Month: June 2016

In this American Masters clip from a 2006 segment called “Marilyn: Still Life,” Gloria Steinem talks about the doomed Marilyn Monroe and how she might have been saved by the women’s movement if she’d somehow lasted until the late ’60s or better yet the early ’70s. I can’t find the URL but I wrote something similar two or three years ago, about how Monroe might have felt less trapped or certainly more understood if she’d managed to stay afloat until the arrival of ’60s freak culture and everything that followed. Or maybe not. Monroe was so brutally abused by her mentally-unstable mother that she might never have found stability under any condition.

But living with feelings of vulnerability and putting yourself through contortions to live up to expectations of the opposite gender has never been a women-only thing. I went through a lot of this in my 20s and especially my 30s — job anxiety, creative failure, crash-and-burn love affairs, being found wanting for fickle or substantial reasons, heartbreak and anger over the constant ‘no, no, no, no, no’ of things — and a lot of it was truly hellish. The Steinem narrative is that women of her generation (reared in the ’40s and’50s, early adulthood in the ’60s and ’70s) had it much tougher than guys of that era. Maybe they did but life is never a picnic for anyone. It haunts from all sides, cradle to grave.

In yet another N.Y. Times piece about Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters (Sony/Columbia, 7.15) and the sight-unseen loathing by hardore, mostly-male fanboys, Dave Itzkoff asks the four leads — Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones — to analyze the adversity.

But before I quote from it, it’s important to reiterate that while I took an instant dislike to this film based on the trailers, I’ve never said to myself “the original over-worshipped 1984 film shouldn’t be remade as a girl thing.” My reaction from the get-go has been (1) “the trailers have suggested there isn’t anything the least bit funny in this film” and (2) “I’m getting a sense that it’s CG-driven if not CG-dominated, and there’s nothing less funny than being carpet-bombed by expensive CG.”

Itzkoff: Was there a point at which you noticed that because of the film’s premise and because the leads were female, some subset of your audience was not happy?

McCarthy: You mean the crazy people?

Jones: You mean the people that don’t know that it’s a movie?

Wells interjection: In other words the proper attitude in Jones’ view should be “it’s just a movie so sit back and chill.” There are some who look at moviegoing this way, as a check-your-brain diversion. And there are many, of course, who go to movies for a kind of theme-park experience…CG, CG and more CG. But there are others who would never say movies are “just” anything. They regard theatres as churches and movies as experiences that might, if the moviegoer is lucky, deliver intensity, enhancement and even joy, even if the film in question is apparently some dumb flick about fighting ghosts. They regard movies as experiences that can potentially cleanse your soul (at least temporarily), that can deliver the kind of emotional devastation that rarely seems to happen in real life, that might even take the viewer on some kind of transcendent voyage. It would appear that Jones is not one of these people, but the Ghostbusters haters, trust me, are made of almost nothing but moviegoers like this.

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In response to the BBC ballot that people are responding to all over, here are my top…I can’t. I can’t choose ten.  Here are my top 42 (but in no particular order): Manchester By The Sea, Leviathan, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Zero Dark Thirty, A Separation, Moneyball, The Social Network, The Fighter, Zodiac, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, Children of Men, Adaptation, City of God, The Pianist, The Lives of Others, Sexy Beast, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, In the Bedroom, Talk to Her, Bloody Sunday, No Country For Old Men, The Quiet American, Whale Rider, Open Range, Touching the Void, Maria Full of Grace, Up In The Air, The Hurt Locker, Million Dollar Baby, Man on Wire, Che and Volver.

“Sometimes you have to do something out of the ordinary. Sometimes you have to make a way out of no way. We have been too quiet for too long. There comes a time when you have to make a little noise. You have to move your feet. This is the time. Now is the time to get in the way. We will be silent no more. The time for silence is over.” — Rep. John Lewis speaking this afternoon on the House floor, just prior to the gun legislation sit-in.

