I’ve always loved Larry Cohen‘s Q, The Winged Serpent (’82), which is out on Bluray on 8.27. I love the jazzy hipster attitude, the flagrantly insincere tone and especially the cheesy special effects. Michael Moriarty‘s performance as a scat-singing eccentric is surreal at times, and let’s not forget the great David Carradine. I’d been an admirer of Cohen’s stuff (God Told Me To and It’s Alive were my favorites) but Q is the film that finally allowed me to understand and embrace the term “Cohen-heads.”
Day: August 24, 2013
Tenacious But Classy
Sid Bernstein, the New York-based concert promoter who booked the Beatles into Carnegie Hall in February 1964 and for two big concerts at Shea Stadium in the summers of ’65 and ’66, died three days ago at age 95. As far as I’ve read or heard Bernstein was known as a smooth, soft-spoken gentleman and a man of honor. There was another New York-based hustler of the Hebrew persuasion who was heavily involved with the Beatles — his rep was a little more mixed.
By What Standard?
Lee Daniels’ The Butler is #1 for the second week in a row, obviously because people like it (and that’s fine) but also because there’s no real competition, right? The Weinstein Co. was smart to open this modest little film in early August. The shocker, for me, is that Warner Bros/New Line’s We’re The Millers is second this weekend and actually approaching $100 million domestic. This obviously means people are telling their friends that it’s good enough to see in a theatre and don’t wait for Netflix, etc. What solar system are these people living in? I was okay or at least mezzo-mezzo with the first act but I felt stuck in hell for the remainder. I called it a “vulgar, sloppily written, oppressively unfunny road comedy about a ‘typical Middle-American family’ involved in a Mexican drug-smuggling charade” and “a lampoon of suburban families and the hellish, self-loathing lives they presumably lead as they tow the ‘normal’ line.”
Batfleck Aftermath
Like it or not, Zack Snyder‘s Batman vs. Superman (Warner Bros., 7.15) will star Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Henry Cavill as Superman. But lost in the Batfleck hubbub is a question of basic plot dynamics. The title indicates the superheroes at cross purposes, but what kind of misunderstanding could result in these Dudley Do-Rights going up against each other? (The Superman-Batman comic book series, launched in ’03, “explored the camaraderie, antagonism, and friendship between its titular characters,” says one description.) And what kind of mano e mano tension can result from a mortal crimefighter duking it out with an extra-terrestrial with super-powers? One presumes that David S. Goyer‘s script will divest Superman of his spectacularness.
