Month: June 2015

“Something important is happening, and in the long run it will matter a great deal,” N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman posted on 6.15. “Ever since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Democrats have been on the ideological defensive. Even when they won elections they seemed afraid to endorse clearly progressive positions, eager to demonstrate their centrism by supporting policies like cuts to Social Security that their base hated. But that era appears to be over. The Democratic Party is becoming more assertive about its traditional values. Why?

“Part of the answer is that Democrats, despite defeats in midterm elections, believe — rightly or wrongly — that the political wind is at their backs. Growing ethnic diversity is producing what should be a more favorable electorate; growing tolerance is turning social issues, once a source of Republican strength, into a Democratic advantage instead. Reagan was elected by a nation in which half the public still disapproved of interracial marriage; Hillary Clinton is running to lead a nation in which 60 percent support same-sex marriage.

Read more

From a 5.30.15 post about Marlon Brando‘s death scene in Edward Dmytryk‘s The Young Lions, which I watched today on a Twilight Time Bluray: “[Brando’s] Christian Diestl is in a forest not far from a recently liberated concentration camp, sick of war and bashing his rifle against a tree in a mad rage. Then he runs down a hillside and right into Dean Martin‘s Michael Whiteacre and Montgomery Clift‘s Noah Ackerman. Ignoring the fact that Diestl is unarmed, Whiteacre fires several bullets and Diestl tumbles down the hill, landing head first in a shallow stream.

“The camera goes in tight, showing that Brando’s mouth and nose are submerged. A series of rapidly-popping air bubbles begin hitting the surface — pup-pup-pup-pup-pup-pup-pup — and then slower, slower and slower still. And then — this is the mad genius of Brando — two or three seconds after they’ve stopped altogether, a final tiny bubble pops through. There’s something about this that devastates all to hell.”

Read more

I was underwhelmed by Oren Moverman and Richard Gere‘s Time Out of Mind when I saw it nine months ago in Toronto. The truth is that I was fighting an impulse to nod out. I didn’t succumb but it was touch-and-go for a while. Raw homeless-guy realism, honestly acted, all-but-absent narrative, meandering, non-judgmental….phhffft. “An eavesdropping observational camera style and a generalized sense of compassion prove no substitute for what’s missing from Time Out of Mind — any sense of drama. This longtime pet project of producer-actor Richard Gere and, eventually, for writer-director Oren Moverman, displays a certain kind of dedication for evoking the life of the homeless in New York City, but with Gere’s character so lacking in memory and mental clarity, the film provides very little for an audience to latch on to. Tedium quickly sets in and is only sporadically relieved in this labor of love that simply doesn’t reward even the patient attention of sympathetic viewers.” — from Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter review, filed on 9.7.14.

Donald Trump believes Obamacare, which even its former opponents have grudgingly acknowledged is working out or is even a modest success, is a disaster because the deductibles are so high. No offense to Billy Friedkin but speaking-style-wise he and Trump sound alike. My hair is very fine so I use Crew Fiber to give it a little body — I’m astonished that Trump never seems to wise up to this simple remedy. “Our enemy is getting stronger and stronger by the day, and we are getting weaker” — an almost exact copy of Martin Sheen‘s line from Apocalypse Now about “every moment I stay in this hotel room I get weaker and every moment Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger.”

It’s hard enough to find a vital, crackling ’70s movie in the cinematic cultural bloodstream these days, but when a ’70s film is regarded by those who saw it enos ago as merely sturdy, sufficient, good enough and (the most damning of faint praisings) professionally made, it is typically forgotten. Hence Don Siegel‘s The Black Windmill (’74), a better-than-decent hardball kidnapping drama with Michael Caine, Donald Plesance, Janet Suzman and John Vernon. I don’t know if it’s been on the tube but purchasing-wise all you can get these days is a Universal Cinema Classics DVD. No Bluray and no streaming. I’ve only the foggiest memories, but I definitely remember The Black Windmill being an 8 or an 8.5.

“I’ve always identified as black,” she said. Rachel Dolezal made a decision years ago to “wear” a black identity, and then she began tanning up and curling her hair, etc. She’s a very calm, very intelligent, positive-minded sociopath. I’ve always “identified” as a gay, Jewish, subterranean samurai motorcycle-riding free man in Paris. But I’ve never pretended to be anything more than what I am, which is just another contrarian straight white WASP from the New Jersey and Connecticut suburbs. Be yourself. Be true to your blood. There’s no other way.

