As I mentioned the other week, there is a fine art movie house about three blocks from me.  Even though the place is closed for now, they still change the marquee every Thursday, as if on a regular schedule.  And to their great credit, they put up fake "Now Playing" and "Coming Soon" films to make funny and wistful commentary.  (To clarify, the movies are real ones, but they're not actually playing now or coming.)  I pass it occasionally when my morning walk takes me past it.  They do a great, admirable job.

For instance, a few weeks ago, the marquee was --
 
Now Playing: 
High Anxiety.” 
 
Coming Soon: 
“Serenity.”


This was replaced the week following with a new schedule, which showed --

Now Playing: 
"Escape from New York” 
 
Coming Soon: 
“What Happens in Vegas"

On my walk today, here’s their latest.  Sorry, it’s a little out of focus – I stepped into the street to get a closer shot, and rushed it.  But it's clear enough to read.

On this week’s Al Franken podcast, he writes that guest “documentarian Alex Gibney presents a cautionary tale, Citizen K, the story of Russia’s slide into totalitarianism under Putin and the fall of a principled billionaire oligarch who spends ten years in a Siberian prison. If only he had the podcast to pass the time.”
 

For our part here, we celebrate National Train Day on these pages by posting a list of the greatest train movies.  These are films in which trains are absolutely central to the story.  Where a train is the driving force of the tale, without which you can’t properly describe the plot.

(Think of it like the classic and beloved Santa Claus song, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."  Santa Claus isn't actually in the song at all.  He hasn't even shown up yet.  In most ways, it's about "you" and what you should do -- or better not do.  But even though there's not a hint of Santa Claus even appearing in the song, without Santa Claus...there's no song.)

We're strict about this.  A friend once recommended The Taking of Pelham-1-2-3, and it was strongly considered, but that was a subway train or light rail.  This list is for full-bore trains, the kind that either have sleeping cars and dining cars, or could if they were hitched on.  But I've added it to our Honorable Mention list this year.

I should also note that, since the list is fluid, we've added another new movie to the list of Great Train Films, a film from 2013, Snowpiercer.  I saw it several years ago, but for whatever reason it slipped through the cracks, so it's time to correct that notable oversight.  It's a vibrant movie.  I was reminded of it for two reasons -- one, it was directed and co-written by Bong Joon Ho, the filmmaker who did last year's Best Picture-winner, Parasite.  And the other is that TBS has adapted it into a TV series coming very soon.  The story, like Parasite is a clash of class systems, but far-differently is about a time in the future when habitable climate has been destroyed on earth, and all of remaining mankind lives on a massive train that circles the globe, building to an insurrection.

There are two other categories:  Honorable Mention is for movies which you can tell their stories without using the word "train," but they have some connection to trains -- usually a great, standout train sequence -- that makes them memorable.  And a few years I added a new category of Special Mention, for works that don't qualify as a train movie or perhaps even as a movie at all, but deserve a place of honor.  For instance, Stephen Ambrose's excellent book on the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, Nothing Like It in the World.

And as I noted in the past, though something I think is likely very obvious, I love train movies.  Here is the current list of Great Train Movies.

Around the World in 80 Days
Back to the Future 3
Bridge on the River Kwai
The Commuter
The Darjeeling Limited
Emperor of the North
The General
The Great Locomotive Chase
The Great Train Robbery
The Lady Vanishes
Murder on the Orient Express
The Narrow Margin
North by Northwest
Northwest Frontier
Night Train to Munich
Polar Express
Runaway Train
Shanghai Express
Silver Streak
Snowpiercer
Source Code
Strangers on a Train
Tough Guys
The Train
Transsiberian
Twentieth Century
Union Pacific
Union Station
Unstoppable
Von Ryan’s Express
 
Honorable Mention
Throw Momma from the Train 
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
The Greatest Show on Earth
Go West
At the Circus 
Cat Ballou
Trading Places
 
Special Mention
Great Railway Journeys of the World (TV documentary)
Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose (book)
The Railrodder (short)
The Taking of Pelham-1-2-3

I've also added another new feature last year -- a scene from one of the Great Train Movies, or another entry on the list.  In honor of it being added to this list, here's a brief scene from Snowpiercer featuring Tilda Swinton (as the sort of general manager of the First Class), and Chris Evans and Octavia Spencer (as two of the rebellious leaders of the Lower Class.)

​I thought you’d appreciate this.  There is a fine art movie house about three blocks from me.  I haven’t seen it for a few months because, of course, I’ve been staying inside, and the few times I ‘ve been out, I went a different direction.  But I took my morning walk in its direction the last two days.  I walked past it yesterday, looked over and started laughing.  I took a picture of the marquee but it was fuzzy, so I went back today – and the marquee was different.  So, my guess is that they actually change this every day.   I don’t know if they’ve been doing this for the past couple months, or if they just started it recently or what.  But hats-off to them whenever they began.
 
