Category: Movies

Gregory Hines in “White Nights”

White Nights In The New Yorker, Joan Acocella recently wrote an article “Up From the Hold” reviewing a new book on the history of tap dancing, What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing, by Brian Seibert. The article gives a fascinating overview of what sounds like an interesting tale about the style of dance and the people who kept tap dancing alive as an art form.

One of the stars portrayed in the book is Gregory Hines, who was born on February 14, 1946 in New York City. The article quotes Siebert’s description of an extended Hines dance sequence in the film White Nights (1985). The dance was choreographed by Twyla Tharp and features Hines and ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Watching the two men, Siebert concludes that it is “difficult to choose which one to watch, which shade of cool to savor.” Check out this dance scene from White Nights, where Hines and Baryshnikov define cool.

Fans expected Hines to take tap even further. He appeared on TV and Broadway in addition to films. And he worked in various ways to promote tap dancing as an art form.

Even though Gregory Hines passed away at the relatively young age of 57 in 2003, his work lives on, not only through his recorded work but through those he taught and influenced. Among others, Hines influenced tap dance artists like the outstanding Savion Glover.

What is your favorite tap dancing scene in a film? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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The Lost Jerry Lewis Movie: “The Day the Clown Cried”

Jerry Lewis Concentration Camp

One of the most famous movies-that-you-cannot-watch is The Day the Clown Cried, a 1972 movie that Jerry Lewis co-wrote, directed, and starred in. The controversial film about an imprisoned circus clown at a World War II concentration camp has achieved legendary status both for being an obviously bad idea and for being shelved by Lewis. But a new BBC documentary The Story of The Day the Clown Cried provides some never-before-seen images from the lost movie about the fictional clown Helmut Doork along with some insight into why Lewis did not want anyone to see the movie.

If you just think about how a movie about a clown at a concentration camp possibly could go wrong, you may not need to know much more about The Day the Clown Cried. But for everyone curious about how a film got made that ends with Lewis’s clown leading children into the gas chamber at Auschwitz, the BBC documentary, presented by Jewish comedian David Schneider, is revealing.

To make the 28-minute documentary, Schneider used footage of Jerry Lewis discussing the film and also sought out other people connected to the making of the movie. Check out the complete The Story of The Day the Clown Cried below.

In 2015, Lewis donated The Day the Clown Cried to the Library of Congress with an agreement that the movie will not be shown for at least ten years. So, if you are curious, you may get to see the movie in 2025 (although the movie itself was never completely finished due to financial and production problems).

Until then, you will have to satisfy your urge to see a comedian in a Holocaust movie by watching Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful (1997).

What was Jerry Lewis thinking? Leave your two cents in the comments. Photo via YouTube.

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    Trailer for “11.22.63” Stephen King Miniseries

    11.22.63

    Hulu is producing an eight-part miniseries based on Stephen King’s novel 11.22.63, a delightful time-travel novel that Chimesfreedom reviewed earlier. The new trailer for the miniseries features actor James Franco as the time-traveling Jake Epping.

    As discussed in our review of the book, 11.22.63 centers on Epping’s attempts to stop the John F. Kennedy assassination. Before acting decisively, though, he has to investigate whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president. I loved the book, and this trailer makes me excited for the miniseries too.

    The miniseries 11.22.63 is directed by Kevin Macdonald and also stars Chris Cooper, Cherry Jones, and Josh Duhamel. The miniseries hits Hulu on February 15, 2016, which is Presidents’ Day.

    What is your favorite Stephen King adaptation? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    8 Things About Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight”

    The Hateful Eight (2015), billed as the eighth film from Quentin Tarantino, is a Western set in the post-Civil War years on the American frontier. The movie stars Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, and others. Ennio Morricone, who wrote great music for many of the classic spaghetti Westerns, provides the musical score for The Hateful Eight (although the song that Jennifer Jason Leigh sings is an old Australian folk song).

    Whether or not you like the three-hour film may largely depend on how you feel about the violence and other aspects of Tarantino’s films. While most regard Pulp Fiction (1994) as a masterpiece (and I agree), his movies since Jackie Brown (1997) have delved into brutal areas that divide viewers. So, instead of a regular review, below are “8 Things About The Hateful Eight.”

    1. Tarantino remains a master at building tension by featuring conversations inevitably leading up to an explosion of violence.

    Tarantino Western 2. I liked Tarantino’s decision about showing the movie in Ultra Panavision 70mm. I like the format for films, although because the movie was a Western I expected more outdoor shots. Instead it was set largely indoors (“four-fifths” of the film, by one count), arguably somewhat wasting the beauty of the format.

