movies Archives - Page 24 of 118 - Ramblin' with Roger

Director Eric Laneuville turns 70

L.A. Law, Lost, NYPD Blue, Dream On

One of my favorite television programs was the MTM program St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982-1988). And one of my favorite characters was Luther Hawkins, played by Eric Laneuville, who appeared in 128 of 137 episodes. Initially, Luther was a hospital orderly, but he became a certified paramedic and eventually a student physician assistant.

Eric was born in New Orleans, LA. His first prominent acting roles were in the science-fiction film The Omega Man (1971) with Charlton Heston and on the TV program Room 222 (1970-1974). But he has had but two acting credits since 1996, and none since 2014.

That’s because he’s in demand as a director. He started this path by directing 20 episodes of St. Elsewhere, starting in 1984. He has also helmed multiple episodes of Midnight Caller; Doogie Howser, M.D.; Everybody Hates Chris; Girlfriends; Ghost Whisper; CSI: NY; The Mentalist; Grimm; NCIS: Los Angeles; Blue Bloods; Chicago Fire; and the current iteration of The Equalizer.

(St. Elsewhere was up against the earlier version of The Equalizer on CBS on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. for three seasons. I’d watch St. Elsewhere but catch The Equalizer in reruns.)

Eric was nominated for Emmys (Dream On, I’ll Fly Away, the Directors Guild of America awards (Lost, NYPD Blue), and both (L.A. Law).

I’ll Fly Away

In 1992, Eric won both an Emmy and a Director’s Guild Award for the All God’s Children episode of I’ll Fly Away. I LOVED that program, which ran from 1991 to 1993 on NBC, plus a TV movie on PBS.

“Forrest Bedford [a pre-Law and Order Sam Waterston] is a Southern lawyer in the late 1950s, generally content with his privileged life. But the winds of change are blowing, and he becomes increasingly involved with civil rights cases. Meanwhile, Lilly Harper [Regina Taylor], who cares for his children, is on her own journey of political and personal awareness.” The kids were played by Jeremy London as Nathan, Ashlee Levitch as Francie, and John Aaron Bennett as John Morgan

Here’s the All God’s Children episode of I’ll Fly Away.

Downton Abbey: A New Era

the south of France

My wife said during the Memorial Day weekend, “Do you want to see Downton Abbey: A New Era?” We go to few enough movies that the answer is almost always YES.

So we got in the car to head to the Spectrum Theatre when she noticed that it was also showing at the nearby Madison Theatre. Should we go there? Nah, the Spectrum popcorn is better, and there’s more room at the Spectrum.

As it turned out, there were more folks at a Friday matinee than I have seen in a long time. Every row on both sides had at least a party of two, and often more, from the back to the fourth row from the front, where we sat.

As I noted in my review of the first film, I had/have never seen a full episode of the TV show, even though the DVDs are in the house. An imperfect analogy: it would be like watching the last two Avengers movies without having seen any of the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You might get the gist of the story, but pieces would be missing.

What is necessary

So I’m responding to what I know. There were two basic plotlines taking place in the early 1930s. One involved an offer from a company to make a film at the mansion. While the initial offer was rejected outright by Robert Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), others, notably Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) noted that the building is in disrepair, including a leaky roof, and that the family really could use the infusion of cash.

Fortunately, some of the family had another place to go, to the south of France, to a villa given to the Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith) back in the 1860s, by a gentleman of her brief acquaintance, much to the dismay of that man’s widow. Although he wasn’t really needed, Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) came along to help the family.

I enjoyed the film – and my wife even more so – in meeting up with the familiar cast. In particular, the issue of making a silent film when the talkies were starting to take hold was a lot of fun. Ah, that’s Hugh Dancy as the film director; isn’t he in the new Law and Order?

The downstairs people – the staff, in general, I find more interested than most of the “passive income earners.” And I think their stories were more compelling. I laughed aloud at least a half dozen times, especially at what I should have anticipated but did not.

