From the Journals of Jean Seberg
by Mark Rappaport
from Image Entertainment
Mark Rappaport, best known as the writer-director of Rock Hudson's Home Movies, pushes the envelope once more with a provocative film that defies convention. Part memoir, part cinematic essay, and part social critique, this is slyly disguised as a documentary. A searing Mary Beth Hurt stars as the cynical and witty ghost of actress Jean Seberg. As much about the American value system as Seberg's tragic life, Journals is a little too convoluted in a few too many places. However, Rappaport does bring his stream of consciousness full circle by the film's ending and it earns kudos just for its originality. --Rochelle O'Gorman
Seberg's story, from her Cinderella-like rise to celebrity status in Otto Preminger's "Saint Joan" to her equally precipitous fall after the movie was released, through her resurrection as a star in Godard's "Breathless" to her death in 1979 is examined through a wide range of her films and others of the period. "From the Journals of Jean Seberg" explores the ideological attitudes that commercial films subliminally offer above and beyond the story, the stars and the price of admission--the message and value assumptions that linger on long after the plot is forgotten. This film about film theory--semiology in practice--is a challenging yet immensely entertaining film by Mark Rappaport (Rock Hudson's Home Movies), starring Mary Beth Hurt.
The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender
by Mark Rappaport
from Water Bearer Films, Inc
From the ground breaking director of ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES and FROM THE JOURNALS OF JEAN SEBERG, Mark Rappaport takes us on hilarious and provocative romp through the hidden and not so hidden gay undercurrents of Hollywoods Golden Years. Dan Butler (Frasier) acts as tour guide as he uncovers, despite efforts to launder American cinema of even the faintest traces of gay influences, Hollywood's squeamish fascination with gay eroticism and camp. Through the use of ingenious film clips, along with Rappaport's signature witty insights, THE SILVER SCREEN/COLOR ME LAVENDER brilliantly uncovers the unmistakable homoerotic flirtations, and the ambiguous behavior that richly imbued the peformances of Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Cary Grant, and other film legends. THE SILVER SCREEN/COLOR ME LAVENDER is a rich and funny meditation on American sexual identity, film history and culture that will change the way you look at butch westerns or the campy charades of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in their "buddy" movies forever.
Rock Hudson's Home Movies
by Mark Rappaport
from Water Bearer Films, Inc
"It was all up there,"says Rock Hudson (Eric Farr) at the start of this rule breaking, dizzying assortment of clips from Rock Hudson's Hollywood career that make up Mark Rappaport's feature film "Rock Hudson's Home Movies". Employing narrative commentary from beyond the grave, the film invents an eclectic form of biography. The closer you look at Hudson's films the more you see the actor winking at us. An award winning blend of dozens of clips, "Rock Hudson's Home Movies" sheds new a new and provocative light on one of Hollywood's greatest legends.
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