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Forty years ago, from August 15th to August 18th, nearly half a million people gathered in upstate New York to watch the likes of Arlo Guthrie, Santana, Canned Heat, the Who, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. Below is a video of one of the best of these performances. So, without further ado, here is Joe Cocker performing the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends."
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
I Admire Your Pictures Very Much
A Review of "Julie & Julia"
By Jeff Webb
First of all, I liked “Julie & Julia.” I didn’t necessarily expect to, but I had a great deal of fun watching the film. The charming performances of the leads, the vicarious experience of encountering wonderful foods, and the straightforward and simple comedy all create a light-hearted, escapist atmosphere. Perhaps above anything else, it is an incredibly relaxing film.
Now, with that aside, it’s probably not a film I would care to see ever again.
The problem with “Julie & Julia” is the script. It revolves around two stories, the first taking place in the mid-twentieth century and depicting chef Julia Child’s efforts to create a French cookbook for American women. The film’s second story is set in 2002 and shows blogger Julie Powell’s attempt to make every recipe in said cookbook within a year’s time.
It is the latter story that I take issues with. Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, and Adams is wonderful, as always. However, when the main conflict of a story is whether or not a character will meet her deadline in time, it’s a little hard to be enthralled or to leave the theater feeling you have learned something monumental about life. Now, perhaps perseverance is the life lesson here, but when it is about something so mundane as cooking, it still feels empty. Perhaps if the film was in the hand’s of a more competent director, someone adept with the mundane—someone like Jim Jarmusch, for instance—something could be taken away from the story, but, alas, the film is in the hands of Nora Ephron, a talented romantic-comedy director but really nothing more than that.
There are moments of real human drama in Julie Powell’s story, but they are brief moments, fleeting moments. There never is any tension, and that is because the conflict isn’t engaging. Every story, no matter the genre, needs a conflict, and it needs to engage the audience.
The film’s other story, revolving around a young Julia Child, is a bit more fulfilling to watch, but even it suffers from a similar problem. Its tone is too light to be accommodating as a biopic for a real person, and its suspense is killed by the interjection of the Julie Powell story. Perhaps more than anything else, though, the audience never comes to know Julia Child. We see her efforts to publish her book, but she is the same woman at the end of the film as she is at the beginning. There is no real development to her as a character, as a person.
Yes, Meryl Streep is fantastic and proves, once again, why she is the best actress of her generation, but she really isn’t given much to work with. Her Julia Child becomes a parody of the real thing, an embodiment of the woman on TV, and Streep, with the exception of one or two scenes, never probes deeply into the person that was Julia Child. But that’s a flaw of the script.
“Julie & Julia” is a good way to kill two hours, and it fits perfectly into the summer movie season. It just fails to deliver human drama, and, while funny, it’s nowhere close to being a classic of the comedy genre. To end with a terrible food analogy, the film is almost like hospital food: it’s not necessarily bad, it’ll fill you up and taste alright, but it’s not something you ever really want to eat ever again.
By Jeff Webb
First of all, I liked “Julie & Julia.” I didn’t necessarily expect to, but I had a great deal of fun watching the film. The charming performances of the leads, the vicarious experience of encountering wonderful foods, and the straightforward and simple comedy all create a light-hearted, escapist atmosphere. Perhaps above anything else, it is an incredibly relaxing film.
Now, with that aside, it’s probably not a film I would care to see ever again.
The problem with “Julie & Julia” is the script. It revolves around two stories, the first taking place in the mid-twentieth century and depicting chef Julia Child’s efforts to create a French cookbook for American women. The film’s second story is set in 2002 and shows blogger Julie Powell’s attempt to make every recipe in said cookbook within a year’s time.
It is the latter story that I take issues with. Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, and Adams is wonderful, as always. However, when the main conflict of a story is whether or not a character will meet her deadline in time, it’s a little hard to be enthralled or to leave the theater feeling you have learned something monumental about life. Now, perhaps perseverance is the life lesson here, but when it is about something so mundane as cooking, it still feels empty. Perhaps if the film was in the hand’s of a more competent director, someone adept with the mundane—someone like Jim Jarmusch, for instance—something could be taken away from the story, but, alas, the film is in the hands of Nora Ephron, a talented romantic-comedy director but really nothing more than that.
There are moments of real human drama in Julie Powell’s story, but they are brief moments, fleeting moments. There never is any tension, and that is because the conflict isn’t engaging. Every story, no matter the genre, needs a conflict, and it needs to engage the audience.
The film’s other story, revolving around a young Julia Child, is a bit more fulfilling to watch, but even it suffers from a similar problem. Its tone is too light to be accommodating as a biopic for a real person, and its suspense is killed by the interjection of the Julie Powell story. Perhaps more than anything else, though, the audience never comes to know Julia Child. We see her efforts to publish her book, but she is the same woman at the end of the film as she is at the beginning. There is no real development to her as a character, as a person.
Yes, Meryl Streep is fantastic and proves, once again, why she is the best actress of her generation, but she really isn’t given much to work with. Her Julia Child becomes a parody of the real thing, an embodiment of the woman on TV, and Streep, with the exception of one or two scenes, never probes deeply into the person that was Julia Child. But that’s a flaw of the script.
