Day: July 2, 2014

We’ve been assuming all along that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman would debut stateside at Telluride but now I’ve heard it really is happening — no ifs, ands or maybes. Another confirmed Telluride “get “, I’m hearing, is Werner Herzog‘s Queen of the Desert, a dramatic biopic about “British traveller, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer and political officer” Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman).

There’s also convincing chatter about Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice, David Fincher‘s Gone Girl and Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar debuting at the New York Film Festival, although the most recent buzz says that Interstellar could play Telluride first. But the other two are thought to be NYFF exclusives.

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I wasn’t paying attention when the celebrated One-Eyed Jacks, the only film Marlon Brando ever directed, played at the New Beverly on April 2nd and 3rd. What was I thinking? I blew a chance to see an allegedly first-rate 35mm print (provided by Quentin Tarantino), which was a rare opportunity indeed. There’s no way to see a decent version of this 1961 VistaVision-shot western as the rights fell into public domain a few years ago and the market has since been flooded with abysmal-looking DVDs. Paramount has the elements in a vault but they’ll almost certainly never pay for a restoration effort, which would probably cost between $90K and $100K all in.

Let’s face it — I’m never again going to see this film in any kind of decent shape (vibrant VistaVision color, crisp focus, 1.66 or 1.85 aspect ratio) unless I attend a theatrical showing here or at MOMA or someplace like that. The chances of a handsome-looking DVD or Bluray being created are probably close to non-existent. Jacks is dead and gone unless Paramount decides to license it to a company that will to spend the money to assemble a first-rate remastering. In a pig’s eye!

The only way to bask in this landmark film right now is to beg Tarantino to offer his print for a special Hollywood Elsewhere theatre or screening-room showing. Maybe at the New Beverly or Cinefamily or Aidikoff or the Wilshire Screening Room. I’ll cough up for the rental fees. How about it, Quentin? For the sake of solemn Brando worship?

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Two days ago the Indiewire guys posted a part-fantasy, part-real Wish List of 50 films they’d like to see turn up at the Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York Film Festivals in late August and September. All goodies, high nutrition. But an overabundance, I think. I’ve trimmed some of the dicey-sounding titles and brought the number down to 36. Simpler that way. And if you include likely festival repeaters like Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan, Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies and Craig Johnson‘s The Skeleton Twins, it comes to 39.

1. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice; 2. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman; 3. Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar (word around the campfire is that it’s an actual possibility for Telluride); 4. Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Wild; 5. Tim Burton‘s Big Eyes (I’ve heard a couple of things); 6. Stephen Daldry‘s Trash; 7. J.C. Chandor‘s A Most Violent Year; 8. David Fincher‘s Gone Girl (will Fincher follow the same break-out strategy he used for The Social Network?); 9. Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young (New York Film Festival?); 10. Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special; 11. Jason Reitman‘s Men, Women & Children (is Reitman on some kind of who-knows streak?); 12. Jon Stewart‘s Rosewater; 13. Saul Dibb‘s Suite Francaise; 14. Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far from the Madding Crowd; 15. Todd Haynes‘ Carol (I don’t even know what this is); 16. Fatih Akin‘s The Cut; 17. Liv Ullman‘s Miss Julie; 18. Daniel Espinosa‘s Child 44; 19. Anton Corbijn‘s Life; 20. Dylan Kidd‘s Get A Job; 21. James Ponsoldt‘s The End of the Tour; 22. Werner Herzog‘s Queen of the Desert; 23. Stephen Frears‘ Untitled Lance Armstrong Project; 24. Alex Garland‘s Ex Machina, 25. Christian Petzold‘s Phoenix (likely Telluride); 26. Michael Roskam‘s The Drop; 27. David Gordon Green‘s Manglehorn; 28. Ramin Bahrani‘s 99 Homes; 29. Tom McCarthy‘s The Cobbler; 30. Rupert Goold‘s True Story; 31. John MacLean‘s Slow West; 32. Dan Gilroy‘s Nightcrawler; 33. Kevin McDonald‘s Black Sea; 34. Michael Cuesta‘s Kill The Messenger; 35. Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth; and 36. Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette.

