“Savages is one of the most complete pleasures for me this summer,” Hitfix‘s Drew McWeenydeclares, “and the confidence that it displays from start to finish feels like a newly clear-eyed Oliver Stone revving the engine for the first time since Nixon. Is the crime story a little familiar, a little simple? Sure. If you’re interested in this sort of material, the actual plot isn’t really a shock or a revelation. But that’s not the point.
“Stone fell in love with these kids, and so he couldn’t do to them what Don Winslow does in the book, leading to a meta-textual moment late in the movie that you’ll either love or hate, but whichever way you go, Stone’s got you. He’s going to get a reaction. I’d love to see another run of bold and fun and dangerous movies from him, and Savages certainly suggests that Stone’s got plenty more in the tank.”
“I wanted to stick a knife in him and gut him and kill him, and I wanted him to die breathing his last breath looking into my eyes.” — Alec Baldwin to Vanity Fair‘s Todd S. Purdum in an August cover story, referring to his feelings about TMZ producer Harvey Levin in the wake of Levin having posted that unfortunate voice mail Baldwin left for his daughter, which was almost certainly furnished to Levin by Kim Basinger, Baldwin’s ex-wife with whom he was battling over this and that.
Note that Baldwin’s quote alludes to a momentary, long-deceased, years-old emotion. No sane, emotionally mature person (which Baldwin most definitely is) hangs on to such feelings. They come and surge through you and then you go “okay, that happened”…and then you move on.
Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s currently rolling Caught in Flight is about the two-year affair between Princess Diana (Naomi Watts) and Dr. Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews), a British Pakistani heart and lung surgeon described by friends of the late princess as the alleged “love of her life.”
Naomi Watts as Princess Diana in Caught in Flight.
Khan broke it off in July 1997, and Diana more or less went straight into the arms of another eastern sort, Dodi al Fayed, albeit one of a much lower level of character and accomplishment.
I was asked to write a long file about Fayed when I was working at People in ’97. After making calls and taking notes for three or four hours, I knew he was basically trash — a spoiled son of a rich man, a guy who didn’t pay his gardener bills. And yet Diana chose him to be her boyfriend. That told me a lot about her. The truth is that she was not an especially bright woman. I’m sorry but a truly wise and perceptive lady wouldn’t have said boo to an asshole like Fayed, much less become his girlfriend.
One presumes that somebody will play Fayed in the film…or perhaps Hirschbiegel will skip that whole final chapter in her life, depending on our knowledge of same and letting the sadness of her affair with Khan not working out speak for itself. But you know nine out of ten people who will pay to see Caught in Flight will want to see a depiction of her final night in Paris with the car slamming into the pole, etc.
I’m sitting at an outdoor table in a kind of passageway section of Le Pain Quotidien, the homey restaurant at Melrose and Westbourne. My table is right near the bathrooms, so if you want to take a leak you have to walk by me. And since I’m an up-close witness and more or less forced to acknowledge each and every passerby it’s almost astonishing how many people (especially women) are following nature’s call.
I mean, I’m trying to concentrate here and “slip under the ice,” as it were, but I’m constantly being jarred out of this state by a relentless stream of people walking by, each and every anxious body saying “I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak…,” their sandaled heels pounding the floorboards and causing the beams to slightly creak.
The bloom is definitely off found-video-footage movies. It’s obviously a legitimate device by which to tell a story in this day and age, but I’ve begun to feel like a sucker when I react to them. They tend to use the same jolts and shock cuts.
“A call to a McDonald’s restaurant in Hinesville, Georgia in February 2003, [prompted] a female manager, who thought she was speaking with a police officer in the presence of [her boss], to lead a 19-year-old female employee who was, she was told, suspected of theft into the women’s bathroom, where she strip-searched her. She then brought in a 55 year-old male employee to perform a body cavity search of the girl to uncover hidden drugs.” — from a Wikipedia entry to a topic called “Strip Search Prank Call Scam.”
Craig Zobel‘s Compliance (Magnlia, 8.17) is based on the above-described incident. I saw it at Sundance 2012, and found it equal parts fascinating, amusing and mildly frustrating…not so much due to the way Zobel’s film unfolds, per se, as much as the incredibly clueless behavior of the principals, all but two of whom are so intimidated by the suggestion of “authority” from a stern male voice on the phone that it’s enough to compel them to treat a fellow employee like she’s an anti-social threat.
