Wow…cool obscure little find: In 1970 Henry Chapier directed “Sex Power,”  a film with Jane Birkin and enlisted the talents of Vangelis to write the score (this was his very first film score after leaving Greece). It played the San Sebastian Film Festival where it won the Silver Shell Award and quickly slipped away into obscurity. The soundtrack however was the only one of Chapier’s films to ever get its score released.

Most of the dialogue is in English, and the feel of the film has a charmingly naive impressionistic, psychedelic bent.

“The Dark, Dark Hours” was first broadcast live from Hollywood on December 12, 1954 from the General Electric Theater series. It features both Ronald Reagan and James Dean before either of them were huge names in Hollywood.

John Meroney of the Atlantic describes how the footage was found:

“No one has seen this episode in the decades since; the kinescope has been locked away, until now. My friend Wayne Federman, a writer for NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, unearthed the broadcast, condensing it from its original 23 minutes (without commercials) into the six-minute version you see [here].”

By now, many if not most of you have already been made aware of – if not have already read – the extensive February 16th article from Esquire entitled Roger Ebert: The Essential Man. A reference perhaps to Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man,” the song that Ebert purportedly played repeatedly while in his hospital room after one of the many cancer surgeries that he’s had to endure since his first one in 2002, the article is a moving and bittersweet account of a man whose contribution to the world of film is immeasurable.

I first became aware of Roger Ebert in the late ‘70s, when he and Gene Siskel, his partner for over 20 years went into national syndication with their Sneak Previews show on PBS.

For me, their show was essential viewing, intelligent discussion about film, and not just the mainstream movies of the day, but also the obscure underground art-house films that could only be viewed in some of the larger cities across America. I was going to Berkeley high at the time, was a terribly shy teen, and spent a lot of my free time going to movies – usually by myself. We had the UC Theater, one of the early Landmark Theater screens, and they played a different double feature pretty much every night. I could be found there three or four nights (or days if on the weekend) during any given week. Each week however, I would always try to make sure that I was somewhere with a TV nearby when Sneak Previews aired. As much as was possible I would never miss a show.

Ebert’s commentary – his words – about film were an essential part of my filmic diet, a veritable classroom doled out in weekly portions, something to be relished. Regardless if I agreed or disagreed with either of the critics, their discourse would invariably spark the critic within me. Their weekly discussions about various films and their relative merit helped to make me a more critical thinker, and ultimately a more astute and critical viewer of film. Keep in mind this is a guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work as a film critic, back in 1975, years before he was on TV!

In 1981, I moved to Seattle. The following year Siskel and Ebert moved to network television, and extended their reach to mainstream audiences. I continued to watch Siskel and Ebert review and debate movies until Siskel’s death in 1999, and continued to tune in to Ebert and his new partner Richard Roper who was his co-host until 2006. My love for film never subsided, and throughout, Ebert was a constant voice, one that I did not always agree with, but one that would invariably give me some new perspective to consider. I thank him for that.

Now his battle with cancer has taken his ability to speak. His entire lower jaw has been removed: The bone that was once there is gone. He cannot eat or drink; he has no voice, no spoken voice anyway. As a writer however, he is more prolific than ever, and since 2008 (when in the midst of a particularly bad fight with cancer) Ebert has been chronicling his experiences and thoughts in a blog that has – as of the writing of the Esquire article – surpassed half a million words!

In the article, Ebert writes: “When I am writing, my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was.” I read this, and I read it again. I am stunned. He is 67 years old. He has devoted his life to the things he’s loved the most, has honed his craft and continued to sharpen his creative self, and when dealt with a blow that would take the juice out of pretty much anybody I can think of, he finds the sweet nugget and savors the little thing that makes it special. His cancer is in a state of remission, and hopefully it will never return. I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through the ordeal that Roger Ebert has had to endure, but through it all it appears that he has managed to keep his focus, and somehow he has managed to find joy in the things that make his life rich.

This is not a lesson on film, but it is most certainly a powerful lesson in life.  As trite as it may sound, I think we can all do better to learn to let the petty shit go so that we can more fully appreciate the small things that make our lives rich. I will certainly do my best find inspiration in the sweet nuggets.

