Love, Lust and Bears: Movie Tips

True love, hot sex, Hollywood egos and a furry face in London.  Those are elements you'll see in these current movies that you might dig as much as I did.  Eddie Marsan was unforgettable as the angry Brit whose temper boils over as he tries to teach a steely optimist how to drive.  Sally Hawkins, the Blue Jasmine Best Supporting Actress of 2013 Oscar nominee, should've received her first Oscar nomination for playing that optimist in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky.  In Marsan's performance, you could practically feel the veins pop out in the neck and forehead of his hot-tempered teacher.

                                             

On Showtime, TV viewers see Marsan as the physically disabled former boxer on Ray Donovan, the series starring Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight.                                                                                                          

Eddie Marsan is absolutely marvelous as the plain, simple British gentleman in STILL LIFE.  Unlike his 2008 Happy-Go-Lucky role, his Still Life character is someone very dear.  This movie is like an unexpected little gift.

He plays a caseworker who sorts through the personal effects of recently deceased persons -- people who passed away alone and seemingly forgotten.  John May sorts through the effects in order to find a living relative and give dignity to the deceased in funeral arrangements.  Often, he's the only person in the church pews at some of the funerals.  And he wasn't related to or a longtime friend of the person who died.  He's often the best friend a dead stranger ever had.

Some of the surviving relatives he finds make him see why the deceased were alone.

At home, he lives a simple life alone.  A predictable life.  There's a sameness of what he wears, what he eats and how his non-colorful home looks.

But, in showing care for the recently deceased, he will find some unexpected color and romantic surprise.  His daily existence will no longer seem like still life.  Something will bloom.  Perhaps there a chance of this single man not being alone and forgotten like the people whose funeral services he's attended.  Joanne Froggatt of TV's Downton Abbey co-stars in this story.  She does lovely work.  The movie has a tone as simple as the caseworker's life.  But it's not boring.  Stay with it.  The last act of Still Life is so poignant.  I highly recommend this new British film.  If you loved Alec Guinness in the 1950 classic, Last Holiday, I'm sure you'll be fond of Mr. Marsan in Still Life.

Julianne Moore deserves to win the Best Actress Oscar for her non-maudlin, moving portrayal of a middle-aged university professor and family woman stricken with early signs of Alzheimer's Disease.  This drama is called STILL ALICE.  Alec Baldwin co-stars as Alice's husband and, giving the best performance of her film career so far, Kristen Stewart as Alice's rebellious yet loving daughter.  Julianne Moore has given vivid, inventive movie performances --  Safe, The Big Lebowski, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Far From Heaven, The Hours, The End of the Affair, A Single Man and The Kids Are All Right.  Still Alice features one of her best.  She's brilliant as Alice Howland.

Moore gave another dramatic performance in another 2014 release that is so opposite of her sweet New York City character in Still Alice.  In David Cronenberg's MAPS TO THE STARS, Julianne Moore is terrific as one of the most annoying and self-absorbed middle-aged movie stars in Hollywood.  Pill-popping Havana Segrand makes Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. seem low-maintenance.

Havana's late mother was a 1960s movie sensation.  She was a screen beauty who died in a fire.  Havana wants to star in a remake of the movie that made her mother a star.  No one is interested in making this project with the aging actress -- and the ghost of Havana's mother appears occasionally to criticize her shallow daughter.

Havana wants a new "chore whore."  That's her term for "personal assistant."  She fired the previous one.  Who better to ask for a lead on a good "chore whore" than Carrie Fisher.  Carrie recommends a young lady she met at a Star Wars convention after finding her online.  When Carrie hears of Havana's desire to play her mother, she replies "Every daughter should have that opportunity, right?"

A show biz family still seeks the spotlight in this movie.  That's a cast of characters you want to line up and slap in succession the way The Three Stooges were slapped. Havana, connected to the family, uses three-way sex as a form of Hollywood networking.

