21ST CENTURY LUCKY

So I had an eye operation yesterday, a very common one where they make an incision, suck out the cataract that's been clouding my vision and making it close to impossible to drive at night and put in a pupil size lens to make my non-cataract vision more clear.

One of my grandmothers had cataracts as I remember it and what that meant in those days was stumbling around as your eyesight got worse and worse. How fortunate I am to be alive today where this kind of operation is routine.

Just came back from the doc removing the plastic bubble that I will be wearing over the eye only when sleeping now—and that my fifteen-year-old called "bug eye"—and replacing the giant black plastic glasses they gave me yesterday with Bono-like wrap-around safety "glasses" that I'll wear during the day for another week.

Except for not supposed to cough, sneeze, bend, lift, strain or in any other way create pressure that might cause the incision to open or something like that, everything's pretty normal except that now I can see pretty well in my right eye, at least for distance, the way I could most of my life.

There's always good and bad in the world and in a day, routine cataract surgery is one of the good.

[PS: Thanks to great friends helping out with rides (Jeff, Bill) and more, and to my sons who have been taking good care of me, my older son Miles drove down from The Berkshires to spend a few days and nights looking out for me, and my fifteen-year-old, Flynn, made me lunch and keeps catching me when I start to bend (first thing I did after the operation was bend over to pick something up from the floor for which the nurse reprimanded me). Try not bending for a day, amazing how many times at least this human does.]

TOO COOL

A lot of you have probably seen this already. Just another reason why our First Lady is the coolest one this country's ever had.



And speaking of cool, check out some James Brown dance lessons:

THE OSCARS

I would have liked to have seen BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD win something important. It was pretty much wiped out at the Spirit Awards which are supposed to be for "Independent Movies" but lately have honored just smaller studio productions like this year it was all SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, a great flick but with major stars and bigtime Hollywood producers and director you can't really call it "independent" like BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD.

I almost had the feeling this year that the contenders in most categories were all deserving. Any of the leading actress category could have won, though I'm happy Jennifer Lawrence did. I may be wrong but in my memory the only other young movie actor at the beginning of their career who got a standing ovation when they won, as Lawrence did, was Daniel Day Lewis when he won for MY LEFT FOOT.

That year I was at a private Oscar party a few nights before the event and got to see Lewis and tell him how much I loved his work in that film. He's a classy act, with that wonderful Brit eccentricity that's one of their saving graces. Lawrence is almost the opposite, so open book "American" and the opposite of slick that even with her beauty and that perfect dress it didn't surprise me when she tripped and fell on the steps on her way up to receive her award (where were the escorts they should have had to help the ladies and the older gents?).

ARGO for best picture, not so much. But the way that category is voted on it could have been any of a few. SILVER LINGS PLAYBOOK was another favorite as was LIFE OF PI and LINCOLN. But again, for originality, acting, directing, writing and sheer movie impact BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD would have been a wonderful underdog to take the top prize.

Tarantino can make compelling screen experiences but they usually rely too heavily on cheap shots for my taste, explicit over the top violence will always get a reaction, AMOUR was ten times more brave than any Tarantino flick has ever been, but maybe too real for his fans to appreciate. But he was right in his acceptance for best original screenplay, his fellow nominees were all good, better than him in my view.

No one can begrudge Ang Lee for winning, though the favorite was Steven Spielberg. But I would have liked Benh Zeitlan to have won for, yeah, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. In the end it won't matter, we'll all most likely forget in a few months who won and why shouldn't we, there's a lot more important stuff to pay attention to and remember. But it's always a kick to see these folks who are in our living rooms or on bigger screens, sometimes, in movie theaters, come together to compete and self congratulate.

For me there's the extra kick, and sometimes aggravation, of seeing people I've worked with or for or hung out with or knew intimately in one way or another still looking good or not. Jane Fonda has finally crossed some line in her face lifts reminding me tonight more of Carol Burnett after her plastic surgery than the woman I had a crush on as a teenager when she first came on the scene and got to meet and hang around with a few times in my Hollywood years and always found as extraordinary to look at face to face as I did on the screen, until tonight.

If I was a fashion commentator I'd have to say this was a great year for classic Hollywood gowns, old Hollywood style, the best were, for my taste, on Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Jessica Chastain, Halle Berry and Charlize Theron. I'm happy my home girl (well from a nearby Jersey town) Anne Hathaway won (nice dress she was wearing too).

As for McFarlane's hosting, not bad but not as good as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on The Golden Globes, and the show was way too long with too many musical numbers though Shirley Bassey was a gas and the cast of LES MISERABLES gave me goose bumps. The highlight of all that was Streisand though, amazing vocal control still at her age. But why so many tributes to people in the business end of Hollywood who passed last year and what seemed a paltry few of those we knew best and cared most about from seeing them on screens over the years?

The producers were brand new for the Oscars and yet they looked older than me, and I'm pretty feckin' old. Maybe it's time to bring in somebody younger than sixty, even younger than fifty, to produce the Oscars from now on. Oh, and classiest of all, again for my taste, was our First Lady's part in announcing the Best Picture Oscar. No matter what you may think of Obama, Michaelle is the coolest First Lady ever.

[PS: I meant to add that whoever did the sound on Adele's SKYFALL number should be fired. The piano drowned her out at times. And who knew Scarlett Johansson could sing so well, so why wasn't she on stage singing her Oscar nominated song instead of Catherine Zeta Jones trying way too hard on that CHICAGO number?]

