Month: April 2013

4:02 pm Update: It’s nothing — a swelling from a fight he got into with a squirrel or something. Needs to be drained. Antibiotics, pain meds, stay indoors for five days.

Earlier: Last night I felt a large lump in the chest area of my Siamese cat, Mouse. It’s probably one of those benign lumps that cats and dogs get every so often. But it’s my fault that Mouse is obese and on some level I’m presuming that this lump has something to do with the shitty Purina Fancy Feast corn-meal food I’ve been feeding him. I’ve been too cheap to buy the super-healthy organic dry food that pet stores sell at premium prices, and Mouse won’t eat the small portions of damp food that I try feeding him every day. I have a 3:20 pm appointment at Laurel Pet Hospital, and then I have to pick up my TCM Classic Film Festival pass.

During yesterday’s chat with Mud director-writer Jeff Nichols, I shared my admiration for the way he wrote and directed the performances by the two kids, played by Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland. Sheridan in particular. Nichols doesn’t have him speak or behave in a typical “movie kid” fashion, or in a way that broadly conveys that the kid is naive and wide-eyed and emotionally vulnerable, etc. And all but totally ignorant about human nature and the realities of life.

(l. to. r.) Mud costars Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Matthew McConaughey.

Sheridan’s “Ellis” character, who’s supposed to be around 14, knows his way around. He’s a kid in some ways but he’s not an idiot and he notices things, and his eyes don’t lie or look away much. He has a naive faith in the idea of true love, but I bought that. He acts the way I felt and probably behaved when I was 14. I knew a few things. I knew about watching my back and being on guard and reading adults for their weaknesses and strengths, and that it wasn’t wise to be friendly with dickheads or assholes.

Here’s Nichols’ response to my observation. He knew exactly what I meant and explained where he was coming from as a writer.

I stole the line about eyes that don’t lie and don’t look away much. Here’s a portion of a scene that the line comes from. Anyone can find out what film it’s from:

Woman: You…you have a lot of very fine qualities. But…
Man: What fine qualities?
Woman: You have good eyes. Not kind, but they don’t lie, and they don’t look away much, and they don’t miss anything. I could use eyes like that.
Man: But you’re overdue in Vermont. Is he a tough guy?
Woman: He’s pretty tough.
Man: What will he do?
Woman: Understand, probably.
Man: Boy, that is tough.

I didn’t have anything to add yesterday to a quickly growing consensus that the seriously loaded Zach Braff is abusing the Kickstarter option by asking fans for dough to make Wish I Was Here, a character-driven dramedy about an loser-ish, arrested-development kind of guy (to be played by Braff) who finds himself and grows up a bit by home-schooling his kids.

Braff says in his pitch that he couldn’t get the kind of financing from the usual sources that would have allowed him to make his film without compromises.

I agree with the anti-Braff pushbackers. He’s connected enough to slap together some kind of deal, I’m sure. Maybe not a perfect deal but that’s life in the big city & tough shit.. Kickstarter movie-finance campaigns are supposed to be for people who aren’t rich or famous, who have no options except to appeal to online supporters. Here’s how HE reader Aaron Lindquist puts it:

“To me, this is the definition of asshole: already being a millionaire and pretending you’re a poor, independent filmmaker. It’s unethical. [Contributors to Braff’s Kickstarter campaign] would be giving money to someone who does not need it and encouraging more established film industry types to piss into the well that is Kickstarter. We should be helping build artists of all types, who don’t have the means to make their projects happen any other way. We shouldn’t let a viable outlet for indie financing become polluted with the same mainstream ideas that crowd-funding has sought to escape.

“Am I the only one who sees the potential for the industry to muck this up (just like they mucked up indie financing and distribution in the 90s)? — Warm regards, Aaron”

Yesterday’s reactions to the HE re-design (which I had worked on for three or four days) were almost entirely negative and often dismissive. People were nice but straight about it, and many comments were constructive and helpful. So the hell with it. The integrity of the HE World Trade Center skyscraper will stay the same and it’s back to square one.

But I’m keeping the flash box (i.e., little moving bullet-links to hot stories & items) and I’m keeping the Discriminator box — I like it and it’s staying put with a permanent second-story position. And I’m expanding the Twitter box to 460 pixels and putting it on top of the Oscar Balloon, or just after the tenth story. All within the classic skyscraper structure. And I’m adding Twitter and Facebook links to the end of every story. And I’m trimming the after-the-Oscar Balloon posts from 20 to 10, which will load faster. So the front page will henceforth have 10 posts above and 10 posts below the Twitter/oscar Balloon space — 20 instead of 30 posts altogether.

