‘You are not creating these dishes,” says a critic to the up-and-coming chef in this flaccid French comedy. “You are just following a recipe. You are like someone singing karaoke.”
That sums up the majority of “Le Chef,” from director Daniel Cohen, which is thoroughly predictable and mildly amusing in molecular amounts. Not to be confused with the also formulaic “Chef” (this summer’s sleeper hit), this French film boasts Jean Reno as Alexandre Lagarde, a famous chef who is under the gun from his restaurant’s new CEO and the possibility that a couple of food critics will appear and dock him a star from his Michelin rating.
In real life, Frank Sidebottom was a character created by British artist Chris Sievey, who performed live with a large, cartoonish papier-mache head on. His character was a bit Pee Wee Herman, singing in a reedy high register like he had a clothespin on his nose. The music was played on children’s instruments, but he covered major pop hits of the day — the mid-1980s through the ’90s. For those growing up in the UK during that time, he was an affectionate satirist, the music of working-class cul-de-sacs and corner newsagents, a contrast with the shiny business offices of the pop world.
However, in the fascinating and rather inspiring new movie “Frank,” we get a knowingly glamorized version of the story, but so far from the truth that it can hardly be called poetic license. Instead, director Lenny Abrahamson and writers Peter Straughan and former Sidebottom band member Jon Ronson have created a fantasy around the myth of the troubled genius. Behind his mask, Frank stands for all kinds of famous outside musicians, whose creativity gets tied into their mental illness. Yet it’s also a musing on the wonder of making music in a band, and in certain scenes the cast really captures that magic of when noodling turns into a song and a song turns into something transcendent. (The cast, apparently, really did jam and created the songs heard in the film, and it’s a thing of wonder that what comes out really does sound unlike anything I’ve heard before.)
Filmmaker Noel Black and his daughter Nicole Black Gonthier embrace. Ms. Gonthier is trying to fulfill her father?s wish that his first film, ?Skaterdater,? is added to the Library of Congress Film Registry. COURTESY PHOTOS
A year ago Noel Black died at age 77 in Santa Barbara.
He left behind a filmography filled with television episodes – “The Twilight Zone,” “The Baby-Sitters Club,” “Hawaii Five-O” “Kojak” – TV movies and theatrical releases, the most famous being the Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld vehicle “Pretty Poison” from 1966, and “Private School,” starring Phoebe Cates.
The Wave is rolling toward our shores this week, a five-day, 11-film mini-film fest put on by Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Intended as a mid-year fundraiser for SBIFF, it features in its first year a focus on France and French directors, with other countries slotted for following years. So why France as the first choice?
“French cinema is very popular among our audience,” says SBIFF programmer Mickey Duzdevich, meaning Santa Barbara in general. He points to the success of the French films that screen in SBIFF’s Showcase series at Plaza de Oro every Wednesday. “Those films are the ones that sell out.” And at the last SBIFF, French films sold more tickets. Who knew Santa Barbara were such Francophiles? Quelle surprise!
Florante Aguilar documents the traditional Filipino art form in “Harana.” haranathemovie.com photo
Although now known as the Presidio Neighborhood, the area between Anacapa and Santa Barbara streets along Canon Perdido used to be both a Chinatown and a Japanese town back in the pre-war era, with Jimmy’s Oriental Gardens (now known as The Pickle Room) being the last remnant of that era. And for six years the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation has honored that heritage in several ways, their current one hosting the Asian American Film Series, three films over three Fridays, starting tonight.
Put together by a committee headed by Teresa Chin, the festival shares recent documentaries that illuminate the Asian-American experience, this year focusing on Filipino-, Chinese-, and Japanese-Americans.
In January, UCSB Arts&Lectures screened Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last” at the Granada with pianist Michael Mortilla accompanying. “It was a non-stop laugh-fest the entire time,” A&L’s Roman Baratiak says. “All ages were there and it was super inspiring … People gasped.” Mr. Baratiak is referring to the infamous 20-minute sequence where Lloyd scales the outside of a building and at one point winds up hanging from a clock.
Mr. Baratiak took that inspiration and has made classic silent comedy the theme for this year’s Summer Film Series, which screens both at Campbell Hall and at the Courthouse’s Sunken Gardens. Last year’s Hitchcock series got the biggest crowds in the Summer Series and it was time to make things a bit more fun. So for the fifth annual event, A&L will be screening two films each, from Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, with extra shorts thrown in for good measure.
Agata Trzebuchowska as Ida, in IDA. Courtesy of Music box Films
Agata Trzebuchowska, the actress making her debut as the title character of “Ida,” has dark eyes that burn like coal when shot in black and white. Playing a novitiate nun in 1960s Poland, she doesn’t speak much at all, the camera is always gazing into her eyes and as we watch and keep watching, there’s a lot going on behind them.
However, her character is going to be tested in this quiet but wrenching little tale from director Pawel Pawlikowski, best known for 2000’s “The Last Resort.” She receives a letter from an aunt and travels out into the great big world to find her. When she does, they are quite opposite: Wanda (Agata Kulesza) smokes, boozes it up, and sleeps around. But we also learn that she used to be a detective for the state, hunting down “anti-socialists” and she has called Anna from the convent to tell her a few shocking things: her name is actually Ida, and she was actually born a Jew. And the reason she’s brought her out is to join her in hunting down the Nazi sympathizers who murdered Ida’s parents back in World War II.
Alex Brendemuhl as Josef Mengele in “The German Doctor
Growing up, I had no real idea about Argentina except that it was the place that many high-profile Nazis fled to after the war, including, some said, Hitler. (They also said somebody had his brain in a jar, but that’s another story.) It was talked about in the same tones reserved for the killer bees, and both might just swarm north to get us all. However, by the time I came of age and learned more, Eichmann had been captured long ago and executed, and Josef Mengele … well, he kind of got away with it, didn’t he? Mossad agents never captured him, and in 1979 he had a stroke and drowned while swimming one day off the coast of Brazil, probably while humming “The Girl from Ipanema.”
The deranged doctor of Auschwitz, the so-called “Angel of Death” never got his day in court.
Fading Gigolo is actor John Turturro’s fifth film, which came as a bit of a surprise to this reviewer, as I missed the bus on “Romance & Cigarettes” (a musical), “Passione” (a documentary), and “Illuminata” (a period comedy). And “Mac,” his first film from 1992, is so dim in my memory that I might not have seen it at all. Regardless, “Fading Gigolo” is two things: a love letter to a New York City that is fast disappearing, a world of bodegas and small shops and affordable brownstones. It’s also a similar mash note to his co-star Woody Allen, whose film romanticized exactly that world.
The set-up also reminds us of mid-’90s Allen: He plays Murray, an old friend of Mr. Turturro’s Fioravente (such a name!), and when both find themselves at the end of employment and needing some cash, Murray half-jokingly suggests that his friend, an eternal bachelor, turn to the oldest profession in the book. Murray will be his pimp, and like an agent, take 10 percent. (This is much better than the 50-50 between artist and gallery owner, he points out.)
Melissa Dixon, left, plays Elaine and Crister De Leon plays Alex in the film “Redemption of the Heart Road Less Traveled Pictures
Indie filmmakers work years to see their projects through to the premiere date. They enlist friends, family and co-workers to help. They scrape together funds to start and they further scrape to finish. But it’s all worth it for the love of creativity.
“Redemption of the Heart” ‘s filmmakers, Isaac Meeks of Santa Ynez and Sandon Yahn of Oxnard, have had a similar experience with their film, but the twist here is that they’re also doing it for the love of Jesus and their church, Calvary Chapel. Read More
