Christmas in July (1940)

Yeah, no. Don't worry. We're not going to start reviewing Hallmark Channel movies. It just seemed appropriate to revive this fine Preston Sturges movie. More are on the way.

Christmas in July (Preston Sturges, 1941) James MacDonald (Dick Powell) lives a life of pretense and dreams. A bean counter for a coffee company, he's just won the $25,000 prize in the slogan contest for rival caffeine-pushers, Maxford House. The winning entry: "Can't sleep at night? It's not the coffee. It's the bunk." 

Well, it is the bunk and the pretenses are false ones. MacDonald didn't win any contest. It's all an impractical joke played on him by co-workers, that manages to sneak under the radar due to a contest SNAFU. But by the end of his perfect day, he's got a promotion, a new raise and an office, and bought presents for everybody on the block without spending a dime yet. You've got to have good luck to get good luck it seems, but it all comes crashing down when the check and everything with it bounces. Jimmy almost loses his new job because, let's face it, he only got it because he won the contest and, his boss, liking sure things and having made a ton of mistakes himself, needs to have something he can count on. Now that he can't count on MacDonald being a proven winner, well...

That twisted logic—the very basis of our banking credit system (You can only get money if you don't need it) forms the curvature of the spine of Sturges' short (68 minutes) winning second film. Another moral, Sturges-style is a familiar one, except in Hollywood: No good deed goes unpunished. MacDonald buys presents for everybody but himself and ends up humiliated in front of his neighbors. But at least he gets to keep his new job if he succeeds at it because "it's one thing to muff a chance once you've had it... it's another thing never to have had a chance."

Powell does measured work far subtler than his musical gigs and ingenue Ellen Drew is delightful. But the stand-out among the Sturges stock company in this film is Raymond Walburn as the perpetually frustrated and passive aggressive Dr. Maxford, head of Maxford House Coffee. Usually these big business CEO's are played with comedy bluster, but Walburn fumes and fusses as if its as part of his everyday routine as a cup of coffee, roasted and aged. The entire movie has a fresh comic timing that's a bit off-kilter, and the results are hilarious. 

It's a Frank Capra movie turned on his ear, but far more cynical and with less of a "reach" at the end. It's "good to the last gulp."

It Might Get Loud

It Might Get Loud (Davis Guggenheim, 2009) Between making An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for 'Superman', (and the occasional tv work like the pilots for "The Defenders," filmmaker Davis Guggenheim did one for fun: It Might Get Loud, a summit, if you will, of three electric guitar aficionados, Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White.  The axe-men were brought together to talk, but as Page wryly notes "there will be guitars there, so who knows?" 

What's interesting about the documentary and hearing them three men talk is their completely different approaches to using the electric guitar: for Page, it's technique; for The Edge, it's technology; for White, it's breaking it down to the bare essentials. All three do things nobody else does with the electric guitar, approaching the instrument with a completely different mind-set, as writers approach a piece of paper.

It reduces them to human beings, all capable of greatness, but not fathoming where each gets it ("I can't tell you what a 'process' is" says Page at one point): to see the unbridled love in the eyes of The Edge and White as they watch Page play the opening to "Whole Lotta Love," how Edge intensely scrutinizes White's fingering during a jam session, all three's tales of creative crises—Page's dissatisfaction with studio sessions, Edge's dealing with writing the "War" album, White, how to create a blues aesthetic in a world of "packaged" music and bands.

And it is fun to watch them eye each other and tell tales and compare notes, artisans and students all.  My favorite moments are with White, whose work I know the least and who always veers precipitously close to the edge of pretension: the first opens the film as he builds a guitar out of scrap wood and a pick-up; the second, is in the extras, and has Page and Edge ask about a particular riff that White wrote for "Seven Nation Army" and White tells the tale of how he socked it away "if I was going to write a James Bond theme song or something." But Edge wants to know how he did it, and when White tells them, the others' eyes go wide with the simplicity of it, and both have to try it. Then, they all riff, finding possibilities. "That'll be five dollars," White cracks.

I'm not a musician, but I appreciate musicianship*, and I have no particular interest in electric guitars, but I like good stories told by good people.  And It Might Get Loud sure is fun.

