Friday's Old Fashioned: Viva Las Vegas (1964)

I generally argue against the “It Was Exactly What I Expected” Theory of movie-watching – that is, the movie was exactly what I expected it was going to be, therefore I enjoyed it. Of course, Elvis Presely movies are right near the pinnacle of “It Was Exactly What I Expected” filmmaking. You need Elvis, obviously, and songs and scenery and a lovely leading lady and hijinks and lunacy and a vibe suggesting the crew had a late night. If you have seen other Elvis movies, however, and then sit down to watch “Viva Las Vegas”, the finest film in the Elvis canon, it’s not quite exactly what you expect. And this usurping of your expectations is on account of a few things.

Yes, Elvis acted with Barbara Stanwyck (“Roustabout”, the second best film in the Elvis canon) and Walter Matthau (“King Creole”), but Ann-Margret, far and away, was his finest co-star. It was as well-known then as it is now that Elvis & Ann carried on a fairly heavy-duty affair during filming of "Viva Las Vegas" and it shows on the screen where sparks fly. It reminds me a little of “To Have and Have Not” when Humphrey Bogart was falling in love with Lauren Bacall on AND off screen. Let’s be honest here, people, and say that you never quite look at someone the same in any other point of a relationship as you do right at the first flush of love and/or infatuation. And what you see on Bogey’s and Elvis’s faces in their respective films is this playful bemusement, this “Damn, brother, I DIG this chick” vibe, this feeling that they both want to declare “Let’s just scratch those reshoots today and skedaddle to the boudoir.”

Other couples at the movies have possessed better chemistry than Elvis & Ann but no couples except actual couples have created that particular type of chemistry. It’s unmistakable and unfakeable. So often Elvis just seemed to be going through the motions, particularly in his later films as they got lazier and lazier and he got heavier and heavier, but Ann-Margret perks him up and draws him out. Notice his double-takes in the stone-cold classic “The Lady Loves Me” when she keeps exiting the frame unbeknownst to him. It’s a little thing but a lot of those little things add up to a great deal over the course of a whole film and makes all the difference between interested and disinterested.

The camera, it goes without saying, indulges in several opportunities to ogle Ann-Margret’s winsomeness, such as when she is introduced and struts right into the camera at which point the shot reverses to see her walking away from the camera which allows the audience to pleasantly digest her sashaying derriere. Quite honestly, it’s not unlike Michael Bay’s camera leering at Megan Fox, and yet….. The character Ann-Margret plays – Rusty Martin (great name) – and her performance go a good ways to transcending the stereotypical sex kitten role of the Elvis movie. This isn’t to suggest she’s two-dimensional, because she’s not, nor to suggest that she doesn't exist just to wind up in Elvis’s arms, because she does, but that she at least is allowed to conform to her character's prerogative. Ann-Margret is able to convey the welcome sensation that she's having fun with this dude, playing a hella good game of hard to get.

Perhaps this could be attributed to the film's writer, a surprising Sally Benson. I say surprising because Ms. Benson was very much skilled in the authoring arts, perhaps best known for her short stories in The New Yorker and subsequent book compiling them and a few new ones that eventually became the masterful musical "Meet Me In St. Louis." Again, the screenplay for "Viva Las Vegas" is not necessarily groundbreaking but, hey, at least it understands cause and effect, how this leads to that which leads to something else and so forth. Sounds simple, sure, but not so much in an Elvis movie where often story and motivation appear out of thin air.

So yeah. I suppose we should discuss the story. It goes like this: Elvis is the gloriously named Lucky Jackson, a race car driver in Sin City for its Grand Prix. He has a special car and needs a special engine in order to beat his friendly adversary Count Elmo Mancini (Cesare Danova), sort of an Italian Jean Girard. He gets inevitably distracted by Rusty and scours casino after casino in an attempt to find her until he finds out - gasp! - that she works at the hotel where he's staying! Which leads to his courtship which leads to her shoving him into the hotel pool which leads to all his money going bye-bye which means Lucky can't afford his special engine which leads to Lucky taking a job at the hotel where he's staying and continuing to pursue Rusty as he does.

Well, needless to say, Lucky gets the engine and wins the race and even marries Rusty, which happens in a hilariously brief sequence right at the end that suggests both the characters and the actors were itching for the after party, all amidst the requisite show tunes.

