After coming out of MOMA’s Mike Nichols tribute last Saturday night, I came upon a long line of people at the corner of 53rd and 6th Avenue. 40 or 50, at least, waiting to buy $5 plates of chicken and rice from a food truck. I asked one of the guys in line what the big deal was. “It’s really delicious, man,” he answered. “You’ve gotta try it.” Can’t be that good, I said. “It is,” he said.
I didn’t want to be a lemming so I passed. Everyone in line looked youngish. I can’t think of any other place in Manhattan where can you get a good meal for five bills. A Depression 2.0 special.
This 4.17 Newsweek piece by Jesse Ellison actually argues that Earth, Disneynature’s watered-down feature version of BBC’s Planet Earth miniseries doc, is too unsettling for kids to be rated G. That’s because it contains sequences that imply (but don’t show) that a Caribou calf and a baby elephant are killed due to natural forces and circumstances. Coddle much?
When I was three years old I saw a neighbor chop a chicken’s head off, and then watched as the chicken’s body ran around a bit with the arterial blood spurting out. I was a little bit freaked by this, sure, but I didn’t faint and probably learned something from it also. What did I learn? Uhm…the meaning of the phrase “running around like a chicken with its head cut off”?
Not long after a little black cocker spaniel puppy who belonged to a little neighborhood girlfriend of mine was run over by a garbage truck. The poor thing had been flattened into a black puppy pancake with the guts splattered and the tongue sticking way out. I’ll never forget that tongue. The episode taught me that life can end in a blink of an eye. It was awful to see — traumatic is the word — but it also made me a little stronger, I think, or at least a little tougher.
As I wrote on 3.25, “Parents are realizing that they haven’t done their kids any favors by funding a cut-off, over-indulged fantasy realm for them to live in.
“Kids need to grow up and grim up and learn the realities and skills and disciplines that will allow them to survive. So enough with the Spielberg-aping films that portray a child’s world as a magical-fantastical kingdom in and of itself that adults might be able to learn something from.”
Carson Reeves‘ Script Shadow, which attempts to review the latest Hollywood scripts, is, at the very least, amusingly written. A conversational blunt style that reminds me of….uhm, well, me.
At the top of the Script Shadow pile right now is a relative oldie — Brad Inglesby‘s The Low Dweller, which reportedly sold for $650,000 and may/will star Leonardo DiCaprio with Ridley Scott directing. I found it a boringly pretentious effort that took me three tries to get through. Here’s what I said about it on 3.23.08….ready?
“I have an instant problem with scene descriptions of rottin’ dead dogs and mayflies and greasy spoons with good old truck drivers sayin’ where they’ve a’trucked to. I especially don’t like readin’ about some lowdown Robert Johnson tune playin’ as a title card says we’re in the southern Indiana lowlands in the year 1985. That was back when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and scratchy 78 rpms of Johnson’s Delta blues songs were heard almost everywhere, and were cherished in the hearts of the people.
“Hollywood sure loves the idea of rural Middle America bein’ a land where there ain’t no Walmart or Starbucks or nothin’ like that, and where workin’ men called Slim and Buck and Jethro sip from half-pint whiskey bottles and roll their own makins and order eggs, taters ‘n’ bacon as they wipe sweat from their brows with tattooed forearms.”
If Reeves want to get in touch I can provide him with some newer, better scripts.
There are 42 Rotten Tomato reviews of Rod Lurie‘s Nothing But The Truth, representing the big-city snoots who had a chance to see this sharp and tight journalism drama before distributor Bob Yari fell into Chapter 11 and Truth became instant road-kill. First-rate film, tough deal.
I understand there are some regional and hinterland film critics who plan to review the Nothing But The Truth DVD as a brand-new feature when it comes out on 4.28. That’s a good and gracious way to go, I feel. Lurie’s film deserves all the benefits of a theatrical opening, including reviews by top-tier critics.
And by the way, Truthisn’t being given a Bluray release after all. The Sony Home Video folks obviously don’t believe it warrants the extra expense. Too talky, not enough action, no tits-and-ass.
There is no spoon, there is no dress, and there is no Nickelodeon/Last Picture Show DVD. Or at least, not in the Manhattan video stores (quaint term!) I’ve been to today.
The kid at the downstairs video desk in the Union Square Virgin Megastore said the buyers never even ordered it. “Only the really big titles between now and closing,” he said. “But Dave Kehr reviewed it last week in the N.Y. Times and made kind of a big deal about it,” I stammered. “I thought you guys might at least have four or five copies.” Naahhh.
Even the guy at my favorite little video store, a place that sometimes sells Blurays ahead of their street dates, said “we never got it in. A friend who works at Sony has a copy but copies never came to us.”
I know it’s irrational and sort-of stupid to go to video stores when it’s obvious they’re no longer the providers they once were and with online ordering being so easy and simple. But I wanted to see Peter Bogdanovich‘s black-and-white version of Nickelodeontoday, not next Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday.
This is the end of a world I’ve known and loved since the ’80s. The lazy camaraderie of movie mavens in a well-lit, library-like atmosphere, casually assessing some of the latest releases in terms of remastered visual quality and, strictly as a secondary consideration, how good they are in terms of story, theme, directorial chops and emotional penetration. Union Square Virgin is the last well-stocked DVD store in Manhattan and it’ll be closing in three or four weeks.
Hello, Amazon.com. Farewell, impulse buys and browsing through the stacks and getting lost in that world. No more, never again.
If it was okay and funny and even convincing in Broadcast News (1987) for Albert Brooks to present a half-serious case about super-smooth news anchor Bill Hurt being “the devil,” I should be allowed to express a similar view about Matthew McConaughey…no?
I saw the guy on a billboard this morning for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (New Line, 5.1), and I quickly said to myself, “That’s the devil…the devil walking amongst mortals.” Not that McConaughey is anything but average human. But if the Devil wanted to roam around and foster evil, he’d definitely pick McConaughey as a host. Because no actor on earth seems more vapid. (To me anyway.) And because vapidity, more than any other human quality, is what allows evil to succeed.
I explained some of my feelings about McConaughey two or three years ago in a piece called “King of the Empties.” The Brooks-Hurt analogy doesn’t fully work since Brooks was talking about Hurt personifying and hastening the lowering of journalistic standards in TV news and McConaughey isn’t lowering filmmaking standards, or at least not to my knowledge. He’s just cruising along on whatever current will carry him along. But some of what Brooks said could apply.
“What do you think the devil’s going to look like? He’s not gonna be a guy with a long grey pointy tail! What’s he going to sound like? Acchh-acch! He’ll be attractive, he’ll be nice and helpful, he’ll never do an evil thing, he’ll never deliberately hurt a living thing. He’ll just bit by little bit lower our standards where they’re important. He’ll just coaxe it along, just a little bit…flash over substance. And he’ll get all the great women.”
At last night’s post-premiere party at Strata for Tyson (Sony Classics, 4.24). Raining cats and dogs outside. A sociologically intriguing guest list, to say the least. Chris Walken showed up early, told Toback he loved the film, and left. My camera’s ostensibly rechargable batteries gave out on me. Proving that rechargable batteries are only good for a few charges, and then they’re worthless. A friend snapped this.
