I think we all understand that Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (20th Century Fox, 10.25) is a revisiting of Cormac McCarthy‘s cutthroat drug-trade realm a la No Country for Old Men minus the sardonic refinements of the Coen Bros. and the rueful lamentations of Llewelyn Moss. Slicker, more uptown, present-day, cheetah on a leash, babes in towels and bikinis, uglier.
Month: August 2013
Nerd Cyber Love
I don’t like the name “Theodore Twombly” — way too nerdy and fanciful — and I didn’t like the first 10 or 15 seconds of this trailer. But I fell for it the instant that Joaquin Pheonix said “hi” because it’s obvious he’s totally jettisoned his tongue-flicking alcoholic serpent personality from The Master (which I was afraid was going to pop up again and again) and is exuding a new openness and warmth and vulnerability. Spike Jonze‘s Her could be something else. I find it interesting that it’s not going to Venice or Toronto or New York, and that it’s just opening on 11.20. I think that means something. Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pratt and Scarlett Johansson costar.
Jonze hasn’t made a feature film about adult humans since Adaptation, which came out 11 years ago.
The participation of dp Hoyte van Hoytema (The Fighter) is a huge plus.
Spielberg Spartacus Wrongo
This was apparently taped ten or more years ago, but I knew right away that Steven Spielberg was again misremembering. He’s right about the vibe inside the wooden pen before Kirk Douglas‘s fight to the death in the Capua arena, but the unsettled expressions are exchanged not so much between Douglas and John Ireland, as Spielberg recalls, but Douglas and Woody Strode. Strode’s face conveys a certain dark resignation and even a kind of morbid amusement whereas Douglas…well, his expression isn’t quite as layered.
Loath To Admit
Music is a very intimate thing. The best songs seep right into your soul but the connection often evaporates if you share it. (Although sometimes it doesn’t.) Last night I was flipping through a magazine in Century City and came upon a piece called “Great Summer Songs,” and one of the respondents mentioned Fleetwood Mac‘s “Over My Head.” Fleetwood Mac was never a hip band, but they became fatally uncool after “Don’t Stop” played at the finale of the 1992 Democratic National Convention. And yet some kind of “Over My Head” memory turned a switch (I hadn’t listened to it in years) and to my everlasting shame I immediately bought it on iTunes.
Leno Obama O’Donnell Putin
Last night President Obama told Jay Leno that he’ll be attending the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, but this morning he cancelled a planned summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Russia’s refusal to send Edward Snowden, the fugitive intelligence analyst, to the U.S. to face leaking charges. Leno brought Putin into the conversation last night, but Obama’s team obviously felt it wouldn’t be fitting to blow off Putin while chatting amiably on the Tonight Show couch.
Tired, Boozy Hudson Gets New Face
Sight unseen the only problem I have with Criterion’s forthcoming Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds (1966) is the 1.75 to 1 aspect ratio, which is too close to the dreaded 1.85. Ditto the 1.75 cropping of The Manchurian Candidate. Frankenheimer’s The Train was released a year before Seconds and the DVD was/is cropped at 1.66. Frankenheimer’s golden period runs from The Young Cannibals to Seconds, and I think all his films should all be opened up to 1.66. Frankenheimer began in live TV, remember — he was accustomed to framing his shots within a boxy a.r. It’s clear that 1.66 is the best compromise.
Gandolfini’s Last
Any ex-wife or ex-girlfriend can trash their ex-husband or ex-boyfriend with authority. They can slice you up like sashimi. Nobody comes away clean from a relationship. Bad reviews are inevitable. But people with a sense of class don’t post reviews of their exes on Rotten Tomatoes. Unless your ex is/was a total loon, the only fair thing you can say is that he/she had their good sides and not-so-good sides but that was then and this is now and you’ve moved on, etc.
The late James Gandolfini plays a mild-mannered bear in Nicole Holofcener‘s Enough Said (Fox Searchlight, 9.13), and Catherine Keener plays her usual contentious snippy crab-head. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a massage therapist who falls for Jimbo. Problems arise when Dreyfus accidentally befriends Keener and yaddah yaddah.
Best Picture Takedown Campaigns Waiting To Happen?
Yesterday Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted a list of 2013’s likeliest Best Picture contenders along with lists from Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley and Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil. For what it’s worth my own list is as follows (and in this order): American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, All Is Lost, August: Osage County, Gravity, Fruitvale Station, Saving Mr. Banks, Inside Llewyn Davis, Captain Phillips, The Monuments Men, Before Midnight, 12 Years A Slave, Foxcatcher, Parkland…what is that, 14? Maybe half of these will be nominated. Okay, eight or nine.
But we also know that one or two will be subjected to takedown campaigns for this or that reason. It’s in the nature of what Oscar campaigning has become over the last 10 or 15 years.
Fair Shot
I’ve been invited to a special screening of JOBS at Regal Cinemas L.A. Live (1000 West Olympic Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90015) on Tuesday, 8.13, and also to an after-party. Every movie has its hoopla, and then the reviews and Twitter comments fill the air and then the public weighs in and…you know, it all evens out.
Legend of the Fall
It seems as if Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s Diana (9.20 overseas, fall stateside) is a complex adult romantic drama about the last two years in the life of Diana, Princess of Wales (Naomi Watts). Hirschbiegel (Downfall) is a good director and I hear that Stephen Jeffrey‘s script is tidy, clean and well sculptured. eOne is opening it domestically in the fall (probably in October or November), but with Diana not slated for any of the fall film festivals you have to wonder why. If the UK premiere is on 9.5 and the commercial UK opening is set for 9.20, why does the UK trailer say it’s opening on October 10th?
We’re The Millers, Oh Boy
We’re The Millers (Warner Bros,, 8.7) is a vulgar, sloppily written, oppressively unfunny road comedy about a “typical Middle-American family” involved in a Mexican drug-smuggling charade. Plot-wise, I mean. Thematically it’s a lampoon of suburban families and the hellish, self-loathing lives they presumably lead as they tow the “normal” line. There’s a scene in which Jason Sudeikis‘ character, a Denver pot dealer, is about to get a straight-arrow haircut so he’ll look like a stodgy family guy, and he goes into a longish riff about what a miserable thing it is to be Joe Schmoe with the kids and the mortgage and the temptation to put a gun in his mouth. And yet the movie is also about the nurturing effect of living this kind of life, and how even the most anti-straightlaced among us are drawn to it.
Hats Off & Thanks to Lone Ranger Trio
In one fell swoop, The Lone Ranger producer Jerry Bruckheimer and costars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer have boosted the reputation of film critics everywhere by giving them credit for having a lot more power than most people think. Variety‘s Stuart Oldham is reporting that the trio is blaming critics for the failure of The Lone Ranger by trashing it early on and coming down on their $250 million western with hammers and claws.