"American Hustle" (I LOVE JENNIFER LAWRENCE!) and 3 Great Documentaries
Film 372
"American Hustle"
starring: Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K.
written and directed by: David O. Russell
Full disclosure: I love Jennifer Lawrence! I have ever since I saw her in "Winter's Bone" (thanks to my best friend, Sean, for telling me I had to watch the gritty, slightly depressing film). She cannot seem to give anything but her very best in every role (however small, she makes her presence known and significant in each of her films).
David O. Russell cannot seem to help but write and direct excellent, gritty, overwrought, spectacles as films. Last year, he came at us with "Silver Linings Playbook" (which I reviewed here in this blog). He's also done:
Flirting with Disaster (reviewed in this blog)
Three Kings
I Heart Huckabees (one of my favorites)
The Fighter
Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) though is the main focus of Russell's new and surefire award-winning film. Rosenfeld comes off as a bit of a mess, with his belly sagging over his pants and his terribly primped combover, but as the plot reveals itself, you cannot help but see that everything about Rosenfeld is calculated. Russell has focused his stories on family dysfunction and mental illness. "American Hustle" is focused on creating allegiances and shifting them and then playing dueling plots with characters playing against each other.
Reveling in the potential for gaudy dress-up and shouty overacting afforded by the baroque disco-era setting, the film charts Rosenfeld's exploits as the small-time hustler teams up with partner and girlfriend Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who enlivens his operation by posing as a posh British heiress. Things start to get out of hand after the pair is first busted for fraud, then strong-armed into service by ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso uses them to run a basic con on unsuspecting businessmen, before quickly surrendering to the same unchecked greed that motivates all the shady operators depicted here. Going over the head of his supervisor, he chases after bigger and bigger targets, ending up with an international scheme involving fake Arab sheiks, prominent politicians, and dangerous mobsters.
Formally ostentatious and unrepentantly messy, the film manages to implicitly convey the overdriven, coked-up confusion that many '70s period pieces make painfully overt. Originally titled "American Bullshit," the film ends up as a compulsive, often intensely obvious study of unbalanced personalities, all engaged in some kind of desperate masquerade, all caught up in the frantic push and pull between chaos and control.
I loved this new Russell film and think it's definitely going to win some awards at several of the award shows in the next few months. Jennifer Lawrence isn't really in the film that much, but each time she appears she commands the scene and demands your attention. She is absolutely one of the best actresses in this new generation. And Amy Adams always seems to shine as well, but damn the wardrobe department for flirting with her dresses showing just enough of her cleavage to be enticing.
.....................................................................................................
Film 373
"Beauty is Embarrassing"
starring: Wayne White
featuring interviews with: Paul Reubens, Matt Groenig
written and directed by:Neil Berkeley
This documentary focuses on its subject- a man we should all know, but probably don't because of his behind-the-scenes presence- in such a great way that we really get to know the man for everything that he probably truly is if we actually met him in real life and had a conversation with him.
Wayne White is an artist, a creator, a person whose mind never seems to stop or turn off. Watching the documentary almost inspires you to go and create something artistic yourself. When he is first shown on the screen, you are struck by his bright blue eyes, mountain-man-esque beard, sardonic humor, and a distinctly calibrated bullshit detector. With all that, White is also hilarious, poignant, charismatic, and highly creative all the time, while also coming off as a bit of a curmudgeon. But, you also cannot help but like him.
Wayne White's art comes from puppets he creates (out of anything), paintings, cartoons, and anything else you can imagine could pass off as art. He says, early on in the film, "My mission is to put humor into fine art." And he succeed with that, just a few years ago, with a new and interesting format after years in the entertainment industry. His new venture, though, really put him on the map. He would go out and buy generic landscape paintings at yard sales and then paint over them with various phrases (and all contain his sense of humor). I definitely implore you to look up some of his paintings, because my just writing them down here in this blog will not do them justice.
