“Focus On...” Archive
Irv Slifkin | Focus On..., Movie Buzz
Flo and Eddie are to the music business like Kevin Bacon is to the movie business. There seems to be six degrees separating the duo from anyone—and everyone—else in the industry.
Flo—AKA Mark Volman—and Eddie—AKA Howard Kaylan--were just a couple of New York-born, SoCal-raised high school friends who made a big splash in the ‘60s as the guiding forces of the Turtles.
When they were very young, they had a host of hummable, hit pop tunes: “Happy Together,” “Elenore,” “I Only Wanna Be with You,” “You Showed Me,” and a cover of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.” Kaylan and Volman stuck together when the group disbanded, joining Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention for a few albums (and the movie 200 Motels), and billing themselves as the Phlorescent Leach and Eddie. After parting ways with the Mothers, they truncated the name to Flo and Eddie and became background vocal specialists, lending their talents to classic tunes as diverse as T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart.” They also performed with a diverse stable of artists like John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Ray Manzarek, Stephen Stills, Alice Cooper, Sammy Hagar and the Psychedelic Furs. In their spare time, the guys wrote and performed music for the animated favorites The Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake. They also supplied the voices, the screenplay and the music for the Bakshi-esque animated film Dirty Duck.
Read More »
Irv Slifkin | Focus On..., Movie Buzz
It’s not every year that picking a top 10 list becomes difficult. Usually, one scrambles just to come up with 10 quality releases. And this year seemed much of the same: a slog through the early part of 2009, a summer filled with mindless blockbusters and occasional surprise gems, and a fall spiked with Oscar wannabes and never-bes. Only this time, it was tough to whittle a list of 20 very good movies down to ten. But we finally managed to get the chore done anyway, resulting in the following list, which, for better or worse, stands as a testament to quite an eclectic year of moviegoing. So here goes, in order of preference:
A Serious Man: Ethan and Joel Coen get a little more serious after their throwaway Burn after Reading with this look at the life of a dysfunctional Jewish family (is there any other kind?) in mid-1960s Minnesota. Darkly humorous, wonderfully acted by a no-name cast and offering great period schtick, this Orthodox version of Barton Fink will leave you with an appreciation of the Jefferson Airplane and rabbis that you may not have had before.
Read More »
Irv Slifkin | Focus On..., Movie Buzz
There’s something about great coming-of-age movies that connect to filmgoers. It could be that movie fans connect with their own lives vicariously through the characters on-screen. There could be a certain wish fulfillment going on, too. If only I had acted on that crush I had on that beautiful girl. Or, if only that guy asked me out. Or why didn’t I follow my friends on that adventurous weekend?
Whatever the situation, the coming-of-age subject has given us some memorable screen moments. Adventureland, a recent coming-of-ager, is in the best tradition of such efforts. The movie is set in 1987 and centers on James Brennan (played by Michael Cera soundalike Jesse Eisenberg), a teenager about to head to the Big Apple and Columbia University at summer’s end. James takes a minimum wage job at a Pittsburgh area amusement park (actually shot at the region’s Kennywood) when his family experiences financial problems. There James meets a crew of eclectic characters, and, of course, gets a lesson in love and romance.
Read More »
Irv Slifkin | Focus On..., Movie Buzz
Up there in Technicolor glory are John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Alvin Karpis and Pretty Boy Floyd. Four of the most notorious of gangsters wreak havoc on the streets of Chicago while the Feds led by Melvin Purvis, G-Man, try to take them down.
Public Enemies is a high-class affair all the way, helmed by Michael Mann and starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger, Channing Tatum as Floyd, Giovanni Ribisi as Karpis and Stephen Graham as Nelson, while French actress and Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard plays Dillinger’s girlfriend. The good guys include Purvis (Christian Bale) and J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup).
The retro gangster thing has certainly brought to mind other classic cinema hoods from bygone eras, so here’s a list of ten that are hard to top.
Read More »
Irv Slifkin | Focus On...
Sony’s recent release of The Jack Lemmon Film Collection has allowed Chris Lemmon to revisit his father, both the actor and the man, in different ways.
First, the younger Lemmon’s A Twist Of Lemmon, his deeply felt 2006 look at his relationship with his father who passed away in 2001, has been reissued, this time in paperback.
Chris, 55, also serves as the host of the documentary Jack Lemmon: The Man Behind The Magic, which is included on The Jack Lemmon Film Collection in tandem with such much-requested titles as Pfffhttt!, Operation Mad Ball, The Notorious Landlady, Under The Yum Yum Tree, and Good Neighbor Sam. The program is based on his book and offers a fine overview on Jack with insights from Kevin Spacey, Peter Gallagher, Cliff Robertson, Shirley MacLaine and film critic Joe Baltake, who penned the book The Films Of Jack Lemmon.
Operation Mad Ball
Read More »
No Comments »