Day: May 7, 2017

Grim, Gray Sunday

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On Monday morning (5.8) Hollywood Elsewhere catches a 7:40 am train to Manhattan, and then a 10 am screening of a film I probably shouldn’t identify, all things considered. Then it’s down to a Murray Street Airbnb, where I’ll be working and bunking until Thursday night’s flight to Paris. Four screenings will happen altogether plus a Tuesday morning interview with Long Strange Trip‘s Amir Bar-Lev. (Here’s my 4.13 review.)

Fairfield beach near Pine Creek Rd. — Sunday, 5.7, 3:30 pm. Weather was damp, chilly, breezy.

 

 Sycamore diner in Bethel, CT.

 

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Macron Over LePen, 65% to 35%

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I saw no reports about the now-concluded French presidential election that indicated anything other than (a) Emmanuel Macron would probably win but (b) the final tally might be close. And yet Macron, France’s new president, has destroyed Marine LePen, 65% to 35%. So the MSM knew but chose not to say? Thank God that a Trump-like figure, a racist candidate appealing to foul, fearful instincts, has bitten the dust.

Visual Punch-Through

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Reaction #1: I’ve seen T2: Judgment Day so many times (the kids watched it repeatedly on laser disc in the early to mid ’90s) that I doubt if I’m capable of absorbing fresh kicks, regardless of the dimension factor. Reaction #2: James Cameron‘s 3D-ing of Titanic was such an aesthetically subtle thing that after the first 20 or 30 minutes I forgot I was watching 3D — I just sank into the film itself. If the same approach is adopted for the T2 conversion, it might feel a tad underwhelming. Maybe. Reaction #3: I still say that the moment when Eddie Furlong hugs Arnold just before he lowers himself into that vat of molten steel…that moment would have paid off a bit more if Cameron had allowed Arnold to shed a single tear. Illogical, of course — emotional expression wasn’t part of his design or programming — but it would have worked.

Broadcast News

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I was, like, floored by Kate McKinnon‘s dead-on inhabiting of Mika Brzezinski during last night’s SNL. Her sentence fragments and strangled gestures while Alex Moffat‘s Joe Scarborough explained the topic du jour, the looks of eye-rolling indignation, the stifled swordplay…perfect. Easily McKinnon’s most on-target bit since Hillary Clinton, and her biggest touchdown since stealing the Ghostbusters reboot.

Waves of Alien Nausea

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I didn’t dislike Ridley Scott‘s Alien: Covenant — I hated it. And I’m not saying that out of some lazy-wrath instinct or pissy posturing or what-have-you. I’m talking about serious stomach-acid sensations here. Then again I mostly despised Prometheus so it didn’t take a great deal of effort to come to this.

If Prometheus rang your hate bell, you’re going to despise this one also. For Alien: Covenant, which runs 121 minutes but feels like 150, is truly a spawn of that awful 2012 film. Is it “better” than Prometheus? All right, yeah, I suppose it is. Is it therefore worth seeing? Maybe, but only if you like watching films that make you resent everything on the face of the planet including yourself.

I’m not going to tap out the usual story, character and actor rundown. All you need to know is that I didn’t give a damn about any of Alien: Covenant. Nothing. I was muttering “Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou” the whole time. Ten minutes in I was going “awww, Jesus…this already feels sloppy and reachy.” Of course it has a back-burster scene. Of course it was thrown in to compete with the John Hurt chest-fever scene in the original. All I could think was “the Hurt version was set up so much better, and delivered so much more…this is just Scott hanging wallpaper.”

I hit the bathroom during the the last ten minutes. You never do this if a movie has you in its grip, but I didn’t care.

Scott’s Alien (’79) had clarity, integrity — it was simple and managable, and it didn’t make you feel as if you had hornets in your brain. Best of all it didn’t explain anything in terms of backstory or motivation. The original Alien space jockey (I will love that elephant trunk and split-open ribcage for the rest of my life) was wonderful because there was no explanation about what had happened or why. It was delightful for what it didn’t explain.

Alien: Covenant is detestable for the exact opposite reason — for all the boring and tedious backstory gruel (i.e., all in service of explaining Michael Fassbender‘s malignant creationism) that it explains and clarifies, and then elaborates upon.

The Telegraph‘s Robbie Colin, who loves this fucking thing and cheers the fact that it’s “a million miles from the crowd-pleasing Alien retread 20th Century Fox [execs] have presumably been begging Scott to make,” calls it proof of Scott “operating at the peak of his powers.”

To me Alien: Covenant is a portrait of Scott as a giver of corporate neckrubs. And it grieves me to say this about the director of The Counselor, which I not only worshipped but which will probably turn out to be Scott’s last brilliant, hard-as-nails, close-to-flawless film.

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