My 10 Favorite Films

I don’t know why I didn’t post this a long time ago, but here’s the list of my ten favorite films (today’s favorites, at any rate).  I’ve shown this list and others like it to friends who are fellow cinephiles, and most of them fault my inventory for including only canonized classic art films.  Couldn’t I include, they ask, at least one disreputable title?  How about Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? How about Women’s Prison Massacre?  Or, at the very least, Ernest Goes to Splash Mountain?  Sorry.  Maybe I’ll do a follow-up of favorite sleazies sometime, but art films, believe it or not, are the kind of movie I like best.  So, for right now, here is my list of faves — art-house-heavy, un-cool, and drowse-inducing though the roll call may be — these are the ten titles that I get the most out of:

10. THE OTHER FRANCISCO

Directed by Sergio Giral (Cuba, 1975)

In his highly original film, Afro-Cuban director Giral adapts a 19th-century Cuban anti-slavery novel, criticizes its middle-class limitations, and then goes on to envision a radical retelling. Where the novel ended with a slave’s suicide, Giral’s version ends with a slave uprising. Inspiring.

9. LA STRADA

Directed by Federico Fellini (Italy, 1954)

This story of a mentally underdeveloped waif tormented by a boorish brute is outstanding for its wondrous and understated observations on the nuances of rustic life in post-war Italy. Fellini’s early neo-realist film barely hints at the near-hallucinatory fever dreams that he would become famous for later in his career.

8. CHUNGKING EXPRESS

Directed by Wong Kar-Wai (Hong Kong, 1994)

Wong defies audience expectations and captures the frenetic atmosphere of pre-hand-over Hong Kong in this film about people trying (and not quite succeeding) to find romance in the big city. Special kudos for the audacity of putting two unrelated stories in the same movie. Wong’s companion piece Fallen Angels (1995) is worth checking out as well.

7. A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

Directed by Richard Lester (UK/USA, 1964)

The energy and vitality of the 1960s New Wave + the rhythms and irreverence of the Beatles = a cinematic masterpiece.  Although we tend to think of the rock-’n-roll ’60s in psychedelic color, this film’s black-and-white cinematography lends it a Chaplinesque timelessness.

6. DR. STRANGELOVE ... OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB

Directed by Stanley Kubrick (USA/UK, 1964)

With alternating horror and hilarity — and a cunningly clinical camera — Kubrick gets us to laugh at the unthinkable: nuclear holocaust. The performances by Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, and Slim Pickens remain the highlight of their careers.

5. RASHÔMON

Directed by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1950)

Kurosawa’s mesmerizing story of four conflicting accounts of the same crime encourages the viewers to question their own sense of truth and the passage of time. Toshirô Mifune’s feral turn as the bandit remains one of the cinema’s all-time great performances.

4. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer (France, 1928)

A minimalist interpretation of the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, Dreyer’s film makes up in emotional intensity what it eschews in conventional big-scale spectacle. Never before or since has the fissured human face appeared so riveting on the screen.

3. THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES

Directed by Sergei Paradzhanov (USSR, 1969)

Not a “narrative” movie in the traditional sense of the word, Paradzhanov’s film is instead a kaleidoscopic visual meditation on the life of the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova. Upon completion, it was cut and banned by the Soviet authorities for its narrative non-conformity and implicit Armenian nationalism.

2.  L’AVVENTURA

Directed by Michaelangelo Antonioni (Italy/France, 1960)

Jeered at its first screening, director Antonioni’s film isn’t interested in what happens in the story.  Rather, the director uses his watchful camera to reveal his uncommunicative characters and expose their alienating environments.  The story isn’t concerned with external actions but with the audience’s apprehensions of the characters’ unstated internal complexities.  Antonioni reinvents the language of cinema. 

1. CITIZEN KANE

Directed by Orson Welles (USA, 1941)

In his freshman film, theatre director Welles boldly broke the conventional bounds of Hollywood narrative to tell the story of a newspaper tycoon with uncommon depth and complexity. The intricate story line is matched by the intricate visuals of master cinematographer Gregg Toland. A milestone in the annals of cinema.

