Breaking Away – Love It!

Rita takes umbrage with a reviewer who called Breaking Away, “a silly little cycling movie.” P-shaw! This is one of my favorite movies from the 1970s….For all those cyclists out there, this little flick will warm your heart and justify those shaved legs….

How could you not be rooting for working-class hero Dave? (Dennis Christopher) He plays the earnest, cyclist fanatic who practices saying “Caio, bella!” in his passable Italian accent, listens to opera (much to the chagrin of his car-salesman pops) and pretends to be an exchange student to woo a pretty college student whose name is Catherine but Dave calls her “Katerina.” (Robyn Douglass)

Dave is one of four buddies who are townies from Bloomington, Indiana. They have just finished high school and rather than figure out what to do with the rest of the lives, they go to the defunct local quarry (now a natural pool) and dive to pass the time.

Dave is the one with the most ambition: he dreams of becoming a champion cyclist like the Italian racing team coming to visit Bloomington. Watching him prance around his working-class parents and be excited by his cycling and budding Italian lessons, is fun to watch.

Director Peter Yates handles the action cycling sequences with much aplomb. Those scenes are exciting, well-paced and well-written. The screenplay won an Oscar in 1979. I remember enjoying it immensely as a kid and after viewing it a second time, I know why. I highly recommend this heart-warming film.

Rita recommends…Infamous

Infamous(2006) Directed by Douglas McGrath. Starring Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver.
The other Truman Capote movie, Infamous, follows the Oscar winning Capote almost a year later. Rita was advised to see Infamous to compare it with Capote and some had hinted they liked Infamous better. Well, I have to say I was a little disappointed with Infamous. The actor, Toby Jones, does seem to be Truman Capote’s doppleganger and the actor has Capote’s mannerisms down pat. That said, I did find the acting a bit stilted with almost all of the players except for Sandra Bullock. She lends a quiet melodiousness to the character of Harper Lee. The rest of the actors looked like they were “acting” which was disappointing. I wasn’t crazy about the talking heads interviews—from Capote’s editor at the New Yorker (Peter Bogadonavitch) to his high society ladies. (Hope Davis & Sigourney Weaver) The interviews broke up the action to fill in background information but it wasn’t dramatically believable.

One of the main difference between the two film is, whereas Capote hinted at a romance between one of the killers, Perry Smith, and Capote, Infamous all but lifts the veil between the two.

Because I already reviewed Capoteearlier in this blog, I only will cover the plot superficially: in 1959, Truman Capote reads about a grisly murder of a Kansas family in The NY Times. This story grabs himself so much so that he pitches to the New Yorker the idea of covering how the murders affect the townspeople. He takes his childhood friend, Harper Lee, with him. The process of writing and researching his literary sensation, In Cold Blood is what the movie explores in detail.

Both movies travail basically the same time period, although in very different ways. Even though I personally preferredCapote as a film, I think both are worthy of consideration in dramatizing a very fascinating, real-life writer and eccentric.

Six Feet Under (2001-2005)

Created by Alan Ball (American Beauty), this dark drama series starred, Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez, Rachel Griffiths with occasional guest stars, Lili Taylor, Patricia Clarkson, Kathy Bates and Richard Jenkins.

I can not rave about this HBO series enough. I am still working my way through the remaining two seasons on DVD. I love the character development and the concept of the show which goes as follows: the Fishers run a funeral home in Los Angeles. The father, Nathanial Fisher, dies in the first episode and from then on, each episode opens with a death, setting the tone. The two sons, Nate Jr. and David, inherit the family business. All of the family members cope with the loss of the father in their emotionally dysfunctional way.

It is rare indeed to love each main character but I can’t help but find something sympathetic and relatable about each one. Nate, as the errant, wayward son who got away from his uptight family, comes back to face his “responsibilities” as half-owner of the mortuary. As the eldest, I totally relate to his impulses to escape and be free.

Then there is younger brother David, the closeted gay man who did everything he was “suppose to” but resents it. Isn’t there a little David in all of us?

Nihilistic Claire whose boredom and attitude is just a convenient cover-up for the attention and guidance she craves. She is an adolescent on the verge of adulthood—you just want to give her a big hug and reprimand her for hanging out repeatedly with “bad boys.”

Poor repressed mother Ruth, who longs to let her hair down and travel the unpaved road of life, is one of my favorite characters. Among other things, her sexuality blossoms after her husband dies. She has not one but two male lovers, Hiram, the hiker, and Nikolai, the Russian florist. In a great episode, Ruth is invited by her co-worker to a graduation of a self-improvement class called “The Plan” and then decides she should take the course too. The self-improvement jargon she picks up at the weekend seminar is hysterical.

