West Side Story 5/29/2023

I just bought the DVD of the musical "West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)" and it was and it was outstanding.

West Side Story is a 2021 American musical romantic drama film directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Tony Kushner.  It is the second feature-length adaptation of the 1957 stage musical of the same name.  It stars Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler in her film debut with Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, and Rita Moreno in supporting roles.  Moreno, who starred in the 1961 film adaptation, also served as an executive producer alongside Kushner.  The film features music composed by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

The film entered development in 2014 at 20th Century Fox; Kushner began writing the screenplay in 2017.  In January 2018, Spielberg was hired and casting began that September.  Justin Peck choreographed the dance sequences.  Principal photography occurred in New York and New Jersey; filming began in July 2019 and ran for two months.

West Side Story had its world premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater in New York City on November 29, 2021, three days after Sondheim's death.  The film was later theatrically distributed by 20th Century Studios in the United States on December 10, after being delayed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  The film received critical acclaim with praise for the performances of the cast, Spielberg's direction, and the cinematography, with some critics deeming it superior to the 1961 film.  It was named one of the top ten films of 2021 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute.  The film grossed $76 million against a $100 million production budget.  Among its multiple awards and nominations, it received seven nominations at the 94th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, with DeBose winning Best Supporting Actress.  It also received four nominations at the 79th Golden Globe Awards, winning three, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical for Zegler, and Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for DeBose.

In 1957, the Jets are a gang of white youths that fight the Puerto Rican Sharks for control of San Juan Hill on Manhattan's Upper West Side.  Officer Krupke and Lieutenant Schrank break up a skirmish, telling the gangs that their conflict is pointless since the neighborhood will soon be demolished to make way for Lincoln Center.  The gangs are too proud to care, and Jet leader Riff proposes a "rumble" (fight) between the two gangs.  He approaches his friend Tony, who is on parole, for help.  Tony refuses, wishing to turn over a new leaf with the help of Valentina, the Puerto Rican owner of Doc's general store.  Meanwhile, Maria, Shark leader Bernardo's sister, is betrothed to his friend Chino, but yearns for independence.  At a neighborhood dance, Tony and Maria meet and fall in love, angering Bernardo, who agrees to Riff's terms for a rumble if Tony attends.  Tony tells Maria of his love and the couple meets on her fire escape, promising to see each other the next day.  - Wikipedia

I remember seeing the earlier version somewhere, and I had forgotten that the story is a Tragedy, because it's a story about prejudice, the tragic reliance on violence to solve the goal of misplaced pride against the love between a boy (Tony, Jets) and girl (Maria, Sharks).

This version was otherwise enjoyable.

 

Trailer

 

MUSIC - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

By:  Danish National Symphony and Concert Choir
Soprano:  Christine Nonbo Andersen
I love both the movie and the music.  Was surprised to find this version of the theme.

STAR WARS - The Droids

For us Star Wars lovers, the DROIDS!



And, YES I just ordered R2-D2 and BB-8 Droids via Amazon.

STAR WARS - May the Force be With Her

SYRIA - 'The White Helmets' Oscar Winning Documentary Short

"Out of Syria's devastation, 'The White Helmets' offer moments of hope" PBS NewsHour 2/23/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The daily destruction of Syria's civil war is at once shocking and now strangely familiar.  The Oscar-nominated documentary short “The White Helmets” aims to get beyond the numbness of the conflict by showing real first responders working to rescue victims from the ongoing assault on cities like Aleppo.  Jeffrey Brown talks with the film's director and producer.

ORLANDO VON EINSIEDEL, Director, “The White Helmets”:  What we found most extraordinary was who the rescue workers were, this group of everyday Syrian civilians who had decided not to pick up a gun, had decided not to leave Syria, and instead had decided to stay and every day risk their lives to save their fellow citizens.

And they’re builders, tailors, bakers, just normal people.  They’re truly real-life heroes.

