Movies for August 2014: Life Itself and For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism

Don is hosting for August. The movies to see are:

Life Itself (2014)

'Life Itself' recounts the surprising and entertaining life of world-renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert - a story that's by turns personal, wistful, funny, painful, and transcendent. The film explores the impact and legacy of Roger Ebert's life: from his Pulitzer Prize-winning film criticism and his nearly quarter-century run with Gene Siskel on their review show, to becoming one of the country's most influential cultural voices, and finally to Roger's inspiring battles with cancer and the resulting physical disability - how he literally and symbolically put a new face on the disease and continued to be a cultural force despite it.

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009)

Relied upon by some moviegoers and reviled by others, film critics for over 100 years have represented a form of journalism that sought to find and judge film as an art in a way others might want to heed. This film presents a comprehensive history of this form of writing as it developed with the film medium itself. With historical profiles on major contributors like Pauline Kael along with interview with contemporary figures like Roger Ebert, the nature of the profession is explored both for its illustrious past and its uncertain future.

(Available on Netflix Streaming)

Other Movies of Note

Jersey Boys (2014)

Page Eight (2011)

Blancanieves (2012)

The Bug Movie (forthcoming)

Votes on Last Month's Movies

Chef: 3.0

Ida: 2.57

Movies for July 2014: Ida and Chef

Nic is hosting for July. We have two movies to see in the theaters:

Chef (2014)

Trivia

• Jon Favreau did his own cooking by training with food truck chef, Roy Choi. 
• First non-Iron Man collaboration between Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau. 

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Ida (2013)

Trivia

• Cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski was forced to quit the film after ten days' shooting for medical reasons. He was replaced by Lukasz Zal. 

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Other Movies of Note

• F for Fake (1973) 
• Finding Vivian Maier (2013)
• Girl on a Bicycle (2013)  
• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) 
• Muscle Shoals (2013)
• Song of Survival (2007)
• The Big Red One (1980)
• Tim's Vermeer (2013)

Movies for June 2014: The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden and The Wrecking Crew

Hugh is hosting for June. The movies to see are two documentaries - one in theaters and one on DVD:

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013)

Synopsis

(I couldn't find any trivia about this movie. It's a documentary but with big stars reading the parts of the main personalities in the story.)

Darwin meets Hitchcock in this true-crime tale of paradise found and lost. The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden is a fascinating documentary portrait of a 1930s murder mystery as strange and alluring as the famous archipelago itself. Fleeing conventional society, a Berlin doctor and his mistress start a new life on uninhabited Floreana Island. But after the international press sensationalizes the exploits of the Galapagos’ “Adam and Eve”, others flock there—including a self-styled Swiss Family Robinson and a gun-toting Viennese Baroness and her two lovers. Clashing personalities are aggravated by the island community’s lusty free-love ethos, and when some of the islanders disappear, suspicions of murder hang in the air leaving an unsolved mystery which remains the subject of local lore today.

To bring this extraordinary story to life, filmmakers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller (Ballets Russes) nimbly interweave newly unearthed home movies of these original settlers; testimonies of modern day islanders; stunning HD footage of native flora and fauna; and powerful voice performances by Oscar® winner Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann, Gustaf Skarsgård and Josh Radnor. Macabre yet inspiring, The Galapagos Affair is a gripping parable of Robinson Crusoe adventure and utopian dreams gone awry.

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The Wrecking Crew (2008)

Trivia

This movie is not to be confused with the Matt Helm movie. Although these musicians did back up Dean Martin on many of his records.

The producers finished the movie in 2008 after working on it for 17 years, but didn't have the money to pay for licensing all the music which was essential to telling the story. So they launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the $250,000 they needed to pay the license fees.

Filmmaker Denny Tedesco's father was one of the guitar players in the Wrecking Crew and the film is both an homage to him as well as a documentary of those days in music.

Hall Blaine estimates that he has played drums on over 10,000 records.

