This trailer is telling me that Angelina Jolie‘s film is on the nose, right down the middle…emphatic, color-desaturated and kinda square. Somebody said the other day that it’s supposed to be a little more Robert Bresson-ish than David Lean-like…okay, but not here. N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply may or may not have have seen Unbroken, but in a 10.14 piece about three World War II-era films (this one plus Fury and The Imitation Game) Cieply writes that Unbroken “is perhaps the closest of the three to a conventional Hollywood film in its focus on an empathetic protagonist.” On top of which the sadistic Japanese camp commandant is too good-looking. I don’t know if Zamperini’s religious conversion in 1949 under the influence of Billy Graham is in the film or not, but it would be interesting as hell to end with this. First and foremost because it happened, and secondly because it would be ballsy to go against the liberal laissez-faire Hollywood attitude by ending a big awards-bait movie with a Jesus conversion. Which of course would play commercially in the hinterland.

Consider that very cool shot around the 35-second mark in which Moby Dick charges the ship just under the water line without breaching. Director Ron Howard may or may not admit to this later on, but I see a visual tribute to the early shot of James Mason’s Nautilus attacking a ship in Richard Fleischer‘s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea — similar angle, same attack, just under the water line.

James Mason’s Nautilus about to attack a merchant ship in an early scene from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

“Birdman, right now, is on the money. In Riggan and the rest of the cast, writhing with the dread of being a nobody but appalled by what it takes to be a somebody, we see not just the acting bug but also the New York bug, the love bug, and, if we’re honest, the life bug, diagnosed as what they are: a seventy-year itch.” — from Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review. The praise is not dissimilar from that offered by many others, but I had to post Peter Strain’s illustration and it only seemed right to include an excerpt.

You can’t live in public only to claim privacy rights when you die. Yesterday’s announcement about poor Elizabeth Pena having passed at age 55 offered no cause. Pena’s manager, Gina Rugolo, said today that the Cuban-American actress died “of natural causes after a brief illness.” No other details were provided. Dying at age 55 is not “natural.” We’re all running around on this planet, ducking this and embracing that, trying to eat the right foods and avoid the poisons, coping with threats and challenges. Due respect but where does this idea come from that divulging the reason for a loved one’s death constitutes an unwarranted invasion of privacy?

All rugged heroes (or anti-heroes) in American-made films about gritty machismo under fire need to be shot at least three or four times before going down. Like a certain big-name actor in a soon-to-be-released film…one or two bullets are not enough to kill our guy as he’s made of sterner stuff. An enemy bullet in the chest cavity…aaggh but fuck you! A follow-up bullet in the shoulder…try again! Only bad guys or wimpy second- or third-billed good guys die after one shot. The more bullets it takes to bring you down = the more movie-star status you have, the greater your Hollywood reputation, the bigger your salary, etc. It all started when King Kong refused to fall off the Empire State building until he’d been hit by machine-gun fire…what, 10 or 12 times? The movement picked up steam during the Wild Bunch finale when William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates and Ben Johnson all took six or seven or eight bullets before signing off.

Exception to the rule: William Petersen went down and stayed down after getting plugged once in William Friedkin‘s To Live and Die in L.A..

In yesterday’s “Try To Look Serene or Cosmic…Like You’ve ‘Been Somewhere’” thread, I remarked that “every time the subject comes up, people say the same thing. The Theory of Everything vs. The Imitation Game. Battle of the Sound-Alikes. Eccentric British Genius vs. Eccentric British Genius. Wife vs Secretary. Dickens vs. Fenster. Mutt vs. Jeff.” And “Avatar” wrote the following: “As well they should, since both of them take up 75% of the same squares on a person’s Oscar Bait Bingo card. The main difference is that Theory takes the ‘Actor Imitates a Physical Ailment’ square, while Imitation takes the ‘…In the Fight Against the Nazis’ square.”

Fury director-writer David Ayer has stated that “the knives are out” over his “polarizing” hell-piss-blood-mud film. I don’t know about that. Most reviewers (myself included) have called it a grimly respectable adrenalized war flick. Yes, it’s presented by way of videogame action aesthetics but them’s the breaks if you wanna attract GenY and GenX males. The “knives”, if you will, are mainly about the absurd finale, and so far only six reviewers have manned up and called a spade a spade. If anyone else has levelled with his/her readers in this respect, please advise.