Napoleon Bonaparte: Not a Short Dude

One of the most pervasive misapprehensions of world history is that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), the French military and political leader and one-time emperor of the country, was a short guy.


Whenever the historical figure of Napoleon is invoked, some mention of his height usually isn’t far behind.  In film, thoughts turn to Ian Holm, a relatively short-statured actor (5’6”) who played the part of the French leader a number of times, in Time Bandits (1981) weeping over other allegedly dwarfish military commanders not remembered as such, or Napoleon as portrayed by Ron Cook in Quills (2000), his dangling feet not touching the floor of his throne.  There have been other cinematic portrayals of Bonaparte as a man of average height — Marlon Brando in Desirée (1954) or Rod Steiger in Waterloo (1970), for example — but the idea of the French commander as a martinet is dominant in the modern imagination.


So, it may come as something of a surprise to most people that Napoleon Bonaparte wasn’t short, especially for his time.  


As recorded in his book The Height of Your Life (1980), Ralph Keyes wrote to France’s Musée de l’Armée in Paris with the intention of determining Napoleon’s actual height.  The reply came back:

The height of Napoleon was 5 feet 7 inches. ... This measurement is one given in the memoirs of Mr. Darling, carpenter of Saint-Hélen [a.k.a. Saint Helena, the island where Bonaparte spent his last years in exile] who was appointed to construct Napoleon’s coffin.  I think that we can consider this measure as completely correct.  (p. 93)

And 5 feet 7 inches was “slightly above the average height for Frenchmen” of that era, in the words of biographer and physician R. Frank Richardson, quoted by Keyes.  So, why is Napoleon remembered as being short?  One conjecture is that he was perceived as shorter because the military strategists with whom he surrounded himself were taller.  Another faults British anti-Napoleonic propaganda, which depicted him as short in an effort to make him look ridiculous.  Yet another attributes the misperception to a mistranslation from French measurements to English ones.  


Whatever the reason, Napoleon Bonaparte was not short for his era.  So, why does the idea of him as a diminutive military leader have such staying power, despite the facts to the contrary?  I think that the popular imagination clings to the image of a pint-sized Napoleon as a figure of hubris, as a personification of megalomaniacal overreach.  After all, what if Napoleon had been decidedly tall?  Would his march across Europe during the Napoleonic Wars bear any resemblance at all to an act of overcompensation, as some today perceive his military exploits, a perception that has given rise to the term “Napoleon complex”?  


Contrast the popular image of the diminutive, defeated Bonaparte with the image of the tall, victorious George Washington.  (The historical Washington was 6’1.5” according to Wickipedia.)  These two historical archetypes convey the socially sanctioned message that a man’s fitness for victory — military or otherwise — is manifested by the height of his body.  The message seems to be that short stature embodies (so to speak) humanity’s limitations, while tall stature incarnates one’s strengths.  This idea isn’t very consoling to those of us even shorter than Napoleon is believed to be.  It’s as though because of something we can’t control — how tall our bodies grow — we shorter men can’t live “up” to what an adult male is supposed to look like and thereby manifest our physical potentials as productive humans.  It’s as though that just by acquiring our height-determining DNA, we have already met our waterloo.

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’: A Capsule Review

This is something that I wrote on my Facebook page in response to a friend recommending the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Oscar Wilde’s classic 1895 comedy The Importance of Being Earnest:

And if you can't catch the new production (and if you haven't already seen the thing 83,673,469,386 times), you can watch the 1952 Anthony Asquith film of the play, which is available for instant viewing on Netflix. The cast is superlative: the ever-earnest Michael Redgrave, the effervescent-voiced Joan Greenwood, the liltingly lugubrious Edith Evans, and especially the car-salesman-smooth Michael Denison. A movie not to be missed — nor mislaid in a handbag, for that matter.

