Month: November 2014

I not only sat through Interstellar again last night, but in the same theatre (TCL Chinese) and almost in the same seat I sat in when I saw it nearly two weeks ago, on Thursday, October 23rd. I’m still of the opinion that this earnestly oppressive, partly breathtaking, level-11 space epic deserves points for reaching out and dreaming big and breaking “bahhriers,” but it’s too confounding and exposition-heavy and generally exhausting, and the dialogue is too often buried under the heavy sauce of Hans Zimmer‘s organ score and is basically too damn hard to hear. I did, however, understand a few more particulars last night, possibly because some Nolan techie tweaked the TCL Chinese sound system in the wake of that disastrous 10.23 screening.

I know now that I have given Interstellar my all, and that I don’t have to ever see it again. Two times = almost six hours = more than enough for the rest of my life. But I’m also glad I did round 2 because now I understand the feelings of those who are basically saying “it’s a mess but a good mess” or “it’s laughable but great for that” or “it’s typically cold and at the same time overly emotional, but in a cool way” because they’re all basically saying “look, it’s not perfect but at least it’s crazy and ‘out there’ in its own deranged way and isn’t that a good thing?”

They’re reacting largely to the film, of course, but also, I suspect, to the first wave of naysayers, some of whom focused on the film’s apparently dashed Best Picture hopes. They want the world to know that they’re more sensitive and perceptive than guys like Scott Feinberg or Tom O’Neil or whomever. Or me.

If, as one or two HE commenters have written, the first wave of internet malcontents went into that 10.23 screening looking to take Interstellar down (an absurd hypothesis — serious online movie hounds always want movies directed by big-name auteurs to succeed), last night’s second wave went into it determined to push back against the first wave. “We hear you, Chris,” many of them were saying last night on Twitter. “We get what you’re going for or at least we get that you went for Something Big, and we’re giving you a pass for laying it on the line and swinging for the fences and wearing your heart on your sleeve. Fuck those shallow Oscar-handicappers…we are in touch with our souls, Chris, and particularly with the soul of your movie, which is emotional and celestial and a little bit cuckoo, which is fine by us.”

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Remember Niki Caro, the director of the beautiful Whale Rider, which came out 12 years ago? She may have tied into another strong inspirational saga with McFarland, U.S.A. (Disney, 2.20.15). Pic tells the true story of track coach Jim White, who led a mostly Latino high school track team to an unlikely championship in the mid ’80s. Obviously a descendant of David Anspaugh‘s Hoosiers (’86), which came out right around the time when White’s story was unfolding. Kevin Costner has always had an affinity for sports sagas so there’s nothing shocking here.

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For whatever reason the battery on my six-month-old iPhone 5S (yes, the one I had to pay full price for after I destroyed my previously functioning iPhone just before a Cannes Film Festival screening) died last Thursday morning. Wouldn’t charge…over and out. I made an appointment at the Grove Apple Store, and when they saw it was toast and told me they’d replace it I said I’d prefer an iPhone 6. It cost me a bit more but I wound up getting a 64-gig iPhone 6 Plus. It took me a day or two to get used to the size, but I’m happy with it now. It seems somewhat faster. The still/video camera is magnificent. I’ve got acres of space so I now have hard mp3s of all my songs — eff that Cloud noise. The battery strength is just as sucky as always. The iPhone 6 Plus mophie pack won’t be ready until January so I’m constantly plugged into my Jackery charger.

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As noted, I went to see Michelangelo Antonioini‘s Blow-Up last night at the Aero. Also as noted, I own a Vudu digital stream of this classic 1966 film, and it looks quite perfect. No scratches, no pops, no faded colors, no reel-change marks…better than any 35mm print ever looked.

As luck would have it, the Aero didn’t show a DCP but a 35mm print, and a bum one at that. I knew they were showing 35mm going in, but in the back of mind I have this Tarantino-ish belief that 35mm prints are somehow more vivid or detailed or movie-ish on some level. Well, they’re not. Nort this time. I felt like a chump watching this beater of a print, which was slightly reddish to boot. I was muttering to myself, “The Aero has gotten people to actually pay money to see this crappy-looking thing?” The sound was shitty for the most part — no accentuated treble or bass, like a p.a. system at a high school. The film was focused but it never delivered sharp images, or at least not what I call sharp images. And the scratches and marks, especially as the reel changes approached, were irksome as fuck. And the way the grass looked a bit faded and brownish and the way the blacks looked a bit reddish and the way everyone’s skin seemed just a little too pink…it was a crappy experience.

Antonioni’s ghost would have been appalled. I left around the one-hour mark. I have better things to do with my evenings.

Authorities can try to get people to refer to it as One World Trade Center, but everyone calls it the Freedom Tower. I do, Chris Rock does…everyone calls it that. In any event it finally opened today, all 94 stories and 1776 feet of it, and man, what a butt-ugly monument to mediocre visions. The original design by Daniel Libeskind was, to me, elegant and off-center beautiful, but “security concerns” raised by the New York Police Department and Governor Pataki resulted in a new hypodermic needle design of architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Nine years ago N.Y. Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff described the obelisk-shaped Childs tower as “a gigantic glass paperweight with a toothpick stuck on top.” Last weekend Chris Rock called it the “never goin’ in there tower”….funny.