I kept thinking about the Milgram experiment of the early ’60s, in which people were told to ask questions of an unseen participant who was audible but located on the other side of a wall. When this participant answered a question incorrectly the person was directed to push a button that sent a jolt of electricity into the participant’s body, causing them to cry out. (The participants were actually acting and “in” on the experiment — the unwitting focus was the button-pusher.) As the cries got louder and louder, the button-pushers would tell the experiment organizers that they felt really badly about zapping the unseen guy and that they wanted to be excused from the experiment. But when they were told that they were obligated to complete the experiment and that they were absolved of all responsibility, 85% or 90% of them obliged and resumed with the button-pushing, unhappy and stressed-out but listening time and again to the screams.
It was asserted that the Milgram experiment proved that you could get almost any small-town resident to be a guard at a concentration camp, or something along those lines.
Ann Dowd is very good as the butch-boss manager of the fast-food restaurant, and Dreama Walker is the low-level employee who’s accused of theft and ordered to remove her clothing and submit to cavity probing, etc. The film pissed off a segment of the audience at Sundance screening, some of whom walked out and some of whom complained during the q & a. As I heard it, some felt that Compliance was basically a sexual exploitation film that was, in a sense, ogling Walker as much as the prank caller was in a non-visual way.
It is a kind of exploitation film on a certain level. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to a certain odd (i.e., queasy, creepy, guilty) form of titillation when Walker starts undressing, but the basic point is that there are many small-town sheep out there who will do whatever they’re told if you scare them enough. The constantly flashing “message” of the film is “question authority, question authority, question authority…”
I don’t want to use a John Deere landfill compactor to crush a flea, but it hit me earlier today that Ashley Tisdale seems like the kind of self-absorbed, chirpy-voiced, me-me-me girl who would have been hunted down in Bobcait Goldthwait‘s God Bless America. I’m focusing on Tisdale because twelve months ago she made a huge obscene deal out of her 26th birthday (“Ooooh, my birthday….all my friends are going to come and pay attention to meeeeee!”) and her 27th birthday is today so let’s get out the noisemakers and roll out the birthday cake, etc.
Seriously, I just wanted to make the point that there are few things more appalling than beedle-y-bee girls who revel in the attention that a birthday brings, and who not only delight in the glorious celebration of the self but hunger for it, at least to the extent that they throw birthday parties for themselves and make YouTube videos about how excited they are that their birthday is only two or three days away and how much they love their friends so, so much…”every one of you!…mwah!” So if I’m semi-acquainted with and/or semi-aware of anyone who organizes their own birthday party and invites, like, 45 or 50 friends with a hint that it’s cool to bring gifts, they are totally, absolutely and permanently crossed off the list for life.
A woman of soul and serenity loves her friends and her pets and her parents as much as Ashley Tisdale, but she chills on the birthday hoo-hah…or at least doesn’t use birthdays to further her social/professional ambitions.
I’m listening to MSNBC out of the corner of my ear, and I just heard a political analyst refer to “low-information voters” and then define them as “people who…uhm, just aren’t paying attention? But you know? It’s often these people who tip an election.” Precisely — that’s how we got Dubya in ’00 and ’04. “Low information voters” is the p.c. TV term. “Gap-toothed tattooed dumbasses” is the term that pops out after a couple of beers. If I was on TV and the subject came up? I would call them “rurally challenged.”
My Virgin America plane arrived in Los Angeles at 8:20 pm Saturday. I crashed around 1 am, up at 5:30 am. Up until 3:30 pm when I took a nap, intending to rise again at 5:30 pm. I slept through two alarms and woke up groggy at 11:30 pm — now I’m flat cold alert. A normal sleep rhythm will kick in eventually. A nap here and there, catch as catch can, roll with it. It takes about a day per time zone.
Now begins the catch-up. Over the next week or two I need to try and see People Like Us, Seeking A Friend For The End of the World, To Rome With Love,The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Brave (which I’m not looking forward to), Men in Black 3 (wait for DVD?), Piranha 3D, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Bel Ami, Paul Williams Still Alive, Lola Versus, Dark Horse, El Gringo, My Way, Life Happens, The Lady, etc., etc. Plus Kirby Dick‘s just-opened The Invisible War, Oliver Stone‘s Savages on Thursday, etc.
