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Archive for the ‘Gentleman Tim’ Category

SEE ERROL FLYNN’S GHOST — IN MIAMI!

28 Feb

MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL 2019

2019.miamifilmfestival.com…

ERROL FLYNN’S GHOST: HOLLYWOOD IN HAVANA

FLORIDA PREMIERE

SHOWTIMES:

@ The MDC Tower Theater: Wednesday March 6th @ 6:30 PM towertheatermiami.com…

@ The Silverspot Cinema: Sunday March 10th @ 1:00 PM downtownmiami.silverspot.net…

DIRECTED BY Gaspar González

Country: USA
Language: English, Spanish
Subtitles: English
Running Time: 50min
Film Year: 2018
Category: Documentary Achievement Award

Cuba’s pre-revolution obsession with Hollywood cinema in the first half of the 20th century led Havana to create some of the most majestic movie palaces of their time in the Americas, where millions of Cubans spent their evenings gazing at the silver screen stars of yesteryear. One of those stars, Errol Flynn, Hollywood’s most famous swashbuckler, traveled to Cuba in late 1958 to overcome his stage a Hollywood comeback, but instead found himself in the middle of a real-life adventure more improbable than the plot of any film he ever made: recklessly endorsing the rhetoric of Fidel Castro and the soon-to-come revolution. Flynn self-produced a disastrous B-movie, Cuban Rebel Girls, and died soon afterwards.

Miami filmmaker Gaspar González finds in Flynn’s demise a fitting parallel to the end of Hollywood glamor in the Havana movie palaces. Although many of the great Havana movie houses are still standing, they are haunted by their long-gone heydays. With a detailed and careful eye, González reflects on the remnants of a film culture that so deeply affected and defined a nation’s collective memory.

SHOWTIMES:

CREDITS

Director: Gaspar González
Producer: Gaspar González
Screenwriter: Gaspar González
Executive Producer: Gaspar González
Production Company: Hammer and Nail Productions
Music: Mickey de Grand IV
Cinematographer: Richard Patterson
Editor: Jorge Rubiera
Cast: Scott Eyman, Megan Feeney, Christina Lane, Nat Chediak

— Tim

 

Flynnfluences in Star Wars

27 Feb

It was just announced that Star Wars Episode IX, will be released in December. Though the “final chapter of the Star Wars saga”, Errol’s inspiration on the series has been profound, from the very start, as confirmed by the quotes below.

Lucas and Spielberg

“If one man defines the era of swashbuckling Hollywood action that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (used as a model) it’s Errol Flynn.”

Harrison Ford/Hans Solo

“Ford’s Han Solo is a watershed creation … a conscious throwback —you can see Errol Flynn’s lightness there …”

Billy Dee Williams/Lando Calrissian

“I patterned Lando after actors I saw when I was a boy, like Errol Flynn and all those swashbucklers. I always liked those bigger-than-life characters.”

“Lando is fun-loving, kind of roguish. He was a swashbuckling character, kind of an Errol Flynn. I wanted to make the character bigger than life.”

Samuel K. Jackson/Mace Windu

“Errol Flynn films he watched as a boy informed his role in Star Wars.”

“What I love about ‘Star Wars’ is that it’s your basic Errol Flynn movie, but it’s science fiction,”

“For me, it was the ’70’s Errol Flynn movie. And as a kid I’d always wanted to be … that swash-buckling pirate, you know — jumping over stuff and getting busy that way. And all of a sudden we got some space buccaneers.”

Alden Ehrenreich/Hans Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story

“Ehreneich channels a young Errol Flynn as this galaxy’s favorite rogue.”

Carrie Fisher

“Not only all this, but we find Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian, sporting that imperious hauteur and even Princess Leia’s hairdo long before they were fashionable.”

Light-Saber Duels

Errol Flynn’s charming scoundrel may be closer in character to Han Solo than Luke Skywalker, but his acrobatic swordplay – especially the famous fight with Basil Rathbone – became a crucial touchstone for the latter’s saber choreography. Bob Anderson was a fencing choreographer and double for both Flynn (in the 50s) and for Star Wars.

John Williams

The composer of this matinee favourite was one Erich Wolfgang Korngold, from whom John Williams derived a brassy, fanfare-rich approach to orchestration and even a theme or two – Korngold’s score for King’s Row (1942) was used as a temp track while Lucas was cutting Star Wars together.

— Tim

 

Summer Up the Hudson

26 Feb

KORNGOLD AND HIS WORLD @ The Bard Music Festival/Summerscape, 2019.

