Day: April 14, 2014

Last night I missed all the showings of “Time Zones“, the debut episode of the seventh season of AMC’s Mad Men. I naturally presumed it would re-air once or twice today and then again tomorrow and so on, etc. But it’s not. There are no airings today or tonight. The next showing is tomorrow morning at, believe it or not, 4 am Pacific. And then nothing after that until episode #2 on Sunday. And it’s not viewable via On Demand. At least according to my Time Warner options. Yes, I realize I can watch the episode online but I vaguely dislike watching dramas on my Macbook Air. I prefer the laid-back splendor of watching high-def images on my 60″ Samsung. So no offense but eff AMC and their stingy airing policy.

19 years ago I did a hotel-room interview with producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer during the Crimson Tide junket. A few months earlier I’d laughed hard at Quentin Tarantino‘s “go the way way” riff in Sleep With Me (’94), in which he discussed a struggling-with-homosexuality undercurrent in Top Gun. So I proposed to Don and Jerry that they should reach out to gay moviegoers by re-marketing all their films as secret gay movies that were fraught with homosexual themes and iconography (i.e., the phallic-shaped submarines in Tide). Bruckheimer froze with a grin on his face but Simpson smirked and kicked it around. When I asked them to sign my Crimson Tide script at the end of our chat, Simpson suggested that the gay subcurrent thing was more in my head than in their films.

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Everything about this trailer for David Fincher‘s Gone Girl is somewhere between cool and extra-cool except for two things: (a) the sickly greenish-grayish tint in Jeff Cronenweth‘s cinematography, which seems very similar to the tones Cronenweth used for Fincher’s Fight Club; and (b) the lame, somewhat shitty-ass voice of the guy singing Charles Asnavour’s “She.” I’m sure I’ll know the singer’s name in minutes but God, his vocal delivery is no better than mine in the shower and that’s not saying much, believe me.

Why didn’t Fincher use Elvis Costello’s version? I’ll tell you my theory. I think it’s because Costello’s version was already used by Notting Hill and Fincher was a little afraid of the mediocre association this might raise. If true, this suggests Fincher is a little off-balance and perhaps even insecure about the film. If he was totally secure he would have said, “Fuck it, I’m using the Costello because it’s the best one…I don’t care if people bring up Notting Hill or not.”

Sorry, man, but John Slattery‘s God’s Pocket (IFC Films, 5.9) was perhaps the most decisive wash of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Almost universally slammed. Slattery’s ass was handed to him on a plate. Working-class, small-town Pennsylvania misery. Rarely have I visited a realm that I wanted so little to do with or wanted to escape from this much. The last time I saw Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the flesh was when he stood on the Eccles stage with Slattery and costar Christina Hendricks. One of my first reactions was that Hendrick’s character, a bereaved mom, is too young, pretty and stacked to be married to the paunchy, saggy-faced Hoffman, who looked at least 60. It also didn’t feel right that she had it off with the 60ish Richard Jenkins, who played a local journalist.

“Three crazy women for five weeks is a lot more than I bargained for” — Tommy Lee Jones‘ character (i.e., George Briggs) says to Hilary Swank‘s (i.e., Mary Bee Cuddy) in The Homesman. Except a man sitting on a horse with a rope around his neck is in no position to bargain. The trailer tells me it’s a blend of John Huston‘s The African Queen and Kelly Reichardt‘s Meeks’ Cutoff. Directed, produced and co-written (along with collaborators Kieran Fitzgerald
Wesley Oliver) by Jones. Costarring Hailee Steinfeld, William Fichtner, Meryl Streep, James Spader (no doubt playing a scurvy scumbag), Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and John Lithgow. Cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto. Based on the book by Glendon Swarthout. Screening in Cannes, right?