I wonder what kind of language system is being used in the filming of George Clooney‘s Monuments Men as the World War II-era film has German, French and American characters. Will everyone speak English with differing native accents as the characters did in John Frankenheimer‘s The Train (’64) and Edward Dymytryk‘s The Young Lions (’58), or will the character speak their native language with subtitles? Or will the character ignore accents as they did in Bryan Singer‘s Valkyrie? Phony and illogical as it always sounds, I suspect that most audiences prefer the “speaking English with accents” approach.
On 3.19 it was observed by HE commenter “CP” that perhaps George Clooney should have thought twice about wearing a moustache in the currently-rolling Monuments Men as the last two films in which he wore one, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Men Who Stare at Goats, were box-office stiffs. Honestly? I’m not much of a fan of Clooney moustaches myself. But I’m guessing that Monuments will be an exception as Clooney needed to separate himself from his usual appearance in this 1940s wartime film, and I think audience will get and accept that.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a good saucy showbiz tale with a kind of villain (Today host Matt Lauer) at the center of it plus two or three Shylocks and a victim (former co-host Ann Curry) and lots of robust acidic flavor. This describes Joe Hagan’s story about Curry’s removal and how Lauer…okay, how he didn’t exactly orchestrate it but how he sure as shit nudged it along and certainly did nothing to stop it or save Curry.
Best passage: “If Lauer is guilty in the hosticide of Ann Curry (he’s certainly not innocent), he’s far from the only guilty party. For all the smiles, TV hosts often get offed for all sorts of reasons. As Hyman Roth said in Godfather 2: This is the business they’ve chosen.”
Second best passage: “Blamed in the press for his co-host’s offing, Lauer has watched helplessly as his reputation gets battered week after week. When Chelsea Handler joked to him on Today earlier this month, ‘You have a worse reputation than I do,’ Lauer’s smile sharpened into something that wouldn’t make it past airport security.”
Early passage: “If Matt Lauer doesn’t want to be seen with sharp knives, it’s because last summer his co-host Ann Curry was discovered with one in her back. She was swiftly replaced by a younger, more genial woman, Savannah Guthrie. Ever since, Lauer has been the prime suspect in Curry’s virtual demise.
“Five million viewers, the majority of them women, would not soon forget how Curry, the intrepid female correspondent and emotionally vivid anchor, spent her last appearance on the Today show couch openly weeping, devastated at having to leave after only a year. The image of Matt Lauer trying to comfort her—and of Curry turning away from his attempted kiss—has become a kind of monument to the real Matt Lauer, forensic evidence of his guilt.
“The truest truism of morning-TV shows is that they are like families, or aspire to be—it’s a matter of practiced artifice, faked from the first minute to the last. But reality can’t always be kept out of the picture.
“On Curry’s final day, Lauer realized the scene was catastrophic even as cameras rolled. ‘I think we all knew it at that moment,’ says Lauer during an interview with his current co-hosts, Al Roker, Natalie Morales, and Guthrie. ‘And it just seemed like something…there was nothing we could do as it was happening, and we all felt bad about it.’
“What followed was the implosion of the most profitable franchise in network television. After sixteen years as the No. 1 morning show in America, Today was worth nearly half a billion dollars a year in advertising revenue to NBC, the bedrock of its business. In the aftermath of the Curry debacle, the show lost half a million viewers and ceded first place in the ratings war to ABC’s Good Morning America, losing millions of dollars overnight.”
Hagan is a solid, exacting reporter and an excellent prosemeister.
In writing your story of your movie career you can go the Klaus Kinski route by including sex (which is to say the madness, fever, longing and heartache) or you can go the William Friedkin route and wait until approximately page 400 to mention that you have three ex-wives and then not even name them and then barely mention your current wife of 20 years, and generally ignore that aspect of your life entirely and just focus on the work.
Which is fine. I’m not sure I’d ever want to read stories about Freidkin doing Kelly Lange or Lesley Anne Down or Jeanne Moreau on a beach in Maui anyway. On top of which there there was only one Klaus Kinski. (To which some might say “thank God.”) In all the times I’ve listened to him address a live crowd, Friedkin has never been one to blurt out random confessions. He’s always been a guy who tells the tale that he wants to tell, no more and no less, exactly.
All along the idea in Baz Luhrman‘s The Great Gatsby (Warner Bros., 5.10) has been “let’s make Gatsby’s world our own…let’s make the affluent, rollicking aspects of Long Island’s North Shore in the early 1920s feel as glam and energizing to Baz and Leo and Toby and Carey and…well, to our post-Millenial sensibilities as it did to the folks who were actually there and living in F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s mercurial realm.
So forget the yesteryear time-travel vibe. This is now, this is us & we’re doin’ it…all new cars, fireworks in the night, breathtaking sex with perfumed ladies, exquisitely tailored suits and warm, sun-sparkled waters…party like it’s 2013 but in dress-up mode.
Just as Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet was an infusion of ’90s urban Americana (guns, muscle cars, street gangstas) and high-style coolness into Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, substituting pistols for swords and Vera Cruz for Verona…roughly the same idea. Bring it down, make it our own.
