Saddled with a predilection, if not quite an outright addiction, to too much booze and excessive gambling, Toots Shor somehow avoided being just another Jewish tough guy/borderline crook and instead became one of the most legendary restaurateurs in the history of New York City. His food wasn’t gourmet fair, but that wasn’t really expected in mid-century Manhattan. The key to his success was his way with people, lubricated with plenty of whiskey, and that made his restaurant-saloon into a kind of Valhalla populated by legends of three worlds: sports, entertainment, and crime.
Directed by Schor’s filmmaker granddaughter, Kristi Jacobson, this affectionate but honest documentary portrait from 2006 is constructed largely from reminisces by authors Nicholas Pileggi (“Casino“), Pete Hamill, and Gay Talese; sports personalities Frank Gifford, Yogi Berra, and Joe Garagiola; uber-anchor Walter Cronkite, and many others. More comedy than tragedy, it’s the story of a man whose irresponsibility when it came to practically everything, especially money, was only matched by his sentimental attachment to both friends and family. A full-on gonif who once made his living as professional muscle, but apparently never crossed the line into Murder, Inc. territory, Toots was not a particularly “good” person by any normal definition — except often to the people he loved, and there were apparently quite a lot of them. It’s hard not to like a guy like that.
I’m a reasonably big fan of Werner Herzog, the film performer, documentarian, and wryly humorous, neurotically heroic philosopher-poet. When it comes to his hugely acclaimed fiction films, however, I can become impatient with their emphasis on pure thought over pure storytelling. Though it is a reasonably straightforward documentary, “Encounters at the End of the World” has elements of both sides of Herzog’s output. Instead of being driven by a sharply dramatic real-life narrative like the one in Herzog’s brilliant 2005 nonfiction, “Grizzly Man”, 2007’s “Encounters” is basically a quasi-philosophical and psychological exploration of just what it is that drives a certain species of extremely intelligent people to frozen (still, for the time being) Antarctica — a place that, as Ernest Shackleton learned the hard way, might as well have had a giant “no human beings allowed without space-age technology or a death wish” sign pasted on it.
Herzog obviously loves the hyper-intelligent rebels and happy misfits the place attracts as much as its sometimes mind-blowing beauty. There’s also plenty of cinematic and verbal rumination, including a soliloquy by Herzog in which he muses about what he sees as the impending end of all human life in a more or less fatalistic matter — not so much an “if” as a “when.” On the other hand, in a brief, intriguing interview with a former linguist, the director also appears to be deeply concerned with preserving dead languages for future generations…so, maybe he’s not expecting the end tomorrow. Still, for all its bone-deep beauty and for the sweetness of its intentions, its Herzogian concern with reality-based eschatology makes “Encounters at the Edge of the World” easily the most disturbing G-rated inquiry into science and possible end times since Robert Wises’ “The Andromeda Strain.”
For as long as this write-up may be, I don’t personally have a whole lot to say about Starz’s “Spartacus,” mostly because Starz didn’t have a whole lot to offer up about “Spartacus” except a lot of talk from the show’s creative team.
Executive producer Rob Tapert describes it as “our reinterpretation of the famous Stanley Kubrick movie,” calling it “a hard-core, testosterone-driven action drama unlike anything on television right now” and “a totally R-rated, hard, hard show that still has all the things that you need in storylines but that delivers the action component that theatrical audiences expect from their entertainment.” Sounds great…but it would sound a lot more impressive if they actually had anything at all to show us or, indeed, had even cast Spartacus yet.
“Goddammit, I said I’M Spartacus!”
Granted, it’s promising that the show is being produced by Tapert and his longtime associate, Sam Raimi, and to have Steven S. DeKnight as head writer and show-runner is certainly good news for those who’ve followed his work on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” and “Smallville.” (He’s also a major player in Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse.”) But you’d be a fool to be but so optimistic when you’ve not seen a single frame of the series, and the fact that it’s going to be extremely CGI-heavy makes me a little nervous, but here are a few quotes from the creative team to help get your hopes up.
