Summer Hours

Winding-up an estate rends many families, but three siblings, heirs to a few valuable art objects and a French country house, manage to do so amicably -- well, democratically, anyway.

The New York Times' A.O. Scott wrote:

... Hélène’s [Hélène Berthier (Edith Scob)] eldest son, Frédéric (Charles Berling), wants to keep everything as it is, so that the next generation can gather at the old place and appreciate Grandma’s stuff. But Frédéric’s sister, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), and their younger brother, Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), who live abroad (she in the United States, he in China with his wife and three children), would rather sell the house and most of what is in it, donating the best of the paintings, pieces of furniture and sundry knickknacks to the Musée d’Orsay.

That, in a nutshell, is the dramatic arc of this extraordinary film, which, in spite of its modest scale, tactful manner and potentially dowdy subject matter, is packed nearly to bursting with rich meaning and deep implication. And this is only fitting, since one of Mr. Assayas’s [Olivier Assayas, the film's Director] themes is the way that inanimate things accrue value, sentimental and otherwise — the curious alchemy that transforms certain objects into art. ...

Late in the film, Frédéric and his wife see his mother's desk and a vase at the Musée d’Orsay and comment that they're nicely displayed, but Frédéric's tone of voice seemed to convey the idea that they were less valuable in their new setting, outside his mother's house, where they had been used in the course of ordinary, everyday life.

In his review, A.O. Scott wrote, "Frédéric ... dreams of holding on to it all for at least one more generation, but the film’s clearest and most poignant insight is that this longing, which is essentially to stop time, can never be fulfilled."

A.O. Scott's review of the film is "Sorting Out an Inheritance: Three Siblings Dissect the Stuff of Life," where this post's photo was found.

My rating of Summer Hours? A must see.

From 8 1/2 to Nine and Back, Again

This is Kate Hudson, as Stephanie, singing Cinema Italiano in Nine. The Blu-ray has some extra material in which you can see how intensely the soundstage was lighted for this number. Hudson's costume was made of a metallic mesh fabric and was heavy and was hot.

While watching Nine, I was contstantly reminded of Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 of 1963. Nine is not a remake of Fellini's film, but is derived from it. Many of the scenes and characters are similar. In both films, there is a director named "Guido."

"Guido" doesn't have a script, in either film. Imagine that! And with cast and crew assembled, with an imminent pre-release press conference, we see the film he might have made through scenes he imagines.

I had always thought that the alternative title for 8 1/2, The Beautiful Confusion, was an appropriate title, because although it was something pleasant to watch, the film didn't seem to have any meaning; it didn't make sense. But Nine and 8 1/2 are both films about making films; something I didn't realize until I saw Nine.

What is a director's role? Choreographer of time? With a number of scenes in the can, what can a director do? He (or she) might omit scenes, rearrange them, or, budget permitting, film additional scenes. The only thing remaining to be done is to tie the scenes together into a narrative whole. Music might be used to do that.

I saw 8 1/2 years ago; I don't remember where or when. After borrowing Nine (Blu-ray) from the library, I borrowed their 8 1/2 (DVD), then bought both Blu-rays. So, I have gone from 8 1/2 to Nine and back, again, and seen 8 1/2 as a musical for the first time.

How is a film like a life? How are a film's scenes like life's experiences? How is being a film director like telling one's life story?

The photo is a still from Nine, from blu-ray.com's collection of screenshots.

The Seven Year Itch

The Seven Year Itch is a 1955 film based on a three-act play with the same name by George Axelrod. The film was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, and starred Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell, reprising his Broadway role. It contains one of the most iconic images of the 20th century -- Monroe standing on a subway grate as her dress is blown above her knees by a passing train.

While his wife and son are away for the summer, "Richard Sherman," played by Tom Ewell, meets "The Girl," played by Marilyn Monroe. Let's just say -- without getting clinical, in a psychological sense -- that Mr. Sherman has a very vivid imagination. The film can be quite tedious while Mr. Sherman is alone in his apartment, but once The Girl comes down for a drink it becomes fascinating. Marilyn Monroe plays a ditzy airhead -- dumb blond, if you prefer -- perfectly. She's an excellent actress.

