Month: October 2014

Way back in early February I tapped out a rave review of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. I did so from my room at Berlin’s Grand Wyndman Hotel during a Fox Searchlight junket for the film. The piece is fairly well written if I do say so myself. It also seems appropriate in this, the height of Derby season, to remind everyone what a superb film Budapest is, was and always will be because…you know, films released in February are sometimes presumed to be not as good as those released between Labor Day and late December. Here it is again:

Rest assured that while Budapest is a full-out ‘Wes Anderson film’ (archly stylized, deadpan humor, anally designed) it also delights with flourishy performances and a pizazzy, loquacious script that feels like Ernst Lubitsch back from the dead, and particularly with unexpected feeling — robust affection for its characters mixed with a melancholy lament for an early-to-mid 20th Century realm that no longer exists.

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Tickets to Monday’s premiere screening of Dumb and Dumber To (Universal, 11.14) are at a premium, but at least I’m on the waiting list. The Farrelly Brothers comedy was set to screen at the Virginia Film Festival but Universal yanked it a couple of days ago. They somehow got it into their heads that the comic sequel would screen only for University of Virginia students and not reviewing press. When someone tapped them on the shoulder and reminded them that any film screening at a film festival is fair game for review, they went “what!?” and pulled the plug. I really loved the Farrelly’s Three Stooges movie and I’m almost certain to like this one, despite the “younger dumb guys tend to be a bit funnier” consideration. Carrey to Letterman: “Once you’ve done a couple of press tours, you welcome death. And I’ve been married a couple of times so it takes a lot to scare me, Dave.”

My Delta flight from Atlanta landed last night around 7:45 pm. I picked up my luggage (a single leather bag) and went to the curb and got a cab. Which is what I always do. And then I piddled around at home and crashed early (10:30 pm), and then got up late (9 am). I worked a bit and then went to the Theory of Everything luncheon and came back and filed three stories. And then a half-hour ago I went downstairs to drop some trash into the bin and I looked over and noticed that my car is missing. Wow. I tried to remember if I’d dropped it off with my local mechanic before leaving….nope. What could’ve happened? I was about to ride my bike to the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station and file a stolen car report when it hit me. I drove down to LAX early Friday morning and parked my wheels in one of those $15 per day lots. Of course! Well, at least I don’t have to buy a new car now. Zoning out on stuff like this used to happen every so often when I was imbibing, but things have been really clean and clear since the sober thing began 31 months ago. Famous last words. Now I have to cab all the way down to LAX for another $45 plus pick up the car. The things I do.

Some instinct told me right away (and quite a while ago) that Susanne Bier‘s Serena, a rural period drama with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, was a wrong one. It was shot two and half years ago (March to May 2012) and then it took Bier 18 months to finish it, and then it got killed a few days ago at the London Film Festival and via general British release, and now it’s being VOD released by Magnolia on 2.26.15. Bier’s had a tough time recently, but she seemed unable to do wrong from ’02 through ’07, at least in my eyes — Open Hearts, Brothers, After The Wedding and the brilliant Things We Lost In The Fire.

Glenn Kenny did a first-rate job of analyzing the life and work of Robert De Niro in that Cahiers du Cinema book he wrote which came out last summer. But the book-publishing world can be a brutal, dog-eat-dog one, and now, alas, it’s time for Glenn’s tome to take a farewell strut and defer to Shawn Levy‘s “De Niro: A Life,” which came out yesterday — Tuesday, 10.28. I haven’t even skimmed through Levy’s biography yet. It was lying on my doorstep when I returned last night from Savannah. But I know his Jerry Lewis and Paul Newman bios, and whatever’s there Levy tends to uncover. Plus he’s an eloquent writer. On the other hand…De Niro again! What is new to say or learn? Same story, same trajectory — Mean Streets/Godfather Part II breakthrough, peaking into the mid to late ’80s (Raging Bull, True Confessions, Falling In Love, Cape Fear), resurgence in the early to mid ’90s (Goodfellas, Casino, Heat), and then the late 90s-post millenial sell-out downturn. I’ll read Levy’s book this weekend.

(l.) Shawn Levy’s “De Niro: A Life“; (r.) Glenn Kenny‘s Phaidon/Cahiers Du Cinema’s “Anatomy of an Actor” book about Robert De Niro, which came out last July.

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Earlier today Focus Features hosted a press luncheon at Lucques on behalf of James Marsh‘s The Theory of Everything (11.7.14), the rapturously received drama about the life of celestial physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne), his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) and their struggle with Hawking’s ALS disease, not to mention their extra-marital intrigues. Redmayne, Jones, producer Lisa Bruce and screenwriter Anthony McCarten took turns speaking with journalists at five (or was it six?) different tables. It was all so civilized and convivial. Everyone conversed, listened, minded their manners, laughed but not too loudly, enjoyed the excellent food, etc. Nobody spilled their drink or behaved like a gorilla or said the wrong thing.

