James Stewart Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Next stop for the world's greatest director: another remake. Steven Spielberg may or may not be the world's "greatest" director, but he is arguably the most influential filmmaker of his generation, so when he commits to make a movie, attention must be paid. Spielberg's next film will not be Matt Helm or any of the other ones that Elisabeth listed for us just a couple of days ago. No it will be ... Harvey, according to Variety. Yes, the one about the invisible rabbit.

The article describes the project as an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1944 play by Mary Chase, but we all know the story better from the 1950 film starring James Stewart and his constant companion, a very tall rabbit named Harvey that no one else can see. Casting and pre-production will begin immediately, and filming is expected to begin in early 2010. Harvey will be a co-production between 20th Century and Dreamworks, with 50% financing provided by Reliance, the new financial backer of Dreamworks. With that kind of schedule, it sounds like the film may be aiming for theaters in Christmas 2010, though no release date has been announced.

The original film was charming almost despite itself, in large measure due to James Stewart's amiable personality and a heartwarming message well-suited for the time. Novelist Jonathan Tropper (This is Where I Leave You) has written the new adaptation. My concern for the project is Spielberg's past tendency to drip too much sentiment on certain sequences (i.e. the ending of War of the Worlds), to the detriment of the material. The other concern: who is this generation's James Stewart? What do you think of the project, and who do you think could play the part?

The basic plot of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window -- man believes he witnessed a murder, has to prove it really happened -- has been reused for so many films and TV shows that it's not that surprising when another homage or ripoff comes around. Yet last year's Disturbia, starring Shia LaBeouf as a guy under house arrest who thinks his neighbor is a serial killer, bore close enough resemblance to be labeled an update on Hitchcock's film. And now, not surprisingly, Dreamworks, its parent company Viacom and Universal Pictures, are being sued for creating an unauthorized remake.*

The defendant in the case is not exactly related to Hitchcock's film, though; the lawsuit was filed by Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust, which owns the rights to Cornell Woolrich's original short story "It Had to Be Murder" (called "Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint" in the article), upon which Rear Window is based. Film business followers may remember the name Sheldon Abend from the important Supreme Court copyright case of 1990, Stewart v. Abend, in which Abend sued James Stewart and the production company Patron Inc. after Rear Window was aired on television.

If you've seen both Disturbia and Rear Window do you think the case is valid? Is Disturbia really that much more of a ripoff than Manhattan Murder Mystery, Head Over Heels and most of Brian DePalma's early career? Even Antonioni's Blow Up and Coppola's The Conversation are fairly similar in concept. Obviously some works, such as the Simpsons episode in which Bart thinks Flanders murdered his wife, are okay because they fall under the permissions of parody.

*Note: We accidentally listed Steven Spielberg as an executive producer on Disturbia, though he was not. That information has been removed from the post. [ed]

While creepy monsters can send chills straight to the spine, there's nothing quite as thrilling as the perfectly simple fright. Thanks to the master Alfred Hitchcock, as well as a number of other filmmakers over the years, we've been showered in an array of scenarios so believable that every shadow becomes eerie, and every noise, threatening. They're the scares that could happen to any one of us on an unlucky day; they are the dangers that await us when we're alone and in the dark.

For tonight's double feature, I wanted to go old school with chills that go back to the '50s and '60s, centered on New York's Greenwich Village. These films might be decades old, but they hold premises that make them worthy, unforgettable classics. Without further ado, I give you: Rear Window and Wait Until Dark.

Some people like parkas, but others like pookas -- spirits from Celtic mythology who show up in a very large animal form. In 1950, the world got Harvey, the cinematic adaptation of Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize-winning play -- a film that won co-star Josephine Hull an Oscar. James Stewart starred as Elwood P. Dowd, a strange, but thoughtful man whose best friend is a 6-foot, three and one-half inch tall pooka rabbit named Harvey.

Oh, Harvey. When Easter comes, some people think of the bwok-ing Cadbury bunny, others think of fluffy little lops, but I think of the super-tall, white friend of Elwood's. There's all sorts of strange premises these days, but modern times definitely don't have a complete hold on strange stories -- like a sweet-natured man who might get committed for his seemingly imaginary friend. And, there's not many men who could pull off a friendship with a rabbit, without having it be animated. Oh, Jimmy Stewart.

It is easy to dismiss It's a Wonderful Life, and indeed, people have been doing so since the film's release in 1946. Too sentimental, too hokey, too loaded with Frank Capra's hopeful humanism -- all these complaints, and more, have been fired at It's a Wonderful Life over the years. People still watch It's a Wonderful Life, sure, but you have to ask how much of this is based in the two most corrosive reasons to watch a film -- camp and tradition. Watching a film only so you can dissect it with the sharp blades of irony can blind you to its real virtues; you look for stereotypes, not performances; listen for often-quoted lines of dialogue without ever hearing them; see scenes in the context of their pop-culture parodies instead of as what they are.

