Month: January 2012

Joss Wheedon‘s The Avengers opens in less than four months and Disney marketing chose to limit their Super Bowl spot…oh, I get it. This is a ten-second tease for a trailer that will debut during the game. I still maintain that Wheedon is a lightweight (i.e., moderately talented) clock-puncher and journeyman, and nowhere near the realm of James Cameron or Bryan Singer even. Here’s the most recent trailer.

Last Sunday I wrote that facial stubble was mandatory for lead actors in Sundance 2012 films, and that “every single actor in every single film I saw in Park City complied.” The mandate also includes mainstream cinema, as this still from Skyfall, the latest 007 installment, makes clear. Daniel Craig‘s James Bond was absolutely clean-shaven in Casino Royale, but I can’t recall if he wore GQ stubble in Quantum of Solace.

Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan is a four-CD package of many, many artists signing Bob Dylan songs. The revenue goes to Amnesty International, hence the copy line “this album saves lives.” But my reaction when I saw this poster was that music itself can do this. Regularly, I imagine.

All great art in fact — films, plays, paintings, novels — has the power to lift people out of the doldrums and turn them on and nourish their souls to some degree. Dylan’s music alone made a huge difference to hundreds of thousands in the ’60s, I’m sure. You could list any number of albums, films, books, TV shows, documentaries.

So what movie, if any, has saved anyone’s life out there? Or at least delivered some kind of spiritual bloom effect? You were in a kind of downish, despairing place when you went into the theatre or popped in the disc, and when it was over you felt significantly different — aroused, aflame and no longer fluondering. Jim Hoberman was recently quoted saying that Jules and Jim had this effect when he was 14 or 15. Costa Gavras‘s Z had this effect upon me, to some extent. I’d never felt politically engaged by a film until I saw it in my mid teens…wow. Second most arousing: Hearts and Minds.

What movie changed LexG‘s life? Or Glenn Kenny‘s?

Earlier today I was buying some regrettably expensive sunglasses at Macy’s at the Beverly Center, and I asked the sales girl to just let me wear them out and to forget the imitation leather case and the cleaning cloth and the plastic carrying bag and the receipt even. I just wanted the glasses.

“Are you sure?,” she said. “Because you’ll need the receipt if you want to return them.”

“I won’t. They’re just sunglasses.”

“You’d be surprised how many people come back and want to return or exchange,” she explained.

“What do they say when they do that?,” I asked. “What…’excuse me but these sunglasses that I bought yesterday don’t seem to be working out’?”

“I’m just saying, people change their minds,” she said.

“It’s like returning a handkerchief. ‘Excuse me but I bought this handkerchief yesterday and I blew my nose last night and it doesn’t seem to be functioning correctly so I need to return it.’ Or ‘excuse me but I bought this T-shirt yesterday and wore it during a date with this girl I just met and we went to a couple of bars and I don’t know…the T-shirt just isn’t working out. I’d like to exchange it for another.'”

People are so impulslve, compulsive, lame, scattered. Waddling around in their little fantasy-whim bubbles. They buy stuff without thinking and the next day they’re Marie Antoinette. “Eeeewww, Louis…this rack of lamb doesn’t taste right,” etc.

To me, Universal’s decision to advance the opening of Oliver Stone‘s Savages from 9.28 to 7.6 means (a) they’ve decided it has definite mainstream popcorn potential and (b) they don’t think it fulfills the requirements of a “fall movie” (however you want to define that term) to quite the same degree. I haven’t read the script but it’s basically a drug-dealing movie costarring Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch that’s about saving Blake Lively from Mexican drug cartel kidnappers. Benicio Del Toro, Demian Bichir, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Emile Hirsch, Mia Maestro and Salma Hayek costar.

“Even The Artist‘s most vocal detractors — who would likely not be vocal at all about it under normal circumstances — would have to confess that the film is not some bloated sop to the Academy, like so many other major studio productions crafted specifically for year-end consideration,” writes AV Club‘s Scott Tobias.

