Month: March 2010

My initial reactions to the just-revealed official poster for the 2010 Cannes Film Festival are as follows: (a) “I like the monochrome-plus-neon blue, but it doesn’t exactly dazzle. Lacks pizazz. Juliette Binoche‘s expression is supposed to exude serenity or whatever, but it seems sedate and complacent.” (b) “Binoche is the 2010 poster girl because…? Oh, I get it. Because French photographer Brigitte Lacombe asked her. Fine.” (c) “Binoche’s black slacks seem a bit long — should have been finessed by a tailor.”

HE reader Andy Smith had the best reaction: “It looks like an ad for Binoche hosting SNL. Or, you know, one of those commercial-break cards they sometimes show during a broadcast.”

“The only time I saw Battlefield Earth was at the premiere, which was one too many times,” writes screenwriter J.D. Shapiro in a 3.28 N.Y. Post apology piece. The inspiration was this deeply loathed John Travolta film being recently named the decade’s worst by the Razzie guys.

“Once it was decided that I would share a writing credit, I wanted to use my pseudonym, Sir Nick Knack. I was told I couldn’t do that, because if a writer gets paid over a certain amount of money, they can’t. I could have taken my name completely off the movie, but my agent and attorney talked me out of it. There was a lot of money at stake.

“Now, looking back at the movie with fresh eyes, I can’t help but be strangely proud of it. Because out of all the sucky movies, mine is the suckiest. In the end, did Scientology get me laid? What do you think? No way do you get any action by boldly going up to a woman and proclaiming, ‘I wrote Battlefield Earth!'”

A “full” trailer for Chris Morris‘ Four Lions appeared on 3.26. The film still has no U.S. distributor, and one reason (apart from the obvious primary one) may be that eternal bugaboo known as indecipherable lower-class British accents. As Film Drunk puts it, perhaps it’s “just too British. Get it, guv? It’s funny cuz da blokes is just standin’ roun’ lookin at each ovvaz ow awkward loikes, innit. An’ den da lorrie droivah fell off da lift an’ ruined da bobby’s jumpah!”

My 1.24 Sundance dispatch: “Early last evening I saw Chris Morris‘s Four Lions — an unsettling, at times off-putting, at other times genuinely amazing black political comedy about London-based Jihadists — Islamic radicalism meets the Four Stooges/Keystone Cops. It’s sometimes shocking and sometimes heh-heh funny, and occasionally hilarious.

“Morris uses a verbal helter-skelter quality reminiscent of In The Loop, and yet the subject is appalling — a team of doofuses who dream of bombing and slaughtering in order to enter heaven and taste the fruit of virgins. It’s amazing and kind of pleasing that a comedy of this sort has been made, but I don’t want to think about the reactions in Manhattan once it opens.

“At times it felt flat and frustrating (I couldn’t understand half of it due to the scruffy British accents) and at other times I felt I was watching something akin to Dr. Strangelove — ghastly subject matter leavened with wicked humor. An agent I spoke to after the screening said, “I don’t know if the American public is ready for this film.” He’s probably right, but Four Lions is an absolute original — I’ve never seen anything like it, nor have I have ever felt so torn in my reactions. I’d love to see it again, but with subtitles.”

Yesterday I wrote that “nobody even thinks about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis” these days “except for fans of Nick Tosches‘ Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams.” Which, of course, inspired a fresh attack from Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny .

Glenn wrote that I was “dying to throw a gratuitous insult at the ‘dweebs’ and ‘monks’ who value those Martin/Lewis films, but [am] also a little mindful of coming off like a closet Eloi. So [Wells] yokes the enthusiasm to the Tosches book, which he takes as some sort of signifier of cool, and posts, believing that he’s having it both ways. Insufferable, really.”

How’s that again?

I responded as follows: “I don’t know my Martin & Lewis films like I should (I like Sailor Beware and Artists & Models), but Tosches’ book — which IS an eternal signifier of cool as it continues to enjoy renown as one of the finest showbiz bios ever written — turned me on to the fabled genius of their live act when they were really hot & crackling — in the mid to late ’40s (and perhaps the very early ’50s).

