Month: April 2017

Letter To A Friend About Long Strange Trip

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Amir Bar Lev‘s Long Strange Trip (Amazon, 241 minutes) is a first-rate chronicle of a great, historic American band. Don’t let the four-hour running time stop you because this time the length fits the scale of the tale. This is one sprawling, Olympian, deeply dug into, nook-and-cranny achievement.

It takes the time to fully explain the appeal of Grateful Dead music and the whole Deadhead ’80s culture thing, which I paid no attention to when it was happening. I loved the frequent use of Frankenstein clips and echoes, and I adored Al Franken‘s comments (“I’m not a Dead authority but a fan”) during the last third.

And I laughed out loud when Robert Hunter recites the “Dark Star” lyrics — “Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes / Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis / Searchlight casting for faults in the clouds of delusion / Shall we go, you and I while we can / Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?” — and asks “what is not clear about that”?

The Dead were brilliant at making sloppy haphazard chops sound mesmerizing and anthem-like, but according to their ex-manager Sam Cutler they were mostly terrible in business matters, at least in the early days. But the decision to let fans tape all the shows during the ’80s was genius.

Act One (’65 to ’71 or thereabouts) is a good, comprehensive mid-to-late-’60s history lesson — efficient, amusing, well-honed and sometimes great. But Act Two (or the last two hours) really brings it home. This is where the heart is, what turned the light on — the thing that told me what Amir Bar Lev is really up to.

The last 15 or 20 minutes of Long Strange Trip is about the sad druggy wind-down and death of Jerry Garcia, and that saga seems to end four or five different times. But it finally gets there and poignantly at that.

Long Strange Trip is more about what happened inside — creatively among the band members, managers and hangers-on, and particularly among the Deadhead throngs in the ’80s — than any kind of rote, surface-y rundown of their performing and recording history (this happened, that happened).

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What If Steve McQueen Had Behaved Differently in Bullitt?

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Whenever I’m in any kind of tough spot or tight corner, I always say to myself, “How would Steve McQueen handle this if it was happening in Bullitt?” This is truly the basis and the reasoning behind most of my public behaviors — I pretend I’m Frank Bullitt and act accordingly. But let’s take this idea to the next step and imagine something else. We’re on that Pan Am jet at the end of Bullitt, waiting to depart San Francisco Int’l airport, and instead of Albert “Johnny Ross” Renick sitting in that window seat it’s Bullitt, off to Italy and a romantic rendezvous with Jacqueline Bissett.

But suddenly a couple of security guys come up the aisle and tell Bullitt that his ticket is invalid, and that he’ll have to leave his seat and catch another flight. Bullitt argues, shakes his head, refuses to leave. The security guys finally grab him and yank him out of his seat, and this is how Bullitt responds. Two questions: If Bullitt had made these sounds when the security guys grab him, what would happen to McQueen’s super-stud image with moviegoers and how popular would Bullitt have been at the box-office?

Imagine that scene in The Big Sleep when Humphrey Bogart‘s Philip Marlowe is talking to John Ridgely‘s Eddie Mars inside Arthur Geiger’s Laurel Canyon home. Mars calls in his boys, Pete and Sydney, and tells them to frisk Marlowe. But Marlowe flinches when Pete starts searching and before you know it they’re punching each other on the floor. Except Pete lands a couple of good ones and Marlowe gets rattled and starts howling. Be honest — how would this scene affect Bogart’s reputation as a chain-smoking, two-fisted tough guy?

Charlton Heston‘s Judah Ben-Hur is sitting pensively in the belly of a Roman battleship as Jack Hawkins‘ Quintus Arrius inspects the crew. Something about Ben-Hur intrigues Arrius. To test his character Hawkins lashes the oarsman’s back with a whip, and Heston, to Hawkins’ surprise, reacts with a series of screams. If Heston had howled like a little bitch, would he have won the Best Actor Oscar and would Ben-Hur have won for Best Picture?

