Kirk Douglas Isn't Old, Is He?

Everywhere I go this week people have been bombarding me with comments about the dull Academy Awards.
Yeah, it was virtually starless. Yeah, there was no excitement.
But everybody is unanimous on one subject.
"Kirk Douglas was great!" said a little old lady on the subway. "And please no old jokes. That guy had more zip than those young Oscar hosts that's for sure."
Kirk Douglas gave a startling demonstration of star power. And the evergreen super star is "only" 94.
What's more there a lot more stars like him out there and some of them are working as hard as ever.
In fact I just watched a great Kirk Douglas classic, 1950's Young Man With A Horn --and both his female co-stars are still thriving --Doris Day (b. April 3, 1922) and Lauren Bacall (b. Sept. 16, 1924).
Another of Kirk's co-stars Eleanor Parker is still around too (b. June 26, 1922).
Before she was America's First Lady Nancy Reagan was a promising MGM starlet (b. July 6, 1921).
And for sheer durability what about funster Betty White on the current hit Hot In Cleveland (b. Jan. 17, 1922).
Recently she welcomed former co-star Mary Tyler Moore for a aep --but Mary is still a kid next to Betty (b. Dec. 29, 1936).
However another MTM alumnus, Cloris Leachman, was strong enough two years back to go out on Dancing With The Stars (b. April 30, 1926).
If you're thinking there are more female oldies out there than males you're totally correct.
Don't forget those two Oscar winning sisters. First up there's double winner Olivia de Havilland (b. July 1, 1916).
And there's younger sister Joan Fontaine(Oct. 22, 1917).
Even today they're not speaking!
And any age list must be double Oscar winner Luise Rainer who later acted on TV's Love Boat (b. Jan. 12, 1910).
The best that the male side can offer is singer Tony Martin, Cyd Charisse's widower --they were married 60 years (he was born Dec. 25, 1913).
Also appearing at this year's Oscars was a winner for achievement --Eli Wallach (b. Dec. 7, 1915).
The oldest female singing sensation I can recall is Dame Vera Lynn (March 20, 1917) --and yes, she did make some movies along the way.
I fondly remember the times on the TV critics' tour when I'd slip out the back door of the Century Plaza hotel in L.A. and onto the Fox lot to have lunch with M*A*S*H's Harry Morgan (b. Apr. , 1915).
And later I did his last ever interview in Toronto on the set of Outer Limits.
And last season Broadway had the occasion to once again witness the artistry of Angela Lansbury (in A Little Night Music) (b. Oct. 16,1925).
She was replaced in the long run by another shimmering veteran Elaine Stritch (Feb. 2, 1925).
I could go on and on: Michael Gough is 95, Jerry Lewis 85, Jack Klugman 89, Liz Taylor and Debbie Reynolds two young sprigs of 79 each.
But I've made my point I think.
It's how young you feel not how old the calendar says.
Don't believe me? Just ask Kirk Douglas.

