Earlier this year Charlie Countryman (Millenium, 11.15) was called The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman — a film festival title that was zotzed for obvious reasons. Right now is has a 33% Rotten Tomatoes rating. “A gripping, violent film that owes an unabashed debt to the Tarantino-penned love-in-low-places story True Romance,” wrote Empire‘s Damon Wise. Variety‘s John Anderson stated that the film contains “barely a serious moment…with the actors offering up vaguely tongue-in-cheek portrayals of characters either too cliched or unpleasant to deserve much else [while the] ending will have viewers shaking their heads in dismay.”
Day: November 1, 2013
Buyer’s Beginning
Not that anyone needs reminding but Dallas Buyer’s Club has a 94% Rotten Tomatoes rating. That makes it required viewing this weekend if you live in New York or Los Angeles, where the Focus Features release is now playing. I’ve seen it twice and I’m actually thinking about going a third time tomorrow or Sunday on my own dime. I’m figuring there’s a little more juice to be squeezed out of the rag. In terms of my own viewing excitement, I mean. The movie has obvious potential to be nominated in at least three or four categories — Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, etc.
Crestfallen
Warner Home Video’s new Bluray of William Wyler‘s The Best Years Of Our Lives looks tolerable for the most part and in some portions is quite pleasing, but — I’m genuinely sorry to report this — it looks compromised here and there by Egyptian grainstorms along with a few soft-focus passages. This is partly, I’m told, because the original negative was lost a long time ago (possibly due to being on a ship that sank in the North Atlantic), and that the source materials are from a couple of fine grain prints (neither one of which is completely usable) plus a dupe negative or two. The bottom line is that this 1946 classic and Best Picture Oscar winner can never look wonderful and will always look a bit dupey and compromised in spots. I accept that, but I swear that the old DVD looked just as good if not a bit better on my old 26″ Sony flatscreen than the Bluray does now on my 60″ Samsung. 13 years ago I had no significant issues with the DVD, but today’s Bluray is an in-and-outer.
The great Myrna Loy trying to smile and laugh her way through a mosquito swarm in an early scene from The Best Years of Our Lives.
Domino Chain Reaction
Some wacko started shooting people inside Terminal #3 at LAX around 9:30 this morning. 10 or 15 “very loud” shots, some guy is reporting. TSA agent killed; “multiple injuries.” The young, black-clad shooter was reportedly carrying an AR-15, and has since been cuffed. Obviously a terrible trauma and tragedy, but when something like this happens the reaction by law enforcement and security officials is always the same. Shut everything down, ground all flights, explode everyone’s travel plans to pieces and bring the entire Los Angeles air-travel world (even Burbank and Long Beach airports have reportedly gotten into the act) to an all-but-absolute standstill. The motto seems to me “somebody shot somebody? Well, guess what, public? You’re going to pay for this. We’re bureaucratically obliged to treat this shooting by a lone psychopath as the spearhead of some kind of coordinated terrorist attack…sorry but we have to think this way…and so we’re going to waste your travel plans. Trust us, the pain starts now.”
Toback on Two Downeys
Some people need a support system to survive. They’re too susceptible to this or that demon and can’t do it on their own. They need something or someone strong to get them through the choices and struggles of the day. To hear it from Seduced and Abandoned director James Toback, Robert Downey, Jr. is such a person, and his controller is his wife, Susan. There’s nothing horribly wrong with this kind of submission — Downey’s career is obviously doing very well. It’s just that certain kinds of creative energies and wild-ass improvs are no longer in Downey apparently — they guy he wqs when he co-starred in Two Girls and a Guy and Black and White no longer exists. Or so Toback says in a chat with HuffPost Live‘s Ricky Camilleri.