Between Christmas 2007 and Oscar night 2008, the entire critical discussion seemed centered on arguing out which side you stood on: No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood. Which was the most authentic, the most provocative, the most profound, the most elemental, and which was the best American film of the year. It was almost like you had to denigrate one to support the other. Now that the debate has calmed, I think we can let these two distinct portraits of the hard, unforgiving American frontier co-exist as different perspectives from the same wellspring.

This week, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood tops the list of DVD releases.

Loosely adapted from Sinclair Lewis’ novel “Oil!,” it reworks the American entrepreneurial success story as an elemental frontier myth, roughly hewn out of the landscape that is remade in its wake. The magnificent opening pits lone prospector Daniel Plainview against the very earth itself, wordlessly digging his way to the American dream until his mine strikes a gusher. When he finally speaks some 15 minutes into the film, he has reinvented himself as a self-made oil man, and he finds his nemesis in a self-aggrandizing young preacher (Paul Dano) who set out to humble Plainview as he builds his church on Plainview’s money.

It’s reviewed here.

Not quite as ambitious or serious is Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the latest from the Judd Apatow comedy factory, and it’s being released in both the original theatrical version and an extended cut the filmmakers call Walk Hard – American Cox: The Unbearable Long, Self-Indulgent Director’s Cut, which I have to admit makes me smile.

John C. Reilly plays Cox with wide-eyed harmlessness from age 14 (towering over his high-school bandmates) to somewhere around 70. In between he gets hooked on every substance known to show-biz, drops acid with The Beatles (played by Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman), turns into Brian Wilson for an endless summer, abandons a few dozen children, and meets his soulmate in country-twanged singer Darlene (Jenna Fischer in June Carter mode). Directed by Jake Kasdan (who co-wrote the script with producer Apatow), it’s more silly than clever, quoting “Ray” and “Walk the Line” (among other biopics) as Dewey morphs through country, R&B, rock, folk and other musical genres

My review is here.

Read more »

Eleanor Powell in classic form

I confess that I’m not the standard bearer of Eleanor Powell fandom. It’s not that I dislike her. It’s simply that I find her screen presence a little slim, defined largely by an overbig grin dominated by a healthy upper set of choppers and an admirable ability to make herself at home in any situation.

But that’s all beside the point the moment she starts to dance, invariably clad in slacks or pant suits or (for the big show-stoppers) tights and hosiery. You flaunt what you got, and she’s got legs and she makes them move. Long before Gene Kelly made the gymnastic leap from stage to screen, Eleanor Powell was Hollywood’s tap royalty (because Bill “Bojangles” Robinson could simply not be a leading man in the racial caste system of old Hollywood). Her smile still bugs me – it’s not aesthetics, it’s a matter of taste that makes me wince whenever she tosses her back for a wide, closed-eye grin in the middle of a number – but at the same time she makes it all look like fun, and that is infectious.

I mention this because Warner’s new nine-film box set Classic Musicals From the Dream Factory Volume 3 features four Eleanor Powell films, and they are a reminder of just what audiences attended musicals for. Broadway Melody of 1936 (which was, of course, released in 1935) and Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) were MGM’s answer to Warner Bros.’s Golddigger films, purely formulaic backstage musicals with a revue approach to storytelling. The songs aren’t motivated by story, they are simply time-outs for showcase numbers. And while they lack the sass and spunk and surreal production numbers stage by Busby Berkley on a stage that exists only in his imagination, Powell can dance rings around Ruby Keeler, the chorus girl who rises to stardom by pure spunk. Keeler rarely took her eyes off her feet as she pounded out her dance numbers (she brought new meaning to the term “hoofer”) and had the grace of a factory girl on a night out, which may have been her charm at the height of the depression. Powell played the small town girl with grace and ambition and the talent to back it up, both as singer and dancer. Born to Dance (1936) is just as formulaic in its combination of backstage drama and sailors on leave looking for sweethearts, but slips into the more traditional musical style of wooing and romantic canoodling bursting into song and dance. (For the record, I didn’t rewatch Lady Be Good, 1941, for this review, but it’s a basic showbiz romantic drama with Eleanor Powell dancing around a story centered on songwriters Ann Sothern and Robert Young, and t hen helping them reunite after they divorce.)

Read more »