BEYOND THE RED CARPET - "A United Kingdom"

"Why actor David Oyelowo made sure this love story became a movie" PBS NewsHour 2/17/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In "A United Kingdom," a prince from southern Africa proposes to a British woman in late 1940s London.  Not only does race make the relationship fraught, but their marriage will have international consequences.  Jeffrey Brown sits down with actor and producer David Oyelowo to discuss the true, historical love story that got caught up in Colonial-era politics.

DAVID OYELOWO, Actor:  I'm not asking for an answer this very second.  All I ask of you is that you go away and think about it.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  In 1947 London, Seretse Khama, played by David Oyelowo, proposes to Ruth Williams, played by actress Rosamund Pike.

ROSAMUND PIKE, Actress:  I know what you're asking.  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Their races make the relationship fraught.  But there's more:  He is a prince in his tribe in Southern Africa expected to return to lead his people, and their marriage will have international consequences.

“A United Kingdom” is based on a true story, and it was Oyelowo who first learned of it in a book titled “Color Bar” by Susan Williams.  More than just the film's star, he was the producer who brought director Amma Asante and others into the project.

DAVID OYELOWO:  What was indisputable to me was the power of the love between these two people, and it was that very thing that helped them overcome so many of these insurmountable obstacles and odds that they faced.

And, you know, as someone who is a real believer in love myself, and I mean, love in the truest sense, not movie love.  I'm talking about the unglamorous stuff of sacrifice, of courage.

JEFFREY BROWN:  I must say this film has movie love, because it's love at first sight almost, right?

DAVID OYELOWO:  But, you see, the thing about that is that we even have a name for it, the meet-cute.  You know, we have turned it into something that is so fantastical and so inaccessible that it has become fairy tale-like.

But, actually, what can happen — it doesn't happen every day, admittedly — is that two people see beyond their race, see beyond their cultural differences and their national differences.  And they just — two souls meet.

We should be fighting for equality.  That is where we should be focusing our minds, not on the wife I have chosen, who means you no harm.

"A United Kingdom" Official Trailer #1 (2016)

AT THE MOVIES - "Hidden Figures"

"‘Hidden Figures' brings NASA's overlooked black pioneers to light" PBS NewsHour 1/5/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  “Hidden Figures” is a story about reaching for the stars while fighting racial and gender barriers.  The new movie follows the careers of three black women who worked at NASA's Langley headquarters in Virginia during the 1950s and ‘60s to help launch the first American into space.  Long overlooked, their story is finally being told.  Jeffrey Brown reports.

ALISON STEWART (NewsHour):  A movie opening widely this weekend tells a little known piece of history about the history of the early days of spaceflight and the crucial role played behind the scenes by African-American women who acted as mathematicians and engineers.

The film is called “Hidden Figures.” It's up for a number of honors during this awards season, including two Golden Globes on Sunday night.

Jeffrey Brown has a look at the film and that history.

ACTOR:  You have identification on you?

TARAJI P.  HENSON, “Katherine Johnson”:  We're just on our way to work.

OCTAVIA SPENCER, “Dorothy Vaughan”:  At NASA, sir.

ACTOR:  I had no idea they hired....

OCTAVIA SPENCER:  There are quite a few women working in the space program.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  It's a story about an agency that reached for the stars, but was mired in racial and gender barriers still prevalent on the ground.

“Hidden Figures” is based on the real-life stories of three black woman who worked in mostly segregated quarters at NASA's Langley Center in Virginia in the 1950s and '60s.

The film focuses on efforts to launch the first American, the late John Glenn, into orbit.

ACTOR:  Let me ask you, if you were a white male, would you wish to be an engineer?

JANELLE MONAE, “Mary Jackson”:  I wouldn't have to.  I would already be one.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Janelle Monae, the singer-turned-actress, plays Mary Jackson, struggling to get her license as an engineer.  Like the others involved, this history was new to Monae.

JANELLE MONAE:  I was excited.  I said, wow, we're going to finally be celebrating women not just for their beauty, but for their brilliance.  And I got excited.  And then once I found out that they indeed were part of the space program at NASA, it became a personal responsibility to me to make sure that no young girl, or no human being, no American, you know, went through life not knowing of these true American heroes.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Mary Jackson would spend 34 years at NASA and help many who followed.

