My first reaction…no, everyone‘s first reaction to the recently revealed poster for the 2016 Telluride Film Festival was, of course, that it used the image of Mighty Joe Young, or at the very least of a very strong ape lifting the top of a mountain. So the ape is a metaphor for what or whom? Sasha Stone called the image “beautiful.” Interesting interpretation, but in what way exactly?
I cast my California Presidential Primary vote for Bernie Sanders about 80 minutes ago, or around 3:45 pm. Speaking as a loyal Democrat almost all of my life, I’ve never felt more fire in the belly for anyone than I do for Sanders or less passion than I currently feel for the braying, cackling, ultra-secretive, constantly conniving Hillary Clinton. I can’t wait to give her my half-hearted vote next November.
I’d like to talk to just one Millennial who will look me in the eye and say, “Yeah, I’m into the whole Tarzan thing…I’ve read two or three of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and I’ve seen a couple of the Johnny Weismuller films and even one with Lex Barker or Gordon Scott or one of those guys, and I also saw Greystoke and even the Bo Derek version, which I think is a total hoot…so yeah, I’m totally invested in the whole thing. So I’m dying to see this new version, especially with the great Christoph Waltz playing the bad guy.”
The Broad Green guys are asking U.S. critics to refrain from posting about Nicholas Winding-Refn‘s The Neon Demon until just prior to the 6.24 opening. I only saw it last night, but since I was at the Cannes Film Festival when it screened there on 5.19, striding around with my pink-with-yellow dot press badge and slurping the cappucino, and because I happened to miss it only because I was caught up in writing something and forgot to notice the time….I think I’m entitled to say at least a couple of things.
While it was booed to high heaven by many Cannes critics I found The Neon Demon irritating but nowhere near as unwatchable as Only God Forgives. It’s slow as molasses and under-written to a fare-thee-well, but it has a certain integrity. It holds back, holds back, holds back…and then it doesn’t really pay off. Well, it does but in an underwhelming, “is that all there is?” kind of way. And that, as Tony Montana would say, takes balls.
NWR knew exactly what he was doing when he shot and cut this thing, and it’s clear that he simply decided “fuck it…this movie is going to play the game with a very, very slow clock. Because this is who I am and where I’m at.”
The Neon Demon has what could coarsely be described as “some hot lesbo action”, a little necrophilia, a little touch of cannibalism in the night…and all in the service of a rather mundane observation about models in the fashion industry being bent out of shape by highly competitive feelings about each other.
You can call it this or that, but it’s basically a haute couture, high-concept, high-gloss Elle Fanning wank-off movie for men and women with a certain cultured urban attitude (i.e., people who live online, who know all about that thousand-yard stare, who once did drugs but no longer, and who like the feeling of concrete and asphalt under their sneakered feet). Which is to say that NWR employs a certain restraint.
Fanning (who was 17 during filming — she was born on 4.8.98) is told during a photography studio scene to take everything off, and she does…but NWR keeps the camera focused on her face and upper chest area the entire time. He’s obviously “going there” but at the same time he’s teasing, you see.
This morning Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan posted a sensible-sounding speculation piece about the ’50s fashion drama that Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis are going to make. Buchanan believes the film will be about the legendary egomaniacal fashion designer Charles James (1906-1978), who, to judge by a recent A.G. Nauta character profile, didn’t give a shit about anything or anyone except what he wanted, what he dreamt of and needed to create, and where his hunger for conquest and excitement led him.
In short, Anderson and Lewis may (I say “may”) be contemplating a revisit to the terrain of crazy Daniel Plainview, only this time with a gay Plainview doing whatever and conquering whomever (including the occasional woman) amid the metaphorical oil fields of midtown Manhattan in the 1950s. Instead of “I drink your milkshake!”, think “I swallow your horse cock while designing a dress for Babe Paley!….viff-viff-viff-viff-viff!”
Michael Bay‘s The Rock opened on 6.7.96. It was co-produced by Don Simpson (whom I used to speak to late at night while half-bombed on vodka and lemonade, and who died five months before it opened) and Jerry Bruckheimer. I’m a serious fan of some of the smart-ass action films produced or co-produced by Bruckheimer between ’94 and ’02 (Dangerous Minds, Crimson Tide, Con Air, Enemy of the State, Armageddon, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Black Hawk Down) but I’ve never been a huge Rock admirer. Yes, I’ll remember to my dying day Sean Connery‘s “your best?” line but that’s just one line, man…c’mon. All that aside, here’s a Rock tribute piece by Nick “Action Man” Clement.