Month: October 2011

HE’s Continental Airlines prolonged agony day continues unabated. I sat in a munchkin-sized middle seat from LAX to Houston, next to a guy eating stinky barbecue Doritos. Awful. My first-class sensibilities don’t synch with flying coach or sitting next to riff-raff. Currently standing next to Gate B75 — “hellgate” — at Houston Airport. Charging phone. No wifi or wall outlets, of course. No massively obese people waiting for the flight, which is good. Flight is delayed 85 minutes and counting. At best I’ll check into Savannah’s Marshall House by 7:30 pm.

Yes, I always favor the earlier, black-and-white version. Whenever, whatever. But I’m also convinced in this instance that the dead-eyed expression on Robert Mitchum‘s face is somewhat scarier and more malignant than the one on Robert DeNiro‘s. Right now the 1962 Bluray version (which costars Gregory Peck in the 1991 Nick Nolte role) is available only from Amazon.co.uk.

Robert Mitchum as Max Cady in J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear (’62).

Robert DeNiro as Max Cady in Martin Scorsese’s’s Cape Fear (’91).

“Bloggers and the writers who turn out well-crafted pieces on their own websites are free to write what they want. The best of them, such as Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule or Kim Morgan at Sunset Gun or Farran Nehme Smith at The Self-Styled Siren, give public voice to the way movies function as private obsession.

“Their film knowledge is broad and deep, but they wear that knowledge lightly. They understand that the true appreciation of any art begins in pleasure (and not in the “work” of watching movies). To read them is to read people grounded in the sensual response to movies, in what the presence or look of a certain star, or the way a shot is lit stirs in them. Reading these writers, I often feel that I’m in the presence of people dedicated to the notion of collective cultural memory in an era when instant obsolescence is the rule.” — from a non-linkable Charles Taylor piece about film criticsm in the Fall 2011 issue of Dissent.

I love Morgan and Smith but who the hell is Cozzalio? I haven’t been to Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule once in my life. Not once. Before this evening, I mean.

I’ve just been told that Carey Mulligan, being interested in Hollywood Elsewhere in advance of our scheduled phone interview, read yesterday’s post about her evolving appearance (“Transformer“) since early ’09. And her feelings were hurt by some of the comments. And so she doesn’t feel safe appearing on HE, given this atmosphere, so the phone chat is a no-go.

I don’t blame her. I deleted a couple of the nastier ones yesterday (one by “my brain is melting“), but I guess I should have been more slash-and-burn about it. As soon as I was told the interview had been cancelled, I read all 40 comments that were sitting there as of 6:15 pm, and four, I have to admit, fit my definition of cruel or harsh or needlessly insensitive. I should have whacked them out last night. HE is a place for blunt opinion, but I don’t want it to be a forum for cruelty. (Unless we’re talking about hurting the feelings of certain bearded directors.)

So here’s an apology to Ms. Mulligan, and a pledge that I will be all the more vigilant about editing out any further cruel stuff. I’ve edited out four more comments — the offending authors are “Gabriel,” “Harry Warden,” “My Brain Is Melting,” “K. Bowen” and “Robert Cashill.” The authors are advised to show a little more sensitivity next time.

Today has been one of the slowest, most agonizing filing days in memory. With every post I’ve felt as if my arms and hands were covered in molasses and maple syrup on a cold day in February…physically and mentally drowned in the stuff, and with both of my computers (iMac and Macbook Pro) running slow and lumpy and requiring re-starts etc. I really give up. Two screenings to get to now. Back at it after 10 pm. Awful.

In a non-video jailhouse interview Bernard Madoff has told GMA’s Barbara Walters that he suffers nightmares and “terrible remorse” for having “ruined his family” but is “happier in prison” than he was on the outside.

“I feel safer here,” said Madoff. “I have people to talk to, no decisions to make. I know I will die in prison. I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear. Now I have no fear because I’m no longer in control.”

Walters explained that “the other prisoners treat him with great respect, especially the young ones, but they do this for all the wrong reasons. But he has a routine, and for the first time in his life he’s not afraid of being arrested.”

Q; What’s the difference between the existence that Madoff has now and the one that Ringo Starr describes in “Octopus’s Garden“? A: Madoff’s is on dry land.

And I dreamed I was dying

And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly

And looking back down at me

Smiled reassunngly

And I dreamed I was flying

And high up above my eyes could clearly see

The Statue of Liberty

Sailing away to sea

And I dreamed I was flying.

Here’s a thing I wrote in March 2009 about what Madoff could have done before he was pinched.

It’s intriguing that the designer of Oscilloscope’s We Need To Talk About Kevin poster chose to show Jasper Newell, who has very little screen time as the very young Kevin, rather than the utterly demonic-looking Ezra Miller, who has the much larger role of the teenaged Kevin.

From my 5.12.11 Cannes Film Festival review: “As far as Ramsay’s film is concerned Kevin is just a steely-brained, black-eyed Beelzebub who’s been brought to life in order to pour acid into people’s lives. His ultimate acts of destruction happen at the very end, but they’re pretty much anti-climactic given the certainty in the audience’s mind that the only humane and compassionate response to this kid early on would have been to put him in a burlap bag, fill it with rocks and toss it off a pier.”

Putzing around online, writing long letters, tending to this and detail about tomorrow’s trip to the Savannah Film Festival. It’s already past 11 am and six or seven stories to file. Where is Yvonne Medrano hiding out and why hasn’t my British West Side Story Bluray arrived yet? Two screenings to attend later today — the very first Hollywood Elsewhere-funded screening of Tyrannosaur at Aidikoff Screening Room at 3:30 pm and then My Week With Marilyn at 7 pm.

The above six-word statement is not one of my wish-upon-a-star fantasies. It’s a direct headline quote from the latest Movieline “Oscar Index” chart, presumably written by Stu Van Airsdale. I’m finally not the only guy standing against the headwind of sight-unseen War Horse praisings. If War Horse surges after it screens, fine. If it wins Best Picture, fine. But at least handicappers have stopped sipping the preliminary Kool-Aid, which is due in part to the sudden surge of Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants.

Carey Mulligan‘s sleek frosty-blonde look, seen at Monday night’s Hollywood Awards, is basically a Baz Luhrman creation as she’s currently playing Daisy Buchanan in Baz’s 3D version of The Great Gatsby. But she’s been looking fairly glammy for a while now, and I was struck this morning by the contrast between these two photos. The left-side shot was snapped by yours truly at Park City’s Egyptian Theatre in January 2009 just after the first screening of An Education; the other was taken the night before last.

Share your impressions by all means, but it seems as if the slightly overwhelmed, vaguely anxious 23 year-old I spoke to in Park City some 32 months ago is…well, we all grow up and become wise to the world, don’t we? It’s just that that this inevitable process has happened very quickly to Mulligan. I’m supposed to do a phoner with her tomorrow or the day after about her crazy-sister role in Shame and other current matters.