Month: January 2017

This trailer for The Lovers (A24, 5.17) suggests that long-of-tooth actors making movies about sexuality, eros and steamy love affairs isn’t such a great idea. I’m not frowning upon sexuality between past-their-prime types — I just don’t want to watch this kind of thing in a movie, no offense, just as I never wanted to even think about my parents doing it when I was a kid, much less see it, much less imagine my grandparents, etc.

I would actually be okay with a film about a 51 year-old guy having an affair if he looked like Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief. (Grant turned this age when he made Alfred Hitchcock’s film in 1954 and early ’55.) As it happens Lovers costar Tracy Letts is himself 51 (born on 7.4.65). The problem is that Letts looks a good 20 years older, partly because he’s all grayed out and bespectacled and far from ripped and because he has one of those two-week beards that look great if you’re 37 but less so if you’re 73.

That said, I’m fine with the still-attractive Debra Winger being in this but please don’t subject me to the presence of older guys with doughy bellies and milky skin wearing a bath towel. Nor do I want to see a movie about Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Harvey Keitel or John Malkovich having an affair. Ditto Johnny Depp now that he’s become Captain Fatass. But George Clooney or Brad Pitt would be okay.

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Chris Pratt has always been likable and charismatic. I decided he was okay five years ago after catching his performance as an insecure baseball player in Moneyball, and doubly so after he played a studly musclebound Seal who smoked a couple of baddies in Zero Dark Thirty. I didn’t like it when he became a fatass in order to play Andy Dywer in Parks and Recreation, but his thinner incarnation allowed me to accept that he was probably the new Harrison Ford. And then I really fell for his routine two years ago in Guardians of the Galaxy.

But soon after an apparent weakness began to reveal itself — Pratt began to offer indications that he has no taste in projects.

He was okay in Jurassic World but I fucking hated the film. (Nobody with any judgment had any love for it — it was laughably ridiculous.) And then he starred in The Magnificent Seven, another piece of shit. And then Pratt lied through his teeth about the basic scheme of Passengers (the script for which he had called “the best I ever read”), and then Morten Tyldum‘s sci-fi epic was savaged by critics and seriously underperformed.

And then it began to sink in that Pratt is some kind of Christian Republican who likes to own and fire weapons and eat meat and drink beer and all that other alpha-male stuff. Which means he’s probably a Trump supporter. So basically Pratt is a congenial if moderately talented marquee name who’s good looking in a brawny, broad-shouldered, regular-dude kind of way, but is clearly no heavyweight in terms of talent or perception. Which means he’s more or less Lee Majors.

Yes, I’m sure he’ll be totally fine in Galaxy of the Guardians 2 (5.5.17).

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If you’re a fool for the latest in UHD 4K HDR flat panels and you occasionally pay attention to the latest toys displayed at the annual Consumer Electronics Shows in Las Vegas (1.5 thru 1.8), you know that QLED (quantum dot display) TVs are all the rage, and that they’re generally regarded as cooler than OLEDs (light-emitting diode), which in turn are better than LEDs. The last time I checked OLEDs were ridiculously expensive, but the introduction of the even more absurdly priced QLEDs will bring OLED prices down. I couldn’t be happier with my Sony XBR-65X850C LED Smart 4K Ultra HDTV — a 65-incher with side speakers. I’m not even fantasizing about getting a bigger, better set. Okay, I am fantasizing about that but there’s no way I’d shell out for this. No way in hell.

Hollywood Elsewhere is attending a reception this evening for Richard Ladkani and Kief Davidson‘s The Ivory Game, a respected Netflix doc about the ongoing assault on African elephants and their possible extinction. It’s on the Academy’s doc shortlist and is naturally hoping to become one of the five nominees.

A persistent view remains that Ezra Edelman‘s O.J.: Made in America will snag the Oscar, but getting nominated adds cred and is no small accomplishment.

I was reminded last week that The Ivory Game is even more timely now that China has put an official timeline on ending sale of ivory. For decades China has been the biggest market for ivory, which is principally harvested with the killing of elephants and chopping off their tusks, but last week it announced a plan to phase out all ivory processing and trade by the end of 2017.

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It was during the 1920s that the below-glimpsed Parisians and tourists sat and dined, sipped and strolled, lived and quarrelled. Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.

The element that you can’t help but respect in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (HBO, 1.7) is the honesty with which it regards the humiliations of aging and creeping illness as suffered by Debbie. She’s a trooper and a toughie, you bet, but the hill keeps getting steeper and thornier, and your heart goes out. Thank God for the fine comic relief of Carrie’s perspective, which includes relentless servings of candor.

