Tribeca ’15: Anniversary Screenings

In fourteen years, the Tribeca Film Festival has grown into an impressive institution, with well-respected grant-writing and film distribution arms. Still, the thirteenth anniversary just isn’t a very round number. However, this year’s Tribeca Film Festival will commemorate a number of films reaching milestones ending with fives and zeroes. Best of all, several of these special screening will be free of charge (although advance ticketing is still required in some cases).

You might have missed the anticipation for the 30^th anniversary of Clue the movie, based on the perennially popular board game, which is why Tribeca’s free Drive-In screening is such a public service. Jonathan Lynn’s film was not kindly reviewed at the time, but in retrospect, we can acknowledge it as one of his wittiest works since the Yes, Minister franchise. The spooky old house set is wonderfully detailed and the all-star cast is relentlessly hammy—in a good way. The random uncredited Howard Hesseman sightings also add a dash of surreal humor, but the real star is the deliciously caustic dialogue. Lynn pushes the rapid-fire delivery, as if he broke out Howard Hawks’ old stop-watch. There are actually more films based on board games these days, but Clue remains the best. It screens for free this Thursday (4/16) at the World Financial Plaza.

In 1985, all the love denied Clue was showered on Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future, which has become iconic for a reason. The effects were pretty cool for its time, but it had tons of heart. It heralded Michael J. Fox’s apparent arrival as a big time movie star, but despite some successful subsequent releases, Back to the Future 1 remains his cinematic high-water mark. As likable as he and Christopher Lloyd are together, it is impossible to think of the film without hearing Huey Lewis’s Power of Love in your mind’s ear, but that just proves how all the elements truly came together for it. Nostalgically recommended, it screens for free at the BMCC on Saturday (4/25).

Back to the Future presents a very innocent, 1950s version of love, but it is nowhere near as endearing as Disney’s Lady and the Tramp, celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. Arguably, the spaghetti sequence is the first movie moment that suggests to boys and girls kissing scenes might be okay after all. Let’s face it, the film is just adorable, plus it features the sassy vocals of Peggy Lee, performing original songs she co-wrote with Sonny Burke. Parents should take their kids to see it at the Drive-In this Friday (4/17), before Disney cheapens it with another live-action remake.

If you like Peggy Lee (and who the heck doesn’t?), you’re probably okay with Frank Sinatra too. 2015 marks the Sinatra centennial (1915-1998), so Tribeca will celebrate with free screenings of On the Town, Some Came Running, and High Society (trailer here). They are all worth seeing, but the latter is particularly notable. A musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, it co-stars Sinatra in the Jimmy Stewart role, Bing Crosby fearlessly stepping in for Cary Grant, and Grace Kelly in her final film, assuming Katherine Hepburn’s duties. Yes, Philadelphia is the better film, but Society has one thing the other lacks: Louis Armstrong, playing himself.

In fact, Armstrong gets the sort of star treatment he lacked in some of his more problematic early films. He serves as a sort of narrator in the opening and closing segments and performs a flat-out flag-waver, “Now You Has Jazz,” with Crosby. Perhaps the coolest aspect of the number is that each of the All-Stars gets a brief solo, introduced by Crosby. At this time, the line-up consisted of Trummy Young (trombone), Billy Kyle (piano), Arvell Shaw (bass), Barrett Deems (drums), and the New Orleans legend in his own right, Edmond Hall on clarinet (but sadly, no Velma Middleton). Society was also the first full screen musical Cole Porter had written in a number of years. It might not be his most memorable work, but there are flashes of that classic wit, like “have you heard, its in the stars, next July we collide with Mars” in “Well, Did You Evah!” It screens at the Regal Battery Park next Friday (4/24), but you’re going to have to deal with rush tickets at this point.

Perhaps the biggest ticket anniversary will be Monty Python and the Holy Grail celebrating forty years of lunacy. In fact, there will be several decidedly not-free Python screenings at Tribeca, as well as the premiere of the documentary Monty Python: the Meaning of Live chronicling their live performances at London’s O2 Arena, designed to pay-off their lawyers’ fees and Terry Jones’ mortgage (full review to come). The Rifftrax guys will also give the live treatment to Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, which is only marking its twelfth anniversary, but it feels like it has always been with us. Altogether, it is an interesting selection of old favorites programmed (sometimes for free, sometime not, check the website) at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Bing Crosby: The Road to a Critical Re-Evaluation

Jazz fans have mixed feelings about Bing Crosby. He first came to prominence as part of the Paul Whiteman organization—a fact that pretty much explains our ambivalence right there. However, he was also an admirer of Louis Armstrong, who helped secure some of the icon’s highest profile motion picture appearances. Regardless how the jazz community felt about the crooner, he had fifty million loyal listeners at the height of his popularity. Crosby’s music and film career, as well as his posthumous controversies get a critical re-examination in Robert Trachtenberg’s Bing Crosby: Rediscovered (promo here), which airs this Tuesday as part of the current season of PBS's American Masters.

