Month: March 2015

M. Night Shyamalan was totally on top between The Sixth Sense and Signs, but things got bumpy for him with th one-two-three of The Village, Lady in the Water and The Happening. (Although I’ll always be a fan of Mark Wahlberg‘s “talking to the plant” scene, not to mention Andy Samberg‘s talking to animals routine on SNL…hilarious then and now.) Shyamalan has certainly been on a downswirl for the last six years, and now he’s got Wayward Pines, a summer series that feels kind of Children of the Corn-y or Wicker Man-ish with a little Twin Peaks undercurrent. Will M. Night ever again be “the guy” he was between ’99 and ’02? Or was that it? I’ll always respect the way he took his time building up to the payoffs in Signs, and that he wasn’t afraid to use silence from time to time.

Matt Dillon: “How do I get outta here?” Terrence Howard: “Well, I’m gettin’ outta here in June. Headin’ back to New York to play Lucious on Season Two of Empire, which is my main bread-and-butter these days. A chopper comes out and flies me back to Vancouver. But you? Sorry, man but you ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Read more

I’ve never been head-over-heels in love with the TCM Classic Film Festival, but I’ve always liked watching restorations of classic films (DCPs and not the dreaded 35mm) on the big screen. I’ve been attending since 2011, or the festival’s second year, and I’ve always been press-credentialed. This year, however, I didn’t request the press pass soon enough and the Ginsberg-Libby p.r. guys are telling me they can’t bend the rules to help me out. If I want to see something I guess I can just show up and buy a ticket. Not worth fretting over but a bit of a pain.

I have two good excuses for dropping the ball. One is that I was assuming the festival would happen in either mid-April (last year it ran from 4.10 through 4.13) or late April (in 2013, or the year of the 1.37:1 Shane, it ran from 4.25 thru 4.28). This year it’s happening from 3.26 through 3.29 — a full month earlier than the 2013 fest and two weeks earlier than last year’s. On top of which Chelsea Barredo, the gracious and compassionate Ginsberg-Libby publicist who took care of me in ’13 and ’14, is no longer with GL and her replacement didn’t send me a friendly reminder or nudge about the earlier dates. She didn’t get in touch at all about anything.

Read more

Expressing disgust or nausea at the culture of Twitter rage-heads out there isn’t the half of it. Roving mobs of howling, hyperventilating scream queens…scolds, fools, goons, brutes, low-lifes. Hair-trigger responses, short-attention-spans, no nuance, saliva missiles, spray pissings.

“A few spotters will shriek at this or that provocateur like Donald Sutherland shrieking at Veronica Cartwright at the end of Phil Kaufman‘s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The mob turns and joins in the shrieking and runs over and beats the hell out of the “bad person” for some politically incorrect “error”, and then leaves him or her bleeding on the sidewalk as they move on, looking for the next transgressor. This is the medieval cyber country that we live in.

“Bill Maher told Sean Penn last Friday that he’s getting tired of “politically correct assholes” lighting up every time someone says something “wrong” or outside the realm of the usual bromides and sentimental assurances. Penn called it the dark side of social media where people just like to hear the sound of their own voice. Maher suggested that these people have “never done anything good in their life and they want to feel like they’re the good people” by punishing anyone who says anything even mildly provocative. Maher: “They want to turn this country into a place I don’t want to live in.”

Does anyone remember Universal mentioning that Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken was basically a film founded upon Christian theology and pretty much tailor-made for the Christian flock? Or critics pointing this out? Yeah, me neither. It was presented and received as a rugged, humanist war film about survival, and one that contained award-worthy direction, acting, cinematography (i.e, Roger Deakins). I really don’t remember many critics aside from myself bringing up the “suffering is next to Godliness” angle. My first reaction, posted on 12.1, stated that Unbroken was “Christian torture porn” and that it portrays “a good kind of suffering that feels vaguely Christian and conservative on some level…something tells me the Orange County crowd will find a place in their hearts.” Two days ago I got an email from Matthew Faraci‘s Faith-Driven Entertainment announcing that Universal Home Entertainment is including a special “Legacy of Faith” bonus disc available as part of the Unbroken DVD that pops on 3.24. Describing Jolie’s film as “one of only two faith films nominated for an Academy Award this year,” Faraci states that Unbroken “has received overwhelming support from faith leaders and audiences alike. The ‘Legacy of Faith’ bonus disc features 90 minutes of rich content from Louie Zamperini, Billy Graham, Greg Laurie and others.”