The Event Is Back

If you've been watching NBC shows over the past few weeks you'll have noticed all those ads telling us The Event is coming back.
Just what exactly is "the event" has not as yet been explained.
When I sat down last fall to sample all the new series I thought the Event was about as good as it gets.
And so did NBC which poured vast amounts of dough into its ad campaign.
And it's not as if nobody watched. The Event initially drew strong numbers only to have viewer interest trickle away in succeeding weeks.
The plot is another conspiracy thingy starring Jason Ritter --looking exactly like late great father John --as Sean Walker who stumbles into this nationwide mystery after the disappearance of his pert girlfriend Leila (Sarah Roemer) during a Caribbean cruise.
Over at the White House Blair Underwood channeling Barack Obama as President Elias Martinez must deal with the problems of a group of detainees kept at a far away Alaskan camp. They are led by freedom fighter Sophia Maguire (Laura Innes).
Sturdy national security chief Blake Sterling (Zeljko Ivanek) completely disagrees with the decision --he knows more about this situation than viewers do.
Think Lost. Think Flashforward. Or The 440. Or V. The intial conception of The Event as a meandering strand of two separate stories that rarely meet became a turn off for potential fans.
Conspiracy stories on TV go right back to The Fugitive. This story wastold almost entirely in retroversions and later episodes will offer flashbacks to "solve" some of the plot questions.
Reviewing the first episode which was titled I Haven't Told You Anything was next to impossible because NBC hadn't really told us anything.
I think "potential" was the word I spotted in so many of the initial reviews. And as the ratings began seeping away NBC panicked and put the show on hiatus. Which is better than cancellation,right?
Now NBC has sent out review copies of the first two new episodes. The series is taut and exciting in places, still confusing as all out heck in some scenes.
So far acting honors go to Blair Underwood as the recently elected president (here a child of Cuban refugees) and he becomes our guide through the mysteries of this terrific story.
If Underwood is all cautious diplomacy Ivanek is a real pepper pot of a security adviser (possible based on vice president Cheyney). He sees conspiracies everywhere and even gets to battle the baddies in a vicious gunfight inside the secret alaskan compound.
Also adding dramatic clout is Virginia Madsen as the new senator from Alaska who has inherited the seat from her late husband, a veteran of sex terms. She suspects something isn't right at the containment center.
Strong acting also comes from Scott Patterson as Leila's father and Clifton Collins Jr. as an alien turned guerrilla.
In a telephone conversation with TV critics Ivanek laughed off suggestions he is having a terrific career playing a wide assortment of extremely creepy characters. I think he said something like it keeps him busy. It also keeps him scene stealing right and left.
On the same call Underwood said, sure, it was strange continuing to work on a series nobody was really aware of. He supported NBC's decision to reboot the show in the New Year and said the network had promised to run the series for nine weeks straight without any pre-emptions.
That way there's the hope momentum can be carefully built. To get into the series one must have patience and a long memory --this is one series not designed for casual viewers.
Technical details including cinematography and a spectacularly staged stunts are up to the standard of any current movie hit.
Now all The Event needs is adequate viewer support to be picked up for a second event. That and some explanation sooner than later what "The Event" really means.
THE EVENT PREMIERES ON CITYTV SUNDAY MARCH 6 AT 9 P.M. AND ON NBC MONDAY MARCH 7 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Inside Hana's Suitcase Comes To TV

Having been a TV critic for 40 years I don't often get to the cinema these days --I'm sure most readers like me prefer to wait for the TV premiere of exceptional movies.
So I'm happy to report CBC-TV has snagged the broadcast TV premiere of the exceptional 2009 documentary Inside Hana's Suitcase.
It's on CBC Sunday night at 8 and marks a welcome return to form for CBC in its role as a public broadcaster.
Brilliant and moving but never exploitative, Larry Weinstein's documentary seamlessly blends dramatic recreations with reminiscences by the few remaining eye witnesses who help him recreate the extraordinary life and times of Hana Brady, born May 16, 1931, killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1944.
This 90-minute true story is must viewing for every young viewer who cannot envisage the horrors of the Holocaust that exterminated six million Jews and millions of others.
But concentrating on one victim instantly personifies the story, makes it real and vivid.
And Weinstein had a lot of luck along the way.
Brady might have been forgotten by all but a few friends and her surviving brother were it not for the extraordinary efforts of a teacher Fumiko Ishioka, director of the Tpkyp Holocaust Education Resource Center, who asked museum authorities at Aushwitz to donate items that might illustrate what the Jewish refugees went through while at the slave labor camp.
They send a suitcase clearly labelled with Hana Brody's name and destination as well as a canister of the deadly Cyclone B gas used to kill inmates in the "showers".
Weinstein gets all these details near perfect: how the Japanese pre-teens studying the Holocaust with Ishioka bond with this little girl leading the teacher to research what if anything else could be learned about Hana Brody.
By luck she actually finds in the archives drawings by the little girl when first imprisoned and reminisces from school friends who say Hana had a brother.
In fact he is George Brady who is still alive and now living as a white-haired grandfather in Toronto. Plagued by guilt, he reaches out to the teacher and the children, even journeying to Japan for an emotional meeting.
Weinstein very cleverly recreates key scenes in the childhood of George and Hana in Moravia (part of Czechoslovakia) where they were the only two Jewish children in town. We come to care about their fate as first the mother and then the father are taken away by the Nazis. And finally the two children are sent to Aushwitz in cattle cars.
In some scenes the docudrama recreations merge with the reality of the actual present day events --as we are taken through Hana's prison her childish drawings seem to spring to life and fill the screen.
And as George, the boy, opens a present from his jailed mother, George, the old man, shows these little slices of dried bread still preserved in a tin box all these decades later.
An old Japanese woman, a survivor of Hiroshima, meets George in Japan, a stark reminder that many suffered in the war and that Japan had her own war crimes which still need confronting.
Inside Hana;' Suitcase is especially relevant for the pre-teenagers who are near Hana's age when she was killed. As long as they react so emotionally to her fate then Hana and her suitcase will not be forgotten.
INSIDE HANA AND HER SUITCASE PREMIERES ON TV ON CBC SUND. MARCH 6 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

All Hail The WB Archives!

