Photo credit HBO

Photo Credit: The Independent

Gemma Whelan is not a name that sparks anywhere near universal recognition. If you know this actress it is almost certainly because of her terrific performance as the unstoppable and steadfast Yara
Greyjoy in HBO’s Game of Thrones,  but her talents run further afield than the tough and dramatic Queen of the Iron Islands.

Photo Credit BBC

About a year ago my sweetie-wife and I began watching a British comedy program Upstart Crow a sit-com that centers on a highly fictionalize version of William Shakespeare’s life. (Though it has enough crosses with reality that it brings forward a number of interesting takes on other historical characters including a fabulous version of Christopher Marlowe.) Gemma Whelan plays Kate the daughter of the landlady who rents Will his London’s residence. Book-smart, inquisitive, and deeply compassionate, whose utmost desire if to be an actress, illegal for women in Elizabethan England, Kate is about as far from Yara as two character can possibly be. I admit that when Gemma first appeared in the Upstart Crow  I did not recognize her as the same actress as the hard Greyjoy but my sweetie-wife did. Gemma’s comedic talent and timing is impeccable often stealing scenes away from much more established comedian/actors. I do hope that the massive global success of HOB’s series launches this talented actor on a flight path for fame and endless interesting roles.

Sunday night after a hectic, busy, and fun-filled weekend playing games at Kingdom-Con I relaxed by watching Woman on the Run  a film noir  currently streaming on the service Kanopy. This is a film I had never heard of and pretty much decided to give it a go on a whim.

Ann Sheridan plays Eleanor Johnson and her husband Frank, while waling the dog late in the night, becomes witness to a mob murder of a witness and informant. Frank, a target for the killer because he can identify him, and because the police proved incapable of protecting the murder victim, is unwilling to trust his life to the police, takes to the streets of San Francisco hiding from both the authorities and the killer. Though their marriage is failing Eleanor starts hunting for Frank with the police and the killer dogging her heels aided only by Legget, a nosey yellow journalism reporting looking for a scandalous story. As Eleanor sifts through the clues of her husband’s life trying to work out where he might be hiding she discovers that their marriage is not what she had assumed it to be.

Woman on the Run,  though she is more hunting than running, is a terrific, taunt, thriller with a second act twist that puts the entire second half of the film onto a roller coaster of suspense. The real star of the movie is the sharp dialog that is filled with character and style. Carried principally by Ann Sheridan and Dennis O’Keefe as Legget, the film has more character development and transformation than many movie today and while it suffers from some ham-handed medical fantasy issues to create an additional sub-plot the main story holds together and is populated with colorful memorable characters. (I was quite pleased that the producers and director avoided ‘yellow face’ for the few Asian speaking parts.) The climatic ending is truly engaging and had me, late Sunday after a packed weekend, night fully awake and involved.

Apparently this film at one time had been thought to have been lost but now thanks to the Noir Foundation it has been restored, though at one point a still is used for a reaction shot, and I can heartily recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of this classic genre.

Based on the terrorist attacks launched into Mumbai November 2008 Hotel Mumbai, is a taunt, emotionally draining film reliving those attacks from a very personal character oriented point of view. As with any narrative film that is ‘based on real events’ or a ‘true story’ it is important to understand that fiction film is a terrible way to learn anything about history. What really good historical film can do is capture the emotional reality of an event, a place, or a time, allowing audiences to connect as human beings to the people who lived though the depicted events and hopefully come away with a better and more empathic understanding of what those events meant.

With the exception of the Raj Hotel’s chief chef Oberoi, played perfectly by Anupam Kher, the characters of the film are either entirely fictional or loosely combined from multiple sources however the characters themselves were not given and significant ‘Hollywood’ treatment and allowed to exist within a sphere of action that retained a strong sense of reality about them.

For those unaware of the history on November 26th 2008 a terrorist group, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, launched into Mumbai a series of murderous attacks. Arriving by boat they coordinated across 12 locations attacking crowds and landmarks with gunfire and explosives. The series of attacks lasted three days until November 29th when the last of the terrorists was killed. Killing 166 and wounding over 300 the Mumbai attacks represents one of the worst and most prolonged terrors incident. Lashkar, unlike many other Islamic-inspired terrorists organizations, held the belief that taking ones life by one’s own hands was always sinful but that dying at the action of the enemy was a path to martyrdom. These terrorists never intended to survive their operation and intended to kill as many unarmed, innocent people as possible before being killed by police or military. PBS’s Frontlinehas an excellent documentary from 2015 about the attacks and the critical role one American played in its planning and execution.

We witness the events of Hotel Mumbai  through the eyes of several characters, Arjun, a waiter and devote Sikh played by Dev Patel, The married couple David (Armie Hammer) and Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi) who have arrived at the hotel with their infant son and his nanny (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) and Vasili a rough Russian played by one of my favorite actors Jason Isaacs. This is not a story of unarmed people taking heroic action to overpower armed evil men. It should be said that the violence of the movie is handled quite expertly; never so graphically as to numb the viewers nor so distantly that it ceases to have emotional weight. There are heroes in the story and there is great tragedy but it is not one of thrilling action set pieces but rather horrific encounters with unrestrained hate and violence. The terrorists murdered with remorse and witnessing the recreated events I was moved to hatred of the attackers, terror for the victims, and emotionally wrung out as no one in the film has a cloak of invulnerability provided by neat story arcs and act structures. The film works, it is a powerful piece of art that conveys an emotional truth about these events while staying in some areas of the historical record. For example the movie compresses events down to a single night instead of the protracted siege that took place at the Hotel Raj, but the film’s deviations from the records are not of the sort that would make the project into propaganda or empty honorifics.

I can heartily recommend Hotel Mumbai if you are the sort of person who can endure a film that uncompromising depicts evil and expects a lot emotionally from its audience.

