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KPBS Film Club of the Air - Jan 30, 2007

January 30th, 2007 by Scott Marks

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Appearing monthly on These Days, the Film Club of the Air features local film critics Beth Accomando and Scott Marks discussing films in San Diego theaters.

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audio_mp3_button.jpg Venus, Breaking and Entering, Pans Labyrinth, Rules of the Game and Smoking Aces
Jan 30, 2007
Film critics discuss some of the new films in local theatres. Films include “Venus,” “Breaking and Entering,” “Pans Labyrinth,” “Rules of the Game,” and “Smoking Aces.”
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A Celebration of Oprah Winfrey’s Hair! (1987 - 1997)

January 29th, 2007 by Scott Marks

It’s the only thing that’s bigger than Oprah Winfrey’s ego!
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
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DREAMGIRLS / Bill Condon (2006)

January 8th, 2007 by Scott Marks

Bill Condon’s DREAMGIRLS (2006)

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Dreamgirlz-z-z-z-z-z

Dreamgirls (2006)

Directed by: Bill Condon

Written by: Bill Condon, Tom Eyen

Genres: Drama, Musical

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover, Jennifer Hudson, Anika Noni Rose, Keith Robinson, Sharon Leal, Hinton Battle, Mariah I. Wilson, Yvette Cason, Ken Page, Ralph Louis Harris, Michael-Leon Wooley, Loretta Devine

Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

The two worst things to happen to popular music over the past 30 years were Andrew Lloyd Weber’s dull talk-singing and the tonsil stretching caterwauls emanating from American Idol.

Dreamgirls is an impious merger of the two, borne in hell and condemned for eternity to home video.

Speaking of eternity, what should have been forever took only 25 years to make it to the screen. This Supreme(s) Broadway smash was originally designed with Nell Carter in mind, but the part eventually went to Jennifer Holiday. In the late-80s, talk was underway about a film version to showcase egomaniacal songbird Whitney Houston. According to Wikipedia, “The production ran into problems when Houston wanted to sing both Deena and Effie’s songs (particularly And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going).”

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NOTES ON A SCANDAL / Richard Eyre (2006)

January 8th, 2007 by Scott Marks

Cate Blanchett & Judi Dench

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Directed by: Richard Eyre

Written by: Patrick Marber, Zoe Heller

Genres: Drama

Cast: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Tom Georgeson, Michael Maloney, Joanna Scanlan, Shaun Parkes, Emma Kennedy, Syreeta Kumar, Andrew Simpson, Philip Davis, Wendy Nottingham, Tameka Empson, Leon Skinner, Bill Nighy, Juno Temple

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Rating: ★★★★☆

Though it would have been a perfect part for her, Joan Crawford could not have played the Barbara Covett role in Notes on a Scandal.

Ms. Crawford was a glamorous movie star, dammit, and in her heyday would never have allowed herself to be photographed in such a flaw-finding manner. Even in the dank, dark hold of Strange Cargo’s prison ship, what little light cinematographer Robert Planck allocates found her face.

Judi Dench certainly qualifies as a movie star and, unlike Joan Crawford, an actress as well, and her performance here is both fault and vanity free. My mother’s generation would get a wash and set every week and water would not touch their hair between beauty parlor visits. Ms. Dench spends much of the movie coiffed as though it’s the morning of her next appointment.

The reason for all this talk of Ms. Crawford is because throughout NOS, I found myself constantly reminded of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, the only one of her films in which Joan put away the glamour. Shift the setting from a rundown Hollywood mansion to an unruly British high school, recast Cate Blanchett in the sympathetic Crawford role and Dench as the domineering Bette Davis and you have an equally worthy battle of the superstar actresses.

Adapting Zoe Heller’s novel, screenwriter Patrick Marber’s (Closer) mordant voice-over narration gives us an all-access pass into the thought patterns of a bitter spinster with a titanic superiority complex. As Barbara Covett, Dench finds a level of pure evil that would make Freddie Krueger blanch.

If given the choice between being loved or feared, Barbara would quickly pounce on the latter. Her students live in mortal terror. They may stir when the final bell sounds, but they don’t dare exit class until a nod replaces Barbara’s scowl.

Enter new hire Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), an ex-party girl who settled comfortably into the position of pottery teacher. When asked to dinner, Barbara is shocked to find she has a husband (the brilliant Bill Nighy) twenty-years her senior, a teenage daughter and a son with Down syndrome whom the voice-over describes as a “somewhat tired court jester.”

Barbara is immediately smitten by Sheba, but it’s not the type of lusty infatuation that has caused some to erroneously dub this a “lesbian Fatal Attraction.” Barbara is not in this for the sex; she seeks a companion to grow old and sip tea by the fire with. Nor is director Richard Eyre interested in churning out another stock Hollywood thrill ride.

Barbara doesn’t miss a beat. The slightest lunchroom scuffle is noted, and settled, as she briskly passes by it. She needs more leverage to pry Sheba from her family and as luck would have it, Barbara happens upon her prey and a student (Andrew Simpson) going at it on school property. One takes great delight in watching just how far Barbara goes to milk this bit of knowledge in her quest to make Sheba hers. This is the kind of first rate, engaging escapist entertainment that’s long been lacking in contemporary genre films.

What’s truly amazing about Notes on a Scandal is its ability to infuse the lead character with such honest psychological insight and personal awareness. There is not a moment in this film where Barbara does not convincingly sell us on her motivation and reasoning. It is so nice to once again have a thinking person’s psycho to cheer for.

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