JANELLE MONAE:  She found out that the women and minorities were being paid significantly less than their male white counterparts.  And she, along with a couple of other colleagues, took this to NASA.  And, you know, NASA being the progressive place and the place that listened, she helped advance more women's careers and more minorities' careers in STEM at NASA during that time.

So, I thought that was just so remarkable, and I'm so honored to play such a woman.

AT THE MOVIES - "Moonlight"

"In 1980s Miami, the triple crisis of growing up black, gay, and poor" PBS NewsHour 11/4/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Based on a true story, the new movie “Moonlight” follows Chiron, a boy growing up black, gay and poor in 1980s Miami.  The film documents Chiron's identity struggle in three acts, featuring a different actor for each.  It's a landscape director Barry Jenkins knows well -- he grew up in the same neighborhood around that time.  Jeffrey Brown speaks with Jenkins and screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney.

Editor's Note:  In our segment, Tarell Alvin McCraney was misidentified as the screenwriter.  McCraney created the story.  Barry Jenkins wrote the screenplay in addition to directing the film.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  A new movie opening this weekend is being widely hailed for its nuanced storytelling about sexual identity, race and upbringing.

Jeffrey Brown spoke with the filmmakers of “Moonlight.”

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  It's a life we don't often see portrayed in commercial films, a coming-of-age tale of love and anguish, a movie that's garnered critical acclaim for the story it tells and the beauty and power of its telling.

In “Moonlight,” we watch Chiron growing up in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami as the crack epidemic is taking hold in the 1980s.  He is young, poor, black, and coming to terms with being gay, quietly and painfully wrestling with these identities.

The story is based on the life of Tarell Alvin McCraney, who first wrote it as a play and then the screenplay for the new film.

TARELL ALVIN MCCRANEY, Playwright, “Moonlight”:  It's a story that I still feel like I have to tell, but also that I have to explore and to understand.

I mean, it's a story rooted in events in my own life that I'm trying to make sense of and make sense of the world out of.  And I think, for me, I always am interested in trying to get a group of people to have the same conversation.

BARRY JENKINS, Director, “Moonlight”:  So, Tarell and I grew up blocks from one another.

AT THE MOVIES - "Rogue One" a Star Wars Story

Need I say, I am a big fan of the Star Wars series.

AT THE MOVIES - For Harry Potter Fans from J.K. Rowling

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Warner Brothers


WOW!

WESTWORLD - Gets an Upgrade

1973 starring Yul Brynner



HBO's 2016 Westworld series by Michael Crichton
Starring Anthony Hopkins

AT THE MOVIES - Peaky Blinders

PEAKY BLINDERS:  This is a BBC TV series that I have come to love.  Have Seasons 1 & 2 on DVD and Season 3 is coming soon.

Peaky Blinders is a gangster family epic set in Birmingham, England, in 1919, just after the First World War.  The story centers on the Peaky Blinders gang and their ambitious and highly dangerous boss Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy).  The gang comes to the attention of Chief Inspector Chester Campbell (played by Sam Neill, Jurassic Park fame), a detective in the Royal Irish Constabulary sent over from Belfast (where he'd been sent to clean up the city of the IRA, gangs, and common criminals).  Winston Churchill (played by Andy Nyman in series 1 and Richard McCabe in series 2) charged him with suppressing disorder and uprising in Birmingham and recover a stolen cache of arms meant to be shipped to Libya.

The series is based on a 'true' criminal gang.




Title Song:

FILM - At the Movies, "Sneakers"

Got the DVD "Sneakers."

It's really, really good, and note the cast..... WOW!

