Sara Batkie

1 week ago | tonemadison.com | Sara Batkie

Ask the average person what they know about Mozart, and they’ll likely tell you something apocryphal. In part, this is just what happens with any historical figure. Their life becomes akin to a game of telephone, facts blurring over the decades (or centuries) into fantastical fictions. But with Mozart, at least some of this must be attributed to Miloš Forman’s 1984 film Amadeus, which was a bonafide cultural event when it was released. It won 40 of the 53 awards it was nominated for that year.

1 month ago | crookedmarquee.com | Sara Batkie

“Good comedy should be about serious things,” director Jiří Menzel once said. “If you start to talk about serious things too seriously, you end up being ridiculous.” It’s a statement of purpose that was also a necessity for any work that came out of the Czech New Wave, which began in the mid-60s during Soviet occupation of the country. It was a time when any political statement had to be stealthy, lest it risk being censored or even banned.

2 months ago | crookedmarquee.com | Sara Batkie

Los Angeles is a vulnerable place to live. Too dry and there’s wildfires. Too wet and there’s mudslides. The next earthquake could be the big one. Then there’s the omnipresent helicopters, reminding you of an emergency just out of sight. It’s a city of fault lines and wide vistas, cinematic even if it weren’t where Hollywood called home, where dreams come true but also nightmares.

2 months ago | crookedmarquee.com | Sara Batkie

Some films are impossible to separate from their provenance. That’s especially true for those made during wartime. 1943’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is now considered a classic of “Englishness,” but at the time Churchill himself tried to get the production shut down, fearing what a satire of British soldiers might do for morale. The Best Years of Our Lives, released one year after WWII ended, won non-actor and disabled veteran Harold Russell an Academy Award for his performance.

2 months ago | crookedmarquee.com | Sara Batkie

According to popular lore, the word “grifter” comes from an amalgam of “graft” and “drifter.” It applied to the types of petty, nomadic con men who traveled around following circuses and carnivals hoping to make a quick buck. This is not the world of high-stakes casino break-ins by the Rat Pack or elaborate stings orchestrated by Newman and Redford.