Pop acts backed up by various members of The Wrecking Crew include:

• Alvin and The Chipmunks
• Beach Boys
• Bing Crosby
• Bread
• Captain & Tennille
• Dean Martin
• Elvis Presley
• Fifth Dimension
• Frank Sinatra
• Frank Zappa
• Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
• Johnny Rivers
• Mamas & Papas
• Mason Williams
• Nancy Sinatra
• Nat King Cole
• Neil Diamond
• Rick Nelson
• Sam Cooke
• Simon and Garfunkel
• Sonny & Cher
• The Association
• The Baja Marimba Band
• The Byrds
• The Carpenters
• The Doors
• The Monkees
• The Righteous Brothers
• The Ronettes
• Wayne Newton

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Rating for May's movies

The Square: 3.67

The Unknown Known: 2.83

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Other Notables Movies

• All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
• The Railway Man (2013)
• Twenty Feet a From Stardom (2013)
• Fargo (2014 TV Series)

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Hosting Schedule

• June: Hugh 
• July: Nic 
• August: Don
• September: Ted (joint meeting)
• October: Carl
• November: Steve
• December: Bill 

For the joint meeting, the shorts program will be selected by Dean, Steve and Bill T.

Movies for May 2014: The Square and The Unknown Known

John C. is hosting for May. The movies to see are:

The Square (2013)

Trivia:

The film is both the first Kickstarter (crowd-sourced) film to be nominated for an Oscar, but it is also the first film released by Netflix to receive a nomination.

and

The Unknown Known (2013)

Trivia:

Rumsfeld does not come off well, especially compared to the agonized McNamara in Morris' earlier "The Fog of War", and it doesn't appear to be the fault of the filmmaker. 

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Other Notes

Hosting line-up

• June: Hugh 
• July: Nic 
• August: Don
• December: Bill 

OSF: The Tempest is a great production. Interesting to watch Forbidden Planet and compare and contrast.

Portland is having the Shakespeare project.  All of Shakespeare plays are being produced in Portland. Info here:  http://portlandshakes.org/.

Othello is at Portland Center Stage right now and is supposed to be great.

Movies and TV Shows to Watch

• Wit by Emma Thompson
• The Train with Burt Lancaster
• True Detective (series)

Movies for April 2014: Grand Budapest Hotel, Dallas Buyers Club & The Monuments Men

Jon and Nic are hosting in April and the meeting will be held at Jon's house.

The movies to see are:

The Monuments Men

Trivia 

• From a newspaper report dated 13 December 2013: Police broke into the flat of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi art dealer who hoarded hundreds of works believed to have been looted by the Third Reich. Gurlitt has been the focus of huge media attention after a trove of over 1,400 previously unknown masterpieces were uncovered in his Munich flat. A task force appointed to research the origin of the art has said that around 590 pictures fall into the category of art looted or extorted by the Nazis from Jewish collectors. These include pieces by Picasso, Matisse, Munch and Cezanne among others. 
• Originally slated for a December 2013 release, with an awards/holiday season aim. In a rare move, Director George Clooney asked the studio for more time for post-production due to the special effects not being ready, knowing this would make it very unlikely to receive awards attention (uncommon for an early-year release). Reluctantly, the studio put it to the following February. 
• When Sam Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas) sees a Rembrandt's painting for the first time (a self-portrait from c.1645), his face is lit with a Rembrandt style (a key light coming from a side of the frame creates a chiaroscuro marking a small triangle on the cheek not receiving the light directly.) 
• Daniel Craig was cast in a role but ultimately he dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Matt Damon replaced him. 
• As mentioned in the jail scene between Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett, the office in Paris where the Nazis amass their stolen art was the Galerie du Jeu de Paume, located next to Place de la Concorde in the heart of the city. The real Hermann Göring visited the museum 20 times during the war and cherry-picked over 700 items for his private collection. 
• The actor playing the older Frank Stokes visiting the Madonna of Bruges at the end is George Clooney's father, Nick Clooney. 
• True to depiction in the film, Neuschwanstein Castle served as a repository during World War II for many works of art looted from conquered European nations by the Nazis. 
• The character of Claire Simone, played by Cate Blanchett appears to have been based on Rose Valland, a Parisian museum curator who was drafted by the Nazis during the occupation of Paris to assist with art acquisitions. As depicted in this film and in the documentary The Rape of Europa (2006), Valland secretly kept a detailed ledger of all works that passed through Nazi hands, the original (often Jewish) owner of each work, and the location in Germany where each item was eventually transported. 