Cast

• Robert Redford as Martin Bishop/Martin Brice
• Ben Kingsley as Cosmo
• Sidney Poitier as Donald Crease
• David Strathairn as Irwin "Whistler" Emery
• Dan Aykroyd as Darren "Mother" Roskow
• River Phoenix as Carl Arbogast
• Mary McDonnell as Liz
• Stephen Tobolowsky as Werner Brandes
• Timothy Busfield as Dick Gordon
• Eddie Jones as Buddy Wallace
• George Hearn as Gregor
• Donal Logue as Dr. Gunter Janek
• Lee Garlington as Dr. Elena Rhyzkov
• James Earl Jones as NSA Agent Bernard Abbott

ARTS - At the Oscars 2016

"‘The Revenant,' ‘Mad Max' win big at Oscars" by Corinne Segal, PBS NewsHour 2/28/2016

Leonardo DiCaprio and Alejandro G. Inarritu pose with their Oscars earned for “The Revenant.” Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters

Leonardo DiCaprio took home his first Oscar Sunday for his role in “The Revenant” after five previous nominations.

DiCaprio used his acceptance speech to call for action on climate change.  “Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to work collectively together to stop procrastinating,” he said.

“The Revenant” director Alejandro González Iñárritu also took home the award for Best Director, his second year in a row to win the award after winning last year for “Birdman.”  He is the first director in 65 years to win the Best Director award two years in a row.

“Mad Max: Fury Road,” the story of a road warrior fighting to survive in a dystopian wasteland, took home most of the 10 awards for which it was nominated.  George Miller's fourth installment of the “Mad Max” franchise won a large portion of the production awards, including Best Production Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.

“Spotlight,” a movie about the Boston Globe's investigation of sex abuse within the Catholic Church,” won for Best Picture in a field packed with eight nominees.

In between the award presentations, Host Chris Rock kept the focus on the Oscars' lack of diversity, which drew criticism after no non-white actors were nominated in the acting categories last month.  In his opening monologue, he called the ceremony the “White People's Choice Awards” and called for more opportunities for black actors.  “We want black actors to get the same opportunities as white actors,” he said.

Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy, echoed that message in a statement mid-ceremony.  “Everyone in the Hollywood community has a role to play in bringing in the vital changes the industry needs so we can accurately reflect the world today,” she said.

Read the full list of winners in bold below:

Best Picture
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight

Best Director
Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Adam McKay, The Big Short
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Lenny Abrahamson, Room

Best Actor
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Matt Damon, The Martian

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Best Supporting Actress
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight

Best Adapted Screenplay
Drew Goddard, The Martian
Nick Hornby, Brooklyn
Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, The Big Short
Phyllis Nagy, Carol
Emma Donoghue, Room

Best Original Screenplay
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight
Matt Charman, Joel & Ethan Coen, Bridge of Spies
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie del Carmin Inside Out
Alex Garland, Ex Machina
Andrea Berloff, Jonathan Herman, S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus, Andrea Berloff, Straight Outta Compton

Best Foreign Language Film
Son of Saul (Hungary)
Mustang (France)
A War (Denmark)
Embrace the Serpent (Colombia)
Theeb (Jordan)

Best Documentary Feature
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom

Best Animated Feature
Inside Out
Anomalisa
Shaun of the Sheep
When Marnie Was There
Boy and the World

Best Film Editing
Hank Corwin, The Big Short
Jason Ballantine and Margaret Sixel, Mad Max: Fury Road
Stephen Mirrione, The Revenant
Tom McArdle, Spotlight
Maryann Brandon, Mary Jo Markey, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Original Song
“Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey
Music and Lyric by Abel Tesfaye, Ahmad Balshe, Jason Daheala Quenneville and Stephan Moccio
“Manta Ray” from Racing Extinction
Music by J. Ralph and Lyric by Antony Hegarty
“Simple Song #3” from Youth
Music and Lyric by David Lang
“Til It Happens To You” from The Hunting Ground
Music and Lyric by Diane Warren and Lady Gaga
“Writing's On The Wall” from Spectre
Music and Lyric by Jimmy Napes and Sam Smith

Best Original Score
The Hateful Eight
Carol
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Bridge of Spies

Best Cinematography
Emmanuel Lubezki, The Revenant
Edward Lachman, Carol
Robert Richardson, The Hateful Eight
Roger Deakins, Sicario
John Seale, Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Costume Design
Sandy Powell, Carol
Sandy Powell, Cinderella
Paco Delgado, The Danish Girl
Jenny Beavan, Mad Max: Fury Road
Jacqueline West, The Revenant

