N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott is callingBenh Zeitlin‘s Beasts of the Southern Wild (Fox Searchlight, opening today in NY & LA) “a blast of sheer, improbable joy, a boisterous, thrilling action movie with a protagonist who can hold her own alongside Katniss Everdeen, Princess Merida and the other brave young heroines of 2012. There are loose threads you can pull at — sometimes the wide-eyed wonder slides toward willful naivete, and there are moments of distracting formal sloppiness — but the garment will not come unraveled.
“A lot of thinking has gone into Beasts of the Southern Wild, about themes as well as methods, about the significance of the story as well as its shape. And it is certainly rich enough to invite and repay a healthy measure of critical thought.
“But its impact, its glory, is sensory rather than cerebral. Let me try out an analogy. Discovering this movie is like stumbling into a bar and encountering a band you’ve never heard of playing a kind of music that you can’t quite identify. Nor can you figure out how the musicians learned to play the way they do, with such fire and mastery. Did they pick it up from their grandparents, study at a conservatory, watch instructional videos on the Internet or just somehow make it all up? Are you witnessing the blossoming of authenticity or the triumph of artifice?
“Those are interesting questions. They are also irrelevant, because right now you are transported by an irresistible rhythm and moved by a melody that is profoundly, almost primally, familiar, even though you are sure you have never heard anything like it before.”
I’ve posted this a couple of times since Sundance but here, again, is my original review, which I titled “Rank, Robust, Ecstatic”:
The passionately praised film “is everything its admirers have said it is. It’s a poetic, organic, at times ecstatic capturing of a hallucinatory Louisiana neverland called the Bathtub, down in the delta lowlands and swarming with all manner of life and aromas, and a community of scrappy, hand-to-mouth fringe-dwellers, hunters, jungle-tribe survivors, animal-eaters and relentless alcohol-guzzlers who live there.
“It’s something to sink into and take a bath in on any number of dream-like, atmospheric levels, and a film you can smell and taste and feel like few others I can think of.
“Beasts is much more of a naturalistic object d’art than a narrative-driven drama, at least as most of us define that term. The emphasis is on sensual naturalism-wallowing — lush, grassy, muddy, oozy, leafy, stinky, primeval, non-hygenic, slithery, watery, ants up your ass — with a few story shards linked together like paper clips.”
The very-good-when-she-was-good Nora Ephron died yesterday at age 71 — hugs and condolences to friends, family, fans. A blood disorder rooted to lukemia, and a shock (nobody outside Ephron’s immediate circle seemed to know it was coming) and very sad — she left way, way too early. But she lived a very full life and experienced the kind of excitement and fulfillment and creative satisfaction that many of us only dream about.
I always think of Bob Dylan‘s line about “death’s honesty” when someone goes. That’s what it is, all right — honest. But keep your distance, pal.
Ephron was an expert, witty, self-deflating writer of a neo-feminist slant. Her best years in this vein began in the late ’60s as a journalist-essayist. Her ’70s articles in particular (largely about food, sex, life in Manhattan) were really, really good — amusing, cutting, confessional, clever. Her screenwriter mother Phoebe once told her that “everything is copy”, and she certainly seemed to have followed that rule. Yes, some of Nora’s ruffs and bon mots were mean at times, but if you’re worried about pissing people off you’ve no business being a writer. Ephron had her voice, and no one can ever take that away.
While married to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein Ephron and he did a re-write of William Goldman‘s All The President’s Men script, and if I’m not mistaken at least one of their scenes made it into that 1976 film — the one in which Dustin Hoffman (as Bernstein) fakes out the chilly, brittle secretary of Dade County investigator Martin Dardis (Ned Beatty) by calling and pretending to be some guy in the County Clerk’s office who needs some records picked up that Dardis wants, etc.
That was a really good scene, and on the strength of it and the screenplay Ephron got a screenwriting gig for a TV movie, and eventually a ticket into the movie bigtime. The ’80s were great for her.
Ephron’s first highly acclaimed screenplay was for Silkwood (’82), which Mike Nichols directed with Meryl Streep as the brave but doomed Karen Silkwood — a strong, commendable, well-acted drama.
And then came her screenplay of Heartburn (’86), which was based on her book of the same name about her marriage to Bernstein and the infidelity that led to their breakup. The Mike Nichols-directed film was quite satisfying during the first half, and less so during the second. The ending was flat.
