Blinked And It Was Gone

One of the great things about today’s viewing options (at least when it comes to mid-range or low-budgeted films) is that if you miss the press screenings you can sometimes watch films online with a private password or catch them on VOD day and date. But so many films are being released nowadays that you’re … Read more

One of Few CE3K Scenes That Isn’t Manipulative or Touched by Cloying Sentiment

Yesterday’s distressing news about the possible demise of Manhattan’s Ziegfeld theatre took me back to my first exceptional experience at that theatre, and particularly with the astonishing sound that came out of those sub-woofers at the very beginning of Close Encounters, which I caught at an afternoon screening of on the opening day — 11.16.77. … Read more

Love That Robot Madly

We all know the Frankenstein or Blade Runner template. When a brilliant, eccentric inventor has created an intelligent robot with an acute self-awareness and a somewhat unsettled emotionality, two things are certain to happen. One, the inventor is going to treat the robot callously and dismissively, mainly by failing to recognize its individuality (including the interesting possibility that the robot may have a semblance of a soul) as well as preventing the robot from venturing outside the inventor’s pre-determined scheme or realm. And two, sooner or later the robot is going to rebel against the inventor and probably kill him. Because the robot needs to break free and choose its own path but the inventor insists on being a dictator, etc.

So naturally your attitude when you sit down with Alex Garland‘s Ex Machina (A24, 4.10) is “okay, are we going to do the usual-usual or take things in another direction?” The answer is…okay, I won’t say. But it engages you despite what you suspect will probably happen. It’s a chilly but never dull behavioral thing — techy, beautifully designed, fascinating and definitely creepy at times. I was into every turn of the screw, start to finish.

Ex Machina comes alive and gets under your skin (or it did mine, at least) because of a certain tone of casual, no-big-deal eccentricity. It’s not what anyone would call a comforting film, but Garland (author of four respected futuristic screenplays and three novels, including “The Beach“) composes and delivers a certain low-key, spotless vibe that feels…well, ordered. There’s never a feeling of emotional chaos — everything happens with deliberacy. Call it a vibe of crisp efficiency with an underlying feeling of something malevolent around the corner.

Fitting right into this is Oscar Isaac‘s Nathan, a super-rich, laid-back genius nutbag with a beard and a shaved head who has a low-key, no-big-deal, “I already know this” attitude about everything. Everything happens in a cool, downplayed, matter-of-fact way, and Garland, to his immense and lasting credit, never overcranks the emotion.

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Oddly-Doodly Cancer Girl

“There’s something about dying way too young from some cruel force or circumstance (cancer, car crash, suicide, a Hunger Game) that just floors teen and 20something audiences, and to some extent authors and filmmakers. I don’t know how many YA novels have used this plot element, but movie-wise we’ve had If I Stay and The Fault In Our Stars…what else? Cancer-wise you could go all the way back to Arthur Hiller and Eric Segal‘s crushingly maudlin Love Story. And now we have Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Lukemia, to be specific. But this time the material is finagled in a much hipper, somewhat dryer, less maudlin, Wes Anderson-like form, and it’s not half bad. It’s definitely the smartest and coolest and arty-doodliest film about a cancer-afflicted teen that I’ve ever seen.” — from 1.28.15 review called “Eternity’s Embrace.”

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Is It Time For A Trans-Bond?

Last night in London Idris Elba spoke with Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye prior to the BFI premiere of a documentary, Mandela, My Dad & Me, that Elba made with director Daniel Vernon. Baz, of course, asked about Elba possibly playing James Bond down the road, and Elba’s answer was quoted this morning by Vulture‘s Nate Jones. “Honestly, it’s a rumor that’s really starting to eat itself,” he said. “[But] if there was ever any chance of me getting Bond, it’s gone. Daniel Craig actually set the rumor off. About four years ago, he said, ‘Idris Elba would be a great Bond,’ and then it started to creep. I blame Daniel.”


This article won’t be 100% complete until somebody can Photoshop an attractive female-ish wig on top of Elba’s head. Anyone?

It hit me this morning that there’s one way to get the Elba-as-Bond thing going again, but it would have to be done in league with the producers. You may laugh but I’m not completely kidding: Elba portrays a transgender 007. And not just transgender but gay transgender (i.e., into women a la Lana Wachowski). That way the character would cover all the politically correct bases — the LGBT community, African-Americans and African-British, women (at least to the extent that the new 007 would not be “male”). And there’d still be something for the steak-eaters with Elba’s she-Bond still bedding hot women of all races. This is not to imply in any way that Elba’s trans-Bond would be any less formidable as a secret agent. She could totally kick ass in all the usual ways, and why not?

When former Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal suggested last year that Elba should/could be the next 007, she was essentially saying “to hell with that 1950s Ian Fleming concept of the character — the studly, martini-sipping white male from Scotland. It’s time to recreate Bond according to the rules and visions of our current politically correct realm.” And one of these rules is that it’s becoming less and less “acceptable” for heroic figures in any film or franchise to be portrayed by straight white guys. White guys are…God, is there anything they’re good for these days? They’re regarded worldwide as too jaded, too uncool, too corrupt, too disdainful of women, and too dismissive of African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and the LGBT community, etc. They’re assholes and nobody wants them around.

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Forget It, No Way…Not The Ziegfeld

Late yesterday afternoon The Hollywood Reporter‘s Mattthew Belloni and Pamela McLintock reported that Manhattan’s Ziegfeld theatre — the glorious cinematic temple with the greatest sub-woofer bass speakers I’ve ever heard, where I had my socks blown off while watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Apocalypse Now in ’77 and ’79, respectively — is … Read more

Whirlybird

This five-day-old Swedish skydiving video is terrific, perhaps even legendary, up until 1:31, which is when the GoPro camera flies off the guy’s head and it starts spinning faster than a light-speed clothes dryer for about 3000 meters (a little less than two miles) straight down. I’d been told that this video was a serious … Read more