The Theory of Everything star Eddie Redmayne during today’s luncheon at Lucques.

(l. to. r.) a portion of Variety‘s Tim Gray, back of Pete Hammond’s head, TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, back of some guy’s head, Eddie Redmayne, back of another guy’s head. MCN’s David Poland is at far right.

My table included In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, TheWrap‘s Steve Pond and Variety‘s Tim Gray. (The table next to us included MCN’s David Poland and Deadline‘s Pete Hammond.)

Theory opens in nine days. The big premiere happened last night at the Academy. Focus’s big mission, it seems to me, is to underline the notion that (a) Theory is indeed a Best Picture contender (most pundits agree) and (b) to convince the guilds and the Academy that it’s a better “eccentric British genius copes with a serious personal problem” movie — richer, trippier, more soulful — than Morten Tyldum‘s The Imitation Game (Weinstein Co., 11.21).

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“’Kit rarely did anything for the money of it. He did things for the ‘aha!’ of it. And nobody could ever convince him he was wrong.” — quote from Cindy Hargrave about her husband, the late L.M. Kit Carson, in a N.Y. Times obit by Bruce Weber, posted on 10.28.

L.M. Kit Carson (1941 — 2014)

The 87% Rotten Tomatoes rating earned by Dan Gilroy‘s Nightcrawler (Open Road, 10.30) makes it easily the best-reviewed new film opening on Halloween weekend. This, of course, means zip to Joe and Jane Popcorn. They’ll see whatever they want to see, quality be damned, and most handicappers are guessing they’ll mainly be attracted to something that sounds more routinely spooky. Maybe Horns (63%) or the Saw revival (48%) or the dreadful sounding Before I Go To Sleep (54%) or The ABCS of Death 2. How do you get through to people who insist on seeing films that will make them feel like shit or at the very least burned? Answer: You can’t. Their minds are on lockdown. Throw up your hands.

New Yorker illustration by Boris Pelcer.

Oh, you could try repeating that Nightcrawler is all that matters this weekend…that it’s manic and furious and reckless, that it’s a high-speed L.A. adrenaline flick you’ll never forget because it feels so damned unusual and perverse, and that it’s spooky in a real-world way, and that Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Lou, a freelance news-video hound, is as much of a generic Halloween-type character as Lon Chaney‘s Phantom of the Opera or Max Schreck‘s Nosferatu.

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The thinking behind HE’s current Best Director contenders is, naturally, more or less the same that led to my Best Picture determinations, which were charted Sunday night. Respect must again be paid to Stu VanAirsdale, the former Movieline editor whose Oscar Index (which ran during the 2010 and 2011 Oscar seasons) is the inspirational model. I’m in a hurry and packing and won’t be posting the larger version until I get on the plane, but this’ll do for the time being.

After last night’s Big Hero 6 screening I saw Jennifer Kent‘s The Babadook, a brilliant, slow-burning psychological horror film made in a kind of German expressionist mode (I was reminded of aspects of F.W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu) and which is significantly more effective than The Shining in telling a story of dark spirits overtaking the mind and soul of a parent and leading to evil impulses. It’s also a descendant of Rosemary’s Baby in the way it takes its time, really burrows into character, doesn’t heap it on too heavily, and relies almost entirely on “in-camera” strategies. Kent needs to say hello to Guillermo del Toro and vice versa. The Badadook is cut from the same cloth as The Orphanage, which Guillermo produced for director Juan Antonio Bayona. I’ll run something a bit longer when my Atlanta-to-L.A. flight is underway. The Savannah-to-Atlanta flight departs at 3:30 pm.

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Suspicions are afoot that Disney’s family-friendly Big Hero 6, a spirited, highly “amusing” animated feature about a 13 year-old tech genius and his fat, care-giving robot buddy, might earn more next weekend than Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar, at least as far as the 11.7 to 11.9 period goes. (The Nolan will have a head start by opening on Wednesday, 11.5.) I caught Big Hero 6 last night inside the trustees theatre at the Savannah Film Festival, and the crowd just loved it. Laughing, gleeful, yaw-haw. I hated it, of course. It’s as smart and funny and “engaging” as a film like this could possibly be, but all super-calculated, corporate-minded cartoons send me into tailspins of depression. And yet it’s very well-made. Congratulations to co-directors Don Hall and Chris Williams for having made a lightweight flick that America is going to have a great time with.

Word around the campfire is that the first Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer is locked and ready to roll. A Batman site (i.e., some 37 year-old overweight guy sitting around in his underwear) says the teaser “will be attached to a November or December Warner Bros. movie and released online around the same time.” Well, Interstellar is a Warner Bros. international release, and it opens on 11.5. Interstellar is certain to attract a better class of geek enthusiasts than those who show up for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which opens on 12.17…right?