newyork

Once Upon a Time in America

by James McNally on February 2, 2011

in DVD

Once Upon a Time in America
Warner released Once Upon a Time in America on Blu-ray in Canada on January 11, 2011. Help sup­port Toronto Screen Shots by buying it on Amazon.ca.

Once Upon a Time in America (Director: Sergio Leone): The first and best thing I can say about the new Blu-ray of this classic gang­ster saga from Warner is that it finally allows the viewer to enjoy the entire 220 minutes without having to change discs in the middle. And the full exper­i­ence is def­in­itely what you want. Never has a film needed and made better use of the larger canvas afforded by breaking (smashing!) the ima­ginary two hour bar­rier some studio exec­ut­ives feel is the upper limit for audi­ence atten­tion. Let me illustrate:

Approximately an hour in, young gang­ster Patsy (Brian Bloom) climbs the stairs for an assig­na­tion with teen­aged pros­ti­tute Peggy. He’s been told he can exchange a freshly-baked cream­puff for sexual favours and as he waits for her, he sits on the stair­case while gingerly pla­cing the cream­puff next to him. Over the next two full minutes, he sits looking at this deli­cious treat while waiting for one of a dif­ferent sort. He picks at the icing and rearranges the wrap­ping nervously until he finally can’t help him­self any longer. He greedily devours the cream­puff, and just as he pops the cherry into his mouth, Peggy emerges from her apart­ment. “Whaddya want?” she demands. “Uh…I’ll come back another time.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better por­trayal of the fine line between child­hood and adult­hood, and in a shorter film, this is the sort of scene that would be cut first.

I won’t attempt a full review, but Leone’s tale of Jewish gang­sters in New York spans more than 30 years in the lives of pals Noodles (Robert DeNiro) and Max (James Woods). The often-overbearing soundtrack by Ennio Morricone piles on to the already-sentimental dir­ec­tion by Leone, but it’s a good story and some of the images are just fant­astic. The film also stars Joe Pesci, Tuesday Weld, Elizabeth McGovern, Treat Wiliams, Burt Young, Danny Aiello and in her first film role, Jennifer Connelly.

Extra fea­tures include a com­mentary by film critic Richard Schickel and an excerpt from the doc­u­mentary Once Upon a Time: Sergio Leone focusing on the making of the film. It runs about 20 minutes.

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: gangsters, newyork, newyorkcity, nyc

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

NY Export: Opus Jazz DVD

by James McNally on November 20, 2010

in Documentaries,DVD

NY Export: Opus Jazz

Still holding top spot in the list of best films I’ve seen this year, NY Export: Opus Jazz (review) has just been released on DVD by Factory 25. I received my copy yes­terday and am extremely impressed. Extras include a longer ver­sion of A Ballet in Sneakers: Jerome Robbins and Opus Jazz, the making-of doc that fol­lowed the per­form­ance, as well as the 1958 doc­u­mentary Jerome Robbins’ Ballets: USA, com­mis­sioned by the US State Department. There’s also a gor­geous booklet fea­turing stills and an essay by John Lithgow. It all comes in an attractive slim slip­case. For over­seas fans, you might be pleased to know that this NTSC disc is region-free.

Buy your copy from Factory 25 here

Really the only thing more I could have wished for is a Blu-ray ver­sion, but that’s a minor quibble. Check out some of the gor­geous images from this film in the gal­lery below.

Tagged as: ballet, dance, newyork, newyorkcity, nyc

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

NY Export: Opus Jazz

by James McNally on March 23, 2010

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,SXSW

NY Export: Opus Jazz

NY Export: Opus Jazz (Directors: Jody Lee Lipes and Henry Joost): It has been a very long time since I have been as knocked out by a filmgoing exper­i­ence the way NY Export: Opus Jazz knocked me out. Based on the cho­reo­graphy of Jerome Robbins and cre­ated by dan­cers from the New York City Ballet, it’s a dance film, sure. But even if you don’t think you’re inter­ested in dance, you owe it to your­self to immerse your­self in this mes­mer­izing film.

The ori­ginal ballet piece premiered in 1958, a year after the suc­cess of West Side Story on Broadway. Robbins con­sidered Opus Jazz a com­panion piece but more of an abstrac­tion of West Side Story. This “ballet in sneakers” has no dia­logue and no dis­cern­ible story. And yet, it power­fully con­veys the mood of what it must feel like to be young and beau­tiful and living in New York City. Originally per­formed over­seas in Spoleto and on Broadway in 1958, it wasn’t revived again until the New York City Ballet per­formed it in 2005. Two of the dan­cers who per­formed in that revival, Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi, saw the poten­tial for a film and began raising funds.