The songs here, too, are generally solid, including the noted title tune, but most importantly they all work - aside, perhaps, from the unnecessary "Yellow Rose Of Texas" - as parts of the plot, advancing it and explaining what makes our characters tic. For example, a big part of the movie, as it must, hinges on a talent contest (this is how Lucky can win his needed money) which leads to direct competition between the song & dance stylings of the Lady and the Dude.

But, of course, nothing compares to the aforementioned casual amusement of "The Lady Loves Me" wherein Elvis strums his guitar as he and Ann-Margret take a brief tour of the hotel pool, trading lyrical barbs. It is one of my all-time favorite single sequences in cinematic history, and, readers, I mean that. Sometimes you just want to have fun at the movies and what's more fun than Elvis and Ann-Margret having fun right there in front of us? This is what pure joy looks like...

 

Completely Useless Cannes Update

Currently the swank soiree known as the Cannes International Film Festival is the center of the cinematic universe. They are showing lots and lots of prestigious and potentially award-winning films and lots and lots of actors and actresses and directors and producers are attending various galas and giving various interviews and so on and so forth. But I'll be honest........

I kind of stopped paying attention once Kylie Minogue showed up for the premiere of the latest Leos Carax film.

When Kylie walks the red carpet, even Cannes momentarily halts.

Top 5 Movie Locations I Wish I Could Visit

Recently it was unveiled that photographer Rä di Martino had, by chance, wound up searching for and tracking down the long-ago sets used by George Lucas for the Tatooine scenes of his legendary original "Star Wars" film. Well, this got me to thinking.

It got me to thinking about how the righteous hosts of Filmspotting, Adam Kempenar and Josh Larson, the Rob Gordons of Top 5 Movie Lists, a couple months back unveiled the Top 5 Movie Locations They Wished They Could Visit.

Granted, I am no amateur when it comes to actually visiting movie locations. Everyone knows I took a pilgrimage to North Carolina to pay respect to the filming locations for "Last of the Mohicans" and on the way there I stopped to pay respect to Elizabethtown (because of "Elizabethtown") and when I visited my sister in Maine I made sure we took a detour to Bethel and Andover to pay respect to the filming locations for "The Myth of Fingerprints" and when my sister lived in Oregon I made sure we spent a day in Eugene to pay respect to the filming locations of "Without Limits."

Of course, all those are real locations that actually exist and the point of Filmspotting's list was to name make-believe places that solely exist within the movie itself that you wish you could go visit. Ah! Well, that's different!

Top 5 Movie Locations I Wish I Could Visit

5. Rick’s Café Americain, "Casablanca." Tonight they’ll be at Rick’s. Everybody goes to Rick’s. Except for me. I wanna go to Rick’s too! I do, I do, I do!!!

4. Speedboat, Gulf of Mexico, “Miami Vice.” Remember in Michael Mann's exorbitantly underrated update on the 80's TV show when Colin Farrell & Gong Li jet off to Cuba for mojitos and salsa (dancing) via speedboat? Sure, you do. I admit this location is a little difficult to pin down. I also admit this location is very much real but... Well, I could rent a speedboat. Sure. And I could pilot that speedboat from Miami to Havana, Cuba with a fetching lady to imbibe mojitos and dance salsa. But, of course, I couldn’t really do any of this. I would never make it to Havana for the mojitos because the Cubans would lock me up. If by some miracle I did make it to Havana I could never possibly dance the salsa (could we instead contort very enthusiastically but very, very badly to Kylie Minogue?). Of course, I would never get anywhere near Havana because if I tried to pilot a speedboat it would totally capsize in about 27 seconds, never mind the fact that I could never pull off Colin Farrell’s suit or convince a fetching lady to join me in the first place. And all that is why if I could be magically transported to movie location with the movie gods covering my every move I would be transported to a speedboat with a Malin Akerman-esque lady jetting off to Havana for mojitos and a salsa.

3. The Hit Pit, “Million Dollar Baby.” Never mind that Frankie Dunn would probably take one look at me, grimace and banish me to the corner where Danger is shadow boxing to pitiful effect, I would like so much just to spend a day – just an afternoon even – at his hole-in-the-wall gym. I would sit back, breathe in that disgusting aroma of sweat, gym socks, fresh blood and cheap bleach, listen to the sounds of speed bags and skipping rope. Besides, visiting Maggie Fitzgerald’s home gym would be for me like a baseball aficionado getting to set foot in the home locker room of old Yankee Stadium.