I often look at negative reviews, though 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. There was a bit of “it’s not cinematic enough” and “another (longer) episode of the show.” Since I didn’t watch the series, it’s impossible for me to assess those aspects. But having seen too many movies on television over the past two years, I’m having a bit more difficulty figuring out what that even means anymore.

1942: Casablanca and White Christmas

THAT’S R and B?

In Joel Whitburn’s A Century of Pop Music, an interesting note. “The recording industry enjoyed booming success during the early 1940s until the era’s dominant big bands were stilled on August 1, 1942, when the American Federation of Musicians joined in a ban on recording due to a dispute over musicians’ royalties.

“By the time all the record companies entered into an agreement to end the ban in late 1944, vocalists had assumed predominance over bands in popularity.”

This is also the year of one of my favorite movies, Casablanca. I’ve mentioned it at least a dozen times in this blog. I saw this film, outdoors in a park, maybe in Rochester (?) with my friend Debi. I’ve lost track of the friend ever since. Nor have I seen the film again, and it was at least thirty years ago, so I should fix that. It’s certainly one of the oldest films that I’ve ever viewed, aside from The Wizard Of Oz and a handful of others.

White Christmas – Bing Crosby (Decca), 11 weeks at #1, gold record. In 2016, I wrote a whole post about the song here. I noted that the recording ALSO led the rhythm and blues tally for three weeks that year, and continued to appear on some charts for several years. It is the best-selling single worldwide with an estimated 50 million copies sold.

Bronze Star

Moonlight Cocktail– Glenn Miller with Ray Eberle and the Modernaires (Bluebird), 10 weeks at #1, gold record. From Wikipedia: “In 1942, Miller volunteered to join the U.S. military to entertain troops during World War II, ending up with the U.S. Army Air Forces. On December 15, 1944, while flying to Paris, Miller’s aircraft disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal.”

Jingle Jangle Jingle– Kay Kyser with Henry Babbitt and Julie Conway (Columbia), 8 weeks at #1, gold record.

(I’ve Got A Gal In) Kalamazoo – Glenn Miller with Tex Bereke, Marion Hutton, and the Modernaires (Victor), 7 weeks at #1, gold record. Apparently, Kalamazoo was a funny-sounding city name, like Walla Walla and Schenectady.

Tangerine – Jimmy Dorsey with Bob Eberle and Helen O’Connell (Decca), 6 weeks at #1. A familiar tune, though I don’t remember specifically why.

Sleepy Lagoon – Harry James (Columbia), 4 weeks at #1. Instrumental.

A String Of Pearls – Glenn Miller (Bluebird), 2 weeks at #1. Instrumental. All of the Miller cuts are well known to me.

Blues In The Night (My Mama Done Tol’ Me) – Woody Herman (Decca)

Documentary review: Attica

Rocky

If “Attica” is just a line you recognize from the movie Dog Day Afternoon, you should watch the Oscar-nominated, 2021 documentary of that name.

Now, if you were around then, you will discover a lot of details that you forgot, or more likely, did not know at all about one of the most significant prison riots in the United States. “This unnervingly vivid dive into the 1971 uprising… sheds new light on the enduring violence and racism of the prison system…”

A little over half of the approximately 2,200 prisoners took over the facility on September 9, taking 42 staff hostage. They had tired of their brutalizing conditions and sought to be treated like human beings. The stories in the film were told by some of the former prisoners. As one critic correctly notes, “I don’t think Attica glorifies the prisoners, but it does humanize them. That is, it presents them as human beings.”

There were four days of negotiations, including with the state Commissioner of Corrections, Russell G. Oswald. While there were some prisoners who wanted to hold Oswald and other negotiators hostage as well, the prisoner leadership opposed this, saying that they should deal in good faith.

Other people interviewed in the documentary included the families of the guards held hostage. Attica is a small town in rural Wyoming County, southwest of Rochester and southeast of Buffalo. The Department of Corrections is the major employer. Most of the prison personnel were white local folks, while most of the prisoners were black and/or Hispanic, creating a definite culture clash beyond the guard/prisoner dynamic.