He is most famous for his work as a set designer and puppeteer on the 1980s television show "Pee Wee's Playhouse" and then on "Shining Time Station." He also worked tediously on Beakman's World (another television show from my childhood). Although, what I found most interesting was his admission to working on the Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight" music video, for which he won an MTV Video Music Award, and within this story he said that night was one of the worst experiences of his life! First, I didn't know he was involved in that production (one of my favorite videos from the 1990s); second, I love that he can openly call "Bullshit!" to award shows like that. He doesn't care about the recognition. He clearly does art because it's his passion and he just cannot stop. Along with the Smashing Pumpkins video, White also did Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" and the Offspring's "She's Got Issues" and MTV's Liquid Television "Bill and Willis" video segment, as well as Snapple and Old Spice commercials (featuring Bruce Campbell!).
The film itself is beautiful in nature as the director, Berkeley, uses shots from a one-man show featuring White discussing his life and art in front of an audience, along with a slide show that he commentates. There's some good interviews with colleagues and peers through his professional years (re: Paul Reubens and Matt Groenig). And then there's real life/real-time happy accidents like his first grade teacher coming to a book signing, and also strategic artistic moments like working on an LBJ head replica with his son, which he then proceeds to wear throughout scenes and the touching scenes of White working with children on another large replica of a man puppet.
I absolutely loved this documentary and it made me appreciate Wayne White, the man and the artist, and it made me want to buy some of his paintings (unabashedly). I watched the music videos, again, too.
....................................................................................
Film 374
"Talihina Sky: The Story of the Kings of Leon
starring: the Kings of Leon
directed by: Stephen C. Mitchell
This is the kind of documentary that is almost like a love-letter to a much-loved band that rose to fame rather "instantly" after their 4th album (?! kind of an oxymoron, right) really pushed them into the mainstream, and many of their earlier fans saw as them selling out. The documentary was made right before the singer/songwriter/guitarist/frontman-with-the-model-looks Caleb Followill sent the band on hiatus due to his excessive drinking turned the rest of his band/family against him until he got help.
The documentary is more of an insider's look at the band in unguarded moments on tour or in the studio, as well as containing many great home-movie clips from the boys' childhood (re: singing at their Pentecostal church). The film's tension and conflict revolves around the dissonance the brothers/cousin faced between a Pentecostal upbringing and life as members of a highly loved and sought-after rock band (and the excesses that are often associated with rock music).
The ample downtime spent in hotels and on tour buses proves a natural spawning ground for rock excess, but what’s endearing here is the mildness of the boys’ rebellion: mostly premarital sex with girlfriends and crafty puffs on marijuana joints in no-smoking bathrooms, as opposed to cocaine-fueled orgies with hookers. The reckless defiance culminates in Caleb’s decision to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, ignoring a plea from his mother to do the right thing by Jesus.
I found it rather interesting that the director, Mitchell, (who also happens to be a longtime friend of the Followills) interlaced the footage with what the viewer can also assume to be some type of family reunion that the band members come back to Talihina, OK for every year. It reminds the viewer that these guys are just people like everyone else, with families that love them, support them, but also criticize them. They have fun in the backwoods, very redneck-esque site of this family reunion.
As a fan of the Kings of Leon, I enjoyed this look into them as a band (with inner turmoil that may be a result of the combination of them being brothers and also spending so much time together). I can remember being introduced to them while I was on my road trip in 2008. I met the girl I was staying with in Kansas City, MO at a party for one of her friends (who was coincidentally a musician) and we were driving in her car and she played the Kings of Leon's newest album "Only By the Night" and I just loved their sound. I later found their back category. And when I return home from my road trip, another friend of mine, Melissa, actually bought us tickets to see the Kings of Leon at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, MA. We went and enjoyed their show (even though we missed their opening song due to insane traffic).
..............................................................................
Film 375
"Wish Me Away"
starring: Chely Wright
I have to be completely honest, before seeing this film, I knew absolutely nothing about one-time shining country superstar, Chely Wright, but after watching this glorified and extended version of something like Behind the Music, I can't help but appreciate and respect her as an artist and as a person.
