Month: June 2016

Story #1: I wasn’t there but a friend ran into Muhammad Ali at a New Jersey Turnpike gas-and-food stop in the winter of ’68. This of course was during Ali’s exile years (i.e., after the boxing commissars had taken away his heavyweight championship title after he’d refused to serve in the military due to religious objections over fighting in the Vietnam War). He was travelling in a large tour bus, and a fair amount of ice and sludge had apparently accumulated on the sides, and Ali had borrowed a water hose from the gas-station guy and was hosing it down and scraping the ice off with one of those long-handled scrapers. It was freezing and windy, but my friend had to shake his hand — “Hey, champ!” Ali stopped hosing, smiled, offered his hand and a kind word. Nothing special but “a moment.”

Story #2: In the fall of ’96 I was moderating a Woodland Hills AMC film class called “Hot-Shot Movies”, and one of my picks was Leon Gast‘s When We Were Kings, the brilliant doc about the 1974 Ali vs Forman “Rumble in the Jungle” championship bout which won the Oscar the following year for Best Feature-Length Documentary. I was introducing the film when a middle-aged, red-haired woman raised her hand and said, “Why have you chosen this film? Why do we have to sit here and watch it?” Translation: “I bought a ticket to your film series for doses of classy escapism, but not to see a film about that black Muslim blowhard who disgraced himself by refusing to fight in Vietnam.” I chose it, I said, because the film is full of spirit and love and celebration, and because it ends in glorious triumph. And because it may be the best sports-related doc I’ve ever seen.

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“Every kid I knew in high school had a Scarface poster….people like bad guys.”

The Great Paris Flood of 2016 is bad for tourism but quite the spectacle. And yet it’s nothing compared to the flood of 1910 when the Seine rose 28 and 1/2 feet (8.62 meters) above its normal level. The Seine levels are currently dropping. They had been at 6 meters (just shy of 20 feet) above normal. No tour boats, lots of bankside gawking, tons of mud and debris in certain areas. But the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay have not been flooded, and life will go on.

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“American’s real religion is capitalism, and like every religion it needs a devil. And that devil has always been socialism. Republicans always say that if you let in a little socialism it’ll spread out of control, but actually it’s the opposite. It’s capitalism that we’ve let spread out of control. It’s eaten our democracy. It’s eating our middle class. It’s eaten our health care system, our prison system, our news media. It’s even eaten our food system so thoroughly that a lot of our food should no longer be eaten.” — Bill Maher “New Rules” schpiel during last night’s (6.3) Real Time, which HBO Now never offers until a day or two has passed.”

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9:30 pm Pacific: Muhammad Ali has died. God rest his soul. He will always be a hero and a beacon to me. Earlier: There have been odd reports in recent years that former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was near death, only to prove untrue. Now Radar Online is reporting that the Parkinsons-afflicted Ali, 74, is grappling with respiratory problems in the Phoenix area and that the situation may be more grave. I love Muhammad Ali if he makes it through, and I love him if he doesn’t. He’s the most inspiring athlete of my life, and never more so than in that legendary 1974 championship bout with George Foreman — the Rumble in the Jungle.

The headline is a misquote. Here’s what Matt Damon actually said in part to the MIT graduating class of 2016: “Let me say this to the bankers who brought you the biggest heist in history: It was theft and you knew it. It was fraud and you knew it. And you know what else? We know that you knew it. And yeah, okay, you sort of got away with it. You got that house in the Hamptons that other people paid for…as their own mortgages went underwater. So you might have their money, but you don’t have our respect. Just so you know, when we pass you on the street and look you in the eye…that’s what we’re thinking. I don’t know if justice is coming for you in this life or the next. But if justice does come for you in this life, her name will be Elizabeth Warren.” I added the Hillary thing.

If you’re an X-Men mutant, you’re a combatant. Gender is not an issue, but your combat skills definitely are. Your special powers define your prowess in the combat arena. It follows that in any X-Men movie mutants are going to be assaulted, punched, kicked, strangled, body-slammed. As far as I’m aware it’s okay to portray said violence involving male mutants in ads for X-Men: Apocalypse. But it’s not okay to show female mutants (particularly Jennifer Lawrence‘s Mystique) involved in any kind of violent altercation, especially if they’re losing. Because this image would be perceived as “casual violence against women.” Yesterday Fox marketing apologized to The Hollywood Reporter for the content of a billboard showing Oscar Isaac’s Apocalypse choking Lawrence’s Mystique: “In our enthusiasm to show the villainy of the character Apocalypse we didn’t immediately recognize the upsetting connotation of this image in print form. Once we realized how insensitive it was, we quickly took steps to remove those materials. We apologize for our actions and would never condone violence against women.”