Read more

Coen brothers movies…of course! The cure that I need right now for the “Jurassic World is completely wonderful because it made so much money” virus. Cheers to editor Steven Benedict (whose Citizen Kane/Wolf of Wall Street echo video is also worth pondering).  Question: “Is the cat dead…or not dead?” Answer: The cat is everywhere. The cat is the virus in the blood. The cat is…you tell me. Maybe I’m the cat. Maybe Steven Spielberg is the cat. Maybe, like Don Barzini in The Godfather, he’s been the cat all along.

Back from New York, unpacking in my West Hollywood home, just shy of 1 am. But a word before before collapsing. It would obviously be derelict of news orgs not to have reported that last weekend Jurassic World managed the highest opening-weekend tally in box-office history — $524.1 million, of which $208.8 million was spent in North America alone. This financial windfall for Universal Pictures and Thomas Tull‘s Legendary Pictures was reported by most news orgs as the emotional equivalent of the surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945. They also failed to mention a very, very minor detail in the story, which is that Jurassic World might be the dumbest blockbuster ever made in the history of motion pictures. Any fair-minded assessment of what happened last weekend would have to acknowledge that the audiences who made Jurassic World the all-time box-office champ (for now) are to a great extent responsible for the tone of stupidity in big-studio escapist flicks. 98% of the reports didn’t even toss this out in passing, not even anecdotally. They were too busy jumping for joy with their white cheerleader sweaters on, going “wheeeee!’ and hugging each other and calling their parents, etc.

Read more

I’m no fan of Mitt Romney, but I have to admit he delivered a good dig at Hillary Clinton this morning on Morning Joe, which I was watching live. “When you see her on a stage or when she comes into a room full of people, she’s smiling with her mouth, but her eyes are saying, you know, ‘Where’s my latte?’,” Romney said. I don’t want to see Hillary lose but on the other hand I don’t like her very much and I have to say that I laughed when I heard this. Why? Because it contains a grain of truth. And trust me — this will persist on Twitter. It’s an instant meme.

“Far more at ease in Tehran than England, Gertude Lowthian Bell (Nicole Kidman) allows herself to be politely seduced by embassy secretary Henry Cadogan (James Franco, looking tired but charming, and acting almost entirely with his eyebrows). Their courtship is the stuff of Merchant Ivory movies, complete with scenic marriage proposal and an old Macedonian coin split in two for the lovers to remember one another by, though Bell’s father refuses to give his blessing, spelling tragedy for the couple.

“At the next stop on her travels, she encounters a young T.E. Lawrence (a consternated-looking Robert Pattinson, who, like Franco, elicited laughs in Berlin when he first appeared onscreen). Though she clearly makes a strong impression on every man she meets, he surprises her by asking, ‘Gertie, will you please not marry me?’

Read more

The sad but oddly touching saga of Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell is a movie waiting to happen. I’m imagining a serious drama starring Melissa McCarthy in a potentially riveting dramatic performance (definitely Oscar bait) but also, conceivably, a Werner Herzog documentary. Or maybe it’s an HBO movie — I need to think this through. But I’d be hugely surprised if eagle-eyed producers weren’t all over this story right now. Mitchell is probably looking at jail time but if she writes an honest book she could see the rights to someone like Scott Rudin or Cassian Elwes or Mike Deluca. She could have a chance at some happiness — a second act — when she gets out. Seriously.

(l.) Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell; (r.) Melissa McCarthy in Tammy.

Call her reckless or foolish or even pathetic, but Mitchell, the pudgy prison employee who’s confessed to not only helping a pair of killers escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility but had also planned to drive their getaway car and wanted the escapees to zotz her husband Lyle, was looking for love, intimacy, a profound bond. She was obviously desperately unhappy and at least tried to do something to brighten her world.

Joyce wasn’t getting what she wanted from Lyle — that’s for sure — and before she came to her senses and decided against enlisting the escapees to kill her husband she was carried away by what she undoubtedly believed was profound love as well as great sex with the “well-endowed” Richard Matt, one of the escapees. She may have also had relations with co-escapee David Sweat, according to what I’ve read/heard.

The bottom line is that Mitchell was miserable and desperate for the real thing. Okay, she may not be the sharpest tool or the brightest bulb but your heart goes out to her.

If McCarthy doesn’t want to play Joyce (but how could she not? Joyce is basically Tammy in a dramatic downbeat mode) Amy Schumer would be an excellent second choice. Schumer’s sarcastic. fatalistic woe-is-me, low-self-esteem thing fits right into the Mitchell profile. I’m serious — any woman in a loveless, joy-less, all-but-spiritually-dead marriage (what would that be, 30% or 40% of all marriages in this country?) will relate. Especially if the right actors play Matt and Sweat. I’m thinking maybe Mark Ruffalo as Matt. It’ll be a great part, and you know that actors will be attracted on general principle to playing a guy with a large appendage. I’m just being honest.

Read more