Yesterday, the marquee was --
 
“Now Playing: 
High Anxiety.” 
 
“Coming Soon: 
“Serenity.”
 
 
Here’s what it was today –

A couple days ago, I saw an ad on TNT about a new, upcoming series that will be premiering on the channel in two months, on May 31, called Snowpiercer.  It looks uncommon for a TV show, a dystopian story set on board a train.  The iMDB describes its plot as, "Set over seven years after the world has become a frozen wasteland, Snowpiercer centers on the remnants of humanity, who inhabit a gigantic, perpetually-moving train that circles the globe."  The series stars Jennifer Connelly, who won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for A Beautiful Mind, and Daveed Diggs who won a Best Supporting Actor Tony Award for the musical Hamilton.. 

There's a point to all this.  Bear with me.  Here's the trailer.
​

As I said, it's unique for a TV series.  And a good trailer.  Except for one thing.  For some surprising reason, they chose not to add this line --

"Based on the movie, Snowpiercer, directed and co-written by Bong Joon Ho, creator of the Oscar-winning Best Picture, Parasite."

Really.

The movie Snowpiercer is absolutely terrific, a dazzling, tour-de-force 2013 film that won 33 international awards.  Why on earth they don't mention the TV series' connection to this year's Oscar-winner is beyond me.  Perhaps because it's on a foreign film, but I doubt that because countless TV series have been based on movies -- and few (if any) based on Oscar-winning Best Pictures.  Maybe because the original source is a French graphic novel and they only bought the rights to that -- though I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't buy up all the rights.

By the way, although a Korean movie, it was in English for its international release and had an impressive cast, including Chris Evans (from Captain America and the Avengers movies), Tilda Swinton (Oscar-winner for Michael Clayton). Jamie Bell (who played Elton John's songwriting partner Bernie Taupin in Rocketman), John Hurt (two Oscar nominations for The Elephant Man and Midnight Express), three-time Oscar nominee Octavia Spencer,(who won for The Help). and Ed Harris from The Truman Show, Apollo 13 and Oscar-nominated for Pollock.  Even one of my faves, the wonderful Allison Pill (from HBO's The Newsroom and currently Star Trek: Picard and Devs) has a small role.

The iMDB description of the film is "In a future where a failed climate-change experiment has killed all life except for the lucky few who boarded the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe, a new class system emerges."  In fact, like Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, the film has a strong class warfare center -- with a heavy emphasis on the warfare.

Here's the trailer of the original movie.  It doesn't do the film justice, but you'll get a good idea.  And it's highly recommended.  And yes, the movie is included on my list of train movies that I post every National Train Day.

Sorry to hear that the great Swedish actor Max Von Sydow passed away at the age of 90.  I only had one occasion where I crossed paths with him, but it was memorable.

It was back in my dark days when I was doing movie PR, though working on staff as the head writer in the marketing department before I headed into freelance unit publicity on individual movies.  I found being on staff a bit more palatable for my taste.

At one point, we had picked up a bunch of movies from an independent company to release (I think it was the British firm EMI), and they didn't tend to have all the PR material we needed, so I would have to fill in the holes.  And on this instance, for the movie Flash Gordon, there was no biography for Max Von Sydow -- who played 'Ming the Merciless -- and as someone so renowned, I had to interview him and put a bio together.  He was in town briefly, so we set up a meeting.

I was a bit intimidated.  After all, I was still just slightly past being a kid, and he was...well, Max Von Sydow.  He was a legend for starring in films by Ingmar Bergman, including the classic The Seventh Seal (in which he famously played chess with Death), The Virgin Spring and The Magician.  He starred as Jesus Christ in the blockbuster The Greatest Story Ever Told.  Played the priest in The Exorcist.  And during his career, he got two Oscar nominations.  And was in both the Star Wars series and Game of Thrones.  And tons more.  And since, once he started making films in Hollywood he so often played villains or cold, distant characters, he was all the more foreboding. 

So, it was with a great deal of trepidation that I went to the meeting.  Unsure what on earth I could conceivably ask someone so renowned internationally, a major figure in film history.

He turned out to be one of the kindest, most thoughtful actors -- or film person, period -- I ever dealt with.  Though I was there to interview him for the production notes of the presskit, he spent almost more time asking me questions.  
  
It was a bizarre experience. At one point, I almost wanted to say, "Stop it! Le ME ask YOU my questions already!" And it wasn't just random questions he was asking, but follow-ups on what I'd said because he was interested.  Maybe it was part of his actor training to learn about people and study them.  Maybe it was because he'd been acting for so long (and went on to actor for another 30 years...) and had done so many interviews that he was tired of just talking about himself -- something, if that were the case, deeply rare for an actor, and to his credit on that alone.  Maybe it was because he was just a very nice fellow.  It felt like the latter.  Because it felt like just a very warm, pleasant conversation.

