New Line Cinema / PG-13 / 145 min

So this Cuban thing with the missiles, it happened 8 years before I was born. Basically, if you’re below the age of 50 it probably doesn’t live in your memory as a ‘real’ event, but more likely as a history lesson taught in a college class. 13 Days, the true story of how our country came closer to nuclear war than ever before, or since, is clearly the perfect film to cap the past millennium and raise historical awareness as we enter the next. I’m certainly not a Kevin Costner fan, but this work returns him to his rightful place in the history of cinema, with his previous Oscar caliber roles. However this is the type of movie, which doesn’t need awards for validation. It’s more important than any award could even begin to symbolize.

Considering how the prospects of an older demographic (50+) audience tend to kill projects in Hollywood, 13 Days is a testament to the will of the producers. Word on the street is that it’s also skewing younger and pulling in a larger audience of viewers like myself (18-49). The key to this cross-generational interest is summed up by producer Peter Almond who remarked, “We wanted to give these events a present, driving action that allows audiences a view of what it felt like from the inside, to experience viscerally the remarkable human pressure of the crisis and how these vital decisions weighed on these young men in unimaginable ways. Thanks to all the input from those who lived it first hand, there’s a real sense of watching the major moments of the crisis unfold through the eyes of an immediate participant.”

For the uninitiated, i.e. <50 folks, the film works on two levels. First is the extraordinary experience of heart-racing crisis-upon-crisis-upon-crisis without ANY resolution in sight. The second is the realization that this actually happened. I'm sure for those who were conscious during this period in 1962 it must evoke the feelings of pure panic that gripped the world at the time.

The fresh style of seeing the events unfold through the experience of Kenny O'Donnell, Special Assistant to The President, played by Costner, also bolsters the narrative by not making John F. Kennedy the central protagonist. Screenwriter David Self performed exhaustive research including first-person interviews, reviewing memoirs and listening to White House tapes. Regarding his stylistic choice he remarked, "O'Donnell was one of President Kennedy's most trusted advisors and he was the perfect person to use as a creative vehicle to take us through this pivotal time in history."

Director Roger Donaldson should certainly be nominated in the spring, as he captured so much of the tension without expository dialogue. Seeing the clock tick down as the blockade against Cuba commences, with Russian freighters chugging toward American warships, makes you feel like a spectator on Main Street in Tombstone at high noon. Bruce Greenwood is superb as J.F.K., who without uttering a word at times speaks silent volumes. Kevin Conway scared me more than anything Freddy Krueger could dream up, as General Curtis LeMay, who seems poised to disregard JFK and just start bombing. Likewise, Steven Culp, portraying Robert Kennedy, isn't just poised, but blatantly announces his idea to perform a reverse coup and summarily eliminate the Joint Chiefs.

I can't say how happy it makes me to see a movie with JFK in it, that doesn't concern his assassination or even hint at any of the conspiracy theories concerning it. Clearly he was his own man, and not a puppet of the industrial-military-complex, so he and Bobby definitely made enemies. It's a sad state if all we have to remember him by is his assassination and not a separate and distinct picture of his character at its Finest hour.
13 Days shows this man had a set of brass-balls that make Glen-Gary leads look like children's diapers.

In the end Castro is the big winner, and if anything it makes me aware that to this day we are still engaged in the political equivalent of a scorned bully mentality. We will do business with China but not with our little communist neighbors 90 miles off the coast of Florida. C'mon guys the cold war is over, break out the Cuban cigars and be glad we're not all dead.

Credits:
Written by David Self
Based on Material by Ernest R. May & Philip D. Zelikow
Directed by Roger Donaldson
Produced by Peter O. Almond, Armyan Bernstein & Kevin Costner
Executively Produced by Marc Abraham, Thomas A. Bliss and Michael De Luca

Cast:
Kevin Costner
Bruce Greenwood
Steven Culp

Director Ang Lee claims he has no checklist of movie genres he’s marking off with each film, but no one could accuse him of a foolish consistency in picking projects either. He’s done everything from a modern romantic comedy with gay themes (The Wedding Banquet), Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility), contemporary drama with social comment (The Ice Storm) and a period Western (Ride with the Devil). His latest film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is perhaps his most ambitious undertaking-a Hong Kong-style martial arts film, complete with eye-popping action sequences but also featuring strong female characters and almost operatic love stories. And what’s next? Maybe a musical. Lee discussed his filmmaking philosophy, as well as some of the challenges of making Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which opens Dec. 8.

Q: Do you see any similarities between your earlier films and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

LEE: I think that, as in Sense and Sensibility, there’s the conflict of social obligations and free will. The “Father” trilogy (Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman) had that theme, and I also realized I was using that principle when I did Sense. My question to myself is always, how do I engineer the through line, the central emotion of a film project. Because whenever I do a genre I tend to bend it or make it something else, to find something refreshing to me, and also find my creative freedom. And I haven’t escaped that theme yet.

Q: A lot of people in the West admire the style of fighting in your film, but they miss the philosophy. These characters aren’t quite soldiers, but there’s a way of life behind the way they live, along with the fighting.