The subject of this documentary, like I said, is Chely Wright, and her conflict which is the basis of the film, the driving plot, is her struggle with coming out as a lesbian. Now, why would this be so hard, in this day and age, when it's definitely more accepted to be gay than any time in history? Well, Chely Wright got her start and fame as a country music star...and as we all know, the country music industry and its fans are a very unforgiving crowd (re: the Dixie Chicks being shunned for making a comment about then-Republican President George W. Bush overseas). Gay marriage is slowly becoming a non-topic since many states are voting to legalize gay marriage over the past couple of years. Chely Wright got her start in the country music business in 1994, though, which was a much less acceptable time to be outwardly gay. She was a very popular country singer, with a few hit songs, but she was around unfortunately around the same time as Faith Hill and Shania Twain. Chely Wright also happens to be very attractive, and so nobody really questioned her sexuality. She even dated a few men (re: Brad Paisley), only to disguise and hide the fact that she was a lesbian.
Some critics dismissed Chely Wright and her "coming out" as simply a ploy to sell more records and her autobiography, which coincidentally came out at the same time as Chely Wright's television appearances to discuss her homosexuality. She handles everything so well and you can tell she is a very strong woman and you can't help but root for her success and acceptance. She stands firm to her reason for coming out as being: to help the teenagers who are facing the same difficulties as she did growing up hiding her secret. She has become an activist in the LGBT organization, as well as still making music (with perhaps more heart behind it now that she's not hiding), but of course, the country music industry hasn't sent her any welcome back's or invitations to perform on their platforms.
After watching this documentary, I felt bad for Chely Wright for the struggles she endured, but I also appreciate her now and respect her.
"American Hustle"
starring: Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K.
written and directed by: David O. Russell
Full disclosure: I love Jennifer Lawrence! I have ever since I saw her in "Winter's Bone" (thanks to my best friend, Sean, for telling me I had to watch the gritty, slightly depressing film). She cannot seem to give anything but her very best in every role (however small, she makes her presence known and significant in each of her films).
David O. Russell cannot seem to help but write and direct excellent, gritty, overwrought, spectacles as films. Last year, he came at us with "Silver Linings Playbook" (which I reviewed here in this blog). He's also done:
Flirting with Disaster (reviewed in this blog)
Three Kings
I Heart Huckabees (one of my favorites)
The Fighter
Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) though is the main focus of Russell's new and surefire award-winning film. Rosenfeld comes off as a bit of a mess, with his belly sagging over his pants and his terribly primped combover, but as the plot reveals itself, you cannot help but see that everything about Rosenfeld is calculated. Russell has focused his stories on family dysfunction and mental illness. "American Hustle" is focused on creating allegiances and shifting them and then playing dueling plots with characters playing against each other.
Reveling in the potential for gaudy dress-up and shouty overacting afforded by the baroque disco-era setting, the film charts Rosenfeld's exploits as the small-time hustler teams up with partner and girlfriend Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who enlivens his operation by posing as a posh British heiress. Things start to get out of hand after the pair is first busted for fraud, then strong-armed into service by ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso uses them to run a basic con on unsuspecting businessmen, before quickly surrendering to the same unchecked greed that motivates all the shady operators depicted here. Going over the head of his supervisor, he chases after bigger and bigger targets, ending up with an international scheme involving fake Arab sheiks, prominent politicians, and dangerous mobsters.
Formally ostentatious and unrepentantly messy, the film manages to implicitly convey the overdriven, coked-up confusion that many '70s period pieces make painfully overt. Originally titled "American Bullshit," the film ends up as a compulsive, often intensely obvious study of unbalanced personalities, all engaged in some kind of desperate masquerade, all caught up in the frantic push and pull between chaos and control.
I loved this new Russell film and think it's definitely going to win some awards at several of the award shows in the next few months. Jennifer Lawrence isn't really in the film that much, but each time she appears she commands the scene and demands your attention. She is absolutely one of the best actresses in this new generation. And Amy Adams always seems to shine as well, but damn the wardrobe department for flirting with her dresses showing just enough of her cleavage to be enticing.
