Month: January 2016

Open Road doubled down on its Spotlight campaign last night with a big, spirited, over-crowded party at Bouchon, the elegant eatery in downtown Beverly Hills. All the blogaroonies plus the usual Academy member suspects plus Spotlight director Tom McCarthy, stars Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton, Sharon Stone, producer Mark Johnson, Open Road honcho Tom Ortenberg, Overnight star Taylor Schilling (who’s taller than I realized), Spotlight costar Jamie Sheridan, Bo Derek, Clifton Collins, Jr. Ketel One Vodka co-sponsored. I realized that the crush of bodies was getting to me when I took refuge in an area between the kitchen and the bathrooms and said to myself “aaah, this is good.” Photos by Imeh Akpanudosen of Getty Images.

Spotlight costar Mark Ruffalo, director-cowriter Tom McCarthy at last night’s Bouchon soireee.

McCarthy, Michael Keaton.

Read more

A different version of this was posted a little over three years ago: I like to think of my life as a Dino-type thing. I am living a kind of Steve Winwood “high” life without the big money, or life as defined by a series of highs rather than one of “stability” in the old-fashioned, white-picket-sense of that term (which my parents invested in). I live in order to feel high and spread highs of a certain kind. My own and those of like-minded souls, of course, but usually born of little half-sparks in my head that are built outwards. Another way to put it is that I live in order to celebrate dream states that have obviously been made, at root, to fuel the fires of commerce, which is where the vaguely dirty aspect comes in. Except I love revenue. Who doesn’t?

All I know is that writing this column sure beats working. Which is what Robert Mitchum often said about acting. And yet I’m a 15-hour-per-day slave to it. The downside of following those half-sparks, of course, have been occasional Twitter pushbacks of an acutely ugly and ignorant cast. I understand that the “constant fighting with people who disagree and are looking to spread poison by tearing you down any which way” will never go away. I have to accept that — what else can I do? But Twitter has fundamentally changed my view of humans, and not for the better. Five years ago the term “kneejerk p.c. fascists” wasn’t in my vocabulary, but it sure as hell is now.

Read more

…and knowing what low-information U.S. voters are like, it’s hard for me to dismiss the logic of this ad.

The central device of Stephen King‘s “11.22.63” (published in November 2011) is a time portal found in the pantry of a diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Initially discovered and explored by Al, the diner’s ailing owner, the portal sends the traveler each and every time back to September 9, 1958, at precisely 11:58 a.m. No matter how long someone stays in the past — hours, days, weeks, years — only two minutes elapse in 2011. The plot is primarily about school teacher Jake Epping going back to 1963 to prevent the slaying of John F. Kennedy, but a lot of other history-altering things happen before that. The basic theme of King’s novel is that you can’t really fuck with time because time will fuck you right back in order to balance things out.

In this trailer for Hulu’s forthcoming eight-part adaptation of King’s novel, it is revealed that the time portal takes Epping (James Franco) back to 1960 and not ’58. Which seems odd. Why shave off two years from King’s original scheme? To what end? Oh, and those vintage cars? Too clean, too spotless, too showroomy. This always happens in period films. The owners spiff them up and the filmmakers forget to dirty them up, to make them look used and worn and exposed to the usual elements. This always looks wrong. Car washes weren’t ubiquitous back then and people didn’t have money to burn.

Comment: A guy showing up in a small Maine town in 1960 with a goatee would be regarded as some kind of commie pinko beatnik weirdo. But British actor Daniel Webber, the guy who plays Lee Oswald, looks just right.

A special debut of the first two episodes, directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland), will happen a couple of weeks hence at the Sundance Film Festival. 11.22.63 will start streaming on Monday, 2.15 — President’s Day.

Read more

Gun-toting, cape-wearing Memphis yokel (Michael Shannon) asks for and is given some face time with President Richard Nixon (Kevin Spacey). The only problem with Liza Johnson‘s Elvis & Nixon, which began shooting a year ago in Louisiana, is that the material seems more suited to a 25-minute short than a feature. The karate, handgun and Dr. Pepper bits are good. (The script is by Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal and Cary Elwes.) All along I’ve had my doubts about Shannon’s casting as The King, but I like what I see here. We knew from the get-go that Spacey would ace Nixon. But why isn’t this 4.15 release, a joint venture between Bleecker Street and Amazon, booked into Sundance?

Posted on 2.5.15: Elvis Presley launched his legendary career in part as a symbol of rock n’ roll rebelliousness against the sexual repression and conformity of the mid-Eisenhower era. But by 1970 Presley had evolved into a conservative hypocrite who wanted to do something to stop the scourge of non-prescription drug use (i.e, pot and hallucinogens) among the nation’s youth. On 12.21.70 Presley paid a visit to President Richard Nixon at the White House. Presley had hand-written Nixon a six-page letter requesting a visit and suggesting that he be made a “Federal Agent-at-Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Six and a half years later Presley died of prescription drug abuse and an overdose of peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches.

Read more

Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant opened wide yesterday. Hinterland reactions are requested. How fresh and immersive does it seem after all the big-city circulations and ricochets of the last few weeks? And what about that warm bear breath fogging up Emmanuel Lubezski‘s lens? Who saw it in IMAX, or at least on a really big screen with a grade-A sound system?

From David Thomson‘s Film Comment review, posted on 12.1.16: “The Revenant is a profound adventure, a nearly unique portrait of the extravagant desolation in nature and an absorbing argument over the fate of mankind and its big movies. I wonder how it will do, and how a holiday public will respond to it with a jubilant Star Wars in the next theater. The film may fail in some box-office ways, but that could qualify it in a tradition that includes Intolerance, Greed, Bringing Up Baby, Citizen Kane, The Night of the Hunter, Two-Lane Blacktop, One from the Heart and Heaven’s Gate.

