Month: November 2014

Forget the award-season bunker mentality, forget the odds, forget handicapping and definitely forget the passions of Joe Popcorn. For herewith is my almost final list of 2014’s finest films, totalling 23 and compiled with a focus on world-class coolness, aesthetic exceptionalism and serious envelope-pushing originality. Obviously I’ll update after seeing Unbroken, Into The Woods, Winter Sleep and Big Eyes. These are the personal bests that I’ll be happy to own in some high-def form (Bluray, Vudu HDX, whatever) and will be watching from time to time in years to come. It’s funny how the movies you’re supposed to like or are obliged to publicly support kind of fall away when you take yourself into a purist frame of mind. I’m not 100% locked into this order but it’s close to this:

Top Twelve: 1. Birdman (d: Alejandro G. Inarritu); 2. Citizen Four (d: Laura Poitras); 3. Leviathan (d: Andrey Zvyagintsev); 4. Gone Girl (d: David Fincher, who took a film with an airport-lounge plot and made it into something much more resonant); 5. Boyhood (d: Richard Linklater); 6. A Most Violent Year (d: J.C. Chandor); 7. Wild Tales (d: Damian Szifron); 8. A Most Wanted Man (d: Anton Corbijn); 9. The Babadook (d: Jennifer Kent); 10. Locke (d: Steven Knight); 11. Nightcrawler (d: Dan Gilroy); 12. The Drop (d: Michael R. Roskam).

Second-Tier Top Twelve: 13. Whiplash (d: Damian Chazelle), 14. The Theory of Everything (d: James Marsh); 15. The Imitation Game (d: Morten Tyldum); 16. The Grand Budapest Hotel (d: Wes Anderson); 17. Selma (d: Ava DuVernay); 18. Omar (d: Hany Abu-Assad); 19. Last Days in Vietnam (d: Rory Kennedy); 20. Life Itself (d: Steve James); 21. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (d: Matt Reeves); 22. Red Army, (d: Gabe Polsky); 22. Foxcatcher (d: Bennett Miller); 23. Edge of Tomorrow (d: Doug Liman); 24. The One I Love (d: Charlie McDowell).

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Some are truly gifted, and if those in that small, choice fraternity are tenacious and lucky and sometimes scrappy enough, they get to develop their gift and turn what they have inside into works that matter for people of all stripes and philsophies. And then there are those gifted types who are fortunate enough to catch a certain inspiration at the right point in their lives, which turns into a wave that carries and defines their finest work for all time to come. This was how things pretty much went for the late and great Mike Nichols, who passed yesterday from a heart attack.

His film-directing career (which alternated from time to time with directing and producing hit Broadway plays), which was flourishy and satisfying and sometimes connected with the profound, lasted from the mid ’60s to mid aughts. Nichols had a touch and a style that everyone seemed to recognize, a certain mixture of sophisticated urban comedy and general gravitas. His first gusher was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff in 1966, and his last truly excellent film was HBO’s Angels in America. If you add Nichols’ brilliant early ’60s stand-up comedy period with Elaine May he really was Mr. King Shit for the better part of a half-century.

But Nichols’ most profound filmic output lasted for eight or nine years, or roughly ’66 through ’74 or ’75 — a chapter known for a certain stylistic signature mixed with an intense and somewhat tortured psychology that came from his European Jewish roots. Longtime Nichols collaborator Richard Sylbert, whom I knew fairly well from the late ’80s to the early aughts, explained it to me once. Nichols had developed that static, ultra-carefully composed, long-take visual approach that we saw in The Graduate, Catch 22, Carnal Knowledge, Day of the Dolphin and The Fortune, and this signature was, Sylbert believed, what elevated Nichols into the Movie God realm.

And then Nichols suffered a kind of crisis or collapse of the spirit after the double-flop of Dolphin and Fortune, and he withdrew from feature films for eight years, doing little or nothing for a certain period and then focusing on plays for the most part. He rebounded big-time with Silkwood in ’83, but the way he shot and paced that successful, well-reviewed drama showed that the great stylistic signature of his mid ’60s to mid ’70s films was no more. The ever-gifted Nichols never lost his sensitivity or refinement, but the anguished artist phase had ended.