A professional redesign guy or two will take a look at the site in a week or two and maybe suggest some changes. I’ll see what happens. One step at a time. Everything in its own time. And I might chicken out on the Twitter box if there are enough complaints, but right now I just don’t see the harm.

In his review of Michael Bay‘s Pain & Gain, N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott describes the Paramount release as “two hours of sweat, blood and cheerful, nasty vulgarity, punctuated by voice-over ruminations about Jesus, physical fitness and the American dream, along with a few tactical visits to a strip club. It all leaves you pondering whether you have just seen a monumentally stupid movie or a brilliant movie about the nature and consequences of stupidity. Why choose?”

(l. to r.) Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg and Anthomy Mackie in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain

Good closing graph: “While not exactly glorifying the crimes of the Sun Gym gang, Mr. Bay does not entirely condemn them either. A different kind of director might have made Pain & Gain into a gamy, gritty sunshine noir, or else a knowing satire of idiot America. The easy move would be to invite the audience to look down on Daniel, Paul and Adrian, but Mr. Bay’s brand of populism holds them rigorously and maddeningly at eye level. The movie and, by implication, those of us watching it are no better than these guys. I found that unspeakably insulting and also impressive.”

In my book Prince of the City is the greatest epic New York film ever. A huge cast of New Yorky character actors playing the greatest assemblage of New Yorky characters ever. Dirty cops, prosecutors, mafia guys, junkies, feds, more dirty cops and last but not least, the great Jerry Orbach as Gus Levy. A profane, rude, emotional, gritty, smelly, tangy, exhausting, amazing film. Huge plates of spaghetti and meat balls splattered all over the floor.

Press Play essay by Steven Santos. Here’s Part Two.

I spoke this afternoon with Mud director-writer Jeff Nichols — a nice Austin guy, calm and bright and gifted. We sat for 15 or 20 minutes in the Four Seasons bar/lounge, but the music was so loud I have a feeling it’ll be hard to hear him when I edit the recording tomorrow morning. Any way you slice it Mud (Lionsgate/Roadside, 4.26) is one of the year’s best so far. A mature, well-honed coming-of-age story about love, bonding, betrayal and illusion. Not a drop of treacly sentiment, no pandering to the saps.

Mud director-writer Jeff Nichols.

I don’t know how well Mud will perform (the title may prove a roadblock for some), but I know that the decision by costar Reese Witherspoon‘s publicist to cancel her client’s appearances on two or three talk shows was a rash and cowardly thing. I know this didn’t help Mud‘s prospects at the box-office and that it almost certainly hurt to some degree. Witherspoon’s girly-girl fans wouldn’t have attended in huge numbers but a certain percentage would have come, and now that percentage will be smaller.

The publicist didn’t want Witherspoon discussing her recent arrest a few days ago after getting mouthy with a cop. It could have been laughed off. Witherspoon could have made herself look loose and cool. Who hasn’t made a mistake after drinking too much? What celebrity doesn’t expect to be treated with deference, especially after they’ve had a few? How many hundreds of times have we read the quote “do you know who I am?” She could have woman-ed up and faced the music like Hugh Grant did after his blowjob, but she chickened out.

Repeating for clarity’s sake: Mud is steady, solid and delivered just right. One of the finest Southern-flavored dramas about small-town rural values that I’ve ever seen, right up there with Sling Blade, Tender Mercies, The Straight Story, The Trip to Bountiful.

George Stevens Jr. recently granted an interview (published today) to N.Y. Post critic/columnist Lou Lumenick about the Shane and Giant restorations, both of which will be screened at the TCM Classic Film Festival (4.25 to 4.28). Lumenick naturally asked for a comment about the Shane aspect ratio hoo-hah, but Stevens declined to discuss it. But he offered a few Shane recollections. Here are the pertinent portions:

It was “always [Stevens’] intention to have the true version of Shane released on video,” eh? And there was “never a capitulation” on this point? Then why did Stevens write me the following in an email?

After two and a half days, the Give Forward online fundraising drive to help Coming Soon‘s Ed Douglas fight Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia has raised $38,467.00 (as of 6 pm Pacific).

In a statement released today, Douglas thanked everyone and explained his situation. “I spoke with the doctors today and they have a diagnosis with plans to start chemotherapy tomorrow morning,” he wrote. “Basically I have Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, which is fairly rare. Of the 12 or 13 people currently in the unit at The James in Columbus, I’m the only one on the floor with this specific version of leukemia. But this is one of the top three leukemia-specializing hospitals in the country and I was super lucky to get into it.

“Those who found out about the fundraiser (on their own, I might add) were as shocked as I was. I’m just so lucky to have such great support, not only from all of you but also my family (my mother and sister are local), my amazing brother who flew to Vegas to get me, and my great friends, especially Mike Sampson, Mike Ryan and Jordan Hoffman who organized the fundraiser.