Over the weekend on the streaming service Kanopy, in installments, I watched the massive documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself. Released in 2003 and with a running time of nearly three hours (how many documentaries have an intermission?) Los Angeles Plays Itself is a video essay and love letter to the filmmaker Thomas Andersen’s home city.  Utilizing films clips from movies as famous as Chinatown and Sunset Boulevard  but also as obscure as independent art films from marginalized communities and early 70s horror films such as Messiah of Evil  Andersen focuses on the distortion and misrepresentations of his beloved home by the film industry over the decades. The film also carries Andersen’s undisguised feelings about the powers that be in the city and the destruction of local color and communities that the filmmaker mourns in their passing.

One of the amazing things about this film is the sheer size and scope of identifying filming locations from iconic movies throughout the history of cinema. Some are already well know, such as the Bradbury building whose use as a location stretches back to the 40s, but also other mansions and works of architectural art that has severed as the homes of bad guys, corporate raiders, and even as Deckard’s apartment in Blade Runner.

With a sharp eye and sarcastic tone Andersen exposed the illusions of Hollywood and the urban myths about Los Angeles that the movies have spread far and wide. For fans of film this is worth seeing.

Released in 2015 and starring Tom Hiddleston I Saw the Light is a biopic based on the brief meteoric life of Country singer Hank Williams. Adapting the biography writer and director Marc Abraham has a clear love and passion for the subject matter.

With a recording career that spanned jus six years, Williams blazed a brilliant career that produced 36 hit records and influenced Country/Western for decades after his premature death at 29 from heart disease. The film focuses on his turbulent relations ship with

image copyright Sony Pictures Classics

Audrey Sheppard Williams his first wife and sometimes singing partner (played by Elizabeth Olsen reuniting these two MCU stars), the pressures of his sudden fame, his complicated relationship with his mother, and his battles with alcoholism.

Hiddleston, a native of England, convincingly adopts William’s Alabama accent and singing mannerisms. Unlike many biopics about singers there is no attempt have the star lip sync to the singer’s performances but rather Hiddleston and Abraham work to create the impression of William’s unique style while giving the actor full reign for a performance. Olsen, as Audrey, has a tougher performance to nail down. Audrey’s irritation and eventual divorce from Williams over his infidelity and substance abuse issues is fairly straight forward and even handed but and additional source of friction in their relationship is Audrey’s desire for a singing career of her own and the film portrays her talents as quite lacking and Olsen must perform well enough that you can believe she has the possibility of a career and yet poorly enough that it is also clear she can never achieve her dreams. Frankly this did not work so well for me. It is possible that no one in the writing or production were looking out to make sure her story was faithful to her voice and viewpoint. I do not know enough to have an informed opinion but as for the action I think Olsen held her own against Hiddleston and they had a real on screen chemistry.

Where the film fails and it dos utterly is the lack of a narrative.  Biopics are particularly tough genre to produce. A person life rarely falls neatly into a narrative structure and this is doubly so when the story has to encompass their death. While there are plenty of  interesting characters and scenes a sequence of events is not a story. When the credits rolled on the Blu-ray I could not tell you why this film mattered or what it was trying to say, and you must always have something to say. There needs to be a point as to why were spent two hours caring about these characters and how that reflects on life in general. The film point of view is firmly fixed with Williams but we never come close to understanding the man, his art, or what drove his creativity. Without deeper themes or a character study the film is hollow and I cannot recommend it beyond enjoying Hiddleston’s enthusiastic performance.

So, the other day I was scrolling through the offerings at my local AMC theater, considering which movie to use of my reservations for and as I saw a number of films that had but one or two screenings for the entire day I suddenly considered the changing technology and options of film exhibition.

Many moons ago I worked at a local theater as an usher. It was a multiplex and each screen showed the same film throughout the week and, except for the rare double bill, only one film screen in each auditorium. Once a feature no longer commanded enough people in seats to justify the screen space it occupied all week the film was broken down back into its component reels and shipped away. This is very different than today where a film, such asThe Upside  might play for a showing or two during the matinee hours and then a different movie take over the screen for the prime time evening audience and it all comes down to digital technology.

This is the projector and film platter for a traditional projection booth. That massive set of three platters hold the entire film that had been assembled from its individual reels. At the theater where I worked this was done by an assistance manager for an extra $75

Photo Credit Anthony Huneycutt

dollars per week. When Romero’s Day of the Dead  was released my friend, who was one of the assistant managers, assembled the print and we stayed later to ‘test’ it, screening the disappointing film for ourselves. Assembling the print onto the platter was a laborious and time consuming processes which dictated that you did not change out prints often or easily.

Here is the sort of hard drive that modern digital prints are distributed on these days. I took this photo during my tour of Paramount Studios and this has quickly become the standard for motion picture exhibition. It’s a lot cheaper to ship that hard drive than the reels and reels of a lengthy feature film, it involves a lot fewer employee hours to set up and project, and it is free from tampering my mischievous theater owners or employees. (I once worked for a theater manager who privately admitted to ‘editing’

photo credit R.M. Evans

the end of a film and sending it back out for distribution.) These hard drives are not only loaded with the film ‘assembled’ and ready to exhibit but also with a digital count that has been pre-authorized. The theaters can project the feature only as many times as authorized and no more. If a theater wants to hold a film over for more showing they have to contact the studio or distributor to have the hard drive reauthorized. (No more private screens like my friend and I enjoyed.) I suspect that these one a day showing of films that have been in release for months may be the theaters using every authorized screening before returning the drive back to the studio.

There are those who love film and maintain it has a look that digital has not duplicated but the chance for films to find audiences and for people to catch screening of movies that had missed I think is a wonderful thing.