“Its goals are modest, its pleasures refined — not a whiff of self-importance or middlebrow grandeur, no issues more pressing than a general appreciation of love and the cinema, and certainly no ambition to heal a nation a decade after 9/11 or credit white audiences with a behind-the-back, Ricky Rubio-style assist in ending black oppression.

“And yet the resentment is there. Late last year, in a tribute to the absurdity of cinematic riches in 2011, I expanded my Top 10 list to 20 and added another 30 Honorable Mentions. Though even I’m not quite nerdy enough to keep ranking, The Artist would likely fall somewhere toward the back half of the next 50, so quickly did it slip like sand through my fingers.

“But then, the Oscars — and to varying degrees, all awards — are not about greatness, but about consensus. And The Artist is a point of agreement, much like a bill that’s been haggled over, kicked around by powerful special interests, watered down in committee, and passed to the majority’s tempered contentment.”

Martin Scorsese, the most gifted, tireless, prolific and devout Movie Catholic director of our time, sat down last night for a longish (160 minutes, give or take) on-stage interview with Leonard Maltin, and it was some kind of beautiful and sublime to take a surface-level nostalgia trip into Martyland and to revel in 40 years of Marty memories, Marty anecdotes and Marty insights.

Murky, not-quite-focused shot of Martin Scorsese taken by yours truly from my seat.

It happened at Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre from 8:20 pm to 11 pm, more or less, as part of a presentation of the American Riviera award. I sat on the right side, about six or seven rows from the front, right next to Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone.

“Surface-level” because a good three-quarters of Scorsese’s films, spanning over 40 years, weren’t verbally mentioned, much less discussed. This was necessary in order to keep the presentation in the vicinity of two hours, or course, but it felt like a greatest-hits primer for people who have only an ADD understanding of Scorsese’s life and career…no offense.

Maltin told me at the after-party that Scorsese himself chose the clips.

A brilliantly-cut career montage started things off, and then clips were shown from Mean Streets,Taxi Driver, Italian American, Raging Bull, The Last Waltz, Goodfellas, No Direction Home and Hugo.

The best clip was one of Muddy Waters singing “Mannish Boy” in The Last Waltz.

Honestly? The Hugo clip, shown in 3D, was by far the least intriguing one shown. It was all about Ben Kingsley‘s Georges Melies fuming at Asa Butterfield‘s Hugo, and then Hugo being chased by Sacha Baron Cohen and the Doberman through the train station, blah blah. I thought they might take a cue from people like me and show a clip from the glorious third act with those recreations of Mellies’ career, but no.

No clips were shown from Who’s That Knockin’ At My Door, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, New York, New York, The King of Comedy, After Hours, The Color of Money,

The Last Temptation of Christ (one of Scorsese’s absolute greatest), Cape Fear, Casino, Kundun, Bringing Out The Dead, Gangs of New York, Il Mi Viaggio in Italia, The Blues, The Aviator, The Departed, Shine A Light, Shutter Island, Letter to Elia or George Harrison: Living in the Material World.

In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, Stone and I had natural notions about chatting with Scorsese at the after-party. But it didn’t happen. This was partly due to Scorsese’s decision to huddle in the back of the room with inner-circle homies (his wife, Hugo costar Ben Kingsley, festival honchos), partly due to our lack of hunger and aggression and partly due to the aggression of others. A trio of super-model blondes barrelled right in there and got their photos.

It was a metaphor for life, in a way — you can’t hang back in the corner and expect things to happen. You have to be direct and willful and even coarse to some extent to get what you want. Tapley, Stone and I were too respectful of Scorsese’s space, and so we missed our shot.