Moore has dyed blonde hair, a shade of blonde that accentuates her middle-age.  The hair is too long.  It's perfect for the character. Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are All Right also with Moore and 2011's Jane Eyre) plays the overwhelmed and ultimately humiliated personal assistant.  Robert Pattinson of Twilight vampire movie popularity plays a limo driver.  Keep in mind that this is a David Cronenberg film.  You will see graphic sexual situations, an uncircumcised penis being fondled and a violent Hollywood crime.  You'll hear lines like "Her labia's pierced."  Moore makes this movie, partly a black comedy, fun to watch because her Havana is such a hot mess in need of a major reality check.  Can these Hollywood characters get over the ghosts of their past? Watch and see.

Director Cronenberg also gave us the 1986 remake of The Fly, the auto erotic Crash starring James Spader and Holly Hunter in 1996 and the 2005 drama, A History of Violence.

Reese Witherspoon also deserves to be in the Best Actress Oscar race for her performance in WILD.  Wow.  This is the best film and one of the finest performances she's delivered since her 2005 work as June Carter in the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line.  In Wild, see Witherspoon once again play a real life person.  Cheryl Strayed goes on a long, grueling Pacific Coast hike.  She's also boldly crossing through the wilderness of her troubled soul to get to a spiritual/emotional clearing in her life.  Cheryl has been sexually reckless, did her time with drugs, had a marriage that ended in divorce and she suffered extreme heartbreak when her mother died.

This is a really good, very compelling movie.  One thing that holds you is that Reese Witherspoon is so alive in this performance.  She's fascinating to watch as this strong, flawed woman who keeps a diary of her journey.

                                                                                   

                                                

The relationship with her mother, played with excellence by fellow Oscar-nominee Laura Dern, is so lovable that you feel Cheryl's grief at the mother's death.  And you understand Cheryl's reckless behavior.  There's a hole in her heart.  That's what makes us act out, whether it's having anonymous sexual hook-ups, drinking, getting high, going on a shopping binge or over-eating.  There's a hunger in our soul that we must tame.  We've all been there.  Watching hiker Cheryl survive Mother Nature's challenges in the wild, deal with men who may have dark motives in the woods and deal with a man on the highway who thinks she's a hobo...they're  all memorable scenes in this well-done movie.  Have a Wild time.  I think you'll like it.

Not getting an Oscar nomination does not mean an actor's work lacked merit.  Nowadays, I often wish we didn't put actors in competition with each other thus making art seem more like a horserace.  However, if Imelda Staunton had received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role as the working class, small town woman who defies town bigotry and embraces diversity in PRIDE, I would have cheered.  She's fabulous and so is the film.  Imelda, playing a real life character, is a woman who may be conservative in her attire but not in her viewpoints.

Three of us film reviewers gave it three very enthusiastic "thumbs up" on one edition of Arise On Screen. the weekend film review & entertainment news show that airs on cable's Arise.TV.

Pride deserved more promotion than it got.  It also needed more specific marketing.  When I saw the lobby posters and the trailer, I expected something along the lines of The Full Monty.  Wrong.  There is humor and a very festive dance scene in the movie but it also deals with some serious and historical events.  Pride is, to a degree, a biopic.

As we mentioned on Arise On Screen, we didn't recall American TV newscasts telling us about British gays and lesbians uniting with striking miners during the Margaret Thatcher era.  This was a major story in Great Britain in the summer of 1984.  Gays were ostracized.  The miners needed better working conditions.  They were socially kicked to the curb.  These two unlikely factions united to form a strong group and changes were made.  One group of underdogs reached out to help another group of underdogs.

This is a true story of gay activism that America knew very little, if anything, about until Pride.  You see the development of straight/gay friendships and the disappearance of ignorance.  Gay activists raised money to help families affected by the British miners strike.  Imelda Staunton is pure gold in a scene with Bill Nighy.  They're old friends simply making sandwiches but the scene is about much more and it's beautifully done.  I loved Imelda Staunton as Hefina Headon (who passed away in 2013).

The whole cast is good.  Like The Full Monty, Pride is a heartwarming movie.

You may be able to see WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD on Amazon.  Actor Chris Meloni is a big, brawny, handsome and versatile actor who acquired a large TV fan base with his work as the killer prison inmate on HBO's Oz and as the tough, compassionate New York City cop on Law & Order: SVU.  This movie got overshadowed by the major box office popularity of Gone Girl.  Both stories show us a wife who disappeared and a husband who wants answers.  Meloni, playing against his TV image, is the passive, somewhat dorky 1980s suburban husband.  Shailene Woodley is a knock-out as the complicated teen  daughter who accompanies her father when seeking help from a detective.