Harry Lillis Crosby was a law school drop-out at loose ends when he hooked up with Al Rinker, the brother of Mildred Bailey, to form a five-piece dance band awkwardly known as the Musicaladers. Eventually, the attracted the notice of Paul Whiteman, but the bandleader-impresario had a difficult time figuring out how to showcase them. When they finally hit, they hit big. Suddenly, Crosby was learning how to drink like a serious musician from experts such as Bix Beiderbecke. So much for marriage number one, but Crosby’s star would only continue to rise.

Those fifty million loyal listeners arguably made Crosby the biggest radio star of all time. With more number one singles than anyone from Memphis or Liverpool, a case could also be made his was the greatest recording star as well, but it is tricky to compare the pre and post LP eras. Admittedly not quite as huge on the big screen, Crosby still had plenty of success with the Road movies and his Oscar for Going My Way. However, six years after his death, Crosby’s son Gary published a family memoir very much in the tradition of Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest. Although not as harrowing, similar damage was done to Crosby’s reputation.

To its credit, Trachtenberg’s profile addresses the book and its charges of abusive physical discipline and emotionally aloof parenting head-on. To a large extent, Crosby’s daughter Mary serves as the family point person on the issue, even claiming her half-brother later expressed remorse during a private lunch together.

So maybe Crosby was a crummy dad, but even if the tell-all is mostly true, it pales in comparison to Bill Cosby’s image implosion currently underway. Frankly, we are now more willing to separate a performer’s private life and personal failings from their public personas. Plus, his sons kind of come off sounding like mess-ups, making it harder to absolutely condemn him. On the hand, Mary Crosby (she shot J.R.) is quite a persuasive presence on-screen.

Using jazz critic Gary Giddins’ recent biography as a roadmap, Crosby: Rediscovered is at its best putting the singer’s music in context, comparing and contrasting his style of vocal interpretation with jazz performance conventions. Strangely though, his brother Bob is only mentioned in passing, despite his legit success as a Dixieland-ish bandleader. Even if you still do not want to like Bing Crosby, Trachtenberg presents his life in an entertaining fashion, dropping plenty of cool names, like Armstrong and Peggy Lee. Recommended for fans of 1940s film and popular music, Bing Crosby: Rediscovered premieres on most PBS outlets this Tuesday (12/2), but many stations also plan to replay it on the 26^th, because Holiday Inn, White Christmas and the “Little Drummer Boy” duet with David Bowie are all duly discussed in detail.

Jimmy Van Heusen: Swingin’ with Frank & Bing

What sort of a tune does a test pilot write? Well, there was the Sinatra staple “Come Fly with Me.” Sinatra fans might already know the vocalist recorded more tunes by Jimmy Van Heusen than anyone else, but the extent to which the composer served as Old Blue Eye’s Obi-wan could still come as a surprise. Van Heusen’s life and body of work are surveyed in Jim Burn’s Jimmy Van Heusen: Swingin’ with Frank & Bing (promo here), which airs on participating PBS stations at various times throughout the month of August.

In a sense, Van Heusen is an apostolic link from Tin Pan Alley and the original Great American Songwriters, like Irving Berlin, to the Swinging Madmen 1960s. As a man who felt instinctively at home in a nightclub or tavern, Van Heusen was ideally suited to be a song-plugger. Tunes like “Darn that Dream” quickly caught on, but it was his association with Bing Crosby that took Van Heusen’s career to a higher level. Following the crooner to Hollywood, Van Heusen wrote scores of hits with lyricist Johnny Burke, including the Oscar winning “Swinging on a Star,” for Going My Way. Shrewdly, the accomplished aviator volunteered as a test pilot for Lockheed during World War II, as a way to maintain his high-flying Hollywood lifestyle while serving the war effort.

When Crosby cooled off, Van Heusen found himself at loose ends, along with his old pal from New York, Frank Sinatra. Rumor has it, Van Heusen interceded during the baritone’s darkest hours and he would pen tunes with his new regularly lyricist partner Sammy Cahn that defined the Sinatra comeback. Swingin’s best segments trace the surprising origins of some of their most popular songs, such as “Love & Marriage” written for a television musical production of Our Town, featuring Sinatra as the Stage Manager and Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint as the teenaged lovers, which frustratingly is not likely to be released on home video anytime soon.

Burns also talks to all the right people, including Frank Sinatra, Jr., Woody Allen, jazz musicians Dr. Billy Taylor and John Pizzarelli, jazz-cabaret crossover performers Jane Monheit and Eric Comstock, and Angie Dickinson and Shirley MacLaine to vouch for Van Heusen’s charm. There are also generous helpings of performance clips, largely focusing on Sinatra and Crosby, for obvious reasons.

Swingin’ will make viewers nostalgic for the glory days of the hard partying yet patriotic Rat Pack. In fact, writer-director Burns makes a persuasive case for Van Heusen as Rat Packer Zero, the one who started it all. Clocking in around the hour mark, the special could have run fifty percent longer without overstaying its welcome. The entertaining and informative Jimmy Van Heusen: Swingin’ with Frank & Bing airs on various PBS outlets throughout the month of August, so check local listings.