Month: April 2014

Speaking of Exodus, I shelled out last night for a 2012 German Bluray of Otto Preminger’s 1960 same-titled epic. Not out of any particular affection for this glacially-paced, historically fictionalized account of the struggle to establish the state of Israel in May 1948. I bought the damn thing simply because Exodus was shot in Panavision 70 (the same large-format process that Lawrence of Arbaia was captured with, although under the freshly-branded name of Super-Panavision 70) and I figured I might see a semblance of the razor-sharp 70mm images that were projected during the reserved-seat engagement at the Warner theatre (B’way and 47th).

Verdict: I’m not sure what elements were used to create the Bluray (35mm or 65mm?) but it doesn’t look half bad. The opening credit sequence has been windowboxed (bad) and there’s a little dirt here and there, but generally it’s fairly impressive. You can see and feel and sense the large-format vibe. This Exodus is apparently much cleaner and richer than that MGM/UA DVD version that came out six or seven years ago and which many complained about.

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It’s obvious why 20th Century Fox decided to give Ridley Scott‘s Exodus a new title — Exodus: Gods and Kings. It’s because it makes the film sound more videogamey or…you know, like a cousin of Games of Thrones or something. It will therefore appeal to the under-educated majority who might be a wee bit uncertain about the meaning of the word “exodus.” Adding a colon and a cheesy subtitle is a zombie studio exec idea — a capitulation to the moronic currents in 21st Century culture. Let’s add subtitles to other Biblical epics: (a) Ben-Hur: Vengeance Is Mine, (b) Kings of Kings: Behind Blue Eyes, (c) Noah: The Exterminating Storm, (d) The Ten Commandments: Blood of the Lamb, (d) Samson and Delilah: Almost Cut My Hair…more? Exodus: Gods and Kings opens on 12.12.14.

Christian Bale as Moses (during his Prince of Egypt phase) in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings.

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The only thing that doesn’t work is when Gregory Peck says to Charlton Heston, “Now tell me, Leach…what did we prove?” No rhetorical summation necessary. Director William Wyler‘s decision to shoot most of the scrap from a fair distance, making the combatants look small and rather silly, said it all. This scene, also great, has a similar point. How many mano e mano scenes have been filmed, ever, in which the idea is to show how lame and pathetic fighting is?

“Film buffs who go to festivals like Telluride have been more or less trained like poodles to sit up on their hind legs and go ‘yap! yap!’ whenever a new Coppola makes a film. Gia Coppola, director-writer of the occasionally irksome but mostly decent Palo Alto, is the latest recipient of this largesse. My attitude is that talented filmmakers deserve respect and allegiance, even if their paths have been paved by family connections. And it has to be acknowledged that The Latest Coppola has delivered a pretty good film here. Or at least one that I felt more or less okay with when it ended.

“I talked things over with three or four colleagues after it ended, and we were mostly agreed with Gia Coppola shouldn’t be penalized for being the granddaughter of Francis because her work is certainly above-average.

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The Los Angeles Film Festival (6.11 through 19) will start with Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, two weeks before Radius-TWC opens it theatrically + VOD. I’m generally mistrustful of South Korean directors (i.e., too show-offy…”look at what I can do!”), I usually hate comic-book adaptations, and I’m sick to death of dystopian wasteland movies, especially ones that geeks are into (Snowpiercer was a very hot ticket at the Berlin Film festival). So Snowpiercer has three HE strikes against it going in. Plus I think Runaway Train was a tad over-rated and I don’t really like driving all the way down to L.A. Live along Olympic Boulevard. So make it five. Okay, four and a half.

Costarring starring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and Ed Harris, pic is a frozen action thriller about a revolt aboard a monster-sized Snowpiercer train — “the last bastion of humanity in an icy futuristic world after an experiment to combat global warming causes an ice age that kills nearly all life on Earth” blah blah.

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It’s generally accepted that Pauline Kael‘s biggest triumph as a critic came when The New Yorker published her 7000-word defense-and-praise piece on Warren Beatty and Robert Benton‘s Bonnie and Clyde (10.21.67), which had opened and fizzled in August 1967. Kael’s piece helped to turn the tide (Newsweek‘s Joe Morgenstern initially panned it but went back a second time and recanted), which led to a profitable re-release and Oscar nominations in early 1968. It might be the only time in movie history in which a single critic was fairly credited with actually saving a film.

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James Gandolfini‘s final performance is in Michael R. Roskam‘s The Drop (Fox Searchlight, 9.19.14). A bar holding illegal drop money gets ripped off — doesn’t that mean the mafia or whomever will suspect an inside job? Sounds a little Charlie Varrick-y or Counselor-like, no? Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts, John Ortiz, James Frecheville, etc. Dennis Lehane wrote the script (formerly called Animal Rescue).

Yesterday N.Y. Post critic Kyle Smith noted the 15-year anniversary of Andy and Larry Wachowski‘s The Matrix, which opened theatrically on 3.31.99. I remember paying to see it at the old multiplex at the Beverly Connection, on the southeast corner of La Cienega and Beverly Boulevard. I remember floating out of the theatre and listening to the chatter as the crowd trudged down the stairway exit. A visionary knockout. The first grade-A cyber adventure. Bullet time, baby! Obviously a hit.

For the next four years I was convinced that the press-shy Wachowskis, who’d also directed the brilliant and hot-lesbo-sexy Bound, were pointing the way into 21st Century cinema and that everything they would henceforth create would dazzle as much as The Matrix, if not more so.

And then The Matrix Reloaded came out a little more than four years later (5.15.03) and the millions who’d flipped over The Matrix were standing around with dazed expressions going “wait…what? ” And then The Matrix Revolutions opened on 11.5.03 and that was it…dead, finished, imploded. Larry and Andy who?

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The gist of yesterday’s A.O. Scott vs. Spike Lee contretemps, ignited by Scott’s Sunday N.Y. Times piece about the evolving gentrification of Brooklyn (“Whose Brooklyn Is It Anyway?”) , is as follows: (1) Scott suggested that Lee’s presence in Fort Greene had nudged along the gentrification of that now-thoroughly-yuppified Brooklyn nabe as much as anyone or anything else , if not more so, (2) he further implied Lee can’t really complain because he lives in a figurative “glass brownstone” on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and then (3) Lee claimed in an open letter to Scott on whosay.com that Scott hasn’t thoroughly done his homework (i.e., a reference to the fact that Lee’s dad bought a brownstone home in Fort Greene in 1968 and still lives there) and that Brooklyn is a state of mind that you carry around and that, in his words, “I can live on The Moon and what I said is still TRUE.”

Lee’s letter is absolutely terrific in its straight from the shoulder resolve. Where Scott’s prose dances and glides and riffs around, Lee speaks with a blunt street patois about heritage and community and the residue of memory and family. The piece presents his no-pretense personality, vocabulary and way of thinking. He’s an American Original. I love it when he tells Scott that his argument is “OKEY DOKE,” and I love his sign-offs — “WAKE UP” and “WE BEEN HERE.”

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“Why? Because it feels so goddam good.” But the notion of paying $57.97 for a Twilight Time Bluray of Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia feels bad. Later, hombre. Drop that price down to $20something and we’ll talk.