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Reviews
'51 Dons (2014)
Uneven telling of important tale
I was bothered at first by the inconsistent presentation of the interviews. One subject was poorly lit where another seemed to be in a studio. One seemed to be caught at a cocktail party. Another was identified as "Nephew" without saying whose (I had to look it up; he was Matson's). But as I settled in for the payoff of this documentary, I was most chagrined that the most important part - the white players' decision refusing the Orange Bowl's demand to leave two black players at home - was not examined more closely at its nexus. It was not clear who delivered the message to the team, when it was delivered, how the Orange Bowl was informed, how Georgia Tech came to be selected to replace USF and contemporary reaction to the Dons' being snubbed. Later, there was only a passing mention of Brown v Board of Education being three years later but no mention of Rosa Parks being four years later in spite of Bob St. Clair's own bus story. The singing of "Good Night, Irene" was poignant, although having a clashing music bed under it was jarring. Burl Toler's legacy was well chronicled and a fitting tribute. But the rest of the documentary left me wanting something more - something that would seem 62+ years later to be perfunctory in the telling of this story.
Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)
Australians giggle at "Good Night and Good Luck"
An American citizen working abroad, I watched a preview screening of "Good Night and Good Luck" in early December 2005 in Melbourne. David Straitharn (Murrow) was on hand to introduce the film, and he commented that journalists in the U.S. covet "the Edward R. Murrow Award." Having won one myself, I had to suppress an Arnold Horshack-like desire to jump up and seek acknowledgment.
Born five years after the "See It Now" that became the flash point for the decline and fall of Joseph McCarthy, I always felt uncomfortable in a lifetime of hindsight watching conventional wise men excoriate "the junior Senator from Wisconsin." Yes, his rapacious lust to seize on America's post-war, post-Berlin Airlift, post-nukes paranoia was unforgivable.
But while McCarthy was reckless with his grabbed power, I often wondered if the backlash against The Red Scare wasn't itself tinged with counter abuse.
Fearing this would be another case of a good point made badly (see "Fahrenheit 9-11"), I was pleasantly surprised to find "Good Night and Good Luck" to be even-handed, even paying some lip service to my lifelong concerns.
It wasn't so much the quiet, understated confidence of Murrow in this film that sold me on the fact Clooney provided an untilted platform. It was more the balance offered by the characterization of Paley, who fortunately was not portrayed as the right-wing bad guy. Nor was he fairy-taled into some crusader, either, as the why-don't-they-make-executives-like-that-anymore liberals would have us believe.
For this, Clooney deserves a great deal of credit. Yes, the long, unwieldy stretch of HUAC testimony made the second half of the film a bit ponderous. But that's a quibbling point against a foundation of overwhelming cinematic excellence.
The '50s were never more beautiful than this film. The long-gone mood of unabated scotch and cigarettes, the anachronistic anti-nepotism policy at CBS, the heavy woolen clothing, the horrible eye wear, the great jazz - the forgotten art of how to light a film for black and white. It's all there - and a wonderful tribute to the son of an old-school broadcaster like Nick Clooney.
A little spoilage, though, from Down Under. As I sat in the nearly full cinema on a Monday night, the crowd - mostly in their 20s-60s - giggled at the oddest places. The quaint Kent commercial. The occasional, go-get-'em dialog. The news anchoring tragic and his endorsement of Murrow's broadcast. Giggles. Very off-putting, almost disrespectful to a time gone-by.
It was almost as if they were saying, "Yeah, we know better, and we were born that way." Glad to know somebody got to skip the '50s in order to get to the 21st century.
French in Action (1987)
Whatever happened to Valerie Allain?
Remember Mireille? If you've made it this far, of course you do.
Word is she's a different Valerie Allain than the one who did everything else on her IMDb list. Rumors abound that she died, that she disappeared, that she discovered underwear.
By the way, I beg to differ with the you-gotta-know French to learn French criticism. Did you have to know English to learn it?