The film is only available on DVD at this time. The DVD includes "Back Story: The Seven Year Itch," which has more of the famous subway scene than was included in the film, and it describes how Monroe's marriage to Joe DiMaggio may have deteriorated over such scenes. Some of the bonus material also describes how the film differs from the hit play from which it was derived; how the Hayes Code caused the play to be butchered in order to make it into a film.

The Seven Year Itch is number 51 on The American Film Institute's Top 100 Comedy Films list. Ewell won a Golden Globe award for Best Actor, Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The film's Director, Billy Wilder, was nominated for a Director's Guild of America award.

The post's image, as well as its first paragraph, were taken from the Wikipedia entry for the film, here.

Charlie Sheen Rants -- 'Two and a Half Men' Production is Discontinued

From "Charlie Sheen slams 'Two and a Half Men' creator in multiple rants," by James Hibberd of "Inside TV:"

Charlie Sheen ripped Two and a Half Men co-creator Chuck Lorre — as well as Alcoholics Anonymous and women he parties with — in a stunning live radio rant Thursday, and then followed up a few hours later with a reported second rant to TMZ directed at Lorre specifically. ...

... Calling into the Alex Jones Show radio program, according to TMZ, Sheen called the executive producer of his hit TV show a “clown” ...

... Seemingly referring to women he parties with, Sheen says, “If I bring up these turds, these… losers, there’s no reason to then bring them back into the fold because I have real fame, they have nothing. They have zero. They have that night. And I will forget about them as the last image of them exits my beautiful home. And they will get out there and they will sell me and they will lose. Bring me a frickin’ challenge. It just ain’t there.” ...

... Regarding AA, Sheen called the organization a “bootleg cult” with a five percent success rate. ... "This bootleg cult arrogantly referred to as AA now supports a 5 percent success rate. My success rate is 100 percent. Do the math! One of their stupid mottos is ‘Don’t be special, be one of us.’ News flash: I am special and I will never be one of you. ‘Oh, we have to all sit in here and touch ourselves and frown.’ Well, you don’t look like you’re having a lot of fun. I’m going to hang out with these two smokin’ hotties and fly privately around the world. It might be lonely up here but I sure like the view.”

“I’m so tired of pretending like my life isn’t perfect and bitchin’ and just winning every second,” he continued. “I’m not perfect, and bitching and just delivering the goods at every f—ing turn. Because look what I’m dealing with, man — I’m dealing with fools and trolls. I’m dealing with soft targets.”

Inside TV's article has been updated with a link to an announcement by CBS and Warner Bros. Television. They are discontinuing production of the show for the rest of the season. The show had been scheduled to resume production on Monday, with Sheen back on the set Tuesday.

This post's photo is taken from The Los Angeles Times' Show Tracker column, "'Two and a Half Men' faces uncertain future after CBS shuts down season in wake of Charlie Sheen outburst," which adds: 'In a letter to TMZ issued after the network decision had been made, Sheen wrote of Lorre: “Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words -- imagine what I would have done with my fire breathing fists.”'

Radio lives. It's a quality rant, no? Much better than anything you can find on internet forums. Check-out the vocabulary: "Unevolved minds," "bootleg cults," "fools and trolls; soft targets," "Vatican assassin warlocks," and "fire breathing fists." Have you ever wanted to defeat an earthworm? Would words do that? Whether Charlie Sheen is embarrassed by his rant remains to be seen; however, he will certainly regret it, if only because its result will be a loss of income, now that production of the show has stopped.

You can hear Sheen ranting at the TMZ link, "according to TMZ," above.

Brain Scan!

I had an MRI brain scan, yesterday, after a CT scan found "nothing remarkable" in my head. I was told that it would take some time and be a noisy experience.