* My favorite comment on that subject came from a rap-artist I was recording—on the subject of Jimi Hendrix—and someone said something about a certain recorded performance being lack-luster, and the guy paused, considered what to say, and said "Ya know...as many grains of sand there are on the beach...THAT's how many times Carlos Santana has played "Black Magic Woman." Wisdom, there. It's not just about innovation...it's about discipline, too.

Mud

Written at the time of the film's release....although I've added a couple of current addendums because this writer-director is so good and his work sought out.

Possession is 9/10 of the Law
or
Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places

The last film that Jeff Nichols wrote and directed was the very interesting, very odd, and quite layered Take Shelter.*  His latest, Mud, is part coming-of-age movie, part Southern Gothic, part classic romance and part tragedy and complete curiosity. It features a couple of great kid performances and a top-tier cast supporting them.

Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland play two tweeners living on the Mississippi River. They're a couple of restless kids who are hired help in their families, but with minimal supervision, have the freedom to sneak out at night exploring. On one of those pre-dawn excursions they motor over to an island and find a wonder—a boat nestled in a tree. Checking it out, they're in for a shock. Someone's living there. 

That someone is Mud (Matthew McConaughey) who is eking out an existence there. How he got there is a mystery. Why he's there is not. He's killed a man, who was messing with the girl he loves, and that man has a powerful family (led by Joe Don Baker). He's hiding out, waiting for word from Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), and when he hears, they'll run off together, where...well, that's a little unspecific. 

In the meantime, he uses the little go-betweeners to get food, supplies, and word out, that includes to one of Ellis' (Sheridan) neighbors, a solitary man named Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard), who Mud labels "an assassin." Blankenship calls Mud a liar, making Ellis slightly conflicted; he's willing to do anything for Mud in his quixotic quest, out of a young man's puppy-love instincts, in part a response to the fracturing marriage of his parents (Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson) and his own interactions with "townie" girls, particularly May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant).

It's to Ellis' advantage that he and "Neckbone" (Lofland) are under the radar of everybody's notice, his parents have other concerns and Neckbone's uncle (Michael Shannon) is in his own little world, so the two boys go back and forth between mainland and island with messages and supplies, which becomes increasingly complex when Mud decides he's going to get that boat out of the tree. And when Ellis, in his come-to-the-rescue way, interferes when one of the goons keeping an eye on Juniper gets aggressive with her trying to get information about Mud's whereabouts.

Things begin to spiral out of control to a conclusion that can't come to any good, despite everyone's best and worst intentions, due to the breaking of borders between the insular natures of the players.

But, there's something else going on here that creeps like an adder through the Louisiana swamp, something to do with misogyny. Maybe it's just the timing of events—not accidental as it's all in the control of the writer-director—but all the problems seem to generate from the war between men and women. The women here—Juniper, Ellis' mom, May Pearl—have an edge of capriciousness and undependability (in the males' eyes, anyway) that derails their plans and dreams. 

The men are hardly blameless, going through their lives with their eyes wide shut, totally aware that the women in their lives may prove disastrous in the short term, while they're quixotically playing the hero or the rescuer, anyway. Everybody has some romantic view of life that is not theirs, and their pursuit of it proves their undoing. One leaves the theater with the sense of a good story well told, but with a stake through the heart in the futility of good intentions. One wants the waters of life to be smooth and transparent, but the reality of it is that it's the consistency of the movie's title.

It's a beautiful film, too. Beautifully shot by Adam Stone. 

2021 note: Nichols hasn't made a film since this one and that's a real shame. He's been working on one film, but has been hired by John Krasinski to make A Quiet Place, Part III. Well, whatever gets him back behind the camera. His work is too good not to be making something. Whatever it is, it is of worth.

* I should mention here in 2021 that he's also made a couple other film's I've loved—2016's Midnight Special and the same year, Loving.

