Month: February 2010

The first line of the second paragraph of Anthony Lane‘s review of Edge of Darkness (in the 2.8 issue of The New Yorker) reads as follows: “Mel Gibson, who looks and sounds not a day over sixty-five, plays a policeman named Thomas Craven.”

The remainder continues: “The name is a joke, since the movie insists, time and again, that he has all but dispensed with fear. Warned by a fellow-officer that “someone armed and dangerous” is on the loose, Craven replies, ‘What do you think I am?’ This is delivered not with a wink and a wild grin — we are not, thank Heaven, in Lethal Weapon territory — but with a pared-down, dead-eyed plainness, which goes with Craven’s salty hair, thinning at the back, and the frown lines carved across his forehead like rifts in a relief map. He wears a loose-fitting suit that he might have picked up at a morgue.

“‘I’m the guy with nothing to lose who doesn’t give a shit,’ he says. You’re telling me.”

The YouTube description reads as follows: “Techno Remix of Mel Gibson‘s WGN interview with Dean Richards, during which Gibson called Dean an asshole on air.”

The L.A.County Coroner’s office has announced that Brittany Murphy died of “community acquired pneumonia complicated by iron deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication.” They’re calling it “accidental.” It would appear, however, that the drugs didn’t get into her system as a result of a gang of ne’er-do-wells kidnapping Murphy and forcing her to swallow them against her will.

HE Blu-ray correspondent Moises Chiullan reports that director William Friedkin has decided against screwing up the To Live and Die in L.A. Bluray in the manner of last year’s French Connection debacle.

Friedkin’s acid-washed version of his Oscar-winning 1971 film was the first corporate-sanctioned vandalizing of a classic film and the first known instance in which a respected director had defaced his own work. Good to see he’s had second thoughts.

I like this teaser one-sheet just fine, but marketing-wise it’s too conceptual, too Saul Bass, too Hollywood Key Art Awards. The plebes would take one look and go “naaah.”

Leaving for Los Angeles in a few minutes. Won’t be filing anything until mid-afternoon, which is when I’ll be chilling (I.e., stuck) inside LAX for three hours.

According to “Hollywood’s Top 40,” a piece by Peter Newcomb on page 272 in the new Vanity Fair, the following filmmakers pocketed the following amounts in 2009: (1) Michael Bay, $125 million; (2) Steven Spielberg, $85 million; (3) Roland Emmerich, $70 million; (4) James Cameron, $50 million; (5) Todd Phillips, $44 million; (6) Daniel Radcliffe, $41 million; (7) Ben Stiller, $40 million; (8) Tom Hanks, $36 million; (9) JJ Abrams, 36 million; and Jerry Bruckheimer, $35 million.

JFK Airport, American Airlines concourse A — Thursday, 2.4, 9:10 am.

Way down at the bottom of the list is Brad Pitt, who earned a piddly $13.5 million last year.

Bloomberg.com’s Kristen Haunss reported today about slick Wall Street types taking part in a mixed martial arts Fight Club scene at Manhattan’s Renzo Gracie Academy.

“We get a lot of finance guys,” says RGAA’s program director Max McGarr. “It’s a good release from their job. If you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s good to come here and get it out.” Richard Byrne, CEO of Deutsche Bank Securities who practices jiu-jitsu and sparring at the club, calls it “a great stress reliever…talk about a great way to get aggression out, and it’s an unbelievable workout.”

Mixed martial arts is described as “a contact sport combining aspects of wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, grappling, ground fighting, muay thai and other techniques.”

How many top-tier actors today could do this scene and really give it their all and bring it home, like this fellow does?

“Beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return.

“Beware those who are quick to censor — they are afraid of what they do not know.

“Beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone.”

I’ve known hundreds if not thousands of people who’ve seemed to fit the description of those first and third lines. It goes without saying I’ve never forgotten them. Every time I meet someone new I find myself wondering who they really are (or may be) in the solitude of their cars, beds and bathrooms.

I’m trying to decide whether or not to spend $1500-plus so I can attend 2010 South by Southwest (3.12 to 3.20) and in so doing catch the following (which I haven’t yet seen): Bernard Rose‘s Mr. Nice, Michel Gondry‘s The Thorn in the Heart, Alexandre O. Philippe‘s The People vs. George Lucas, Shane Meadows‘ Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, Steven Soderbergh‘s And Everything Is Going Fine, Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas‘ American: The Bill Hicks Story, Mike Woolf‘s Man on A Mission, Jacob Hatley‘s Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm, Mark Landsman‘s Thunder Soul and Daniel Stamm‘s Cotton, as well as the alrready-announced Kick-Ass, Cold Weather, Elektra Luxx, Hubble 3D and The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights.

It may be worth it just to see The People vs. George Lucas. Just after The Phantom Menace opened — more than ten years ago! — I told David Poland in a phone coversation that Lucas was “the devil.” Poland chortled, scoffed. “George Lucas is not the devil, Jeffrey,” he said. He most certainly is, I replied, in the sense that Albert Brooks called William Hurt “the devil” in Broadcast News. Lucas is an embodiment of evil in that he destroyed his own Arthurian mythology and sacrificed the church of millions of Star Wars believers on the altar of commercialism and Jake Lloyd and Jar-Jar Binks action-figures.

Now I have won — the world has caught up to my view. George Lucas is the devil, there’s a SXSW doc about this very point, and Rabbi Dave lacked the foresight to understand the fundamental truth of it.

If the 2.9.07 release of the dreadful Norbit damaged Eddie Murphy‘s chances of winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his Dreamgirls performance, will last month’s DVD/Bluray release of the dreadful All About Steve hurt Sandra Bullock‘s bid for a Best Actress Oscar? Probably not, but if Steve had been released theatrically this month, maybe. Is Bullock the first actress to have been nominated for a Best Actress Razzie and a Best Actress Oscar the same year?

Canal Street and Broadway — Wednesday, 2.3.10, 6:15 pm

Hudson Street just south of Abington Square.