Day: August 22, 2014

The best films are always feeding off cultural currents like water drawn from a well, and it’s common knowledge that real-life events sometimes trigger interest in a film that’s lucky enough to open at just the right time. Sometimes it’s hard to say whether events influence films or vice versa, or if “fears, ideas of joy and what’s happening on the horizon” (in the words of Film Society of Lincoln center honcho Kent Jones) are just swirling every which way and sticking to this and that surface. Everyone remembers how The China Syndrome, a 1979 film about meltdown threats in nuclear power plants, got a significant boost when the Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened less than two weeks after it opened. And if you ask me some of the potency of Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire (’04), an immaculate whoop-ass revenge film, came from a general feeling that deep down it was a response to 9/11 (i.e., Denzel Washington bringing great pain to a gang of fiends).

Likewise I have a slight seat-of-the-pants feeling that Mike Binder‘s Black and White, a racially-tinged child custody drama pitting a lushy, well-off L.A. attorney and grandfather, played by Kevin Costner, against his African-American in-laws, is going to somehow siphon the Ferguson after-current on some level. The film doesn’t dramatize police brutality or shootings or any of that, but it takes a hard look at responsibility and parenting and racial identity and who’s really feeling what, and if you ask me it offers one of the frankest discussions about the black-white racial divide since Barack Obama ‘s Philadelphia speech about Reverend Wright, and before that Spike Lee‘s Do The Right Thing (’89).

Read more

Chris “right on the edge of thin although I’m sure he’s planning to get fat again” Pratt is on the cover of the new Esquire, which I bought last night. I didn’t start flipping through it until 10:45 or 11 pm, at which point I was starting to fade. At the same time I was talking to a lady on the phone and playing with the kitten. All to explain that I had to read this pull quote three times before I got it. At first I thought Pratt had bought a gun for his wife, Anna Faris, with instructions for her to blow their brains out — his and her own — in case an intruder breaks into their home. (“Crazy person” is singular, “their” is obviously plural.) I read it again — Chris Pratt wants Anna Faris to shoot him in the head and then kill herself if an intruder breaks in? If he’s referring to “their” brains being blown out he can’t be referring to a single “crazy person”, right? So he must be talking about leaving the world together as man and wife. Then I realized, “Of course! The under-educated Pratt got his articles wrong and Esquire didn’t want to fix the quote (i.e., change it to ‘his’ brains) for fear of being labelled sexist. After all the intruder could be a woman.” This is the world in which we live.

This Central Park shot (snapped by ex-g.f. Sophie Black) was taken in the winter of ’76, or about a year before I moved into my first Manhattan apartment at 143 Sullivan Street, or just south of Houston. This and dozens of other pics arrived today inside a big box full of my mother’s photo collections, letters and keepsakes. Of no particular interest to anyone except myself, of course, but what about that second shot…me, the dog and the 1988 computer? Does anyone remember Wordstar? It was Andy Klein who told me to buy it and even helped me with the basics. I found it horrifying at first. If I were to try it again today I’d probably still find it horrifying.

January or February of ’76…sometime around there.

Mom, dad, myself at kitchen table in their Wilton, Connecticut home, sometime in the mid ’80s.

Read more

Last night I went to see Carol Reed and Graham Greene‘s Our Man in Havana (’59) at the Aero. A dryly amusing, mild-mannered timepiece. Intelligently written by Greene, pleasantly assembled. Handsomely shot in widescreen black-and-white (those old cobblestoned streets of Havana look wonderful under streetlights), although everyone is unfortunately affected with the CinemaScope mumps. It was filmed in Havana two months after Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution. (Warning: Trailers From Hell tour guide John Landis says it was shot during Batista’s regime and that Batista visited the shoot — in fact Castro and Che Guevara visited.) Alec Guinness in his prime, Ernie Kovacs, Noel Coward, Maureen O’Hara, Ralph Richardson, Burl Ives, etc. The sort of light-hearted, old-school, mid 20th Century film that was all but eradicated by the cultural upheavals and radical passions of the ’60s and all that followed.

Read more

A fair-sized percentage of the New Yorkers and Los Angelenos who will pay to see Ira Sachs‘ Love Is Strange (Sony Pictures Classics) this weekend will be doing so, I’m guessing, because it’s racked up a 96% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a Metacritic rating of 85%. That averages out to 90.5, which pretty much means “whoa…let’s definitely see this before Sunday night!” And then they’ll see it and most, I’m presuming, will emerge moderately pleased, although others, I’m fairly certain, will be feeling a bit confused and perhaps even frowning. I can imagine some guy saying to a friend, “It was nice but a little…what’s the word? Enervating? It doesn’t have much of a pulse. Why did the critics get so excited? Is it me? Do I lack sensitivity or something? Because from my perspective it was almost a meh. A nice sensitive meh.”

The reason Love Is Strange has done so well among N.Y. and L.A. critics is because a private memo was sent around two or three weeks ago. I won’t say who wrote it and I can’t even quote directly, but it more or less said the following: “This is a nice, low-key, sensitive little Sundance movie, possibly autobiographical to some extent, from an admired, openly gay New York filmmaker, and we don’t want to be anything but gentle and admiring in our responses. No snark, no snippy-ass remarks, no put-downs…Love Is Strange is an opportunity for all of us to to open our pores and show the world how enormously sensitive we are when given half a chance and to show our respect and affection for gay people who marry and also to show how humanistic and 21st Century our attitudes are. Plus it pushes back, deftly but forcefully, against anti-gay discrimination by Catholics and other religious organizations. So be nice, and if you want to play it extra-safe, be really nice.”

Read more

Yesterday Little White Lies, a British film magazine, published a q & a between correspondent David Jenkins and directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose Two Days, One Night will play the Toronto and New York film festivals before opening stateside via Sundance Selects. I respect the film but I’m calling it a “ploddingly earnest line-drive single.” I’m mentioning the Jenkins piece because of (a) a forehead-slapper of a question (i.e, “Why did you decide to make a movie which is essentially the same scene played over and over?”) and (b) an even bigger forehead-slapper of a response from Luc Dardenne (i.e., “Why not?”). Even if I was hostile to the film (which I’m not) and wanted to give the Dardennes a hard time, I wouldn’t have the balls to ask this question. Jenkins is an admirer, just to be clear.

A hunch just slipped into my bloodstream that Jean-Marc Vallee, Reese Witherspoon and Nick Hornby‘s Wild (Fox Searchlight, 12.5) will be the first film to be shown at the Telluride Film Festival, or around 2 or 3 pm at the Chuck Jones Cinema (i.e., right after the picnic). No one’s told me anything — I’m just hearing a little voice, or more precisely a ping. All prophetic, telepathic and/or inspirational messages are always received as little taps on your shoulder or ping tones in the back of your head.

Telluride is technically a four-day festival (Friday, 8.29 through Monday, September 1st) but it doesn’t really start until Friday afternoon, and for industry visitors is all but over by early Monday afternoon so call it three days.

Incidentally: Everyone travels to Telluride on Thursday, of course. My Burbank-to-Durango flight arrives around 2:30 pm. I’ll pick up the rental car right away and drive to Telluride, which takes a little over two hours. If anyone wants a lift in exchange for gas money, get in touch. I’m heading back to Durango around 1 pm on Monday.

Read more