.....................................................................................................
Film 373
"Beauty is Embarrassing"
starring: Wayne White
featuring interviews with: Paul Reubens, Matt Groenig
written and directed by:Neil Berkeley
This documentary focuses on its subject- a man we should all know, but probably don't because of his behind-the-scenes presence- in such a great way that we really get to know the man for everything that he probably truly is if we actually met him in real life and had a conversation with him.
Wayne White is an artist, a creator, a person whose mind never seems to stop or turn off. Watching the documentary almost inspires you to go and create something artistic yourself. When he is first shown on the screen, you are struck by his bright blue eyes, mountain-man-esque beard, sardonic humor, and a distinctly calibrated bullshit detector. With all that, White is also hilarious, poignant, charismatic, and highly creative all the time, while also coming off as a bit of a curmudgeon. But, you also cannot help but like him.
Wayne White's art comes from puppets he creates (out of anything), paintings, cartoons, and anything else you can imagine could pass off as art. He says, early on in the film, "My mission is to put humor into fine art." And he succeed with that, just a few years ago, with a new and interesting format after years in the entertainment industry. His new venture, though, really put him on the map. He would go out and buy generic landscape paintings at yard sales and then paint over them with various phrases (and all contain his sense of humor). I definitely implore you to look up some of his paintings, because my just writing them down here in this blog will not do them justice.
He is most famous for his work as a set designer and puppeteer on the 1980s television show "Pee Wee's Playhouse" and then on "Shining Time Station." He also worked tediously on Beakman's World (another television show from my childhood). Although, what I found most interesting was his admission to working on the Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight" music video, for which he won an MTV Video Music Award, and within this story he said that night was one of the worst experiences of his life! First, I didn't know he was involved in that production (one of my favorite videos from the 1990s); second, I love that he can openly call "Bullshit!" to award shows like that. He doesn't care about the recognition. He clearly does art because it's his passion and he just cannot stop. Along with the Smashing Pumpkins video, White also did Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" and the Offspring's "She's Got Issues" and MTV's Liquid Television "Bill and Willis" video segment, as well as Snapple and Old Spice commercials (featuring Bruce Campbell!).
The film itself is beautiful in nature as the director, Berkeley, uses shots from a one-man show featuring White discussing his life and art in front of an audience, along with a slide show that he commentates. There's some good interviews with colleagues and peers through his professional years (re: Paul Reubens and Matt Groenig). And then there's real life/real-time happy accidents like his first grade teacher coming to a book signing, and also strategic artistic moments like working on an LBJ head replica with his son, which he then proceeds to wear throughout scenes and the touching scenes of White working with children on another large replica of a man puppet.
I absolutely loved this documentary and it made me appreciate Wayne White, the man and the artist, and it made me want to buy some of his paintings (unabashedly). I watched the music videos, again, too.
....................................................................................
Film 374
"Talihina Sky: The Story of the Kings of Leon
starring: the Kings of Leon
directed by: Stephen C. Mitchell
This is the kind of documentary that is almost like a love-letter to a much-loved band that rose to fame rather "instantly" after their 4th album (?! kind of an oxymoron, right) really pushed them into the mainstream, and many of their earlier fans saw as them selling out. The documentary was made right before the singer/songwriter/guitarist/frontman-with-the-model-looks Caleb Followill sent the band on hiatus due to his excessive drinking turned the rest of his band/family against him until he got help.
The documentary is more of an insider's look at the band in unguarded moments on tour or in the studio, as well as containing many great home-movie clips from the boys' childhood (re: singing at their Pentecostal church). The film's tension and conflict revolves around the dissonance the brothers/cousin faced between a Pentecostal upbringing and life as members of a highly loved and sought-after rock band (and the excesses that are often associated with rock music).