2. New York City, “The Royal Tenenbaums.” As much as Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” romanticizes that city all out of proportion, it is still showing us the real Manhattan – as in, places that actually exist. Wes Anderson’s “Royal Tenenbaums”, on the other hand, while technically being set in Manhattan envisions it is as a mythical Manhattan, a place that only exists in our imaginations. It is set on streets and at places that while being located in New York do not actually exist – such as The Public Archives and the Lindbergh Palace Hotel. This is what sets it apart. I think my favorite place to visit in NYC every time I go is The Algonquin Hotel partially because just being inside it feels like New York in the 30’s and 40’s. And really, that’s the New York I want to visit – the New York of the 30’s and 40’s. And the New York of “The Royal Tenenbaums” feels like the New York of the 30’s and 40’s but still with the amenities required by the modern unmanly man.

1. Nelson, Washington, “Roxanne.” So in the wake of the esteemed Roger Ebert’s passing I was, of course, perusing various Ebert-related bits out there on the world wide interwebs and stumbled across a Youtube video of he and the late Gene Siskel discussing “Roxanne”, one of my all-time favorites, on an episode of At the Movies. (Both of them loved the movie so much Ebert actually concluded their review by saying “We can’t even have an argument.” Awesome.) And a line of Siskel’s struck me like a bolt of Midwest lightning in May. He termed Steve Martin’s lead performance as being akin to “effervescent ginger ale.” Well, it is! It is effervescent ginger ale! But the whole movie is effervescent ginger ale and its setting – the city of Nelson, Washington – is effervescent ginger ale! Not just the scenery, mind you, which is striking or the delightfully slanted streets of a ski-town but the……the………aura. The way Martin declares “Irony? Oh, we don’t get that here” just seems to permeate every sidewalk and home and main street shop. But at the same time it’s not staid, plain-jane Eisenhower America, it’s something sweeter and truer, a place where no one seems to put on airs or masquerade as something they’re not. It comes across so tranquil, so refreshing, so much like……effervescent ginger ale.

Dammit, I want to go there.

Star Wars: The ABC Saturday Night Movie Re-Release

There have, of course, been roughly 1.5 million re-releases of the original “Star Wars” trilogy in some sort of home video format. VHS & DVD & Blu Ray & Gamma Ray & A-1 Ionisation & Orographic Advanced. It has been re-released with new footage & bonus footage & special footage & special bonus footage & deluxe special bonus footage & enhanced deluxe special bonus footage featuring Cloud City reimagined as a Blanket Fort (unless I’m confusing that with an episode of “Community” – I honestly don’t know anymore).

All I ever wanted, though, was the original versions. That’s it. The “Star Wars” where Mos Eisley still looked like a sleepy desert town off I-80 in Nevada and “The Empire Strikes Back” where Cloud City still looked like a leftover Emerald City set and “Return of the Jedi” still had The Yub Nub Song That dream finally came true in 2006, even if Grand Chancellor Lucas still stuck the special edition versions on there too. Didn’t matter. I had the originals, Jabba didn’t show up ‘til the third one, you barely saw the Wampa and the X-Wings lifting off from the moon of Yavin were still tiny blips of light in the sky. It was – to quote Shelley Duvall in “Annie Hall” – transplendent! Except……

Well, just recently Ryan McNeil of the ever-fabulous Matinee wrote a post detailing how one of the crucial ways in which he first watched film as a young lad was off TV – watching broadcasts and taping broadcasts to VHS and so forth. And this made me realize something. See, kids, there was a time when home video meant there was no such thing as “Netflix streaming” or some such fancy-pants nonsense. No, it meant your whole family piling into the car and driving to the Roadshow Video and arguing for who-knows-how-long about what to get from the severely limited options and getting something like Howie Mandel’s “Walk Like A Man” which even if you were all of 10 years old you knew was a cinematic atrocity.

It also meant gathering around your TV set for the ABC Saturday Night Movie because cable was niche-driven and an afterthought, something your family might not even have for another handful of years, and mostly unnecessary since ABC, CBS & NBC ruled the roost all on their lonesome. Way back when we had “Star Wars” (that is to say, “Episode IV: A New Hope”) taped onto Betamax from an ABC Saturday Night Movie telecast, and THAT’S the version I want most of all. I want the feeble sound and the dodgy visuals and the dude saying “We will return to ‘Star Wars’ after these messages” and I want those messages. I want Karl Malden hawking American Express and Wendy’s customers wondering “where’s the beef?” and people arguing about whether Miller Lite tasted great or was less filling.