“[The finale] is occupied by a quasi-suicidal mission that Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) is ordered to undertake by a captain (Jason Isaacs). The command is issued so quickly that it’s not really clear why it’s so important for tanks to rush behind enemy lines; the Americans know they’re going to win, so the puzzlement over the reason for sending men into such peril at this stage impedes one’s investment in the climactic action. Plunking Wardaddy and his men down in such an impossible position doesn’t feel right dramatically, and [Pitt’s] stoic reaction…introduces a note of windy grandiosity that mildly rubs the wrong way against everything that’s come before.” — Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter, 10.10.

“The film’s climax…abandons realism entirely, as the devastated crew seemingly takes on the entire German army with a single rusty, immobile tank. Fury lives up to its title with its great ferocity, but at a certain point, it begins to feel like a macho fantasy.” — Nathan Rabin, The Dissolve, 10.16.

“Would a team of five men with a half-disabled tank really dig in their heels and fight a [company] of Germans nearly 300 strong? This choice is [Fury‘s] most ‘Hollywood’ element.” — Peter Debruge, Variety, 10.10.

This morning I asked a Variety guy who recently attended the Hamptons Film Festival and Mill Valley Film Festival what film seemed to really hit the bullseye. They didn’t show everything and he hasn’t seen everything, but in the context of these gatherings The Imitation Game is “the one that really went over, like gangbusters,” he said. “No head-scratching at the end of it…you come out knowing that you’ve seen a really solid movie about a guy who triumphs despite having been victimized. It works way better than The King’s Speech, and it doesn’t throw you a hook or a curve…it operates within a classic traditional form.”

This, then, is what “they” want. No hooks, no tricks, no curve balls…nothing too unusual or challenging…just something straight and true, a nice 40 mph pitch across the plate that they can connect with. In other words, if Interstellar is clean and conservative and not too weird or curious…if it’s engaging enough without making people feel unsure of themselves…if it melts them down in just the right way and gives them the “big thing”…that good old lump in the throat that delivers some profound bedrock truth about our common experience, that makes you want to hug your father or your daughter…that comfort, that assurance, that touch of a high…if it gives this particular crowd what they want or need, it’ll be Oscar time on top of being a big box-office champ, which everyone believes is 100% guaranteed.

Today I received a cooler-than-cool Birdman action figure — relatively rare (one of only 1500), hand-crafted in London, hand-painted, mounted on a stand. It only made me want more, of course. A Michael Keaton-as-Riggan Thomson figure with a little digital player that says some of his lines. Or an Edward Norton-as-Mike Shiner action figure. Not economically practical, of course. Thanks to Fox Searchlight.

I’m not an audiophile. I’ll probably never own an upscale turntable system. I’ve been listening to nothing but mp3 music for years, and before that music on CDs and cassette players. But I’m considering plunking down $400 bills for one of Neil Young‘s Pono players (which won’t be shipping until January or February) and then forking over even more so I can download Pono versions of all the great albums, past and future. Because it’s supposed to be like vinyl. Because while mp3s offer roughly 5% of the dynamic range of what was originally recorded, Pono music will deliver more than 90% of that. So I’m really thinking about this. Anyone else?

The well-paid cyborg known as Warner Bros. studio chief Kevin Tsujihara has announced an intention to anesthetize if not suffocate U.S. movie culture with 10 superhero flicks over the next six years — Zack Snyder‘s already-rolling Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, David Ayer‘s Suicide Squad (2016…what a whore!), Wonder Woman with Gal Gadot (2017), Justice League, Part One (2017), The Flash with demon-eyed Ezra Miller, an Aquaman movie (2018), a fucking Shazam flick, Zack Snyder‘s Justice League, Part Two (2019), Cyborg (2020), a new Green Lantern movie (2020). Plus another stand-alone Superman film starring Henry “Ernest Borgnine” Cavill and a stand-alone Batman flick with Ben Affleck. There’s also a Sandman movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt plus Guillermo Del Toro’s Justice League Dark. I hope that the scraggly-bearded, overweight, ugly-T-shirt-and-flip-flop-wearing cretins who live for this CG flotsam will be happy.

With Christian Bale now locked to play Steve Jobs in an Aaron Sorkin-written, three-chapter film about the late Apple honcho with Danny Boyle directing, the rumored plan is to shoot in the spring. Which means it might be released in late 2015. Or not — you never know. But if it happens Jobs will almost certainly become one of next year’s Best Picture contenders. This is the same Scott Rudin-produced film that David Fincher was going to direct until he walked over a compensation dispute with Sony. Leonardo DiCaprio was interested in the Jobs role but “passed to take time off from acting,” according to Variety‘s Justin Kroll. Except DiCaprio is now shooting Alejando G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant under miserable northwestern conditions so what kind of a “time-out” was that?