Oscar Qualified: Ethel & Ernest

The parents of beloved British illustrator and children’s book writer Raymond Briggs were the generation before Britain’s “Greatest Generation,” but they went through the same Great Depression and Second World War. They always kept their chins up and a stiff upper lip, but it was almost too much for them to bear when they learned their only son was transferring to art school. Briggs told their deceptively simple, emotionally resonant story in a bestselling graphic novel that Roger Mainwood adapted as the BBC-BFI-produced animated feature Ethel & Ernest (trailer here), which officially qualified for Academy Award consideration.

Ernest Briggs will work as a milkman for thirty-seven years, while Ethel, a former lady’s maid, toils as a clerk, but she chafes at the suggestion they are working class or “common laborers.” She votes Conservative and he supports Labour, but they both generally agree Churchill is the best man for the job during WWII. These were difficult years for the Briggs, because they were forced to send their only son Raymond to live with his kindly spinster aunts in the country, for his own safety. As a volunteer fireman, Briggs also witnesses the horrors of war first-hand and have a few close scrapes of his own. Yet, these sequences are by far the strongest of the film.

Of course, the Briggs continue to carry on, watching Twentieth Century history unfold from the vantage point of their cozy Wimbledon Park home. Churchill will be voted out and then triumphantly return, man will walk on the Moon, and Margaret Thatcher will stand for office. However, they are more concerned about the employment prospects for their slightly wayward artist son and his unruly hair.

E&E is a gentle film that gives voice to characters that are often overlooked in media, falling in between tony dramas like Downton Abbey and grubby melodramas, such as EastEnders. Conservative in temperament, they always maintained decorum—and in Ernest’s case, he was a Labour man who actually worked. Jim Broadbent and Brenda Blethyn are absolutely pitch-perfect as the Briggses. You can always hear in their voices a hopefully optimism tempered by their past disappointments and modest expectations.

The hand-drawn animation is nostalgic, in a sophisticated way, in keeping with Raymond Briggs’ original illustrations. It is a handsome film, nicely supported by Carl Davis’s pleasant, era-appropriate score. Ethel & Ernest also features “In the Blink of an Eye,” penned and performed by Sir Paul McCartney. Frankly, it is one of his best tunes in years and it hits all the film’s themes square on the nose, so it is rather baffling that it wasn’t submitted for best original song. Seriously, he was one of the Beatles. Remember?

Ethel & Ernest is definitely an Oscar longshot, but it is quite a worthy little film. It would actually send a strong statement about the artistic maturity of the animation field if the Academy nominated Loving Vincent, The Breadwinner, Window Horses, A Silent Voice, and Ethel & Ernest. On other hand, maybe they would feel more comfortable just nominating films from Disney, the longtime employer of Harvey Weinstein, and Pixar, co-founded by John Lasseter. Hey, whatever works for them. The point is there are some exceptionally strong independent animated features in contention this year. Ethel & Ernest makes the field even stronger. Highly recommended, Ethel & Ernest is fully Oscar qualified, for your consideration.

Bang! The Bert Berns Story: The Man Behind the Hits

People often think Motown is the preeminent soul/R&B record label, but hit-for-hit, it is tough to beat Atlantic Records. In the mid-1960s, Bert Berns was a major reason why. As both a producer and songwriter, Berns cranked out a steady stream of hits until Atlantic’s owners staked Berns’ own label, leading to a tense power struggle. Casual soul listeners might not recognize Berns’ name, but they will know his music and his short but eventful life will confirm everything they ever suspected about the recording industry. The producer’s son earns all kinds of credit for presenting the straight dope on his father in Bang! The Bert Berns Story (trailer here), directed by Brett Berns & Bob Sarles, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

When we say Berns produced hit records, we are talking about massively catchy, instantly recognizable tunes, like Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” The Exciters’ “Tell Him,” and the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk.” As luck would have it, Berns penned several tunes that so appealed to the British Invasion bands that they recorded their own versions, like a little number called “Twist and Shout.” (If you forgot it, Sir Paul McCartney is on-hand to remind us just how big it was.)

For Berns’ friends and colleagues, his importance extended beyond the charts. They also give him credit for introducing Afro-Cuban rhythms into rock & roll. However, for Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler, it really was about the hits. When the commercial success of Berns’ Bang Records exceeded all expectations, Wexler made a grab for a bigger piece of the pie by appealing to gangster allies. However, Berns had even higher ranking mobster friends to call upon. Maybe there should be an “alleged” in there somewhere, but Berns fils and Sarles present it all as the straight-up truth. They never suggest Bert Berns did anything illegal himself (except maybe facilitate the harassment of a wayward label artist by the name of Neil Diamond)—he just happened to make friends with connected figures liked the late Carmine “Wassel” DeNoia, whose interview segments sure add a lot color to the film.

Seriously, if Bang! is sanitized in anyway than the truth might be too much for mere mortal soul fans to wrap their heads around. Frankly, Bang! often has a distinctly hardboiled vibe thanks to Steven Van Zandt’s tough-talking narration (penned by Berns biographer Joel Selvin). Still, it is hard to lose sight of the music. In addition to McCartney and Burke, Ben E. King, Cissy Houston, Van Morrison, Keith Richards, and Ronald Isley also pay tribute to Berns, which keeps things in perspective.

Bang! is a wild ride that veers back-and-forth between an overdue ovation for Berns’ contributions to popular music and a wild chronicle of recording industry shenanigans. One thing is for sure: it’s never dull. In fact, it is quite successful at both ends. Compulsively watchable and irrepressibly hummable, Bang! The Bert Berns story is highly recommended for fans of 1960s pop, rock, and soul when it opens this Friday (5/5) in LA, at the Laemmle NoHo.

