Day: April 12, 2013

Terry Teachout‘s 4.13 Wall Street Journal piece about film critic Otis Ferguson (1907-43) struck a chord. Ferguson’s jazzy, loose-shoe prose was a seminal influence when I first began in this racket in the late ’70s. It was Annette Insdorf who gave me a 1971 compilation of Ferguson’s film reviews. Ferguson reviewed books, movies and jazz for The New Republic from 1933 until he joined the Merchant Marines after Pearl Harbor. He was killed at age 36 by a German bomb near Salerno, Italy.

Teachout excerpt: “Like George Orwell, Mr. Ferguson was a sworn enemy of the pretentious, and he wrote in a casual, slangy ‘spoken’ style well suited to his preferred topics. He described Louis Armstrong‘s 1939 recording of ‘Bye and Bye,’ a black spiritual, as being full of ‘the sadness and hope of heaven and jumping rhythm; the open-bell trumpet tones and that magnificent husky voice of his. It is a mixture of horseplay and the faith of fathers, and not to be imitated. Not to be snooted, either.’

“That last line is Mr. Ferguson in a nutshell. Unlike most of his critical contemporaries, he understood that you can be popular and serious at the same time.”

Another key Fergsuon compilation is “In The Spirit of Jazz,” published in 1997.

It is rude and lazy and completely unfair to say that my interest in seeing Jerome Salle‘s Zulu, a noirish South African thriller with Forest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom, is next to zilch. Sorry but that was my immediate reaction when I heard it’ll close the 66th Cannes Film Festival. I will quite possibly eat these words, and that’ll be fine. In that sense I’m looking forward to seeing it. The full list of Cannes selections will be announced on on Thursday, 4.18.

In other words, a Scottish Bad Lieutenant only a lot crazier, crossed with the sensibilities of Trainspotting‘s Irvine Welsh by way of direction and a script adaptation by Jon S. Baird and a lead performance by James McAvoy. Will the film include the dog scene in Welsh’s book?

The incontestably great Jonathan Winters has left the earth. He was much more than a comedian, and much more, I always felt, than Maude Frickert — the character that Middle America seemed to like the most. Winters was first and foremost (and I don’t think this is a word) a transportationist. He would leave his body and go into trance-states that seemed to flirt with real madness. “This guy isn’t just playing characters — he’s one-third nuts,” I told myself long ago. “He knows what it is to throw normality out the window.”

One reason for this (apart from Winters having been blessed with pure genius) is that he crashed and did two stretches in a mental hospital in ’59 and again in ’61 for manic depression. I’ve never fallen into that pit myself, but I know that guys who’ve been there and have come back are always fifteen times more interesting than mild-mannered folk. Ask any comedian who knows a thing or two. Ask Albert Brooks or Robin Williams or anyone, really, who knows what a bitch it is to be funny in a way that resonates on some level. Winters was world-class.

A Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic grade in the mid to high 60s obviously signifies substantial resistance, even if the majority of critics are with you. It also means, in strict high-school exam terms, a failing grade. This is what’s happened so far with Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect — a RT 69% rating, a 65 from Metacritic.

It feels odd when a third of the critics disagree with you, but it happens. All I can say is that I have a very clear and hard-won understanding of what a failed film plays like, and Disconnect, trust me, does not deserve that label.

Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern isn’t as much of a fan as myself, but he allows that despite an element of “sheer contrivance” (which is there in a sense but doesn’t get in the way as the multiple-overlapping-plot-strand drama is a genre and as valid as any other reality-reshaping approach or film style) “the film is impressive all the same, a bleak vision of life in the internet age as an asocial network where faceless predators abound, heedless kids live secret lives, everything is phishy until proven otherwise and quests for love or intimacy lead to loneliness or grief.

“Movies about intertwined lives often suffer from the gimmick that’s supposed to sustain them: Two examples of recent years, Crash and Babel, piled on fateful connections to the point of self-parody. Disconnect suffers less in that department because the gimmickry is accompanied by a valid if familiar irony — the technological revolution that brings us together in ways that were unimaginable to previous generations also separates us by replacing face-to-face encounters with texts, tweets, webcams, emails and disembodied chats.”

Here’s how I put it on 4.3:

“Disconnect works because it delivers in the writing, direction and acting. Andrew Stern‘s screenplay feels credible and compelling and is very finely threaded, always pushed along by believable turns and real-seeming characters behaving in what they believe are their best interests. Rubin’s direction is unforced naturalism par excellence, and the result is a story that always seems steady-on-the-tracks — nothing ever feels like a stretch (except perhaps that one moment at the very end when slow-mo kicks in). And the performances are honestly inhabited and true-feeling and just about perfectly rendered.”

Those negative 42 reviews from Variety‘s Scott Foundas and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy (plus my own briefly expressed disappointment) might suggest to some that Brian Helgeland‘s film has been roundly condemned. It hasn’t. It currently has a 70% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a 60% Metacritic score. Ticket buyers traditionally don’t have a huge problem with square, on-the-nose films of this sort. I’ve no tracking information to share.

From Coed.dom’s Phil Villarreal: “While Jackie Robinson’s story is worthy of respect and admiration, director-writer Brian Helgeland shows conclusively that even a great man’s life can be incredibly repetitive and boring. “42 can find no other conflict or resolution than Robinson getting treated like crap, then proceeding to play such incredibly great baseball that it’s accompanied by extremely loud trumpet swells.

“Chadwick Boseman, as Robinson, does an excellent job of playing a man with a female name. One might argue, in fact, that Boseman does a better job of playing Robinson than Robinson himself did playing himself in The Jackie Robinson Story back in 1950.

“Harrison Ford does a solid job as Dodgers executive Branch Rickey, who, as baseball historians love to note, showed incredible bravery in bringing Robinson into the Majors. Poor Rickey had to sit there and watch as Robinson got hit in the head, spiked on the base paths and shunned in the locker room as Rickey counted mounds of cash that Robinson made him. Ford does a good job of conveying the plight of an incredibly rich old man who watches stuff happen while wearing a poker face.”

The most significant Sonoma Film Festival event last night (or so it seemed to me) was a Netflix-sponsored dinner, held under a large hospitality tent in the town square. The guests of honor were The Iceman costar Ray Liotta and director-cowriter Ariel Vromen. SIFF Exec Director and consummate host Kevin McNeely offered a hearty welcome. Thanks to SIFF p.r. rep Carol Marshall for inviting me up and seeing to the usual comforts.

Sonoma Film Festival exec director Kevin McNeely, The Iceman costar Ray Liotta during last night’s Netflix dinner.

McNeely, The Iceman director-writer Ariel Vromen.

SIFF programmer Steve Shor suggested the following films during my three-day stay here: Blackbird, You Will Be My Son, Monkey On My Shoulder, Terms and Conditions May Apply, The Deep, Souffle Chocolat, Lo Zucco: The Wine of the Son of the King of the French, Cover Story, The Teacher, Fierce Green Fire, Rebels With A Cause.

Mary Louise Parker and special HE friend Demian Bichir are also attending this weekend.

Netflix is now offering an ultra high-def service that’s as good if not slightly better than Bluray, a Netflix exec told me last night. The only problem is that Time Warner, my West Hollywood cable-internet provider, is one of the two companies who aren’t on board with this service. Netflix employs roughly 600 at its Los Gatos headquarters; the Beverly Hills office has about 100 staffers.

Sonoma’s flat typography is obviously bicycle-friendly. Temperatures in the 70s and low 80s, but the air cools down a bit in the evening.