Day: February 15, 2009

Jeffrey Wells to Bertrand Tavernier (sent in an e-mail just now that I might as well share): “Bertrand — We haven’t spoken since Cannes in ’04 or ’05, but I hope you’re well. I’m writing to say that I’ve just found a copy of In The Electric Mist at a DVD store in Manhattan, even though it’s not supposed to be released until March 3rd. And I’d like very much to see your 15-minute-longer version of this film.

Snapped inside an anonymous Manhattan DVD store this evening — Sunday, 2.15, 8:20 pm.

“I’ve read all about all the troubles, mainly by having read Scott Foundas‘ article in the L.A. Weekly. I wasn’t at the Berlin Film Festival, however. Is there any way I can see your version from my Manhattan base? Does someone in this country has a disc they can let me look at? Might there be a NYC screening of your cut? I naturally want to write a comparison piece. Sorry for all the grief, but it seems only right that U.S. critics should at least see your version and write about it, even if it’s not available to the general public over here. (Unlike viewers in Europe, who are being shown your director’s cut.)”

“We can’t lose with Jerry Lewis at the Oscars next Sunday,” Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips wrote today. “Like the clashing personalities showcased in Lewis’ greatest film, two scenarios present themselves.

“Scenario 1: The perpetually divisive screen icon takes a gracious pill and accepts the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award with his own brand of charm, plus a couple of inoffensive jokes, steering clear of any references to ‘broads’ or homosexuals or his ‘kids.’

“Scenario 2: Lewis forgoes the gracious pill. He seizes the moment. And he tells the Academy how he really feels about never having been nominated for a regular Oscar.

“The 82-year-old writer, producer, director and star will no doubt be greeted by one of those ‘waves of love’ moments Lewis once referred to, on his old talk show, describing how audiences flood him with adoration.

“But Lewis was never recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for any of his efforts in, well, motion picture arts or sciences. (Lewis patented the video-assist playback system, which he first used on The Bellboy in 1960.)

“Part of it relates to the age-old prejudice against comedy. Robert Downey Jr.’s supporting actor Oscar nod for Tropic Thunder is a gratifying exception to the rule. But I’m here to tell you: This is a matter of the wrong statuette for the right guy. Lewis should’ve won an Oscar a long time ago.

“1964, to be exact. That year, the Oscars recognized the screen achievements of 1963, and in 1963 Lewis released his masterwork, The Nutty Professor.”

I respect Lewis’s Professor but I’ve always been a bigger Bellboy fan.

I’ve always liked Michelle Pfeiffer in recent years but I haven’t paid serious attention to her since The Fabulous Baker Boys, so it’ll be a welcome thing when Stephen Frears‘ Cherie (Miramax) goes into the screening and promotional dance, which I suspect won’t happen until the fall (i.e., either during or just after Toronto). The last time I was seriously focused on Pfeiffer due to serious ardor was…well, a long time ago.

By pinching his reptile fingers and sending out unmistakable brain signals, this guy is telling the Wall Street bankers, the donkey-stubborn Republicans in the House and Senate, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner exactly what to say and do. Thank fortune there are some with the will to resist.

Arianna Huffington was dead-on when she wrote the following: “The battle lines over how to deal with the banking crisis have been drawn. On the one side are those who know what needs to be done. On the other are those who know what needs to be done — but won’t admit it. Because it is against their self-interest.

“Unlike the conflict over the stimulus package, this is not an ideological fight. This is a battle between the status quo and the future, between the interests of the financial/lobbying establishment and the public interest.

“What needs to be done is hard but straightforward. As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times sums it up: ‘Admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once.’

This 2.12. Cenk Uygur piece is also worth reading. It’s about the cap on executive pay having been removed from the stimulus bill, how it seems as if the system of everyone having been bought and paid for is unchanged, and what kind of guy Geithner really is.

Andrew Sullivan said this morning on the Chris Matthews Show that President Obama would “end up nationalizing several major banks….and that the stress tests for these financial institutions that Treasury Secretary Geithner has proposed are the first step in explaining to the American public, for which nationalization is a charged word, why this has to happen.”