Being an old movie buff from way back I'm still feeling there aren't enough great vintage films on TV to satisfy my needs.
It took me more than a decade of columns at the Toronto Star to get the CRTC to budge and allow Turner Classic Movies onto the Canadian cable TV universe.
But lately TCM has been running far too many current movies for my liking.
And then along came a solution: the WB Archives.
Now let me hasten to report Warners currently owns rights to three gigantic old movie collections: Warners, MGM and RKO.
How it got hold of those thousands of titles is a story in itself. At one point MGM even owned all the Warners titles --except in Canada.
Lately DVD sales have been dwindling in retail outlets across North America. One problem I'm sure is the high price tags on many items.
So Warners created its own way of dealing directly with vintage movie fans: it set up a website where you can order directly --the promise has been made to get all the films it owns onto the site.
Instantly there was trouble from this side of the border: the site did not accept Canadian orders for various copyright reasons. I understand that:up to seven percent of all TCM films shown in any given week are substituted for others on the Canadian feed.
To get around that restriction I asked a buddy in the U.S. to buy three titles for me --he could watch them first and then send them onto me.
The parcel quickly came: Cain And Mabel (1936) is an overstuffed but enjoyable Depression musical starring Marion Davies and Clark Gable.
I've always looked for it on TCM but never could find it and now I'm glad I've got it in my DVD library. Trouble is there are no extras not even scene selections --a few titles have the original trailers.
The second title I chose was We Were Dancing (1941) with Norman Shearer and Melvyn Douglas. It rightly gets only two stars but I wanted to catch it to find out why Shearer chose it over Gone with The Wind and Mrs. Miniver.
And it's not all that bad --it had the misfortune to be released right after Pearl Harbor and moviegoers were no longer interested in the adventures of a bogus Russian countess.
My third choice was Goodbye My Fancy (1952) because I knew director Vincent Sherman and wanted to see this strange venture into comedy by the usually melodramatic Joan Crawford.
Each DVD cost $29.99 but the price has since come down to $19.99. I have one friend who rents a Buffalo post office box and orders from Warners that way.
But now the WB collection is also available through amazon.ca, tcm.com and moviesunlimited.com, And a few titles from the WB archive have actually been appearing the the downtown Toronto DVD outlets: The Mortal Storm (1940) and Forsaking All Others (1934) --but these in store treats are selling as high as $32.99!
I tried ordering three more from amazon.ca and I got Cry Havoc (1943), a good all-female war story with Margaret Sullavan and Ann Sothern, Son Of The Gods (1930) with Richard Barthlemess in a strange tale of racial insensitivity and When Ladies Meet (1941): Crawford, Greer Garson, Robert Taylor all looking mighty uncomfortable in a teacup drama/comedy of infidelity.
My WB sources say next month's "premieres" will include June Allyson in the Opposite Sex (1956), Olivia de Havilland in My Love Came Back (1940), Bette Davis in That Certain Woman (1937), Barbara Stanwyck In BF's Daughter (1948) and the 1923 and 1933 versions of The Whte Sister.
The alternative is to sit patiently for years until TCM shows these gems again.
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Remembering Jane Russell: Last Of The Great Broads