12-12-12: the Sandy Aid Concert

People do not realize the swath of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy was so wide, encompassing most of the Tri-State Area and a good chunk of New England, it made flight impractical.  Where were you going to go? Ohio?  As a result, most New Yorkers sat tight and made the best of things.  Many were wiped out and the rebuilding continues to this day.  The Robin Hood Foundation was one of many non-profits that rushed to assist those in need.  To support their efforts, Cablevision-Madison Square Garden boss James Dolan, Clear Channel’s John Sykes, and the always quotable Harvey Weinstein organized a benefit concert at the Garden, featuring some of the biggest (and as many can’t help observing, oldest) acts in rock & roll.  Amir Bar-Lev, with co-director-co-producer Charlie Lightening, documents both the on-stage attractions and the backstage bedlam in 12-12-12 (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Not to be confused with the little seen horror film with the same title, 12-12-12 starts a few days before December 12, 2012, as the power trio scramble to nail down the concert details.  Once again, Sir Paul McCartney is the concert’s lynch pin, as he was for the Concert for New York six weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11^th.  Once the elder statesman Beatle signed on, some of rock’s biggest names followed, including The Who, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, the divisive Roger Waters with Pink Floyd, and Billy Joel, an alumnus of the 2001 benefit, who also featured McCartney as a special guest at his send-off concert for the fondly remembered Shea Stadium.

12-12-12 mostly features songs that roughly sort of fit the evening’s themes, like “Living on a Prayer” and “Miami 2017” (the one that goes “I’ve seen the lights go out on Broadway”), but sometimes it just makes do with greatest hits.  As a follow-up to Bar-Lev’s fantastic music doc Re:Generation Music Project, 12-12-12 is a considerably more commercial, but ironically less interesting subject.  Essentially, it is a clips package, but Bar-Lev still has a shrewd eye behind-the-scenes action.  When the concert’s website goes Sebelius on them, it is rather amusing listening to Weinstein and Dolan try to bullying poor tech support folks into fixing it.  Likewise, it is rather telling to see Jesse Jackson glad-handing any celebrity who will talk to him.

Shockingly, Charlie Watts now looks like the youngest member of the Stones—and he still lays down a solid beat, God bless him.  $50 million was raised for Sandy relief, which definitely helped a lot of people.  Overall, it is a nice film, if not particularly deep, with only an occasional snippet of global warming soap-boxing here and there.  The Robin Hood Foundation is still accepting donations for Sandy Aid, but frankly, this is the time for New Yorkers to come together to support the typhoon survivors in the Philippines, a nation we have a long, close history with that has an accomplished film industry and a better jazz scene than you would expect.  You can donate to the Red Cross relief efforts here.  Recommended for mainstream rock fans, 12-12-12 opens this Friday in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

Maysles and McCartney: The Love We Make

This is not the Beatles reunion everyone continues to hope for, but it is still quite notable. In 1964, Albert Maysles and his filmmaker brother documented Paul McCartney and three other young chaps from Liverpool on their first American tour in What’s Happenning! The Beatles in the USA. By late 2001, much had changed for the Beatles, the Maysles Brothers, and America. Six weeks after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Albert Maysles once again followed McCartney as he spearheaded the all-star Concert for New York City at Madison Square Garden. Again shooting in glorious black-and-white, the senior Maysles (with co-director Bradley Kaplan and editor Ian Markiewicz) revisits his old subject at the peak of his prestige (before that rather unfortunate second marriage) in The Love We Make (trailer here), which starts its premiere theatrical engagement this Wednesday at Film Forum.

McCartney was in the process of returning home from New York on that fateful day in September, when his plane was suddenly grounded. He was here for the immediate aftermath and it clearly made an impression on him (as it did all people of good conscience). Not wanting to get in the way of real emergency responders, he avoided Ground Zero (unlike many gawkers), but he still wanted to do something constructive.

Following the example of fellow Beatle George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, McCartney became the public face and chief recruiter of the Concert for New York City. Wisely, co-founder Harvey Weinstein himself kept out of the spotlight (but there is a brief awkward exchange between him and Maysles that suggests the two men might have some history together.)

It is clearly good to be a Beatle. Fast approaching sixty at the time, McCartney still has some of the impishness we remember from the Maysleses’ 1964 film and A Hard Day’s Night. We half expect him to start talking about what a “clean old man” his grandfather is. Yet, he is well aware of the seriousness of the time. In a more reflective moment, he speaks rather candidly about instances when he would put his pacifist beliefs on hold, clearly implying that now might be such a time.

The Concert was an all-star affair, but Love We Make is McCartney’s show, despite the parade of celebrities and politicians that gets somewhat tiresome down the stretch (does anyone really want to hear what Tom Daschle has to say in the green room?). He is the Beatle after all, so understandably, the longest musical selection heard in the film is his rousing closer “Freedom,” written days after the attack. Pitch-perfect for the night, Sir Paul has evidently since become a tad uncomfortable with the implications of his lyrics, which speak of “fighting” for our “God given right” “to live in freedom.” That is too bad, considering it is his best song since perhaps the days of Wings.

Mayles’ focus on McCartney, a skilled diplomat to be sure, allows him to ignore some of the gaffes of the night, such as Susan Sarandon’s pitch for Mark Green’s mayoralty campaign and the resulting boos it drew. Like Paul Crowder & Jon Small’s Last Play at Shea (in which both McCartney and Billy Joel appear), Maysles nicely captures the emotional connection between the audience and particular songs. McCartney’s “Let It Be,” another commonality in both films, is an apt example. His black-and-white cinematography also well conveys the urgency and camaraderie of that brief moment in time when rock-stars allowed themselves to be patriotic. Already a nostalgic film, Love We Make is definitely recommended when it opens this Wednesday (11/9) in New York at Film Forum (with a pay cable run on Showtime to follow).