Look, I get it. I do. I’m as nostalgic as anyone, if not possibly more than anyone, and asking for a “Star Wars” re-release of a TV telecast with freaking commercials from around the end of the Reagan administration is essentially hitting nostalgia rock bottom. And it’s not that I don’t love Netflix, because I do. And it’s not that I don’t adore DVR, because I do. And it’s not that without Turner Classic Movies I wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown, because I would. And it’s not that my DVD collection isn’t more important than the possibility of finding life on mars, because it is. And while it certainly has something to do with wanting to gather around the TV with my family for popcorn and “Star Wars”, that’s not all of it.

Nowadays we become discontent when our movie-viewing experience isn’t the biggest and/or brightest and/or best. There was a time when you could watch a movie on a middling TV with middling sound and middling special effects and still have it be.........special.

Happy People: A Year In The Taiga

Summer in Siberia and the air is awash in mosquitoes, so thick with them the residents are forced to dress head-to-toe in protective garments and cover their faces with netting. Well, all except for the trapper with whom we have become friends, hard at work chopping wood and prepping a hut, who has no netting to keep the swirling, blood-sucking mosquitoes away from his eyes and ears and nose. He seems……almost bemused. He says in his native language: “When you’re busy, you hardly notice them.”

Everyone seems busy here in the Taiga, a ginormous swath of land in eastern Siberia. Siberia is isolated to start and Taiga is even more isolated and even more isolated is the Taiga-set village of Bakhta. It is 300 people strong, reachable either by helicopter or by boat when the Yenisey River is not frozen solid. Our sort of protagonist in the documentary "Happy People: A Year In The Taiga", Gennady Soloviev, the trapper who forgoes the face netting, explains he came here in 1970 and was employed by the Soviet Union to trap game. He has stayed on ever since, tending to the same land granted to him by the communist regime. Politics are hardly mentioned, aside from one strange arrival of a campaigning politician. But no one pays him any mind. You can almost sense the landmark moment of the Soviet Union giving way to the Russian Federation having passed by unnoticed.

These people, more or less, are on their own, self-reliant to quote the narrator. The narrator is Werner Herzog, the legendary German eclectic, and while it is very much his film is also very much not his film. The actual footage, four hours worth, was shot by Russian filmmaker Dmitry Vasyukov, but then was seen by Herzog who took and whittled away Vasyukov’s material to craft this 90 minute documentary. He also, of course, added his infamous Herzogian balladry for voiceover accompaniment. The appeal of this story to him is obvious, not just the self-reliance but the accord with nature. No wonder he is the one who dubs them “Happy People.”

The film tracks Soloviev from the end of winter, which they burn in effigy while still being all bundled up, to the mosquitoes of spring to the too-few extra-long days of summer to the wintry fall to the arctic winter. It is in the winter that the trapper, off on his own with only a dog (given a reverential treatise here) for accompaniment, earns his living, but, as “Happy People: A Year In The Taiga” shows, preparation for trapping is a year-around event. The trapper is always busy.

The movie occasionally diverges from the hard-working but reflective Soloviev to catch up with another trapper related to the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and also takes a brief detour to what remains of one of the area’s few remaining indigenous groups, the Kets. The portrait painted of them is quietly tragic – there is little work for them to do which leads to problems with alcohol even as they cling, somewhat desperately, to ancient customs. Whether it is meant as irony or not, these original Taiga inhabitants merely become tourists in this story of their land. And I suspect that is because Herzog’s heart lies squarely with the rugged and individualistic trappers.

Conflict is noticeably absent especially when considering the peril into which these people seem to put themselves so consistently. Incredibly difficult situations are seen and addressed, such as Soloviev returning from trapping to find his hut buried in snow or recounting her first winter in the Taiga on his own and short of supplies, but the danger always feels less than tangible. And this, I think, is because Herzog wants us to sense that these are just lives being lived, that is way of life is something they respect and danger is merely part of the bargain. It’s the same as Soloviev’s arc essentially being non-existent. There is no great triumph, no moment of holding a trap with the most desired prey above his head, but rather work, work and more work. Always more work to be done. Always busy.

 The reward for these “Happy People” is in the doing.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Blue Hawaii (1961)

The opening scenes of “Blue Hawaii” are a picture-perfect tone-setter. I say picture-perfect because the opening credits, set to The King’s lilting rendition of the tune bearing the movie's title, is a montage comprised of clichéd Hawaiian images – blue surf, white beaches, palm trees swaying in the breeze – that go to show how the clichéd can still make you dreamy.

