Month: March 2014

I was hot to see Craig Gillespie‘s Million Dollar Arm at Cinecom this morning, but I was also feeling a bit anxious about the time frame. I knew I had to leave Las Vegas by 11:30 am to get back to Los Angeles by 3:30 pm to prepare for a 5:15 pm appointment on the 20th Century Fox lot. I also knew the film wouldn’t begin until at least 10 am, if not later. But I was determined to see most of it. I checked out of the spartan fleabag motel at 8:40 am and drove south down Las Vegas Blvd. and then turned left on Flamingo Road. I had done a Google search last night about Ceasar’s Palace self-parking and believed the best approach was via Frank Sinatra Drive, behind the hotel. I tried twice to find Sinatra Drive and both times was diverted elsewhere or blocked. Valet was out because I knew I’d have to leave in a hurry after the screening and that valet would slow me down by a good 15 minutes if not longer. I was reminded for the 179th time why I hate Las Vegas. I also realized and accepted that God didn’t want me to see Million Dollar Arm in Vegas and that I’d be catching it in April or early May instead. (Disney is opening it on May 16th.) So I got the hell out of Dodge. I’m writing this from a Greek diner in Baker, California. Excellent wifi!

Jon Hamm in Million Dollar Arm (Disney, 5.16).

MCN’s David Poland presented several contentious, spoiler-ish observations in a two-day-old Hot Blog review of Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah. I’m not going to do a point-for-point ten minutes before a Ceasar’s Palace screening of Million Dollar Arm, but I can say without hesitation that Poland’s complaint about Noah not constituting a vigorous “challenge” is highly questionable. At every step and juncture this movie feels like a fever dream — like it was put on raw, virgin canvas with fresh paint. It never, for me, felt tired or humdrum. Yes, Aronofsky throws in action elements with conventional-seeming evil expressed by the mad-dog villagers and particularly Ray Winstone‘s Tubal-cain, but I understood the why of it (the movie has to reach the idiots to some extent) and this tactic didn’t get in the way. McWeeny’s thumbs-up Hitfix review is…well, read it.

Yesterday Latino Review‘s Kellvin Chavez reported that Disney, which purchased distribution and marketing rights to the Indiana Jones franchise last December, is technically open to making a new Jones film with the somewhat creaky and weathered Harrison Ford (who, at 71, is now 13 years older than Sean Connery was when he portrayed Professor Henry Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) but they’re quite naturally looking to re-cast the role with a younger, studlier guy. Chavez, quoting “ever reliable sources,” is also reporting that Bradley Cooper is at the top of the list of potential replacements. “Let’s get it straight — Cooper doesn’t have the role [and hasn’t] signed the deal,” Chavez writes. [He’s] just someone they’re looking at to play the role.” Looking at? That’s it? They’re “looking” at him in the same sense that LexG could theoretically take a walk in a municipal park somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, sit down on a bench and “look” at a squirrel who happens to be scampering by?

Anyone who’s read HE for any length of time knows I genuinely admire comedies that I call no-laugh funny — i.e., consistently clever, amusing and witty but never quite eliciting actual laughter. Nicholas Stoller‘s Neighbors (Universal, 5.9.14) is not that — it’s heh-heh funny. I was never that giddy or tickled but I never felt bored or irritated or disengaged. I got ten or twelve heh-hehs out of it, and the rest is at least fast, punchy and lewd. It’s not exactly a routine culture clash comedy but the basic set-up — a 30ish couple with a baby (Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne) vs. a party-animal college fraternity (Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse) that moves in next door — is familiar. But Neighbors is agreeably tight and vigorous and scattershot, and Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O’Brien‘s script (augmented, I’m sure, by nonstop improv) is a cut or two above. A likely hit.

During tonight’s Neighbors after-party inside Ceasar’s Palace.

For the honor of eating pizza in a Caesar’s Palace food court, you pay at least 30% or 40% more per slice than anywhere else. Wait…nine bucks a slice? That’s at least double what any NY pizzeria charges. I was on the verge of breaking the cockatoo diet but those prices turned me off.

