Month: June 2014

From the American Film Institute’s 42nd Life Achievement Award ceremony for Jane Fonda: “Meryl Streep recalled a day on the set of Julia that someone came up to her, saying how she was glad that Jane was feeling better because she has been ‘crying all night.’ ‘Why?’ Streep asked. She was told, ‘Well, they looked at dailies from last week and [Jane] just thinks she looks so old.’

“’She was 38 years old and so beautiful,’ Streep recalled. ‘We’re all afflicted with these insecurities, but Jane has a special radar…what she does, she deflects her own anxiety and made me — a day player, a nobody — feel fantastic. After we wrapped that movie, I found out she’d gone back to California and told everyone who would listen about this girl with a weird last name, and [that] opened more doors than I even probably know about today.”

To me, curved-screen ultra-HD televisions are as essential as high-def 3D, which is to say not at all. The only way it might make a real difference is if you’re sitting 24 to 30 inches away from a 70-inch screen and dead center at that. The only reason Samsung and others are making curved screens is because they’re trying to generate new revenue streams from those TV buyers who fancy themselves as high-end connoisseurs. It’s basically a big con.

Listening to the dialogue in John Huston‘s Key Largo (’48), based on Maxwell Anderson‘s play but re-shaped for the screen by Huston and Richard Brooks, is like savoring a perfect dessert. It’s tethered to character and therefore substantial in the usual ways, but the flavor is rich and marvellous. I don’t know why you can’t find clips on YouTube so I captured a couple myself. Thomas Gomez is fantastic in the “can you blame us for gettin’ rude?” scene. And the bit in which Edward G. Robinson whispers vulgarities to Lauren Bacall is one of the few “suggestive” scenes from the big-studio era that still feels “dirty” by today’s standards because it prods the viewer into imagining what he’s saying.

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A Bluray of Delbert Mann and Paddy Chayefsky‘s Oscar-winning Marty (1955) will be released on 7.29. It gives me no comfort or satisfaction to report that the Bluray’s aspect ratio will be in the dreaded 1.85 with the tops and bottoms of the protected 1.37 image (seen on TV, VHS, laser disc and DVDs for the last five or six decades) severed with a meat cleaver. In early May aspect-ratio historian Bob Furmanek noted in a Home Theatre Forum post that (a) the Marty Bluray will (a) be presented “for the first time since the original theatrical release with Mann’s intended 1.85:1 compositions,” and that (b) “we provided the documentation to insure mastering in the correct ratio.”

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Guardians of the Galaxy (Disney, 8.1) looks fairly awful if not ludicrous, but it’s been directed and co-written by James Gunn, whose Super (’11) I admired after catching it at 2011 South by Southwest, so it’s probably wiser to wait and see. I only know that my first reaction was to feel sorry for Chris Pratt, whose performance as an insecure catcher-turned-first baseman was one of Moneyball‘s finest. He needed a paycheck role and he took this, but where’s the dignity? A pretty good cast — Zoe Saldana, Dave “who?” Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close and Benicio del Toro…they all took their checks and cashed them. The August 1st release date suggests…aaahh, maybe it doesn’t suggest anything. Except that the rule of thumb is that all real-deal, balls-to-the-wall, guns-blazing summer escapist flicks usually come out in May, June or July.

That shouting voice around the nine-second mark (“Chaahhhrrrr!) sounds like some lug brought into the post-production recording studio from Gold’s Gym. The voice doesn’t seem to blend with the action — it sound like a folio dub from a Dino de Laurentiis film from the ’60s. Could this be an omen? All the principals (Bay, Wahlberg, DiBonaventura, Murphy) have gotten (or will get) a nice fat paycheck from Transformers 4: Age of Extinction (Paramount, 6.25). Are the fans starting to think it might be time to put this franchise out of its misery? Nice fantasy, but no such luck unless this latest installment tanks. Which doesn’t seem likely. They’ve all been punishing, and they’ve all made big money.