Weekend One: August 9–11
Korngold and Vienna

Weekend Two: August 16–18
Korngold in America

The Bard Music Festival/Summerscape is “a highlight of the musical year” (Wall Street Journal) and “the most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals.” (London Literary Times)

The subject of this season is a composer who straddled the worlds of fin-de-siècle Vienna and the Golden Age of Hollywood. “Korngold and His World” comprises an illuminating series of chamber, vocal, operatic, and orchestral concerts – as well as pre-concert talks, commentaries, and panel discussions – devoted to the life and times of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957).

Perhaps the greatest musical prodigy since Mozart, before turning twelve Korngold had already been proclaimed a genius by both Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, while his concert and operatic works were routinely premiered and championed by the likes of Bruno Walter, Artur Schnabel, Jascha Heifetz, and Lotte Lehmann. Combining voluptuous chromaticism, soaring melodies, opulent orchestration, operatic leitmotifs, and a nostalgia for the Romanticism of his youth, Korngold’s distinctive compositional voice would revolutionize film music, winning him two Academy Awards along the way. His music was performed for European royalty and at both of Reagan’s inaugurations, while his influence continues to permeate the soundtracks of more recent films, like Star Wars, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In light of this, he is surely “one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.”

Korngold’s first full-length score was for Michael Curtiz’s Captain Blood (1935), which not only established the template for the sound-era Hollywood swashbuckler but also marked Errol Flynn’s emergence as a major star.

www-broadwayworld-com.cdn.ampproject.org…

A TASTE OF SEA HAWK

— Tim

 

Errol & Livvie at the Library

25 Feb

“One Eyed Willie’s ship, The Inferno, was 105 feet long and took 2-1/2 months to construct. It was modeled after Errol Flynn’s ship in The Sea Hawk (1940).”

www.loc.gov…

— Tim

 

Bambi Goes to The Baron — Best International Actor

24 Feb

www.imdb.com…

bambi-awards.com…

de.m.wikipedia.org…

— Tim

 

Close, But No Cigar (Yet) — Nor for Errol.

19 Feb

What do Errol and the following Hollywood heavyweights have in common with Glenn Close?

Amy Adams – Annette Benning – Johnny Depp – Robert Downey Jr. – Harrison Ford – Liam Neeson – Edward Norton – Joaquin Phoenix – Lana Turner – Sigourney Weaver

ERROL FLYNN: He was the Tom Cruise of the 1930s, a global superstar whose natural charisma and box-office power put him at the tippytop of Hollywood — and he never won an Oscar. Unlike Cruise, Flynn was never even nominated, not for “Captain Blood,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade” or 1938’s still-dazzling “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”

www-newsday-com.cdn.ampproject.org…

Will Errol ever receive any meaningful tribute from the Academy? Why no lifetime achievement awards for actors of his immortal caliber? Halls of Fame around the globe regularly commemorate posthumous greats. Why doesn’t the Academy? Or do they?

en.m.wikipedia.org…

— Tim

 

Now Playing On Google Play

15 Feb

“In the age of tent pole cinema and big-budget blockbusters, it’s not as easy to access mid-tier action movies as it used to be. Thankfully that’s an abandoned market that home entertainment and digital platforms have been able to exploit with services like Google Play bridging the gap.”

IN LIKE FLYNN

“An action movie only in the sense that the subject of this biopic’s life was full of action, but those elements make In Like Flynn much more than your standard ‘here’s a retrospective on a Hollywood icon’. If you happened to see this in Australian theatres, you might be a wizard because it unfortunately barely breathed for a moment before hitting home entertainment. It follows the wild early days of Hollywood star Errol Flynn before he blew up on the international stage.”

m.flicks.com…

— Tim

 

King of the Cameos

14 Feb

Oh, What a Marvelous Web He Weaved …

“When I was a kid, I thought, ‘Oh, it’d be great to be like Errol Flynn. I want to be an actor.’ So I do my cameo. For that brief period, I’m an actor.”

m.zimbio.com…

— Tim

 

Wha?! No. 2?! To What!?!

11 Feb

Regarding “The Adventures of Robin Hood”:

“This classic American technicolor tale is considered by many to be the best Robin Hood film of all time and for good reason. It stars Errol Flynn in the best role of his career as the valiant archer and Olivia de Havilland as his love interest, Maid Marian. The story follows the legend of Robin Hood more closely than any other on this list and the action is excitingly inventive. You get the real sense that the creatives behind this masterpiece wanted to push boundaries and test limits with every sword-fight, archery-contest, and all-out battle. It’s a must-watch if you’re a fan of the source material and it would’ve ranked number one if it weren’t for… ”

www-syfy-com.cdn.ampproject.org…

— Tim

 

Errol’s Awesome Auburn

28 Jan

Errol Flynn and Marlene Dietrich tooled around Hollywood in limited-production Auburn Speedsters, the most flamboyant of the boattail breed.

www.smithsonianmag.com…

— Tim