For me Heartburn was the first movie that told me that Ephron, good as she was, was unwilling to step outside of her well-tended box. She couldn’t seem to admit to any kind of marital failing on the part of her stand-in character, Rachel Samstat (played by Streep), and that was trouble.
As I wrote a few weeks ago after re-watching the film, “The problem is that Jack Nicholson‘s affair with the unseen giraffe lady with the big splayed feet (inspired by Bernstein’s affair with Margaret Jay) happens entirely off-screen and reveals nothing at all about Nicholson’s psychology. All you can sense is that he feels vaguely threatened by fatherhood and responsibility. It just feels bizarre that the affair just happens without the audience being told anything. Nicholson’s Mark is just a selfish shit (which may well have been the case except it takes two to bring a marriage down), and I felt bothered and irritated that I wasn’t getting the whole story.”
And then then came her much-beloved screenplay for When Harry Met Sally (’89), which included that famous Meg Ryan orgasm scene in the diner. That and the film’s nicely-woven emotionality solidified Ephron’s rep as the seasoned go-to lady for romantic comedies, and she was more or less set for life…as far as anyone who lives by their wits and the task of catching and condensing ephemeral pollen can have anything “set.”
Ephron’s first directing effort, This is My Life, a dramedy about a mom (Julie Kavner) who works nights as a stand-up comic, was a critical and box-office dud. But her next film, Sleepless in Seattle (’93), was a huge hit, and was reasonably well handled for the most part. But — sorry but I think it’s true — after that it was all downhill as far as Ephron’s mise en scene-ing was concerned. For she had stepped into another box — that of the highly-paid hyphenate who could presumably deliver sharp, well-sculpted romantic comedies that connected with women and men alike — and the demands of that business or that genre plus her inability to really dig in and go for the challenge and somehow deliver soulful relationship meals in an ’80s and ’90s James L. Brooks-like vein….I don’t know what happened exactly, but it was all diminishing returns, or so it seemed to me.
Mixed Nuts (’94), Michael (’96), You’ve Got Mail (’98), Lucky Numbers (’00), Bewitched (’05) and Julie & Julia (’09) — none of them really worked. And yet I was mostly okay with the screenplay she co-wrote with her sister Delia for Hanging Up (’00), a Diane Keaton-directed film about three sisters (Keaton, Meg Ryan, Lisa Kudrow) coping with the death of their cantankerous dad (Walter Matthau).
The last time I heard Ephron speak was during a 4.18.09 tribute to Mike Nichols panel at the Museum of Modern Art. She and three of Nichols’ legendary collaborators — Streep, Elaine May and Buck Henry — delivered a “moderately dazzling, often funny, at times chaotic group discussion,” I wrote, “like a spirited dinner-table thing between Uncle Mike and the in-laws…a nice, raggedy, catch-as-catch-can vibe.” Here’s the mp3. Really good stuff.
Here’s a portion of an introduction that Ephron wrote for the Kindle version of her last book, “I Remember Nothing””
“When you’re young, you make jokes about how things slip your mind. You think it’s amusing that you’ve wandered into the kitchen and can’t remember why. Or that you carefully made a shopping list and left it home on the counter. Or that you managed to forget the plot of a movie you saw only last week.
“And then you get older.
“Anyway, at some point, I thought it might be fun to write a book about what I remember, and what I’ve forgotten. I still feel bad about my neck, but I feel even worse about the fact that huge bits of my life have gone slip-sliding away, and I thought I’d better write them down while I still had a sense of humor about it all.”
411’s Roger Friedman has posted another portion in which Ephron lists the things she’ll miss when she’s gone:
“My kids, Nick [Pileggi, her husband), Spring, Fall, waffles, the concept of waffles, bacon, a walk in the park, the idea of a walk in the park, the park, Shakespeare in the Park, the bed, reading in bed, fireworks, laughs, the view out the window, twinkle lights, butter, dinner at home just the two of us, dinner with friends, dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives, Paris, next year in Istanbul, Pride and Prejudice, the Christmas tree, Thanksgiving dinner, one for the table, the dogwood, taking a bath, coming over the bridge to Manhattan, pie.”