The ample downtime spent in hotels and on tour buses proves a natural spawning ground for rock excess, but what’s endearing here is the mildness of the boys’ rebellion: mostly premarital sex with girlfriends and crafty puffs on marijuana joints in no-smoking bathrooms, as opposed to cocaine-fueled orgies with hookers. The reckless defiance culminates in Caleb’s decision to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, ignoring a plea from his mother to do the right thing by Jesus.
I found it rather interesting that the director, Mitchell, (who also happens to be a longtime friend of the Followills) interlaced the footage with what the viewer can also assume to be some type of family reunion that the band members come back to Talihina, OK for every year. It reminds the viewer that these guys are just people like everyone else, with families that love them, support them, but also criticize them. They have fun in the backwoods, very redneck-esque site of this family reunion.
As a fan of the Kings of Leon, I enjoyed this look into them as a band (with inner turmoil that may be a result of the combination of them being brothers and also spending so much time together). I can remember being introduced to them while I was on my road trip in 2008. I met the girl I was staying with in Kansas City, MO at a party for one of her friends (who was coincidentally a musician) and we were driving in her car and she played the Kings of Leon's newest album "Only By the Night" and I just loved their sound. I later found their back category. And when I return home from my road trip, another friend of mine, Melissa, actually bought us tickets to see the Kings of Leon at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, MA. We went and enjoyed their show (even though we missed their opening song due to insane traffic).
..............................................................................
Film 375
"Wish Me Away"
starring: Chely Wright
I have to be completely honest, before seeing this film, I knew absolutely nothing about one-time shining country superstar, Chely Wright, but after watching this glorified and extended version of something like Behind the Music, I can't help but appreciate and respect her as an artist and as a person.
The subject of this documentary, like I said, is Chely Wright, and her conflict which is the basis of the film, the driving plot, is her struggle with coming out as a lesbian. Now, why would this be so hard, in this day and age, when it's definitely more accepted to be gay than any time in history? Well, Chely Wright got her start and fame as a country music star...and as we all know, the country music industry and its fans are a very unforgiving crowd (re: the Dixie Chicks being shunned for making a comment about then-Republican President George W. Bush overseas). Gay marriage is slowly becoming a non-topic since many states are voting to legalize gay marriage over the past couple of years. Chely Wright got her start in the country music business in 1994, though, which was a much less acceptable time to be outwardly gay. She was a very popular country singer, with a few hit songs, but she was around unfortunately around the same time as Faith Hill and Shania Twain. Chely Wright also happens to be very attractive, and so nobody really questioned her sexuality. She even dated a few men (re: Brad Paisley), only to disguise and hide the fact that she was a lesbian.
Wright grew up smack in the middle of the Bible Belt in Kansas. She always dreamed of going to Nashville, and she settled there when still a teenager and eventually rose to the top of the country charts. But she knew even when she was growing up in Kansas that her sexual desires placed her at odds with her family and with the very conservative music universe she hoped to conquer. She prayed fiercely for a transformation, and she dated men over the years, but she remained trapped between two worlds, which led her to the brink of suicide.
Wright allowed the filmmakers intimate access during the weeks before her decision to come out while promoting her autobiography. Family members, friends and Nashville colleagues also speak candidly on-camera. The one person who would not cooperate was Chely’s mother, and the film never quite gets to the core of this troubled relationship. On the other hand, Chely’s father (divorced from her mother) has been a strong supporter and speaks poignantly about his unconditional love for his daughter. Some critics dismissed Chely Wright and her "coming out" as simply a ploy to sell more records and her autobiography, which coincidentally came out at the same time as Chely Wright's television appearances to discuss her homosexuality. She handles everything so well and you can tell she is a very strong woman and you can't help but root for her success and acceptance. She stands firm to her reason for coming out as being: to help the teenagers who are facing the same difficulties as she did growing up hiding her secret. She has become an activist in the LGBT organization, as well as still making music (with perhaps more heart behind it now that she's not hiding), but of course, the country music industry hasn't sent her any welcome back's or invitations to perform on their platforms.
After watching this documentary, I felt bad for Chely Wright for the struggles she endured, but I also appreciate her now and respect her.
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