 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Apr 27, 2017 - 3:06 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
|
The documentary THE AGRONOMIST is the true story of Jean Dominique, a Haitian radio journalist and human rights activist. Dominique's death in 2000 was one in a series of depressing milestones in Haiti's history, but Jonathan Demme -- who had befriended him in the early 1990s -- was determined to make this documentary and show to a wide audience all the positive events from his amazing life.
Demme, who became friends with Dominique and filmed him during the journalist's exile in New York, interviews Dominique's widow, his siblings and others who place his life in the context of Haiti's turbulent existence. Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted in what he said was a U.S.-backed coup, is a presence in THE AGRONOMIST and is shown delivering fiery speeches. Only one person is shown really smiling at times, and it's Dominique, who says in a broadcast, "You cannot kill the truth."
Demme won two "Best Documentary" awards for the film-- at the Chicago International Film Festival and at the Gotham Independent Film Awards. The film's score, by Haitian musician Wyclef Jean and Jerry Duplessis, has not had a release.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Apr 27, 2017 - 3:45 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
|
The 2007 documentary JIMMY CARTER: MAN FROM PLAINS is a chronicle of the former president's late 2006 tour for his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Demme's camera follows Carter from city to city, home to Plains (population 635), visiting a Habitat for Humanity site in New Orleans, and talking on radio and TV with Teri Gross, Charlie Rose, Diane Rehm, Jay Leno, Larry King, Wolf Blitzer, and Tavis Smiley. He is seen conversing with Al Jazeera and Israeli pundits, discussing Palestine's plight and the policies of Israel. Critics speak as well. Between events, Carter talks about Camp David, recent travels, being married, speaking Spanish, and wisdom he learned from Rachel Clark, his nanny. A montage of speeches, awards, and travels ends the film.
Demme said: "I have always held President Carter in high esteem, so I leapt at the opportunity to do a documentary portrait of him. I chose the book tour of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid as the backbone of the documentary before reading the book. I knew that with the kind of subject matter promised by the title, there would probably be a lot of fireworks on that journey. I love how his un-self-censored behavior and attitudes help reveal how authentic and deep President Carter's faith-based motivation really is - and how terrifically complicated he is as a human being, with such an active sense of humor, an encyclopedic knowledge of a seeming endless array of subjects - and how super-sensitive yet bold, feisty and obstinate he can be at times - and that he reveals how a devoted, adoring husband like him fits so organically with the fellow who "loves the ladies." Every time I see this film, President Carter makes me believe that - as frightening and appalling as so many things are in the world today - that there is nevertheless a very real possibility for peace and better lives for future generations if we strive to somehow get along and if we aspire to defining the upside of being human."
The film's score, by Djamel Ben Yelles and Alejandro Escovedo, was released on a Milan CD.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
May 7, 2017 - 4:52 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Rozsaphile
(Member)
|
LAST EMBRACE was a 1979 thriller in which a CIA agent (Roy Scheider), who has seen his wife assassinated, believes that he is to be next. The project originated with producers Michael Taylor and Dan Wigutow, executives at United Artists, when they decided to buy the screen rights to a recent novel by journalist Murray Teigh Bloom, titled The 13th Man (1977). The rights sold for $90,000. Once the producers optioned the property, they left United Artists and formed their own production company, designating LAST EMBRACE as the inaugural project. . . .
After a year of working on the screenplay with writer David Shaber, the producers approached Jonathan Demme to direct based on his previous films, particularly, CITIZENS BAND, which had received enthusiastic reviews. . . .The filmmakers shot sequences on Amtrak’s "Rainbow" line during the eight-hour train journey to Niagara Falls, occupying three passenger cars.
There was an interview with Demme where he blamed the film's failure on studio pressure. He said the script wasn't satisfactory, but they were forced to go ahead because Roy Scheider had another commitment. Of course the number of films shot without a finished script is legion. It's a hell of a way to run a business. Sometimes things works out for the best (CASABLANCA, BEN-HUR). More often not.
As for the train sequence, I believe that the Scheider and Levine were on the way to Princeton. Scheider and Margolin travel to Niagara Falls by car.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As for the train sequence, I believe that Scheider and Levene were on the way to Princeton. Scheider and Margolin travel to Niagara Falls by car.
I don't know what scenes were filmed on the train, only that a studio press release said that filming was done en-route on the train that the company took from New York City to Niagara Falls.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
May 10, 2017 - 10:59 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Ralph
(Member)
|
“Melvin and Howard” and “Married to the Mob” are my favs from Demme. And I thought Denzel saved “Philadelphia” by providing just the right edge. If things seemed to start going downhill for Demme in “The Manchurian Candidate,” it’s not Denzel’s fault so much as the miscast Meryl who said, “I agreed to do the part because I actually get a chance to be funny.” Huh? But I’d argue Demme started his fall with another famous personality.
In “Beloved,” Morrison moves beyond the simplicity of Alice Walker and attempts to elevate tragedy to Greek mythology by lifting too much from Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice” and Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s magic realism. Turning the mournfulness into black legerdemain, Morrison goes all out for character and reader suffering, which the Pulitzer and Nobel prize committees love. Oprah, the author’s most vocal advocate, told us for well over a decade how she loved “Beloved” too, and, wouldn’t you know it, had to make it into a movie. She’s its biggest mistake: every year she waited to film this depressing tale—to have “her baby,” as she puts it—increased the inevitability that her own deserved celebrity would overshadow the role of the infanticide mother. It isn’t enough that she’s uglified herself, or brought forth a semi-convincing Negroid accent, or kept her voice (as well as the voices of all the others) so g.d. hush-toned. No matter how appreciative and receptive the targeted audience, we’re still watching TV’s spiritual Ann Landers attempting to convince us that she’s got the internal power to evoke the genuine heartbreak of the unspeakable. Intentions unquestionable, Oprah needed to be told no; but who’d dare say that to America’s most beloved black?
Certainly not Demme, a director temperamentally unsuited for reverential myth. Whose cockamamie idea is this movie’s close-up perspective—that when Oprah and Danny Glover are speaking to each other, they’re talking directly into the camera, force-feeding us on the private hell of their tormented pasts? There’s not much we can read into Oprah’s face, except that she’s trying to bring dense respectfulness and coming up woefully short. Ironically, while there’s a forgiveness built in to the character Beloved because it’s impossible to play, Thandie Newton, a beautiful version of Margaret Avery, manages to get some of us into a most unforgiving mood. Demme permits her excess effects: when she’s eating, we accept her first and maybe the second mouth stuffing, but after that we’re repulsed by the gratuitous continuation. (The only assets coming to brief life are Kimberly Elise as Denver, Glover’s thighs and buttocks carrying inside them the whole history of black genetics, and Tak Fujimoto doing some lovely shots of light through trees and windows.) No one seeing this movie will wonder why it didn’t make money; had it been presented as a TV special, we’d probably be congratulating our “tolerant” selves while watching it win awards Spielberg was supposedly denied for “The Color Purple.” His losses are justified, and, having hoped otherwise, so are Oprah’s and Demme’s: they conjured a drooling jeremiad beyond their limits, insufferably running for 172 minutes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