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Virtual Crossing

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Elite journalists looking to see Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Carne y Arena, a 390-second virtual reality experience at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, will have to take a shuttle to some Cote d’Azur location away from the Grand Palais, where they’ll strap on the VR headset and take the trip. I’m guessing that the whole process — being picked up, driven to the viewing location, watching the short and then taking a shuttle back to base camp — will take an hour at least, and probably a bit more. But essential, of course. The latest collaboration between Inarritu + dp Emmanuel Lubezski, etc.

It’s a solemn emotional experience. A heart and humanity thing. What a would-be Mexican immigrant goes through in trying to cross the U.S. border, or something in that realm. I’m told that viewers won’t necessarily sit in a cozy chair as they watch it. They’ll just as likely stand or lie on the floor.

The full title is Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible). Pic was produced and financed by Legendary Entertainment and Fondazione Prada, and will be presented during the entire Cannes Film Festival (5.17 to 5.28). A longer three-act version (the 390-second short augmented by a first and third-act experience of some kind) will be presented at Milan’s Fondazione Prada from June to December ’17. You can call it an “installation” as well as an experience, especially if you catch it in Milan.

With Hollywood Might-Have-Beens Hiding In Tall Grass, Another Mostly Euro-Centric Cannes

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The first official roster of Cannes ’17 films has been announced. My immediate reaction: “Uhhm, okay, another shortfaller and what else is new? But at least there’s the Andrezj Zvyagintsev, the half-silent Todd Haynes, the Noah Baumbach and the 390-second Alejandro G. Inarritu virtual-reality short to look forward to.”

Many interesting-sounding films were on the early-speculation lists, but only those with nothing to lose and everything potentially to gain from an early Cote d’Azur peek-out will show up. Those with even a teeny-weeny bit to lose (i.e., films which may turn out to be admired but not loved)? Forget it.

In my book there are six Cannes ’17 hotties — Andrezy Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless (very high expectations for the director of Leviathan), Todd Haynes‘ Wonderstruck, Michael Haneke‘s Happy End, Noah Baumbach‘s The Meyerowitz Stories, Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s 390-second virtual reality short Carne y Arena (which rsvp’ed viewers will have to journey on a shuttle to see, apparently within a viewing space some distance from the bunker) and a special screening of Eugene Jarecki‘s Promised Land, which reportedly “juxtaposes contemporary American socio-political history with the biography of Elvis Presley.”

Oh, yeah, right…the first two episodes of David Lynch‘s new Twin Peaks series…calm down.

As I noted a month ago, the festival’s biggest highlights will most likely be European-produced, and that the American-made films that will likely appear are going to rank as…who knows? “I’m not calling it another deadbeat Cannes in terms of U.S. entries,” I wrote, “but the counsel of Oscar strategists along with generally cautious instincts across the board have all but killed this festival in terms of potential award-season titles.

Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Fox Searchlight, 10.13) was test-screened last October to excellent notices and is, I gather, 100% finished and viewable, but it won’t be screening at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Frances McDormand‘s Best Actress campaign will launch around Labor Day instead.

Alexander Payne‘s much-anticipated Downsizing (Paramount, 12.22) was shown last night in Sherman Oaks and is therefore not that far from finished (raggedy, half-completed features are rarely shown to Joe and Jane Popcorn for research purposes), but it won’t be going to Cannes either. Appetites were whetted at Cinemacon last month when attendees were thrilled by a 15-minute excerpt (I thought it looked brilliant), but just because Payne took Nebraska to Cannes doesn’t mean he’s obliged to follow suit this year.

And while it’s entirely possible that Chris Nolan‘s Dunkirk (Warner Bros., 7.21) — another Cannes no-go — won’t be “ready” to screen in mid May, many of us suspect that a very-close-to-finished version could be shown if Nolan and his Warner Bros. handlers wanted to go there.

