Month: October 2015

Steven Spielberg‘s Bridge Of Spies (Dreamworks, 10.16) isn’t half bad — a sombre, dialogue-driven, fact-based spy tale. It’s a little Spielbergy in the second half (i.e., visual punctuations or signatures that feel a bit pushed or manipulative) but not in ways that I would call excessive or tedious. It’s aimed at the over-40 crowd as younger auds will most likely steer clear. The only obvious stand-out, Oscar-worthy attribute is Mark Rylance‘s droll supporting performance as real-life Russian spy Rudolf Abel, but it’s a keeper. Rylance owns this movie the way Jane Fonda owns Youth; he may very well snag a BSA nomination.

Regular HE readers know how I feel about Spielberg, and I’m telling you I didn’t feel as if I was suffering through this at all. Half of Spies is actually pretty good and the other half is…well, in and out but basically tolerable. From me that’s almost a rave. And I don’t think that’s proportional. This is not a “great” film but a smart and mostly satisfying one, especially if you’re getting older and fatter and have a few faded memories of the days when Russian commmies were the big baddies.

Tom Hanks, once again portraying a walking emblem for American front-porch decency and Atticus Finch-style values, is James B. Donovan, the late American attorney who defended Abel after his arrest in ’57, and then, following the 1960 Russian capture of U2 spy-plane pilot Francis Gary Powers, was asked to fly to Berlin to negotiate for Powers’ release by swapping him for Abel. Donovan also managed to free wrongly accused academic Frederic Pryor, whom the East Germans were holding on suspicion of espionage.

Spies is basically two espionage flicks, the first and best taking place in New York City in the late ’50s and the second occuring in Berlin in ’61 and early ’62. The Spielbergy stuff starts to kick in during the second half, and when it happens you’ll say to yourself “okay, here we go…time for Spielberg to remind us every so often what a great and exacting cinematic composer he can be.” What’s so great about part one (i.e., the New York chapter) is that Spielberg doesn’t insert any conspicuously brilliant flourishes at all, or at least none that demanded my attention.

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Four or five days ago Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted a Best Supporting Actress spitball piece. She settled on ten performances that are probably on the proverbial list at this stage, she feels. Here are those ten plus an extra name or two coupled with my reactions. By my sights there are four near-locks and one compelling maybe. (Open to debate, of course.) The rest feel dubious for this and that reason.

Near locks: 1. Rooney Mara in Carol — emphatically yes. Except Mara will have to figure some way around that impassive ice-maiden thing she kinda gives off, which won’t serve her well in the long run, red-carpet-wise. 2. Jane Fonda in Youth — definitely. A hot-skillet performance given by a respected, consummate pro who knows exactly how to play the game — probably the front-runner as we speak. 3. Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl — yes, okay, but mainly because her performance is being talked up as better than Eddie Redmayne‘s. 4. Elizabeth Banks in Love & Mercy — yes, definitely. 5. Rachel McAdams, Spotlight — quite possible (this is the “compelling maybe” I spoke of) as she gives a deft, assured performance in a universally admired film.

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I finally saw Freeheld on Friday night, and I didn’t find it half bad. A TV movie, okay, but heartfelt, reasonably well constructed, straightforward. But mainly I came away convinced that Michael Shannon‘s performance is the best thing about it, and that coupled with his performance as a guarded real-estate guy in 99 Homes he absolutely deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Shannon is 41 (three months older than Leonardo DiCaprio) and has been delivering honest, first-rate work since the ’90s but especially, I feel, since his breakout role as a dysfunctional but ruthless truth-teller in Revolutionary Road. In Freeheld he plays an Ocean County detective who stands by his lesbian professional partner (Julianne Moore) when she’s afflicted with cancer and has to fight local bureaucrats to pass along her pension to her partner (Ellen Page). I like and respect this guy more than his 99 Homes character, who is basically a scared, flinty prick…but with a measure of vulnerability. Shannon definitely steals that film from Andrew Garfield. And he steals Freeheld from Moore and Page. And both films are playing side by side at the Arclight now. Shannon is the guy, the master of that thing that he does. He doesn’t have to be nominated for anything — he’s fine — but he should be.

Michael Shannon as a fearful real-estate shark in 99 Homes.

As Julianne Moore’s Ocean County detective friend/platonic partner in Freeheld.