From 6.22 N.Y. Times story, “House Democrats Stage Sit-In to Push for Action on Gun Control,” by David M. Herszenhorn and Emmarie Huettaman:

“While the speeches in the House chamber veered all around the gun-control issue, making it difficult at times to ascertain what specific legislative action protesters wanted, a spokesman for the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, said Democrats were seeking votes on measures similar to two proposals by Democratic senators that failed to advance in the Senate.

“One of those sought to restrict gun sales to people on the government’s terrorism watch list, while the second would expand and toughen background checks for gun buyers. Those two measures were defeated on Monday in the Senate, along with Republican alternatives.

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I don’t how it happened, but sometime during the 20th Century an observation about African American women caught on and became legend. The legend is that certain ladies of this heritage (i.e., those with a little meat on their bones and who aren’t slender as bankside reeds) have hefty, haunchy, cow-sized asses. This cruel stereotype needs to removed from public consciousness. Blake Lively found this out last month when she posted an Instagram of her front and back with a caption that read “L.A. face with an Oakland booty.” Why Lively wasn’t immediately brought up on charges I’ll never know, but where did she get the idea she can just body-shame with impugnity? If it were my call she would be feeling the wrath of the p.c. court right now. There are no “Oakland” booties — there are only beautiful variations of the female form, and anyone who’s catty and cheap enough to suggest…I refuse to discuss it any further.

I knew after watching last February’s two-hour Vinyl pilot that it was toast. If asked I would’ve told HBO executives to pull the plug then and there. But no — they hung in there, tried to create buzz by offering free episodes on HBO Now, approved a second season and then changed their minds and pulled the plug.

Here’s what I wrote 17 weeks ago: I sat through Martin Scorsese‘s two-hour Vinyl pilot last night, and I’m sorry, man, but it didn’t quite cut it for me. Here and there, yes, but overall no. The greatest rock music era was not the glitter-trash early ’70s but the mythical explosion-and-transformation period between ’64 and ’68 — the arc that began with Motown, early British invasion (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, etc.), schmaltz and bubble-gum succumbing or getting swallowed or pushed aside by Bob Dylan and folk rock finessings and then the Yardbirds and the Velvet Underground and early-to-advanced psychedelia. (And don’t forget the Boxtops!)

I’m also unable to believe in a loud, crude, non-levitational guy named Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale) as a kind of electric talent-spotting, trend-spotting savant. Cannavale has been playing none-too-bright New Jersey goombah types for too long to attempt this kind of transition, and I just didn’t care what happened to him or what he lucked into or what new rock group is about to restore his faith in rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t mean to sound harsh or dismissive but I didn’t like or care about anyone.

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This Benicio del Toro Heineken commercial (which is over three months old) is all but ruined by two things. One, the tourist couple with the GoPro camera gleefully announcing that they’ve run into Antonio Banderas and two, the parenthetical statement that “this is not Antonio Banderas.” If the whole Banderas thing had been dropped and if the couple knew it was Benicio, the look of deflation and disgust on Benicio’s face would have been perfect because it would have said “God, I hate tourist low-lifes who take selfies and can’t contain themselves.” Instead it says “Jesus, I thought I was well-known but not so much, I guess.” The contempt-for-humanity thing is hilarious because we all feel the same way. (Okay, I do.) But the “gee, I’m not as famous as I thought I was” is on the level of a Bob Hope one-liner from the ’50s.

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It feels like decades since Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) directed a major narrative film. It’s actually been three and a half years since ZDT, but it feels like a whole lot longer. First there was talk about Bigelow and producer-writer Mark Boal (i.e., the entity once known as “Biggie-Boal”) collaborating on Triple Frontier, a South American drug dealing movie that might’ve starred Tom Hanks, but that went south. Then she was planning to direct a Bowe Bergdhal film but who wants to watch a movie about a flaky deserter who was held by the Taliban for five years? In any event the Bergdahl thing has been temporarily shelved in lieu of his court martial yet to happen and his story being incomplete.

