Month: July 2013

The humid air and briney aroma of Beach Haven took me right back to my first visit here, with my parents and cousins and grandparents when I was 9 or 10 years old. There may be other beachy places with a similar invigorating flavor (Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket) but I’ve got it in my head that Beach Haven owns it. Last night there was a flashing lightning storm over the bay. Lightning bolts and warm gusty winds and whitecaps on the water. We sat on a wooden pier on the bay and just waited for words that might improve on the silence. They never came.

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“Oh my god. I just can’t keep up with that stuff. The internet has developed this thing about me, and I’m not even a computer guy, you know? I don’t know why it is happening. I’m trying not to…lemme say this: I’m now of the mindset that, when in Rome, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” — Nicolas Cage to Emma Brockes in a 7.19 Guardian piece titled “People Think I’m Not In On The Joke.”

And yet Cage also says the following: “There is a misperception, if you will, in critical response or even in Hollywood, that I can only do exaggerated characters. Or what they would call over-the-top performances. Well, this is completely false. Another misconception about me is that I just do movies for paychecks. For a while there, it was the three Cs — castles, comic books and cars. I just can’t get that stuff off of me.”

According to screen captures recently posted by DVD Beaver‘s Gary W. Tooze, the difference between the 2002 DVD of Henry Hathaway‘s Niagara (’53) and Fox Home Video’s 60th anniversary Bluray version is as follows:

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If I was a big-studio production chief whose survival depended on greenlighting as many dumb-ass, CG-driven superhero-franchise-comicbook bullshit jizz-whiz movies (Batman Meets Superman, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Edge of Tomorrow, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor 2, Captain America 2, Suck My Dick 3) as possible, I would need to get a colonic every weekend just to get rid of the poisons in my system. To say I would be seething with contempt for the tens of millions of fanboys who pay for my lifestyle…that would be putting it mildly. Ahab’s last words would have nothing on me. On the other hand I would donate generously to liberal causes, and I would drive a hybrid and worship my children and eat as healthily as possible.

I’ve crashed contentedly at Airbnb apartments in New York, Paris, San Francisco and Prague. (And I almost snagged an Airbnb Telluride pad a few weeks ago.) Totally down with it. Hotels and motels can go suck it. Ditto Craigslist, which used to be my #1 go-to for temporary sublets. So I was naturally interested in this interview piece with Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky by writes N.Y. Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.

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“I honestly urge you to seek Gravity which is right up your alley and one of Alfonso’s best films.” — Filmmaker friend who’s seen the whole thing.

“This is not a psychotic episode. This is a cleansing moment of clarity. I’m imbued with some special spirit. It’s not a religious feeling at all. It’s a shocking eruption of great electrical energy. I feel vivid and flashing, as if suddenly I’d been plugged into some great electromagnetic field. I feel connected to all living things. To flowers, birds…all the animals of the world. And even to some great, unseen, living force. What I think the Hindus call prana. But it’s not a breakdown. I’ve never felt more orderly in my life. It is a shattering and beautiful sensation. It is the exalted flow of the space-time continuum, save that it is spaceless and timeless and…of such loveliness.”

Tweeted last night by N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes. I think it’s time to upgrade Barnes to permanent HE homey status.

I’m staying at the Island Guest House, a homey b & b on Long Beach Island. Except the wifi really sucks here. Pages are taking forever to load (even email is a pain) and it took me three to four minutes to obtain the embed code for this trailer. I hate it. I’m not going to let this ruin my day but I don’t want to post stuff any more. It’s too depressing. I’m going for a walk and then I’ll rent a bicycle and then hit the beach around 2 or 3 pm. Why would a b & b owner want to provide less than lightning-fast wifi? What’s the point in half-assing it?

Thing about it — a mafia family mixing it up with (and in some cases go up against) the locals in France is hilarious material. But the implied savagery in this trailer suggests that director-writer Luc Besson and co-screenwriters Tonino Benacquista and Michael Caleo went at it with a reductive, mafia-default, one-track mind. The Family opens on 9.13.13.

It was reported late yesterday that the MPAA has partially overturned its Butler ruling and will no longer prevent the Weinstein Company from using the word “butler” in the title of the forthcoming Lee Daniels film about a long-serving White House servant. The apparent intention is to call it Lee Daniels’ The Butler. I wouldn’t do that. I would want to suppress all awareness of who directed it. To me the auteur who brought you Shadowboxer (which wasn’t very good), Precious (which I found torturous due to Mo’Nique‘s performance) and The Paperboy (howlingly bad) is no drawing card. If I were Harvey I would call it The Bee. Seriously.