“Julie & Julia” is a good way to kill two hours, and it fits perfectly into the summer movie season. It just fails to deliver human drama, and, while funny, it’s nowhere close to being a classic of the comedy genre. To end with a terrible food analogy, the film is almost like hospital food: it’s not necessarily bad, it’ll fill you up and taste alright, but it’s not something you ever really want to eat ever again.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
I Admire Your Pictures Very Much
A Review of "Funny People"
By Jeff Webb
It’s interesting to watch the direction of Judd Apatow’s directorial career play out on cinema screens. With his first film, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” Apatow introduced audiences to his stories of “bromance” and men stuck in adolescence. With “Knocked Up,” Apatow covered similar territory, but this time making it a bit more personal, basing it somewhat on his own experiences with becoming a father. Still, there was a sense of the cartoonish in the characters, an outrageousness to the film. With his third and latest film, though—the newly released “Funny People”—Apatow has hit his stride. It is his most focused feature yet, completely realistic and understated and restrained.
The problem with Apatow’s previous two films is not that the stories lack a moral—for they do have a point—but that they sometimes lose focus of that moral, wandering into territory where it just seems like comedy for the sake of comedy. Nothing is learned. Plot and characterization is not advanced.
That is not the case with “Funny People.” Yes, the movie is long—perhaps a bit too long—but every scene plays a part in the bigger story. That story revolves around George Simmons, a popular comedian who, upon finding out he has leukemia, starts to reevaluate his life. Helping him on this journey of self-discovery is young and insecure comedian Ira Wright.
Adam Sandler plays Simmons, and Seth Rogen plays Wright. For the latter, it is clearly the best role of his career, one that is truly unique from his other characters. For Sandler, it is his best since work since 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love,” and, even at that, Sandler may be even better here than in PTA’s mini-masterpiece. Simmons is Sandler, Sandler is Simmons, and through the course of the film, Sandler plays his part to perfection, never ringing a false note, never going for the zany over the dramatic. It is a character wrought with pain and disappointment, and Sandler plays him just as such.
Some people will walk into the film expecting a comedy, and, while the film is a comedy, it carries quite a bit of dramatic weight with it, as did Apatow’s “Knocked Up.” However, unlike “Knocked Up,” the drama in “Funny People” doesn’t come across as forced or schmaltzy. It feels natural, perhaps because the premise is a serious premise. It is about a man dying. If anything, it is the laughs that feel forced, but the very fact that the man in question is a comedian makes it all seem right.
There is nothing outrageous about “Funny People,” no hair-waxing scene or mushroom trips to Las Vegas or shock value shots of female genitalia. No, like the characters in his films, Apatow finally seems to be growing up, not only addressing themes of adulthood, but also addressing them like an adult: serious, focused, and in control.
Without giving it away, the ending of the film is enough evidence of Apatow’s maturity as a filmmaker. There is nothing grandiose about it. It’s just a plain and simple ending to a fairly plain and simple story, and, thus, by making it all the more real, it becomes all the more relatable.
And that is something every filmmaker—be the genre comedy or drama—should strive to achieve.
By Jeff Webb
It’s interesting to watch the direction of Judd Apatow’s directorial career play out on cinema screens. With his first film, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” Apatow introduced audiences to his stories of “bromance” and men stuck in adolescence. With “Knocked Up,” Apatow covered similar territory, but this time making it a bit more personal, basing it somewhat on his own experiences with becoming a father. Still, there was a sense of the cartoonish in the characters, an outrageousness to the film. With his third and latest film, though—the newly released “Funny People”—Apatow has hit his stride. It is his most focused feature yet, completely realistic and understated and restrained.
The problem with Apatow’s previous two films is not that the stories lack a moral—for they do have a point—but that they sometimes lose focus of that moral, wandering into territory where it just seems like comedy for the sake of comedy. Nothing is learned. Plot and characterization is not advanced.
That is not the case with “Funny People.” Yes, the movie is long—perhaps a bit too long—but every scene plays a part in the bigger story. That story revolves around George Simmons, a popular comedian who, upon finding out he has leukemia, starts to reevaluate his life. Helping him on this journey of self-discovery is young and insecure comedian Ira Wright.
Adam Sandler plays Simmons, and Seth Rogen plays Wright. For the latter, it is clearly the best role of his career, one that is truly unique from his other characters. For Sandler, it is his best since work since 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love,” and, even at that, Sandler may be even better here than in PTA’s mini-masterpiece. Simmons is Sandler, Sandler is Simmons, and through the course of the film, Sandler plays his part to perfection, never ringing a false note, never going for the zany over the dramatic. It is a character wrought with pain and disappointment, and Sandler plays him just as such.
Some people will walk into the film expecting a comedy, and, while the film is a comedy, it carries quite a bit of dramatic weight with it, as did Apatow’s “Knocked Up.” However, unlike “Knocked Up,” the drama in “Funny People” doesn’t come across as forced or schmaltzy. It feels natural, perhaps because the premise is a serious premise. It is about a man dying. If anything, it is the laughs that feel forced, but the very fact that the man in question is a comedian makes it all seem right.
There is nothing outrageous about “Funny People,” no hair-waxing scene or mushroom trips to Las Vegas or shock value shots of female genitalia. No, like the characters in his films, Apatow finally seems to be growing up, not only addressing themes of adulthood, but also addressing them like an adult: serious, focused, and in control.
Without giving it away, the ending of the film is enough evidence of Apatow’s maturity as a filmmaker. There is nothing grandiose about it. It’s just a plain and simple ending to a fairly plain and simple story, and, thus, by making it all the more real, it becomes all the more relatable.
And that is something every filmmaker—be the genre comedy or drama—should strive to achieve.
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