There was a lot of noise, but at times I recognized the source sounds of a fantastic music. It's very percussive. Afterward, I asked whether anyone had a recording of the machine; the operator didn't know of any. So, I searched the web and quickly found one person's description of an MRI for a wrist injury:

... The table then started to rise and slide into the machine. A few seconds later, the sound show began.

First, a somewhat distant repetitive rhythm kicked in, followed by a series of synth-like bleeps. Then it got LOUD. There were all kinds of odd sounds resembling horns, jackhammers, alarms, sci-fi blips and industrial percussion. One stretch sounded just like a time-expanded drum loop. The sound was incredible. ...

Then I found Project MRI. There, you can hear music tracks created from the sounds made by an MRI machine. Project MRI states, "All the songs on this CD were based on a set of sample recordings of a real MRI machine. The artists manipulated the samples with various effects and audio software, using the output as their final composition, or using it as a backdrop for adding additional recorded tracks from various Instruments."

Two raw MRI sound samples can be heard at a Center for Diagnostic Imaging page. The sounds heard while undergoing an MRI are louder and may be more interesting, or irritating, depending upon your taste, but those samples may give you an idea of what the raw machine sounds are like.

Always in the background, even before the scan began, there was a hammering sound. I was told that that sound is the noise made by the machine's cooling system. The rate of that sound varies as the scan proceeds and varies with the machine's cooling demands. The non-background sounds occur when electrical currents flow through the machine's gradient coils, producing magnetic fields that interact, audibly, with the machine's core magnetic field.

In a couple of days, my doctor will have the scan's results. Is there anything in my head? Anything at all?

Update, February 25, 2011: My doctor's office called to say, "The MRI is negative: no tumors; no masses." This adventure began when I experienced an overnight hearing loss in one ear. Doctors call it "sudden hearing loss."

A Touch of Evil

Touch of Evil was written and directed by Orson Welles, and the film stars Orson Welles as "Hank Quinlan," Janet Leigh as "Susie Vargas," and Charleton Heston as Miguel "Mike" Vargas. Along with them, Marlene Dietrich and other well known actors of the time play supporting roles.

This two-DVD set is a feast for film aficianodos. It includes the theatrical release of 1958, a "preview" version, discovered in 1976, and a 1998 "restored," actually re-edited, version, which was made to conform to a memo Orson Welles wrote after he had submitted a rough cut and then saw, with disappointment, the studio's re-cut, which included new footage added by contract director Harry Keller. A facsimile of Welles' typewritten memo is included in the box. Welles had fallen out with the studio's executives by leaving the country before the film was finished. Welles never directed another U.S. film.

In his memo, Welles expressed, among other things, two concerns about the film's opening. First was his concern about the long tracking shot at the beginning of the film. He was shown that shot superimposed with the film's credits and accompanied by Henry Mancini's score. The "restored" version removes the credits from the opening and replaces the opening's music with "sourced" sounds, that is, sounds that might be heard along the streets of a typical town on the U.S. and Mexican border. That town was the imaginary Los Robles, which was actually Venice, California. Welles' original vision of the opening shot was available for the "restoration," because the studio had preserved it in order to present international editions of the film with credits in languages other than English. Another great concern of Welles was the removal of the inter-cuts between the scene of the explosion, at the end of the opening shot, and Susie's encounter with Grandi; Welles thought the inter-cuts were necessary to the plot, but the studio thought that the audience might become confused by them. The inter-cuts make clear that essential elements of the plot occur simultaneously, in different places. Parts of the action occur on the U.S. side of the border; equally important things occur on the Mexican side.

The film does have a plot: Someone places a bomb in a car; the car explodes at the end of the film's opening; a lot of police descend on the scene of the crime; a long search for the perpetrator ensues. During the course of the investigation, several more tensions become apparent: Vargas is Mexico's top cop, and Grandi is a Mexican mobster; Vargas is Mexican, just married to an American, and Quinlan is an American who may have strangled his own wife; Quinlan is a corrupt, celebrity cop, and Vargas is a good, doing-his-duty cop; and then there are the differences between the cultures of Mexico and the U.S. The "restored," re-edited, version was made to make the plot more coherent, to tie-up the many loose ends left by the theatrical release. But the journey may be more interesting than the destination; this film can be enjoyed without comprehending the plot in its entirety.