If you could somehow capture and compress all the rage and contempt in the reader comments about this “Utterly Correct” story and convert it into liquid fuel….

“All the companies are laying off employees. There will be fewer deals. Budgets will be tighter. It will shrink the business, I’m sure. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. When you look back on some of these weekends when you have five, six movies opening the same day, they cannibalize each other. So with fewer films it’s better for all concerned. Even the consumer — it’s easier to decide what to see.” — producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Confessions of a Shopaholic) speaking on the current economic climate in Hollywood.

“…and we’re gonna catch the hell. Gonna be pretty goddam bad. [But] that’s all right. These things happen every so often. Five years, ten years. Gets rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one.” — Clemenza (Richard Castellano) in The Godfather.

1999 is commonly regarded as an excellent movie year, and just as commonly 2008 is seen as a relatively weak one. I didn’t realize how weak until I spent some time today looking over a month’s worth of HE clips from November 2006. Volver, Children of Men, The Lives of Others, Tsotsi, United 93, Babel, Pan’s Labyrinth, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada — I hereby nominate ’06 as a classic year also. The movies weren’t just better then, but this column, I regret to say, was a more engaging and inventive read.

This is hilarious — a projection riff about Baz Luhrman‘s Australia written in November ’06. Red River…hah!

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” — quote attributed to Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Thomas, used in the opening credits of Amy Berg‘s Deliver Us From Evil and initially mentioned in this column 2 years and 3 months ago.

In his review of The International, N.Y. Press critic Armond White says that Clive Owen‘s “perpetually sullen, unshaven mug provokes dreadful flashbacks of his woebegone heroics in the ludicrous apocalypse-thrill-ride Children of Men.” We’re all familiar with Owen’s sullenness, but equating Children of Men with some kind of “dreadful”? It was my choice for Best Picture of 2006, and I knew whereof I spoke when I wrote this initial review.

White has to be the contrarian; he has to blow your mind, piss on your temple, show disgust for one of your all-time favorite films, etc. It’s his handle, I get that, but still.

White also provides a list of “recent feel-bad movies about international politics,” including Children of Men, Michael Clayton, Lord of War, Traitor, Rendition, Syriana, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Kingdom, Stop-Loss, Vantage Point, the Bourne [films] and War, Inc., and says they’re all “essentially about glamorous cynicism.” Well, there’s obviously no way to address current or futuristic global political concerns without coming to some pessimistic-cynical conclusions, so the question is when making a film about this is do you make the world of your film appear glamorous or not? Which obviously could mean stylistically avant garde. If I were producing such a film, I would certainly approve of any glamour additive that didn’t distract from the aesthetic essence.

According to the photo editor of London’s Daily Mail, the below photo, chosen to illustrate an article by reverse-mortgage pitchman Robert Wagner called “I blamed myself for Natalie Wood’s death: Robert Wagner on the night his wife disappeared,” is a shot of Wagner and wife Natalie Wood in All The Fine Young Cannibals.

If the woman in this photo is Natalie Wood I’m Alanis Morissette. Look at her eyes and her teeth. Tell me she doesn’t summon thoughts of a flesh-eating ghoul ready to take a bite out of Wagner. Tell me she doesn’t look like a candidate to costar four years hence in Roger Corman‘s The Tomb of Ligea. (A reader informs that the actress is actually Susan Kohner, who retired in 1964 and later became the mother of Chris and Paul Weitz.)

So who’s worse at the end of the day? The Daily Mail photo editor or the woman who mentioned The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button on the Chris Matthews Show this morning?

On the “tell me something I don’t know” portion of this morning’s Chris Matthews Show, a female guest announced that the first film that the Obamas had watched in the White House screening room was The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button. Nobody coughed, smirked…nothing. Imagine the chuckling mockery that would result if I wrote a piece that referred to Treasury Secretary William Geithner. The Matthews blooper says something about the public’s attitude about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I think. But what?