AMOUR

This is an unusual movie to be nominated for an Academy Award. It's in French, the stars are "senior" citizens, i.e. old, it's a slow paced contemplation of the deterioration and degradation of the physical, as well as mental, that sometimes, too often, goes along with aging and the inevitable end of aging.

But it is also brilliant in its way. Mainly for the incredibly courageous performance of its female lead Emmanuelle Riva, a once ravishing model (in both senses) of a European movie star beginning in the 1950s with HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR and continuing for a lifetime. I really want to see Jennifer Lawrence win the Oscar for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK because as someone who as acted in and written for movies, from my perspective she saves that movie with the incredible realism she brings to the role and forces on the bigger stars DiNiro and Bradley Cooper.

In AMOUR, Emmanuelle Riva is matched and supported by the male lead, Jean-Louis Trintigant, another actor whose career began in movies in the 1950s and was marked by worldwide success in such films as A MAN AND A WOMAN, but who now is also very old for a contemporary movie, let alone a leading man role. But he too is magnificent, although it is Riva whose performance is uniquely brave as well as bravely unique.

Isabelle Huppert, who also was a ravishing young movie star at one point, my first crush on her was in GOING PLACES in 1974, where I also first discovered the movie acting brilliance of Gerard Depardieu for the first time. But Huppert is only "middle aged" and plays a supporting role as the daughter of Riva's and Trintignant's characters.

The film was written and directed by Michael Haneke, the Austrian director known for his often bleak and always uncompromising films, the first to gain wide notoriety being THE PIANO TEACHER. AMOUR is probably his gentlest movie in its scenes of domestic harmony and aging lifelong love, but it is also uncompromising in its portrayal of aging's challenges and cruelty.

I can't imagine much of an "American" audience for this flick, its slow pace and long scenes with only one fixed camera angle in many is almost like a rebuke to most "American" movies, but if you can surrender to its rhythms and framing and confined spaces and limited exposition, not to mention the artlessness of its artistry, you may well leave the theater feeling you not only know these people very well but have just returned from their Paris apartment.

I went to see it for the acting, because I don't generally like Haneke's movies, but I left impressed with his accomplishment and the reality that no one else until AMOUR had dared to address this subject so intimately and realistically. I also left envying the film couple's long relationship, their lives and their apartment.

AH RITA

Caught this scene in a movie on TCM tonight and left me thinking was there anyone ever lovelier to watch on film than Rita Hayworth? I was in love with her as a kid, and still am. Even though she didn't get the best movies or best music too often. But she made the best of everything she ever did.

And though there may have been more stunning beauties or more compelling actors or more iconic legendary movie stars, there was never anyone who looked like they were having as much fun as she did when she danced with Fred Astaire, who said she was his favorite dancing partner.

Here's the clip, not the greatest music and someone else's voice when Rita sings, but the dancing is all hers:

  

DOUBLE INDEMNITY

Watched this tonight with my fifteen-year-old. Part of TCM's series on Oscar winners and nominees. I've seen it a lot, but always forget some of the details and usually am delightedly surprised at other things I forgot or maybe never even noticed. The way a shot is framed, or a set dressed, and especially background vignettes like the kids playing baseball in the street in a way that makes no sense, the little girl in a dress batting at the end of a driveway facing a house which means if she hits the ball well there's a strong possibility it will break a window. But the detail of her playing in a dress is doubly satisfying, first because it so represents the world when I was a boy, most men in suits and ties, women and girls in dresses, even sometimes while playing sports. But it also emphasizes that during the war females gained a certain parity in the workforce because so many men were overseas, and at least in that scene even in the makeshift playground of a street.

My son wandered off for a bit in the middle but came back for the surprisingly suspenseful last forty-five or fifty minutes. Interestingly he didn't like Fred McMurray's acting in it, though he got Barbara Stanwyck's character's diabolical seductiveness immediately. MacMurray was always the weakest thing in this flick for me as well. I love Billy Wilder's direction and his and Raymond Chandler's script and Edward G. Robinson's supporting role as MacMurray's character's immediate boss and so much else about the flick, including the actors playing the daughter (Jean Heather) and her boyfriend (Byron Barr). My teenage son thought Jean Heather playing the eighteen-year-old daughter was beautiful, and he dug the classy way the men dressed in their fedoras and suits and ties. I found that pretty cool too.

[Jean Heather in DOUBLE INDEMNITY]

[Byron Barr in DOUBLE INDEMNITY]

I used to make my older kids watch classic flicks as well and I think it was an important and integral part of their education and development. Hopefully it will be for my younger son too. He's already watched some of my favorites with me, like ON THE WATERFRONT and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS among many. Here's to Turner Classic Movies.

[PS: Here's a strange coincidence I found when looking up Byron Barr, for whom DOUBLE INDEMNITY was probably the highlight of his acting career. Only two years before, another Byron Barr was also starting an acting career in Hollywood playing a film character named "Gig Young," and the head of the studio decided for that actor Gig Young was a better name, so he kept it and became a minor star and Hollywood celebrity, while the other Byron Barr had a much less illustrious career, with the exception of his small role in DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Ain't the Internet grand sometimes?]

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"My greatest mistake was ever to have compromised. My greatest achievement has been to survive."  —Abel Gance (from an interview after Francis Ford Coppola refurbished and rereleased Gance's silent film masterpiece NAPOLEON)