“Knowing that there’s a cushion of money has definitely helped ease my mind so I can just focus on getting better and getting back to NYC as soon as humanly possible.”

Here’s the re-design that’s been giving me so much grief over the last 36 hours. Grief from others and my own nagging doubts. Here’s the link to the whole thing. The FLASHBOX is one of those bullet-point come-ons providing links to the hottest stories and items of the last few days. DISCRIMINATOR is one of those “this is hot but that’s not” charts — always changing, a scroll bar, six or seven items at a time. The arrows on the DISCRIMINATOR box will be smaller. A friend wants me to kill the second 72 8 x 90 ad. Another says the Twitter box is unnecessary but I kinda like it.

Amy Seimetz has been kicking around as an indie-level director-writer-actress for a good seven or eight years, but before seeing Upstream Color at last January’s Sundance Film Festival I hadn’t paid much attention, to be honest. Seimetz says very little in Shane Carruth‘s film, but sometimes (or should I say often?) a certain mystique arises when an actor holds back and just settles in and the camera just stares. On top of which Seimetz looks a bit like Juliette Binoche in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is a roundabout way of saying she’s obliquely hot.

Amy Seimetz in Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color.

So naturally I wanted to speak with her about Sun Don’t Shine, a dark-toned drama she wrote and directed. It opens on 4.26. Here’s the mp3. I had this idea of Seimetz being a kind of reflection of her Upstream Color character, someone a little vague and imprecise, a woman of few words, etc. So it was a slight surprise to speak with this friendly, fully confessional, almost bubbly-sounding voice on the other end.

Seimetz mentioned that she was going through some “really rough” personal struggles during the shooting of Upstream Color and that maybe some of that came through.

The clip below was shot by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson during the 2013 South by Southwest Festival. I’m having trouble paying attention to what’s being said because I’m so fascinated by that construction-site backround. A covered chain-link fence, tractors, tools. Where the hell are they doing this interview, in someone’s back yard in some nondescript Austin neighborhood?

From the Sun Don’t Shine press notes: “[The film] follows Crystal (Kate Lyn Sheil) and her boyfriend Leo (Kentucker Audley) on a tense and mysterious road trip through the desolate yet hauntingly beautiful landscape of central Florida. From the outset, the purpose of their journey is unclear, and the motivations behind their heated altercations and shady errands are hazy, but sporadic moments of tenderness illuminate the loving bond between the two that exists underneath their overt tensions.

“As the couple travels up the Gulf Coast past an endless panorama of mangrove fields, trailer parks, and cookie-cutter housing developments, the disturbing details of their excursion gradually begin to emerge, revealing Crystal’s sinister past and the couple’s troubling future.”

I spoke last Sunday with Mary and Martha director Phillip Noyce. We went on for a half-hour — here’s the mp3. The nominal subject of Mary and Martha is the ravages of malaria, so tomorrow is an especially fitting day to catch it. But the film is really about much more, and not just in terms of content. It’s a personal film for Noyce as well as a spiritual retreat of sorts.

Mary and Martha director Phillip Noyce.

Noyce’s motive in directing a politically-tinged HBO character drama, he says, was to downshift from his experience as the director of Salt, a hugely successful Angelina Jolie action thriller that required dealing with as many political elements as creative ones. Noyce equates the experience to working in a “washing machine.”

Mary and Martha is about two moms (Hilary Swank, Brenda Blethyn) “coping with the malaria-caused deaths of their sons in Africa, and about the social and political activism these tragedies bring about,” I wrote three days ago. “But it’s clean and direct and earnest as far as the story allows it to go, which is farther than you might expect,”night, and it hit me all over again (and in a sense a bit more this time) how well made it is, how carefully finessed, how exactly right it all feels.

Noyce is primarily known for directing big expensive action thrillers and potboilers (Salt, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games, Dead Calm) as well as somewhat smaller-scaled humanistic dramas (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Catch A Fire, The Quiet American) — this is obviously one of the latter.

“The material might be a little on-the-nose, but Noyce knows exactly what he’s doing, and there’s just this sense of convergence — a team of clearly talented people have been told to contribute in just the right way. It’s so well acted by not only Swank and Blethyn but every last costar and bit player (Frank Grillo, James Woods, Lux Honey-Jardine, Sam Claflin, Sean O’Bryan, Ian Redford) and written with such clarity and finesse that it moves along and just sinks right in without a hint of huffing or puffing…it just happens.”

Noyce’s next project is a kind of futuristic Hunger Games-meets-Phillip K. Dick film with Jeff Bridges and yet-to-be-cast costar. It will shoot in South Africa. The Weinstein Co. is producing.