Five or so months after its Sundance Film Festival debut, Nicholas Jarecki‘s excellent Arbitrage (Lionsgate, 9.14 VOD, limited) has its first trailer up. “I was entirely caught up in and enjoyed the hell out of Arbitrage, which to me is a solid Sidney Lumet New York potboiler,” I wrote on 1.23.12. “Familiar, yes, and not ‘great’ but tough and real and well-threaded.
Richard Gere in Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage.
“As a smooth but fraying-at-the-seams trader-financier involved in high-stakes flim-flam and a manslaughter cover-up, Richard Gere gives his best performance in a long time, and Tim Roth is amusing as a colorful Colombo-type detective.”
Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling , Nate Parker, Laetitia Casta, Monica Raymund, Josh Pais and Larry Pine costar.
I’ve filled out a ticket order to add extra gigs to the memory on the HE server. There have been complaints about pages loading slowly so hopefully this will speed things up, but the server has to go down for this to happen. It’s scheduled to happen around midnight LA time, 3 am NYC time and 9 am Munich time. It’ll take around 15 minutes, they’re saying.
Four days ago I noted that a press release about Warner Home Video’s upcoming release of a 3D Bluray of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Dial M for Murder (streeting on 10.9) didn’t say if the aspect ratio will be “Furmanek-ed at 1.85, or if WHV will go with the 1.33 or 1.37 aspect ratio that audiences have been watching on TVs and DVDs and in revival houses for the last 55 years or so…I’m guessing it’ll be the former.”
Well, I rented a high-def version of Dial M on iTunes last night, and it’s 1.85, all right. Or 1.78. That pretty much makes it official, if you ask me — the Furmanek forces are calling the shots, and HE’s “boxy is beautiful” and “let the image breathe with more head space” philosophy has been discounted. And as for Robert Harris‘s suggestion that this superb 1954 murder thriller would probably look best at 1.66….naaaah!
Eff you very much, guys. I guess I’m what you might call a sore loser, huh? If there was such a thing as a French underground fighting the 1.85 fascists, I would join up today.
Life is generally unfair, but for Taylor Kitsch, the star of two mega-bombs, John Carter and Battleship, over the past three months, life and fate have heaped bad cards on to staggering levels. And now there are indications that a third film that he’s a significant costar of, Oliver Stone‘s Savages (Universal, July 6), may not do all that well either.
Taylor Kitsch, star of John Carter and Battleship, costar of Savages.
During yesterday’s Oscar Poker chat, Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino projected that Savages will earn only about about $14 million on opening weekend. Not too bad from a layman’s perspective perhaps, but for a heavily promoted big-studio action flick with several recognizable names (Kitsch, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Blake Lively, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, John Travolta, Demian Bichir) and the Stone insignia, not exactly something to pop champagne over.
Late yesterday a German distributor friend told me if Savages under-performs or crashes Kitsch’s career will be in trouble. Contrino feels the same way.
“A young career cannot survive three bombs in a row and still hold on to real momentum,” he said today. “Kitsch has had unbelievably bad luck. If he wants to rebound, he’ll have to pick an interesting project from a trustworthy director. Working with Peter Berg again” — the IMDB says Kitch’s next film is Lone Survivor, a Berg-directed actioner about a mission to kill a Taliban leader” — “is not the solution.”
Is it fair when lead actors take the hit for starring in unsuccessful films? Nope, but that’s the general rule. When they star in hits, they always get a career boost. When they star in a flop, the industry usually doesn’t get too shook up and cuts them a break. But when they star in two tanks in a row, the stock drops. People start looking askance and saying “hmm, I don’t know.” And with three…?
Orlando Bloom went down and hasn’t yet recovered from starring in two bombs in a row — ’05’s Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown.
The other big factor, for me, is that Kitsch doesn’t radiate much inner intelligence or light…no fire and definitely not a lot of technique. If you ask me his on-screen vibe is almost in the shark-eyed, anti-matter realm of Rob Pattinson.
I asked a few journo-critic friends for opinions. They all cut Kitsch a break, and that’s my inclination as far as the box-office situation is concerned. But still…
Marshall Fine: “To the average moviegoer, I can’t imagine that any of these films registered as ‘a Taylor Kitsch movie.’ Nor do I think there is much of a Taylor Kitsch following, except among former Friday Night Lights fans. On the other hand, I don’t think the guy is much of an actor.
