Day: April 13, 2014

If you know Mad Men, you know the first episode of a new season never does anything especially head-turning or eye-opening. First episodes just quietly amble along, taking their time, no big hurry, at most planting seeds that might pay off four or five episodes down the road…if that. Mad Men guru Matthew Weiner doesn’t believe in keeping viewers on the edge of their seats. He believes in keeping them slumped in their seats and moderately engaged as far as the general scheme allows. He believes in peeling off artichoke leaves one by one…one leaf and then another and then another…whoops, out of time. Well, there’s always next week!

Those square, somewhat older sports fans (i.e., guys over 35) didn’t show up for Ivan Reitman‘s Draft Day this weekend. The Kevin Costner-starring ensemble piece “underperformed” with a three-day haul of just $9.8 million anticipated. This despite a B-plus CinemaScore rating. So what happened? It couldn’t have been the reviews as nobody reads them. Reactions from HE regulars are hereby requested.

Last night I attended the 9:15 pm TCM Classic Film Festival screening of William Friedkin‘s digitally remastered Sorcerer (Warner Home Video, 4.22). I’ve seen this film six or seven times now, and I was just as absorbed as ever. It’s a near-great movie. But during the finale I was remembering why Sorcerer choked at the box-office when it opened on 6.24.77. It went down because it didn’t deliver a fair and just ending.

I’ve never bought Friedkin’s theory that Sorcerer died because the hugely popular Star Wars, which opened on 5.25.77, had ushered in a sudden sea-change in mainstream cinematic appetites — i.e., a new comic-book, popcorn-high attitude plus a corresponding diminished interest in gritty, low-key, character-driven adult dramas. Sorcerer, of course, was never going to be a hugely commercial film. It’s a fairly downbeat, men-against-the-elements adventure flick made for guys. Women don’t go for sweaty, atmospheric, end-of-the-road Latin American fatalism. But I suspect that Sorcerer would have been at least a modest success if it had delivered a sense of justice in the case of Roy Scheider‘s character, a wise guy on the run from the New Jersey mob.

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Last night the largely undiminished Jerry Lewis, 88, sat down with Ileana Douglas for a tribute interview organized by the TCM Classic Film Festival. Lewis and Dean Martin, his legendary partner for ten years (1946 to ’56), made 16 films together. Douglas said that The Stooge (’52) is the Martin & Lewis flick that best conveys the essence of their act. I’ve never seen it. I’ve never even decided against seeing it. It’s never come up. To be honest I’ve only seen two Martin & Lewis movies in my life — At War With The Army and Hollywood or Bust. In “Dino: Living High in The Dirty Business of Dreams,” Nick Tosches wrote that their films never quite captured the uproarious manic flavor of their legendary live act. Lewis’s solo films (i.e., The Nutty Professor, etc.) are the keepers.

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