I would say that Michael Fassbender‘s resemblance to Steve Jobs is pretty close to nil. He looks as much like Jobs as Dustin Hoffman looked like Robert Redford when they were costarring in All The President’s Men. His casting as the late Apple genius is analogous to….oh, Matthew McConaughey playing the title role in Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln but minus the beard and the stovepipe hat? Director Danny Boyle, currently filming the Aaron Sorkin-authored, Scott Rudin-produced drama about Jobs that will open on October 9th, has obviously decided against giving Fassy a Jobs-like nose or floppy Jobs-like hair. Boyle had a Jobs look-alike when Christian Bale was on the train, but that flew out the window when Bale abandoned the role. I can roll with Fassbender/Jobs. I was down with Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan so why not? Forget the physical resemblance (which is superficial anyway) and focus on who Jobs was deep down, and particularly how he thought and dreamt and achieved. Steve Jobs costars Seth Rogen, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg and Katherine Waterston.

It’s generally understood that Universal won’t stop making Fast & Furious films until they stop being hits so the Furious 7 slogan is obviously insincere. Unless, of course, it refers to the fact that Paul Walker is no longer available. Naaah, that couldn’t be it.

Focus Features will distribute Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette, a history of the women’s suffrage movement from (I gather) roughly ’03, which is when Emmeline Pankhurst (played by Meryl Streep) founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, to the start of World War I in 1917. The drama, which has the aura of another Selma (and that doesn’t imply excitement on my part), will open sometime in the fall (a likely Venice/Telluride debut) and be part of the award-season chatter, I’m sure. When peaceful protests for women’s right to vote proved fruitless, certain WSU activists “became known for physical confrontations (smashed windows, assaulting police officers) and later arson,” says the Wiki page. The story of Carey Mulligan‘s Maud, a working-class woman involved in the militancy, “is as gripping and visceral as any thriller, [and] also heartbreaking and inspirational,” says the boilerplate description. Question: Why is Garvon standing in the second row and off to the left? The movie is her baby. She should be sitting dead-center between Streep and Mulligan.

(l. to. r.): Sufragette director Sarah Gavron, Helen Pankhurst (great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst), Laura Pankhurst (great-great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst), Alison Owen (producer); front row (L-R): Abi Morgan (screenwriter), Anne-Marie Duff (“Violette Cambridge”), Meryl Streep (“Emmeline Pankhurst”), Carey Mulligan (“Maud”), Helena Bonham Carter (“Edith New”), Faye Ward (producer).

Last Thursday I wearily predicted that yet another round of Amy Schumer-related bashing would kick in with the approach of last Sunday’s SXSW “work in progress” screening of Trainwreck. Limited apologies, re-phrasings and walking it back to some extent haven’t mattered to dodo bird journos like Indiewire‘s Ryan Lattanzio or, it appears, to Schumer herself. She got into the groove of playing the victim who won’t let sticks and stones, etc. As I reminded last week these attacks have been going on for over a month now. The hyperbolic haters won’t quit.

Despite last-ditch ceremonial testimonials from Chuck Norris and Jon Voight that no one cares about, Israel’s hawkish prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will probably be slightly edged by Issac Herzog in today’s Israeli elections. If Herzog prevails forming a new government will be tricky. The polls close at 10 pm or 1 pm Pacific — a little more than an hour from now. Why is the audio so weak on the Norris video? How is it that Norris’s hair was light honey brown 30 years ago but has darkened as he’s gotten older? His career peaked during the Cannon action-movie run in the early to mid ’80s so who cares, right? The bottom line is that Norris has been a staunch conservative all along and the wacko right needs all the support it can get.