    3. But the indoor setting highlighted similarities between the approach of The Hateful Eight to Tarantino’s classic Reservoir Dogs (1992), focusing on the interactions between characters with flashbacks to solve mysteries.

    4. Depending on your point of view, The Hateful Eight comments on America’s brutality, racism, and misogyny both today and in the post-Civil War frontier. Or Tarantino unnecessarily overuses the n-word and imposes violence against a woman as a sort of running joke. Or maybe it is a little of both, but the film certainly goes over the top at points.

    5. Some folks loved the movie. The Guardian headlines “Tarantino triumphs with a western of wonder.” There is some talk of a Best Picture Academy Award nomination. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 75% Critics rating and a 79% Audience rating.

    6. Some folks hated the movie, arguing that the movie is not about big American themes but instead is just a bunch of talk as an excuse to lead to violent killings. Matt Zoller Seitz on RogerEbert.com concludes that “there’s no detectable moral framework to speak of.” Similarly, The Atlantic calls it a “Gory Epic in Search of Meaning.” In an insightful conclusion, Seitz raises an interesting question about Tarantino: “It’s hard to shake the suspicion that, deep down, he believes in nothing but sensation, and that he’s spent the last decade or so stridently identifying with oppressed groups so that he can get a gold star for making the kinds of films he’d be making anyway.”

    7. Samuel L. Jackson is a great actor who should have won an Academy Award by now.

    8. The movie kept me entertained and some of it was brilliant, but some of the language and violence were unnecessarily distracting. One killing near the end was ridiculous and overly cruel, although the final scene was great. After watching the film, I felt like I needed to do something to wash my brain of all the nastiness. I went home and watched an Anthony Mann Western.

    What did you think of “The Hateful Eight”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    What Song Did Jennifer Jason Leigh Sing in “The Hateful Eight”?

    Jennifer Jason Leigh Jim Jones Song In one of the rare touching moments in Quentin Tarantino’s film The Hateful Eight (2015), the captured fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) picks up a guitar and sings a song about a prisoner on a ship. Although Domergue eventually adds a few lines of her own about getting revenge upon her captor John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and escaping to Mexico, the song itself is a traditional Australian folk song called “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” or sometimes simply “Jim Jones.”

    “Jim Jones at Botany Bay”

    The song refers to the first Australian penal colony, Botany Bay, where England sent convicts beginning in 1788. Star Trek fans may recognize the name because the ship that carried Khan Noonien Singh and his comrades was named the S.S. Botany Bay after the penal colony.

    In “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” the singer Jim Jones is an English convict who has been sentenced to ride the ship to the penal colony, although the judge first threatened to hang him. On the trip, the men on the ship repel a group of pirates, but Jones thinks, “I’d rather joined that pirate ship than come to New South Wales.”

    Jones dreams of escaping and joining “the bold bushrangers there Jack Donahue and Company.”

    And some dark night when everything is silent in this town,
    I’ll kill the tyrants one by one and shoot the floggers down;
    I’ll give the law a little shock, remember what I say;
    They’ll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.

    The song was first published in 1907, although The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature notes that scholars speculate that the song was written around 1830 because of the reference to the bushranger Jack Donahue (sometimes spelled “John Donohoe”). Donahue was an Irishman sentenced to Australia in 1825. But he later escaped, forming gangs that stole from wealthy land owners. He eventually was killed in a shootout in New South Wales.

    So, the song would have been around during the years after the Civil War, which is the setting for The Hateful Eight. And it might not be unusual for someone like Daisy Domergue to be fond of a ballad about another outlaw.

    Versions of the Song

    “Jim Jones at Botany Bay” has been performed and recorded by a number of singers. Bob Dylan recorded “Jim Jones” for his Good As I Been To You (1992) album. You may hear a clip of Bob Dylan’s version on his website.

    The video below features Old Crow Medicine Show performing the song at Byron Bay Bluesfest in 2010. Check it out.

    For a complete recording of “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” below is a version by Australian singer-songwriter Gary Shearston.

    In modern decades, the song has been used as a song of defiance as it was in The Hateful Eight. For example, English folksinger A.L. “Bert” Lloyd sang ““Jim Jones at Botany Bay”” at London’s Westminster Hall during a rally in support of releasing political activist Angela Davis in the 1970s. So, whenever you are feeling a bit rebellious, crank up “Jim Jones at Botany Bay.”

    And that is the Story Behind the Song.

    Photo via YouTube. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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