Year: 2014

Two and a half years ago I posted a sincere piece called “Solve Almost Everything.” It basically said that if you cut loose the hinterland crazies many of the nation’s problems would vanish in one fell swoop. And now** comes a book by a right-wing guy, Douglas Mackinnon, called “The Secessionist States of America: The Blueprint for Creating a Traditional Values Country…Now,” and it more or less says the same thing. Secede from the multicultural U.S. of A., form a “traditional values” nation called Reagan (screw minorities, gays, women…hooray for the Ozzie and Harriet ’50s) and yaddah yaddah. If someone like me can agree with a guy like Mackinnon, there’s hope for this country yet.

Here’s that 3.27.12 piece again:

“Sociopathic corporate malfeasance and gangster banks are easily the biggest evils and the worst predators around. But the second- and third-worst factors are (a) the butt-plug teabaggers who think that slapping constraints on corporations is un-American and (b) cultural hee-haws who allow themselves to be played by corporate rightwing tricksters into voting against their economic interests by persuading them that a Presidential election is about supporting heartland values (i.e., no abortion or gay marriage, women in the kitchen).

“Get rid of the rightwing heartland element and you’d have a lot less support for corporate evils and a political climate that would be a whole lot healthier and more progressive.

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For all but ten of The Vikings‘ 116 minutes, Kirk Douglas‘s Einar character is all macho bluster and rage and strutting around, but in one six-second passage (3:14 to 3:20) he suddenly becomes a tragic figure — a man who lets his guard down over a hint of repressed fraternal love, and then pays the price. It’s rare when a mostly villainous character is allowed to suddenly show another side, let alone effectively, at the end of Act Three, but it happened this one time. Or am I forgetting something? Charismatic bad guy, charismatic bad guy, charismatic bad guy, charismatic bad guy…oh, he’s not so bad.

The GOP’s Tea Party wave will last exactly two years. In the 2016 election Republicans will be defending 26 seats while Democrats will face re-election in just 10 races. The only thing that scares me is that as the 2016 election approaches voters might start thinking “how does continuing the Clinton dynasty help my situation exactly? Why can’t some 21st Century person run for President? Someone who was born in the ’60s or ’70s who really gets it?” In short, Rand Paul. It would be a whole different story if Elizabeth Warren were to run (please!), but I accept that Clinton will probably be nominated and most likely win and in so doing will probably bring in a lot of Democrats on her coattails, so it’s just a matter now of huddling down and toughing it out and waiting for this awful two-year period to be up.

“Gentlemen of the court, there are times when I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race and this is one such occasion.” — Kirk Douglas‘s Colonel Dax character in Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory.

Yesterday older, mostly white middle-class voters, understandably enraged about the generally healthy economy, the lowest unemployment rate in many years, a successful implementation of Obamacare, no terrorist attacks over the last six years and the fact that two people with the Ebola virus flew into this country and infected three health-care workers, installed a Republican majority in the Senate and a big Republican majority in the House. And today a major, must-see Chris Nolan film about the ruination and abandonment of our planet is opening nationwide. It seems to me that there’s a certain ironic linkage in that, and most likely a general disconnect among the natives.

Tens of thousands of Americans will be seeing Interstellar today and over the next five days and beyond, including those who voted for all of those highly principled Republicans who’ll be sworn in next January. The rural, mostly-white yokels who voted against President Barack Obama‘s Stalinist health-care system, his African heritage and his utter failure to stop the scourge of Ebola may be touched by Nolan’s film, and they may nod in recognition as they consider a possible future in which earth has become all but uninhabitable. But it’s probably a safe bet that very few of them will say as they walk out of the theatre in Bumblefuck, Kansas or wherever the fuck they live, “Yeah, the earth is partly destroyed now and our grandchildren and great-grandchilden will be really screwed if we don’t do something…hey, who did we just vote for?”

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We all know exactly what will happen in Neill Blomkamp‘s Chappie, which is about a “kidnapped robot who ends up being raised in a dysfunctional family.” And who learns about life on the planet earth the way a dog would. And who learns to talk and feel and relate and all that good stuff. And who gets abused and taken advantage of by bad guys. Blomkamp buddy Sharlto Copley collects a paycheck for voicing Chappie and doing the motion-capture performing. Costarring Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel, Sigourney Weaver. Columbia will release Chappie on 3.6.15.

Some professional journalists play it cool when chatting with big-name actors, and some don’t. Hotel interviews, party chit-chat…all in a day’s work. You have to be a little pushy at parties, and you can’t hang back too much, like I sometimes do. If you want a word or two you have to nudge your way in to their immediate realm and wait, oh, five minutes or sometimes longer for a brief opening and then wham, you pounce like a cheetah. But once you have their ear you have to be mild-mannered. Don’t stare a hole and for God’s sake don’t laugh too hard or do the old David Poland alpha-chuckle.

Celebrities are used to people beaming at them like idiots and laughing at every half-assed observation or mildly amusing witticism they might share. I sometimes gaze at journalists as they chat with movie stars, and it’s pathetic when they start in with the goo-goo eyes. I’ll sometimes telepathically say to them, “If you only knew how how anxious and desperate you look…wow.”

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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.