I asked Kingsley about why there’s still no DVD or Bluray of Betrayal, which will observe its 30th anniversary next year. I said that I’d been told it has something to do with the family of Betrayal producer Sam Spiegel refusing to accomodate would-be distributors. Kingsley said he’d heard the same thing. “I’ll look into it,” he said. And I said, “Okay, cool, but…uhm…well, how could I follow up…?” Kingsley smiled like Don “ya ponce!” Logan and said, “I’ll look into it and we’ll run into each other again at another party and we’ll see where it is!”

Tonight the Santa Barbara Film Festival will honor Martin Scorsese with its American Riviera award, starting at 8pm. Two hours of clips, chatter and showing obeisancr. A cool-cats-only afterparty will follow. If only Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist, had been shut down at last weekend’s DGA awards, and if Marty had won instead.

Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theatre — Monday, 1.30, 5:05 pm.

Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet posted earlier this afternoon about reactions to the ending of Joe Carnahan‘s The Grey, so I thought I’d kick it around also. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Some have reportedly complained about the finale being unclear, but it’s obvious that Liam Neeson gets killed by the wolves. A guy reciting macho poetry to himself (“Once more into the fray…live or die on this day”) as he faces a growling threat is surely toast. Carnahan chooses not to show anything, but its a bit like Gary Cooper anticipating death at the end of For Whom The Bell Tolls, and feeling half terrified and half exhilarated.

This is obviously a ballsy finale because it defies conventional expectations about the dominant alpha male always surviving, and I admire that. I thought Carnahan was finished after The A-Team, and then he comes back with this…impressive. Almost too impressive. Because at the same time the Grey ending is faintly irksome and unfulfilling because there’s no particular payoff or satisfaction in watching an alpha male go down. I’d become used to death, you see, with all the other plane-crash survivors getting their throats torn to shreds so it was kind of a so-whatter.

We know how survival tales play out. Black and Hispanic guys never make it to the end. Sensitive dads and brainy types also have to die. Ditto old guys. But the strongest male always makes it to the finish and gets to exhale and savor the victory against nature and the elements. So I’m asking myself what exactly is interesting about Neeson being slaughtered at the finish? And I really can’t come up with an answer.

We all want to survive and fend off predators and live another day. We understand that we’ll eventually lose the battle and die, but in stories like this we all want the tough alpha male to make it through somehow. Because if he doesn’t make it, it means that fortitude and strength and canniness are meaningless. It means that survival is mainly about luck. And a movie that tries to sell this idea is not doing anything arresting or stirring. It’s just telling me, “Well, his string ran out, and tough shit.”

By prior arrangement a cat sitter is living in my apartment until next Sunday so I won’t be able to watch these five Blurays (not to mention Amazon-purchased Blurays of The Apartment and Cleopatra) for a while. So from my room at the Hotel Santa Barbara I’ve been looking to experience these Blurays by proxy, and John Nolte‘s Big Hollywood piece on The Apartment Bluray is the best I’ve come across so far.

This is the only time in my life that I’ve felt any sense of values-based kinship with Nolte, whose conservative political views have often appalled me. But it’s never difficult to find common ground on movies with problematic people. Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was an admirer of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Foreign Correspondent, so by that standard I could probably have a nice chat with him if we could somehow meet. John McCain likes Shane, George Bush loves High Noon, etc. I’ll bet Pol Pot liked some of my all-time favorites.

What I don’t get is how an unhinged rightwing loon like Jon Voight could point to his work in Coming Home, Deliverance, Midnight Cowboy and Runaway Train and say, “That was good, I’m proud of those films, they’ll always be part of me” and still think like he does.

What world-famous director could Slate‘s Bill Wyman be talking about? Excerpts: (a) “He can’t do comedy”; (b) “He has a surprisingly weak record when it comes to eliciting great performances”; (c) “He never commits to a worldview that doesn’t ultimately have a sunny patina”; (d) “The scares, the drama, the emotional ups and downs [in his films] feel hackneyed and even mannered”; (e) “His lack of interest in narrative coherence is one of his hallmarks“; and (f) His career has ultimately become “an arc of failed promise.”