sooooo good! Brother Sun Sister Moon about St. Francis Assi, and speaking of churchy stuff... The Devils By Ken Russell 1971 An account of the apparent demoniacal possession of the 17th-century nuns of Louden, climaxing in the burning of their priest as a sorcerer. There is the cutest cabaret scene in it where a gorgeous boy plays the Venus Di Milo. More movie hits, picked because they are dreamlike twisted fairytale moving paintings: The Fall, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, Come Along Do, Breathless, Holy Motors, The Holy Mountain, Citizen Kane, The Maltese Fountain, anything by the Coen Brothers, and anything by the Brothers Quay. Surreal plotlines of Being John Malkovitch, Last Year at Marionbad, Mulholand Drive, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, A Ghost Story, It Follows, Rubber, Funky Forrest, and Back To The Future. The crazy jewel tones and harsh lighting contrasts of Hammer Horror Movies, and The Cook The Theif His Wife and Her Lover. The stunning visuals and general atmosphere of A Pigeon Sat on A Branch Reflecting on Existence, Russian Ark, The City Of Lost Children, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Enter The Void. The social commentary of Where The Green Ants Dream, Bubble,The Bicycle Thief, There Will Be Blood, and The Dark Backward plus all animations by Steve Cutts, who I truly love with a passion (like I wanna marry him, sight unseen, or maybe my brain just wants to marry his brain). The campy and poignient portrayals of artists about art, in Pink Flamingos, Big Eyes, Loving Vincent, Blow Up, Black Swan, The Mirror, The Dving Bell and The Butterfly, Waking Life, The Five Obstructions, My Best Fiend and Minute Movies by The Residents. The Nautical themed and true examples of what it’s like to dream and astral project to another world of Master and Commander, Cloud Atlas and Time Bandits. And the way Sunset Boulevard, Gummo, and Slumdog Millionaire show a reality specific to the portrayer. And of course all the stuff I saw in Larry Jordan’s animation class and dollar Matanee at The Red Vic on Haight Street while in art school in San Francisco. Still classic favorites : A Colour Box, La Jetee, Un Chein Andalou, Meshes Of The Afternoon, Anemic Cinema, Ballet Mechanique, Man With The Movie Camera, Flicker, Blue, Back and Forth, The Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra, Surface Tension, Chelsa Girl, and Dog Star Man about a man trying to climb a mountain with his dog in this scratch emulsion found footage mess madness that is one of the most deeply original movies of all time.

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chaperongroup · 5 years ago

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Jane Fonda Accepts BAFTA Award as She’s Arrested

Jane Fonda is taking multitasking to new heights.

The “Grace and Frankie” star wasn’t in attendance at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Friday night to accept the Stanley Kubrick Award for Excellence in Film because, earlier in the day, she was arrested in Washington, D.C. during a climate change protest. But handcuffs and a police escort didn’t stop her from accepting her award.

As officers arrested…

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Coming to America: The Secret Shared Cinematic Universe You Forgot About

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When one thinks about 1988’s Coming to America, a few things stand out: James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair as the King and Queen of Zamunda speaking to their son Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) at a breakfast table with intercom radios; the opulence of Zamunda’s palace, which represented an idealized African nation to 1980s audiences the way Wakanda does today; and of course Murphy and Arsenio Hall’s Semmi fresh off the plane in Queens, New York with no idea what “common” means—or also Murphy and Hall under pounds of makeup as the argumentative old-timers at the nearby barbershop.

The film has many great elements that make it a comedy classic. However, what’s often overlooked is that the picture is not-so-secretly part of a shared cinematic universe. Indeed, Coming to America is the film which confirmed several of director John Landis’ films all occur in the same world: One with another Eddie Murphy as Billy Ray Valentine, a small time hustler who gets one over on some rich old racists and winds up nouveau riche in Trading Places, and one with carnivorous lunar activities in An American Werewolf in London. Weird, right?

The more overt and official of these is the callback to Murphy and Landis’ previous collaboration, Trading Places (1983). In that film, Murphy’s Billy Ray Valentine is an unimpressive grifter who’s trying to get by on a put-on about being a Vietnam vet without legs. Obviously Billy Ray has never had the opportunity to achieve more, and two corrupt blue bloods named Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) think it would be funny to give Billy Ray that chance to succeed—if only temporarily, after all they don’t want a Black man actually flourishing at their company—while throwing their silver spoon lackey, Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) into poverty.

It’s a cynical racist game they’re playing, and it ends up blowing up in their faces, with Billy Ray and Louis eventually joining forces to get rich while bankrupting the Dukes. In other words, it’s a perfectly ‘80s comedy in tune with that decade’s values: humor based in a lot of stereotypes that ends with the good guys getting rich. Still, it’s a charmer which, alongside 48 Hrs. (1982), proved Murphy was a bona fide movie star outside of Saturday Night Live. Hence why Murphy and Landis are so keen to call back to it in Coming to America.