Which it was.

Far more so than this --
​

Though they released it almost a year ago, I finally got around to watching the Netflix original movie, Foreign Correspondents.  It's written and directed by Ricky Gervais, who did a very nice job with both -- based on a French film, Envoyés très spéciaux,  It tells the story of a self-centered radio reporter and his put-upon technician who are sent to cover a war in Ecuador, but through a screw-up never get there and instead have to pretend to cover it from an apartment in New York City.  And because the borders are closed before other journalists are able to arrive, they end up therefore having an "exclusive."  It only streams on Netflix, so if you don't subscribe to that service, you're unfortunately out of luck, though hopefully it will be released on DVD at some point.

I thought it was quite well-done and often very funny, coming up with a range of ways to keep twisting the plot, continually creating more convoluted problems for the two guys.  It's not a flamboyant, over-the-top farce, but for my taste I particularly liked its low-key, often subtle nature.  The film stars Eric Bana and Gervais and both were very good -- Bana dry in his role and objective in his awareness of their lunatic situation, and Gervais more hopeful and very self-effacing.  Good as they are, I almost even-more enjoyed America Ferrera as the very sweet, helpful and utterly dim-witted wife of the couple who let Bana and Gervais use their spare bedroom.  I laughed at almost every line she delivered.  I also liked Kelly Macdonald as a low-level reporter at the station who has a sort of Greek-chorus sensibility to her reaction of everything her.  Also in the cast are Vera Farmiga (in a scene-chewing role as Gervais' annoyed wife who sees herself on center stage -- the song she writes for herself is very funny and written in real life by Gervais) and Kevin Pollack as the well-meaning station manager.

Here's the trailer.  They do a pretty good job capturing the movie, though there's a lot more quipping and interpersonal relationship in the film and much less war action than the trailer suggests..

I didn't have a burning interest in watching the broadcast this year, and as always I recorded it and fast-forwarded through.  I watched the 3-1/2 hour broadcast a little quicker than usual -- generally it takes me about two hours, though on occasion 2-1/2 -- this time finishing in about 90 minutes.  Without going into any details, just because, well, as I said I didn't have a burning interest, I was intrigued by the results.  They weren’t all my choices, but for the most part they were perfectly defensible.  And it sure made a fascinating bit of history. 

As for the show itself, what little I saw of the banter before presenting awards I thought was fairly amusing and better then usual.  The standouts for me were James Corden and Rebel Wilson willing to be totally self-effacing on knowing the importance of special effects, Tina Fey and Will Ferrell explaining their deep understanding of movie making, and Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig going...well, looney, though for my taste, fun as they were, I thought it went on a bit too long since there are nominees for that category on the edge of their seats.

What I will include is the opening bit from Steven Martin and Chris Rock.  Every joke didn't work, but I found it very funny overall.  What I particularly liked about their performance is that they made no pretense about how they were “really chatting.”  It was very mannered, but intentionally so and with an effortlessness that only comedy pros can pull off.

For decades, I was on a mini-mission to get the Motion Picture Academy to open their Oscar broadcast with a particularly wonderful song that, though it had a bit of shelf-life in country music, I figured they wouldn't know.  I actually came close -- not to accomplishing my task, but having access to making the suggestion -- when my former boss at Universal Studios, Bob Rehme, was made president of the Academy.  Alas, I didn't have the contact information that would have helped and didn't make the effort -- which probably wouldn't have been too difficult, even it was before Google searches -- to track it down (hence never getting beyond being just a "mini-mission").
 
The idea time has long-since passed, since the group who sang the song, the Statler Brothers, have retired, and also some of the references in the song -- while many are still classic -- aren't all likely as impactful on today's audience.  Still, it's a very fun song, and would make an enjoyable number in the middle of the broadcast, sung by a cobbled-together quartet of movie stars singing.  Or the Statlers themselves could come out of retirement.  They did briefly a couple years ago for an event when elected into a country music Hall of Fame.
 
But no, that's not going to happen.  But it doesn't stop me from at least presenting the song on the day of the Oscar broadcast.  So, here it is -- one of the most affectionate and clever songs I've heard about movies. And it fits perfectly into the portfolio of "list" songs that the Statlers were so well-known for, over a career that began with “Flowers on the Wall, written by the group’s Lew DeWitt…who, as it happens, wrote this song, as well.
 
Indeed, the name of the song is "The Movies."

Just in time for the Oscars, we have a special edition of 3rd & Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America.  Recently, the WGA and Writers Guild Foundation held its 2020 Beyond Words special event.  The WGA Awards-nominated screenwriters gathered to discuss their acclaimed films, and the group included Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story), Greta Gerwig (Little Women), Steven Zaillian (The Irishman), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), and Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), among others.