Month: October 2013

How could any serious film lover not prefer to see Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity in IMAX 3D? The bloom is off 3D these days, of course, but if any film has been tailor-made for this format it’s this one. And yet less than 10% of viewers even have this option, give or take. Of the 3,575 screens that Gravity opened on yesterday, a mere 323 are IMAX. (425 screens are showing it in 2D.) I myself haven’t seen an IMAX-3D presentation — my Telluride viewing early last month was in straight 3D. So I intend to catch an IMAX 3-D showing at Universal Citywalk around 8 pm this evening. I wonder how many of the 323 are genuine vs. ersatz IMAX? Probably a small percentage. (The AMC Century City plex is definitely offering “fake” IMAX.)

Gravity “is a brilliant, visionary and groundbreaking film, and a great gift to exhibitors because it makes the theatrical experience an absolutely necessary component,” I wrote on 9.11.13. Deadline‘s Nikki Finke is projecting $48 million for the The Warner Bros. release by Sunday night.

An actual obit that some Breaking Bad fans put into the Albuquerque Journal. Everyone’s already reported this today but I figured I might as well join in as Hollywood Elsewhere has become a kind of emotional Ground Zero for fans of this now-mercifully-concluded AMC series. Bonus points for those who can remember which “deceased” actor in which film was referred to as a “tough monkey” after his demise?

With the post-apocalyptic dystopian thing completely spent and in the wake of Cloverfield and Pacific Rim, who outside of 14-and-unders wants to watch more of this?

Directed, written and produced by Linda Bloodworth Thomason, Bridegroon (Virgil Films, 10.4 in NYC/10.18 in Los Angeles) is about how tragedy separated a committed gay couple, Shane and Tom, and then how Shane Bitney Crone, the survivor, was stunned and angered when faced with familial and “legal” anti-gay prejudice. Shane posted a video tribute to his partner called “It Could Happen to You.” The video went viral and garnered over four million views. A release states that Shane “wanted it to serve as a warning to other LGBT couples, and show the world what can happen when two people are legally barred from having equal rights and equal protections under the law to marry.” I’m attending a screening of Bridegroom on Tuesday, 10.15, at the Academy theatre.

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The sound on my Macbook Pro sound stopped working yesterday due to a faulty installation of OSX 10.8.5. So I had to re-download and re-install that system and then restart, blah blah. The sound was fixed. And then, at the Apple guy’s suggestion, I went into all three cache folders and emptied everything out. (Which I should do every week except I forget.) This somehow killed the sound again. Plus the operating system is slow and gunked up. I made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon to drop off this soundless Macbook Pro plus the other broken MBP (i.e., faulty keyboard) to the Geniuses at the Mac store at The Grove. (Which I despise, spiritually and environmentally, because of that phony bullshit Disneyland vibe.) On top of which the four-year- old iMac that I bought in Manhattan is all but worthless. So everything is basically breaking down from overwork so I’m thinking I need a new Macbook Air. It may sound fickle but I need a computer that, you know, works, especially with the two Pros being in the shop for two or three days.

Chris Pine as Robo-Ryan — Jacksnapper injected with video-game DNA. Seemingly related to Captain Kirk. Kenneth Branagh provides the robo-direction. David Koepp wrote the robo-screenplay. My, how sensibilities have changed since Clear and Present Danger came out in ’94 (i.e., the Pleistocene era). Not Patriot Games, not so much Hunt for Red October, not The Sum of All Fears. [Note: Despite two restarts on two computers the sound isn’t working. On anything. I’m presuming this is my problem alone.]

“All Is Lost is amazing, deeply moving, and a harking back to an age when the best mainstream films might be the best pictures America made,” says New Republic critic David Thomson in a 10.3 posting. “It is an adventure and an epic with one person. I am warning you that it may win Best Picture, and that its one person, Robert Redford, deserves what has never come to him before, an Oscar for best actor. He is as noble, vulnerable, and harrowed as Gary Cooper at his best.

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My first thought when I saw the new Philomena poster was “where have I seen this before?” I’m sure there are dozens of other posters that put out a similar look and attitude. It says “this is a very safe and tidy film about safe and tidy people…trust us, it will not threaten or challenge you in the least.” It’s also gives Judy Dench a nice little nip and tuck — she looks about 40 or 45 here.

Documentarian Bob Smeaton has done well by himself and his subject, the late Jimi Hendrix, in Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A’Comin’ (PBS, 11.5). He’s delivered a stirring, well-crafted valentine — a two-hour portrait of a much-worshipped, gentle-mannered, extremely modest genius who loved the ladies and was obsessively devoted to playing guitar. Which is all true as far as it goes. But this is a project controlled by the Hendrix family (i.e., Experience Hendrix, LLC), and if you know anything about this notoriously conservative-minded bunch you know what that means. Almost all the details about Jimi Hendrix’s short life that allude to any kind of subterranean undertow or inclination (such as the ingestion of psychedelic drugs) have been pretty much scrubbed out.

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Universal’s decision to remove Focus Features CEO James Schamus and install FilmDistrict exec Peter Schlessel in his place means that Focus will no longer be involved with refined, upscale movies for people who eat granola and olives and feta cheese with pita bread. The new idea is to make movies for people who slurp 24-ounce containers of Coca Cola while inhaling tubs of buttered popcorn and extra-large packets of red Twizzlers. Schlessel, who helped make Screen Gems into a valued low-rent moneymaker for Sony, was exec producer on Oldboy, Insidious: Chapter 2, Olympus Has Fallen, Evil Dead, Looper, The Possession and Drive. Say goodbye to the Focus of yore (i.e., Burn After Reading, Brokeback Mountain, Atonement, Moonrise Kingdom, Lost in Translation) — those days are finito. This is now, the world we live in.

Radius, the Weinstein Co. and Landmark Theatres have announced that all federal and military employees will be given free tickets to see Jacob Kornbluth and Robert Reich‘s Inequality For All (i.e, the Inconvenient Truth of American economics) but only today. They should be a little more liberal about it and allow the eligible to see it gratis for two days — today (Thursday, 10.3) and tomorrow (Friday, 10.4). And then go back to paid admissions starting Saturday. Participating Landmark Theatres include The Landmark (Los Angeles, CA), California 3 (Berkeley, CA), Harvard Exit 2 (Seattle, WA), E Street Cinema (Washington, DC), Century Centre 7 (Chicago, IL), Aquarius 2 (Palo Alto, CA), Ritz 5 (Philadelphia, PA), Bethesda Row (Bethesda, MD), Kendall Square 9 (Cambridge, MA), Hillcrest 5 (San Diego, CA), Renaissance Place 5 (Highland Park, IL), La Jolla Village 4 (La Jolla, CA) and Keystone Art (Indianapolis, IN).