Folks, last week was overstuffed with new releases, this week is a bit of a dry spell.  One of the bigger releases this week is the Joel Surnow-produced miniseries The Kennedys has been the subject of a great deal of controversy, and the trouble it had getting onto TV sets has been covered extensively by conservative blogs.

Crackerjack documentarian Robert Greenwald (who also directed such cinematic masterpieces as Xanadu) spearheaded the effort to keep The History Channel from airing the miniseries by starting a petition at a web site called Stop Kennedy Smears.  This, along with the efforts of the Kennedy family, got the miniseries dropped from The History Channel, eventually landing it on the ReelzChannel.  Barry Pepper’s portrayal of Bobby Kennedy won the actor an Emmy at the awards ceremony over the weekend.

One must wonder, what is more damaging to the Kennedy legacy: a mini-series drama, or the recently released tapes in which Jackie-O calls Martin Luther King  a “phony” and talks about affairs and sex parties?  Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of those movies that is probably better known as a poster than as a movie, thanks to the dorm rooms of college girls everywhere.  While Blake Edwards was a Hell of a director, I don’t think a lot of his movies have aged well, and this is one of them. Funnily enough, my first exposure to the movie itself was in the biopic Dragon, in which the scenes with Mickey Rooney offended the shit out of Bruce Lee, and his embarrassed wife-to-be escorted him out of the theater.

Available on Blu-ray.

Other Noteworthy Releases

Bridesmaids: This Kristen Wiig-scripted film directed by the great Paul Feig (the man behind Freaks & Geeks) was the sleeper comedy of the summer.  Judd Apatow’s productions have caught a lot of flak for being overly male-driven, giving guys the cool, funny roles while giving the nagging, obnoxious roles to women.  Kristen Wiig is by far the funniest actress that works with Apatow’s camp, so giving her a vehicle in response to this criticism makes perfect sense.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Dumbo: I remember primarily two things from Dumbo: an acid tab of a dream sequences that dwarfs the cemetery scene in Easy Rider in the drugged-out crazy department, as well as Disney’s racial sensitivity shown in the form of the musical number with the crows.  John Nolte did an excellent write-up of the Blu-ray.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD.

The Others: This eerie ghost story starring Nicole Kidman has the quiet, restrained suspense of an old Val Lewton production.  Though it was often compared to The Sixth Sense, it’s far less sensational than what M. Night Shyamalan was doing at the time.

Available on Blu-ray.

Les cousins & Le beau Serge: French New Wave auteur Claude Charbol has two films coming separately to Criterion this week.

Les cousins is available on Blu-ray and DVD.
Le beau Serge is available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Dead Heat: Dead Heat, a zombie buddy cop movie starring Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo, is a semi-guilty pleasure of mine.  I feel slightly guilty because it’s not a good movie, but I have a lot of fun with it.  The thing is, not a ton of people have seen it.  So if you put it on a guilty pleasures list, people say “What’s that?” instead of “What awful taste you have!” as their monocle proceeds to pop out of their eye and shatters on the pavement.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD.

The Stuff: The Larry Cohen cult classic gets a DVD re-release, it’s not my favorite in Cohen’s canon of entertaining B-movies, but this one’s special because it features an entertaining performance from Big Hollywood’s Michael Moriarty.  It’s pleasing to see the distributor has wisely kept the delicious original poster in tact.

Available on DVD.

Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer – The Complete Series: Pulp mystery fans and noir nuts, go crazy!

Available on DVD.

NY Post’s Lou Lumenick:

A petition is circulating to stop an outdoor screening of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” next month at a Brooklyn Park. The beloved romantic dramedy starring Audrey Hepburn, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in October, has long been considered problematic by many because of the bucktoothed, splenetic and bumbling Japanese character played by Mickey Rooney — an ethnic stereotype that was outdated even in 1961, and seems much more offensive than funny today.

A planned outdoor screening in Sacramento in 2008 was replaced by “Ratatouille” after a public outcry.

You do know this is just the beginning with these neo-fascists, right? After “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” they’ll go after “Gone With the Wind” and all the rest. And they and their ilk won’t stop until every film that offends everyone except white, Christian male conservatives disappears entirely — just like “Song of the South” has.

It may take years, decades or even generations, but the Left never stops. Never ever stops.

Orwell called this memory-holing.

Mickey Rooney’s Japanese character in “Breakfast” is way too over-the-top to ever be considered funny (I also think the movie is overrated in general), but if we’re going to start banning and making lists of “offensive” characterizations, I’d like to start with every portrayal of a Caucasian Eddie Murphy has ever done. And what about Archie Bunker? Talk about ethnic stereotyping.

See how that works?

Keep in mind that “offensive” has nothing to do with this attempted purge. If that were the case, these same petitioners would be demanding museums throughout Manhattan remove whatever might offend Christians and Republicans. Maybe they’re doing that. My money’s on not.

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

#1 – JAWS
I saw this all-time classic as a 9-year-old on opening day, and saw it a second time at the Saturday matinee. To this day, I am afraid to swim in the ocean. That shark is always there in my imagination. The poster is literal, but haunting.

#2 – CHINATOWN
This is truly a work of art. The smoke shrouding the ultimate mystery of Evelyn Mulwray, and the stylized version of Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson), the hard-boiled detective who unravels it all.