Read Ebert’s Response to the Esquire Article

See Ebert’s 323 (and counting) Greatest Movies of all Time (alphabetical)

Over this last weekend, I finally got around to seeing Avatar in 3D, and then yesterday the Oscar nominees came out. Unsurprisingly, Avatar was one of the picks for the most coveted of the Academy awards, the Best Picture. I understand why it was nominated, and I expect it may likely win. I also expect that Cameron may well win for best director as well. That said, I do not think it or he deserves the win. Avatar, which managed to win both awards at the Golden Globes, did not win either award at the Directors Guild (DGA), the awards event that gave the nod to The Hurt Locker, the film that deserves to win hands-down.

Sure, Avatar raked it in at the box office, already having earned the unbelievable sum of over 2 BILLION worldwide. Hurt Locker meanwhile earned only $12 million, a pittance by comparative standards.

Bottom-line: Cameron knows how to make big splashy mainstream Hollywood films that rake in big bucks. He is responsible for the Terminator franchise, one or two of the Alien movies, and another Oscar winner Titanic, a movie that I – in the minority –did not much care for. Cameron is Hollywood royalty. He spends boatloads money making grand epics and earns it back ten-fold…and the Academy loves grand epic films with high box office receipts…so who cares if the story isn’t there to back up the spectacle? This is not always the case, but it’s happened too often to overlook. Past cases-in-point: A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Dances With Wolves, and of course Titanic. Go ahead and call me a blowhard, but I think that these movies were all beautifully polished turds, albeit polished turds with impressive budgets.

Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed Avatar, I really did. I do not put in the category of a turd – not at all. I think that Cameron created a beautiful and remarkable world on Pandora. I appreciated the astonishing attention to all the production design, the visual effects, makeup, and the great attention paid to every last detail, but when you’ve got 4+ years and a reported $280 million to spend, I expect as much…and I was duly entertained. I do have issues however. First with the story. The Avatar concept was interesting, but was nothing even remotely original. If you haven’t seen it yet on Facebook or elsewhere, the now-classic comparison between Avatar and Disney’s Pocahontas pretty much nails it. Face it folks, it’s Technicolor fluff with guns and lots of big explosions. Another web phenomenon, but also a really strange and questionable choice, was that of using Papyrus as the font for the titles and subtitles. It was a very distracting disconnect, especially for those of us who have a deep fondness for font in design.

I found Cameron’s heavy-handed, hardly transparent and self-righteous political correctness with his obvious analogies to Native Americans (getting back to Pocahontas) and their “connection to all things living,” a people in touch with the natural energies of the world, manipulative. His obvious “green” messages about energy dependence vs. a purer Pantheist view of the world (which I in fact embrace) were smug and sanctimonious.

The piece that really surprised me however was how the films starts first with our common enemy, the evil hawk of a general, engaging in a non-provoked aggression against a lesser race for their natural energy supplies (sounds familiar, right?), which of course we rally against, feeling politically correct ourselves [look up The White Man’s Burden]. Our hero, a jarhead with the muddled sensibility of a blue-collar Jersey construction worker has apparently experienced a spiritual awakening of sorts, and comes back to save the day (as the natives are clearly incapable of saving themselves). A seemingly unintended message, we are left with a subtly patronizing act of noblesse oblige, wherein the (enlightened) white man has to come in and help the savages out. The subtext is one of superiority, that we must help those out that cannot help themselves, because they are inevitably inferior and ignorant.

Hurt Locker on the other hand, was powerful in the most visceral sense, in the deepest emotionally impacting sense. It is a film about real brutality, and is portrayed in such a way as to make you feel like a fly on the wall observer. It takes hard looks into the damaged psyche of soldiers in war, and should be included in the list of the great war movies along with Gallipoli, Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon and The Deer Hunter. It is a beautiful film dealing with the stark and upsetting realities of war, and is an undeniable piece of modern-day classic cinema…and it deserves to win the best picture Oscar along with Katherine Bigelow for best director.

This battle between the Epic Goliath that is Avatar against the smaller, but ultimately more powerful Hurt Locker is of even greater and gossipier interest as Katherine Bigelow and James Cameron were once married. What’s more, it it’s entire 82 years of existence, The Academy has never given the best director award to a woman. Speaking of political correctness, giving the woman the award would be the “right thing to do,” but more than that, her work is simply more deserving. The 82nd Academy Awards airs on March 7th.