Woman in the Moon (1929)

Woman in the Moon (aka Die Frau in Mond, Fritz Lang, 1929) It's the 52nd anniversary of the first Moon Landing by humans (and yes, it did happen and it happened five more times—which brings up the question "why would you fake it six times?"), but movie-makers had been imagining such a scenario for almost as long as there have been movies. There is, of course, A Trip to the Moon, made in 1902 by Georges Méliès, but another one—at least the one that survives—is Fritz Lang's fanciful adaptation of his then-wife's novel "Die Frau in Mond" which was produced two years after his landmark work, Metropolis.

The story tells of an industrialist, Wolf Helius (Willy Fritsch), who visits a scientist, Professor George Manfedt (Klaus Pohl), living in decrepitude after being laughed out of academia by his vision of traveling to the Moon. Manfredt speculates that there is valuable mineral deposits on the Moon, including gold, which would make such a journey economically advantageous—no need for any sort of political one-ups-manship to stimulate such a reckless adventure. Helius begins plans for such a journey. But, there are complications.

A cadre of rival industrialists have been following Manfredt's work, and they dispatch a spy (Fritz Rasp), using the name "Walter Turner", to gain access to the plans. They rob Helius, gaining access to the research, and demand to be part of it, or else they will make attempts to sabotage the project. With so much at stake, Helius agrees to their demands and the man named "Turner" is allowed to accompany the flight.

Also on board will be Helius' two assistants, engineer Hans Windegger (Gustav von Wangenheim) and Friede Velten (Gerda Maurus)—for whom the moon-ship, Friede, is named. The two have recently announced their engagement, a proposal that Helius privately disapproves of, as he is also in love with Frieda. The ship is launched, but, unbeknownst to the vital but conflicted crew, there is a stowaway on board, the youngster Gustav (Gustl Gstettenbaur), who is an avid collection of pulp science fiction magazines.

Now, look. The thing about science fiction, however the media it is presented in, is that it is actually "Prescience"-fiction—a leap of imagination that takes a look at the world and pre-cognitions what it will be in the future. This is always a bit problematic, for there is more than a chance, as we advance through the years, with ever more diverse discoveries and technologies, that the imagineer will get as much wrong as they can get right. When the year 2001 arrived, it was ruefully noted that the movie 2001: a Space Odyssey—as strenuously researched as it was—was wildly off the mark. Not only were there no manned flights to Jupiter, but we were decades from its achieving its vision of Pan-Am shuttles routinely flitting into space (and, in fact, by 2001, Pan-American had gone out of business!). It did get I-pads right, though...

So, one can look at The Woman in the Moon and chortle with the advantage of hindsight about there being gold, or water (found with a divining rod?), or a breathable atmosphere on the Moon, or that the gravity might be equal to Earth's, or that such a primitive craft could make it there.*

But, look at what they got right: The flight would have to be achieved with a multi-stage rocket; the launch vehicle is constructed in an industrial building and then tracked to a launch-pad; they get "G"-forces right, putting the passengers in horizontal beds; although technically wrong, when the rockets are shut off, the crew experience micro-gravity—at one point, the engineer flicks a bottle so he can drink the floating water "bubbles" as has been so often demonstrated on space-flights—using foot-straps to negotiate around the craft; it's the first instance of a "countdown" to launch (a minor point, but still...).

It's eerily prescient. And one is struck by such scenes as the crew reacting visibly to their first "Earth-set." 

Or maybe not so prescient. Maybe, it's cause and effect. Scientists Hermann Oberth and Willy Ley were advisers to the film, and it was very popular at the German VfR, which counted among its members a young student named Wernher von Braun.

Director Fritz Lang lived long enough to see the first Moon landing in 1969. For real, this time.

* Uh-huh. One of the conspiracy theories I "love" is that we couldn't have gone to the Moon in the 1960's because the technology was so primitive back in those days. By today's standards, sure, but, also, these days out more intricate technologies are much more fragile—go ahead, drop your I-phone, which has more computing power than the Apollo computers had bolted into their control panels. What is true is that, today, we might have the technology to fake a moon landing—but we didn't in the time they occurred.

Don't Make a Scene: Broadcast News

The Story: It's been a tough time for the news business. The internet has dried up the source-revenue of classified ads for newspapers, and broadcast news outlets have to compete with 24-hour-a-day news channels that scroll headlines if the President gets a hang-nail. Then, there's the clowns and bone-heads bleating about "fake news" whenever it's a story that they don't like or doesn't fawn enough—it was ever thus—or if it conflicts with their own lies or junk headlines.