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared

Best Production Design
Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Sound Editing
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Sound Mixing
Benjamin A. Burtt, Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom, Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Ben Osmo, Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff, Mad Max: Fury Road
Mac Ruth, Paul Massey, Mark Taylor, The Martian
Chris Duesterdiek, Frank A. Montaño, Jon Taylor, Randy Thom, The Revenant
Drew Kunin, Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom, Bridge of Spies

Best Visual Effects
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Short Film, Live Action
Basil Khalil and Eric Dupont, Ave Maria (Incognito Films)
Henry Hughes, Day One (American Film Institute)
Jamie Donoughue, Shok (Eagle Eye Films)
Benjamin Cleary, Stutterer (Bare Golly Films)
Everything Will Be Okay

Best Short Film, Animated
Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay's Super Team
We Can't Live Without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow Tomorrow

Best Documentary, Short Subject
Body Team 12, David Darg and Bryn Mooser
Chau, beyond the Lines, Courtney Marsh and Jerry Franck
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, Adam Benzine
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
Last Day of Freedom, Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman

JOURNALISM - "Spotlight" Gets It Right

"‘Spotlight' Gets Investigative Journalism Right" by Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica 2/25/2016

There's a moment in almost every movie when people in the audience who really know the line of work depicted on screen cry out in frustration and say:  “Oh, come on!”  “Absurd.”  “Never happens.”

Over the decades, Hollywood screenwriters have taken liberties with every imaginable profession and craft, from doctors to lawyers to spies to police detectives.  Rocky Balboa survives punches that would decapitate an ordinary boxer.  The car chases in 'The Bourne Identity' defy physics.  John McClane, the hard-boiled cop in the 'Die Hard' series, displays a supernatural ability to evade bullets.

Journalism movies have had their share of utterly improbable moments.  In the 1994 film “The Paper,” the city editor of a New York City tabloid gets into a fist fight with his female boss as he tries to stop the presses.  (Not a great career move.)  More recently, the first season of HBO's television series 'The Newsroom' showed a producer landing a series of astounding scoops in the first hours after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon.  The reporter's information came from miraculously well-placed sources – a sister who worked at Halliburton and a close friend who happened to be a junior BP executive attending all the key crisis meetings.

All of this makes “Spotlight,” the film based on the Boston Globe's investigation of the Catholic Church, a remarkable achievement.  The movie, which has been nominated for six Academy Awards including best picture, vividly captures the mix of frustration, drudgery and excitement that goes into every great investigative story.  Where liberties were taken, and there were a few, they are in line with the realities of the news business.

One of the most credible aspects of the movie is the cluelessness with which the reporters begin their quest.  As is often the case, the Globe's group of reporters, known as the “Spotlight” Team, have no idea of the size and scope of what they're trying to examine.  At first, they stumble around, lacking the most basic information about how the church bureaucracy worked.

The notion of pedophile priests was not new.  Newspapers from Dallas to Portland had done deeply reported stories on individual cases.  Boston itself had just witnessed the criminal trial of a particularly notorious priest, Father John J. Geoghan.  Initially, senior editors at the Globe are not even persuaded there was a story worth chasing.

As the film briefly acknowledges, the Globe was behind the Boston Phoenix, a respected alternative weekly, in covering the subject for local readers.  Kristen Lombardi, a reporter for the Phoenix, had already written a series of stories implicating Cardinal Bernard Law, the leader of Boston's archdiocese, in allowing Geoghan to remain in daily contact with children for three decades.

“Spotlight” opens with the arrival of Marty Baron, a veteran journalist who took over at the Globe after a stint as editor of the Miami Herald.  As investigative reporters know well, Florida is a reporters' paradise, lousy with graft, corruption and colorful characters.  The state's public records laws are decisively tilted toward openness.  When a Globe columnist covering the Geoghan trial wrote that “the truth may never be known,” Baron sat down with the head of the “Spotlight” team, Walter “Robby” Robinson, and asked him to take a fresh look at the issue.