“Photography easily cheats nature: it dwells on the light of magic hours; it clings to the sentiments embodied in landscape, horizon and sky; it is agape at spectacle, scenery and the magnificence of wilderness. From the paintings of the German-born Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) to the films of Terrence Malick, this mood can co-opt wildness as an idealistic American state of mind. But that ecstatic framing hardly feels the cold, the cruelty, or the isolation, let alone the terror of being hunted by other creatures.

“If you want a quick lesson in commitment to external and human nature, just notice how in the bogus, gloating 70mm stupor of in-jokes in The Hateful Eight, its winter prairie is a groomed back lot where a stagecoach (as perky as a Wells Fargo ad) comes bouncing along in a conveniently snow-plowed track.

Read more

Around noon I drove all the way out to Woodland Hills (Topanga exit on the 101, south for half a mile) to buy this nicely hand-crafted shoe rack for only $25. Built around ’55 or so. Semi-heavy and solid, not too varnished or foo-fooey — a shoe rack that Jack London or Ernest Hemingway would have approved of. I couldn’t fit it entirely into the car so I tied the hatchback down with some thick string and kept my distance from the cops, as they could have busted me because the hatchback was bobbing up and down a bit. It fit right into the bedroom decor. Very satisfying.

As mentioned on 12.30, German all-region Blurays of The Big Sleep and Key Largo will pop in early February, although I’m told the release might be delayed just a bit. (I’m expecting my package between 2.15 and 2.19.) I’ve also learned that Warner Bros. Home Video will release domestic Blurays of both titles sometime during the first quarter, or before 3.31. A posting for Warner Archives’ Key Largo Bluray appeared this afternoon.

If this is the actual cover art for the forthcoming German Blurays of The Big Sleep and Key Largo, I’m appalled.

Jacket cover of Warner Archive’s Key Largo Bluray, as posted this afternoon on Facebook.

A 1.6.06 N.Y. Times Fashion & Style piece by Unbuttoned columnist Vanessa Friedman highlighted a striking Louis Vuitton women’s wear ad featuring three female models and 17 year-old Jaden Smith, all of them wearing skirts and blouses and whatnot. Feel Jaden’s fluidity! The once-promising actor son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith had a nascent career that crested with The Karate Kid (’10), only to be killed in 2013 by M. Night Shyamalan‘s After Earth. Now he’s an avant garde, non-binary fashionista.

Friedman writes that “it is possible to see this as sheer sensationalism…there has been speculation that Mr. Smith, who has been wearing various bits of women’s clothes for a while now — a white skirt and black tux to a prom; a flowered T-shirt dress to Coachella and making statements such as ‘I like wearing super drapey things so I can feel as though I’m a super hero’ (in an interview in GQ) — has done it mostly as a canny play for attention, or to promote the idea of himself as a new thought leader (‘Went To TopShop To Buy Some Girl Clothes, I Mean ‘Clothes,’’ he Instagrammed last year).”

Nicolas Ghesquiere, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton, has adopted a more admiring if not solemn opinion of Jaden’s fashion sense. Smith “represents a generation that has assimilated the codes of true freedom, one that is free of manifestoes and questions about gender,” Mr. Ghesquière told Friedman. “Wearing a skirt comes as naturally to him as it would to a woman who, long ago, granted herself permission to wear a man’s trench or a tuxedo.”

Friedman: “Translation: This is the natural end stage of the fashion revolution started in the 1960s and ’70s when women took off their aprons and girdles and appropriated jeans. This posits millennials as the real heirs to the Me Generation, though it’s questionable whether many of Mr. Smith’s 2.4 million Instagram followers are also actual Vuitton customers.

“It’s not unisex. It’s not gender neutral or gender bending or gender free or any of the other expressions we’ve been using to describe the current clothes-fluid moment, because it is, in fact, entirely gendered, at least going by traditional definitions of men’s versus women’s clothing. The clothes and their conceptual allegiance have not changed at all. The person wearing them has.”

Read more

Netflix content honcho Ted Sarandos is quite the hotshot these days. Three years ago Time magazine listed him as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world so you have to figure he’s even more formidable today. Last night I attended what was described in the invite as a “VIP celebration at the private residence of Ted Sarandos,” which is located in swanky Hancock Park. My invite said the gathering would begin at 8:30 pm, but when I got there at 8:40 pm it was obvious the event had begun well before. The party was packed to the gills and quite noisy — you could hear the wallah-wallah of the crowd from a good distance away. Perplexed, I asked a security guy and he told me the party had actually begun at 7:30 pm. And I saw red. You don’t want to be part of the first wave of soldiers attacking Omaha Beach, but being categorized as a second-waver by Netflix publicists is a highly specific and pointed social insult. On top of which the party wasn’t happening “at the private residence of Ted Sarandos” but in a big impersonal plastic party tent outside his home. And it was mostly packed with nobodies. (Okay, I saw Beasts of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga but that was it.) My instant reaction was “good God, lemme outta here.” If you’re going to invite people to a party at your home, have the party inside your home or not at all. And don’t invite the world — keep it smallish and select. I bolted after four or five minutes. As I was walking down the driveway David Poland (obviously another second waver) was coming in. I was so pissed that I only managed only a scowl and a muffled “hey.” Poland: “Hello, Jeffrey…goodbye, Jeffrey.”