Late in the 1988 comedy about Prince Akeem traveling to New York City in order to meet a nice American girl, the prince and Lisa (Shari Headley) are taking a walk in the promenade near the Brooklyn Bridge when Akeem gives a handful of rolled up hundred dollar bills to two homeless men. Committed to embracing a life of poverty, Akeem tells Lisa he just gave away pocket change. However, when the camera returns to the two old-timers beneath blankets and cardboard, we learn that (gasp) it’s Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche! It seems Billy Ray and Louis really did thoroughly put these capitalist vultures out on the street. But the two grumpy old men are thrilled with this newfound investment.

“Mortimer, we’re back!” Bellamy announces with a Cheshire grin. The two then show up again to bang on Akeem and Lisa’s window as they have dinner, shouting, “Let’s have lunch.”

It’s an amusing and impossible-to-miss Easter egg for fans of Murphy’s films. Although given how rotten the Duke brothers are, we fear Akeem has done more harm than good. The moment also makes the two films a rare thing in 20th century Hollywood cinema: a shared cinematic universe. While the Universal Movie Monsters did this 40 years prior to Trading Places, we were still a long way from Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith’s independent world-building in their 1990s films, never mind the Marvel Cinematic Universe popularizing the idea a decade after that.

However, what many miss is that Trading Places isn’t the only Landis movie that Coming to America also calls back to. Later in the 1988 movie, Akeem is chasing Lisa, and the two run through an appropriately scuzzy New York City subway. There are real posters from that time period on the walls, such as one for August Wilson’s Broadway play Fences, which starred James Earl Jones and Frankie Faison (both players in Coming to America). But there’s also a poster for See You Next Wednesday.

This fictional title does not correspond with a real movie, however it does match a running joke throughout Landis’ filmography, including most famously in The Blues Brothers (1980) and An American Werewolf in London (1981). Consider a nondescript billboard for a movie called See You Next Wednesday also appears in The Blues Brothers, with Aykroyd and John Belushi driving right past it in Chicago while on a mission from God. In American Werewolf, meanwhile, there are posters scattered throughout the London tube system for a movie of sorts also titled See You Next Wednesday.

The title is a play on the dirty turn of phrase “See You Next Tuesday,” and actually originates from a line of dialogue spoken in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Landis, however, enjoys sprinkling it throughout his work, suggesting it’s the name of a fictional movie, one with a significant underground advertising budget between Werewolf and Coming to America.

The movie-within-a-movie is revealed in Werewolf’s third act to actually be a seedy porno film playing in London’s Piccadilly Circus. It’s there that the poor schmuck David Kessler (David Naughton) transforms into a werewolf one last time, and kills some perverts on his way out the door.

Admittedly, this is not an official connection between Coming to America and An American Werewolf in London, or The Blues Brothers. For starters, it legally has to be slightly different since Werewolf and Brothers are Universal Pictures releases while Coming to America (like Trading Places) was produced by Paramount. Additionally, the See You Next Wednesday poster in Coming to America is not for a porno film, but a glossy sci-fi cheesefest apparently starring Jamie Lee Curtis, who also happened to appear in Trading Places. But we suspect these superficial differences in the posters (that you have to squint to notice) are concessions to the legal need to differentiate the running joke.

Like the fan theory that Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner occur in the same universe—a theory Scott himself has publicly supported—despite the sci-fi films being produced by different studios, Landis seems to invite folks to imagine Coming to America and a number of his other films are also part of the same universe.

It’s a funny thing to imagine that there are two Eddie Murphys out there, one yachting with Aykroyd’s Louis and Curtis’ Ophelia around the world, and the other a kind hearted if overly naïve African prince. And while Zamunda is a kind of paradise (at least for the men in its highly patriarchal society), demons and cursed devils like David Kessler prowl the moors of England, picking off American tourists too dim to beware the moon and stick to the road.

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Of course these are more winks and nods than concrete world-building, and they’re masterminded by one of the most controversial directors of their era. In fact, it is hard to consider these connections and not also recall the director’s complicated past. For a short time, Landis was on top of the world when he made Animal House, The Blues Brothers, and An American Werewolf in London back-to-back-to-back. But by the time of Coming to America’s release, fewer and fewer colleagues were working with him due to the tragic and entirely avoidable disaster on the Twilight Zone: The Movie set, an accident which led to the deaths of three people, two of them children. Murphy, however, was one person who continued to work with Landis.

And the two worked exceptionally well together, indeed. Landis’ specific brand of outlandish, sometimes fratty humor complemented Murphy’s big swings as a performer, including beginning to experiment with makeup comedy. He never more adeptly used prosthetics than in Coming to America; and much of this film’s iconography comes from Landis and his wife, costume designer Deborah Nadoolman, who imagined Akeem and Semmi’s now iconic Zamunda winter wear.

Whatever else, Landis helmed some of the most popular comedies of the 1980s, with four of them apparently existing in the same universe. Remembering that these days can still crack a smile. Or at least a howl.

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