Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pirate Radio (Rhoades)
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
On Fridays I co-host a radio program on KONK AM (1680 on your dial) with Michael Shields, a segment called Film on Fridays. Community radio at its finest. It reminds me of the freedom of expression we enjoy.
Back in the ’60s our friends in England didn’t have it so simple. The BBC preferred soothing music, not the raucous sounds of rock ’n roll. The solution to this was so-called pirate radio stations, illegal transmissions sent from ships anchored offshore in the Black Sea.
That era (and its music) is recalled in a new film appropriately titled “Pirate Radio.” This comedy is currently broadcasting its story at the Tropic Cinema.
The ensemble cast is led by Phillip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, a raucous American DJ. He’s joined by Tom Wisdom as Midnight Mark, Nick Frost as Dr. Dave, Chris O’Dowd as Breakfast DJ Simon, Rhys Darby as Angus “The Knut” Knutsford, Rhys Ifans as DJ Gavin, and Ralph Brown as DJ Smooth Bob.
The decrepit old ship is helmed by veteran actor Bill Nighy, well cast as the station’s tenacious boss. And Tom Sturridge is on board as his godson Carl.
The posters promise “One Boat. Eight DJs. No morals.”
Every story has a bad guy. Their nemesis is a government minister, wryly portrayed by Kenneth Branagh. His aim is to shut them down. Passing a law known as the Marine Offences Act, he sends an armada of boats out to arrest the malefactors.
The old tub that headquarters Radio Rock is not up to evasive maneuvers and begins to sink. Will the minister’s boats save the offensive rockers? Will listening fans be horrified? Will Phillip Seymour Hoffman sink beneath the seas like a stone?
Hey, it’s only rock ’n roll to me. Go see for yourself.
Written and directed by Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Love Actually”), this British production was originally titled “The Boat That Rocked.”
Bill Nighy has been here before with Richard Curtis. Although Nighy had been a working actor for 40 years, it was his portrayal of an aging rock star in Curtis’ “Love Actually” that put his career on the map.
“Whatever else the film might be,” says Nighy, “it was mainly an excuse for Richard to play all the songs from that period, the Who, the Small Faces, the Kinks. He is a slave to them. It’s funny but at the time, 1966, I just accepted that there was all this good music around. I thought that was the norm but, in retrospect, I realize that it was an extraordinary time for music. Extraordinary.”
Nighy remembers the pirate radio stations of the ’60s. “Radio Caroline was seen as a threat and was chased all over the seas. The best thing about them was they had a good signal. Radio Luxembourg was great but it would always drift off the signal. I would listen to it on a beautiful old wireless that I kept by my bed ... My dad just shook his head. It was beyond his comprehension.”
Pirate radio ended. But the battle was won. Today, there are 299 music radio stations across the UK playing rock and pop music 24 hours a day.
Rock on!
srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Week of Nov. 13 to Nov. 19 (Mann)
What's on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann
There's a line my partner uses on me: "You're very seldom right, but this time you're wrong."
That's what I wanted to shout at the mass of movie critics when I saw AMELIA, the bio-pic of famed aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, now going into its second week at the Tropic. A common critical complaint seems to be that the movie "just tells the story" of her life. Well, duh, with a life like hers that's more than enough.
A girl from Kansas who would rather wear pants than a wedding ring, she became the first woman to solo across the Atlantic and the nation's sweetheart. Her life is the stuff of legends, and Director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair) and Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby) capture it dramatically. If you want the real scoop, just ask one of the hundreds of locals who have seen it over the past week. The movie has been enough of a hit for the Tropic to move it into the big Carper Theater auditorium. So now Amelia and her Lockheed Electra are swooping across an even bigger screen.
Also continuing its run is another bio-pic, COCO BEFORE CHANEL, the story of the early life of the fashion icon. Coco's life may not have had the winged drama of Amelia's, but the two were sisters in spirit, both strong-willed and committed to making their mark in a world that offered little room for such women.
Maybe it's a coincidence, but the theme that Craig Wanous has chosen for this month's Monday Night Movie Classics is "Wild, Wonderful Women." Joining Amelia and Coco on Monday night will be Mamie Van Doren as a Venusian woman in the sci-fi/spoof film VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN. Mamie, for those of you too young to remember, started her movie career with great promise as Universal Studios tried to do with her what 20th Century Fox had done with Marilyn Monroe. But that was in the '50s. By 1968 Mamie was off on Venus wearing a clam shell bra over her 38DD pair. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who would hit the big time with The Last Picture Show three years later, it's quite a combination of talents.
