Word: altmans
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Another elective worth shopping in the VES department is VES 157r: "American Cinema." Taught by Visiting Lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies Charles Warren, the class is a survey of American films from Charlie Chaplin's silent pictures to the modern works of directors such as Robert Altman. Students will be taught the art of writing film analysis...
...Organizer (1963), the homosexual fighting Fascism in A Special Day (1977), the Chekhovian philanderer in Dark Eyes (1987), the gentle padrone besotted by a dwarf in the Argentine I Don't Want to Talk About It (1993), his finest late role. He worked with ambitious auteurs from Altman to Zurlini; he lent his bankability to obscure projects. In his last year he starred with Chiara in Three Lives and Only One Death, an elaborate jape by the Paris-based Chilean Raul Ruiz, and appeared with fellow icon Jeanne Moreau in a sweet vignette--a poignant farewell kiss--in Antonioni...
...Robert Altman couldn't believe it. before him sat two talented actors, Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott, with a script for a movie they wanted to direct together. "We'd talk for a while, and then he'd suddenly say, 'Now, you guys have never directed anything before, right?' And we'd say, 'Nope, nothing on film.' And we'd talk for 10 minutes, and he'd say, 'You never directed anything?'" recalls Scott, who worked with Altman on Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. "But in the end, he said, 'Oh well, it's not too damn hard anyway...
...Night the virgin directors made it look positively easy, even though Altman ultimately had to back out as producer. Tucci, best known as billionaire Richard Cross on the TV series Murder One, co-wrote the screenplay for Big Night "out of frustration with the films I was making." (Among his movies: Beethoven and Jury Duty.) Big Night's theme, making money vs. staying true to one's talents, will no doubt touch a chord in many of his peers. But the setting, a down-on-its-luck Italian restaurant, is all Tucci--a devotee of Italian food as well...
...Altman's movie won't be released for two months, but the sound track is already here, on a just released Verve CD. As the jazzmen of yore might've said, it's a gas. The mix of 21 musicians includes veteran players whose stylistic roots go back to Kansas City and beyond--alto saxophonist David ("Fathead") Newman Jr., drummer Victor Lewis--and younger stars who actually seem to enjoy paying their respects to tradition--tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, guitarist Mark Whitfield, bassist Christian McBride. On track after track, soloists of different generations find a common groove. On Froggy Bottom...