She was the last of the great movie sex symbols.
"Just call me a broad with attitude," smiled Jane Russell, the only time I interviewed her for a TCM documentary on her studio RKO.
The year was 1986 making the silver-haired Russell a simply stunning 65-year-old.
She died Monday at her home in Santa Maria of respiratory problems.
"I had the Lord on my side," she whispered to explain how she survived the rigors of Hollywood stardom and why her pal Marilyn Monroe did not.
Russell became an instant star with the 1943 release of producer Howard Hughes' risque western The Outlaw. The film was so provocatively sexy for its date that it did not go into general release for three years because of censorship problems.
Photos of Russell sprawling in a haystack helped sell the film. So did stories that Hughes had engineered a specially designed pneumatic bra for Russell to wear.
"I put it on once, it hurt so I took it off and stuffed tissue in there and Howard never knew the difference."
"Today it looks so sweet," smiled Russell of The Outlaw.
"I never did a nude scene, I was never even allowed to show my belly button. No bad words, no nothing. But I became a sex symbol because of my attitude. It was Louis B. Mayer who told me never to show my backside. Garbo never did."
Russell became a pin up staple of fighting American soldiers everywhere along with Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour and Lana Turner.
"Unlike the other girls I never believed in any of that publicity guff," she said. "I was a Four Walls dame --just hadda get home at night to my husband and my kids --and my God. The other gals would be out partying all night long. Me, I'd be home studying my Bible --mother was a preacher and I wanted to be as good a Christian as she was.""
But Russell could do more than pose fetchingly. She was Bob Hope's sidekick in two comedy romps, Paleface (1948) and Son Of Paleface (1952).
"On my first fday Bob told me I'd play the straight guy, the one who tosses him the innocent line and then he responds and gets the big laugh. When I asked for a funny line he acted out out and refused. When I did holiday tours for the troops with him I got all the wolf whistles and he still got all the laughs."
And she "absolutely adored" working with Clark Gable in The Tall Men (1955). "He joked he was just an ordinary guy but there was no ordinary way he kissed me. He may have had dentures and a hair piece but here was the King of Hollywood."
"My favorite co-star --I was going to say it was Trigger --but seriously it was Bob Mitchum. If I told you he was just about the smartest guy around you'd fall off your chair. A real big reader. He play acted at being tough, he was a real sissy when it came to brawling."
When it came to directors Russell was a man's woman. "Howard Hawks was the tops. He once told me how lucky we were to work with Marilyn Monroe before she became strange. Raoul Walsh --now there was a man. I'd call him Papa. As in 'Papa, come over here to mama right now!' He loved that sort of thing.
"I think my movie career would have lasted if I'd had the opportunity to work at MGM. But Mr. Mayer told me they had enough screen tramps under contract! I understood what he meant."
Opposite Marilyn Monroe she was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953): "A scared kid. Always chose the wrong man --Joe DiMaggio was no help to her and neither was Arthur Miller --both were plain wrong.
"She was killed by the Kennedys. I know that. A few months after her passing I saw Bobby Kennedy at an event and he turned away quickly. He knew I knew what they had done to her."
"Marilyn came out to our Malibu ranch weeks before she passed. And she romped in the surf with the kids. Was real happy. A gal that happy does not commit suicide."
Howard Hughes made his last movie with Russell in 1955 --it was Underwater with the entire premiere held underwater in the Florida everglades.
"I told Howard he should have cast Esther Williams because I spent a lot of weeks acting under water. For once the critics were right in saying I was all wet."
But he kept Russell on full salary for the next 25 years just in case he should ever decide to make another movie.
"I didn't exactly hang around waiting for the phone to ring.-- I was touring all over the world by then. Occasionally he'd phone saying 'Just one more picture Janie?' I'd humor the old guy but he got strange after his plane crash. Stayed holed up on a Vegas hotel --when they threatened to evict him he bought the joint -- out of petty cash. He hated the local TV outlet's movies so he bought the station and ordered them to run only westerns."
Later on she became the TV pitch woman for Playtex bras --for the full figured woman.
I first met Russell on the set of her TV series The Yellow Rose (1983) --she played Sam Elliott's mother and joked about the transition.
"I'd even play Trigger's mom if the salary was right."
What I'm remembering is her niceness, her continuing beauty and her sheer delight at still being recognized and applauded as a true movie queen.

I Wanted To Like the Oscars But....