The result is a 46-minute film of the ballet per­form­ance itself, fol­lowed by a 15-minute doc­u­mentary on the film’s making. Using real New York loc­a­tions and shooting in widescreen 35mm, dir­ectors Lipes and Joost always provide visu­ally inter­esting spaces for their dan­cers to move in, or even just to pose in. The dan­cers, dressed in street clothes, are all gor­geous and make up a group diverse enough to look like real New Yorkers. Once they start to move, the film comes to life, and the camera con­stantly prowls around and above them, dazzling us with remark­able views. The com­bin­a­tion of the camera’s move­ment with that of the dan­cers cre­ates a sexy and hyp­notic effect. Though some of the cho­reo­graphy might have appeared dated, somehow the dan­cers and cam­er­a­work make it seem more retro cool, and instead the film bursts with life and youth. Something about the incred­ible pulsating sense of move­ment, for lack of a better word, moved me (pardon the pun) and left me prac­tic­ally breath­less with awe. Not to men­tion grasping for just the right words to describe my feelings.

The good news is that PBS has picked this up as part of its Great Performances series, and it will be tele­vised begin­ning on March 24 on your local PBS affil­iate. The bad news is that because of that deal, the film will have no the­at­rical run in the US, and no film I’ve seen so far this year deserves to be seen on a large screen more.

Official site of the film

10/10(10/10)

Tagged as: #sxsw10, ballet, dance, newyork, newyorkcity, nyc

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos

by James McNally on May 7, 2006

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos

Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (USA/UK, 2006, Director: Paul Crowder and John Downer, 97 minutes): The North American Soccer League was strug­gling along through the 1970s until the New York Cosmos, owned by Warner Communications head Steve Ross, decided to bring super­star Pele to the Big Apple. Suddenly, attend­ance was up, and the Cosmos started win­ning. Continuing the for­mula by bringing some European stars over, the Cosmos won sev­eral league titles over the next few years. In the pro­cess, the once-moribund NASL expanded quickly to 24 teams. Unfortunately, the res­ulting dilu­tion of talent, and the inab­ility of smaller-market clubs to pay the huge salaries demanded by European or Latin American stars, meant that the league soon imploded.

The film tells the story with humour and verve, and it’s hard not to be a little bit nos­talgic for the days when 70,000 people would crowd into Giants sta­dium to watch “the other foot­ball.” But ulti­mately, the Cosmos’ strategy was short-sighted. Building an audi­ence for soccer in North America was going to take time, and the free-spending style of Ross and the Cosmos attracted only fair­weather fans, who would melt away as soon as the team stopped win­ning. Other fran­chises couldn’t attract enough fans in the first place, and the league suffered as a result.

It was inter­esting that the dir­ector admitted after­wards that he is a huge fan of Chelsea Football Club in the English Premiership. Chelsea are fol­lowing a sim­ilar strategy at the moment, with the seem­ingly end­less bil­lions of owner Roman Abramovich funding the con­struc­tion of another super­team. So far, they’ve won back to back titles in England, but to the det­ri­ment of the league, according to many observers. Without a salary cap, the English Premier League drains talent away from the rest of the world, and Chelsea are the richest club of all. This con­cen­tra­tion of talent makes the game less com­pet­itive in the long term, and while it may attract a few new fans, they’re not the sort of fans who will stick around if and when the team starts losing.

Many of the American innov­a­tions brought to the game by the NASL have made it into the game in the rest of the world. For example, pen­alty shootouts to decide games tied after reg­u­la­tion time. This will always be unpop­ular with foot­ball pur­ists, but for the casual fan, it cer­tainly adds excite­ment to the game. Other gim­micks weren’t so suc­cessful, thank­fully. Who wants to see cheer­leaders at a foot­ball match?

The only flaw in the film was the absence of any present-day inter­views with Pele or Johan Cruyff (who played for the Los Angeles Aztecs and Washington Diplomats fran­chises), though I believe numerous attempts were made to obtain their par­ti­cip­a­tion. The dir­ector Paul Crowder prom­ised lots of fun stuff in the DVD extras, including their attempts to get Pele on board.

An inter­esting art­icle on the editing of the film

Official site of the New York Cosmos

Wikipedia entry on the New York Cosmos

Information on the NASL from the National Soccer Hall of Fame

The American Soccer History Archives

The NASL Alumni Association arranged a reunion for more than 60 former players in September 2005.

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs06, Documentaries, football, Hot Docs, newyork, pele, soccer, sports

{ Comments on this entry are closed }