Month: April 2014

Three…no, actually two days before the unveiling of the Cannes Film Festival’s roster, German helmer Fatih Akin has withdrawn The Cut, which had been submitted to the festival, “for personal reasons.” Does this have something vaguely to do with last month’s passing of Karl “Baumi” Baumgartner, the co-founder of Pandora Film, which is listed by the IMDB as one of the producers of The Cut and which is presumably distributing? Either way it doesn’t add up. Life is a vale of troubles, but when misfortunes occur you have to man up and soldier on. Whatever it is, I’m sorry. I hope Akin’s situation will soon rectify or smooth out. All I know is that presumed Cannes hopefuls are dropping like flies — The Cut, Birdman, Inherent Vice.

The Cut director Fatih Akin.

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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?

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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William Friedkin‘s long-awaited, digitally-remastered Sorcerer (’77) screens tonight at the TCM Classic Film Festival. The Warner Home Video Bluray streets on 4.22. What is Sorcerer about? Four guys on two trucks carrying nitroglycerin through the South American jungle. I’ve always admired the exceptionally long time (i.e., 70 minutes) that Friedkin devotes to (a) the various back-stories and (b) the reasons and preparation for the dangerous trip. The journey itself only takes about 45 minutes of screen time, maybe a touch more.

If you speak ‘strine‘, the title of Phillip Noyce‘s upcoming film (due on 8.15.14) is pronounced “the Givaah.” For whatever reason this is how I say it whenever the subject comes up…”the Givaah!”. Boilerplate synopsis: “The haunting story…centers on Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he’s given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community.”