Look, I like the Academy Awards and really hoped to watch every minute of the long winded ceremonies.
But wanderlust got to me.
I wandered off to get a sandwich. I read a few pages of a book. Wrestled with my cat. Did some dishes in the kitchen sink.
The Oscars just dragged on and on.
For one thing I'd seen it all before.
I'd watched the Golden Globes, The DGA Awards, the Screen Actors Awards.
Same group of contenders at every pit stop. Same winners.
By the time the Oscars stagger on the awards season had been in full tilt for months. There's nothing left to say. Everybody looks bushwhacked.
It never used to be like this.
Nobody ever bothered with the Golden Globes until a few seasons ago. And those other peripheral awards? Forget it!
But all those entertainment shows are competing with each other to produce a strange case of over coverage.
The Oscars all came out as predicted.
If only The Social Network had won as best picture! Or Annette Bening as best actress! That would have stirred up the pot a bit.
But three hours of these Dale Carnegie speeches left me pretty well exhausted. And bored. And just plain fed up.
The red carpet treatment? Blah! Where was Joan Rivers to deflate all that pomposity.
By Oscar standards this one clocked in at just over three hours. But it really dragged!
Hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway were way out of their league. These pretty young actors were imported to attract a younger demographic.
But what the show needed was a Rickey Gervais or a Billy Crystal.
One highlight was the appearance of 94-year old Kirk Douglas. The audience collectively held its breath, feating he might make a gaffe but he sailed away with some of the best lines of the night.
Another big moment was a salute to the departed talent as Celine Dion warbled away --that segment really worked.
Billy Crystal also introduced a brief salute to Bob Hope whose zingers sounded better after 50 years than the current stuff I was hearing.
This year was a strong one with Inception, The King's Speech and The Social Network all contenders as best picture.
I really wanted Jeff Bridges to duplicate his win of last year --that would have shook things up.
But I kept watching. I wondered why so many "B" List actors were selected as presenters. Where were the truly greats of the business?
To become truly competitive again the Academy Awards should be held in early January so all those ersatz award shows won't be able to hog the spotlight.

A Powerful, Shattering Documentary

Talk about relevancy! Here I am watching the TV newscasts focusing on the ongoing Arabian revolutions when I switch on my preview DVD of Remote Control Wars.
The hourlong documentary is on CBC-TV's Doc Zone Thursday night at 9 p.m. and nothing on TV this week could be as relevant.
The news showshots from Libya and Bahrein are all about such new technologies as Facebook and Twitter permitting oppressed people to rise against well entrenched dictators.
But Remote Control War goes far deeper as it probes into new warfare techniques already being practiced over the skies of Pakistan and often against innocent civilians.
Then those same techniques, refined and miniaturized, might one day be practiced over the skies of North America.
It's Robotic Warfare and it's the hottest killing technique of the decade.
Every night in remote Indian Springs, Nevada, well outside of Las Vegas, normally dressed civilians go to work to fight the rebels in far distant Afghanistan.
They do so using the most sophisticated computers commanding the most highly specialized drones yet devised, drones than can follow civilians on the ground and often bomb, maim, even kill many innocent people.
The images are dazzling --we see the way drones hover in the air and how they can spot movement. What they cannot do is selectively chose between the ordinary populace and the Taliban. And so many mistakes are made as the bombs go off.
But since U.S. casualties are diminished by this impersonal way of killing the U.S. military chiefs and the Congressional politicians are very much in favor of the new ways of war.
Dead U.S. soldiers come home in nbody bags to grieving families and an increasingly sceptical civilian population.
The list of experts director Leif Kaldor and producer-writer Leslea Mair have chosen to take us into this hitherto unknown war is dazzlinng: New York Times writer David Rhode, U.N. investigator Philip Alston, University of Sheffield's Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence, Peter W. Singer, author of Wired For War.
Together they take us into a new form of modern warfare --one done almost entirely by robotics instead of the usual soldiers.
The robotic planes can hunt people down but they cannot discriminate. Anybody fleeing becomes a target and U.S. robotic planes now number 7,000. And another 43 countries including Canada are investing in drones as the preferred choice of future conflicts.
Kaldor has gotten unprecedented access to hitherto classified footage, Pentagon sources and dissenters both in North America and Europe who wonder who will make the decisions about future kills.
When does the robotic method amount to killing for the sake of killing.
And what happens when the adversaries of the U.S. become as technologically advanced. We go to one robotics fair where amateurs have miniaturized everything and produced their own tiny planes for as low as$300. Could these planes swarm Manhattan in a future attack? Or Toronto?
U.S. Lt. Gen. David Deptula and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams grapple with the morality of the issues. This rush to a new way of waging war is scary as hell and reinforced by the images of conflict throughout Arabia on the newscasts.
In Short Remote Control War is perfectly positioned --it asks all the questions we should be asking with conflict all around us. The hour was made by Regina-based Zoot PIctures which made such past documentaries as Eco-Home Adventures and Weekend Wonders.
REMOTE CONTROL WAR premieres on CBC's DOC ZONE Thurs. Feb. 24 at 9 p.m. Two additional showings are on CBC News Network Frid. Feb. 25 at 10 p.m. and Sunday Feb. 27 at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
MY RATING: ****.

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