Eva Green supplies even more power as the angry, agitated wife.  We see her in flashbacks and watch the suburban marriage fray at the edges.  The wife starts to dress like a tart.  This mystery has more in common with Mike Nichols' The Graduate than Gone Girl.  Mother and daughter are out to get their lips on the same young dude.  Mom definitely wants to get her "Mrs. Robinson" groove on.

The loving, troubled daughter is left to console her sad and clueless dad.

White Bird in a Blizzard was directed by Gregg Araki, the man who gave us the profane and tender Mysterious Skin.

Here's a situation:  A young Peruvian bear with a sweet, brown face seems to be lost and alone in a big city train station cafe.  You strike up a conversation.  Soon, the bear is going home with you.  Personally, I've had dreams like that which I won't go into right now, but this is the open of a feature that's mighty fine if you need family entertainment.

It's PADDINGTON.  Not outstanding like a Toy Story or The Incredibles in the category of features for kids that will also appeal to adults, but it's not bad either.  It's warm, amusing and the special effects are quite good.  Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville plays the slightly grumpy but lovable head of the London family that takes Paddington home.

I admit it.  I got really tickled watching Paddington try to follow directions as he used an escalator for the first time.

And his bathroom sequence was pretty cute too.  Just the ticket for kids 12 years of age and under.

Paddington finds a family that loves him.  He learns about his own bear family background.  And he escapes from an evil taxidermist played by Nicole Kidman.

Paddington's face was often more animated than hers.  Frankly, I'm concerned.

Well, there you have it.  Some movie entertainment for you to keep in mind.

Bob Simon Will Be Missed

There appeared to be tears in the eyes of CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley when he broke into regular programming with a bulletin and said, "We have some sad news tonight from within our CBS News family."  Award-winning veteran 60 Minutes correspondent, Bob Simon, had been killed in a New York City car crash.

In his TV news career, he received 27 Emmy Awards and 4 prestigious Peabody Awards.  He started his television news career reporting from the battlefields of Vietnam and hit just about every major battlefield in the world after that.

During the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, Bob Simon and his news crew were held as POW's in an Iraqi prison for about 40 days.

Just last weekend, a young friend and I sent out for food and watched Mr. Simon's 60 Minutes piece on Selma movie director, Ava DuVernay.

I never met Bob Simon.  I never saw him in person.  I never wrote him a fan letter.  But, for many years, I was one of the many TV viewers who had a deep respect and appreciation for his work.  Scott Pelley said that Simon was "one of the great writers of a generation," adding that he "was a journalist of extraordinary courage."

Bob Simon was a great writer.  I loved his journalistic art.  He could cover a news story and make me care about someone or something that I didn't think I would care about.  He connected us to the world around us.  He brought issues to life and made complicated issues understandable.  He was true to and devoted to his profession.  He never became the story.  Not until, tragically, last night, February 11th, when a car collision claimed his life at age 73.

What an ironic triple play of news exits we experienced this week.  NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams couldn't seem to decide which lane he wanted to stay in.  I say that as a viewer.  He anchored the news -- and made millions doing so -- then regularly appeared on nighttime entertainment talk and comedy shows.  He had frequent comedy bits with Jimmy Fallon, he was slated to make another appearance tonight with David Letterman (the appearance was cancelled) and he got laughs on Saturday Night Live.  Did he get intoxicated on the spotlight of entertainment and did it blur his vision?  Did he want to be more entertainer than journalist?  When he told the story of being in a helicopter that was shot down as he covered the Iraq war of 2003...well, that was more acting than fact.  He told his fake war story on David Letterman's show.  This week, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was suspended for six months without pay.

