Mr. Magoo gets taught a lesson on Christmas Eve
REVISITING THE JULE STYNE / BOB MERRILL MR. MAGOO’S CHRISTMAS CAROL
Paley Center
25 West 52nd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, December 1, $20, 6:00
www.paleycenter.org
www.mrmagooschristmascarol.com
MR. MAGOO’S CHRISTMAS CAROL has always been one of our favorite holiday programs, along with, of course, A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS and SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN’ TO TOWN. The first animated Christmas special – it premiered on NBC in December 1962 — Mr. Magoo’s version of Charles Dickens’s classic seasonal tale features music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill, and a great lineup of celebrity voices, including Morey Amsterdam, Paul Frees, Jack Cassidy, Royal Dano, and the great Jim Backus (Thurston Howell III!) as the near-sighted Magoo. The Paley Center will honor the fifty-two-minute film with a screening on December 1 at 6:00, followed by a panel discussion with animator Darrell Van Citters, who has just released MISTER MAGOO’S CHRISTMAS CAROL: THE MAKING OF THE FIRST ANIMATED CHRISTMAS SPECIAL, and Judy Levitow, daughter of director Abe Levitow, moderated by casting director Jack Doulin. And as an extra treat, each attendee will go home with a DVD of the charming original show.
South Korean singing sensation Rain goes all Black Mamba in this action-packed revenge thriller chock-full of highly stylized beheadings, beautifully sliced-off limbs, and extreme bloodlettings, courtesy of director James McTeigue (V FOR VENDETTA) and MATRIX producers Joel Silver and the Wachowski brothers. When Mika Coretti (Naomie Harris), a Europol agent based in Berlin, thinks she has found a connection between a series of assassinations and murderous ninja clans long believed to be the stuff of legend and rumor, her career – and life – are soon in jeopardy. Even her boss, Ryan Maslow (Ben Miles), seems to give up on her as he is ordered by powerful higher-ups to drop the case, but she is already in too deep, on the run with mysterious ninja Raizo (Rain). The confusing plot mixes a BATMAN BEGINS-like origin story with KILL BILL-type violence as McTeigue cuts between Raizo’s brutal life as an orphan training to be a cold-blooded killer in the Ozunu clan (run by Japanese martial arts master and ENTER THE NINJA star Sho Kosugi) and his modern-day struggle to survive, being hunted by the clan he betrayed. Rain takes quite a beating in the film, reminiscent of what Jim Caviezel went through in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, but Raizo is not so set on turning the other cheek. A lot of NINJA ASSASSIN makes no sense, and the ninjas move so fast during some of the fight scenes that you can’t really tell just what the hell is going on, but, hey, it’s a ninja movie. What did you expect?
Twenty-three-year-old writer-director Damien Chazelle has expanded his senior thesis at Harvard into an unusual black-and-white musical that mixes John Cassavetes’s SHADOWS and FACES with Jacques Demy’s THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (and a little French Nouvelle Vague) as seen through the modern lens of mumblecore. An accomplished jazz drummer, Chazelle (who makes a cameo in the film behind the kits) casts real-life jazz trumpeter and first-time actor Jason Palmer as Guy, a jazz trumpeter in a relationship with Madeline (Desiree Garcia), whom he met on a Boston park bench. But when Guy strays following a chance encounter on a train with a stranger named Elena (Sandha Khin) — an electrifying scene filled with heat and passion — Madeline leaves him, instead dreaming of making a new life for herself in New York. But as the two of them go their separate ways, they still imagine what could have been. The film features such actual musicians and dancers as Andre Hayward of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, tap-dancer Kelly Kaleta, and teenage saxophone prodigy Grace Kelly. (Look for Chazelle’s father, Benard, as Paul.) Justin Hurwitz wrote the music for five of the original songs, with Chazelle supplying the lyrics. A slow-paced, heartfelt drama, GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, which played the Tribeca Film Festival, has the improvisational feel of a quiet jazz solo, a soft, tender film about love and loss and how fragile meaningful relationships can be.