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A few weeks or months from now some seasoned journalist will write an absorbing, almost certainly colorful history of the Aaron Sorkin-scripted Steve Jobs project, which has not had a smooth ride so far. The latest development, reported by Deadline‘s Mike Fleming, is that Sony Pictures has decided against distributing — why? — and that Universal has all but snapped it up. This following the abrupt abandonment of the Jobs role by Christian Bale, and before that David Fincher leaving the project over a pay dispute. Based on the Walter Isaacson biography of the Apple founder, the film will be directed by Danny Boyle with Michael Fassbender reportedly a possible candidate to fill Bale’s slot. (He doesn’t seem like the right guy to me — wrong physical look — Bale would have been perfect.) The film is being produced by Scott Rudin, Christian Colson, Mark Gordon and Guymon Casady.

Earlier today Variety‘s Brent Lang suggested that Laura Poitras‘ Citizenfour, easily the year’s best feature-length documentary, deserves a Best Picture nomination. Lang is apparently concerned that the Academy’s documentary branch might be too contrarian or mule-headed to nominate it or that the general Academy membership, which prefers to vote for docs that make them feel emotionally nourished, might regard Citizenfour as too controversial or something. This despite the International Documentary Association (IDA), a pretty good indicator of Academy sentiments about documentaries, having last month nominated Citizenfour for Best Feature Doc.

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I’ve always loved this old SCTV skit about longtime Bob Hope worshipper Woody Allen attempting to collaborate with his idol. Until today I never knew that the phrase “aging Pentagon clown,” a Hope description that I first heard back in the early ’70s, came from a Russian journalist. Ten or twelve years ago Albert Brooks delivered an entertaining speech to some industry gathering of some kind (I seem to recall it occuring in Santa Monica) and I somehow got hold of an audio tape of Brooks’ remarks, and I transcribed a portion of them. And one of the stand-out portions, for me, was when he talked about watching Bob Hope on TV as a kid in the 1950s, and how his father would get really excited when an upcoming Hope appearance loomed, but when Hope did his act “you never laughed,” Brooks recalled. I posted a transcript of Brooks remarks about Hope and the absence of seatbelts in 1950s cars, and a couple of days later Howard Stern read from the Hope stuff on his show. (This was at least a couple of years before he started with SiriusXM.) Note to Brooks if he’s reading this: Any chance you have a recording of this speech lying around, and could I persuade you to share it?

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In Dan Fogelman‘s Danny Collins (3.20.15), Al Pacino plays a successful but creatively frustrated songwriter who apparently decides to churn out deeper, more personal songs after learning that John Lennon wrote him a fan letter in 1971. That’s 43 years ago. Pacino’s titular character couldn’t get his more soulful mojo going on his own? Got to strike your own match. On top of which Pacino/Collins thinking he might have developed his artistic potential if only he’d read Lennon’s letter in ’71…? Forget it. And not getting around to this until his 70s? Pacino/Collins is also hoping to rekindle his relationship with a son (Bobby Cannavale) and perhaps bask in a little forgiveness for being a selfish shit, but of course that doesn’t come easy. I think we’ve seen this story a few dozen times. The only “formerly selfish old guy looking for forgiveness and redemption from his kids” movie I’ve ever half-liked was Wes Anderson‘s The Royal Tennenbaums. Oh, and I can’t roll with the name Danny. I have this very stubborn, deep-rooted resistance to it, as I explained five and a half years ago.

I was roaming around a Macy’s on Tuesday night. The combination of the treacly, mildly sickening Christmas carols playing on the sound system (my feelings about “Jingle Bells” are best not expressed) plus coming upon a row of gold-toe socks in various designs and colors…wow. Just a passing moment but I fell into a dark place, especially as I thought about the general holiday thing. I like the jingle vibe as much as the next guy, but I always feel relieved on January 2nd. I began to feel this distance when I was in my 20s. It went away when the kids came along, especially during their toddler years, but then it came back. And that’s fine.

