1976 was a great year to be alive in many respects. I’ll just leave it at that. On top of which there are few things hotter than getting lucky with a nurse when you’ve been admitted to a hospital for some ailment. Those white stockings and white hospital shoes. That aside…done this before but can’t hurt to reiterate…Ron Howard and Peter Morgan‘s Rush (Universal, 9.27) is about the rivalry between drivers James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl).
Day: July 18, 2013
Enchanted Evenings
There are at least two versions of Dick Powell‘s response upon being told that Alan Ladd had fallen in love with June Allyson, Powell’s wife, during the filming of The McConnell Story (’55). The story is that Ladd and Allyson fell hard but they never “did it,” which sounds like Allyson’s bullshit story to Powell. It seems inconceivable that Ladd would leave his wife, Sue Carol, over his Allyson entanglement without dipping his wick. Version #1 has Ladd calling Powell and saying “I’m in love with your wife,” and Powell replies “everyone is in love with my wife.” Version #2 (which comes from Allyson’s autobiography) has Carol calling Powell and asking “do you know Alan is in love with your wife, June?,” and Powell replies “isn’t everyone?”
Homework Assignment
I spoke to Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn at last night’s The Entrepeneur screening, and we agreed…okay, I said and Kohn went “yeah, I suppose”…that it’s highly likely that J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, which I fell 100% in love with at the Cannes Film Festival, will be one of the U.S. premieres at this year’s Telluride Film Festival (which begins on 8.29). An absolute natural for that gathering. Kohn also believes/suspects (as do I) that Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis and Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color will be shown. But what major fall-holiday films? Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips? My brain won’t function.
Tough As Nails
Last night at Spin I attended a special, Snagfilms-sponsored screening of Jonathan Bricklin‘s The Entrepeneur, a cerebral procedural doc about his celebrated dad, automotive innovator and wheeler-dealer Malcolm Bricklin, trying to put together a U.S. distribution deal with Chery, the Chinese auto maker. It’s a tribute to the old fire-in-the-belly tenacity that propels all movers and shakers. The elder Bricklin (who was there last night with Jonathan and the latter’s partner-girlfriend Susan Sarandon) is a trip-and-a-half. The film also reminds (as if we needed reminding) that big business realms are sometimes colored by the perverse ethical behavior of some real world-class motherfuckers.
Boots That Knock
I generally steer clear of Broadway musicals — “fun” and relentlessly “spirited,” of course, but way too expensive and attended by far too many madras-shirt-wearing 60ish tourists. But a couple of weeks ago my significant other nudged me into getting tickets to Harvey Fierstein and Cindy Lauper‘s Kinky Boots, and we caught the matinee show yesterday afternoon at the Al Hirschfeld theatre. It’s a jolt and a hoot and a glittery wow — a 100% delightful adrenalizer and lifter-upper. For two hours-plus I surrendered to the whole emotional Fierstein-Lauper drag-queen fantasia, and I mean the whole swoony magilla of it. I clapped and laughed and cheered and tapped my feet and went out on a high that, some 18 hours later, has only slightly subsided.