Jane Fonda would probably tell you she had a good time last night in Santa Barbara, or more precisely at the Bacara in Goleta. Dressed in a fetching forest green gown and looking like $75 million bucks, the two-time Oscar winner accepted the 10th annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film award, which was presented by Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling. The underlying agenda, of course, was to launch her Best Supporting Actress campaign for that fierce seven-minute performance as a fading actress in Paolo Sorrentino‘s Youth, which everyone went apeshit for five months ago in Cannes.

“That’s a burn-through, that scene,” I told her when I was ushered into her realm by a publicist. “You own that film completely or…you know, pretty much. That was definitely the consensus among my know-it-all journalist pals in Cannes.” Yes, a typical kiss-ass thing to say during a ballroom conversation, but it’s true — Fonda blows Michael Caine and everyone else off the screen.

Love & Mercy costar Elizabeth Banks, Diane Lane delivered lecturn praise for Fonda at the conclusion of the ceremony.

Fonda, Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling following her acceptance of 10th annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film award.

Fonda thanked me for the compliment (“It’s the truth,” I replied) but said right after that even though she and Keitel and Sorrentino shot it over and over, she wishes she could’ve done the scene once more. (She thumped my chest with her fist as she made this point — great sensation!) Her actress character is from Brooklyn, she explained, and as she gets more and more wound up during her frank-talk scene with Harvey Keitel (who plays a 70ish director) she could have slightly regressed into her Brooklyn accent. Which would’ve made it a tiny bit better, she feels.

I love this about her. All artists feel these frustrations. They’re glad that what they’ve done has tuned out reasonably well, but they mostly see the flaws, the shortcomings. Fonda said the same thing at the lecturn when she accepted the honor: “People were asking me about the clip reels…what do you feel when you see them? It’s hard…it’s hard. You just want to do them over again, make ’em better. I’m nearly 78 and I still feel like a student.”

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I’ve been Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead-ing for eight and a half months now, or since I fell for this snappy, punchy-assed doc at last January’s Sundance Film Festival. I’ve raved and raved (“Quite the cultural landmark…about something that nearly everyone understands or identifies with to some degree, which is the seed and birth of anarchic, counter-conventional, ultra-outlandish comedy, which everybody takes for granted today but was a whole new thing when it popped out of the National Lampoon in 1970″). I’ve expressed surprise that it took six long months to cut a deal for theatrical release. I sought out and interviewed columnist, author and former National Lampoon editor P.J. O’Rourke. I’ve noted the film’s popularity at film festivals over the first seven months of this year, etc. I’ve riffed on it every which way.

Doug Tirola, director of Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, at Andaz Hotel last Wednesday afternoon.

So when I was offered a chance to speak with director Doug Tirola a few days ago, I responded “but of course!” I was an hour late. (Sorry.) We met in a conference room at the Andaz in West Hollywood (i.e., the former “Riot House.”) . We batted the ball around but I was feeling a little sloppy in the brain. The vibe was easy and relaxed but something wasn’t quite clicking. Amiable ping-pong for the most part.

Then I struck a vein. I noted that with the film in circulation now would be an excellent time to make available all those years of National Lampoon issues (’70 to ’80) online. Tirola nodded, grinned. And then he half-shrugged. “So why isn’t it?,” I asked. “What’s the hold-up?” He answered that the National Lampoon operation is now headed by CEO Jerry Daigle and president Alan Donnes and that they had mainly managed to calm things down and put out fires. Whatever that means. I know that despite knowing for at least a couple of years that Tirola’s doc would almost certainly be hitting theatres sometime in’15, these guys haven’t been able to get it together enough to offer online sales of back issues.

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As one who has suffered over and over from the shrieking, ear-rupturing laughter of groups (particularly women) who’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, I heartily agree with giving such rabble the heave-ho. I’ve sat through this dozens of times in bars and cafes from coast to coast, and giggly wine laughter is gross and repulsive. I therefore applaud last month’s decision by conductors on a Napa wine train to boot 11 women who wouldn’t stop wailing and howling and having a gay old time. The fact that this was an African American group (i.e., The Sistahs on the Reading Edge Book Club) may have been a factor. It certainly shouldn’t have been, and it absolutely wouldn’t have if I’d been the conductor, I can tell you. The only consideration would have been an apparent lack of breeding. Warning #1: “Hey, girls…we’re all here to have a good time but could you maybe keep it down a little bit? People are complaining.” Warning #2: “Please, ladies of the grape…not so loud…think of the other folks on this train.” Third warning: “Ladies, if you can’t show a little consideration for your fellow wine lovers you’re outta here.” Final communication: “All right, that’s it…you guys are off at the next stop.” The issue isn’t ethnicity but manners. Uncouth is uncouth, vulgar is vulgar. The more times loud people get disciplined, the better for civilization as a whole.

