Month: July 2014

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve heard nothing but pulse-quickening things about Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman, which will open the Venice Film Festival and almost certainly play Telluride directly after. But in selecting Birdman to close the 2014 New York Film Festival, festival director Kent Jones has relinquished his original dream of concluding with a major world premiere. Like, for example, Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar, which went south when Nolan-the-perfectionist either refused or dilly-dallied too long as far as screening it for Jones (or anyone else) in rough form. Birdman may turn out be the finest film of 2014 (who knows?) but in competitive pecking-order terms it’ll feel a bit like used goods when it plays NYFF after Venice, Telluride and (I’m assuming) Toronto.

“Birdman is a knockout,” Jones said in a release. “It’s consistently surprising and inventive — you think the movie is going in one direction and then Inarritu shifts gears and takes you somewhere else completely unexpected. The movie is like an intricate machine generating greater and greater amounts of beautiful radiant energy. The entire cast is amazing and they mesh perfectly, but I have to say that Michael Keaton is astonishing. He’s always been a terrific and, in my opinion, underrated actor. Here he gets the role he deserves, and he makes the most of it. And, it’s a great Broadway movie.”

It makes obvious sense that Morten Tyldum and Graham Moore‘s The Imitation Game will open the 2014 BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday, October 8th. British history, British cast (Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Mark Strong, Charles Dance) and a compelling, tragic theme about a drop-dead genius, Alan Turing, who was celebrated for breaking the Nazi enigma code only to be persecuted after the war for being gay. (Sometime in 2015 Imitation Game will be co-billed at the New Beverly with Enigma, the Mick Jagger-produced 2001 film that was about more or less the same effort in the exact same location (i.e., Bletchley Park) but focused on characters who worked under Turing.) The Imitation Game will preem in England on 11.14; The Weinstein Co. will open it domestically on 11.21.14.

I’ve been on the receiving end of (a) tingly, fluttery intrigue bordering on animal lust vs. (b) wifey looks that convey pleasant but perfunctory interest mixed with vague boredom, and let me tell you that (a) is what you’ll be smiling about when you’re on your death bed at age 87. I don’t intend this to sound the way it’s inevitably going to sound, but Showtime’s The Affair seems to be up to something atypical because Ruth Wilson, the 32 year-old British stage actress and Lone Ranger costar, is clearly one of those women whose “raging rivers of passion” are somewhat modified by the fact that she’s not (here come the slings and arrows) conventionally Maxim. She’s attractively “real world”, yes, but one presumes that a married guy with kids wouldn’t risk shattering the foundation of his life without volcanic temptation.

Wilson and Dominic West, both in complicated marriages, are the infidels in this pic about a summer affair in Montauk gone horribly wrong (i.e., clips of a detective asking about motive). Maura Tierney and Joshua Jackson (whom I wouldn’t even have coffee with if I was a lady) play their perplexed mates. The Affair, a Rashomon-like longform of some kind, debuts on 10.19,

Read more

One week left on the Star Wars: Force for Change UNICEF fundraiser…great. In a just-up video director J.J. Abrams makes the pitch next a full-sized X-Wing starfighter, which is alleged to be new. Maybe technically it is, but the similarity to the Z-95 Headhunter is obvious. “As long as they keep on making upgrades for this baby, the Z-95 will never become outdated.” — Outlaw tech Klaus “Doc” Vandangante.

With tonight’s much-dreaded fourth episode of The Leftovers lying in wait like a python, here’s a line from Bill McCuddy that got a decent laugh at Caroline’s the other night: “That two percent of the population taken from the planet in HBO’s The Leftovers apparently included all the good screenwriters.”

I would be a devoted fan of a weekly half-hour cable show about chimps indicating their reactions to new movies. I’m serious. You know everyone would watch it. You can’t beat the metaphor. We all know chimps are reasonably good communicators and that they could somehow convey their reactions to this or that aspect of a new film, perhaps with visual aids or gestures or whatnot. We’re talking about New York-based chimps who would get themselves on screening lists (obviously with the help of human handlers) and attend viewings along with Lou Lumenick, Josh Horowitz, Matt Zoller Seitz and Armond White. In fact…wait, wait, wait…human and chimp critics dishing side by side? Don’t kid yourself — this would be hugely popular.

Every now and then I read another doom-and-gloom piece about the summer’s disappointing (i.e., not as good last year’s) box-office performance. “Downward spiral,” “big drop,” etc. The top ten films so far have grossed $130 million vs. $174 million last year. 2014 is down 6% from 2013. Could that have something to do with a mortifying awareness that the majority of summer movies are intended to be downmarket CG-driven shite? Not to mention that (a) ticket and popcorn prices are ridiculous, (b) many urban theatres are filled with yakking low-life apes munching on jalapeno nachos and checking their brightly glaring cell phones, (c) the varied VOD and streaming options are highly competitive and attractive plus cable dramas seem much more satisfying to anyone with a smidgen of taste. Theatrical attendance levels are presumably still dropping. Two years ago Goldman Sachs analysts Drew Borst and Fred Krom concluded that ticket buys were at a 25-year low with under-30 attendance down 40% since 2002. The theatre experience has been declining for a long while, and action movies…I don’t want to talk about it. Megaplex summer is just something to endure, get through, wait out. Life begins with Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York, and then the season begins. There are many, many good to great films about to unfurl. It’s simply a matter of ignoring the diversions made for the downmarket mob, and of course the mob itself.