Rachel McAdams: The Blonder, the Blander

Okay, this is going to be totally superficial — but that wouldn’t be a first for the Internet.  I want to talk about Rachel McAdams’ hair.  Now, I’m not commenting at all on the Canadian-born movie star’s talent (I don’t think that anyone is interested in my opinion on that, anyway).  But I need to say something.


That something is this: I can’t think of another woman whose looks are so dramatically transformed by blonde hair color — transformed for the worse.


Full disclosure: I generally find darker hair more attractive on a woman than lighter hair.  Although I have my exceptions, the darker the hair color, the better, in my book.  (I guess I’m no gentleman.)  Of course, I don’t need to tell anyone just how beautiful Rachel McAdams is.  With her liquid hazel eyes, elegant chin, and supple lips parenthesized by two delicate dimples, the Canadian charmer will haunt many a movie-goer’s dreams for years to come.


In most of her films that I’ve seen, she usually sports a head of gracefully flowing auburn hair.  In some of her other movies, her cascading tresses are slightly lighter, maybe a burgundy brown, but still agreeably dusky.  The darkness of these hair colors brings out the best in her tan-tinged beauty.  But in a few of her films — and in most of her red-carpet and other off-the-set photos — her hair is bleached blonde.  The obviously artificial yellow in her curls blanches the crinal frame of her face, a face with a tincture of tawniness that clashes with such a bright color.  

According to the Huffington Post,
this shade of dark brown is Rachel
McAdams’ real hair color.

Rachel McAdams’ Internet Movie Database trivia page says that her hair is naturally blonde.  This is hard to believe.  Ms. McAdams is an “autumn” (to use the outdated beauty-parlor parlance) in every other aspect of her appearance, but blonde hair belongs on a “summer.”  Another on-line article says in one paragraph that her hair is “naturally brown” and in another that it’s “naturally blonde.”  I guess that clears things up.  But a YouTube video of her audition for her breakout movie The Notebook (2004) shows her with dyed blonde hair over grown-out brunette roots.  Did this “natural blonde” dye her hair a deep brown in order to bleach that color over with an artificial blonde?  If so, why?


I think the best explanation is that Rachel McAdams’ hair is naturally brown, as the rest of her coloring would indicate, not naturally blonde.  But if the actress does indeed have a natural hair color — blonde — that is inexplicably inharmonious with the rest of her looks, she patently helps it along by man-made means.  It’s the synthetic quality of this blonde look that subtracts from her attractiveness.

Or in plain old English: The otherwise extremely beautiful Rachel McAdams just does not look good with bleached-blonde hair.  

Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams in Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’

On the other hand, this disagreeably artificial look can sometimes aid her characterizations as an actress.  The difference between her hair’s various visual effects upon an audience is most noticeable in her two films co-starring Owen Wilson.  In the romantic comedy Wedding Crashers (2005), a brunette McAdams plays the ingénue whose affections Wilson fights for.  Like the rest of the cinema patrons seated around me, I rooted for Wilson to win over the dark-haired beauty.  In their second film together, Midnight in Paris (2011), a bottle-blonde McAdams plays Wilson’s fault-finding fiancée.  Given this off-putting character’s ersatz appearance, it was easy to root against the relationship, which is certainly the audience reaction that the film desires.

In ‘Mean Girls’ (left) and ‘Wedding Crashers’

In fact, when I first saw Wedding Crashers, the face of the beautiful brunette who played the female lead really stuck in my mind.  What I didn’t realize was that I had seen this same actress the year before as the blonde antagonist in Mean Girls (2004), and her face never really registered with me.  I think that says a lot about how McAdams’ hair color can change the perception of her appearance — and, as in Midnight in Paris, how pejoratively the audience perceives her when her hair is yellow.


