Day: April 9, 2016

That Gilligan’s Island story about three guys getting capsized by a wave, swimming to an uninhabited Micronesia island, being stranded for three days and then getting rescued after starting a fire and spelling HELP on the beach with palm fronds? It’s no HBO movie. If they’d been missing a month or two, okay, but 72 hours is chicken feed in the annals of men stranded on the open seas. How long was Tom Hanks all alone with “Wilson” in Cast Away? After their boat went down they swam “all night” to make it to the island, fine, but this was no one’s idea of a Herculean endeavor as they were wearing life preservers. JFK and his PT 109 Navy crew swam farther without life preservers and some of them had been burned or otherwise injured. Lt. William Bligh and 18 non-mutinous Bounty crew members managed a 3600-mile voyage in a 23-foot launch. And did anyone notice the size of one of the stranded sailors? Are we sure they were capsized by a rogue wave?

Shipwrecked sumo wrestler — pic taken by rescue pilot who spotted HELP spelled out on the beach with palm fronds.

“The Family Fang [is] a sharply drawn portrait of a dysfunctional, tortured artistic family that speaks affectingly to the troubled legacy that all parents inevitably bequeath to their children. Following his raucous and foul-mouthed Bad Words, director-star Jason Bateman shows marked progress and deepening maturity as a filmmaker with this cleverly structured but never arch or mechanical adaptation of Kevin Wilson’s 2011 comic novel, with Bateman and Nicole Kidman nicely inhabiting one of the more tender and persuasive brother-sister relationships in recent movie memory.” — from Justin Chang‘s Toronto Film Festival review, posted 9.14.15.

“You think we damaged you? You have kids, you’re gonna damage them. That’s what parents do. So what?”

Chris Walken‘s line is obviously meant to zing and appall, but it’s not untrue. One way or another parents are going to get it wrong, screw up, fail to show enough love…you name it. When I was nine or ten I used to have furious debates with myself about who was worse, my dad or my mom. There was no doubt in my mind that they were abusers who lacked insight and kindness, and were beyond uncool. Guess what? I still think that, but having made mistakes of my own as a dad and having gradually come to appreciate my parents as people and personalities above and beyond their parental shortcomings, I forgave them a long time ago. Sooner or later every kid has to stand up and say, “Okay, that happened but here I am now, the captain of my own ship.”

ESPN’s seven-hour O.J.: Made in America was screened over an entire day at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, but there was no way to swing that. A follow-up press screening or two between now and the mid-June air dates would be good. On Saturday, 6.11 ESPN Films will debut the first episode on ABC. The opener will then re-air it on ESPN along with four subsequent segments starting on Tuesday, 6.14.

Variety‘s Brian Lowry, filed from Park Cty on 1.22.16: “O.J.: Made in America takes its title to heart, adding rich contextual layers to the case, including a dive into the history of Los Angeles race relations that played such a central role in his acquittal.

“Writer-director Ezra Edelman has been provided an enormous canvas, one that allows him to cut back and forth between the football star’s seemingly charmed life and the world that surrounded him.

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There was some kind of junket press screening last night for Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: Civil War (Marvel/Disney, 5.6). To go by Twitter, the general response has been ecstatic. I would have loved to attend, being an ardent Russo-brothers fan and all, but this was for people doing interviews. Pic has a running time of 2 hours and 27 minutes, apparently the longest Marvel flick to date.

For the time being Kino Lorber is keeping mum about their forthcoming Bluray of Carl Reiner‘s Where’s Poppa (’70), which will pop on 7.19. I haven’t seen this bizarre, occasionally hilarious Jewish-guilt comedy in eons, and I know it hasn’t had any kind of upgrade since it appeared as an MGM/UA DVD 14 years ago. As it’s out of print, a new copy of the DVD will set you back $60 so the cheaper Bluray will make sense.

Nervy for its time, Where’s Poppa? is coarse and extreme and way beyond the current limits of politically acceptable humor.

Robert Klane‘s screenplay is about a 30ish Manhattan-residing attorney (George Segal) who wants to put his highly eccentric, bordering-on-senile mother (Ruth Gordon) in an old-folks home but feels hamstrung by a pledge made to his dying dad that he’d never do that. His married brother Sid (a non-toupee’d Ron Leibman) made the same pledge and guilt-trips Segal along these lines. The issue is forced when Segal falls in love with a nurse (Trish Van Devere) whom he hires to take care of Gordon.

There’s a running gag about a trio of black Central Park muggers (one of them played by SNL‘s Garrett Morris) accosting Leibman and stealing his clothes and later forcing him into taking part in a half-rape. I remember one of the muggers saying to Leibman, “Lookie, man…everybody’s gotta make a buck, right? So how’re we supposed to make a buck when you walk across Central Park but you don’t bring any bread?”

I also seem to recall Van Devere telling Segal about some guy she’d gone out with who “went ca-ca” on the bed.

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The Guardian‘s David Smith has posted a 4.9 piece about how residents of Chappaqua, the leafy, well-tended hamlet 45 minutes north of New York City, feel about Bill and Hillary Clinton, who moved there after leaving the White House in January 2000.

Excerpt: “Stan Amberg, 81, a retired lawyer, recalled sitting with his coffee and newspaper at Lange’s Little Store, a deli where the Clintons often take breakfast away in brown paper bags, and where the former President introduced himself one day.

“He came over and said, ‘My name’s Bill, mind if have coffee with you?’ He’s very approachable and he loves kids. He gets down on his knees and talks eye to eye with them. She can’t do that. She has this issue with engaging. I don’t know if it’s an inherent problem with her personality.'”

Smith re-posts a recent Hillary quote: “I am not a natural politician, in case you haven’t noticed, like my husband or President Obama.”

I don’t know (or care to know) the address of the Clinton abode but you know what’s odd? Consult Google Maps and you’ll see a highlighted designation that says U.S. Secret Services along with an address (480 Bedford Road, Chappaqua, NY 10514). You’d think the Secret Service guys who shadow the Clintons would want to keep things on the down low, no?

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