newyorkcity

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

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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

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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

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West 32nd

by James McNally on November 16, 2008

in Film Festivals,Reel Asian

West 32nd

West 32nd (Director: Michael Kang): John Cho (Harold from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle) plays John Kim, an ambi­tious young lawyer who offers to rep­resent a Korean teen­ager accused of a gang-related murder in New York’s Koreatown. His firm wants to raise its pro­file and he feels by doing this pro bono work, he can advance his career as well. His own Korean back­ground helps con­vince the boy’s family to sign on, but in reality, he doesn’t even speak the language.

Before he knows it, he’s caught up in an under­world he didn’t even know existed. He meets Mike (Jun Sung Kim), a mid-level gang­ster trying to move up in the hier­archy, and the two quickly recog­nize each other’s ambi­tion and begin an uneasy cooper­a­tion. But John is soon over his head in a cul­ture he doesn’t really under­stand, and before long, there are more dead bodies and he’s no closer to win­ning his case. By the end of the film, any hint of altruism in John’s offer to help is peeled away to reveal that he’s really not that dif­ferent from the gang­sters he’s trying to bring down.

Though Cho is effective as John Kim, it was Jun Sung Kim’s char­acter Mike Juhn who really lit up the screen for me. Unfortunately, the female char­ac­ters seemed largely dec­or­ative, but that seems to be part and parcel of the tra­di­tional Korean cul­ture that runs these crim­inal organ­iz­a­tions. The loc­a­tions in Manhattan and in Flushing, Queens added to the gritty realism of the film, and Kang used many actual Korean-American den­izens of the neigh­bour­hoods to fur­ther boost the authen­ti­city factor.

Kang has made a slick and effective thriller that, while not par­tic­u­larly ori­ginal, pays homage to both the American gang­ster films of the 70s and the more recent wave of Korean crime films. His co-writer is Edmund Lee, a former Village Voice reporter who spent years thor­oughly researching gangs and organ­ized crime in New York’s Korean com­munity. As Kang described the pro­ject, he started out trying to make a Korean-American ver­sion of The Departed and ended up with some­thing more like Mean Streets.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Michael Kang from after the screening (con­tains pos­sible spoilers):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Duration: 14:00

Official site of the film
Director’s blog

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: #reelasian08, crime, gangsters, korea, newyorkcity, nyc

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The Most Beautiful Night in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Yoru)

by James McNally on July 2, 2008

in Film Festivals,Travel

The Most Beautiful Night in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Yoru)

The Most Beautiful Night in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Yoru) (2008, Director: Daisuke Tengan): Thanks to the good folks at the J-Films Powwow blog, I wound up with a free ticket to this film, screening as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. It was the per­fect end to a four-day trip to the city, and a great way to spend three hours inside on another swel­tering hot day. Daisuke Tengan is the son of legendary dir­ector Shohei Imamura and is well-known as the writer of such classic films as Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999), as well as his father’s films Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001) and The Eel (1997). This film just opened in Japan in late May, and this screening was the second at NYAFF, where it was making its inter­na­tional premiere.

Starting with an anim­ated pro­logue, the film quickly takes this sense of whimsy and adds layers and layers of mys­tery, creep­i­ness, humour and sex until it cli­maxes (sorry!) in a huge orgy scene that scan­dal­ized the Japanese press. The mys­tery involves a small vil­lage with the highest birth rate in Japan. Our 14-year old nar­rator takes us back to a time before her birth when a journ­alist from Tokyo was exiled to work at the vil­lage news­paper as the result of a sex scandal. Since there’s no real news, he digs around trying to find out as much about the town’s eccentric inhab­it­ants. He uncovers what he thinks is a murder con­spiracy. The pro­pri­et­ress of the local bar is a mys­ter­ious and sexy woman whose fiancé and then hus­band both died under mys­ter­ious cir­cum­stances. Thinking he has an insur­ance scam artist in his sights, he pur­sues the story fur­ther but it’s nothing at all like he thought. Instead, by the end of the film, a sexual revolu­tion has been launched by the eccentric inhab­it­ants of this mys­ter­ious village.

Director Tengan, even in this enter­taining film, makes a polit­ical state­ment. Sex, he says, takes us back to our more prim­itive state, and des­troys cul­ture and civil­iz­a­tion. But in light of what civil­iz­a­tion and its rep­res­ent­at­ives (politi­cians, clergy) have done to us, maybe that’s not such a bad thing at all. Railing at all polit­ical and reli­gious creeds, he assures us “there is no prom­ised future,” only the one we make for ourselves. Though orgies and wild sex might not seem polit­ic­ally sub­versive, con­sider, one char­acter says, what would happen if everyone stopped what they were doing and just had sex for one night. We would have no war, no politics, no reli­gion. Just love and pas­sion and pleasure. It would be “the most beau­tiful night in the world.”

Yes, the sen­ti­ment is shallow and, as por­trayed on screen, a little silly, but it’s heart­felt and actu­ally kind of sexy and moving at the same time. And des­pite its run­ning time (161 minutes), the film is never less than enter­taining. Don’t make me come up with some lame joke about length here. Just see it, if you can.

Official site of the film (Japanese) including the trailer

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: japan, newyorkcity, nyaff, nyc, sex

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