Day: May 3, 2013

Scott McGehee and David Siegel‘s What Maisie Knew (Millenium, opening today in New York and a bit later in Los Angeles) is an adaptation of Henry James’s 1897 novel about selfish, thoughtless, bickering parents who’d much rather fight each other than be decent and kind and nurturing to their young daughter. In the present-day version Maisie (Onata Aprile) is stuck watching her detestable rock-star mom (Julianne Moore) and aloof art-dealer dad (Steve Coogan) battle each other over custody rights and then take up with younger lovers (Alexander Skarsgard, Joanna Vanderham) and generally yak on about themselves and their careers and latest moves.

The problem, for me, is that Nancy Doyne and Carroll Cartwright‘s script hits the same note over and over again. Moore and Coogan are monsters, Moore and Coogan are monsters, Moore and Coogan are monsters. Maisie is a thoughtful and respectable film, yes, but is more about a precise but passive exploration of a malignant parenting situation than about telling a half-gripping) story that might engage or provoke. Moore and Coogan are metaphors for the corruption or inane self-absorption or cluelessness of today’s professional elite…except that James’ parents were metaphors for the corruption or inane self-absorption or cluelessness of yesterday’s elite. So there’s obviously something classic and eternal about this situation.

Except Moore and Coogan are so repulsive you become sick of them soon enough, and you just want to avoid them altogether but you can’t if you’re determined to stick with the film. (Which I absolutely was because it’s clearly been made with intelligence and a form of restraint.) And it becomes a tiny bit taxing that Maisie (a nicely understated performances by Aprile) offers no opinions and makes no judgments about either of them for the longest time. What is she supposed to be, five or six? She has opinons at that age, trust me. She knows what’s going on. So you’re feeling exasperated after a while. And there’s no one to turn to allegiance- or affection-wise except toward Skarsgard and Vanderham, and thank God for the humanity and compassion that they provide.

Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson believes that The Great Gatsby will either tank or open flat or underwhelmingly next weekend. Not because the film is a problem in and of itself (although the consensus among those who attended Thursday night’s Gatsby premiere is not encouraging), but because the the release date of May 10th (or the 2nd weekend in May) exudes some kind of spooky mood pocket vibe that kills or wounds big Warner Bros. movies.

“The proverbial ‘second weekend of summer’ has been a pit stop for one high profile Warner Bros. disaster after another,” Mendelson writes. “It has given them almost nothing but pain for 15 years.” And yet, he adds, the second weekend of summer “isn’t completely cursed. There have been any number of smaller-scale pictures that had flourished, mostly because they didn’t need to be blockbusters to succeed.

The Great Gatsby “isn’t traditional counter-programming,” he notes. ‘Yes it’s a literary period piece drama in a summer of fantasy adventures, but it’s also a $120 million 3D spectacle. Correlation isn’t causation, but history is not on the side of Baz Luhrmann’s latest adaptation. Obviously the film may very well under-perform in the states only to flourish overseas. But purely from a domestic point of view, it seems beyond odd that Warner Bros. seems to keep tempting fate by attempting to open expensive summer movies during a period where audiences have rejected their pictures in favor of the summer kick-off film again and again.

“If the pattern holds, The Great Gatsby is doomed.”

A.O. Scott‘s observation that the second films in a franchise (The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back, Spiderman 2) tend to be the best ones is true, I think. David Carr: “Is there any chance that Hangover 3 will by any good?” Otherwise they’re performing a kind of superficial forced joviality in quotes. What else are they gonna do? Let it all out and just hate on the whole corporate summer avalanche? No — lighthearted chuckles.

I was sufficiently impressed with Scott McGehee and David Siegel‘s What Maisie Knew to want to attend yesterday’s junket gathering at the Tribeca Grand hotel. I spoke to the directors plus Julianne Moore (who gives a brave but dislikable performance as a sociopathic ego-monster Mother From Hell), Alexander Skarsgård (who plays a good guy — a low-key, zero-ambition bartender whose parenting skills for outshine Moore’s or those of her estranged husband, played by Steve Coogan), young Onata Aprile (strikingly low-key but magnetic as the film’s titular character) and Joanna Vanderham.

Alexander Skarsgard, Onata Aprile during yesterday’s What Maisie Knew round=table discussion.

I told Onata that I once saw another actress draw on a pad during a round-table interview — Cate Blanchett. It was for The Good German. I was drawn to Blanchett’s method of concentratig or hiding or whatever, but it was touching.

“Misery loves family” is a pretty good slogan, but why use a different Weston house than the one we’ll see when August: Osage County opens on 11.8.13? Why create a fictional version? I ran a photo of the home, a.k.a. “the historic Boulanger home north of Pawhuska, Oklahoma” — last March. According to Osage News It was purchased by August OC Film for $250,000.” That can’t be right. $250 grand for a home like this?

An old friend is renting a large place in Paris for the month of June, and she’s invited me to stay and provide occasional guidance and security so that’s the plan. A month…actually closer to five weeks in Paris after Cannes, and then returning to L.A. on 6.30. I won’t spend any more over there on food and transportation than I would in West Hollywood so it’s not going to hurt financially. What will I miss? Not the big blockbusters as they open day-and-date over there. I’ll also be attending regular Paris press screenings of most of the stuff I’d see in L.A. Yeah, I’ll probably miss a few L.A. screenings of certain indie titles but there are always the (a) screener-in-the-mail or (b) online viewing-with-a-password options.

Trailer #2 for Roland Emmerich‘s White House Down (Sony, 6.28) offers a greater emphasis on characters (principally Channing Tatum‘s Jone Cale, a D.C. cop of some kind, and Jamie Foxx‘s James Sawyer, the U.S. President) and humor. You can’t beat that shot of the U.S. Capitol exploding from within and collapsing. As Burt Reynolds‘ character says at the start of the Deliverance canoe trip, “This gonna be fun!”

Last night’s screening of William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer (’77) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music was fine. A packed house filled with cool people. (I sat right next to Glenn Kenny!) No Tangerine Dream overture on the print — a huge disappointment — but maybe it’ll turn up on the Bluray. Variety critic Scott Foundas handled the q & a with Friedkin following the screening. Clip #1 is about the genesis of the project, and clip #2 is about Friedkin’s discussions with Steve McQueen about playing what became the Roy Scheider part.

I’ve seen Sorcerer (a terrible title in terms of what the 1977 Joe Popcorn crowd was led to expect) six or seven times, but until last night I’d never wondered about the gas. The two trucks make a 200-mile journey through the jungle, and driving entirely in first and second gear. Surely they couldn’t make the trip on a single tank each, and yet I didn’t notice any extra cans of gas strapped to the flatbeds. And how long did the journey take? Two days? A single day? Three? The film gives you no real clue about the clock.

And Scheider getting iced at the very end seems wrong. The trip was hell but he made it through and had earned redemption by delivering the nitroglycerin. I wanted hsi character to taste the satisfaction of a job well done, and perhaps a little serenity. Scheider apparently wasn;t happy with how he came off. From the Wiki page: “Scheider was angry that in the final cut Friedkin removed a subplot that showed his character in a more sympathetic light; it involved him befriending a small boy from the village. For that reason, Scheider consistently refused to comment on the film.”