Offscreen Notes
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Ettore Scola: 1931-Jan. 16. 2016
It has been a sad stretch of late with recent losses of David Bowie and Alan Rickman, and now the death of Italy’s important screenwriter turned director Ettore Scola, at the age of 84. Scola may not have been in the upper echelon of greats along with Fellini, Antonioni, De Sica, and others, but he was a rare talent with the gift of matching comedy with bittersweet melancholia. Still my favorite of his films is La Famiglia (1987), which follows six decades of a middle class family from the 1920s to the 1980s. Structurally the film is fascinating in the way it marks movements forward in time with successive slow, tracking shots through the house’s main corridor. The film never leaves the house and shifts in time are noted by the mise en scene. Another standout is A Special Day (1977), which is also bound mainly inside a large tenement building and takes place on the day of Hitler’s first visit to Italy in 1938. The heart of the film is the unlikely friendship that grows between two tenants largely from their mutual dislike of Fascism, a left wing homosexual named Gabriele (Marcello Mastrioanni) and housewife Antonietta (Sophia Loren).
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Alan Rickman, RIP: 1947-January 14, 2016
Only a few days after the passing of David Bowie, England loses another of its bright stars, the great actor of the stage and screen, Alan Rickman, at the same age as Bowie, 69, of the same illness, cancer. BBC obit.
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David Bowie: 8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016
David Robert Jones, better known as David Bowie, died at age of 69 of cancer. Bowie is of course rightly feted for his groundbreaking work in music, blending rock, pop, avant-garde and electronica with verve and style. Bowie managed to transform himself continuously like a chameleon, shedding one layer after another with a persona that ranged from operatic to minimalist. Bowie’s musical work always had a visual quality to it so it is not surprising that he also left his mark in cinema, both as an actor (best works being The Hunger, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) and composer. A true one of a kind who brought class and rebelliousness to whatever he touched.
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Recolletcion by Kamal Aljafari
Kamal Aljafari’s new film, Recollection, a found footage film using Israeli fiction films dating as early as the 1960s.
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The Male Gaze in Retrospect
From the Chronicle of Higher education, four contemporary thinkers give their views on the long standing value of Laura Mulvey’s ground-breaking essay, “Visual Pleasures in Narrative Cinema.”
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Vilmos Zsigmond: June 16, 1930-Jan. 1, 2016
One of the greatest cinematographers of his time, Vilmos Zsigmond, passed away on Jan. 1, 2016 at the age of 85. Zsigmond’s credits include such standouts as Images, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Sugarland Express, Deerhunter, Deliverance, Blow Out, The Long Goodbye (ah those amazing slow zoom shots in Images and The Long Goodbye!), McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and Heaven’s Gate.
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To TIFF or Not to TIFF
Read about long-time Offscreen scribe Peter Rist’s less than successful and ultra frustrating attempts to navigate the press screening hoopla at the mega-major Film Festival, TIFF (The Toronto International Film Festival).
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Haskell Wexler: February 6, 1922 – December 27, 2015
One of America’s premiere cinematographers died on December 27, 2015, at the age of 93. Wexler long career included a stint at directing, with the impressive 1969 Medium Cool, an intelligent look at the role of media in the truth making process. Wexler worked with many great directors (Kazan, Malick, Jewison, Nichols, Sayles, Ashby, Lynch), including the first film to employ the steadicam (operated by Garret Brown), Bound for Glory.
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Réal La Rochelle, Quebec Film Critic Dead at age 79
Long time film and music critic, professor and cinephile Réal La Rochelle died on December 27, 2015, at age 79. La Rochelle was an expert in the work of Greek Diva Maria Callas, having written a book Callas : La diva et le vinyle and two books on his filmmaker friend Denys Arcand. Click here for an obituary (in French) by Elie Castiel.
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Christopher Lee RIP: May 27, 1922 - June 7, 2015
He’s bandaged from head to toe and appears to be struggling to stay upright on the floor as the Baron opens his laboratory door; the creature’s hand slowly rises to its face and in a violent move, rips the bandages off its disfigured and scarred features. A little boy, about 8 years old, screams in terror prompting his grandfather to shut off the black and white television on which this spectacle is unfolding much to the annoyment of his elder brother.
That was my first introduction to both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and although this story is about Mr. Lee’s passing, Peter Cushing cannot help but be in the same frame since both are so closely linked to each other’s international success. Their combined effort in the Hammer gothics of the late 50’s and early 60’s assured their screen immortality for ever (despite Christopher Lee’s reluctant appreciation of that fact on occasion). However it is at that point that Mr. Lee decided to stretch out into various other cinematic roles and try to break free from his Hammer past so to speak. He went to Europe and had leading roles in various European horror films as well as police crime thrillers and the full on historical costume dramas that were to be a large part of his mid-70’s output.
He then moved on to lucrative work in the U.S. in the 80’s before returning to the U.K. and then starring in gigantic epics such as the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings films.
He was an apparently gifted operatic singer as well and lent his voice to many heavy metal projects in later life.
Christopher Lee came of age in the cinema as the horror film had resurgence in the early 60’s on both sides of the Atlantic; both Peter Cushing (1913-1994) and Vincent Price (1911-1993) in the U.S. were also part of that now defunct trio of major horror stars.
Although Lee was often reluctant to praise his luck at being associated with Hammer Film Productions, unarguably it was the success of their films which allowed him to stretch out across borders to act in other material which he considered more highbrow.
It was my exposure to these horror films that seeded my interest in filmmaking and exposed me to the wondrous world of all types of cinema as I grew up, and for that alone, I shall always be grateful for that moment where I simply could not continue to watch Christopher Lee strangle Peter Cushing in that paraphernalia filled, gothic laboratory, that became the staple of what horror cinema was going to look like for the next 10 years.
The moment that I keep watching again often is the interview he gave on his friendship with Peter Cushing (which is included on the new Arrow bluray of The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1959) where he says that he misses him dearly, and you can see in his eyes that he realizes his mortality at that moment; a truly honest expression of feeling for a lost friend.
Christopher Lee has now shuffled off this mortal coil and rejoined his friends who have preceded him; he leaves a tremendous legacy behind him which I hope will be remembered and passed on to future generations who will rediscover that lonely castle on a hilltop which is cared for by his trusty servant Klove…..awaiting….the moment when…visitors to these stories will find the hidden passage….that leads back in time to a world of imagination the likes of which we may never see again.
Mark Penny (June 11-2015)