#3 – THE DARK KNIGHT
Impossible to separate Heath Ledger’s death from his remarkable interpretation of The Joker. This is an amazing image. In 30 years, I will look at this poster and immediately feel the impact of Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece.

#4 – BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
You can almost hear Audrey Hepburn warbling “Moon River” at the sight of this iconic poster. Every woman wanted to be her and every man wanted to be with her.

#5 – SECRETARY
The 2002 cult classic about a sadomasochistic relationship between a demanding lawyer (James Spader) and a submissive secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The movie is an under-appreciated gem. The poster may be even better.

#6 – UNFORGIVEN
This is my favorite poster made for Clint Eastwood’s masterful revisionist Western. Simple. Classic. Tells you everything you need to know about Clint’s Bill Munny character.

#7 – AMERICAN BEAUTY
A beautiful image that suggests the perversity that lies just beneath the surface of the suburban neighborhood created by screenwriter Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes.

#8 – SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
“You will let me know when those lambs stop screaming, won’t you?” You can almost hear Dr. Hannibal Lecter say it. The Death’s-head moth “lodged” in Clarice Starling’s throat. Brilliant image.

#9 – VERTIGO
An ode to acrophobia as Detective Scottie Ferguson (as played by Jimmy Stewart) battles his fear of heights while becoming obsessed with Madeleine Elster (the stunning Kim Novak). This kaleidoscopic design immediately brings the strains of Bernard Hermann’s amazing score into my head.

#10 – PULP FICTION
Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in all her swagger. Yes, she does wind up with a sharpie circle on her chest and a shot of adrenaline, but the whole gritty movie is captured with this image.

HONORABLE MENTION
- in no particular order -
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
SWEENEY TODD
MEAN STREETS
AMADEUS
GONE WITH THE WIND
METROPOLIS
KING KONG (1939 Fay Wray version)
CLOVERFIELD
THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

But there are others who, more often than not, get overlooked while far too much praise is lavished on actors and directors.  I refer to the men who compose musical scores for dramatic films.  Although there have been great scores composed for mediocre movies, there has very rarely ever been a great movie that didn’t have a great score. An example of the difference a fine score can make was “Brian’s Song,” a TV movie that would have drowned in its own bathos and banalities if Michel Legrand’s music hadn’t saved it from itself. 

Understand, I’m not referring to movie musicals filled to the brim with catchy tunes, and I’m not even referring to non-musicals whose scores pretty much consist of minor variations on a nice song written for the movie.  Those would include the likes of “Picnic,” “High Noon,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Laura,” while “Casablanca” and “The Grapes of Wrath” got a lot of mileage out of old standards.  Neither would they include movies that simply utilize a pre-existing classical or semi-classical piece, such as “Brief Encounter,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “The Story of Three Loves” or “The Horse’s Mouth,” which owed far more to such people as Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, than to those hired to adapt their music for the screen. 

Unlike some people, I don’t subscribe to the belief that to be successful, a dramatic score should be so unobtrusive as to be virtually unnoticeable.  To me, that makes about as much sense as suggesting that the cinematography or the dialogue or the costumes and scenery, should go unnoticed.  It is the music, after all, that heightens the emotions, helps dictate the pace of the movie and, as much as any other single factor, cues our responses.  If you ever had to sit through a movie that gave short shrift to its music or was saddled with an inappropriate score, I can guarantee you will have found it very hard sledding, even if you weren’t fully conscious of what the problem was. 

So, at this time, I’d like to pay tribute to the talented men who have done so much to make the great movies even greater and the not-so-great movies bearable. Narrowing my list down to my 25 favorite scores means some of the finest of the breed are not represented.  They include John Williams, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Dimitri Tiomkin, Nino Rota, William Walton, Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa, Victor Young, and Alex North. 

In alphabetical order, then, they are: “A Place in the Sun,” “Cinema Paradiso,” “Citizen Kane,” “East of Eden,” “Force of Evil,” “Forever Amber,” “Jezebel,” “Of Mice and Men,” “On the Waterfront,” “Our Town,” “Raintree County,” “Sweet Smell of Success,” “The Bad and the Beautiful,” “The Best Years of Our Lives,” “The Big Country,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Man With the Golden Arm,” “The Natural,” “The Third Man,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The Untouchables,” “Things to Come,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” and “Witness.”  If I added three more for good measure, they would probably be Allan Gray’s haunting “Stairway to Heaven,” John Barry’s “Somewhere in Time” and Richard Addinsell’s “Suicide Squadron,” which gave the world “The Warsaw Concerto.” 

Sixteen composers turned out those 25 scores.  Franz Waxman, Leonard Rosenman, Jerome Moross, Bernard Herrmann, John Green, Hugo Friedhofer, Randy Newman, Maurice Jarre, Arthur Bliss, Anton Karas, and Leonard Bernstein, each scored one of them.  Aaron Copland, Ennio Morricone, and Max Steiner each scored two.  David Raksin scored three, and the remarkable Elmer Bernstein scored five! 

When it is done really well, a dramatic score can evoke a specific moment in a movie in much the same way that a certain scent can evoke a time, a place or a person.  

So, the next time you go to the movies, and quickly discover that the critics have conned you once again, you could try shutting your eyes and listening to the music.  You just might discover what you’ve been missing.