The Terrence Malick flick formerly known as Weightless (aka Wait List) is now being called Song to Song — terrific. Broad Green Pictures has announced a 3.7.17 release, or roughly two months hence. And they don’t have a trailer to show, much less a one-sheet?

Boilerplate: “In this modern love story set against the Austin music scene, two entangled couples — struggling songwriters Faye (Rooney Mara) and BV (Ryan Gosling), and music mogul Cook (Michael Fassbender) and the waitress whom he ensnares (Natalie Portman) — chase success through a rock ‘n’ roll landscape of seduction and betrayal.”

You never know which actors will make the final cut in a Malick film, but Song to Song‘s Wiki page lists the following cast members apart from Gosling, Mara, Fassbender and Portman: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Haley Bennett, Val Kilmer, Benicio del Toro, Clifton Collins Jr., Angela Bettis, Holly Hunter.

Principal photography began on this Austin-based musical drama in September 2012, or four years and three months ago — two months before Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney for the Presidency.

When Song to Song finally opens in February, over five and 1/3 years will have transpired between the earliest filming at the September 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival.

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Reactions to Lionsgate’s forthcoming Bluray of Nicolas Roeg‘s The Man Who Fell To Earth (1.24): (a) The cover photo of David Bowie looks more than a little porny; (b) Interesting as Roeg’s film is, there’s something pallid and even a bit lifeless about it due to a curious vacancy within Bowie, who almost always seemed to duck and recede when the cameras were rolling — he rarely stepped up to the plate and delivered; and (3) My favorite scene is when a couple of goons break into Buck Henry‘s high-rise and attempt to throw him out the window — the first time Henry not only bounces against the glass but apologizes for this (“I’m sorry!”) — in response to this one of the goons says “don’t worry about it” and then they try again, this time succeeding — as Henry is falling 50 or 60 stories we can hear him breathing and gasping.

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Honestly? If I was asked to pose for a Los Angeles magazine cover story with some other award-season blogaroos and they asked us to pose in pairs, let’s say, and if a colleague came up behind me and gave me a double-arm T-shirt hug like the one Adam Driver is giving Viggo Mortensen here, I would be cool about it but my first thought would be “the fuck?” My second thought would be “okay, I’m getting a warm erotic man-hug here, but does that mean I should tenderly place my right hand over the right arm of my man-hugger?” To me this photo is only a step or two removed from that 1963 shot of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not me. I’ll do an arm-around-the-shoulder hug if I’m posing for a shot with a male friend or one of my sons, but that’s about it.

My eyeballs popped out of their sockets Wile E. Coyote-style (boiinnnggg!) when I took a gander at Scott Feinberg’s final pre-Academy-balloting prediction piece in The Hollywood Reporter, and more specifically when I saw that he regards Warren Beatty‘s Rules Don’t Apply as a longshot for a Best Picture nomination.

Actual Wells to Feinberg email message: “By using the term ‘longshot’ do you mean that potential nomination-wise, Rules Don’t Apply is bound and gagged and tied up inside a burlap bag and buried under 50 tons of soil, sand, gravel and concrete? I’m just trying to clarify what ‘longshot’ means.”

Do the producers of Nocturnal Animals and Patriots Day have reason to be upset at Feinberg for lumping them in with Beatty’s critically lamented Howard Hughes pic? Patriots Day producer to Feinberg: “How could you do this to us, Scott? Did we do something to personally hurt you? If so, we apologize because this is ridiculous. Patriots Day is 10 or 15 times more successful than Rules Don’t Apply. They’re not even in the same league much less the same ballpark. The Watertown shoot-out sequence is a classic. You’ve really hurt our feelings and damaged us in the eyes of the community. I hope you’re satisfied.”

Hollywood Elsewhere is participating in the 1.12 Los Angeles press day for John Lee Hancock and Michael Keaton‘s The Founder (Weinstein Co., 1.17). For the 16th or 17th time: From an ethical, artistic or strategic standpoint, Keaton’s fascinating, neither fish-nor-fowl performance as McDonald’s kingpin Ray Kroc in The Founder is an essential thing. The ’50s period drama refuses to adhere to a black and white moral scheme. It treads a fine edge, allowing you to root for Keaton’s “bad guy” despite reservations while allowing you to conclude that the McDonald brothers were stoppers who didn’t get it. Keaton’s performance never instructs you how to feel or what judgments to arrive at, and therein lies the genius.