Gossip Central

Tom Hanks in Paul Greengrass’ News of the World: Does the Right Thing

Back in the early days of the coronavirus, when we heard the news that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, on location in Australia, tested positive for COVID-19, a cry could be heard round the world. How could Hollywood’s essential decent man, in every role—think Sully or Captain Phillips--, and his image in person, be so vulnerable? Playing Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a Civil War veteran in 1870, in Paul Greengrass’ latest movie, News of the World, Hanks inspires one thought: he’s everything you’ve ever loved about him and more.

Maybe with Joe Biden at the helm, decency has increased cache: Capt. Kidd, coming upon a rogue child, a doubly traumatized blond 10-year old he calls Johanna in the woods at the site of a lynching, takes it upon himself to bring her (the superb German actress Helena Zengel), home. America is still the wild west, and much of this trip through harsh landscapes chased by desperados, is beautiful to look at, yet harrowing.

Christmas at Moran Studio: Peaceful Holiday Cheer

When he wasn’t in a brownstone in Chelsea, the painter Thomas Moran occupied a studio on Main Street in East Hampton. “A shingled two-story boardinghouse with a smoking chimney” facing the pond, described the late Robert Long in his 2005 book, De Kooning’s Bicycle. In the late 1870’s, “Moran thought that this could be his Fountainebleau.” Visible from Montauk Highway, the stately “cottage” was in disrepair for years, and has been restored as an exhibition space for Moran’s etchings, and this year, for a Victorian Christmas.

Denzel Washington’s Vision: The Museum of the Moving Image Honors Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Blues singer Ma Rainey was plus sized in many ways, most especially her voice. In a new film based on August Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Viola Davis gives her Ma a grimace to go with her mega-sound, as large as life for blacks in America. Davis’s Ma is a grand performance balanced by that of one of her horns-men, lithe Levee, played with charm cum mischief and madness by Chadwick Boseman. Ruben Santiago-Hudson adapted Wilson to perfection in this gem, and this week, the movie, to air on Netflix, had its premiere at the Museum of the Moving Image gala. Virtual, this event was a state-of-the-art forum on the movie’s production, starring Viola Davis and cast, costume designer Ann Roth, director George C. Wolfe who accepted an award from producer Denzel Washington.

Washington, a longtime interpreter of August Wilson’s art, vowed to make the playwrights’10- play cycle, one for every decade of the 20^th century, into film. That vision started with his direction of Fences in 2016, an Oscar nominated film in which he starred with Davis. While Fences does not take place in a recording studio, Wilson's dialogue is always rhythmic. Speaking about the musicality of Ma Rainey, the actors talked about filming with rehearsal time as if this were a staged production, and the bond created among the players. The actor Glynn Turman, Toledo in Ma Rainey, recounted Denzel seeing him in a production of the play and saying, “Stay ready. I stayed ready.”

Nomadland: Off the Grid with Frances McDormand

Chloe Chao’s extraordinary film Nomadland is a map of America, seen in Frances McDormand’s face. Unadorned, craggy, her face looms large in every frame—that is, when the camera is not tracking roads along America’s most beautiful open spaces, the deserts of the West. You do not want to take your eyes off McDormand’s Fern, a human embodiment of the American frontier, its resilience and relentless loneliness. We—our culture climbing out of difficult political years-- haven’t focused on those places sufficiently, places in Nature threatened by commodification and industry. But the open road motif is an American tradition, a promise of freedom inherent in the pursuit of happiness, the heart of democracy’s foundation.

Rocks feature as prominent edifices in this landscape, and Zhao juxtaposes their humble majesty with the Amazon fulfillment center where Fern sometimes works when she’s not on the road. The steel grid, hive of busyness, brings to mind last year’s excellent documentary American Factory. Fern, maybe a nickname for Frances, although the actress goes by Frannie, is otherwise an unglamorous shrub close to the earth. The cast, an ensemble of real-life nomads, go by their names including co-star David Strathairn, David, a man Fern connects with in her travels, or stasis in one of the RV stations she parks her tricked up van, “Vanguard,” now her home after her mining town, Empire, shut down. Charlene Swankie is a stand out; with a few months to live, she’s in charge of her destiny. She makes you understand Fern’s choices, including one you wish she’d reconsider: a future with David and his warm family.