I caught the 12:10 pm show of The Fault In Our Stars today at the Grove. Mostly groups of young girls in theatre #1, of course, but the place wasn’t packed. I was half-impressed. It tries a little too hard to melt people down, of course, being what it is. The filmmakers trumpet their sensitive feelings about the ineffable sadness of being removed from life’s symphony at a much-too-early age, and at times they tap you on the shoulder to say “just reminding you that we’re coming from a really delicate place.” But Stars is not bad at all with the LMN mode. I never twitched or flinched or groaned. It’s reasonably well done all around, and the acting by Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort takes root early on. They’re both quite alive and well-measured and engaged, and Willem Dafoe adds a little abrasive pepper in a cameo-sized role as a Dutch writer. Stars is expected to earn $50 million by Sunday night, and in so doing beat Edge of Tomorrow. I’ll tap out something tonight or first thing tomorrow. I have an engagement this evening and jetlag is giving me the usual rough going-over. I feel like I’m tripping half the time.

Mark Hamill handled an improv challenge pretty well at a recent Star Wars Weekend q & a at Orlando’s Walt Disney World. Good to see he’s dropped a few necessary pounds in preparation for shooting Episode VII in England.

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A little movie that I really, really don’t want to suffer through is looking like a bigger hit — certainly a more surprising hit — than Warner Bros.’ Edge of Tomorrow. Deadline‘s Anita Busch is reporting that the imaginative Doug Liman-Tom Cruise sci-fi actioner made a lousy $1.8 million in 3-D/IMAX venues last night while Fox 2000′s The Fault In Our Stars earned a what-the-fuck $8.2 million. Busch says she wouldn’t be surprised if Stars earns over $40 million by Sunday night. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have a difficult time when I see it on Saturday or Sunday. I despise movies about kids coping with terminal cancer. The stink of premeditation…the cloying emotionality!

I love this clip from Don Siegel‘s Charley Varrick (’73), in which Walter Matthau tells John Vernon that he wants to return a pile of ill-gotten mafia money. Just after 1:03 Vernon conveys something about occasional serendipity with a wonderful economy, using a gently changed expression and a little gesture with his left hand. It’s perfect. In ’85 I was working in publicity and had a chance to speak to Vernon on the set of Hail To The Chief, a TV series about a female U.S. President (Patty Duke) in which he played a hawkish military advisor. I told Vernon I was a huge admirer of this little bit of acting, and he didn’t seem to get what I was saying. He just brushed it aside and indicated he wouldn’t mind if I left him alone. I didn’t decide he was an ayehole because of this (although his behavior was a bit dickish), but I was a bit surprised that he didn’t seem to feel any particular pride about his work in Varrick. Or that he did feel this but didn’t care to share it with a fan…whatever. Vernon died in ’05.

The first thing I popped into the Oppo when I got home last night was the Criterion Bluray of Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Eclisse (’62). And about halfway through the striking resemblance between 26 year-old Alain Delon and Zac Efron, currently 26, hit me. Many others have noticed this. Question #1: Who has/had the most interesting face? Question #2: Who was/is the more interesting actor? Could a time-transported Efron have held his own in scenes with Monica Vitti in the Antonioni film? Could Delon have managed the song-and-dance stuff in High School Musical?

(l.) 26 year-old Alain Delon in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse; (r.) Zac Efron, born in October 1987, currently 26.

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All strong comedians and dynamic actors are angry and judgmental under the skin. Jonah Hill vented some of that anger at an asshole photographer recently, and has been paying the price for using the “f” word. He’s dutifully apologized and should be left alone. Primal outbursts are usually never about refined language, and they almost never “mean” anything. I used to hear “faggot” all the time in grade school and high school, and it was always about generic degradation. I don’t hear it any more, of course, and good riddance, but stuff like that just pops out of your mouth sometimes if you’re hugely pissed about something. I’ve angrily blurted out “cocksucker” many, many times in my life, and if someone recorded me saying that (and if anybody gave a shit) I’d be accused of homophobia just like Hill. Except I remember a guy in high school telling me once how an old souped-up Chevy that a friend owned “goes like a cocksucker” in a drag race. He was just using that term for emphasis.

How homophobic is the “French mistake” scene in Blazing Saddles? Very, but everyone regards this 1974 Mel Brooks film as a classic and nobody has ever talked about hauling Brooks on to the carpet to retroactively apologize. Gay slurs are gone from the world I live in, but remnants of old attitudes will sometimes peek through at the wrong times. They can’t be eliminated overnight.