Month: April 2016

Once a month I sleep in on Sundays. Last night it was around midnight, which is early for me, until just after 6 am. Nothing unusual, always up early. I read for 100 minutes and then returned to the cave for three and a half. It feels kind of wonderful to get nine. I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, although I expect Arianna Huffington would approve.

The early wakeup may have…no, probably was due to having had a dream that included Joel Edgerton. He only appeared in a fragment, but he was definitely wearing that same awful three-piece blue suit he wore in Black Mass. The dream happened back east somewhere, in the cold. No leaves. It was a sign, I suspect, that I’m fretting too much about Edgerton’s performance in Jeff Nichols‘ Loving, which will screen during next month’s Cannes Film Festival.

I’ve been more specifically concerned about the combination of Edgerton’s Southern accent (which I dread like Banquo’s ghost) compounded with the bassy echo sound problems in the Grand Lumiere, which last year made it all but impossible to understand Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth and Denis Villeneuve‘s Sicario.

Last night around 7:30 pm I experienced something close to a spiritual revelation, except it arrived in purely visual terms. I’d bought a pair of Warby Parker prescription reading glasses two or three months ago, but they were too good in that regard as they made everything outside of whatever I was reading look blurry. So yesterday I bought a pair of tinted bifocals. Almost as an afterthought the guys at Lens Crafters had tested my long-distance vision, which I’d never had a problem with. Everything five or 100 feet or a block or two away had always looked clear enough, I thought. Then I put these babies on last night…heavens! Everything outside my immediate reading realm was suddenly razor sharp. It was like I was suddenly living in a Lucy in the Sky realm in which everything outside of my 18-inch sphere was crystal clear and focused with an Alexa 65 lens by Emmanuel Lubezski. In fact my distance vision had softened a bit over the years but I just hadn’t noticed it. Quite a change.

For the last 40 years posters for Woody Allen movies have mainly looked…well, fine but minimal. The idea, it always seemed, was to agree with or certainly not challenge the generally austere, less-is-more Allen aesthetic, which has most consistently manifested in the bare-bones, white-on-black style of his opening credit sequences. Simple, direct, tasteful…but never much in the way of flair or stylistic pizazz. This has all changed with the cool new poster for Allen’s Cafe Society (Amazon, 8.12.16). You have to assume this idea came from the advertising guys working for Amazon, the film’s distributor. I’m not saying previous Allen posters were dull or listless or lacking in merit, but none of them looked as sexy-cool as this newbie. Nothing, at least, is leaping out from my memory.

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During last night’s Tribeca Film Festival q & a with John Oliver, Tom Hanks said flat-out what anyone will tell you but which stars like Hanks are often loath to admit. He said that he “peaked in the ’90s.” Gold star for candor.

Except I partially disagree. I would say that Hanks peaked from Splash (’84) to Road to Perdition (’02), or a run of 18 years. Okay, 14 years if you feel that Hanks’ career really took off with Big in ’88. And yes, I would say that since Perdition luck was not really been with him except in the case of Charlie Wilson’s War (’07) and Captain Phillips (’13).

Once your cards have gone cold, it’s awfully hard to heat them up again. There’s nothing more humiliating than for a man who once held mountains in the palm of his hands having to push his own cart around the supermarket as he buys his own groceries and then, insult to injury, has to wait in line at the checkout counter. Then again he’s stinking rich.

Hanks’ finest early-career-building films: Splash (’84), Dragnet (’87), Big (’88), Punchline (’88).

Hanks’ amazing six-year, nothing-but-pure-gold period: A League of Their Own (’92), Sleepless in Seattle (’93), Philadelphia (’93), Forrest Gump (’94), Apollo 13 (’95), Toy Story (’95), Saving Private Ryan (’98), You’ve Got Mail (’98), Toy Story 2 (’99).

Hanks’ first big-time stinker — a movie I’ll hate with every fibre of my being for the rest of my life: The Green Mile (’99).

Commendable:  Cast Away (’00)

Hanks’ last, best serious role after his ’90s kissed-by-God period: Road to Perdition (’02).