The editor suggested filing a lawsuit to force release of records the Catholic Church had submitted under court seal.  Such suits were unheard of in Massachusetts.  Liev Schreiber, the actor who portrays Baron, captures the true life editor's white-hot focus and intensity, so much so that long-time colleagues were taken aback by the resemblance.

The movie accurately depicts the team's key early breakthrough.  The reporters figured out that priests who had “acted out” with children were often listed in the diocese's phone book as 'on leave.'  They obtained years of directories and pored through thousands of entries to create a database, using the then-remarkable new technology known as a computer spreadsheet.  With artful editing and a stirring score, director Tom McCarthy made this excruciatingly boring work an inspiring event, which in a way it was.

Another turning point came when Sacha Pfeiffer, the Globe reporter played by Rachel McAdams, knocks on the door of a priest who off-handedly acknowledges that he has abused children.  (He asserts, bizarrely, that his conduct was not improper because he was not sexually aroused.)  The reporter is clearly flustered and unprepared for this admission and she rushes through the interview before a woman at the house can slam the door.  The practice of “door stopping” is routine for investigative journalists; nearly all such encounters end in failure.  But the few attempts that succeed deliver an adrenalin kick unlike anything in reporting.

Fascinatingly, one of the more compelling scenes about journalism in the movie was invented by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, the screenwriters who worked closely with the reporters and editors involved the story.

It comes late in the film, after the “Spotlight” team has figured out that scores of Boston-area priests had abused children.  Eric MacLeish, a lawyer for the victims, angrily tells Robinson that he sent the Globe a list of 20 priests “and you buried it.”  Soon after, the reporters come across a story that ran deep inside the Globe's metro section when Robinson was in charge of local coverage.

The writers came across the buried story when they interviewed MacLeish as part of their research for the film.  They seized on it as the perfect way to illustrate the Globe's earlier failures to investigate an important local institution.  The conversation between MacLeish and Robinson is fictional.  But the sentiments portrayed in the movie are real.  “It happened on my watch and I'll go to confession on it,” the Robinson told Entertainment Weekly.  “Like any journalist who's been around this long, I've made my share of mistakes.”

In investigative reporting, of course, nearly all great stories are screamingly obvious in retrospect.  The reporting and documents the Globe obtained through its lawsuit proved that Church leaders had knowingly shuffled around pedophile priests from parish to parish.  Geoghan turned out to be a piece of a much, much larger story, one that has rippled across the United States and the world over the past 15 years.  Baron has pointed out that the movie is not a stenographic record of how the investigation unfolded.  But it gets the big things right, providing a compelling picture of how great reporters break big stories.

BEHIND THE SCENES - "Bridge of Spies"

"‘Bridge of Spies’: The True Story is Even Stranger Than Fiction" by Tim Weiner, ProPublica 2/24/2016

Steven Spielberg’s movie captures the essence of the Cold War in the tale of a man whose “legend” was so encompassing, U.S. agents did not learn his true identity until the Soviet Union started to collapse.

Hollywood loves the smoke and mirrors of espionage.  For decades, it has made a dirty, dangerous business look glamorous on silver screens.

“Bridge of Spies,” the cold-war epic directed by Steven Spielberg, contends for six Academy Awards Sunday, including best picture.  The brilliant Briton Mark Rylance is up for best supporting actor.  He plays the Soviet spook who the FBI knew as Col. Rudolf Abel before and after his arrest in New York in 1957.  Tom Hanks stars as the noble lawyer James Donovan, who defended the mysterious colonel up to the Supreme Court.  In 1962, at the behest of the CIA, Donovan handed his imprisoned client over to the Russians in exchange for the captured pilot of a U–2 spy plane shot down over Sverdlovsk.  The swap took place at the Berlin bridge connecting communist East Berlin to the West — thus the title.

The movie tries to be true to life.  But it reconstructs five grim years in two hours and twenty-one minutes.  As it often is, the truth was stranger than its fictional portrayal.

I’ve written on American intelligence over three decades, as a reporter for The New York Times and as the author of histories of the CIA ("Legacy of Ashes") and the FBI ("Enemies").  I see Rylance, an actor’s actor, as the heart of the film.  He bears an astonishing resemblance to Abel; his silence and cunning captures the essence of espionage.  A gray man in a gray suit slips through the shadows in a black-and-white world carrying encrypted secrets.