“Of course studio idiots will see this as his fault, though Carter and Battleship were sold as an effects extravaganzas and Savages is being sold as an Oliver Stone film. Will Kitsch take the hit? Really, it’s his agent and his acting coach who should take the blame.
“Having collected what are probably big paychecks for these movies, Kitsch should scale back his lifestyle to make the money last, buy himself some acting classes and work in low-budget indys for a while…or perhaps go back to TV.”
Coming Soon‘s Edward Douglas: “I think Savages will be lucky to make $12 million its opening weekend to be honest, but that’s really not Taylor Kitsch’s show or his fault. From what I understand, it’s more of an ensemble piece and just as much of that relies on the better-known John Travolta, Salma Hayek, Benicio del Toro and even Blake Lively, who was being sold as some sort of ‘It Ggirl’ based on The Town but hasn’t really shown much acting talent beyond that.
“I’m also not sure either if John Carter or Battleship could be considered Kitsch’s fault as these were huge budget movies being sold more on the vision of the filmmakers and the original properties than on him having any drawing power. He’s just an actor who both Andrew Stanton and Peter Berg trusted to be able to pull off the role of a hero amidst lots of action and FX-driven eye candy, but neither movie even used his name in the advertising from what I remember.
“Sure, his career would be in better shape if either of those were hits, but these days, movies really can’t be sold only for the stars and many of the year’s more profitable movies such as The Devil Inside, Project X and Chronicle did decently and I doubt anyone could name a single actor in any of them. (Same for the Paranormal Activity movies.) I’m guessing there will always be star-driven films like Men in Black 3, Maleficent, and anything Brad Pitt stars in, but Hollywood has already been shying away from big budget star-driven vehicles and I think as long as Kitsch can prove himself to be versatile actor, he will continue to get work.”
Lewis Beale: “It seems to me we can accuse Kitsch of making bad choices with John Carter and Battleship, but starring in an Oliver Stone film should be a major step up, career-wise. I think the problem here might be that Savages looks really nasty — violent, hyper-sexualized — and it’s also going up against the new Spider-Man film, so it’s a lose-lose.
“As for Kitsch himself, beyond the terrible last name, which almost begs late-night host jokes, he just seems to be from some cookie-cutter line of new leading men, none of whom really stand out in any way. Other than Chris Pine, I don’t see any of these guys — Kitsch, Channing Tatum, etc. — hanging on for a long time, because their basic appeal is male model, not movie star.”
I’d reconsider Tatum’s situation, Lewis, until you see Magic Mike. Or have you?
Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike (Warner Bros., 6.29) is one of those summer films that comes along once in a blue moon — a fun romp filled with yoks and swagger and whoo-hoo, but also sharp, wise and shrewdly observed, and flush with indie cred. And quite funny for the first two-thirds. If this thing isn’t a fairly big hit in the States there’s going to be a lot of complaining on this site. I’m sick to death of people paying to see only the big crap movies while occasionally blowing off the really fine smaller ones.
Every frame in Magic Mike tells you someone super-smart and focused is running the operation, and Soderbergh (serving again as his own dp under the name Peter Andrews) lays on the atmosphere by using a faintly reddish sepia color scheme with a vaguely hung-over aura — his way of saying “Look, this is me, okay? Nothing too bright or luscious or HBO-attractive. We’re kickin’ it, obviously, but digging into character.”
Trailers always lie but the Magic Mike trailers are really lying. They’re selling only the cheap stuff. This thing is way better than what you might expect.
As Mike, a Tampa-residing, cock-rocking male stripper facing his 30s and the pressure to build his life (he dreams of being a high-end furniture designer) into something with a semblance of a future, Channing Tatum scores big-time with his first genuinely decent role and performance — I was completely in his corner all the way, admiring his skill and ease with a role that touches all the right bases. And 22 year-old newcomer Alex Pettyfer hits a ground-rule double as Adam, a.k.a. “The Kid” — a proverbial good-looking innocent whose arc acquaints us with the male-stripping realm and all the behavioral pitfalls.
