Day: August 2, 2016

It was announced yesterday that Benedict Cumberbatch intends to star in an adaptation of Geoffrey Household‘s “Rogue Male” (published in 1939). A simpler way of putting it is that Cumberbatch intends to play the great grandson of Cpt. Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) in a remake of Fritz Lang‘s Man Hunt (’41).

I like the idea personally but it sounds like an HBO or Netflix movie, at best.

If it’s theatrical do Cumberbatch and his producing pallies really intend to stick to the Household plot? Because 95% of the 21st Century audience would probably feel it’s too old-world, too slow and solitary, too lean and not crazy-GG enough. The only way to make it even half-palatable to today’s audience is to (a) set it in the present and (b) make the target of Thorndike’s stalking game not Adolf Hitler but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. If they did that, maybe.

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What I’d really like to see is a story of 90-year-old Jerry Langford, the late-night talk show star who was kidnapped by Rupert Pupkin back in the early ’80s. Jerry is semi-retired but still plugging away, involved in real estate and other ventures, still playing golf, still on the cryptic and blunt side, still disdainful when the occasion requires and is no one’s idea of a gentle or lovable fellow. And yet he’s largely unbent and, for an old guy, still full of beans. And he’s nice with kids and dogs.

Does “mean” Mr. Langford feel badly about still being flinty and not all that considerate with each and every person he deals with? Okay, maybe, but he’s ecstatic about the fact that he’s alive and crackling and living a pretty good life for a guy born in 1926. He’s on Twitter and Facebook and owns over 300 Blurays. And he has a 79 year-old girlfriend that he “puts it to” every so often (i.e., extra-strength Cialis), and he rides a bicycle and walks two or three miles every day and lifts weights. Who needs love, kindness and forgiveness when you’ve got your health? Langford pushes on! But watch out when he’s in a bad mood.

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All Vanity Fair cover stories are blather, but if you read them carefully you can sometimes find a line or two that hints at the truth of things. Case in point: Evgenia Peretz‘s profile of The Light Between Oceans costar Alicia Vikander. Peretz describes Derek Cianfrance’s film (Disney, 9.2) as “the kind of wrenching adult melodrama that Hollywood rarely makes these days, because it’s hard to pull off successfully — although they got this one right.”

Let’s imagine for the sake of argument or hypothesis that they didn’t “get this one right.” That the film underwhelms on this or that level. If so, would there be any chance in hell that Peretz or Vanity Fair would indicate this?

What unsuccessful “wrenching adult melodramas,” I wonder, did Peretz have in mind? Which ones have worked and which haven’t? A more thoughtful writer would have explored this sub-topic to some extent, at least, but that’s not Peretz’s job. She’s on hand to fawn, to spin, to convey glamor and fascination.

Peretz later states that there was “no room for restraint” in the making of Oceans, which is “based on a full-on weepie best-seller” by M. L. Stedman. She reports that the book had director Derek Cianfrance “crying on the C train in Brooklyn when he finished it.”

Seriously? Cianfrance told her that he wept on the C train? This in itself is cause for concern.

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The “bad” Ben-Hur (Paramount, 8.19) had its world premiere last night (8.1) inside the Cinepolis JK in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Not Rio de Janeiro, where the 2016 Olympics will begin on Friday, 8.5 and where thousands of major-media types are congregated, but in corporate Sao Paulo. (Why?) I can’t find any Twitter reactions to Timur Bekmambetov‘s Christian-angled remake, but one can at least compared the musical scores between the two films to get a sense of things.

Miklos Rosza composed the Oscar-winning score to William Wyler’s 1959 film. To my ears Rosza’s music was a character, a voice, a force unto itself. The newbie’s score, obviously a lesser thing, was written by Marco Beltrami (3:10 to Yuma, The Hurt Locker, Hellboy, The Wolverine).

Above is a passage from Beltrami’s Ben-Hur channellings — a mildly dreamy, keyboard-synth thing. The main-title section of Rosza’s score, performed in 2013 by the John Wilson Orchestra inside London’s Royal Albert Hall, is below. A second Rosza composition (“Parade of the Charioteers”, performed by an all-brass band conducted by André Rieu) is after the jump, followed by a special Ben-Hur related performance of “Ceasefire,” performed by For King & Country, a Christian pop duo composed of Australian-American brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone. Please compare and assess.

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How do you feel about revisiting Zack Snyder‘s Sucker Punch? Tonight the second-tier, all-media crowd (i.e., people like myself) will face up to the reality of Suicide Squad at screenings on both coasts. I’m a man, I can take it, I can handle anything they throw at me, bring it on! And yet I feel as if I’m about to go to the dentist. Especially after reading Peter Debruge‘s Variety review, which warns of a Snyder-type experience in more ways than one…good God:

Excerpt #1: “Suicide Squad plunges audiences right back into the coal-black world of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice…for reasons beyond Ayer’s control, he’s beholden to the corporate vision of other recent DC adaptations, most notably Zack Snyder’s sleek-surfaced and oppressively self-serious riffs on the Superman legend. [and is] ultimately forced to conform to Snyder’s style, to the extent that Suicide Squad ends up feeling more like [Snyder’s] gonzo effects-saturated Sucker Punch.”

Excerpt #2: “[While Ayer] and Jared Leto manage to invent a version of the Joker every bit as unsettling as the late Heath Ledger’s immortal incarnation, turning the iconic Batman rival into a ruthless seducer (hunt down ‘Mr. Nobody’ to see the origins of Leto’s wicked deep-throated cackle), the character barely has anything to do. [For] the Joker exists only to inspire his deranged arm candy, Harley Quinn.”

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