Start the day with "Stormy Weather," a swiftly paced jazz-bedecked
black-and-white all-black musical from 1943 starring a young, gorgeous Lena
Horne, hip harmonic hoofer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Cab Calloway
and Fats Waller, who gets in the line, "I was born bawlin' and I gonna
ball my whole life." Good golly, Miz Molly - they snuck some racy
dialogue by in those days.
Waller also got good comic mileage out of the expression "One never
knows, do one?" (Although the supremely talented Mr. Waller knew exactly
what he was saying, I am reminded of Fran Lebowitz's crack about an all-black
Shakespeare production of "As You Likes It.") The 77-minute extravaganza
leads up to a spectacular dance number in which two rubber-boned young men
in tails combine the underlying theory of the hurdles with the overwhelming
bravado of the splits with such ferocious landings that your crotch hurts
just watching. Any movie that can give me sympathy pains in the groin region
53 years after it was made (not to mention that I'm a girl) is pretty hot
stuff.
The film is the first of two today in the Jazz in the Movies retrospective,
the second being a likable 1993 pic called "Lush Life" in which
Jeff Goldblum and Forest Whitaker play session musicians and best friends
in contemporary NYC.
Today's competition offering - a world premiere that's also headed to the
Toronto film festival - is "The Substance of Fire" in which Ron
Rifkin reprises his Obie- and Drama Desk-award winning performance as a
tyrannical NY publisher whose three grown children are a distant second
in his affections after rare first editions. I never had the pleasure of
seeing Jon Robin Baitz's much-praised play, but the film version is as lukewarm
as it is well-intentioned. Good performances by Tony Goldwin, Timothy Hutton
and Sarah Jessica Parker aren't enough to make the story of this elite dysfunctional
family fly.
If you come to Deauville and the wind off the English Channel isn't too
ferocious, try the 18-hole miniature golf course opposite the Hotel Normandy.
It's pleasantly dinky and part of the course is downwind from the pony
stables, which gives one the odd impression of being immersed in nature
while trying to get a dimpled little golfball to hew to one's will across
concrete and red dirt mini-fairways.
Following last night's tribute to prolific producer Arnon Milchan (before
the French premiere of "A Time to Kill") was this evening's sequel
tribute to Arnon Milchan before the world premiere of "Bogus."
Norman Jewison's "Bogus", which stars Gerard Depardieu and Whoopi
Goldberg, is supposed to make single-parent or orphaned children feel better
about themselves but its forced and insipid narrative made this adult cranky
and irritable. After the ever so aptly named "Bogus" I felt like
taking a machete to my inner child.
The evening was capped by splendid fireworks over the beach. The French
are famous for wine and food, fashion and perfume, but one area in which
they always, always excel is fireworks displays. The French term for one
who designs and ignites fireworks is "feux d'artificier", which
translates as guy who does sleight-of-hand with fire. Their handiwork tonight
pleased me infinitely more than anything in "The Substance of Fire".
I watched the bursts of colored gunpowder from my room on the 3rd floor
of the Normandy. When the last ka-boom had echoed out over the water, I
heard distinct American voices below. If I'm not mistaken, it was a man
and a woman accompanying the aforementioned Ron Rifkin. "They really
know how to do glitz and glamour here" the other man said. "I
never feel this way in Hollywood."
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