I can imagine a movie in which a male lead is torn between two female love interests, one blonde and the other brunette.  And — I’m sure you saw this coming — both women would be portrayed by Rachel McAdams.  This conceit of a male lead who divides his affections between two different women played by the same actress has been done before in Masahiro Shinoda’s Double Suicide (心中天網島, 1969), in which Shima Iwashita plays the roles of both the weak-willed lead’s wife and his mistress.  Shinoda’s use of casting the same actress (who is also his wife) in two different parts underlines the indecisiveness of his anti-hero and the somewhat capricious character of romantic love.  (And this concept is different from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo [1958], in which Kim Novak plays only one character: a dark-haired woman who disguises herself as a blonde.)  The way I envision it, this casting of my imaginary movie would be an experiment to weigh the contrasting attractiveness (or unattractiveness) between blonde Rachel and brunette Rachel.  I know which one I’d want to prevail.  My hypothetical movie’s writers could make brunette Rachel the most despicable character in cinema, and I’d still want to see the male lead end up with her.  

Yes, I tend to go overboard on the subject of female beauty. Thank you for indulging me and sticking with this blogpost, kind reader, for as long as you have.

There you have it — my raindrop-in-a-bucket diatribe about the ever-urgent issue of Rachel McAdams’ hair color.  I know that she has some fans who absolutely adore her blonde.  And I know that my opinion won’t matter to anyone else, least of all Ms. McAdams herself.  So, I know that she will wear her hair whatever color she pleases, as she should.  

But I think it’s a shame that a woman with an exceptional beauty best enhanced by darker hair seems to spend so much time lightening her locks for a look that — and this word is very apt — pales in comparison.  I believe that Rachel McAdams would better serve her exquisite features by keeping her tresses brown, thereby making the most of her kinda-coppery coloring and avoiding an inorganic appearance that makes her look like just another Hollywood blonde.  But it’s not for me to dictate what the actress does with her hair.


Unless maybe I could get blonde bleach declared a controlled substance.

Everyone’s a hair critic, I suppose.

‘Cupid’

One TV series that I really liked but which — as a direct result, I suspect — lasted for less than one season was Cupid, created by Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars), which ran on the ABC network from September 1998 to February 1999.

In addition to being one of the few attempts to translate the movie genre of the romantic comedy into (non-sitcom) episodic television, Cupid had a heart-piercing premise: a wanderer (Jeremy Piven) in contemporary Chicago proclaims himself to be the Greco-Roman god Cupid in human form, banished because of the sorry state of love from Mount Olympus to Earth by Jupiter. The self-described deity’s way to get back home? Bring together 100 couples. Until he does, he’s stranded in the land of mere mortals. Of course, the local authorities think him crazy and put him in the care of young psychotherapist Claire Allen (Paula Marshall). In order to get released from the loony bin, “Cupid” says that his name is “Trevor Hale,” but Claire — ironically an uptight academic specialist in the psychology of romance — believes the name to be an alias. Still, she does what she can to get him to adjust to life in Chicago while trying to uncover his real identity. For his part, the bluff smart-aleck Trevor does what he can to bring his requisite 100 couples together — each attempt being the subject of each episode. Trevor’s declared identity and mission would be easy to dismiss as delusion if it weren’t for his preternatural ability to unite lonely hearts, as well as other telltale signs, such as his uncanny adeptness at throwing darts.

Built into this intriguing premise was a Moonlighting-like unspoken romantic and sexual tension between Trevor and Claire, which both seemed to suppress. In addition to the taboo of romance violating the doctor-patient relationship, Trevor claimed that any amorous attachment on Earth would complicate his “return” to Olympus. Also, their tacit attraction was counterintuitive to their personalities: Claire’s cautious, over-intellectualized, somewhat pessimistic view of romance constantly clashed with Trevor’s wildly optimistic, impulsive, damn-the-torpedoes approach to affairs of the heart. So, while he worked from episode to episode to bring potential lovers together, Trevor/Cupid didn’t indulge in any amatory pursuits of his own. Shot on location in Chicago, Cupid grounded each episode’s quasi-magical romanticism in a down-to-earth depiction of life in the unromanticized city.