Have you been to the new Peggy Dow theater yet? It's still lacking a few cosmetic touches, but this new space has quickly become my favorite of the Tropic's four screening rooms. This week it's showing a wonderful little film, NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU. Ten well-known directors each made an eight minute short about love and marriage in New York City. Mira Nair (Amelia) features Natalie Portman as a Hasidic woman about to marry and, as required by her religion, cut off her beautiful hair. There's Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman as a quarrelsome married couple, and Orlando Bloom and Christina Ricci as young lovers . Some segments are great, others not so, but if you're bored you can always look around and admire the beautiful new theater for eight minutes until the next one starts.
Looking for something more serious? FLAME AND CITRON is a Danish World War II noir political thriller. The eponymous leads are part of the resistance who murder traitors to their cause as well as the Gestapo. Based on a true story of two men who became Danish national heroes, it is reputedly the most expensive Danish movie ever made. That shows in a very stylized, and stylish production to accompany the tense events on screen. The critics have loved this one. I think this may be one of those seldom cases where they're right.
[from Key West, the newspaper - www.kwtn.com]
New York, I Love You (Rhoades)
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Do you have one of those souvenir T-shirts that reads I Y New York? Sure you do, if you’ve ever been to NYC.
As a guy who lived in New York and its environs for 25 years, I can tell you it’s a city that’s easy to love.
Nearly a dozen directors do exactly that in “New York, I Love You,” the new film that’s playing at the Tropic Cinema.
You know what to expect if you saw “Paris, je t’aime,” that love poem to the City of Lights. Same here with the City That Never Sleeps, an anthology of stories about love in Bloomberg land.
These tales of love take us from Tribeca to Central Park, a journey of the heart. Actors include Bradley Cooper, Shia LaBeouf, Natalie Portman, Orlando Bloom, Hayden Christensen, Christina Ricci, Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke, James Caan, John Hurt, Julie Christie, Andy Garcia, and Robin Wright – to name only a handful.
Emmanuel Benbihy and Tristan Carné get credit for the idea (both the Paris and New York versions). The directors here are Faith Akin, Yvan Attal, Allen Hughes, Shunji Iwai, Wen Jiang, Shekhar Kapur, Joshua Marston, Mira Nair, Natalie Portman, Brett Ratner, and Randall Balsmeyer.
By the way, even if you’ve never ever been to New York, you’ll love this movie if you’re a romantic at heart.
srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Week of November 6 to November 12 (Mann)
What’s on at the Tropic
By Phil Mann
I don’t know why, but we seem to be in the era of fashion films. First there was The Devil Wears Prada, and in just the past few months we’ve had The September Issue (Vogue magazine) and Valentino: The Last Emperor. All were outstanding films. Now it’s COCO BEFORE CHANEL, starring Audrey Tatou, and the winning streak continues. This is the back story of poor Gabrielle Chanel who went from orphan to chanteuse to mistress before becoming an iconic designer. “Coco Before Chanel has it all -- striving, sensuality, romance and a bittersweet ending that turns out to be just the beginning” says Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post.
Well, maybe not all, since it doesn’t tell the rest of the story. Not to worry. Coco and Igor, the story of Mlle. Chanel’s passionate affair with Stravinsky, premiered at
While Coco Chanel is famous for her accomplishments, Amelia Earhart’s fame is mostly attributable to her startling disappearance at the height of her powers. AMELIA, the new bio-pic from director, Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake) keeps the flame alive. Amelia was beautiful, a pre-feminist feminist, the first woman to solo across the
If Amelia is about a woman who refused to be a homebody, THE BOYS ARE BACK is about the opposite, a man who is thrust into that role. Australian Director Scott Hicks (Shine, Snows Falling on Cedar) has adapted the true story of a sportswriter who became an active single-parent to two boys. Just when the mother of his six-year old son died, a 14-year old son from a prior marriage decided to live with his dad. Clive Owen (Children of Men, Duplicity) performance as the father has picked up Oscar buzz.
It’s remarkable that this set of facts, so common for the other sex, should be deemed worthy of a movie. But rules in this testosterone-laden household depart drastically from those in the more-common female-supervised landscape. It’s more permitting than parenting, but the love is there as they all struggle with loss. Who’s to say what’s right? And the movie is “an intimate drama told with humor and emotion” (USA Today), “polished yet authentically moving” (Variety).
Parenting is also the theme of THE HORSE BOY, a documentary about the extraordinary journey of the Issacson family from
Are you a veteran or on active military duty? Here’s your chance for a perk. Free popcorn all day on November 11. It’s Red Cross Veterans’ Day at the Tropic.