Month: July 2016

From a 7.24 Washington Post piece about the resignation of divisive Democratic National Committee chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “According to one Democratic member of Congress involved in the discussions leading up to her resignation, Schultz strongly resisted giving up her position amid discussions that staff should shoulder some of the blame.

“Among the options discussed was having Amy Dacey, the DNC’s chief executive officer, put out a statement, according to two Democratic sources.

“That served to exacerbate other Democrats’ frustration with Wasserman Schultz, and led to accusations that she had made the situation worse by not acting swiftly to step aside as the convention loomed.

“’There was a lot of drama,’ this lawmaker said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. ‘She made this as painful as she could. She did not want to go…she wasn’t going to resign until the president called her. She put a lot of people through hell.”

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I was surprised to hear a couple of days ago that Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation (Fox Searchlight, 10.7) will not make an appearance at the Telluride Film Festival. That’s a bit of an eyebrow-raiser for a festival regarded as a significant Best Picture harbinger, and one that Fox Searchlight has often favored (and vice versa) in years past. 

Most handicappers will tell you that Birth is a likely Best Picture nominee, especially in a year in which Academy and guild members are expected to “get their black on” to atone for last year’s Oscars So White narrative.

Parker’s film will play Toronto, I’m told, but not Telluride. You could presume this is because Telluride honchos are disinclined to present films that, like The Birth of a Nation, premiered at Sundance eight months earlier. 

This rule-of-thumb is likely to be challenged, however, if and when Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea, which also had its debut at Sundance ’16, turns up in Telluride, which I understand is probable.

HE’s Telluride 2016 spitball lineup so far: Manchester By The Sea, Damian Chazelle‘s La-La Land (Venice Film Festival opener), Pablo Larrain‘s Neruda (Cannes) and Denis Villeneuve‘s Arrival (Venice).

Even though Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals (Focus, 11.18) is playing Venice, I’m told it won’t play Telluride. Nor will Jeff Nichols‘ Loving, another Focus film. This despite having played well in Cannes.

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Chop my head off, now. But after you’ve done that, you have to pay a visit to Guy Ritchie.

My attention is divided every time Chuck Todd appears on MSNBC. 65% of my attention is on the reporting and the commentary, and 35% is on his rapidly thinning Jack Nicholson hair. Five years ago [after the jump] Todd’s hair was hanging in there — now it’s Custer’s Last Stand. Just as Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to resign to end the distraction and spare the Clinton campaign from embarassment, Todd has to end his own distraction before he becomes Humphrey Bogart in the 1950s. Because the instant he appears on-screen my eyes go right to his follicles. And it’s an easy fix. A few sprinkles of light-brown Toppik (keratin fiber that attaches itself to the meager hair you have left) followed by two or three micro-plug treatments (500 to 750 plugs per session). Okay, so Chuck will have to wear a baseball cap for a couple of weeks…big deal.

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With ample justification, Democratic National Committee chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz has thrown herself under the bus at the behest of the Clinton campaign. She’ll resign at the end of the week after the Democratic convention ends in Philadelphia.

Schultz’s resignation was forced by recently revealed Wikileaks emails that proved that the DNC actively conspired against the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Please raise your hand if you think the Clinton campaign wasn’t 100% supportive of Schultz and the DNC’s gross impartiality. Please raise your hand if you think Wasserman Schultz would have resigned today if it hadn’t been for the Wikileaks revelations. Please raise your hand if you don’t think Wasserman Schultz will be booed when she speaks at the convention.

Is there any way this isn’t another bad thing for Hillary? Her campaign’s tacit support of the DNC’s anti-Bernie bias is another indication that she’s conniving and untrustworthy.

Donna Brazile will be the interim chairwoman through the election.

I’ve been split on Hillary Clinton since she vanquished Bernie Sanders. Half of me accepts that I have to vote for her sensible, pragmatic, Obama-continuing wonkery (along with her hawkish foreign policy instincts), and the other half can’t stand her — her cautious sidestepping of the Bernie revolution, that cackle, the Wall Street ties, the testiness, her liberal-leaning but weather-vane-ish political values, the just-revealed DNC connivance against Bernie, the eye bags, the eff-you to the Berners with her selection of Tim Kaine, her compulsively secretive nature.