Comedian/actor Jon Stewart had a gig on MTV.  He took over host duties on Comedy Central's The Daily Show and became an acclaimed heavyweight in TV news.  In fact, millions of young viewers go to him for the news -- with him giving an uncensored voice to their social voicelessness -- instead of watching traditional network evening newscasts.  The comedian/actor often challenged politicians and other newsmakers with harder, sharper questions than some current journalists do.  Stewart announced that he will leave The Daily Show later this year after a long and most successful run.

And then came the shocking news of Bob Simon's death in an accident on a Manhattan highway.  That was a sudden, unexpected departure.  One that we did not want.  He was a man who obviously did the work he loved, a man whose talents were utilized so he could do the work he loved, and a man who was appreciated for hard work.  That's a blessing we don't all get.  His reports changed minds and hearts.  That was his art.  He was a journalist. A serious reporter.  He stayed in that lane.  I don't recall ever seeing him get applause and laughs on late night comedy and talk shows.

To do the work you love, to have your talents utilized and appreciated, to make an impact on minds and hearts -- all that, coupled with someone dear to kiss on New Year's Eve -- what a beautiful life that would be indeed.  It's still my dream.

My condolences to the family, friends and co-workers in Bob Simon's life.  His work will be missed by millions of us TV viewers who learned more about our world, and ourselves, because of him.

To read more about Bob Simon and to see videos, log onto www.cbsnews.com.  The last piece that he did for 60 Minutes airs this coming Sunday, February 15th, on CBS.

Holt Could Make History

NBC's classy and qualified Lester Holt could be on the brink of making American broadcast news history.

The Brian Williams kerfuffle is still a hot topic in broadcast news.  The Oscar and Emmy winning director/writer James L. Brooks gave us a classic sitcom that holds up today -- The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  In that series, which brilliantly took serious situations and played the human and funny side of them in a workplace -- situations like divorce, unemployment, gender equality, and the death of a co-worker -- the Brian Williams "misremembering" of a personally dangerous incident while covering live news would've been something that the vain and vapid anchorman Ted Baxter would've done.  News boss Lou Grant would've been furious.  Mary Richards would've been totally outdone with Ted while she attempted to do damage control.  Mary would've been adamant that Ted apologize to his viewers with an "I'm sorry" versus "I misremembered."

As soon as the Brian Williams news scandal hit with the reports that he was not -- as he said on David Letterman's show -- in a U.S. military helicopter that took enemy fire while he covered the Iraq war in 2003, I immediately thought of Tom Grunick.  He's the anchorman William Hurt played in Brooks' film, Broadcast News.  Like Brooks' Terms of Endearment, this film also got top Oscar nominations -- William Hurt, Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks were nominated in the acting categories, Brooks was nominated for his original screenplay and the film was nominated for Best Picture of 1987.

Anchorman Tom Grunick had the look that network news upper management loves when it comes to hiring. Respected veteran journalist Aaron Altman had the serious skills, the credibility and the knowledge, but he didn't have the looks that corporate top brass desired for anchor duties.  And he perspired heavily.                                    

Grunick had neither the years of field experience nor the substance that Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) possessed.  But he was young, white and telegenic.  Also, Grunick lacks the steely truthfulness that ace news producer Jane Craig (played by Holly Hunter) has.  She does not and will not stage situations for a TV news report.  But she falls for hollow Grunick's charm and looks.  She discovers he was dishonest in reporting one story.

Watch Broadcast News.  Just like episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it still holds up.  Brooks was one of my favorite guests on my VH1 talk show.  He was promoting this movie at the time and I loved talking about Grunick's character.  Broadcast News came out before Matt Lauer was hired by WNBC local news and before Brian Williams was anchor of the NBC Nightly News.  James L. Brooks' Broadcast News was amazingly prescient in how it showed the erasure of the line between news and acting/entertainment/marketing.  As a TV viewer, there were several nights I wondered how many more times network news anchor Brian Williams was going to appear and get laughs on an NBC sitcom or on a late night talk/entertainment show like the Jimmy Fallon and David Letterman programs.  Once in a while was fine.  But he was practically a semi-regular.  Did Williams want to be a newsman or an entertainer?