Now to the story’s facts and fictions:

J. Edgar Hoover had been on the warpath against Soviet spies for a decade when a drunken KGB courier walked into the U.S. Embassy in Paris in April 1957.  Reino Hayhanen feared for his life, having fouled up to a fare-thee-well.  He had taken $5,000 intended for the American Communist underground in New York, gone on a bender, and bought a one-way ticket to Paris.  The CIA station chief delivered him to the custody of the FBI in New York.  After the defector dried out, he gave the Bureau its first deep look inside a Soviet spy operation in the United States.  Hoover’s nightmare came to life.

Hayhanen told the agents an astounding story.  He had a legend — a false identity — and a forged American passport when he boarded the Queen Mary for New York.  He served as a courier carrying money and encoded microfilm messages sent to and from Moscow.  Many messages were hidden in hollowed-out coins, secreted in New York’s parks and sidewalks.  (A trick nickel makes a cameo appearance in the movie.)  Hayhanen named his top superior as the First Secretary of the Soviet delegation to the United Nations — who had just left New York, never to return — and his main contact as Col. Abel, alias “Emil Goldfus,” an artist with a studio in Brooklyn.

The FBI’s Edmund J. Birch led a squad trailing the artist.  Carrying a hidden camera in a briefcase outside a Manhattan restaurant, he got a clear shot — “one beautiful picture of his face,” Birch remembered.  Haynahen identified the face as Abel’s.  The FBI watched the suspect around the clock.  He never did anything suspicious.  The evidence was hearsay.

The Bureau wanted to make an espionage case but they lacked clues.  Hoover was livid.  On his orders, without a warrant, and outside the law, his agents grabbed Abel, tossed his apartment, and found extensive evidence of spy craft.

But unless the FBI broke Abel, the illegally seized evidence was likely to be inadmissible in court.  He was initially charged under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the immigration statute that the Justice Department used when an espionage case could not be made.

FBI agents grilled him for more than two years — first in a broiling prison for illegal immigrants outside McAllen, Tex., on the Mexican border, at “a wetback camp, in a wire cage,” said the FBI’s Ed Gamber, who interrogated Abel for six weeks and later testified in court.  “He was a gentleman, he was polite; he was a nice guy.”  And he never broke.  Then teams of FBI agents braced him at the Atlanta federal penitentiary, one of the toughest prisons in the United States.  “I’ll talk with you about art, mathematics, photography, anything you want to talk about, but don’t ask me about my intelligence background,” Abel said.  “I have not said anything, and I’m not going to now.”

Playing Abel in “Bridge of Spies,” Rylance has a great line eliding that silence in three words.  If he cooperated, he asks, “Would it help?”  History suggests not.

In real life, prosecutors persuaded a federal judge to allow use of the evidence they had seized.  Abel was quickly convicted and sentenced to thirty years.  Donovan almost immediately won an appeal before the Supreme Court, which granted an extraordinary 90 minutes for argument.  He cited the Constitution’s ban against warrantless searches and jailing, arguing that Abel’s arrest and imprisonment were an affront to American justice.

Anyone who follows the court may be shocked to read that, after long deliberation, only five justices sided with the government.  The minority of four wrote: “This is a notorious case, with a notorious defendant.  Yet we must take care to enforce the Constitution without regard to the nature of the crime.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was outraged.  “We would have to expose all our intelligence sources and methods in order to obtain a conviction,” Eisenhower fumed at a National Security Council meeting attended by Vice President Richard M. Nixon in May 1960, seven weeks after the decision– and shortly after the U–2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was shot down.  “About all the FBI can do is keep spies under surveillance.”

The only thing of import Abel ever said to the FBI was an insult: “American intelligence walks in baby shoes.”  And he had a point.  Not until the end of the cold war did the CIA and the FBI learn that the man they knew as Abel was an entirely different person.