LEE: The philosophy is usually what generates me to make up stories. To devote a year of my life, in this case two years, a project has to have a structure or a basic element that excites me. But I think for a movie viewer the philosophy isn’t important. I think the most important thing is the emotional tour they will go through in that two hours. I’ll try to hide the philosophy and make it invisible. I think that’s the skill, to hide it. If somebody picks it up, that’s great.

I always feel like philosophy works against drama, at least in my case. Philosophy is one way to reduce your self-tension, desire, your hidden dragon so to speak, and try to match the way nature’s laws operate. Being from Taiwan and educated as a Chinese, that’s a philosophy and lifestyle that is very much ‘discipline’ and anti-dramatic-but moving toward the Western tendency to be dramatic and self-asserting. That becomes my theme. And I love Western drama and the constant conflict. But any audience has as much right as I do to look at the film and interpret it their own way.

Q: I read that you said that every Chinese director must do a martial arts movie.

LEE: That was just bragging, because I did it. But it’s kind of true in a way. I think it’s a boyhood fantasy about power, morality, about women certainly, romance and adventure. It’s close to our primitive and secretive joys. And since it’s a fantasy, anything’s possible.

Also the Hong Kong genre is such an exhilarating filmmaking language-it’s really a powerful, raw energy kind of filmmaking, and I think that’s very attractive. The Hong Kong filmmakers are the best at how to work out a shot. For them, all that matters is what looks good and is effective for the audience.

Q: How difficult was it choreographing the wire work? It’s the most incredible wire work I’ve seen in any martial arts movie.

LEE: We used thicker wire-usually films use much thinner wire. They also use cheesy lighting skills, not backlighting it, or using smoke or Vaseline over the lens to blur it. Thanks to the digital technology that now can be affordable, we were able to use a lot thicker wire. Even so, the swinging forces could be terrible. The wire work also involves a tacit understanding between the puller and the actors. The actors have to act along with the force and be quite sensitive to it. The coordination between them and the puller is something they have to adapt to and learn. We live in a world with gravity, there’s nothing we can do about it, but we try to imitate weightlessness as much as we can.

Q: How long did shooting take?

LEE: The whole movie? Five months.

Q: Is there a tradition of having women warriors? I haven’t seen that in a lot of martial arts movies.

LEE: This is a very male-dominant genre, and I suspect the woman warrior is a male fantasy-oh, what a potent, fascinating woman-and it’s even more fascinating to conquer them. But this book is one of the rare cases where we take the emotional tour with the women. We take their point of view, and they get to carry the story.

Q: Is this a very popular book?

LEE: No, that’s why I chose it. Others have been made over and over.

Q: Were the combat scenes in Ride with the Devil a preparation for this film?

LEE: Yes, but the skills are very different. Ride was educational for me, although Westerns are a lot easier-the complexity of choreography and setting up the camera to shoot them is easier than sword fighting. I think it was a good warm-up for me; technically I learned what to expect in action sequences, like how much time it might take to rig something, and safety issues.

When I see movies where they can stage something great but not get close to the actors, I’ll always get bored. Especially doing a martial arts movie you can get carried away showing off how much you can fascinate people with movement. But I knew from experience that unless the movement is an extension of the characterization, an interpretation of the relationship, part of the plot, it’s not good. People get bored, because they want to know what’s going on and they get confused.

Q: How do you include character and the continuation of the dramatic elements in the combat scenes? Are those things incorporated in the script?

LEE: It’s not in the script-those are on-set kinds of things. It’s really the collaboration with the choreographer on the set, where we start to pool ideas and see what’s possible. Because a fighting sequence, if it lasts three to five minutes, does need narrations, pauses, time to exchange lines. It’s a part of the storytelling.

I’ll tell the choreographer what principles I want the fight to have. For example in the bamboo fight [between Chow Yun Fat's and Zhang Ziyi's characters, atop swaying bamboo branches 60 feet in the air], I told the choreographer it’s not fighting, it’s almost like caressing. It’s the prohibited dragon dancing, so let’s do something magic. When it comes to shoot, I give my opinion about if it fits the overall characterization and relationship at that stage-does it escalate? does it help the plot?-and he’ll make adjustments on the set, which really tortures the actors.

Q: How important was Yuen Wo-Ping [fight choreographer of The Matrix] to this movie? Would you have made this if he wasn’t available?

LEE: No. It would be some other movie. I like his style, I’ve admired him since I was a film student. He made the first Jackie Chan movie that made him a star, it revolutionized martial arts style. To me he’s the ideal collaborator. He taught me a lot.

Q: Did he have any apprehension in working with you, because you hadn’t had martial arts experience?

LEE: I think we have a mutual admiration, and he knew what I do. But it was like doing Jane Austen-I had to prove that I could do the job. It was a long stage to speak his language and earn his trust. I also think that, although he doesn’t admit it, at heart Yuen Wo-Ping is an artist. His profession has such a blue-collar, working ethic-they don’t admit that they care for art, but I think he does care. Of course they have their own way of working, and most of the times I would try to bend those rules and make a difference and there would be struggles.