The original Daniel Libeskind Freedom Tower, which would have been beautiful if the NYPD and then-Governor George Pataki hadn’t stepped in and fucked everything up.

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Something that director Danny Boyle said about the Aaron Sorkin-written Steve Jobs biopic apparently rubbed Christian Bale the wrong way, as he has officially said “fuck it” and walked away from what seemed like a golden opportunity to play the late Apple founder. In a 10.23 Bloomberg story screenwriter Aaron Sorkin said that Bale was a lock for the Jobs role. “We needed the best actor on the board in a certain age range and that’s Chris Bale,” Sorkin said. “It’s an extremely difficult part and he’s gonna crush it.” Actually, no, he’s gonna blow it off. What is it with this project? People keep leaving. Leonardo DiCaprio ixnayed the Jobs role earlier. Director David Fincher walked over a payment dispute. The studio is reportedly in discussions with Seth Rogen to play Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Scott Rudin, Mark Gordon and Guymon Casady are producing.

This is strictly second-hand, but last weekend one of the producers of Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper (Warner Bros., 12.25) boasted to a journalist friend that it’s “Clint’s best film in 15 years.” It may be that (an impressive Sniper scene was shown a little before the chat) but the claim is imprecise and therefore suspicious. If you want to make an impression along these lines you have to (a) do your Wikipedia homework and (b) know your dates. 15 years ago Eastwood’s True Crime (a decent genre thriller but nothing stupendous) was released, and after that Space Cowboys (an amiable old-guys-in-space movie). What the producer probably meant to say was that American Sniper is Clint’s best film in ten years, or his best since Million Dollar Baby (’04). That makes sense.

No Oscar-handicapping website or columnist wants to say this for fear of Paramount pulling ads, but Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar (11.5) is clearly the first big bust of the season, esteem-wise. I’m not any different than the others. I’d like a piece of that Paramount award-season revenue. But this is reality, Greg. Nolan’s apocalyptic space voyage epic will make bales of money, I presume, and the geek chorus (led by guys like First Showing‘s Alex Billington) will chime in and a pro forma Best Picture nomination may happen, as indicated by some positive industry reaction. But it’s too much of a frustrating mixed bag to be called wholly successful (an observer at Saturday night’s Academy screening has described the post-screening reaction as “pretty quiet…not a lot of buzz“), and the mixed critical pushback so far makes the likelihood of serious Best Picture contention seem…well, unlikely.

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“Eddie Redmayne’s performance [as Stephen Hawking] is astonishing, as eloquent, though in a different way, as Daniel Day-Lewis’s work in . Day-Lewis, playing the Irish artist Christy Brown, a man whose mobility is reduced to a single limb, deployed his left foot, a bushy black beard, and minimal, mangled speech to create a ferociously willful and sexually miserable man. Redmayne is a gentler actor; he was the noble youth in Les Misérables who sang, in a fine light tenor, the tear-stained but upbeat ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.’ Tall and slender, with freckles and a flattened upper lip, he wears his brown hair in a heavy mop that in this film falls across his forehead to meet enormous black-framed glasses. With his narrow shoulders, he initially looks like an abashed scarecrow. Redmayne uses his eyebrows, his mouth, a few facial muscles, and the fingers of one hand to suggest not only Hawking’s intellect and his humor but also the calculating vanity of a great man entirely conscious of his effect on the world.” — from David Denby‘s New Yorker review of The Theory of Everything.

This frame-capture from Orson Welles’ visit to the Dick Cavett Show on July 27, 1970 is misleading. It makes it look like Welles was the Colossus of Rhodes, like he could stop trucks in the street with one arm. But all the sites say he was only around six-foot-one. Cavett was only seven inches shorter but you’d never know it from this shot. One thing is clear, and that’s that Welles had a bison-sized head.

Tonight author and film essayist Karina Longworth will sign copies of her coffee-table book, “Hollywood Frame by Frame: The Unseen Silver Screen in Contact Sheets, 1951-1997” at Santa Monica’s Aero prior to a 7:30 pm screening of Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blow-Up (’66). I naturally assumed that a few choice Blow-Up stills are contained in her book, but Longworth informed me otherwise. She was just invited to show up and sign, and is not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. So I dug around yesterday and found a few pics online. I’ll be attending the Aero screening but I’m very, very afraid of how this exquisitely captured film will look on the Aero screen. If it’s a DCP, fine, but if they’re showing a 35mm print it’ll probably look dicey. I’ve almost gotten to the point where I hate 35mm these days. Either way I’ll be flabbergasted if the Aero version looks anywhere near as good as the immaculate HDX high-def version I own on Vudu.

David Hemmings in Blow-Up‘s key scene.

Michelangelo Antonioni, Vanessa Redgrave.

Hemmings, Redgrave, Antonioni.

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“Have you seen the Mortdecai trailer?,” a critic friend wrote this morning. “I’ve seen it in theaters twice recently, and each time I thought ‘who would find this crap funny?’ The answer: the people sitting around me, guffawing at every lame riff.” In other words, it’s going to do pretty well with the none-too-clevers. Congrats to Johnny Depp, director David Koepp and everyone else who was significantly involved.

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