There was another inspired bit of business on The Mary Tyler Moore Show that black viewers, like my family in Los Angeles, loved.  Lou Grant's Minneapolis newsroom had a black weatherman.  His name was Gordy.  Back in the 1970s, if you saw a black man on a TV newscast team in the studio, he was doing sports.  Period.  Black folks didn't cover entertainment, they didn't do film reviews and they didn't anchor. That's the way TV news was then.  That's the way it was in L.A.  We had a black guy with a huge Afro on our local NBC affiliate.  He did sports.  His name was Bryant Gumble.  The Mary Tyler Moore Show had the African-American talent doing something other than sports.  Every time someone asked Gordy is he was the new sportscaster, we laughed in my house.  We got the reality of the gag.  It was rare at that time to see a black man do the weather on TV.  Lou Grant kicked diversity up a notch.  Gordy Howard, wonderfully played by John Amos, came years before Spencer Christian on Good Morning America and Al Roker on Today.

Apparently, African-American journalists didn't have the right "look" for network news top brass when it came to anchoring a weeknight evening newscast.  African-American newscasters were in the Aaron Altman Broadcast News category, so to speak, when it came to landing an anchor spot.  Like I wrote in my previous blog post, only the late Max Robinson broke that network color barrier when he co-anchored with Peter Jennings on ABC weeknights in the late 1970s through the early 1980s.

If Brian Williams leaves NBC Nightly News anchor duties and if he's replaced by the outstanding Lester Holt, that appointment would make broadcast history.  Lester Holt would be the first African-American journalist to land the solo anchor spot on a weeknight evening newscast airing on one of the three senior major networks -- NBC, ABC and CBS.  The groundbreaking Max Robinson co-anchored.

Lester Holt would be equally groundbreaking if it happens.  And it's 2015.  High time an appointment like that did happen on one of the senior three networks.

Network News, Sitcom Views

NBC anchor Brian Williams was a top target of Twitter snark after a major revelation.  He reported that he was on a downed helicopter in the Iraq war.  You can Google this story and read all about it.  Just like when the anchorman's daughter, Allison Williams, sang "I'm Flying" on NBC as the star of Peter Pan Live!, it was fantasy.  He wasn't on a shot-down chopper.    First of all, remember how the classic films Network and Broadcast News focused on the disappearing line between news and entertainment?  Broadcast News, in the anchorman character portrayed by William Hurt, showed the unsettling degree of acting that crept into journalism.  An offshoot of that applies to Brian Williams.  He does news and comedy.  I feel the newsman has done too much comedy.

Do you recall Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley or Mike Wallace making as many guest appearances on late night comedy talk shows as Brian Williams has?  He's done David Letterman's show.  He's done The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  He's done Saturday Night Live and he did sitcom appearances on 30 Rock.  Just a few days ago, Twitter had news of Williams' latest rap music "performance" for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.  Network news anchor Brian Williams was cut Snoop Dogg's "Who Am I?"

With this embarrassing news about his war coverage fib, I'm interested to see if NBC pulls in his number of nighttime comedy appearances.  The Brian Williams rap music pieces are popular semi-regular segments on Fallon's show.  See what I mean?  The line between news and entertainment disappeared. If I was a top exec in the NBC news division, I'd have Williams cut back on his comedy show appearances in order to re-establish his credibility and image as a news anchor.

As a card-carrying member of SAG-AFTRA currently seeking auditions and work, I dream of having the number of sitcom appearances in my list of credits that network news anchor Brian Williams does.

I'm pretty sure that Williams' contract has already been renewed.  IF he wanted to leave and focus on a different broadcast career, the classy Lester Holt would make an excellent anchor for NBC Nightly News.  And he'd make broadcast history.  As I've written several times, there has not been an African-American weeknight anchor of the CBS, NBC or ABC evening newscast since the late Max Robinson.  Robinson broke the network anchor color barrier and worked on ABC in the late 1970s into the early 80s.  He was a no-nonsense, candid, skilled and helpful journalist.  He was helpful to me very early in my TV career.  He was serious about his work and about racial diversity.                                                                                          

Max died of AIDS in 1988 at age 49.  It's a shame that his groundbreaking ABC News legacy is overlooked today.  Lester Holt would be a great weeknight NBC news anchor.