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The Grand Budapest Hotel

Trivia

• Wes Anderson's seventh collaboration with Bill Murray. 
• Bill Murray's character's name can be read in hungarian as "Mi van?" which means: "What's going on?". 
• Tilda Swinton underwent hours in the makeup chair to play the 84-year-old dowager Madame D. "We're not usually working with a vast, Bruckheimer-type budget on my films, so often we're trying a work-around," says director Wes Anderson. "But for the old-age makeup I just said, 'Let's get the most expensive people we can.'" 
• Angela Lansbury was originally cast in the movie but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with the stage production of Driving Miss Daisy and was replaced by Tilda Swinton. 
• Saoirse Ronan's character is responsible for making the hotel's signature confection, the Courtisane au Chocolat. "Making them wasn't easy," says Ronan. "Forget the action scenes in Hanna - these little pastries were the hardest thing I've had to do in a movie." 
• The snowy rock formation in the background of the wedding scene is the so-called Saxonian Switzerland in Saxonia, Germany. 
• Jeff Goldblum plays Deputy Kovacs. In 1984's "Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter (1984)", Goldblum played comedian Ernie Kovacs. 

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Dallas Buyers Club

Trivia

• The budget was also so low for this film that only two-hundred and fifty dollars ($250) was allotted to the Makeup department. Amazingly, the film's artists were able to work within that figure, and the film's Makeup and Hairstyling won an Oscar. 
• Matthew McConaughey lost 47 pounds in assuming his role as an AIDS patient. Newspapers reported his new looks as "terribly gaunt" and "wasting away to skin and bones". 
• The movie went through various stages before finally being financed with the help of Matthew McConaughey. The first director/actor duo who tried to get the movie made were Brad Pitt and Marc Forster and also Ryan Gosling and Craig Gillespie. Woody Harrelson was also involved with the project at one point. 
• Jared Leto stayed in character as Rayon throughout filming. At one point, he went grocery shopping in character at a local Whole Foods where he received numerous stares and double takes. 
• The film marked Jared Leto's return to acting after 5 years. 
• Jared Leto lost 30 pounds for his role. 
• Leto's and Garner's characters didn't exist in real life. 
• Such were the budgetary constraints on this 25-day shoot, no customary lighting setups were used for the only camera that was hand-held for takes lasting up to 15 minutes. Rehearsals were excluded and, to the relief of the actors, no post-production looping requested. 
• During the mid-1990s, Dennis Hopper was attached as director with Woody Harrelson as Woodroof, but financial backing was impossible to secure. 
• Major League Baseball player Adam Dunn, a friend of producer Joe Newcomb, helped finance the film and appears in the non-speaking, uncredited role of Neddie Jay, the bartender. 
• This is the fifth movie to win best actor & best supporting actor oscars (for Matthew McConaughey & Jared Leto), Going My Way (1944),The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Ben-Hur (1959) & Mystic River (2003) Being The Others. 
• Hilary Swank was cast but she dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. 
• This movie marks the second collaboration between Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn, eight years after their first collaboration, in Sahara (2005). 

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Notes from the last meeting

Notable Phillip Seymour Hoffman films

• Love Lucy
• Doubt
• The Big Lebowski
• Boogie Nights
• The Master
• Almost Famous
• The Savages
• A Late Quartet
• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Other notable films

• Jane Mansfield's Car
• The Intouchables
• Enough Said

Notable TV shows

• Veep
• Episodes
• Californication
• Damages

Movies for February 2014: Nebraska and August: Osage County

Don and Barb will host for Oscar Night on Sunday, March 2nd.

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Votes on January's films:

Philomena (2013):  11 Thumbs Up
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013):  2 Thumbs Up / 8 Thumbs Down

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Dean will be hosting for February. The movies to see are:

Nebraska (2013)

Trivia

• Bryan Cranston auditioned for the role of David, but director Alexander Payne didn't feel that he was right for the part. Matthew Modine, Paul Rudd and Casey Affleck were also considered. 
• Gene Hackman, Robert Forster, Jack Nicholson and Robert Duvall were considered for the role of Woody. 
• Alexander Payne's fourth film set in his home state of Nebraska, after Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999) and About Schmidt (2002). 
• Alexander Payne's first experience shooting in black and white, with digital cameras and anamorphic lenses. Paramount initially balked at Payne's choice to shoot in black and white, but relented when previews yielded positive feedback to the cinematography. 
• The first Alexander Payne film that he did not also write the screenplay for, and the first since Citizen Ruth (1996) whose screenplay is original and not adapted. 
• The movie begins and ends with the 50s and 60s Paramount logo, saying "A Paramount Release". 