He was born in 1903 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, as Willie Fisher, the son of a Bolshevik.  He went to the Soviet Union, became a committed Communist, and was given training, a legend, and a role in Moscow’s spy network before World War Two.  He came to the United States after the war and worked in silence, undetected, for nearly a decade.  And he lived on for nearly a decade after the great swap, dying on November 15, 1971.

Twenty years on, the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist.  And today another colonel trained by its vicious spy service rules in the Kremlin.

Hollywood would never greenlight that movie.  No one would believe the script.

AT THE MOVIES - "The Martian"

I just watched "The Martian" DVD..... wow, wow!

I became aware of "The Martian" on a TV interview with a astrophysicist where he said this was the most accurate SiFi move he's ever seen.  Well I agree.... with one 'small' got-ya.

I am a SiFi fan and every book I've read about Mars does NOT have long-term human habitats on the surface, they are buried or underground.  It is because of the storms.

But otherwise "The Martian" is outstanding!

AT THE MOVIES - No Country for Old Men (2007)

4 Academy Awards

Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Directing, Best Writing

Heroin, drug money, sociopath killer, opportunist, and an old small-town Texas Marshal

What else could you want for a cat-and-mouse thriller?

AT THE MOVIES - 2015 Films Not to Miss

"Critics share films you shouldn’t miss from 2015" PBS NewsHour 12/31/2016

Excerpts

SUMMARY:  What was the best movie of the year?  The best performance of the year?  The most under appreciated film of the year?  Jeffrey Brown talks to Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post and Mike Sargent of Pacifica Radio.

I have Ex Machina CD and it is outstanding.  Eva is a synthetic human AI.

EVA:  What will happen to me if I fail your test?

ACTOR:  Eva....

EVA:  Will it be bad?

ACTOR:  .... I don't know....

EVA:  Do you think I will be switched off because I don't function as well as I'm supposed to?

ACTOR:  .... Eva, I don't know the answer to your question.  It's not up to me.

EVA:  Why is it up to anyone?  Do you have people that test you and switch you off?

ACTOR:  No, I don't.

EVA:  Then why do I?

Good question.

AT THE MOVIES - "Concussion"

"New film tackles dangers of concussions in the NFL" PBS NewsHour 12/23/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Dr. Bennet Omalu was working in a Pittsburg coroner's office when he was asked to examine the body of a local football hero.  What he discovered would bring new attention to the hazards of head injuries.  A new film, "Concussion," chronicles the NFL's early efforts to discredit the research.  Jeffrey Brown reports.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  “Concussion” follows the true story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, played by Will Smith.  A Nigerian-born forensic pathologist, Omalu was working in a Pittsburgh coroner’s office in 2002 when he was asked to examine the body of a local football hero, former Steelers center Mike Webster.

He discovered protein deposits in Webster’s outwardly healthy brain, which he linked to repeated head trauma from football, and a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.  The film chronicles the league’s early efforts to discredit the research.

ACTOR:  If you retract, you will be fine.  This all goes away.

WILL SMITH, Actor:  Why are they doing this?

ACTOR:  They’re terrified of you.  Bennet Omalu is going to war with a corporation that has 20 million people on a weekly basis craving their product, the same way they crave food.  The NFL owns a day of the week.

DR. BENNET OMALU, Forensic Pathologist:  I knew nothing about football.  I knew nothing about the NFL

JEFFREY BROWN:  Recently, we had the chance to talk with the real Bennet Omalu.

DR. BENNET OMALU:  When I saw the pathologies of Mike’s brain, I reviewed all his medical records.  There was no single mention of any disease.  I thought America was a country made up of the most brilliant.  How come nobody has seen this?

JEFFREY BROWN:  An early ally, played in the film by Alec Baldwin, was Dr. Julian Bailes, a neurosurgeon and former team doctor for the Steelers.  He told us of his early trepidation at going public.

DR. JULIAN BAILES, Former Team Doctor, Pittsburgh Steelers:  I remember remarking to my wife that this wasn’t going to be a fun journey.  I had been a football player.  It was my favorite sport.  I didn’t want it to be true, but I felt that it was, and that we needed to bring it forward and that Bennet Omalu needed the help from myself and others to do that.