I saw Rob Reiner‘s And So It Goes (Clarius, 7.25) last night at a KCET screening at the Aero. What do want from me? You want me to say I was knocked out, delighted, turned around? I wasn’t. Mark Andrus‘s screenplay is drawn from the same well as As Good As It Gets (snippy, selfish misanthrope grows a heart) with a little sprinkling of Heidi, and is therefore way too predictable for my tastes. But some of it works. It’s amiable enough and…well, somewhat better than I expected. Aimed, yes, at 60- and 70-somethings. Delivers some above-average insult humor. Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton score every now and then.

Reiner strode down the aisle and spoke with moderator Pete Hammond when it ended, and reminded everyone that he’s definitely sharp and attuned and alive on the planet. The boomer target audience is “100% into seeing the film and 40% able to get to the theatre,” he quipped.

Leaving aside Jeff Sneider‘s perplexing if not appalling admiration for Neighbors and 22 Jump Street as the two finest comedies of 2014 so far, I’m down with his view that the two best male performances have come from Locke‘s Tom Hardy and The Skeleton Twins‘ Bill Hader. Along with Miles Teller in Whiplash, Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Andre Benjamin (a.k.a. Andre 3000) in Jimi — All Is By My Side.

“Men acting idiotically and fearfully while planning to kill bad bosses just isn’t funny,” I wrote in my 7.6.11 review of Horrible Bosses. “Sneaking into the homes of would-be victims without wearing shoe gloves and hair bonnets and rubber surgical gloves is absolute idiocy and therefore not funny. Jennifer Aniston playing a small business owner (i.e. a dentist) who’s an intemperate sexual predator in a dark wig and who flashes portions of her hot bod and risks years of struggle to get through medical school in order to satisfy passing fancy is degrading and ridiculous and not in the least bit funny. It’s doubly unfunny when the object of her lust is little male hygienist with a high-pitched voice who probably has a schlong the size of a rook on a chess board. I could go on and on and on.

“I sat there like a tombstone, studying the screen like a cop studies a suspected felon during a late-night grilling at a grimy downtown precinct and not even tittering (okay, I inwardly tittered) until one partiuclar joke came along, which I really did laugh at. But even then I didn’t go ‘haaaah-hah-hahhh-hah-ahhh-hah…whoa-ho-ho…gee, whoo!’ I just went ‘hah-huh.’

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Six years and four months ago, Vanity Fair contributor Sam Kashner interviewed the extremely press-shy Richard Lester. It happened “on a chilly morning at a gastropub near a marina in Chichester, England,” Kashner writes. One of the topics was Lester’s two Beatles films, A Hard Day’s Night (which opened on 7.6.64, or almost exactly 50 years ago) and Help!. In honor of the HDN anniversary or the recently released Criterion Bluray or both, VF has published an article by Kashner about the ’08 encounter. The piece also contains references to the here-and-now.

Richard Lester, now 82, in a still from the website of 2013 Febio Fest, which Lester attended.

Lester might be interview-averse with journalists, but he visited the 2013 Febio Fest in Česke Budejovice, a mid-sized city in the Czech Republic.

Kashner’s article deals with Lester’s decision to quit directing due to the death of actor and longtime Lester friend Roy Kinnear, who suffered a fatal heart attack during the filming of Lester’s The Return of the Musketeers (’89). This was preceded by a performing accident in which Kinnear was “thrown from his horse, fractured his pelvis and suffered massive internal bleeding.” The 54 year-old Kinnear died the next day.

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A gathering of the friends, fans and colleagues of the late Jeffrey Ressner will happen on Tuesday, July 8th, at 11 am at the Burbank branch of Forest Lawn (6300 Forest Lawn Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90068). It’s definitely in Burbank but the Forest Lawn hustlers are calling it the “Hollywood Hills” branch. That strikes me as a rather phony and pretentious claim. Oh, by the way: there was a mistake in the obit that was sent out yesterday to Variety. Ressner passed last Saturday night, 6.28, so the whole L. Ron Hubbard announcement riff no longer applies.

Jeffrey Ressner, 1958 — 2014