Day: July 29, 2015

Six years ago I posted a short riff about “Vacation ’58,” the original John Hughes National Lampoon story (published in ’79) that became the basis of National Lampoon’s Vacation (’83). The HE piece (called “Eisenhower Days“) contained a once-valid link to the Hughes story. I used the same link last May in a riff called “Calling All Schmucks,” which referenced the first trailer for the new Vacation, which I’m reviewing tomorrow. (It’s awful.) Now dark forces have killed the original link to the Hughes story and you have to go to a recently-posted Hollywood Reporter page to read it. I wrote last May that the 1983 film (with a screenplay by a success-hungry Hughes) diluted the fuck out of his original National Lampoon short story, which was much, much darker — it really shook hands with the white-bread American angst of the pre-Kennedy ’50s and the repressed rage of the Depression and World War II-hardened dads who gave so many boomer kids such miserable childhoods.”

The basic thrust of Mark Harris‘s Grantland piece on Tom Cruise (posted as part of the site’s “Tom Cruise Week” tribute) is that his decision to become the dominant 50something energizer bunny of the action-franchise realm is unfortunate because he seems to have concurrently shut down his ambitious acting game. Harris says that Cruise’s peak acting years happened between 1988 and ’99, or the timespan in which Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia were released. That’s because Cruise’s performance in each landed a Best Actor nomination, but that’s not encompassing enough. Cruise also delivered riveting, touch-bottom performances as a selfish, resentful younger brother in Barry Levinson‘s Rain Man (’88) and as Vincent-the-compassionate-assassin in Michael Mann‘s Collateral, and he definitely pushed his limits in A Few Good Men (’92), The Firm (’93), Interview with the Vampire (’94) and Vanilla Sky (’01). And how can Harris write a here-and-now assessment of Cruise and not even mention Alex Gibney‘s Scientology doc and the portrayal of Cruise as an enabler/promoter of an unmistakably venal, predatory and vicious-minded organization? How can Harris ignore that and just say “ah, well, too bad Cruise isn’t interested in the big acting roles any more”?

If Michael Bay‘s 13 Hours: The Secret Solders of Benghazi (Paramount, 1.15.16) is anything like Mitchell Zuckoff’s book of (almost) the same name, Hillary Clinton will have nothing to fear. The book is a workmanlike tribute to the private militia guys who defended Benghazi’s U.S. Embassy and CIA station as best they could during the 9.11.12 attack in Libya. The film is obviously minor or it wouldn’t be opening in mid January, but it might be respectable. The attack killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, foreign service guy Sean Smith and U.S. citizens Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods. A story of duty, bravery and manning up when the bad guys are at the gate.

If Thomas McCarthy‘s Spotlight (Open Road, 11.6) is only playing the Venice and Toronto film festivals, fine. But as I noted yesterday, the fact that it’s been categorized by TIFF organizers as a “Canadian premiere” indicates a Telluride showing directly after Venice. Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schrieber, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery, Brian D’Arcy James and — wait for it — Billy Crudup. The guy who used to play soulful heartthrobs, now he plays chilly creeps.

Wouldn’t it be great if Walter James Palmer, the dentist from Eden Prairie, Minnesota who paid $55K to track and kill Cecil the Lion, could be stripped naked, forced to drop a tab of ecstasy, set out on the plains of Kenya and be hunted down by animal conservationists? Not with bullets, mind, but with paintballs. Just so he could savor the experience. And then they could tie him to a tree and paint his dick blue. Something like that. This guy is disgusting. Boycott his ass. Warning: Anyone trying to steer the comment thread into any kind of comparison to abortion and dead fetuses will be instantly deep-sixed, and his/her comments will be deleted.

It’s been well telegraphed that Glenn Kenny, who edited and was on good bromancey terms with the late David Foster Wallace, is less than pleased with the latter’s portrayal in James Ponsoldt‘s The End of the Tour (A24, 1.31). He’s particularly unhappy with Jason Segel‘s hulking behemoth impersonation along with David Margulies‘ script, which is based on David Lipsky‘s “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.” Kenny has now vented his complaints in detail in a 7.29 Guardian piece.

What do they boil down to? Wallace was who he was and the guy presented by Ponsoldt, Segel and Margulies is a lot lumpier and gloomier and kind of suicide-obsessed with his clothing a half-size too small.

Kenny obviously knows what he knows but honestly? I found myself wondering if the ghost of Abraham Lincoln had similar reservations about Henry Fonda‘s performance in John Ford‘s Young Mr. Lincoln. How did the ghost of F. Scott Fitzgerald feel about Gregory Peck‘s portrayal of him in Beloved Infidel?

Kenny beef #1: “I found The End of the Tour risible. [This] very conventional independent film left me so angry I actually had trouble sleeping the night I saw it. I lay awake obsessing over the best phrase that could sum up Jason Segel’s performance as Wallace. I came up with ‘ghoulish self-aggrandisement‘. For me, it recalls a line from a Captain Beefheart song: ‘I think of those people that ride on my bones.'” (HE insert: I think it’s fair to say that for most people the phrase “riding my bones” refers to some hulking behemoth putting the high hard one to a presumably willing recipient.)

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Yesterday EW‘s Mary Sollosi posted a clip of British supermodel and Paper Towns star Cara Delevingne enduring a hellish interview with three peppy but dismissive anchor-reporters from Good Day Sacramento — Marianne McClary, Ken Rudulph and Mark S. Allen (i.e., the show’s resident film maven and BFCA member who attends all the movie junkets). It was a scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers — Delivingne was the human and the Sacramento threesome were the pod people.

Things started off awkwardly with McClary addressing Delevingne as “Carla.” Then McClary asked if Delevingne had read the John Green book that the film is based on. (Translation: “You don’t seem like the deep-actress type. Are you just whirling along and grabbing the money and saying to hell with the art?”) Then Rudulph asked if Delevingne’s super-busy schedule was a problem, indicating an underlying “slow down, girl!” opinion. Then Allen told her flat-out that she wasn’t acting peppy enough. “I saw you in London talking a couple of weeks ago on TV and you seemed a lot more excited about it than you do right now,” Allen remarked. “Are you just exhausted?”

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