AARP The Magazine - January/February 2011

The Green Hornet, played by Seth Rogen in the hero’s big-screen return, is the Lone Ranger’s grandnephew.

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Entertainment

Four Artists Get New Gusto From the Past

The Illusionist
If ever there was a cartoon for grown-
ups, it’s the lushly cinematic, delicate-
ly drawn animated film The Illusionist,
from director Silvain Chomet (Oscar
nominee for The Triplets
of Belleville). Chomet’s
tale—sometimes melan-
choly though ultimately
enthralling—is that of a
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FOR GROWNUPS

washed-up magician and his friendship with a teenage girl. Not a lot happens in The Illusionist, based on a ’50s script by French filmmaker Jacques Tati, who liked to take his time in telling a story. But in a jangly world of frantic 3-D computer ’toons, Chomet’s handcrafted Illusionist is a return to a more beautiful, not simpler, era. —Bill Newcott

The Elephant to Hollywood

In 1993, when Michael Caine turned 60, he broke a Hollywood rule: If you’re going to make a bad movie, make it someplace sunny and warm. (Caine was in Alaska for the lamentable On Deadly Ground.) In his new memoir, The Elephant to Hollywood, Caine reveals he was also mulling retirement. But Jack Nicholson urged Caine to rethink that—and he went on to triumph in The Cider House Rules (1999), the Batman movies (2005 and 2008), and

Inception (2010). —Antony Shugaar 2 BOOK

Apocalypse Now More than 20 years after 1979’s

Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola

reedited his original footage to create Apocalypse Now Redux. Both versions—along with the documentary about Coppola’s ordeal making the first version—are together for the first time on a DVD/Blu-ray release. Turns out Coppola had changed the 1979 film to please investors. Only after it became a modern classic did he feel free to remake it his way. Still, he says, “I think some people prefer the original cut. It’s shorter.” —B.N.

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Chamber Music Society

Few young singers have the nerve to resurrect a style they’d abandoned years before, but 26-year-old jazz sensation Esperanza Spalding is nothing if not precocious. A string trio swings through her third solo album, Chamber Music Society, a nod to the singing bassist’s early classical training. And while Spalding specializes in high-flying, free-form wordless melodic vocals, the highlight turns out to be her neoclassical “Wild Is the Wind.” —Richard Gehr