I’m not uninterested in seeing Roland Emmerich‘s White House Down (Sony, 6.28) because I’m figuring it has to be a bit better than Antoine Fuqua‘s Olympus Has Fallen. It has the same basic plot (under-appreciated good guy in a career cul-de-sac saves U.S. President from terrorists), but it’s awfully hard to imagine it being worse than Olympus. Plus I’m sure I’ll be into Jason Clarke‘s bad guy more than Rick Yune‘s.
TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman is reporting that “billionaire Ron Burkle and former Hollywood Reporter CEO Richard Beckman have joined forces to create a new branded entertainment company, Three Lions.” She adds that “Joel Katz, global chair of Greenberg Traurig’s international media and entertainment practice, will be a minority partner and have a seat on the board.”
I’m not trying to sound like a nine-year-old, but how can you announce a company called Three Lions with three partners and not expect everyone to say, “Oh, we get it…these guys see themselves as lions of the Hollywood forest”?
If I were Katz I’d be feeling vaguely insulted by that “minority partner with a seat on the board” stuff. Like he’s some kind of adolescent lion who isn’t quite ready to hunt with the other two. It sounds to me like they’re saying Katz is a little like Simba and Burkle is King Mufasa or something. Burkle obviously seems himself as a lion. He’s been one for years. And I imagine Beckman sees himself as one also, but probably not able or willing to roar as loud as Burkle.
Fox Home Video will be releasing a Great Escape Bluray on May 7th following a special screening of a new 4K digital transfer of John Sturges‘ 1963 film at the TCM Classic Film Festival (4.25 through 4.28). But all the Bluray extras listed in the press release are the same ones offered in the 2004 special collectors edition DVD. In fact, the DVD had a few more. So we’re just talking about a better-looking version of the feature, which is fine.
The one thing I’ve never been able to tolerate in The Great Escape is Angus Lennie‘s performance as RAF officer Archibald “Archie” Ives, the Scottish jockey who befriends Steve McQueen‘s Hilts. I instantly hated his twee Scottish accent — too Brigadoon. And his smiling, cheerful attempt to hide the fact that he was on the verge of cracking up. My first reaction when I saw this film as a kid was “fuck you, Ives…I hope you get machine-gunned to death by the krauts.” I wasn’t elated when this happened at the end of Act Two, but I wasn’t displeased. Is it too much to ask for a deleted scene in which Ives is tortured by the SS?
As a huge fan of Rodney Ascher‘s Room 237, I’m urging everyone to please read a week-old “Vulture”/New York piece by Mark Jacobson called “The Shining Cult at the Overlook Hotel.” Great passion! And as a prelude to a chat I had this morning with Marshall Fine about Room 237, please read Fine’s piece in which he kind of pisses all over the movie and Jacobson’s piece in particular.
I guess you could my 26-minute discussion with Fine the latest Oscar Poker, if you’ve a mind to.
Here’s a nifty Huffington Post discussion about “Movies That Divides Us”, focusing mainly on Spring Breakers. MSN’s Glenn Kenny (“Eeww, here’s a subversive Harmony Korine film finally making its way into the mainstream market!”), Huffpost movie wag Chris Rosen, The Inquisitir‘s Niki Cruz and director William Friedkin. Ricky Camilleri moderates.
Wells to Friedkin: Have you given any thought to joining the good-guy team and offering the Sorcerer Bluray at 1.66, even though you don’t have to and can fully justify mastering it at 1.85? It’s a free-thinking movement, Billy. And the philosophy of this movement is, “We can watch movies any way we want.” To hell with projection standards from 40 or 50 years ago. This is 2013, and if we like the way an older film looks at 1.37 or 1.66 then we can bloody well show it that way. Eff 1.85…unless, of course, we really and truly like 1.85 and are not just being cowed by the 1.85 fascists.
Update: Friedkin to Wells: If you want to see my movie in 1.66 you can mask your display. What is a 1.85 fascist? I’ve never heard of such an animal.
Variety‘s Jon Weisman is reporting that the 2014 Oscar telecast will happen on Sunday, March 2nd, or a week later than the 2013 Oscars which happened on Sunday, 2.24. And yet…and yet!…the 2015 Oscar telecast will happen a little bit earlier on Sunday, February 22nd.
Nominations voting will begin on Friday, 12.27.13 and end on Wednesday, 1.8.14 at 5 pm, or a little less than two weeks’ time. The 2014 Oscar nominations will be announced on Wednesday, 1.16. Final voting will begin a month later on Friday, 2.14.14 and end on Tuesday, 2.25.14.
Note: Either I need glasses or Wiesman’s initial blast initially stated — incorrectly — that the 2015 date would happen on February 2nd.
Jim Carrey‘s Funny or Die video is titled “Cold Dead Hand”, and yet the late Charlton Heston‘s famous NRA statement used the plural — i.e., the only way the proverbial and ignominious “they” could take his guns away would be to pry them “from my cold head hands.”
A 2.1.13 Gallup poll doesn’t seem to address the racial gun-ownership issue in cut and dried terms, but it states the following: “Non-Hispanic whites (33%) are significantly more likely than nonwhites (22%) to own guns. Hispanics (18%) in particular show below-average gun ownership. Twenty-one percent of blacks own a gun. Younger Americans (20%) are much less likely to own guns than older Americans. There are only minor differences among adults 30 and older by age group (ranging between 31% and 34%). Gun ownership is much higher among those who are politically conservative (39%) than among those who are politically liberal (17%).”