Another story-line staple of the series was a therapy group that Claire held for singles, a group that Trevor sometimes attended. When the lovelorn members of the group would tell Claire of their romantic difficulties, she would respond with by-the-book analyses of their problems with an emphasis on the joy-killing laboriousness of seeking a soulmate. To Claire’s analyses, Trevor would usually counter with exultations of the adventurous messiness of finding romance and the joy of following your instincts.

The plots of the episodes provided a deft mix of comedy and drama. One installment involved a husband who constantly burst into song and dance on the street, movie-musical-style, embarrassing his dance-deficient wife; Claire tries to get the husband to stop dancing in inappropriate places, while Trevor encourages the wife to take dance lessons. A woman “falls in love” with a man on a billboard advertisement; Claire lectures her about the pitfalls of “emotional transference,” but Trevor hunts down the male model who posed for the ad. A local singer laments the would-be childhood sweetheart that she missed having; Claire advises her to accept the failure of a relationship with the boy in her past to work out, but Trevor takes her on a road trip to find him. In one of the more unusual episodes, Trevor, on his own initiative, brings together a man and a woman whom he senses were meant to be together, but the woman then reveals that she has a terminal condition which only a heart transplant will cure, and her rare blood type makes a transplant unlikely. In the end, the man dies in a car crash, and his heart provides the transplant that saves her life.

Cupid’s weekly appearance allowed the series to follow both the humor and the heart-tugging solemnity of finding love in the big city. In one episode, a young woman named Helen (Twin Peaks’s Sherilyn Fenn) gets a crush on Trevor, not knowing his claims to a life in ancient Greece (Trevor to Helen: “I knew a Helen once — beautiful face; bit of a troublemaker, though”), and we grin at Trevor’s attempts to avoid her, so he won’t endanger his chances to make it back to Olympus. But in one of the series’ inter-episodic subplots, Trevor has introduced Claire to a possible Mr. Right, and he now seems to be regretting the decision. Perhaps because of his ambivalent feelings for Claire, or perhaps because of his desire to remove himself from this mundane mortal world, at his moment of possible consummation with Helen, Trevor — without revealing his alter ego to her — breaks down in front of her and tearfully tells her of his yearning to “go home.” But is the god “Cupid” really homesick for the mythical Mount Olympus, or is the Earth-bound mortal Trevor unfantasically falling for Claire.

One of the show’s few bothersome false notes was its portrayal of Claire and her profession. The series was so quick to celebrate Trevor’s from-the-gut approach to love that it often went too far in portraying Claire’s psychoanalysis as strictly from the head. She seemed determined to cram every problem that a patient encountered into some textbook-defined box so that Trevor could rip up this metaphorical box with some seat-of-the-pants idea and thereby liberate the patient’s true romantic impulses. In other words, Cupid’s portrayal of psychoanalysis as over-intellectual and somewhat anti-feeling was a caricature, a straw man for Trevor to knock down. Also, the show’s invention of Claire’s therapy group specifically for singles — while providing Trevor with weekly opportunities to flex his wings — would be unworkable in the real world: such a group would probably devolve into a meat market. But, hey, the episodes’ story lines fueled by the singles group still worked.

Was Trevor really the god Cupid or a flesh-and-blood mortal — albeit one extremely skilled in affairs of the heart — with an identity-engulfing delusion (and an extensive knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology as well)? The series never let on. Given Cupid’s naturalistic depiction of contemporary Chicago, the idea of a mortal Trevor would certainly conform to the show’s ambiance. But this was also the realm of fiction, where it wouldn’t be impossible for archaic gods to assume human form and toy with our knowledge of the known world. I was certainly hoping that the show would last long enough to answer the question of Trevor’s identity in an intriguing way.

