Day: August 9, 2014

Most of us are down with Guardians of the Galaxy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Get On Up, of course, and I suppose there’s nothing fatally misguided about seeing an apparently mediocre foodie film like The Hundred-Foot Journey (55% Metacritic rating). But the other six toppers are the usual late-summer crap. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (33% Metacritic rating), Into The Storm (submental, CG-driven Twister for YouTube generation), Step Up All In (47% Metacritic….who cares?), Lucy (“It’s a movie that says ‘you can take a bathroom break whenever you like’“), Hercules (another 47% wonder) and The Purge: Anarchy. This is the world we live in, the world we’ve submitted to. Except me. Tonight, at least. I’ll be catching Neil LaBute‘s Reasons To Be Pretty at the Geffen, and all the better for it.

Dick Cavett’s Watergate aired last night on KOCE, the local (i.e., Costa Mesa) PBS station. I missed it, but I figured “no big deal…I’ll find some kind of VOD way to see it this weekend.” Actually, no. I thought everything was VOD-accessible these days. A recent L.A. Times review says it runs 90 minutes. But this morning I called John Scheinfeld, director of the Cavett/Watergate show as well as Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talking About Him)?, and asked if I can get the 90-minute version, and he said that the 55-minute version is the final deal. Dick Cavett’s Watergate is such a smooth and delicious recollection. Those old Watergate junkie highs come rushing right back into your system.

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This is just wrong, man. Vin Diesel was really good — genuine, centered, straight-arrow vibes — for nine years. First out of the box was Strays, an autobiographical piece which he directed. And then a smallish supporting role in Saving Private Ryan — nothing special but solid. And then Boiler Room, Rob Cohen‘s The Fast and the Furious and finally — this was major — Diesel’s performance as an amiable, lower-level mafia guy in Sidney Lumet‘s Find Me Guilty. I began to lose the feeling with Cohen’s xXx (’02), to be honest, but Find Me Guilty put me back on the train. Diesel was doing something back then, and he could always bounce back.

Last night I caught episode #1 of Steven Soderbergh‘s The Knick. I’m sorry but I felt a little…inconclusive about it. My basic problem was Clive Owen‘s cocaine addiction. I can’t invest in a lead character, even a brilliant surgeon, who’s on a self-destructive downswirl. Life is difficult and draining enough without a monkey on your back. Otherwise I found it smart, layered, downbeat, well-written-ish, very nicely shot (kind of Gordon Willis -y), all but humorless (that bit with the cigarette-smoking nun insulting those two guys wasn’t funny enough), grisly, intriguing and sometimes fascinating in a period atmosphere sense…and just a bit underwhelming, I have to say.

The highlights were (a) a startling if stomach-churning surgery scene that began with Owen shooting cocaine into a patient’s spine and (b) a portrayal of professional/urban racism as it existed 114 years ago. I don’t know what I was expecting but I wanted something more. Something crazier, sexier, more sinister…I don’t know. I realize it might take two or three episodes to really kick in. You can’t just pull narrative tension out of a hat, but maybe if Soderbergh had thrown in a nice sprawling CG shot or two of lower Broadway or some other distinctive Manhattan neighborhood. I’m not that hard to please.

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