A 10.3 box-office assessment piece by Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson reports what was obvious to anyone who visited a plex last night — The Martian is kicking ass while The Walk is going “whoa, whoa…what happened?…shit, I dropped my balancing pole! No, no, no, no….aaagghhhhhhh!” The Robert Zemeckis film opened on 441 IMAX screens to jumpstart word-of-mouth (it doesn’t open big-time until next Friday) but “it’ll be lucky to earn $1.75 million during its first five days,” Mendelson writes. Compare that to the $7.22 million earned by Everest during its opening IMAX engagement. Question for HE readers: what happened to the two conversational points that were supposedly driving interest in The Walk — (1) “You have to see the last 25 minutes!” and (2) “Are you man enough to handle the WTC walk sequence without throwing up?” That whole daredevil-vomiting thing seems to have flatlined. Mendelson: “I’m not sure how helpful it was for we critics to harp on how the first two acts weren’t that great while the third act was a barnburner. Audiences don’t exactly have the option of paying 1/3 of the ticket price to only watch the last act of the film.” Was that a factor, knowing that people like myself were saying that the first four-fifths of the film blows? I still say it’s essential to see The Walk for the last 25 minutes alone.

I paid a visit a couple of days ago to the construction site of Sunset LaCienega, the Las Vegas-like eight-story complex that’ll be completed sometime next year. It’s actually modest by Vegas standards but it does interrupt or diminish views of (or from) the Hollywood hills to some extent. Buildings have to get bigger and taller to accommodate an expanding population and business environment — I get that. You can bitch and moan but you can’t stop progress. But I would be more than a little unhappy if my view of the flatlands (or of the hills) was being blocked by this, or by the other big-ass Strip buildings that will surely follow. I’m not happy with this thing on general aesthetic grounds. I would prefer it, frankly, if the Strip looked like it did in the video after the jump.

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Ask any 1.85 fascist (like occasional HE commenter Pete Apruzzese) to explain the basic aspect-ratio laws and you’ll hear the same thing time and again: All non-Scope films released after the fall of 1953 should be presented at 1.85 unless otherwise specified by the director. They’ll allow for exceptions among some 1950s and early ’60s releases (various British films, United Artists releases) and/or when the director specifies 1.66 or 1.78 or whatever. But their general attitude is 1.85, 1.85 and 1.85 unless otherwise noted. Most of the 1.66 Bluray croppings are found in films from the ’50s and ’60s, but they begin to radically thin out when you move into the ’70s and beyond. (One glorious exception: the 1.66 aspect ratio of John Schlesinger‘s Sunday Bloody Sunday.) Which is why my heart soared when I noticed a 1.66 aspect ratio being used for the Criterion Bluray of James Ivory‘s A Room With A View (’86). The fact that the a.r. was approved by Ivory kills any pushback, but the thought of Apruzzese and Glenn Kenny and all the other 1.85 strict constructionists seething and gnashing their teeth is just heaven to me.

Monica Belucci, 50, will become the oldest “Bond girl” in history when her performance as Lucia Sciarra, “the widow of an assassin killed by Bond”, is seen in Sam Mendes‘ Spectre (10.26 in England, 11.6 worldwide). The below b & w photos are from Esquire. They remind us of one the most tedious aspects of the Bond franchise — i.e., the legendary no-nips policy and a general rule that erotic suggestion can’t exceed that of a typical 1956 LIFE magazine photo spread. 007 franchise producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have insisted all along that the Bond films must be family friendly. What other movies or franchises live in this kind of time-capsule realm? Isn’t the term “Bond girl” culturally synonymous with “Playboy bunny” and all those other randy terms left over from the Eisenhower-Kennedy-LBJ eras?

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I’ve been waiting a long time to see Universal Home Video’s restored Spartacus Bluray, which streets on Tuesday, 10.6. I asked earlier today if I could snag a review copy but they said they had none, so I bought a copy on Amazon. DVD Beaver‘s Gary Tooze was sent a review copy, at least, and he’s posted quite the review: “The green is in the title, the dye restored and colors are a dramatic improvement in replicating the original appearance,” he writes. “Skin tones [have] a more natural state and there is also more information in the frame on all four sides! Detail has tightened [and] there is a sense of depth…magnificent!” Plus the disc contains a nine-minute “Restoring Spartacus” essay.

Framne captures from Gary Tooze’s DVd Beaver review. The above image is from the “shiny” 50th anniversary Bluray issued in 2010; the bottom image is from the restored version.

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