On the face of it, a Bluray of a 35 year-old made-for-TV movie doesn’t sound all that essential. But David Greene and C.D.B. Bryan’s Friendly Fire may — I say “may” — be an exception. I know it got to me when I saw it in my fleabag Sullivan Street apartment in the spring of ’79, but you can’t trust an old memory. Based on a series of New Yorker articles and then a book by Bryan, it won four Emmy Awards and was nominated for several other honors. It’s basically about the pain of being lied to about the cause of a loved one’s death. Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty portray Peg and Gene Mullen, an average couple going through hell because the U.S. military won’t explain how their son (Timothy Hutton) happened to be killed by U.S. artillery fire during a Vietnam War battle. Sam Waterston plays Bryan. As many as 8000 U.S. soldiers might have been killed in Vietnam by friendly fire; many thousands more were killed by their own during World War II, World War I and other major conflicts. Friendly Fire aired on ABC on ABC on 4.22.79, attracting an audience of 64 million people. The Kino Lorber Bluray is streeting on 8.26.

James Garner‘s passing led me to a seven-week-old announcement about Kino Lorber releasing a Bluray of William Wyler‘s The Children’s Hour (’62), in which Garner plays a strong supporting role as Audrey Hepburn‘s fiance. John Michael Hayes adapted Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play; Hellman got screen credit but otherwise had nothing to do with the Wyler film (which is viewable right now on Vudu in HDX). This led to me a YouTube clip of Hellman presenting the Academy Award for Best Documentary Film at a ceremony on 3.28.77. It is very unfortunate that the editor chose to cut out Hellman’s remarks about her blacklisting, which I’ve pasted after the clip:

Read more

James Garner, 86, has left the earth, perhaps even the solar system. To many he was Maverick or Jim Rockford, but to me he’ll always be Charlie Madison, the nonchalant dog-robber and “practicing coward” in Paddy Chayefsky and Arthur Hiller‘s The Americanization of Emily (’64), which Garner often said later was his favorite performance. My second favorite Garner guy is Lt. Robert Hendley (a.k.a. “the Scrounger”) in John Sturges‘ The Great Escape (’63). My third favorite is race-car driver Pete Aron in John Frankenheimer‘s Grand Prix (’66). And that was it, really — a four-year streak in which Garner was peaking like a stallion and 100% in synch with America’s idea of success and masculinity — smart, laid-back, smooth, broad-shouldered, good-looking, a little scampy.

All right, if you add his three years with Maverick (’57 to ’60) plus Sayonara (’57), The Children’s Hour (’62) and one or two of his fluffly romcoms with Doris Day I guess Garner had a nine-year streak but ’63 to ’66 was when he really and truly mattered — when he was “the guy.” I know he was primarily at home on the tube for most of his career, but he owned mainstream movie potency for that four-year period.

Read more

Earlier this month I mentioned that I’d heard “convincing chatter” about Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar possibly debuting sometime during the span of the 52nd New York Film Festival (9.26 through 10.12), “although the most recent buzz says that Interstellar could play Telluride first.” Now I’m hearing that Nolan’s time-travel film, an 11.7 Paramount release, may not…uhm, let me phrase this carefully. So far, I’m told, there’s been a reluctance on Nolan’s part to screen the film for reps of at least one of the hot-shot fall festivals. That means he’s probably saying the same thing to all the other reps. Interstellar is understood to be a very effects-heavy film, but Nolan can’t play this “not ready” game much longer. Interstellar may not be ready to screen for festival programmers right now (i.e., 7.19) and it may not ultimately be ready to screen at the Telluride or Toronto festivals, which span from late August to mid September. But it would have to be ready to theoretically close the New York Film Festival on Sunday, 10.12, which would be less than four weeks before the commercial opening. Bottom line: If there was a serious interest on Nolan’s part to premiere Interstellar at one of the early fall festivals (New York being the most favorable in terms of post-production leeway), he would be playing ball at this stage by letting certain persons see it in whatever form it happens to be. But so far he hasn’t, I’m told. Read into this what you will.

I’ve never been much of a fan of John Ford‘s Monument Valley westerns. I “respect” them as far as it goes but I’ve never been able to get around the fact that it’s completely ridiculous for a community of any kind (settlers, soldiers) to be living in a place about as life-nurturing as the surface of the moon — no river or grass so you can’t raise cattle or grow crops or do anything except savor the scenery. (I’ve been to Monument Valley so don’t tell me.) On top of which I’ve never really cared for Ford’s collaborations with Henry Fonda — My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache, Young Mr. Lincoln — as they’ve always seemed…I don’t know, kind of smug and even lazy on some level. Fonda always seems to be posing in these films. Plus I’m generally sick of the Earps vs. the Clantons…I just don’t want to do that whole O.K. Corral thing again, no offense. So if it’s okay I’ll be taking a pass on Criterion’s forthcoming Clementine Bluray, 4K digital restoration or not. I’d pay $6 bucks to stream it but Criterion doesn’t offer that stuff…will they ever?