Walk Hard; The Dewey Cox Story, with an agreeable John C. Reilly in the lead, comes with good news and bad news. There's a couple of killer songs recorded in the genre of the times - late 50s rockabilly and 60s country pop - and you leave the theater with the tunes running through your mind. That's the good news. The bad news is that Walk Hard tries too hard to be funny, like Marx Bros. funny, like Airplane funny, and falls flat on its face. The film should be called the Nashville Penis movie it tries so hard. Imagine a coupe of flaccid penis shots a la Borat in a mildly amusing biopic about a country singer who becomes famous to atone for a horrible childhood trauma. While producer and co-writer Judd Apatow has been on a roll with a couple of comic classics recently (Superbad, Knocked Up) the work on display here doesn't equal those kinds of kudos. You'll chuckle and you might tap your toes, but you'll be arching your eyebrows at the sophomoric wit long before the film ends.
Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has the wrong title. It should be There Will Be Blood Too. Actually TWBB and ST are both worthy films, it’s just that Sweeney Todd, a film that aims high and gets there easily, opens the dam gates to the flow of red in a manner that will appeal to the Saw crowd even while unreeling in a fashion beholden to serious musical theater. The blood is plentiful, sticky and velvet textured, thick and bright in hue. The flow is copious, yet there are interludes between the violence that transform the experience from one of Tim Burtonesque Grand Guignol to the sublime sweetness of Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics. The 1979 Broadway play Sweeney Todd is considered a benchmark among musicals, and it’s not hard to become a believer in Sondheim when you’ve taken the journey into his world of eerie harmonies and complicated orchestration. Combine Burton’s similarly frightening vision and the at times midnight blue monochromatic color scheme (Imagine black and white where black is blue highlighted with the occasional blood stain.) and the entire film becomes a spectacle to behold with wonder. Two scenes that take place in pure sunlight are in such contrast that the brightness makes you squint. Pacing the story so that the first blood doesn’t appear until about the end of the second reel the duo of the macabre and the melodies are like opposites that attract. The second wave of killings dispatches five victims during one song. That’s followed by a lull in the violence only to be outdone by the final deaths of the main characters, each one more vividly resplendent in tone. Johnny Depp toplines along with Helena Bonham Carter and both talk sing their songs in character. Ditto with Timothy Spall and Alan Rickman, as devious a couple of public officials that ever dealt harsh judgment. Newbie Jamie Campbell Bower plays a lad who gets to warble the best song “Johanna.” Fans of legit fare won’t mind the judicious cutting of some of the play’s songs.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. stands tall among classic 60s television series. Wedged between the absurd humor of Get Smart and the more realistic but still silly Mission: Impossible TMFU stamped its own brand of humor and adventure on the then culture. Other 60s shows that offered spy drama ranged from the serious I Spy to the tangy Honey West. TMFU really wasn’t about espionage so much as hot chicks in go-go boots and secret agent men with cool contraptions. There were no cell phones in 1964 so the stars Robert Vaughn and David McCallum talked to headquarters via a fountain pen (with an antenna that extends from the top). A vintage toy version just sold on ebay for $130. Make no mistake of the influence of Napoleon Solo (Vaughn) or Illya Kuryakin (McCallum). Illya was the reason people wear black turtleneck sweaters and the entire project, while only lasting four seasons, inspired everything from input by Ian Fleming (who contributed the name Solo) to making sure Mannix in his second to third season transition went from a private dick to a secret agent. Napoleon and Illya talk shit. In various scenarios they blackmail a thief to help them rob a casino, or warn a scientist that they do the dirty work so that huge corporations can get even bigger defense contracts. And one really saucy interlude has the duo chatting up a femme only to use her for subterfuge. Illya, perhaps not out of character, chilling tells her how depraved she is for fooling around with Solo and not him. The first season, the only one in black and white, constantly amazes with top-notch guest stars and subliminal sexual tension. Imagine my surprise when after several episodes one particular man on man confrontation between Solo and Ricardo Montalban turns out to have been written by Robert Towne (Chinatown). One ep has both Jill Ireland (married to McCallum who introduced her to Charles Bronson) and Anne Francis (herself the doyenne as Honey West to every crime fighting woman who’s appeared since). It’s hard to top one ep that guest stared William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Werner Klemperer. By the third season plots had gone kitsch but that still allowed room for eps with Sonny and Cher, another with Nancy Sinatra. The latter has Sinatra as the daughter of a scientist who believes in UFOs. Before long Sinatra and Illya are singing a duet and the bad guy pretends that he’s a benevolent alien from outer space. The second season launched color and two-part episodes, some of which were also released as feature films. It’s easy to look past the wacky nature of some of the plots when guest starts like Vincent Price or Rip Torn are munching the scenery. One second season show introduces Mary Ann Mobley as April Dancer, later a spin off show with Stephanie Zimbalist called, natch, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. The Sonny and Cher ep from season 3 features kazoos in the musical score. Exactly 105 episodes, all four seasons plus an unaired pilot, are now available on 41 DVDs as part of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Complete Series. One standout of the extras is a short devoted to the show’s theme music. Jerry Goldsmith wrote the main theme while Lalo Shifrin wrote background music during the first year. It’s interesting to hear the theme progress from the second season with its bongo percussion track to the third season when the title song rips with a Dick Dale-type rhythm complete with a madman sax break. There’s so much to see with this set it will take a couple of months to completely view. So don’t rush, rather sit back, take off your shoes with the secret transmitter hidden in the heel and partake.
New Line Cinema has resolved its legal dispute with Peter Jackson. Good move and the fans of LOTR will no doubt embrace not one but two films of The Hobbit, one of them being a sequel (Hobbit 2?). Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will serve as Executive Producers of the two films. Now the speculation will focus on who will actually direct.