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August: Osage County (2013)

Trivia

• Beverly Weston, the Weston family patriarch, was played by Dennis Letts, playwright Tracey Letts' father in the Steppenwolf premiere of the play. 
• Chloë Grace Moretz auditioned for the role of Jean Fordham, but lost to Abigail Breslin, who had a 103 degree fever when she auditioned for the role. 
• Jim Carrey was considered for the role of Steve. 
• Renée Zellweger and Andrea Riseborough were considered for a role. Riseborough was cast but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Juliette Lewis replaced her. 
• The role of Violet Weston was originally played by Deanna Dunagan who won a Tony Award for her performance on Broadway (she also played the role in its world premiere at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company). Phylicia Rashad and Estelle Parsons replaced Dunagan later in the play's Broadway run. 
• One critic noted that the story, in both its stage and film version, "draws heavily on Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1941)" 
• "Life is very long" --the opening line spoken by Sam Shepard's character Beverly Weston--is from T.S. Eliot's infamous "Hollow Men" poem, but it's a line borrowed from Joseph Conrad's novel "An Outcast of the Islands". The hollow emptiness of modern, Western life is a grand theme of this movie and its original stage play. Also, the name of the major female character, "Vi" for Violet, is very similar to the name of Eliot's wife, Vivienne. In addition, Sam Shepard--whose father was also a teacher and drinker like the Bev Weston he portrays--has long been a playwright documenting the demise of the American dream in works such as "True West". 
• Tracy Letts unsuccessfully objected against Harvey Weinstein's decision in the casting of British actors for the film (Ewan McGregor, Benedict Cumberbatch and etc.. including Andrea Riseborough who was nearly cast as Karen) as the characters are written to be all-American, but admitted had a change of view after seeing the film. 
• Gary Cole was offered to reprise the role of Steve Heidebrecht he played in the London stage version but declined. 

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Other Movies of Note

American Hustle (2013)

Beyond the Sea (2004)

Everybody's Fine (2009)

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Liberal Arts (2012)

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

Sound of Noise (2010)

The Sapphires (2012)

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Movies for January 2014: Inside Llewyn Davis and Philomena

Bob will be hosting for January and we will meet on Wednesday, January 8th.

The movies to see are:

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Trivia

• Loosely based on incidents in the life (and the 2005 memoir) of the late Dave Van Ronk and the Greenwich Village music scene in and around the real-life Gerde's Folk City club. 
• The "Inside Llewyn Davis" album cover is based on the cover of the album "Inside Dave van Ronk". 
• This film marks the second time Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan have played opposite each other. The first was in Drive (2012) where they played a husband and wife. 
• The Coens' usual choice for cinematographer, Roger Deakins, was unavailable as he was busy shooting Skyfall (2012). 
• The valet driver for John Goodman's character mentions a stint in a play he did for three weeks called "The Brig". This refers to a Living Theatre production in the early 1960s which was revived a few years ago - including a documentary covering the play by Dirk Szusies, former member of the Living Theatre and his partner Karin Kaper. 
• Last acting role of Jerry Grayson. 
• After Oscar Isaac's first meeting with T-Bone Burnett, advisor/composer/musician Burnett put on a Tom Waits record and simply left the room for an hour. "That was the first lesson." Isaac said. "It was a real Mr. Miyagi moment." 
• Early screenings were shipped to theaters under the code name, 'The Gaslight.' 

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Philomena (2013)

Trivia

• There are flashbacks which are done with "home movies". Some of these were created for the film but some of them are from actual footage of her real son. 
• While visiting the convent, Martin Sixsmith sees an autographed photo of an American actress on the wall and asks if it is Jayne Mansfield (it is actually Jane Russell). A character who appears later in the film, Pete Olsson, is played by Peter Hermann. Hermann is married to Jayne Mansfield's daughter, Mariska Hargitay.