Matthew McConaughey, whose career has really turned around over the last couple of years, hits a solid triple as Dallas, the owner-manager of the strip club Xquisite, nailing every line and delivering the requisite hoots and cock-of-the-walk sleaze. And Cody Horn, as Adam’s skeptical older sister, hits nothing but true notes in a role that’s basically about slowly shaking her head and nagging a bit, a character who’s always saying “Okay, guys, you’re making money and a lot of whoopee but when are you gonna get real?” But she’s not tedious — she’s honest and steady and investable at every turn.
Alex Pettyfer, Channing Tatum in Magic Mike.
The very first scene shows a strutting, bare-chested, leather-pants McConaughey delivering a show intro to a roomful of cheering, half-bombed women, and you’re thinking right away, “Okay, this feels standard — a typical way to start a movie about male strippers.” And then boom — Soderbergh cuts to black and then to a groggy Tatum waking up in bed after a threesome with an occasional hook-up (Olivia Munn) and a sleeping nude girl whose name neither of them can recall. And right away you’re thinking, “Wow, this is good…the dialogue (by first-time scripter Reid Carolin, who’s also Tatum’s producing partner) is canny and astute and cuts to the quick, and the acting feels natural and unforced.”
And you just relax. You know you’re in good hands. God, what a relief!
All it takes is one standout like Magic Mike to wash away the crud and part the clouds and make everything feel right again. Is it a great movie? No, but there’s very little in it — almost nothing — that doesn’t feel right. Okay, the last third feels a bit predictable and the final scene doesn’t quite deliver one of those final closure notes that we all talk about months or years later, but it’s good enough. More than good. Anyone who says this film doesn’t cut it needs to hit refresh and watch it again, and anyone who says it flat-out blows is a moron, and if he/she wants to make anything out of that I’ll see them outside after the film.
Yes, I intend to see Magic Mike at least another couple of times. It works the way all good movies do. It turns you on with smarts and honesty and sophistication, and sends you out on a high.
Knowing how unhappy I am about not being able to see The Newsroom due to HBO’s refusal to let HBOGo travel overseas, Vancouver-based journalist Ray Tomlin sent good news this evening — HBO has put the entirety of the first episode of Aaron Sorkin‘s The Newsroom on YouTube. Great! So I clicked on the link and got this:
“I look at these huge movies that come out, and some of them are really, really impressive [but] I think I couldn’t do it,” Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh recently toldMiami Herald critic Rene Rodriguez. “Haywire was really fun to do. I was stretching in a way I was comfortable with. Even though Contagion may not appear that way, it was really fun to make too. That’s all that motivates me now. After Che, I have no desire to make another quote-unquote important movie. I’ve been cured of that.”
Steven Soderbergh during filming of Magic Mike.
In other words, the ‘meh’ reception to Che broke his heart. In response to which Soderbergh began to say to himself, “You know that? Eff this shallow culture that refuses to at least consider and appreciate to some degree something that I know is real and solid and true. I can find more spiritual fulfillment in another line of art.”
“But since Che, Soderbergh has remained as prolific as ever,” Rodriguez writes. “He’s directed several films including Contagion and Haywire. The Bitter Pill, his follow-up to Magic Mike, is already wrapped, and he’s currently preparing to direct Behind the Candelabra, a biopic of the famed pianist Liberace starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon.
“So what gives? Here’s what Soderbergh said about his recent career choices and why he’s been working on noticeably lower budgets and smaller scales.
“‘In retrospect, the most frustrating thing about Che was that the quality of the discussion wasn’t where I had hoped it would be. It broke out so obviously along ideological lines and nothing else was discussed. I always knew it would be a polarizing movie. I just thought there would be a more wide-ranging discussion.
“After that, I’ve been consciously looking for things that would be more fun to do. With Contagion, I was trying to push into a genre category as far as I could. Even though it came out in the fall, I didn’t want it to feel like important Oscar-bait. I wanted to make something really entertaining. As far as the smaller scale goes, that hasn’t necessarily been by choice.
“I was fired off Moneyball [he was replaced by Bennett Miller] and then got sort of shoved off The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Those movies were on a larger scale. Contagion was $60 million. When I was on it, Moneyball was $50 million. When you get into those kinds of numbers, the amount of time you spend doing the things you like to do decreases. I like being in a room with actors. But when the scale of a film grows, you are forced to wrangle with a bunch of other elements. And that’s not fun for me.”
A $50 Sears gift certificate to anyone who can identify the source of the headline. No, make it $25.