Nate meets his match in super brainy Brenda and her promiscuous tendencies. Brenda’s mentally disturbed younger brother, Billy is an intriguing, reoccurring character. David and Keith remind me of many gay couples trying to reconcile being openly gay in a heterosexist society.

The music choices are superlative—they underlie the ethos of the characters and what they go through.

Capote

Capote (2005), aka the writer, Truman Capote, covers a very short time in the writer’s life, a span of six years, when he decides to do research into the 1959 murders of the Cultler family. He reads about the brutal murders in the
New York Times and is hooked. He calls his editor at The New Yorker and informs him of his decision to write a feature on this gruesome story. He brings his good friend, Nelle Harper Lee (Author of “Kill a Mockingbird”) as his assistant and emissary to try to connect with the local people of Holcomb, Kansas (pop. 308). Capote’s feature article on how the murders affect the small town turns into a six-year odyssey that would mark the pinnacle of his writing career and his ultimate undoing.

Capote does not hide his effeminate manners and as such, no one in the town wants to talk to him. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays him so artfully and captures Capote’s complexity; it is riveting performance. He has Capote’s mannerisms down cold but instead of playing him as caricature, (which would have been easy for an actor of lessor ability to do) he expertly captures Capote’s absolute steadfastness and total immersion in his subjects. Regardless of how much disdain is reflected in the face of the chief of police and his underlings, one marvels at how Capote gets access to his subjects, namely, one of the accused killers, Perry Smith. It is a testament to his writer’s tenacity; he is absolutely wedded to his obsession. He seems to become enamored with Smith (Clifton Collins Jr. ) and the interviews between them in the jail cell are a bizarre dance of the erotic and exploitation.

Clue

Based on the Parker Brothers board game of the same name, Clue, the comedic whodunit, was released in theaters in 1985 with a huge ensemble cast. When it originally opened in theaters, it received mixed reviews and was considered a flop at the box office. It was then released on DVD in 2000 and has had a resurgence as a cult favorite. Clue has received very favorable customer reviews on Netflix.

After I saw that my brother had recently watched it, I decided to see for myself, since Clue was one of my favorite childhood board games. I awaited my little red envelope anxiously, like a little kid. I was not disappointed!

The director, Jonathan Lynn and John Landis developed the screenplay. They use the same character names as the game: Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving) is the man murdered in the game—in the movie he is the mysterious host who has invited six strangers to his sumptuous mansion on a dark and stormy night in 1954.
Mr. Boddy’s butler, Wadsworth (Tim Curry), assigns each guest the names to those of you familiar with the board game: Mr. Green (Michael McKean), Col. Mustard (Martin Mull), Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd), Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren), and Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn). Two additional servants, the Cook (Kellye Nakahara) and Yvette, the maid (Colleen Camp), help the butler as he informs the guests that they have been invited to meet the man who is blackmailing them.

It is very campy and over the top. Many memorable one-liners ensue. It is a riot to see the old game pieces, the candlestick, the lead pipe, the rope, etc..worked into the plot. The expressions of Eileen Brennan are priceless and I especially love Madeline Kahn’s character, Mrs. White who is suspected of murdering two of her former husbands. She deadpans: “Husbands should be like Kleenex – soft, strong, and disposable.” See under Blogroll for links to Clue fan web sites where you can find more fun quotes from the movie.

A Place in the Sun (1951)

The radiant Elizabeth Taylor and handsome Montgomery Clift star in this social drama about the haves and the have-nots. George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) is the working class protagonist with aspirations to work for his rich Uncle, Charles Eastman (Herbert Heyes) in his bathing suit factory. He hitchhikes his way from Chicago to his Uncle’s factory. His Uncle decides to put him to work immediately in one of his assembly lines and on the first day, he meets a fellow co-worker, plain Jane Alice Tripp (Shelly Winters). He starts an affair with Alice but he life gets more complicated when he is invited to a party at his Uncle’s lavish home and meets ravishing debutante Elizabeth Taylor. His entanglement between a high society girl and impoverished Alice, causes George Eastman to hatch a plan that portends a calamity.

One of the extras on the DVD is an interview with Elizabeth Taylor. She was 18 at the time of this role and it was on the set of A Place in the Sun where she met and became life-long friends with Montgomery Clift. This was Taylor’s first adult film role and she looks absolutely stunning. She talks at length about her friendship with “Monty” in the interview and how she really learned what acting was about from him. It is a marvelous, B/W film directed by George Stevens emphasizing the complexity of the class divide in America. The film was adopted from Timothy Drieser’s 1925 novel, An American Tragedy which in turn, was based on a real life 1906 trial of Chester Gillette in the state of New York.

Many of the external shots of Lake Tahoe were shot on location and add to the beauty of the film.