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Pick Her Up Just To Say Hello

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Until I saw Miguel Arteta‘s Beatriz At Dinner (Roadside / Film Nation, 6.9), I never realized how short Salma Hayek is. Look at her compared to her female costars in this trailer — she’s like a munchkin. I’m not saying this to be a dick, but to mention that her church-mouse proportions serve as a metaphor when Beatriz, a spiritual healer and massage therapist, has an unfortunate encounter with a group of Orange County synthetics. Poor Beatriz seems beaten from the start.

From 1.17 HE Sundance review: “Beatriz drives down to Newport Beach to give a massage to Cathy (Connie Britton), a rich client. But then Beatriz’s car dies, and so Cathy invites her to stay for the party. She first has to overcome the small-minded objections of her husband (David Warshofsky) because the dinner is basically about business deal with a rich, Donald Trump-like monster (John Lithgow). Also attending are Strutts’ wife (Amy Landecker) and are a smarmy Orange Country couple (Chloe Sevigny, Jay Duplass).

“But then Beatriz starts blowing it by ignoring the conservational flow and trying to pass along a moral or spiritual lesson whenever there’s a lull. Then she starts to drink too much wine. Then she throws a cell phone at Strutt over his disdain for society’s lessers. Then she insists on playing a song on her guitar. And then she begins to wonder if she might have a moral duty to stab Strutt in the neck. Then she has some more wine.

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Ballhaus With The Godz

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Michael Ballhaus, the renowned visual composer best known for his long and fruitful partnerships with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese, has passed at age 81. His most famous accomplishment is the long Goodfellas tracking shot in which Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco slip into the Copacabana through the kitchen, but God, I loved so much of his work. Ballhaus knew from steam, smoke, shadows, reddish glows and sunlight piercing down through windows…all the impressionist tricks of the trade. And above all about gliding movement.

The headliners: Fassbinder‘s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Fox and His Friends, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lili Marleen. Steve Kloves‘ The Fabulous Baker Boys. Nancy Meyers‘ Something’s Gotta Give. James L. Brooks‘ Broadcast News and I’ll Do Anything. Mike Nichols‘ Working Girl, Postcards From The Edge and Primary Colors. Wolfgang Petersen‘s Air Force One. Francis Coppola‘s Dracula. Scorsese’s After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York, The Departed.

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Stepped Into It

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In a nutshell, Sean Spicer‘s Hitler gaffe was a claim that Nazi Germany’s immortal monster “was not using the gas on his own people” like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad “was doing…[not] in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down [on] innocents…in the middle of town.” Remember that everyone is calling this much-apologized-for statement a gaffe — an accidental, inappropriate slip of the tongue that either reveals something truthful or (in this case) the mindset of the speaker. For what Spicer meant (and is now very, very sorry for having said) is that European Jews were not Hitler’s people, that they were the subversive, non-patriotic “other”, as Hitler and his Third Reich henchmen repeatedly described them in the ’30s. This indicates that Spicer himself, speaking from his 2017 Trumpian perspective, has bought into the same notion about European Jewry not being real Germans. He can apologize, but he can’t un-say what he said.

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A Fine Madness

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We’re approaching (i.e., are five months away from) the fifth anniversary of Rodney Ascher‘s Room 237. I don’t know what it’s earned on video/streaming since, but the fact that it only made a lousy $296,359 theatrically indicates hundreds of thousands if not millions of X-factor filmgoers never gave it a tumble. And it’s one of the best LQTM movies I’ve ever seen. Not “no laugh funny” like Ishtar but genuinely hilarious — just not in a way that makes you slap your thighs as you go “hah-hah.” Why such a small audience? Because (and I’ve heard this over and over) the people who saw it told their friends that it was bullshit — that Stanley Kubrick never faked the moon landing and never intended to insert all of those veiled allusions in The Shining and therefore the doc was a waste of time — an interpretation that is truly staggering in its stupidity. I just re-watched the below clip, the first time since mid ’13, and was chuckling all over again.