I haven’t seen Get Hard (Warner Bros., 3.27), the preparing-for-prison comedy starring Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart. Chances are I’ll find it over-the-top coarse and unfunny, but Drew McWeeny’s politically correct slapdown review, filed tonight from Austin, makes me want to bend over backwards to find something I can enjoy or praise about it. Remember how Mel Brooks has said over and over that Blazing Saddles could never be made today? Please share impressions of Drew’s Get Hard disapproval, and in so doing consider the possibility that a straight guy being fearful of being forced to be some bossman’s heifer for ten years in the joint is not necessarily the same thing as being homophobic.

“There is nothing [Get Hard] can imagine that is worse than gay sex,” McWeeny laments. “How in the year 2015, as we see over 30 states finally recognizing same-sex marriage, can we possibly justify this thing? How can anyone sit in the theater and just laugh and laugh and laugh as the movie repeatedly screams, ‘Oh my god, gay people are so gross!’

“This film is so relentless in how wrong it is that I eventually gave up. I just couldn’t bring myself to laugh at something that will reinforce hatred, that plays into this idea that gay sex is somehow inherently more disgusting than regular sex. When we talk about homophobia, that’s exactly what this is. Sorry, but as great as sex feels and as important as it is to every person’s happiness, stigmatizing anyone for enjoying themselves in a safe, consensual way seems morally offensive to me.

Read more

When I let my cat Zak outside in the morning, the first thing he does is hop onto the fence and raise his head slightly and just smell the world. He’s revelling in the sampling of each and every aroma swirling around, sniffing and sniffing again, everything he can taste. I was thinking this morning how delighted and fulfilled he seemed, and how maybe I should do a little more of this myself. Take a moment and sample as many scents as possible in my realm. A few minutes of olfactory meditation.

The problem with so much of Los Angeles today, of course, is that too much of it is covered in asphalt and steel and plastic and concrete shopping malls and massive apartment buildings, and it doesn’t smell like very much of anything. Talk to Robert Towne about how Los Angeles used to smell in the 1940s, or read his screenplay of The Two Jakes for some great descriptions of the fragrances that were fairly commonplace. Or talk to anyone who remembers what it smelled like from time to time in the ’70s (despite the town being covered in horrible smog back then) or the early ’80s.

Read more

I was reminded last weekend there are several kinds of laughter but really only two — the heartfelt but not over-the-top kind that you tend to hear from people of modest character or cultivation, and the excessive, low-class laughter from people whose lives are basically a series of frustrations followed by a series of emotional outbursts, and who don’t “laugh” as much as howl or shriek or cackle like jackals, and who don’t seem to know when to put a cap on it when the laughter is done.

If something is funny you laugh accordingly — honestly, softly, giddily, loudly, joyously. But if you have any class you let it go after a few seconds and don’t hang onto it like a four-year-old. You let the flow of emotional ecstasy cool down and settle into a natural horizon-line of serenity.

I was in the fruit section of the West Hollywood Pavillions last Saturday, and a woman near one of the checkout counters was laughing like a loon who’d lost all sense of control. 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds…she wouldn’t quit. She could be heard all over the store, in every section, every aisle. You could see basket-pushers stop and turn in her direction and make a slight face as if to say, “What’s wrong with that woman? Why doesn’t she turn it down a bit?”

The general rule, I’ve found, is that the louder and longer a person laughs in mixed company, the more repressed and fucked up their lives are. For loud, prolonged laughter is not about “funny” — it’s about emotional exorcism or a kind of primal scream release. It’s about people letting go of inner torment, really. The loon laughers are never aware of what’s really going on, of course. They think they’re just having a great old time.

Read more