The happiest Christmas moment of my adult life was at a party at Robert Towne‘s home in mid-November of 1997. Towne had hired three professional singers to roam around his large Pacific Palisades abode and sing Christmas carols in perfect harmony, all dressed in Dickensian garb such as top hats, shawls, bonnets, gloves and hoop skirts. Towne’s home smelled of cinnamon, turkey, cigar smoke, turkey gravy, stuffing, egg nog….glorious. Curtis Hanson was there; ditto Jerry Bruckheimer. Everyone was buzzing about Hanson’s L.A. Confidential and what seemed like a good chance of it winning the Best Picture Oscar. And then some guy told Hanson he’d just seen Titanic. “It really works,” the guy said, and I think on some level (and I felt badly about this) Hanson knew. An inkling of what was to come. The dashing of his dream. And if he didn’t sense it, I sure did.

Due respect for the enthusiasm and elation that followed an 11.17 New York screening of Ava DuVernay‘s Selma, but a potential Best Picture Oscar winner has to be about more than the ideals and convictions and historical events that may be recreated on a screen, and it certainly has to be about more than the pride and delight that an audience feels upon recognizing the transformative goodness and nobility of these events. The movie itself has to sing. It has to make its own magic. It has to be its own magic. The acclaim for any film has to be about that film. The cultural significance or the emotional baggage or the grand triumph of the events portrayed, however stirringly, are not enough. If Selma ends up winning, fine. I’ll understand; everyone will. But other qualities in other films should be weighed and given their just due. To be fair, I mean.

Just as a 5 pm screening of Paul Schrader‘s Dying of the Light was ending, the stories about Bill Cosby‘s latest and 15th accuser, Janice Dickinson, began to break. Three or four hours later the news broke about Netflix cancelling their Cosby special, which would have aired on 11.28. How many more women are going to come forward now? Are you telling me that NBC is going to go ahead with that new Cosby series in the wake of all this? Get outta here. The 77 year-old Cosby, who brought all this upon himself by his own hand (and particularly his own you-know-whatty), is about as finished as a once-high-riding, top-of-the-mountain superstar can be. 11.19, 10:45 am Pacific Update: It’s being reported that NBC has pulled the plug on Cosby’s planned series.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down with the kindly and serene Abderrahmane Sissako, director and co-writer of the well-crafted Timbuktu, the Mauritanian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Timbuktu was respectfully received at Cannes last May, but it’s one of the grimmest films I’ve ever sat through. Grim. My personal idea of misery is no wifi or sitting through an awful film or being dropped by a beautiful girlfriend who was magnificent in the sack. Misery in Sissako’s film, which is set in the Timbuktu region of Mali, a mostly barren African nation that few people in this country have heard of and wouldn’t give a shit about if they have, is much more hard-core. Forget about it. Shot in Mauritania, it’s about the 2012 occupation of Timbuktu by Ansar Dine, a relentlessly purist, wacked-out Islamic militia dedicated to enforcing Sharia law and order. The film was partly inspired by a public stoning of an unmarried couple in Aguelhok, in eastern Mali, but that’s just another pebble in the pond. I think we all know about the pitch-black souls of nutter Islamics by now.

Timbuktu director and co-writer Abderrahmane Sissako, translator Myriam Despujoulets during our interview at West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center.

Timbuktu is in no way boring. Sissako knows how to tell a riveting tale and keep you engrossed, but good God. This is a film about dirt-poor hardscrabble types living in various states of misery and deprivation, powerless, at times terrified and always subject to rigid judgments and brutalities. An awful way to live. If there’s an uglier, crueler, more inhumane, more rancid belief system or culture than Islamic fundamentalism, I’d like to know what it is. The earth needs to be absolutely cleansed of this scourge. Welcome, western audiences, to life in one of the worst ideological desert prison camps ever created. Watching Timbuktu, for me, was like squatting on dirt at the bottom to a mine shaft, accompanied only by the flame of a single candle and surrounded by snakes and rats and bugs. Call Orkin, the extermination specialists.

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Yesterday AMC Theatres began offering an unlimited Interstellar ticket to AMC Stubs members for those wishing to immerse themselves in Chris Nolan‘s masterpiece as many times as they wish. The prices vary from $19.99 to $34.99, depending on the location. (Presumably the lower end of the pricing scale applies to Interstellar fans who live in outlying regions.) Some 330 AMC theaters are participating in the promotion. I’ve seen Interstellar twice, but that’s all for now. I’ll be seeing it one more time when the Bluray comes out so I can watch it with subtitles. How many HE readers have seen Interstellar two or three times, and how many find AMC’s unlimited viewing offer attractive?