Bigelow and Boal are currently planning a 1967 Detroit riots film — presumably shooting this summer or early fall for an Oscar-bait release next year. Why am I doubting that a 2017 release will happen? Because John Boyega was just announced as a cast member, and it’s nearly July. The Detroit riots happened in mid-summer weather.

When’s Bigelow going to start shooting? I’m told that “Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Film” has been casting day players and soliciting background in Boston via CP Casting, and that the shoot is slated for late July thru September. Then again the last few years have taught us that Bigelow works in slow-mo time. Prepare fully and painstakingly, dig in, get it right. If I were around I would be whispering in her ear like that slave whispering to the Roman conqueror, “All glory is fleeting….life is short, hubba-hubba, no slacking off.”

I saw Jaume Collet-Serra‘s The Shallows (Columbia, 6.24) last night at a Grove all-media screening. The review embargo is in place until tomorrow morning (6 am Pacific), but I can at least mention the following without getting into any specific reactions.

(1) Besides star Blake Lively there are five male supporting characters (two surfers, a local guy with a jeep, a little kid, a fat drunk), but the most distinctive supporting performance is given by a seagull who becomes Lively’s pal, and whom she nicknames “Steven Seagull.” I haven’t read anything about this bird attending the Shallows press junket, but if I was working on the p.r. side I would have definitely brought him in. “Steven Seagull” is almost as emotionally important to The Shallows as “Wilson” the volley ball was to Cast Away.

(2) Lively played the lead in Age of Adaline but here she delivers an impressive stand-alone. For what it’s worth it’s her most noteworthy performance since her supporting perf in The Town. Yes, she interacts with the supporting cast but only briefly — mostly it’s just her, her leg wound, the water, a buoy and a big-ass shark.

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Last night I posted what I called an “Open Letter to Personal Shopper Loyalists.” I asked the critics who had strongly or at least respectfully praised Olivier Assayas‘s film after its debut at last month’s Cannes Film Festival to explain the strange schism between admirers (of which they are many) and dissers (ditto). What’s going on here and why? I asked. Variety and Time Out critic Guy Lodge replied a little while ago. Here’s what he wrote:

“Like you, I’m disappointed by the number of dismissive reviews out there for Personal Shopper, though pleased it has a distinguished core of champions — a group I’m sure is going to grow over time. Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria (of which I wasn’t actually a big fan) also played Cannes to mixed reviews, though by the time its U.S. release rolled around, there had definitely been an uptick in its reception.

“I’m not surprised, however, by the Cannes dissenters. Within the opening minutes of the film, I had a strong instinct that (a) I would really be into it, and (b) that it would receive boos.

“The ectoplasm in the possibly haunted house was the giveaway for me: many Cannes critics like genre when it’s postmodern or symbolically self-aware or otherwise above convention, but when Assayas starts engaging directly and sincerely with ghost-story tropes, those critics sneer.

“There are still critics who regard fantasy, however intelligently imagined, with a degree of snobbery, just as there are those who still see Kristen Stewart as the girl from Twilight. Most of the boos at Cannes came from critics who fall into either or both of those camps.

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Andrea Arnold‘s American Honey is a kind of Millenial Oliver Twist road flick with Fagin played by both Shia Labeouf and Riley Keogh (Elvis’s granddaughter) and Oliver played by Sasha Lane…but with some good earthy sex thrown in. There’s no question that Honey stakes out its own turf and whips up a tribal lather that feels exuberant and feral and non-deodorized. It doesn’t have anything resembling a plot but it doesn’t let that deficiency get in the way. Honey throbs, sweats, shouts, jumps around and pushes the nervy. (Somebody wrote that it’s Arnold channelling Larry Clark.) It’s a wild-ass celebration of a gamey, hand-to-mouth mobile way of life. And every frame of Robbie Ryan‘s lensing (at 1.37:1, no less!) is urgent and vital.” — from my 5.14.16 mini-review. A24 will presumably open Honey sometime in the fall.