Richard Wagner‘s “Ride of the Valkyries” theme was used as prelude music during a Donald Trump rally Wednesday night in San Jose. (Go to the 29-minute mark on the video.) The general interpretation is that Trump was trying to summon echoes of a Hitler rally, as der Fuhrer was a huge Wagner fan. I’m no Trump apologist, but “Ride of the Valkyries” is not a Hitler thing — it’s an Apocalypse Now thing. It signifies force, aggression, blowing the enemy to Kingdom Come. It’s still an ugly anthem, of course, especially in the context of a political rally, but for the last 37 years “Valkyries” has belonged more to Francis Coppola than Hitler or even Wagner himself.

Nasal-voiced Beach Boys singer Mike Love has long been a conservative Republican. And a bit of a shit in personal terms. Back in the mid ’60s he did what he could to dissuade Brian Wilson from musical experimentation instead of sticking to the Beach Boys formula. Director Bill Pohlad didn’t portray Love as one of the three bad guys in Love & Mercy (along with Murray Wilson and Dr. Eugene Landy) for nothing. Love is some kind of green Republican (he supports environmental causes) with an investment in Transcendental Meditation, but he nonetheless supported John McCain in ’08 and Mitt Romney in ’12. And now, of course, he’s with Donald Trump.

I’m sorry but nothing has changed my initial impression about the L.A. Film Festival being a no-buzz flatliner. When an event of any artistic or cultural importance is about to happen my insect antennae can always sense the hoo-hah vibes. Right now I’m feeling only their absence. That said I might catch an LA Film Festival feature tonight — Amber Tamblyn‘s Paint It Black. Not at the Culver City Arclight but at LACMA. If all goes well, I mean. I haven’t picked up the pass or anything. It all feels like such a chore.

Boilerplate descriptions of Paint It Black make it sound like another grief recovery drama. Which naturally scares me. (The only grief recovery film I’ve really liked so far has been Manchester By The Sea, in part because it’s not about “recovery.”) The notes call it “startlingly visceral.” Directed and co-written by Tamblyn, it costars Janet McTeer, Alia Shawkat, Alfred Molina, Emily Rios and Rhys Wakefield.

I’ve been a fan of Tamblyn’s acting and poetry-writing for a decade or so. I was floored by her performance in a summer 2014 Geffen Playhouse production of Neil Labute‘s Reasons To Be Pretty. Here’s a piece of my review:

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I caught Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow‘s De Palma (A24, 6.10) last night on Rodeo Drive, and pretty much loved every second of it. So much so that I intend to see it a second time at the Aero on Sunday night. It put me into film-maven heaven. It’s basically MCU footage of Brian De Palma sitting and talking about every film he’s ever made (process, personalities, politics, technique) and regaling the viewer with whatever anecdotes come to mind. No personal revelations or intimate details are offered — the film is strictly about nuts and bolts and personalities.

My only gripe is that De Palma moves too briskly and is over way too soon. (I would have preferred a running time of 120 or even 160 minutes rather than 107.) I’ve shared plenty of complaints about De Palma’s films over the years, especially the ones made after Snake Eyes, but they were all magically set aside as I watched the doc. I just sat there and kind of melted. The film is so much fun if you know the terrain.

I was touched by De Palma’s honest recountings of his ups and downs. He admits to his failures (he really doesn’t care for The Fury), is proud of his successes and quite specific about why this or that film didn’t work out. But he doesn’t address the constant criticism about so many women being disrobed and taunted and stabbed and sliced in his films — he only says that women are much better at playing victims than men.

De Palma‘s story is my own in a sense, the story of a film-worshipping life that’s been going strong for 40-plus years. I started out as a huge fan of the guy in the ’70s, and then an in-and-outer in the ’80s, and then I began to fall away in the late ’90s.

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