“Martin & Lewis never really replicated on film what they struck with a match onstage, Tosches wrote. All I was saying in the post is that Martin & Lewis were comics of their time who aren’t, it seems, generally regarded, much less worshipped, as legendary world-class film comedians 70 years hence. (Largely because of the disparity between their nightclub act vs. films. ) Maybe the tide is turning and one day Average Joes will think of them in the same light as the Marx Brothers or Laurel & Hardy. All I was saying is that right now that regard doesn’t seem to be out there. Am I wrong?

From their Wikipedia bio: “In 1945, Dean Martin met a young comic named Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York, where both men were performing. Martin and Lewis’ official debut together occurred at Atlantic City’s 500 Club on July 24, 1946, and they were not a hit. The owner, Skinny D’Amato, warned them that if they didn’t come up with a better act for their second show later that same night, they would be fired.

“Huddling together out in the alley behind the club, Lewis and Martin agreed to go for broke, to throw out the pre-scripted gags that hadn’t worked and to basically just improvise their way through the act. Dean sang some songs, and Jerry came out dressed as a busboy, dropping plates and more or less making a shambles of both Martin’s performance and the club’s sense of decorum. They did slapstick, reeled off old vaudeville jokes, and did whatever else popped into their heads at the moment. This time, the audience doubled over in laughter.

“Their success at the 500 led to a series of well-paying engagements up and down the Eastern seaboard, culminating with a triumphant run at New York’s Copacabana. Club patrons were convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while he was trying to sing, and ultimately the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much fun as possible.

“The secret, they have both said, is that they essentially ignored the audience and played to one another.”

“The Catholic Church can never recover as long as its Holy Shepherd is seen as a black sheep in the ever-darkening sex abuse scandal. The nuns have historically cleaned up the messes of priests. And this is a historic mess. Benedict should go home to Bavaria. Yup, we need a Nope — a nun who is pope.” — N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd in her 3.27 Sunday column.

I’m online every day for too many hours on end, nosing around for anything/everything, and so I naturally missed the 3.24 debut of this lesson in contrasts. Which is brought down by repetition. (Alternate Boehner spews would have helped.) And which romanticizes a bill that “in lieu of a public option, delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers,” as Frank Rich notes in Sunday’s N.Y. Times.

“Democrats should not listen to the people who are now saying they shouldn’t attempt anything else big for a while because health care was such a bruising battle,” writes Bill Maher. “Wrong — because I learned something watching the lying bullies of the Right lose this one: when they’re losing, they squeal like a pig. They kept saying things like, the bill was being ‘shoved down our throats’ or the Democrats were ‘ramming it through.’ The bill was so big they couldn’t take it all at once!

“And I realized listening to this rhetoric that it reminded me of something: Tiger Woods‘ text messages to his mistress that were made public last week, where he said, and I quote, ‘I want to treat you rough, throw you around, spank and slap you and make you sore. I want to hold you down and choke you while I fuck that ass that I own. Then I’m going to tell you to shut the fuck up while I slap your face and pull your hair for making noise.’ Unquote.

“And this, I believe, perfectly represents the attitude Democrats should now have in their dealings with the Republican Party: “Shut the fuck up while I slap your face for making noise — now pass a cap-and-trade law, you stupid bitch, and repeat after me: ‘global warming is real!’

“The Democrats need to push the rest of their agenda while their boot is on the neck of the greedy, poisonous old reptile. Who cares if a cap-and-trade bill isn’t popular, neither was health care. Your poll numbers may have descended a bit, but so did your testicles.

“So don’t stop: we need to regulate the banks, we need to overhaul immigration, we need to end corporate welfare including at the Pentagon, we need to bring troops home from… everywhere, we need to end the drug war, and we need to put terrorists and other human rights violators on trial in civilian courts, starting with Dick Cheney.

“Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th — and by passing health care, the Democrats saved their brand. A few months ago, Sarah Palin mockingly asked them, ‘How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?’ Great, actually. Thanks for asking. And how’s that whole Hooked on Phonics thing working out for you?”

Newsarama‘s David Pepose speaks with writer Chuck Dixon about a four-issue Expandables comic-book series that will tell a prequel tale. Esteve Polls drew the images, etc.