During the negotiations, authorities agreed to 28 of the prisoners’ demands. But they would not agree to complete amnesty for the inmates involved with the prison takeover.

Nixon’s the one

The film shares audiotape of Nelson Rockefeller conferring with Richard M. Nixon. The governor assured the President that he would not accede to the demands to go to Attica, a position that Nixon applauded. Then on September 13, Rocky ordered armed corrections officers, and state and local police to retake the prison.

The next thing that happened, you may know. Or not, as disinformation was sent out by Rocky himself, disputed initially by ABC News reporter John Johnson and soon by medical examiners.

But it is what happened AFTER the siege that I had never heard about or seen before. It was quite disturbing in its own right. And that’s the strange thing about the movie. If you don’t know how the story ends, you might get three-quarters of the way through and still hold out for a happy ending.

The movie by writer/director Stanley Nelson got positive reviews from 50 of 51 critics. And the 51st has a snippet that says, “Extraordinary archival footage… You can’t just dismiss it as hyperbole.” I watched it on Amazon Prime.

Movie review: Being The Ricardos

Aaron Sorkin

When she co-hosted the Oscars recently, Amy Schumer “took a swing at Aaron Sorkin’s Being The Ricardos, the Nicole Kidman-Javier Bardem film about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. ‘Aaron Sorkin: a genius! Truly, right? I mean, the innovation to make a movie about Lucille Ball without even a moment that’s funny? Not your fault, Nicole.'”

But Sorkin was not making a comedy. “This is no more a comedy than the ‘King of Comedy’ or ‘Joker’ is a comedy.”

I read all of this after I saw the movie, which I watched just before the Oscars. The harsh criticism I’d read about how Nicole’s face was stiff whereas Lucy’s was rubbery had made me wary about even viewing it.

I should note that I’m a big fan of Ball and Arnaz. It’s less about the I Love Lucy series, which of course I had seen many times. It was more about WHY I was able to watch it over and over. Desilu essentially invented the rerun at a time when the general perception was “We already saw that episode. Why would we watch it AGAIN?”

I’m enough of a devotee that our family stopped at the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, NY in 2016, which was very much worth visiting. We bought the I Love Lucy DVD box set there, which my daughter has watched in its entirety. Also, in 2019, I read her autobiography, Love, Lucy. It was written in 1964, but not published until 1996, after both Desi and Lucy had died.

The vision thing

So I think that Sorkin achieved what he was going for, although he consolidated certain elements that took place over a few weeks into one week of shooting an episode of I Love Lucy. We see the Red Scare stuff, discussed in her book; this has to do with her grandfather, who helped raise her. The couple wanted to include Lucille’s pregnancy in I Love Lucy, but the network and sponsors thought it was a terrible idea; we now know how it turned into comedy gold.

Was Desi unfaithful to Lucille? The bitter relationship between Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda) and the much older William Frawley (J. K. Simmons), who played the neighbors Ethel and Fred Mertz, was on full display. We see the plan to fatten up Ethel/Vivian.

Ultimately, I mostly enjoyed it. There’s latitude in the biopic genre that I allow for. I do agree with the assessment by Ken Levine that the writers on the show were perhaps treated more shabbily than necessary.

The film received The Women Film Critics Circle Awards’ Hall of Shame “For taking a beloved female icon and turning her intelligence, talent, and work ethic against her as a harping shrew, and the deeply flawed men around her as downtrodden male saviors.” I think this is a bit harsh. Lucille Ball was one tough woman.

Bardem, Kidman, and Simmons were all nominated for Oscars, though they did not win. Kidman did get the Golden Globe, though no one cares anymore. I was actually most intrigued by the performance of Nina Arianda’s Viv. About 2/3s of the critics liked Being The Ricardos.

If you are looking for great recreations of I Love Lucy bits, this is not the film for you. If not, you might like it.