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“Being a regular-ass white guy of English, French and Welsh heritage, something in me wants to push back against this shite. White-shaming has been going on since the late ’60s (the 1972 National Lampoon article ‘Our White Heritage’ was one of the first expressions of this self-loathing). I guess I’m feeling vaguely annoyed with this general attitude out there that there’s something vaguely wrong with being a white guy. I’m fairly liberal to a degree. I want everybody to be free. But I also reserve the right to be white, see white-people movies, eat white, put mayonnaise on sandwiches, dress white, party white, fuck white, talk white and indulge in everything else that flows from my natural whiteness if I fucking feel like it.” — from “The Whiteness, or Why The Old ‘Birds of a Feather’ Rationale Doesn’t Cut It Any More and Why Mixed-Culture Characters Are Better Than European Anglo-Germanic Types,” posted on 5.28.15.

Since the beginning of 2010, or the start of the 21st Century’s second decade, roughly 54 films that are really, really good have opened commercially. Add to these HE’s best of the first decade, which number 42, and you have 96 films since the dawn of this century. If you haven’t seen all of these you need to seriously recalculate and make an effort to do so:

Best of 2016 (So Far): Manchester By The Sea, A Bigger Splash, The Witch, Eye in the Sky, The Confirmation, The Invitation. (6)

Best of 2015: Spotlight, The Revenant; Mad Max: Fury Road; Beasts of No Nation; Love & Mercy, Son of Saul; Brooklyn; Carol, Everest, Ant-Man; The Big Short. (10)

Best of 2014: Birdman, Citizen Four, Leviathan, Gone Girl, Boyhood, Locke, Wild Tales. (7)

Best of 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, Dallas Buyers Club, Before Midnight, The Past, Frances Ha (8).

Best of 2012: Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Barbara, The Grey, Moonrise Kingdom (7).

Best of 2011 (ditto): A Separation, Moneyball, Drive, Contagion, X-Men: First Class, Attack the Block (6).

Best of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Black Swan, Inside Job, Let Me In, A Prophet, Animal Kingdom, Rabbit Hole, The Tillman Story, Winter’s Bone (10).

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I’m not trying to be picky but Gen. Robert E. Lee and President Abraham Lincoln are too young and pretty here. A more realistic, harder-core version of this skit would have used middle-aged, 50something actors with creased faces to play the Civil War-era leaders.  

About a month ago Warner Bros. announced that Ben Affleck‘s Live By Night, a 1930s gangster drama based on a Dennis Lahane novel, would open on 10.20.17, or roughly two years after it began shooting. (Sasha Stone and I visited the set during last October’s Savannah Film Festival.) I figured they might need a little time for extra shooting or whatever, and that they needed to accommodate Affleck’s super-busy schedule. So it seems odd that they’re having a research screening on Tuesday, 4.26, in Pasadena. Odd that it’s showable already (Affleck wrapped principal last February) and a little odd that they’re test-screening a film not slated to open for another 18 months. But whatever.

Yesterday afternoon I visited a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at the corner of Beverly Blvd. and Robertson Blvd. and ordered my usual no-frills black coffee. I sat two tables away from a couple of 20something women — Gabourey Sidibe‘s sister and a tallish brunette thoroughbred — who weren’t chatting as much as aggressively networking each other like crazy. They were trying to out-intensify each other. Everything they said had to be astonishing or funny or outrageous or an OMG. They were, like, so getting off on each other’s wit and energy.

After a while I started getting a fucking headache. I tried not listening, believe me, but it found it exhausting to even attempt this.

If I’d been rude enough I would’ve walked over and said to them, “Excuse me, guys….I know this is none of my business so please forgive me in advance, but did you know that sometimes you can just say this or that to each other without, you know, the intent or expectation of your words being anything special? You don’t have to be funny or outrageous or OMG…you can just settle into your souls and say what you really think, and it’s okay if it’s slightly boring or whatever. You can turn it down and it’ll all be good….I promise.

