Continuum Film Blog

my review of "red tails" (2011) d. anthony hemingway

 "6 Smashing Reels!"

Here's an earlier draft of this review that has the clip of GL mentioned in the text.

You can also read the review online at Film Comment.

And I'm reposting this clip from our friends at

Fantasy of Flight 'cause I love it!

 

oh davey, happy easter!

I'm a little melancholy today. My parents weren't very religious but but they did religiously celebrate Easter. No matter what or where there was always at least a card for me even after I had gone away to college, and when I was young, I got an Easter basket (made by mom, not store bought) or a stuffed animal. On the air base in Panama I remember going to the officer's club for Sunday brunch. Usually this called for a new dress or lace tights and mom and I would wear hats. Dad wore a springy dress uniform.

Back in New York there would be dinner with the Wilkins and dad would roast a lamb, a ham, a turkey or a fresh ham -- sometimes all of the above! There would be dyed eggs and I would search the house and the yard.

So much nostalgia-- I guess cause I'm sick this weekend and couldn't make the choco-roonies. And mom and dad aren't here...

Here's a little more Easter memorabilia...

 

 

 

 

Still, happily, I have an invite to dinner and many wonderful memories to resurrect!

Happy Easter!

"paris is small for those who share so great a passion as ours."

I had a crush on this film before I even saw it...

Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) d. Marcel Carné

I'm going to see the restoration tonight.  It will be my 15th or 16th time seeing it--I've lost count. I would always cry at the end.  I saw it once at the theater in Paris that plays it continuously.  But I stopped seeing it long before it became available generally on DVD.  Before I had heard of a dvd. I've never watched a videotape of it.  I may have watched it on TV once.  You went to see it--if it was playing somewhere...like France. I had a book of the film. The cover is tattered and that's how I "saw" the film in between it's rare outings. But some time after college I saw l'Atalante by Vigo and fell in love with it instead. I would cry at the end but with delight. Still, I can recite whole scenes of Paradis in english and in french (well, at least the men's roles). Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) was my obessesion.  I tried to turn innocent young guys attempting to be my boyfriend into him--rather like crazed surgeon, Pierre Brasseur, in Eyes Without a Face.  Speaking of Pierre, I find him, as Frédérick Lemaître, much more alluring now than pining, pale, white-faced Baptiste. Black-faced-Othello, agressive, Frédérick!

Brasseur...

who always reminded me of...

Le Pew!

Anyway, can't say more now--I have to go and fight for a premium seat not in the "paradis" of Walter Reade--and take a trip down the "Boulevard du Crime" to my old days.

And cry?

It's a big movie at 3 hours+ but with a passion like ours...

 

"a very serious picture about death"

A gorgeous, irreplaceable trio...

"Those three dahk Noo Yawk fellas!"

Below is a clip of the opening shots of Husbands, my favorite Cassavetes film. Now all three fellas are gone and it seems like the end of an era. Or the end of something. I love this LIFE cover but it makes me sad.  And happy. That it makes me sad. Because all three worked so hard to make us feel...

 
Husbands (1970) d. John Cassevetes

“He just buried us!”

 

The Dick Cavett Show w/ John Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara

red tails: un filme de...?

 

“It’s exactly like Star Wars…The story is too fantastic and wonderful to cram into 2 hours.” If we get a good first weekend…there is a prequel and a sequel and they’re better than this movie by a long shot…I took the soft center."

Well, it is what it is! I find this clip of George Lucas discussing RED TAILS on the Daily Show both illuminating and amusing!

    Illuminating because he addresses some of my very mixed feelings about the movie. My father, Lee (Buddy) Archer, was a Tuskegee Airman and he and his good friend Dr. Roscoe Brown ("The Gruesome Twosome"), consulted on the film and appeared in the accompanying documentary, Double Victory. Dad passed away in January 2010 and did not get to see any of the completed film.

I attended a preview screening a couple of months ago and the premiere last week. The film, much improved from the first time I saw it, should be supported. As a daughter, at first I found Red Tails disappointing, having had the good fortune to hear first-hand stories from the Airmen all of my life (I'll never forget the image of the small sea of red jackets at my mother's funeral in 1996). As a filmmaker tho', I'm intrigued by the way Red Tails is being hyped, the vague authorship of the movie and how it fits into Black cinema, historically. The amusing part is that I thought that Lucas called the film the 1st black-cast film (!) but, in fact, he claims "It's one the first all-black action pictures ever made."(see below)

Also funny--or at least a little hyperbolic--is his fear that the film, if it fails, will endanger if not destroy the opportunities for black filmmakers from this weekend on--prompting from Greg Tate and others the moniker “George Lucas, Black Filmmaker”! But I think Lucas is actually referring to the dangers of big —or should I say GI-normous budget films with predominantly black cast with a black director at the helm. This confused authorship between Lucas and the film’s director, Anthony Hemingway, is intriguing and in the clip Lucas self-effacingly disparages the film (the "soft" center) but inadvertently or unconsciously depending on how you feel about Lucas’ motives, displaces director Hemingway who he does not otherwise refer to in the interview.