So, it's tough—tougher—to make a living trying to get substantial information float above the swill of opinions or advertising posing as news. And as revenues drop, so do staff, whether they group tries to hang in there, or whether it gets bought up by a conglomerate, who then take even more draconian measures to please investors or themselves. And when costs get cut, it's usually the lower-paid staff who are let go, because it's so much "easier" to cut costs in little dribs and drabs than to drop any higher-paid management—which always makes business sense. "Penny-wise..."

This scene from Broadcast News came to mind with all the "Tax the Rich" talk that's been going on. In it, Jack Nicholson's high-profile news anchor pays a visit to "the trenches" to buck up morale on the day a big lay-off happens. And as Dave Barry once wrote: "You can tell it's bad news when the network anchor has his frowny-face on." Nicholson had just won his second Oscar for Brooks' Terms of Endearment and paid it back by agreeing to be in what is essentially a cameo roll—for no money (he was about to get a big pay-out playing The Joker in 1989's Batman and was prepping The Two Jakes, the long-anticipated sequel to Chinatown, at the time). And his reaction to the news exec's little quip is full of (what the script describes as) "grace and dignity." And more than a little dismissal. At least, he didn't start a diatribe about "destroying capitalism" and "creeping Socialism." Nicholson's Jake Gittes would ask "...how much better could you eat?..."

Meanwhile, the less-prestigious workers have to display the same "grace and dignity" while they have their worlds turned upside-down.

My reaction would be more like the newsie who responds to Paul's regretful sentiment of "If there's ANY-thing I can do..." with "Well...you could DIE soon..."

The Set-up: The Network is cutting back news-jobs today, and the National Anchorman Bill Rorish (Jack Nicholson) has come back to show his support. Network Exec Paul Moore (Peter Hackes) escorts him through his old haunts.

5, 4, 3, 2,...

116 INT. NEWSROOM - DAY

BILL ...be my pleasure... 

116 Paul arriving with Bill Rorish. The first time we have seen the multi-millionaire anchorman in the flesh. He has the grace and dignity of a man who spends every waking moment working on grace and dignity. He and Paul are in the midst of an important conversation -- muted and ominous.

MAIL-ROOM Guy: Mr. Rorish? 

BILL Just when do you start telling people? 

PAUL Almost immediately, Bill.

BILL I’d like to take everyone out after the show.

PAUL: Fantastic.

BILL: Hello, Donnie!

DONNIE: Bill! What a surprise!

BILL: Good to see you again...

STAFFER: Mr. Rorish! 

PAUL Bill...This is hard on all of us... 

PAUL: ...and it’s no time for compliments. 

PAUL: But I think it’s extraordinary of you to come down here for this. 

BILL If we’re not here for each other during the tough times, we’re not a news organization.

BLAIR: Bill! 

Blair ENTERS scene. The smallest flicker of interest from Bill, but more than enough to justify her going into hock for the outfit. 

BLAIR Welcome...

BLAIR ...back to Washington...

BLAIR ...Bill. 

BILL Well, thank you. Thank you.

BILL Thank you... 

A self-conscious look of greeting to Paul and she’s gone. 

BILL I’ve forgotten. Was she on the list?

Paul nods “yes” 

BILL This is a brutal layoff...

BILL And all because they couldn’t program Wednesday nights. 

PAUL (can’t resist) You can make it a little less brutal by... 

PAUL: ...knocking a million dollars or so off your salary. 

AS Bill turns: 

PAUL Just a bad joke. I’m sorry. Awful. It’s a miserable day...

PAUL ...and that was some kind of totally sick-joke defense mechanism

PAUL ...which does not indicate any of my feelings 

PAUL -- not one -- 

PAUL ...but just shows the kind of stress... 

PAUL ...this represents... 

PAUL ...for all of us.

Broadcast News

Words by James L. Brooks

Pictures by Michael Ballhaus and James L. Brooks

Broadcast News is available on DVD and Blu-Ray on Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and the Criterion Collection.