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Yesterday afternoon Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson posted some Oscar-nomination spitball calls. I’m afraid I need to clear the air about some of her Best Picture picks. I’ll just go down the list title by title:

Thompson Frontrunner #1: Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation (Fox Searchlight). HE comment: It’s a frontrunner, yes, but it probably won’t last over the long run, especially if Denzel Washington‘s Fences turns out to be aces. Any and all films with African-American subjects and/or made by African-Americans are in a very favorable position this year with many Academy members anxious to prove they’re not OscarSoWhiteys, but here’s a fact: The Birth of a Nation is an Ed Zwick film.

Thompson Frontrunner #2: Rebecca Miller‘s Maggie’s Plan (Sony Pictures Classics, 5.20). HE comment: Not a snowball’s chance in hell. At best a Spirit/Gothams award contender. Here’s my 4.1.16 review.

Thompson Contenders:

Robert Zemeckis‘ Allied (Paramount) / HE comment: WWII romance between assassins, or something like that. Maybe but if you ask me Zemeckis’ instincts these days are too schmaltzy. He was a provocateur in the late ’70s, and a somewhat edgy guy when he made Cast Away. But Polar Express and The Walk convinced me that he’s become kind of a smoothie who smoothes things over.

Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Sony) / HE comment: Maybe.

Woody Allen‘s Cafe Society (Amazon, Lionsgate) / HE comment: Two days ago I would’ve said Woody’s in a decline mode and that he generally doesn’t do Oscar films anyway, but that trailer is encouraging. Still, you have to wonder why Thierry Fremaux gave it the opening-night slot for next month’s Cannes Film Festival.

Denzel Washington‘s Fences (Paramount) / HE comment: Almost certainly.

Gary Ross‘s The Free State of Jones (STX) / HE comment: Nope. Ross doesn’t make Oscar-level films, period. The McConannaissance is on a downturn.

Derek Cianfrance‘s The Light Between Oceans (DreamWorks/Disney) / HE comment: Nope.

Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester by the Sea (Amazon, Roadside Attractions) / HE comment: A sad, devastating knockout. Academy nominations for Best Picture and Casey Affleck-as-Best Actor all but assured.

Morten Tyldum‘s Passengers (Sony) / HE comment: Nominations for VFX and production designed all but assured. Ethical issue will interfere with Best Picture talk — mark my words.

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A couple of days ago I read a close-to-final draft of Jon Spaihts‘ Passengers, a sci-fi drama which has been directed by Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence in the lead roles. Sony/Columbia will release it on 12.21.16. The presumption in some quarters (certainly on Anne Thompson’s part) is that it’ll qualify as an awards-level thing. And maybe it will.

Here’s the Wiki synopsis: “A spaceship, Starship Avalon, on its 120-year voyage to a distant colony planet known as the Homestead Colony and transporting 5,259 people, has a malfunction in two of its sleep chambers. As a result, two hibernation pods open prematurely and the two people that awoke are stranded on the spaceship, still 90 years from their destination.”

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Yesterday that pithy Woody Allen line from Cafe Society — “Life is a comedy written by a sadistic comedy writer” — was ricocheting all over the blogosphere and twitterverse. It hit particularly close to home with me because it alluded to what I believe is the central sickening irony in romantic relationships, which is that the only way to last with someone is to not be 100%, head-over-heels, cunnilingus-two-or-three-times-per-day in love with them.

If you’re happily, contentedly, earnestly in love as far as it goes — if you’re settled, semi-complacent and comfortable with an attractive lady of good character but not down on your knees in love with her, things might work out.

But if the wonder and rapture of going to bed with this or that object of erotic deliverance is a prevailing current in your relationship, sooner or later she’s going to start assessing your feelings as neurotic and identifying them as a weakness, and she’ll soon after develop a distaste for it and gradually cut you loose. So the likelihood of getting dropped or jettisoned is unfortunately quite high.

You can’t be crazy in love — you have to be confidently, peacefully, sincerely, half-solemnly and moderately in love. Then and only then can things work out…maybe.

Posted on 10.28.13 after a breakup: “One of life’s darker ironies is that the relationships that I know could last forever are always the ones that I can walk away from without too much concern because I’m less smitten than she is.

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