The soapy and boyish "soft center" he describes is a truncated and specifically located episode, with hugely compressed characters. The focus then is mainly on dogfights and air(and digital) technology with an almost complete lack of context for the characters--particularly the absense of black women or almost any women--who are not even referenced (no gals back home? No sisters, no Mamas?), nor of African Americans at home following the airmen's adventures.

Well, I guess all of this was relegated to the prequels and sequels that hopefully will be produced (and maybe with my help!)but now hang in the balance of the OPENING WEEKEND BOX OFFICE!!

Anyway, all of this reminds me that all-black/colored movies directed by blacks and whites have existed since the movies began. There’s more than one per decade (I'll make a list later)!  For example, preserved in part by our own Women’s Film Preservation Fund, A Fool and His Money (1912) is thought to be the first American film featuring an all African-American cast. And it was made by a LADY!—Alice Guy Blaché who owned Solax Studios, in Fort Lee, New Jersey and produced and directed dozens of films in the silent era.

The first all black action picture?  What about The Norman Studios The Flying Ace set in WW1 and made in 1926! This film featured air battles, special effects (the camera turns completely upside down), comedy, action, daring aerial rescues AND romance!!

Here is a great clip from this rarely screened jewel!

 

Whether they run for two hours or for "6 SMASHING Reels!" black-cast films with their delights, issues, failings and travails are uniquely American and for me, essential in our understanding of the history of cinema.

SO,go see Red Tails this weekend!! You'll have fun!

red tails opens 1.20.12

More about the film a little later but if you are planning to see RED TAILS (2012) d. Anthony Hemingway, consider supporting it this opening weekend. The film cannot begin to represent the incredible history and amazing stories of the Airmen (which I have had the fortune to hear all of my life) but IT IS exciting, action-packed, appropriate for young people and well-acted with an attractive cast! It's clearly a labor of love and deserves an (enthusiastic and critical) audience.

Red Tails Trailer

Above: "Ina The Macon Belle" restored P-51 by Kermit Weeks and Dad and the original, early 1940s

r.i.p. michael sarrazin

A 70s stalwart! via Ina's 70s Horror

The post is about Frankenstein but what's better than this scene from Eye of The Cat(1969) d.David Lowell Rich

 

"and now i'm gonna howl!"

 elizabeth taylor abides...

 
No wonder it's raining. It's the end of an era.  She's with all the other stars now.  I want to try live some part of my life with an atom of the brio with  which she lived hers.

Meanwhile, this ALWAYS cracks me up!

 

Rest in Peace, Liz.

workworkworkworkwork...charles ledray

You should run runrunrunrun to the Whitney to see Charles LeDray's virtuoso, poignant and for me very funny show.  Funny...is that the right word? Intricate, moving, horrifying and melancholic. And funny!

 
(detail from Men's Suits)
This piece is not in the Whitney show but it is similar to another shredded outfit. What manner of monstrous moth or wolf got at this little suit? Or was it just time?

Trompe l'oeil and yet not at all with slight sifts and mixes of (small to tiny) scale. 

This was the first piece I had seen of LeDray's work.  It's one of my favorite artworks.

(Sorry about the lack of detailed information but the show ends on Feb. 13th!)

 

(Jan. 2010 ina d. archer)

 

 

i love jack lalanne's organ!

nice tuffet!

When I think about the time I spent at my grandparent's house in Macon, GA. my favorite memories are of watching my granddaddy's huge b&w cabinet "telly-vision". He also had an old timey wood radio that he would pick up and mime trying to find a signal. I don't recall anyone ever watching the television but me. I used to sneak watching Dark Shadows and Jack LaLanne!  

I loved Jack Lalanne.  I never did the exercises but I found him endlessly entertaining with his black hair, jumpsuit (a one piece outfit? Wow!), and his white German Shepard! (gosh, our shepard, Jag,and granddaddy's dog, Nitro were just regular colors!). But the best thing was that his every move was accompanied by an organ flourish! All the exercise routines had live music. And as you'll hear below, the organist was quite illustrative. It was like Jack was always at his own personal skating rink! RIP Jack Lalanne, God bless'im!