Another thing: Trevor’s knowledge of Greek mythology is immense, but he claims that one story from the otherwise true tales of ancient mythology never happened — he says that Cupid, contrary to the well-known myth, never married a mortal woman named Psyche. “Psyche” is also the psychoanalytic term for the mental forces of an individual that influence thought, emotion, and behavior. The psyche is often the central concern of psychoanalysis (as its name might suggest), and Claire is a psychoanalyst. This sets up a compelling possibility: perhaps the story of Cupid and Psyche tells of an ancient occurrence that has yet to happen. Perhaps Claire is the beautiful mortal woman with whom the god Cupid falls in love. Maybe instead of falling for a woman named Psyche, the god of love falls for a woman of the psyche. Maybe it’s Claire’s destiny to live and fulfill the ancient myth. Or maybe Trevor’s just out of his gourd — one of the two. I just wanted the show to make the outcome interesting.

But such, alas, was not to be. After 15 episodes, Cupid was cancelled, leaving the motivating questions unanswered. I’m still disappointed that the series wasn’t picked up for another season or two in order to play out its richly comedic and dramatic possibilities. However, ten years later — perhaps in recognition of Cupid’s enormous potential — the show was reworked, recast, and given a second chance, something uncommon for a series that lasted less than one season. In this iteration, Piven’s bristly, sometimes obnoxious Trevor was transformed into a lovable hunky lunk played by Bobby Cannavale. The dark and brooding beauty of Marshall’s Claire gave way to the airbrushed blondness of Sarah Paulson’s not-terribly-troubled psychiatrist. And most dismaying of all, the moody, cinéma-vérité Chicago setting was switched to a candy-colored, picture-postcard New York. The old show’s agreeably quirky premise was back, but the new show was missing the old one’s carefully crafted soul. This rejiggered Cupid ran for only seven episodes from April to June of 2009.

Somewhere, in a more perfect world, gas costs only 28¢ a gallon, there’s no such thing as war, and the Mudville Nine won the pennant. And in this perfect world, Rob Thomas’ Chicago-set Cupid, starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall, would have been given the long and devoted TV run that it deserved.

The first ten minutes of the pilot to Cupid

Click here for ‘Cupid, Part Two’

Happy 70th Birthday, Mr. Zimmerman

I wouldn’t call myself Bob Dylan’s biggest fan, but my respect for him is greater than the Nashville skyline. His myriad songs have conveyed complex thoughts, reflected the social sentiments of a generation, and brought a greater literateness to popular music than any composer before him. The fact that the former Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota, remains active in today’s music world — not only active but still a vital presence — after 50 years sings volumes about his importance. Like Elvis Presley and the Beatles, Bob Dylan’s contribution to contemporary music, and indeed to contemporary culture in general, can hardly be overestimated.

So, it’s with some embarrassment that I confess to rarely listening to his singing. Often nasal and occasionally cracking, Dylan’s voice has a sincerity and an integrity that suits his songs. What his voice doesn’t have is an ease of listenablity. For this reason, when I listen to a Bob Dylan song, I’m likelier to listen to a cover by a more accomplished vocalist than to an original recording by the tunesmith himself. I’m sure that my admission has just irretrievably cost me whatever cultural credibility I might have had with the music mavens of the world. But such are my shortcomings.

The juke box at my local bar can download multitudinous songs from Cyberspace. Whenever I’m visiting the old watering hole and feel like inflicting a block of Dylan songs on the room, I will usually play the following covers:

MR. TAMBOURINE MAN by The Byrds

ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER by Jimi Hendrix

KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR by Eric Clapton

IF NOT FOR YOU by George Harrison

LIKE A ROLLING STONE by The Rolling Stones

WHEN THE SHIP COMES IN by Marcus Carl Franklin

STUCK INSIDE OF MOBILE WITH THE MEMPHIS BLUES AGAIN by Cat Power

So, despite my musical apostasy, Happy 70th Birthday, Bob Dylan. Here’s hoping for another 70 years of vital songs and a tireless presence on the music scene. Here’s hoping that you never stop.

Now, if you’d just do something about that mustache ...

Subaru Commercial: Baby Driver

I’m not big on commercials. But this one from Subaru gets me every time.