On my way to an 8:30 am screening of Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner. Then a little filing time (10:30 to 11:30) followed by a Mr. Turner press conference. Followed by “I haven’t decided just yet but I guess I’ll figure it out before long.” You have to be organized but semi-loose at the same time. “Everything’s everything, baby.” — stoolie to Gene Hackman‘s Popeye Doyle in The French Connection.

Groundhog Day in a sci-fi, high-tech action mode in which Tom Cruise dies, like, 200 times. Groundhog Day in a sci-fi, high-tech action mode in which Tom Cruise squeals and dies, like, 200 times. Groundhog Day in a sci-fi, high-tech action mode in which Tom Cruise squeals and dies, like, 200 times. Groundhog Day in a sci-fi, high-tech action mode in which Tom Cruise squeals and dies, like, 200 times. I get it, I get it… I get it.

I asked myself an hour ago why I’ve never really sat down and re-watched Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood since I bought the Bluray six years ago. I’ve never, ever popped it into the player, even after I got my beautiful Oppo and particularly the 60″ Samsung plasma. The honest answer is that among the great films of the 21st Century, Blood is perhaps the most disturbing and self-conflicted in that it constantly fascinates while pouring one of the most vile and reptilian characters in film history into the beaker of our souls — Daniel Day Lewis‘s Daniel Plainview. I’ll never forget this monster for the rest of my life, but I don’t want his poison in my system.

Here are excerpts from my 11.6.07 review, which was actually written after my second viewing of the film in San Francisco. Mostly excerpts about Plainview, I mean.

“Within its own heavily male, oil-soaked, organized religion-hating, misanthropic realm, There Will Be Blood is brilliant. It passes along a kind of insanity, but it does so with absolute greatness.

“But (and I’m talking about the first viewing, not the second) it’s about as hateful as a quality film can be — hateful in that there’s no one to care about except for the young son (and his adult incarnation at the end), and not that much to think about. Most women viewers will probably despise it, and yet it’s easily one of the year’s best made films.

Jack Nicholson‘s version was more charismatic than the Real McCoy (naturally). Suffice that his bravura performance in The Departed is the reason I’m into seeing Joe Berlinger‘s Whitey: The United States of America vs. James J. Bulger (Magnolia, theatres and iTunes, 6.27.14). “A sweeping and revelatory documentary film that follows the trial of the infamous gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, using the courtroom action as a springboard to examine accusations of multi-faceted corruption within our nation’s law enforcement and legal systems,” etc.

For me, the standout quote of the press conference for the Cannes Film Festival jurors (held at 2:30 pm) came when a Scandanavian journalist asked for comments about the reported suicide death of Searching For Sugar Man director Malik Bendjelloul, and Nicholas Winding Refn said it was very sad and tragic news, adding that “life is a beautiful gift.” (I vaguely recall his saying “very beautiful” but I wasn’t taking notes.) That immediately struck me as an unexpected thought coming from the director of Only God Forgives, but once I got past this I suddenly reconsidered who Refn might really be deep down. Because I was more than half-convinced after seeing God that he was the proverbial chubby kid who likes to pull the wings off flies.

Reminder: Last November I got an email from Refn‘s assistant, informing that Refn’s wife, Liv Corfixen, “is making a documentary about what life is like married to an artist like Nicolas surrounding the making of Only God Forgives. She has footage of Nicolas reading aloud a portion of your review of OGF that was published on Hollywood-Elsewhere.com and would love to include it in the film. Copied on this email is Nicolas’ producing partner Lene Borglum. She would like to have your permission to use the quote from your review and can answer any questions you have.” My reply: “Funny. Sure, use away.”

The juror chairperson/honcho is director Jane Campion (i.e., white hair). The others are Carole Bouquet, Iranian actress Leila Hatami (A Separation), Willem Dafoe, Gael Garcia Bernal, Nicholas Winding-Refn, director Sofia Coppola, South Korean actress Jeon Do-yeon and Chinese director Jia Zhangke.

There is nothing in Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, a precious, rarified tale of French political maneuver and regal appearances, that persuades or reaches out in a dramatic sense or which resembles “life” as most of us know it. It may as well be taking place on the ice planet of Hoth. It’s basically about a socially isolated prisoner, the former Grace Kelly (Nicole Kidman) who became Princess Grace of Monaco when she married Prince Rainer (Tim Roth) in April 1956, chafing against the restrictions of her marriage and title and mulling a return to the screen as the star of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie. (Fate spared her that embarassment.) Right away I was muttering to myself “who cares?” I was chafing against the restrictions that came with watching this film, I can tell you. The word that best applies is “mediocre.” Grace of Monaco is essentially a TNT movie aimed at older women who remember Grace’s car-crash death in ’82 (as traumatic in its time to Princess Di‘s passing in ’97) and who revere the notion of marrying into royalty and all that. I couldn’t have felt less involved. This is one of those movies that you do your best to sit through.

The most arresting sequence, for me, is one in which Kidman/Kelly is shown racing her sports car around winding hairpin turns in the hills above Monte Carlo. On one level it foreshadows the circumstances of Grace’s actual demise in the same area, but it’s shot and cut to closely resemble a similar scene in To Catch a Thief with Kelly driving and Cary Grant riding shotgun. Not a profound moment but nicely done all the same.