Forgotten Films: Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman, 1968)

The death of screenwriter Stewart Stern a couple of weeks ago brought some fine remembrances from numerous writers, many of whose lives he touched as a mentor as well as a filmmaker. Obviously, most folks who knew Stern's name -- if they knew it at all -- was as the screenwriter of Rebel Without a Cause. But his passing reminded me that, years ago, I’d written a “Forgotten Films” feature for Nerve.com about another work -- Rachel, Rachel, Paul Newman's directorial debut. Lesser known but almost equally as great as Rebel, it's since been released on DVD by Warner, so now there's actually a chance that people might rediscover it. What follows is a slightly edited version of my original piece.  (For more on the Forgotten Films project, go here.)

The Ice Harvest: Something To Do With Death (R.I.P. Harold Ramis)

The sad and untimely passing of Harold Ramis yesterday exacerbated my need to revisit his 2005 film The Ice Harvest. The film, shot for a very modest budget, flopped in its initial release, but has gained admirers in the years since. At the time, it struck me as a solid comedy with more than the usual on its mind, but in recent years, I’ve come to think of it as a stone-cold masterpiece. Maybe that’s why it was the first film I thought of when I heard that Ramis had died – not Ghostbusters, not Caddyshack, not even the wondrous Groundhog Day. Or maybe it was something else – something to do with the film itself, which is one of the most haunted and despairing comedies I’ve ever seen.

To Control Something That's Out of Control: On Tony Scott

Tony Scott’s shocking suicide yesterday brought an end to not just one of the most influential careers in modern Hollywood, but also one of the strangest and most divisive. It’s interesting to note that, for a guy so often identified with blockbusters, he really had just a handful of genuine hits: Top Gun was huge, Beverly Hills Cop II was huge (mainly because it was a sequel to a box office phenomenon), Enemy of the State and Crimson Tide were huge-ish. Otherwise, films like Days of Thunder and The Last Boy Scout were generally seen as underperforming and not quite there. And True Romance, now correctly viewed as one of Scott’s best films, was basically a flop. Despite all that, his influence over not just other filmmakers but also male moviegoers of a certain age is undeniable.

Sarris

Plenty of better, smarter writers than I will have enough to say about the legacy of the now-late Andrew Sarris. (Here are Andrew O’Hehir at Salon and David Edelstein at Vulture, and David Poland at Movie City News. And Peter Labuza over at his blog, with a lovely anecdote. Oh, and the Times obit is pretty good, too.) For my part, I can note that, for all the times I’ve (literally) thrown The American Cinema across the room in frustration, I‘ve always picked it back up to check and see what Sarris had to say about the next filmmaker. (“John Sturges as ‘Strained Seriousness’? Screw this guy! Okay, what does he have to say about Robert Mulligan?”) Others have noted his erudition and generosity as a writer, as well as his willingness to change his mind. O’Hehir’s piece mentions Sarris’s famous change of heart on 2001: A Space Odyssey.*

Eulogy for Lutfi Akad (1916-2011)

Kizilirmak Karakoyun

The Turkish director Omer Lutfi Akad has passed away. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, since I could have sworn that I had heard reports of his death a few years ago. But I guess things like that happen when you get to be 95. Nevertheless, he now rests in peace, and a few words should be said here.

RIP Annie Girardot

Here we go with another obituary. Darn.

I hadn’t thought of Annie Girardot in a while. Then I heard the news of her passing, and the memories came raging back. I must have watched and re-watched my crappy tenth-generation VHS dub of Rocco and His Brothers dozens of times when I was in high school (thanks, Facets by Mail!), and as much as I was impressed by all the stuff I was supposed to be impressed by – Visconti’s direction, Nino Rota’s music, Alain Delon’s soulful innocent, Renato Salvatori’s tormented, eye-rolling antihero, etc. etc., it was Annie Girardot’s Nadia that I found most captivating at all.

Don't Forget About Bernd Eichinger

Amid all the Oscar hoopla the other day, the news of German film producer Bernd Eichinger’s death at the untimely age of 61 may have understandably fallen through the cracks for some. But it shouldn’t: Eichinger was one of those guys who had an old-school, hands-on approach to producing, especially when it came to some of his pet projects like Downfall, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and The Baader-Meinhof Complex. With a filmography that includes Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's Hitler: A Film from Germany, Wim Wenders’s Wrong Move, The Neverending Story, and the Resident Evil films, among many other lesser-known titles, his credits are a curious mix of acclaimed prestige epics, sleazy action franchises, and lots and lots of Europudding -- a career of De Laurentiisian contrasts. He had started, interestingly enough, by trying to organize funding for works made by his film school classmates Wenders, Edgar Reitz, and Alexander Kluge. There’s a very nice Der Spiegel obituary here.  Also, an interesting 2005 profile of him here.