The films hogging all the hype and hoopla don’t necessarily count long-term. Otto Preminger‘s Saint Joan is more highly esteemed than Victor Fleming‘s Joan of Arc. A Song Is Born is generally regarded as a lesser version of Ball of Fire. Nobody except for fans of Nick Tosches‘ Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams even thinks about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, much less 3-Ring Circus. And I’d never even heard of Edge of Doom or Our Very Own before seeing this photo. They both starred Farley Granger.

Dennis Hopper has been getting a lot of respect and affection lately. I could write about him for days and never run out of material. He’s like some kind of Mt. Rushmore figure now, beloved for his hipster authenticity and storied wackness. With the exception of Frank in Blue Velvet and the wackjob villain in Speed, the crazier or more eccentric or self-destructive Hopper seemed to be on a personal basis, the better he seemed to be on-screen. The saner and healthier he got, the less he seemed to bring.

Dennnis Hopper a day or so ago at Mann’s Chinese, in Giant (’56), during his extra-bad period in the late ’70s, with Daria Halprin in the early ’70s.

I tried to interview him at a Manhattan hotel in ’80 about Out Of The Blue, and he kept me waiting for over two hours — guess why? But at least now I can say I blew off a Dennis Hopper interview, etc. I have that memory. He came down to the lobby at the last minute as I was walking out, and I remember that hyper look in his eyes.

I could write about Hopper’s degenerated, cowboy-hatted Tom Ripley in The American Friend (“I know less and less about who I am, or who anyone else is”) until I’m blue in the face. Or his jabbering photo-journalist in Apocalypse Now. I remember quite liking his direction of Colors (’88) and The Hot Spot (’94). I don’t know why a guy like Hopper would direct something like Chasers (’94) except for the money. I guess that was it.

I’ve never even seen The Last Movie (’71), which destroyed his cred as a serious/rational/trustable director. It screened at the Aero in January 2009. I’d buy it in a second if it came out on Bluray or DVD, even.

Hot Tub Time Machine is at least as funny as The Hangover if not funnier, and it’s certainly much wilder, and it grossed a lousy $4.5 million yesterday? Which is only $900,000 more than the $4 million earned by the second-stanza Bounty Hunter, which people with taste and brains are said to despise? What happened?

Standoffish women is what happened. Plus the fact that HTTM only opened in 2700-plus situations compared to 4,055 screens for How To Train Your Dragon, the weekend’s top-grossing film, and 3384 runs for Tim Burton‘s second-place Alice in Wonderland.

Definite interest among under-25 males for HTTM was a relatively okay 46, but a not-so-hot 30 among over-25 males (i.e., guys who were young in the ’80s). Clash of the Titans (4.2) has a definite interest factor of 59 among under-25 males by comparison, and Kick Ass (which doesn’t open until 4.16) has an under-25 definite interest at 67. Hot Tub managed to wrangle a mere definite interest 31 from under-25 females, and over-25 females only gave it a 26.

I know what this film is, I know how well it played with the crowd I saw it with, and a $13 or $14 million weekend gross just doesn’t seem to add up. It’s not a disaster — it’ll end up with $45 or $50 million domestic — but it doesn’t seem proportionate to what HTTM actually is.

How To Train Your Dragon took in $12.2 million yesterday and Alice pulled down $4.7 million.

Those stories about Motherhood‘s $131 gross in London are almost a good thing, press-wise. Now there’s a slight curiosity factor, at least, whereas before no one cared. This day-in-the-life drama, directed by Katherine Dieckmann and starring Uma Thurman, has found historical distinction. To paraphrase former Secretary of State Edwin Stanton, “Now it belongs to the ages.”

Motherhood opened stateside on 10.23, and had made $92,900 by 11.15. The DVD/Bluray came out on 2.23.10.

I’m a little confused about why this story broke today when the IMDB says it opened in London on March 5th — three weeks ago! — but we’ll let that go. Here’s another IMDB link that seems to indicate it opened on 3.7, but maybe not. The N.Y. Post story says Motherhood opened in London “last Sunday,” or 3.21. What?

Let’s keep in mind, at least, that Motherhood got thumbs-up reviews from the Hollywood Reporter‘s Stephen Farber, Entertainment Weekly;s Owen Gleiberman and the N.Y. Observer‘s Rex Reed.

If the London wipe-out story hadn’t appeared, I probably never would have seen Motherhood. Now I’m thinking I will.