Day: November 20, 2013

I’m not saying that Hoi An’s Boutique hotel isn’t a soothing, in-all-ways appealing, first-class experience. It is. I’m saying that I’ve stayed in places like this before and I’ll stay in places like this again. They’re great but they deliver what boils down to a blue-chip, top-of-the-line McDonald’s experience in terms of familiar deluxe elite splendor. And that’s fine. The clientele is very happy here. I’m happy here. I’m just saying I’d rather be swerving around water buffalos on a scooter.

Rubble stirred up by the recent typhoon, which was actually downgraded to a tropical storm by the time in hit Vietnam.

So I’ll be missing the first American Hustle media screening in Los Angeles on Sunday, 11.24 (the invites just went out). No one will be allowed to “review” until Wednesday, 12.4 at 9 am, but the Twitter responses will be fast and furious starting…oh, around 9:30 or 10 pm on 11.24. I’m back on 11.25 so my first viewing will be on Friday, 11.29. The response from people like myself will either be (a) “yes, yes…we feel the same way!” or (b) spotty counter-punching. Sometime around 11.29 or 11.30, remember, is when the same earlybirds will most likely be starting to view Martin Scorsese‘s Wolf of Wall Street.

And to think of poor Donald Sutherland today, playing a heavy in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Yes, of course…he’s delighted to have the work and the exposure and to be in the swim of it, etc. But to have stood at the top of the mountain…well, at least he had those moments. Over two full decades of them. The Dirty Dozen to M.A.S.H. to Klute to Don’t Look Now to Little Murders to Eye of the Needle to Ordinary People to that brilliant soliloquy as “Mr. X” in JFK…nothing to snort at. What percentage of the under-educated wankers who live for the Hunger Games series know anything about Sutherland?

I scootered down from Hue to Hoi An in the rain today.  Off-and-on rain but at times it was fairly torrential. Helmet, goggles, windbreaker, leather gloves…soaked to the bone. The 130-kilometer drive (roughly 80 miles) happened almost entirely on narrow rural roads (some not much wider than a typical American driveway) and for a short period over mountainous terrain. It took about four and a half hours, not counting a stopover for lunch. I’d like to see Dan Quayle or Glenn Kenny do what I did today. Forget the traffic — I’d just like to see them deal with the elements. As in Rome, nobody pays much attention to traffic laws in Vietnam except for stopping at red lights. Everybody improvises, anything can happen. The roads were occasionally smooth but always winding and often muddy and bumpy and pot-holed. Near-accidents happen every other minute, it seems, but vehicles never collide. Everybody just ducks and weaves and zips around and somehow it all works. We passed through one little shanty village after another. Hills, flat plains, dense forest patches, rice fields, cattle, wild goats, water buffalos…I’ve never travelled through any place in the world quite like Vietnam.

“My thinking…got altered today because I talked to someone who saw American Hustle and said it’s totally the real dealio in a big, big way. This source is smart, informed and seasoned, and so I took this as exciting news that this race still has some surprises left in it.” — Variety‘s Steven Gaydos in an HE comment posted earlier today.

In any sort of fair and just world, Berenice Bejo‘s performance in Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past would be, at the very least, nominated for Best Actress. She is riveting, volatile, vulnerable, ferocious and anguished in this exceptionally complex and poignant film. I’ve rarely felt as riveted by the complexities and recriminations of a family’s domestic drama, and Bejo’s portrayal of a mother grappling with enormous guilt and divided loyalties is sad and penetrating and lasting. What are her chances then? Not so hot apparently. The apparent locks are Blue Jasmine‘s Cate Blanchett, Saving Mr. Banks‘ Emma Thompson, Philomena‘s Judi Dench and Gravity‘s Sandra Bullock…and not one of these performances can hold a candle to Bejo’s or, for that matter, Adele Exarchopoulos‘s knockout performance in Blue is the Warmest Color. The fix is in, life is unfair, etc.