I enjoyed the cinemaphotography. It's black-and-white, and much of the film is shot at night; it should be expected to be dark and contrasty, as it is, yet a lot of detail is retained. Aside from the justifiably famous, opening tracking shot, there is a scene of a moving car filmed without a process shot -- a first! -- with the camera attached to the front of a car as it's driven by Vargas down a long Venice, California alley. The film's cars were supplied by Chrysler, some of them are convertibles (1957?), whose design was influenced by Virgil Exner and marked the height of Chrysler's use of tailfins, before the 1959 Cadillac appeared.

There is a wealth of "bonus" material on the two disks. Each version of the film can be seen with voiceover commentary: writer F.X. Feeney, on the theatrical version; Welles historians Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore, on the preview version; and, on the "restored" version, the restoration's producer, Rick Schmidlin talks about the film. An additional voiceover commentary on the "restored" version -- although the box' back cover indicates that it's with the preview version -- with Schmidlin and two of the film's stars, Charleton Heston and Janet Leigh, can also be heard. In addition to the voiceover commentaries, Bringing Evil to Life has interviews with Heston, Leigh, members of the film crew and film historians, and Evil Lost and Found has a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the restored version.

One of the voiceovers mentions that Alfred Hitchcock became enamored of this film. His Psycho of 1960 also starred Janet Leigh, who had a bad time in an out-of-the-way motel, just as she did in this film. In Touch of Evil, the motel clerk was played by Dennis Weaver, whose eccentricity was portrayed differently than Norman Bates' eccentricity in Psycho.

Russel Metty was responsible for the film's cinemaphotography. He won an Academy Award for 1960's Spartacus, another film that starred Charleton Heston.

These disks were seen, upscaled via a Sony S570 Blue-ray player to a 1080p hi-def TV, and the transfers were done very well. Harry Quinlan's seediness is quite apparent; a Blue-ray edition might show off his whiskers a little better and reveal more of the costumes' details and textures, but these DVDs provide an adequate impression of those things.

Some have complained that this set is inappropriately letter-boxed. It was filmed in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio, but the director's intent was that it be shown in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, so this set's presentation is correct. People who saw a theatrical release or the VHS release in 1.37:1 saw more than was intended. In a theatre, the projectionist should have set the projector's aperture plate to display 1.85:1 frames; the VHS transfer's aspect ratio may have been a concession to television's 4:3 aspect ratio at the time of the VHS release.


The film's Wikipedia entry is here.

Walter Murch's article, "Restoring The Touch of Genius to a Classic," which appeared in The NY Times, is here. Walter Murch was engaged by restoration producer Schmidlin to re-edit the film.

And, again, Welles' memo, with editorial matter by Lawrence French, can be read here.

This post's image was found at Amazon.com, here.

Sudden Fear

I've seen this. It is excellent; a must see.

I say that fully aware that the film's transfer to DVD appears to be flawed. It's doubtful that the film appeared as poorly when it was projected, but I have only seen this DVD. The contrast varies throughout the film, and it isn't as sharp as it might have been.

Nonetheless, the film is a thrilling suspense story.

The film was nominated for four academy awards in 1952: Best Actress in a Leading Role, Joan Crawford; Best Actor in a Supporting role, Jack Palance; Best Cinemaphotograpy, Black-And-White; Best Costume Design, Black-And-White.

The film's suspenseful score (particularly effective late in the film) was written by Elmer Bernstein.

Wikipedia's Sudden Fear entry.

Sudden Fear at The Internet Movie Database.

The NY Times' 1952 review of Sudden Fear.

Kino International's DVD release occurred in 2003. There is a German/English language DVD entitled Eiskalte Rache, released in 2005, which may be a better transfer. I haven't seen it, so cannot say.