October 5, 2007

Open Left

Screening Liberally Big Picture:

What to Rent This Weekend,

According to Rachel Maddow

by Rachel Maddow

This marks the first edition of a new semi-regular feature on the Screening Liberally Big Picture - What to Rent This weekend, according to various members of our movement. Our inaugural guest is Air America host and self-described 'cheerful liberal TV pundit' Rachel Maddow. - Josh

Suddenly (1954)

What kind of a government list will I find myself on if I recommend an obscure movie about presidential assassination? Speech-chilling lists be damned - I say you've got to see Suddenly, a 1954 film starring Frank Sinatra.

Loved the original Manchurian Candidate but thought that Sinatra kind of sucked as Ben Marco? Then Sinatra's portrayal of John Baron in Suddenly will patch that creative disappointment for you. Intrigued by Death of a President but wanted to know more about the crime itself than the crime's aftermath? Then Suddenly will scratch that itch, too.

It's a quick film - I think it's only an hour and fifteen minutes or so. That and the fact that it takes place mostly in one room makes me not understand why someone hasn't produced Suddenly for Broadway. Tense, psychopathic, riveting, full of ethical and strategic conflagrations - I loved it.

It was released in 1954, then withdrawn from circulation shortly after the assassination of JFK - rumor has it that Sinatra yanked it after learning that Lee Harvey Oswald had watched the film. Apparently they also let the film's copyright lapse, which means it's in the public domain, and you can actually watch the whole thing online! That's handy, since I don't think it's out on DVD.

One note - do yourself the favor of NOT reading the wikipedia entry about this film before you see it - it describes the complete plot and therefore spoils the twists and turns.

The Thin Man (1934)

Drinking liberally, indeed.

Living Liberally :: Screening Liberally Big Picture: What to Rent This Weekend, According to Rachel Maddow Nick and Nora Charles ought to be liberal icons. As decent and ethical as they are louche, these two characters can teach you more about drinking than Cocktail, Animal House, Strange Brew, and Leaving Las Vegas, combined. True, they're rich socialites. But they're rich socialite detectives with hearts of gold; Nick's still friends with all the crooks he's ever put behind bars. Nora never takes no for an answer, and she parties and works and fights alongside all the guys.

Even though they're mostly devoted to having a good time, they're never mean and they always win, by being smart and being right and by making allies along the way. They always nail the crooked bastard, even if they have to trick and canoodle a lot of other slightly-less-crooked bastards along the way. Nick and Nora are like the perfect hybrid offspring of Henry Waxman and Dorothy Parker.

The Thin Man series sprung from the phenomenal success of this first Thin Man movie. Don't expect nearly as much from any of the sequels, though some of them are funny enough to at least remind you of how good the first one is.

Sandbaggers (1978)

OK, so this isn't technically a movie, it's a TV series... but it's a really short TV series (only 20 episodes), and you can rent the DVDs of it now, so treat it like a movie, OK? OpsRoom.org is the geeked-out fansite for this show, if you want to get a taste of what it's like before you actually rent it.

Even better, you can ensure that you'll devour the TV series more ravenously than an Alaska republican devours pork if you treat yourself to Greg Rucka's graphic novel series, Queen & Country, before you see the Sandbaggers TV show. Rucka's graphic series was inspired by the show, and it's absolutely addicting. Even if you hate comic books, if you have even the tiniest jones for spy movies or political thrillers, just check it out. Blame me if you hate it.

I'm almost sad to hear that a movie adaptation is in the works for Q&C - it seems perverse, since Q&C itself was inspired by a TV show. But the TV show itself is great - indeed, in 2003, when the DVDs became available, the New York Times called it the "best spy series in television history".

Production values are laughable, the few action sequences are only one step up from the Batman TV series - blammo!, even very accomplished women spend an awful lot of time making coffee for men, the hero of the series is not exactly a liberal (though he's certainly no Jack Bauer dipshit, either) - but none of this detracts at all from how smart and nuanced the plotlines and the characters are. Day of the Jackal meets Jason Bourne meets All the President's Men.

Sandbaggers (and the graphic novel series it inspired), will make you think more critically about intelligence work, about global geostrategic bungling, and about just what a delicate job it is to make a government work well. Great stuff - unparalleled since, despite the horrendously overcrowding in the genre.

Link to Source