So, the virtues of It's a Wonderful Life are often ignored by detractors. I'd also put forward that the virtues of It's a Wonderful Life are, in some way, occasionally ignored by the people who love it. It's a Wonderful Life is part of the American film canon, sure, but the canon is a cage -- placing movies on pedestals can put how good they actually are out of our minds. And hurling a film on every year because you're used to doing so can turn it into something seen but unwatched, the cinema equivalent of a nativity crèche or an artificial tree: It gets pulled out every December, put away soon after, forgotten until next year.

One of my favorite movies ever is Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. When I was growing up, every holiday season my grandmother would scour the TV Guide for It's a Wonderful Life and White Christmas, and I'd sleep over at her house and we'd watch them together. This was back in the olden days before cable television, in the very early days of the VCR. My dad was an early-adopter of the VCR -- we had one of the very first $1,000 VCRs on our block -- but it took another decade or so for my grandma to trust those newfangled recording contraptions.

Back then, It's a Wonderful Life came on once a year, and if you missed it you were screwed. So my grandma and I would make sure we knew when it was on, and I'd cuddle up on her couch under the afghan, and she and I and my great-grandmother would watch George Bailey's life unfold again on the television screen.

In recent years, of course, we've been able to get more than our fill of It's a Wonderful Life as it's shown a lot more, and there have been a couple of versions released on DVD, but now we have the "Special Collector's Edition" two-disc collector's set.

I'm going to work from the assumption that I don't need to go into a great deal of detail here on the plot of the film: George Bailey (James Stewart), a nice guy who runs a savings and loan and has four kids with his lovely wife, Mary (Donna Reed). After some bad luck (aided and abetted by the local evil rich guy, Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), with his savings and loan on the brink of collapse and under investigation, George makes a wish that he'd never been born -- and with the help of a bumbling angel named Clarence (Henry Travers), he gets to see just what the world would have been like without him.

"This list...is an absolute good." Well, it's an absolute "pretty good." As I told you yesterday, the American Film Institute has refreshed its "100 Years ... 100 Movies" list. From a master list of 400 films, a panel that included directors, screenwriters, actors, editors, cinematographers, critics, and historians, selected their top 100 choices. The original list came out in 1998, and last night's special taught us that apparently not many great films have been released since then! The new poll allowed voters to select movies released between 1996 and 2006 for the first time. Of the newly eligible films, only Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, The Sixth Sense, and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring were added. Steven Spielberg was the director with the most films on the list, with five. Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Billy Wilder each had four. James Stewart and Robert DeNiro were the most represented actors, with five films apiece. You can check out the list for yourself here.

I can sit and watch these things for hours. I don't care how many times I hear about the shark not working, I still love it. But to be honest, last night's special was a bit dull. These lists tend to be painfully predictable, and this was no exception. Citizen Kane was ranked #1 yet again, and the only major additions to the Top 10 were Raging Bull (jumping from #24 to #4) and Vertigo (jumping from #61 to #9). New to the 2007 list are the following films: The General, Intolerance, Nashville, Sullivan's Travels, Cabaret, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Shawshank Redemption, In The Heat of the Night, All the President's Men, Spartacus, Sunrise, A Night at the Opera, 12 Angry Men, Swing Time, Sophie's Choice, The Last Picture Show, Blade Runner, Toy Story and -- a special cheers to this one -- Do the Right Thing, though it came in at a pretty weak #96.

Titles that were removed from the 1998 list are: Doctor Zhivago, Birth of a Nation, From Here to Eternity, Amadeus, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Third Man, Fantasia, Rebel Without a Cause, Stagecoach, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Manchurian Candidate, An American in Paris, Wuthering Heights, Dances With Wolves, Giant, Mutiny on the Bounty, Frankenstein (1931), Patton, The Jazz Singer, My Fair Lady, A Place in the Sun, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and Fargo. Make of those additions and subtractions what you will, but show me one person who'd rather watch Intolerance than Fargo, and I'll show you someone who is no friend of mine.

For the past half century, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals has honored the greatest names in entertainment. Since 1951, it has given its Woman of the Year award to Katherine Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, Meryl Streep and others of tremendous talent. In 1967, it began handing out a Man of the Year award, too. Recipients have included Paul Newman, James Stewart, Robert DeNiro and Steven Spielberg. This year's winners are Scarlett Johansson and Ben Stiller.

Now, I know I could be in the minority here, but I just don't see Johansson and Stiller being in the same boat as some of the past honorees. But I think maybe the theater group hasn't chosen Johansson specifically for her acting (or her gallbladder). I think they just want the "Sexiest Woman Alive" to lead their parade (perchance in a Cinderella costume?). As for Stiller, well, I'm sure he should be a fun guy to have around at a premiere party for HPT's latest theatrical production. He isn't the first comedy star to be honored, and at least he's still in his prime, unlike 1993 honoree Chevy Chase.

Looking through the list, it seems most of the elder greats have already been given awards in the past, but surely there must be somebody more deserving than these two. Okay, granted Stiller is a huge box office success this year, though his draw is likely temporary, but Johansson hasn't shown herself to be a great actress and so far she's been "box office poison." Who should have gotten the awards instead?