Oceans Of Time

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Paramount’s Cinemacon presentation included a 15-minute-long sampling of Michael Bay‘s Transformers: The Last Knight (6.23), and the general reaction was (a) “whoa, complex…intense post-apocalyptic dystopia meets some kind of time-trippy Knights of the Round Table scenario shot in England,” (b) “nice effects” and (c) “this is gonna be a long-ass film…140, 150 minutes, something like that.” Neither the just-released trailer not the previous assemblies tell the tale as clearly as the Cinemacon reel, and that in itself wasn’t entirely clean and concise. Ambitious, obviously, but with layers upon layers upon layers. Not a sandwich or fast-food meal, but what felt to me like a potentially exhausting 10-course banquet. Mark Wahlberg, Isabella Moner, Anthony Hopkins, Laura Haddock, Stanley Tucci, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, et. al.

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Elegant Editing, Finely Judged

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A couple of weeks ago three beautifully-cut assemblies of a select roster of Annapurna films were posted. “America”, “Photograph”, “Hustle” — to which I only paid attention this morning. They should have included clips from Detroit, Downsizing and the Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson fashion-in-the-’50s film, but otherwise very nice. Annapurna (along with Amazon, Netflix and Scott Rudin) believes in ’70s films made for 21st Century moviegoers, and thank God for that. Lawless, The Master, Killing Them Softly, Zero Dark Thirty, Her, Foxcatcher, Joy, Everybody Wants Some!, Wiener-Dog, Sausage Party, The Bad Batch, 20th Century Women, et. al.

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“It’s Time We Knew”

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50 years later, the fire that time. Memory detour, flashpoint, cuts and close-ups, an inferno rekindled. A jarring, presumably riveting descent into hell. Directed in the usual bracing, deep-dive fashion by Kathryn Bigelow. Written by the intrepid Mark Boal. Shot by the legendary Barry Aykroyd (The Hurt Locker, United 93). Edited by the masterful William Goldenberg (Zero Dark Thirty, The Insider). A possible…call it a presumed award-season headliner that dares to open on August 4th. Go bold, break the mold.

“One of the bleakest chapters in American history — four days that stunned a nation and left scars on a great city that are still seen and felt today.” — from a 7.22.12 Time.com article showcasing the Detroit riot photos of Lee Balterman.

From Wiki page: “The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a violent public disorder that turned into a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan. It began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, just north of the corner of 12th Street (today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount Avenue on the city’s Near West Side.

“Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in the history of the United States, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit’s 1943 race riot.

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Reluctant To Admit That Boredom Seeped In

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Such is the ardor and devotion of the notorious James Gray cabal that when a fellow who is either a member or temporarily posing as one — New Yorker critic Anthony Lane — tries to gently dismiss Gray’s The Lost City of Z (Amazon Bleecker, 4.14), he can’t help but dance a little side-step. Which wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t muttering to yourself, “C’mon, man…spit it out.”

One, do not trust the 89% Rotten Tomatoes rating — the foo-foos have been worshipping Gray for years and will almost always give him a pass no matter what. I’ve said two or three times that this film will empty the sand out of your hourglass and make you feel imprisoned in your theatre seat. On top of which you must always, always beware of the word “fantasia” if the speaker isn’t referring to a 1940 animated Disney feature. Remember also that Lane is obliged to show a certain deference to David Grann‘s “The Lost City of Z,” which ran in The New Yorker before being published in book form.


New Yorker illustration by Wesley Allsbrook.

Two excerpts tell the tale:

Lane excerpt #1: “Gray has borrowed the title [of the book], and he dramatizes many of the episodes to which Grann and other writers have referred. Yet the movie that results should not be combed for historical truth. It is best approached, I would say, as a fantasia on Fawcettian themes.”

Lane excerpt #2: “Does The Lost City of Z count as an action movie? It seems more like a study in restlessness. You could frame Percy Fawcett as desperate, deluded, and ill-prepared. [But] Gray’s Fawcett is a sturdy and somewhat monotonous creature, who, for all the strivings of Charlie Hunnam, does not consume us.”

I re-posted my reactions, originally penned after catching The Lost City of Z at the 2016 NY Film Festival, on 2.23.17.