From there we move on to Maile (Joan Blackman) jetting down an Oahu roadway – jetting too quickly, it turns out, because a motorcycle cop pulls her over and explains she’s speeding. Well, he calls her by name first and then she proceeds to tell him she’s speeding only because her soldier boyfriend is coming home from service overseas. Never mind then, says the motorcycle cop, transforming himself into her personal pace car and escorting her to the airport. Maile may be in a hurry but “Blue Hawaii” is not, content to function as a tropical postcard (the film was released but two years after Hawaii joined the union), escapism of the most breezy sense.

Consider the motorcycle cop. We won’t give the actor’s name to protect the innocent but suffice it to say his acting is of the most stilted sense, as if he just landed the role the night before and tried too hard practicing his lines in the mirror. Which, hey, maybe he did! Maybe director Norman Taurog noticed him on patrol and asked: “Do you want to be an Elvis movie?” It would have fit the mood just right.

Back to the layabout story. Maile’s soldier boyfriend is Chad Gates (Elvis). She plans on driving him home to his well-to-do parents, his pineapple magnate father and his meddlesome mother (an annoyingly ostentatious Angela Lansbury – yes, Angela Lansbury), but Chad would rather postpone this reunion as long as possible. He diverts them to a secluded beach with a shack where we reckon Chad has spent a lot of time in the past. “It’s a Hawaiian holiday,” he tells Maile. “Haven’t you ever heard of hooky-hooky-day?” This is what passes for humor in “Blue Hawaii.”



Chad seems content on this beach – when Maile exclaims he can’t spend the rest of his life on a surfboard he replies “The G.I. Bill of Rights say I get my old job back and this is my old job” – and, frankly, the movie does too. Of course, a movie about a guy laying on a surfboard and watching the sun rise and the sun set and then strumming a guitar and crooning a casual ditty probably won’t pass muster for a whole 90 minutes. So Chad’s dad wants his son to join the family business and Chad’s mom wants him to refrain from hanging around those ne’er-do-well “beach boys” but Chad, by golly, wants to be his OWN man and make his OWN way in life. Therefore he decides to cash in on the burgeoning Hawaiian tourist industry.

Elvis fans often dismiss “Blue Hawaii” as the moment his film canon jumped the shark. Its box office success – third all-time for Presley behind “Viva Las Vegas” and “Jailhouse Rock” – as well as its easy-to-recreate vibe and values meant that for the rest of his career his movies followed the “Blue Hawaii” template, much to their detriment. There is certainly truth in this viewpoint but, at the same time, harsh as it may sound, I don’t know that Elvis was headed for a transcendent acting career. People will point to “King Creole” and while Elvis was decent in the part and showed at least of semblance of potential, I genuinely think that film gets graded on a curve. This is to say that while “Blue Hawaii” is definite fluff, it’s not quite the harbinger of middling disaster it’s made out to be.

So, too, did the character of Chad Gates stray from Elvis’s image of the young rabble-rouser who burst on to the scene throwing flames with The Sun Sessions. The tuneage in “Blue Hawaii” is decidedly more adult contemporary – “Rock-a-Hula” barely rocks – and his image is more polished. Yes, he aims to defy his parents, but he also brings a dose of levity to young Ellie (Jenny Maxwell), a rambunctious child in a small tour group he escorts around the islands. She is intent on not having fun and then she is intent on getting into Chad’s pants and Chad is having none of it, forced to finally forced to……spank her. Yes, spank her. No, this is not in any way lascivious, rather it is Elvis making like the parental chaperone he is and scolding this unruly teen. It would have been a moment to make Steve Allen – the square talk show host who viewed Presley as a no good ruffian – proud.

In fact, this entire second-half storyline of Ellie & The Tourists threatens to stall out “Blue Hawaii” as it alters its leading man into being a sort of moral policeman while balancing tepid humor, sing-alongs and, of course, the obligatory bar fight. (Not every Elvis movie has a bar fight but it feels like they do.) It’s funny – every time I watch this movie I start to drift off as it meanders toward the end, like napping on a longboard out in the water, and yet I return to it again eventually anyway.

“My French blood,” says Maile at one point, “tells me to argue with you and my Hawaiian blood tells me not to mind.” And while I have no French blood nor Hawaiian blood, well, while my French blood tells me to examine the film analytically and structurally and say it’s not very good, my Hawaiian blood is telling me not to mind.

Happiness Is...

Your two favorite movies of 2012 arriving together in the same Amazon package.