Q: Do you have a favorite genre, since you’ve dabbled in so many of them?

LEE: No, I don’t have a checklist. I think anything with dramatic elements would be interesting. But I know any genre I pick up I would like to bend and find something different about it. I think a thriller or a ghost story would be great, maybe at a certain point a musical. James Schamus (co-screenwriter of Tiger) is writing a musical. I want to do something back in New York so I can stay home.

Q: Your films always have a lot of humor-I wonder if you’d do an out-and-out comedy?

LEE: I think that would probably be the hardest thing to do-as if someone points a gun to my head and says ‘be funny.’ The humor in my movies is always about something that I didn’t know was really funny. If I think something’s funny and leave space for people to laugh at, it never really works. Pure comedy, whether it’s romantic or absurd comedy, would probably be the most difficult for me.

Q: Could you talk about casting Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh, why you wanted them?

LEE: Well there’s not much choice, they’re big stars, and the parts they’re playing are kind of role models in the martial arts genre. Their experience, stardom and status fit perfectly. Michelle I never had a second thought about-when I had the idea of doing this movie, she naturally was in my head. To me she worked all her life toward this part. Before she read she was freshly off the James Bond movie, and she was hot and didn’t take anything for a year-she was waiting. She went through tai chi training and [Mandarin] language training for this film.

And Chow Yun Fat is our biggest star and finest actor. The difficulty of him is to change his audience image from the modern character to a stately, conservative, more repressed one, with a shaved head and a ponytail-and holding a sword, that was new.

Q: What does the title signify?

LEE: In the written Chinese characters, Jen’s name has a dragon in it, and Lo has a tiger, so it’s the little tiger and the dragon. The hidden tiger or crouching tiger is a Chinese phrase to not underestimate what you see on the surface-people in disguise can surprise you. There’s also the repressed desire in a repressed society, the untamed nature that’s potent, that’s romantic, that’s destructive. To me it appeared to be the midlife crisis. Making this movie and stretching everything-I was dealing with the hidden dragon.

Columbia Pictures / 122 minutes

The film hasn’t even opened yet and already I know I’m the lone voice against it

God has truly blessed Cameron Crowe. I know this because Crowe is one of the few people in the world who can nostalgically look back on their teenage years and not see personal misery and suffering. And to top off his luck, he was a fifteen-year-old writer for Rolling Stone magazine.

And given writing assignments that meant traveling with rock bands.

ALMOST FAMOUS was called “semi-autobiographical,” until early buzz anointed it a hit. Now its 97% autobiographical. Oh boy! This means rock looked like this in the early 70′s. The dominant drug-of-choice was pot (which Crowe never touched), Crowe always called his obsessed mom, and he lost his virginity “cute.” Crowe never saw anything in music that would lead to the deaths of Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, and Jimmy Hendrix. The band Crowe traveled with (the fictional band Stillwater) got into a fight about T-shirts, not ugly disputes over control, contracts, or fame.

If this was rock in the seventies, we didn’t miss a thing but love.

Crowe’s alter ego (William Miller, played by Patrick Fugit) is so fresh-faced, na·ve, and pure of heart and body that I wondered how he ever got mixed up with music in the first place. No matter, this is not the world of VH1′s BEHIND THE MUSIC. So, Crowe could easily have been placed on The Brady Bunch bus. This is how much insight into backstage life I got from watching ALMOST FAMOUS. Miller spends the entire movie trying to get an interview out of the band members he is tagging along after. He’s the guy from Rolling Stone, but the band doesn’t care. They are NOT deferential to him, even if there is the possibility of “The Cover.” Managers, agents, promoters, publicists, producers – was Crowe a writer before all of these people got involved in the music business?

The child-angel of the movie is super-groupie Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson). Hudson instantly became a star due to DNA and the hard years her mother put into her Hollywood career. And Hudson’s face is the poster for ALMOST FAMOUS. This will be THE negotiating stick for guaranteed instant stardom. Now, all Hudson has got to do is show up and learn to act. (Though, we acknowledge, acting has never been a diehard requirement in star-making careers. But I have the nagging impression that Kate already considers herself an actress).

Here, in Hudson’s performance, “Look pretty” is an emotion. Her halo of blond curls signal her purpose: to be the object of desire for the virgin reporter who hasn’t reached puberty yet. She even has the requisite angel-fairy scene where she dances, ballet step-style, in an empty parking lot. Penny Lane knows the writer-kid is in love with her, but she belongs to the budding star guitarist, who has a perfectly normal, no-nonsense girlfriend back home. She’s a groupie with a heart of gold, not treacherous self-interest! But Crowe/Miller really is in love with guitarist Russell Hammond (played by Billy Crudup) himself. The only drug backstage is unrequited love! Crudup has got the sexy rock star nonchalance thing down pat. Unfortunately, I came away not knowing much about any of these characters.

Maybe this is what rock life was really like since, incredibly, Crowe’s wife is Nancy Wilson of Heart. Surely Wilson would have clued Crowe in if there had been an ugly side to the rock business.

Mick and Keith – was it all a big publicity stunt?