American Idols
The moment we have all been waiting for arrived Oct. 31, when the Crescent Theater opened downtown at 208 Dauphin St., directly across the street from A&M Peanut Shop. Locally owned and operated, the Crescent Theater is Mobile’s only independent art house movie theater and specializes in showcasing film as an art form, with a diverse selection of first-run independent, foreign, documentary and retrospective cinema. Also, unique to the movie theater-going experience here in Mobile, they offer at our concession stand a full selection of beer and wine.
Friday, Nov. 21 through Thursday, Nov. 27, “Frozen River” will be shown daily at 6 and 8:30 p.m. In this Sundance award winner, two women – one white, one Mohawk, both single mothers faced with desperate circumstances – are drawn into the world of border smuggling across the frozen water of the St. Lawrence River between Quebec and New York State. This naturalistic thriller is the debut feature of writer-director Courtney Hunt.
Following that is “I Served the King of England” from Friday, Nov. 28 through Dec. 4, with showtimes at 6 and 8:45 p.m. daily. Directed by one of the best-known and most successful Czech directors of all time, Jiri Menzel (“Closely Watched Trains”), and adapted from a work by one of their greatest novelists, Bohumil Hrabal, “I Served the King of England” follows the exploits of an ambitious little waiter who strives to become like one of his rich clientele. Long after the War and the Nazi occupation, he looks back to that time and to his successes, both financial and sexual, and his failures, and to the decisions that lead to each.
If you were living under a rock or out of the country when “The Order of Myths” played at the Saenger, you will get a second change from Dec. 12 – 26.
More details on future events and trailers to all of these movies are available at http://www.myspace.com/crescenttheater or www.crescenttheater.com. Call (251) 438-2005 for more information. Or visit my blog at http://blog.lagniappemobile.com/category/film.
The most shocking reveal in American Cinema might not be the famous moment in “The Crying Game” or “The Sixth Sense” but for me is about five minutes into “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Suspense builds as a truck opens and Russian bad guys aim their guns at one of our cultures most powerful cinematic totems: Indie’s fedora, which they treat as a threat unto itself and rightly so. Then, the man himself is set on his feet, shown still as a tantalizing shadow.
Then we see his face and, more shocking still, his hair. His gray and white hair. Indiana Jones is a human, and as such, he has aged. He quickly makes a quip about his age, and he quickly dons his hat. We start to relax.
The jolt subsides and familiar tropes take over. He’s still scared of snakes. He still has a whip. But he doesn’t move quite the same. He doesn’t even sound quite the same.
You can’t go home again, and this is particular tricky for movies and movie stars. We want them to stay the same, yet we criticize them for clinging to the past. Do you make the same movie over and over again, or take a risk and try something new that might freak audiences out?
You can’t please everybody, and I certainly don’t want to see some other clown playing Indiana Jones. But, like seeing anyone you love grow old, it is tricky business to revisit a formula that struck gold in years past. It is a tightrope walk between what worked in the past and what works now.
Revisionism has struck many of the cultural icons nearest and dearest to our collective hearts in the past decade. The grotesqueries visited on the beloved “Star Wars” franchise, albeit by their own creator, are a sore subject with me to this day. Not only did Lucas construct an unsatisfying, poorly acted trio of prequels that a current generation of viewers actually perceive as “Star Wars,” but he went back and stuck a bunch of cartoons into the “real” movies.
Would Orson Welles go back and add some kind of preposterous dragon to a new DVD release of “Citizen Kane?” Would he digitally slim himself down? Do we have to fear an alternate ending to “Casablanca?”
More complex than the barbaric additions to older films is the evolution of a character like James Bond. I’m pro-Daniel Craig, but even I found parts of “Casino Royale” disturbing. Everybody talked about his bathing suit scene, but that was not where the real revolution took place. It was in the naked torture scene that the old James Bond disappeared.
The old James Bond would never be subjected to a torture of his, shall we say, masculinity. Until recently, that zone existed solely for the purpose of seducing gorgeous babes. The strike there was to literally strike at the heart of the character.
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” handles the changes most gracefully. Once you accept them, it is a fairly satisfying, respectable addition to the canon. Full of cartoonish stunts and an overall light and witty touch, it is also not hurt by the addition of Shia Labouef. The whippersnapper is kept appropriately in his place, while throwing something in there for the younger viewers, for whom, perhaps, this is not such a sacred cow. The young star becomes a kind of stand-in for the audience. With time, we see the almost undiminished power of the aging Jones, who never relents to the next generation and who still has plenty to teach.
The film, like its predecessors, is full of self-aware wackiness. My favorite scene is one in which a large group of monkeys identify Labouef as their leader because they sport similar pompadour hairstyles. The stunts are outrageous, the science absurd, the villains lay it on thick. Not taking yourself too seriously is, perhaps, they key to aging gracefully.
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is currently available to rent.
Contact Asia Frey at afrey@lagniappemobile.com.
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