I first heard celebrity TV chef Eddie Huang in a  National Public Radio interview.  He enthusiastically revealed that his parents rode the tide of Reaganomics to U.S.A. success.  The rap music-loving chef put his life to print in the memoir Fresh Off The Boat.

Huang's book serves as the basis for the new ABC sitcom of the same name.  Episodes aired this week. My main two reasons to watch will be actor Randall Park as little Eddie's dad.  I've seen his work in national TV commercials and, over the Christmas holidays, he was seen in a key role in the controversial comedy, The Interview.  In fact, he gave one of the funniest performances in the film as a political threat.  However, with all the network mention the movie got on morning news shows and evening newscasts,  only Seth Rogen and James Franco got mentioned.  Even ABC neglected to mention Randall Park, who'd be making his ABC debut come February on a new ABC sitcom.        

In The Interview,  Randall Park got laughs as the man two TV characters fly overseas to interview.  Park had an important role. He played Kim Jong-un, the Korean dictator who has a kooky bromance with a dimwitted American TV host.

Park is a pro at comedy.  I loved him in The Interview.  Many have seen Park on the HBO sitcom, Veep.  The other reason I will watch is that Fresh Off The Boat is only the second sitcom in network TV history about an Asian-American family.  The first one starred Margaret Cho twenty years ago.  It was also on ABC.  Can you believe that?  Twenty years in between prime time network TV shows about an Asian-American family.  That's just wrong.  I had Filipinos, Koreans and Japanese people as friends, neighbors and classmates when I was a kid in South Central Los Angeles.  That was before I turned 18.   Couple those experiences with the ones I had in 2011, the year I lived in San Francisco, and I could give you a half dozen ideas right now for TV shows -- sitcoms and dramas -- about Asian-American families on the West Coast.  And I'm black.  So what does that tell you about the need for more diversity behind the scenes in Hollywood?  We should be shocked that we haven't already seen several TV shows about Asian-American families in California.  It still bewilders me that The Joy Luck Club, of my top ten favorite films of 1993, was not adapted into a network TV series with good dramatic roles for Asian-American actors.

There are plenty of Asian-American stories out there to tell and plenty of Asian-American actors in the Screen Actors Guild to tell them.  I hope Fresh Off The Boat brings lots of exposure to Randall Park which leads to more script opportunities for him.

I hope the same for the entire cast.

Show our Asian-American actor friends on ABC some love.  See Fresh Off The Boat Tuesday night, February 10th.

Disney Goes Latina

This minority report from the Mickey Mouse House got plenty of mention in my Twitter feed on Thursday.  Disney has its first Latina princess.  Excellent news!  She is Elena of Avalor.  I believe that she hails from Enchancia.  Enchancia is a fantasy kingdom "inspired by Latin cultures."  Here she is.

I have a question.  Princess Jasmine from Disney's 1992 hit, ALADDIN, do you now feel like you hail from a fantasy kingdom called WhaDaFukYall?

Look at Jasmine.

Look at Elena.

Is it just me or did Disney just draw some 1950s Rita Moreno pre-West Side Story movie costume on the Middle Eastern Jasmine and think we wouldn't notice?  Or do they simply look like twins?

And what does that mean "inspired by Latin cultures"?  Is Elena a Latina or not?  "Inspired by Latin cultures" sounds like Anderson Cooper when he was still single, dating and lived in the Chelsea section of New York City.  That was my neighborhood.  I used to see him with a different inspiration every week.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm thrilled that Disney wants to give attention to the Latino market.  It's about time.  And I hope that Elena doesn't do one big feature and then get a ticket to the Land of Obscuria to be neighbors with other ethnic Disney female leads like strong, brave Mulan...

...and it's first African-American princess, seen in The Princess and The Frog.

Last year, network TV showed us little black girls dressed up like the very popular, very high-profile Elsa from Frozen for Halloween.  It would've been nice to see a couple dressed up like the lovely Tiana from 2009's The Princess and The Frog.  Has she been incorporated into ABC/Disney's Once Upon a Time the way the Frozen blonde has?

"¡Viva Diversity!," as we people inspired by Latin cultures would say.  But doesn't Elena look like Jasmine with hoop earrings and hair that has brown highlights?  Or is it just me?