It’s hard to blame Dane Cook for making the most of his 15 minutes of fame – and boy did he, since it lasted more like five years – but one look at his IMDb profile will confirm that it’s finally over. This will likely please movie critics who hold the comic responsible for starring in some of the worst films of the last few years, because his latest rom-com, “My Best Friend’s Girl,” isn’t much better. The fledgling comic stars as Tank, a sort of anti-boyfriend who gets paid to take women on dates so terrible that they immediately run back to their former boyfriends. When Tank’s best friend Dustin (Jason Biggs) hires him to do the same thing with his new lady (Kate Hudson), however, Tank discovers that he actually has feelings for her. What follows is a series of events straight out of the Romantic Comedy Bible, and while the movie isn’t very funny, it’s never so bad that it’s unwatchable. I’m still not entirely sure what Alec Baldwin is doing in a movie like this (Dane Cook and Jason Biggs’ involvement makes sense, and even Kate Hudson has had some questionable taste in scripts lately), but at least he limits his time on screen to a handful of scenes. Bonus points to writer Jordan Cahan for coming up with the idea of a Bible-themed pizza joint named Cheesus Chrust. Now, if only someone actually had the balls to open one up.
Kevin Bacon’s a really underrated actor. We so often hear people refer to the whole “six degrees” thing that I think we sometimes forget just how talented a thespian he is…which is a little odd, really, given how often he offers us proof of his abilities. If you should happen to need another reminder, however, HBO’s “Taking Chance” fits the bill nicely. The film is based on the first-person narrative of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, USMC (Ret.), and chronicles Strobl’s journey as the volunteer military escort officer assigned to accompany the body of 19-year-old Lance Corporal Chance Phelps, USMC, who was killed in action in Iraq, across America to his hometown of Dubois, Wyoming.
Given that American forces remain in Iraq even as the film makes its network debut, it will certainly hit home to a great number of viewers, particularly as you experience the sad reminder that the soldiers dying over there are people’s friends and relatives. At the same time, however, it’s also a testament to how we can loathe the war but still respect those who are forced to fight it.
“One of the things that’s really interesting to me about the film,” said Bacon, “is that you really get back to the fact that…you can of read an article, and you can say a certain amount of Marines were killed in this city, when you see a body count coming up, but it doesn’t really hit home in the same kind of way as it does if you actually see what happens to the actual remains. You see the preparation, you see the respect, and you see the tradition and the honor that is involved with actually returning them to their final resting place. And the story is really a very, very simple one in that it’s really just the story of this man and this person, Chance, that he’s returning. And it’s almost completely unembellished with anything to make it more cinematic or dramatic or to somehow force us to feel one way or another based on what our preconceived notions are about Iraq and whether or not we should have been in there or whatever. It’s just the simple telling of what this process is like and, in its simplicity, I think, becomes an extremely profound kind of comment on the casualties of war.”
This is the third time Bacon’s played a Marine in his career, the other two occasions being in “Frost/Nixon” and “A Few Good Men,” but we shouldn’t infer any sort of military aptitude from these repeat performances. “There is no part of me that ever considered being a Marine or could make it in the Marine Corps,” he said, with a laugh. “I am definitely not that guy. I’m not the guy to throw myself in harm’s way. I would never make it through boot camp. It’s all acting.”
The actual Lt. Col. Strobl was on the panel as well, and he was asked if he thought it was a disservice to the memory of American servicemen that we rarely see their final farewells and are so often forced to remember them as numbers rather than names.
“Perhaps it might be good if we saw or thought more about them than just a line in the newspaper and went on with our day,” said Lt. Col. Strobl. “Hopefully, this movie will make people realize…I know we all know, but that there have been 3,400 combat deaths so far, and there’s a risk that they all run together. This movie will remind us all that they all have families that love them. They all had vibrant lives up to that point. So, yes, I suppose there is a risk, but maybe this movie will address some of that.”
“Taking Chance” premieres on HBO in February 2009.