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A Variety story by way of AP states that (a) “investigators have determined that the Porsche driving Fast & Furious star Paul Walker was [speeding at] approximately 90 mph when it crashed and killed the actor and his business partner last November” and (b) “A person who reviewed the crash investigation report said it was unsafe driving, not mechanical problems, that caused the crash.” Are they certain? A similar report appeared in the 11.5.33 edition of the N.Y. Herald Tribune: “Investigators have determined that Carl Denham‘s giant ape, commonly known as King Kong, died as a result of falling from the top of the Empire State Building. A person who has reviewed the report said the cause of death was major body trauma when the ape slammed into the pavement on 34th Street at a speed well over 100 mph.”

The shot of a lion attacking Dwayne Johnson in slow motion is worrisome, to say the least. There’s no room in my life or my head for CG that looks this bad. It’s suddenly conceivable that Brett Ratner‘s Hercules (Paramount, 7.25) might be as bad as John Derek‘s Tarzan. Two-thirds through this caveat emptor trailer Johnson is wading chest-deep through a swamp and is suddenly yanked under the surface by a slimey super-snake, which soon after roars like a T-Rex. The swamp-yank thing is half Jaws and half R2D2 being swallowed by a Dagobah serpent in The Empire Strikes Back. Q: “Now tell me…who…are…you?” A: “I…am…Hercules!!”

I arrived in summer-hot Las Vegas at 12:45 pm. I left West Hollywood at 8:35 am and got on the 134 east around 9 am. I did a 10-minute stop for gas and a stretch so it really took me three hours and 35 minutes. I averaged 80 mph. My stalking horse method worked just fine. I saw a CHP hiding behind a bridge piling just beyond Baker but saw no bulls pulling anyone over. I’m staying in a spartan shitbag Motel 8 (opposite the Mandalay Bay) for $45 and I don’t care. I’m now sitting in the Ceasar’s Palace press room with my ADMIT ONE (i.e., first-class) press pass and Neighbors tickets in my pocket. The first screening is Ivan Reitman‘s Draft Day at 4 pm (an hour and 50 minutes from now). I don’t gamble and I never will, but I’m in like Flynn.

If I leave by 8:30 am I should be in Las Vegas by 12:30 or 1 pm, and picking up my Cinemacon pass by 1:45 pm or 2 pm at the latest. I haven’t done this drive since the late ’80s. I’m mindful, of course, of the notorious CHP speed-trap area approaching Barstow and then beyond to the Nevada state line. What I generally do is find a couple of “stalking horses” who are moving as fast as I want to go and then stay eight to ten car lengths behind them. If the bulls are going to pull anyone over they’ll go for the horses rather than myself — that’s the theory, at least.

The trick with Las Vegas is to stay there no longer than 24 hours. By the 36-hour mark the plasticity and toxins begin to seep into your system. 48 hours and you’re staggering around like Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A..

John Wayne‘s anti-Communist proclamations and behind-the-scenes maneuverings in the late 1940s and ’50s and were fairly relentless and strident. To go by some accounts he was a kind of swaggering Rush Limbaugh-like figure within the Hollywood community when it came to ferreting out “reds” and “pinks.” Wayne didn’t approve of Kirk Douglas having brought Dalton Trumbo out of the shadows as a screenwriter with Spartacus, and he resented High Noon. But alongside today’s rightwing nutters he wasn’t that extreme and was by all accounts an entirely decent guy on personal terms. As far as I can discern Wayne was a kind of Barry Goldwater conservative, which was defined as a traditional preservationist position and almost liberal by 21st Century standards. (The real liberal by 2014 standards is Richard Nixon, of course.)

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The 50% Rotten Tomatoes rating for Cesar Chavez (3.28, Participant) indicates that director Diego Luna was too impressed by the legend of the renowned labor leader to do anything exceptional or daring. Sight unseen I wrote last October that rote “biopics of revered political underdogs can only tell the tale — modest beginnings, protagonist shows mettle, rise to power, complications from adversaries, big climax, end coda.” The rule of thumb in making a good political saga is to avoid deification by concentrating on a challenging or traumatic episode that revealed or brought forth character. Two noteworthy examples: Stephen Frears‘ The Queen or Dore Schary‘s Sunrise at Campobello. Raoul Peck‘s Lumumba, Gus Van Sant‘s Milk and Oliver Stone‘s Nixon are probably the best political biopics that take the broader “this happened and then that happened” approach.

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