My allegiance to sanity nonetheless compels me to vote for her. I want her to win despite her many flaws, and I expect that despite all the debits she’ll probably nudge out a victory. But it speaks volumes about Clinton’s appeal that even if the Gods are with her, Hillary may not manage a decisive victory against the most appalling major-party presidential candidate in American history.

And now Michael Moore‘s just-posted essay, “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win,” has given me pause. It has really put a chill into my lower backbone. As noted, I’m inclined to believe that Hillary will probably be elected, but after reading Moore’s piece I’m wondering how solid that prediction is.

Boiled down, the five reasons favoring Trump’s election, in Moore’s view: (a) the rust-belt yokels are going to vote for Trump by a lopsided margin, and this may result in his winning four major, very decisive rust-belt states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin; (b) white guys will vote against her en masse as a kind of Alamo-like last stand against the femme-Nazis, LGBTs, multiculturals; (c) A lot of people despise Hillary and particularly the dynastic establishment politics she represents; (d) the depressed Bernie vote; and (e) despite their disagreement or even distaste for Trump, disenfranchised Americans are crazy enough to vote for him as a fuck-you to the system, just as Minnesota voters voted for Jessie Ventura.

Hillary Problem as explained by Moore: “Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump — it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. The kids [in general] don’t like her, and young women are among her biggest detractors.

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The massive smoke clouds from the Santa Clarita fire (which I snapped a couple of shots of when I was in Studio City last evening) are casting a muddy glowing amber light over everything. If Vittorio Storaro was here (and for all I know he is) he’d be in pig heaven. Any photographer worth his or her salt is shooting this right now. Certain portions of the soot-and-ash flooded sky are more Apocalypse Now than Apocalypse Now.

These and other worn-down little photos are taped on the inside of a living-room door leading to an office-supplies room. If I was serious (and some day I will be) I would of course scan them.

My late mom and I in a San Francisco cafe, way back when.

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I know I’m supposed to be jazzed about Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman (Warner Bros., 6.2) because of Gal Gadot, who delivered the only stand-out current in the otherwise regrettable Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But this trailer…I don’t hate it but it feels a little cheesy. I’m so sick of origin stories! Yes, it’s somewhat interesting to set the story in the era of World War I, agreed, but this trailer doesn’t seem to have that commanding, totally together feeling that you can always sense from films that have that “extra”-ness. My personal suspicion is that the appearance of Danny Huston constitutes a huge “forget it…this isn’t going to be that good.” Huston is fine but the only truly exceptional big-league film he’s costarred in was Children of Men.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts‘ Kong: Skull Island (Warner Bros., 3.17) is obviously going to be at least half-decent. The Vietnam-era touches (especially dp Larry Fong‘s deliberate attempt to recreate Vittoro Storaro‘s photography in Apocalypse Now) give it an extra dimension. Tom Hiddleswift…sorry, Hiddleston and Brie Larson plus the always-barking Samuel L. Jackson plus Toby “Messala” Kebbell, Tom Wilkinson, John Goodman and John C. Reilly. Who took Michael Keaton‘s role? Wilkinson?

A guy named Terry Notary is playing Kong via mo-cap.

No glimpses of Kong’s face but we know for sure he won’t have those deliciously unreal white eyeballs that the original bruiser had in the 1933 original. Here’s how I put it on 9.19.10:

“Cooper’s Kong didn’t look like any gorilla, chimp or orangutan that had ever walked the earth. He was something between a prehistoric hybrid and an imaginary monster of the id…a raging nightmare beast designed to scare the bejeesus out of 1933 moviegoers.

“Willis O’Brien, the legendary stop-motion photography pioneer, used three slightly different-looking Kong models during filming, but for me the master stroke was deciding to give his Kong a set of gleaming white teeth and a pair of very bright white eyes.

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