Posts Tagged ‘David Mamet’

Farkakte Film Flashback: It’s Not Personal, It’s Just Business Edition

I swear to God I'm not holding a bag of money behind my backMichael Moore’s latest, Capitalism: A Love Story, opens around the country today, and if the early reviews are any indication, it’s yet another cleverly executed and scathing reminder of how we’re all … wait, let me check my notes … ah, yes — majorly screwed. Taken as a whole, the Moore oeuvre seems dedicated to the concept that before we die we’ll all be laid off, betrayed by our government, shot, burdened by lousy, expensive heath care, and cheated out of our tax dollars and retirement funds, possibly all at once.

Moore’s latest is of course aimed at the business titans of Wall Street who let us have it twice, first by ruining our economy, then by wheeling and dealing the government into ponying up billions in public money so they could get started on ruining it again. I’m sure Capitalism is well executed but no doubt depressing, at least for those of us not on the receiving end of the aforementioned billions. I prefer my cinematic big business to be the fictional kind, where greed may be good but Michael Douglas still goes to white-collar jail at the end, or is at least sexually harassed by Demi Moore. Mrowr!

With that in mind, patch in to my conference call as I review my 300-slide PowerPoint presentation on five random business flicks that deserve the key to the executive washroom.

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DVD Review: David Mamet’s “Homicide”

Writer/director David Mamet and co-star William H. Macy have a good time reminiscing on the commentary track that accompanies the Criterion Collection edition of Homicide (1991). This “cop movie that didn’t want to be a straight-up cop movie,” and started as an adaptation of a novel that was soon abandoned, is the third of the playwright’s films, following 1987’s hard-edged House of Games (also on DVD from Criterion) and the gentler Things Change (1988). Whatever it is—“I’m paid to write it, not read it,” Mamet growls—the movie is one of his more compelling, and makes a timely reentrance on the scene, given its relation to the “Jewish vengeance” pictures Defiance and Inglourious Basterds.

Those are set during World War II, or, rather, the fact-based Defiance is; Tarantino’s unspools in the multiplex in his head. Filmed in Baltimore (before the like-named TV show got there), Homicide unfolds in Mamet-land, that semi-realistic place where everyone has a “thing,” and if your thing collides with someone else’s thing you better look out. It centers on police detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna, the star of Mamet’s prior films, here with a wounded face and manner like slightly bruised fruit), whose “thing” is being a stalwart first-through-the-door cop. But the overt racism of black FBI agents trying to take down an elusive drug dealer (Ving Rhames) and the institutional prejudice of the force (Macy is his best friend, a member of the Irish old guard) get him more personally involved in the routine murder of an elderly Jewish candy store owner—whose past includes running guns for Zionist causes. Gold’s assimilation offends the proprietor’s family and colleagues, who close ranks around him. But he wants to know more about their “thing,” which draws him into a noir-ish hive of archaic symbols and anti-neo-Nazi activity. (more…)

Popdose Flashback: Madonna, “Like a Prayer”

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Love her or hate her, Madonna defined popular music – screw that, she defined popular culture – like no one else during the 1980s. Her 16 straight Top-5 singles (from “Lucky Star” to “Cherish”) are unmatched by any act in history; her clothing choices defined tween fashion for much of the decade; and her penchant for simultaneously generating controversy and commerce has served as a template for spotlight-hogging celebs ever since. And let’s not get started on her film career …

Anyway, with her last album of the decade Madonna took it all to a new level, and cemented her status as the biggest star of the ’80s. After all, how many artists can piss off Pepsi and the pope in one fell swoop?

The Material Girl actually had gone sorta quiet in 1988, leaving the pop charts to George Michael and Michael Jackson while she tried her hand at theater in David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow. Even as her not-too-badly received Broadway run continued from May through December, Madonna went into the studio in the fall with her usual compatriots, Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray – along with a certain diminutive purple-clad figure with whom she would record one song publicly, and who would contribute to a couple others in secret.

The early buzz around the making of Like a Prayer was overshadowed during late 1988 and early ‘89 by a cultural controversy that had been brewing – make that bubbling – for a few years. The nation’s leading soft-drink companies had made pop stars an important part of their competition for market share, a development that (figuratively speaking) set many rock purists’ hair on fire. They accused artists like Michael, Whitney Houston and Jackson (whose hair had proved quite literally flammable) of selling out the music in pursuit of the almighty dollar; they howled once more when Madonna was given the then-enormous sum of $5 million to debut the “Like a Prayer” single in a commercial for Pepsi, which also bought sponsorship rights to her 1990 tour. (more…)

Political Culture: “November” Spawns a Monster

“Why do they hate me?” wails Nathan Lane as the fictional (but not too fictional) President Charles H.P. Smith, early in David Mamet’s new political comedy November. The reply comes without hesitation from Dylan Baker, playing Smith’s loyal subordinate in crime: “Because you’ve fucked up everything you’ve ever touched.”

Like I said, the play, which opens tonight at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre, isn’t too fictional.

Yes, Lane is prowling a Broadway stage once again this season. And once again he’s a thespian Godzilla chewing up scenery, full of bluster and bullshit and brilliance—and enough spittle to make the first five rows wonder if they’ve stumbled into a Gallagher concert. He’s President Max Bialystock, and he dominates November the same way he commanded The Producers way back when, at the dawn of the $480 ticket. (more…)