Month: May 2017

Sometimes the Cannes Film Festival will hold its hottest titles until the first weekend or even just after, leaving heat-seekers to bide their time over the first three days. Not this year. The Cannes press schedule just popped, and two major competition titles are screening early — Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless (aka Nelyubov) at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, 5.17, and Todd Haynes‘ Wonderstruck early the next morning at 8:30 am.

I’ve got seven films at the top of my Cannes list — Loveless, 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 some distance from the bunker), those two 56-minute episodes of David Lynch‘s rebooted Twin Peaks series (showing on Thursday, 5.25) and a special screening of Eugene Jarecki‘s Promised Land, which reportedly “juxtaposes contemporary American socio-political history with the biography of Elvis Presley.”

The only bizarre aspect is that Twin Peaks will premiere on Showtime on Sunday, 5.21, or four days earlier than the Cannes showings of the first two episodes. It would obviously mean a lot more to festivalgoers if the Cannes showing was scheduled before the Showtime debut, not after.

I was reading Michael Reubens‘ review of the new Seven Days in May Bluray. But I was soon distracted by Reubens’ 12.5.12 review of a Bluray of Lewis Allen‘s Suddenly, and particularly by the following paragraph:

“There seems to be some confusion regarding the correct aspect ratio of Suddenly. Image’s presentation is an unmasked 35mm frame (with rounded corners) that measures 1.38:1. IMDB lists the film’s original presentation at 1.75:1, which seems unlikely, as that ratio was never a standard in American movie theaters.

“Suddenly was made in the early years of the film industry’s conversion from Academy ratio to its current twin standards of 1.85:1 and 2.39:1. It’s most likely that Suddenly was shot for the older ‘square’ format but protected for the newer matted shape. Certainly most of the shots have sufficient extra headroom to allow the film to be matted to 1.85:1 without damaging the narrative. The images ‘breathe’ better, however, at the full Academy ratio.”

Breathe better?

This isn’t a big deal or even a middle-sized one, but for years I’ve been under the impression that anyone who uses the term “breathing” or “breathing room” in a discussion of aspect ratios is borrowing from the HE glossary. I’m not saying I own the term, but I’ve used it repeatedly in my aspect-ratio articles, and I don’t know of anyone else who has celebrated the concept of breathing room as much as myself.

If “breathe” and “breathing room” were commonly-used terms among Home Theatre Forum aspect-ratio obsessives before Hollywood Elsewhere began in 2004, fine. I stand corrected and no biggie.

What could it feel like to parrot the Donald Trump talking points, and then be debunked by Trump himself during that Lester Holt interview? Mike Pence will almost certainly go to his grave before revealing his inner thoughts about this latest embarassment, but God, what a pathetic clown. No honor, no clarity, no ethics that stand up to scrutiny. Imagine the inner turbulence as Pence glances at himself in the bathroom mirror. Imagine the stomach acidity.

What killed King Arthur: Legend of the Sword? The widely-shared opinion that it stinks? Medieval genre fatigue? Guy Ritchie‘s attempt to make a tale that has been told again and again into a hodgepodge of flash-bang editing, modern colloquial dialogue, the sounds of Led Zeppelin and a general sense of the absurd? The fact that Charlie Hunnam is no one’s idea of a box-office draw? Or did the trailers turn people off for some other reason?

Did anyone see it? I sure as hell didn’t and wouldn’t.

Reported by Variety‘s Brent Lang: “It looks like summer 2017 has its first official flop. Ritchie’s attempt to make the Knights of the Round Table hip again, is collapsing at the box office. Based on its Thursday pre-shows and Friday afternoon mid-day grosses, the $175 million epic is looking at a disastrous $18 million debut.

“Those projections come from rival studios. Insiders at Warner Bros. think the film could still exceed $20 million, but even if it does, that’s still a very weak start for such an expensive picture. Barring a mid-weekend surge in enthusiasm for tales of gallantry, there will be red ink.”

This trailer for Home Again (Open Road, 9.8) looks to me like a suburban sexual fantasy film. More specifically about 40ish Reese Witherspoon, her character recently separated from Michael Sheen, hooking up with some young stuff. The director-writer is Hallie Meyers-Shyer, the daughter of Nancy Meyers (who produced with Erika Olde) and Charles Shyer. The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. Costarring Candice Bergen, Michael Sheen, Lake Bell, Nat Wolff, Reid Scott and Pico Alexander.

I’ve just arrived in in a country that recently elected a sensible pragmatist instead of a racist fearmonger to run the show. It feels very good to be here for that fact alone. Would that American bumblefucks had the common sense to realize what they were doing when they voted last November for Orange Orangutan. Yeah, I know — a lot of them didn’t vote for Trump as much as vote against Hillary Clinton, but still.

Donald Trump’s ill-informed, authoritarian, shoot-from-the-hip bluster and bullshit-spewing is a rolling embarassment. The tweets he posted this morning verged on the surreal. Threatening that he may have secretly recorded conversations with recently-dismissed FBI director James Comey, and that “[he’d] better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press“?

Followed by a hypothetical about cancelling live press briefings in favor of issuing written reports? And then doubling down on this notion with Jeanine Pirro in a forthcoming interview on Justice With Judge Jeanine? And admitting in a recent interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that the previous explanations for the Comey firing were evasive, to put it mildly?

It’s exhausting, infuriating. But it also feels good — satisfying — to watch him unravel. I’ve nothing brilliant to offer about any of this, and even if I did I wouldn’t be able to phrase it…I can’t even finish this sentence.. Too jet-lagged. I quit. But it sure feels good to be in a country that primarily values sanity and level-headedness. Leave it at that.

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Every time I arrive in Paris there’s always something that goes a little bit wrong, usually because I haven’t gathered all the necessary information or forgotten something. Or because I’m too tired to figure something out. That’s what happened today. I missed some instructions about picking up the apartment keys that had been sent several weeks ago by my Airbnb host, Romain. They were sent early last March but not re-sent today or yesterday, which would have been the considerate thing. But a couple of other things also went wrong on their own.

My flight from JFK arrived around 12:40 pm.   I took the usual Roissy bus (40 minutes, slogging through traffic), and arrived at the depot behind Place d’Opera around 2:40 pm.  I hopped on a Creteil-bound metro, got off at the Filles du Calvaire stop, and dragged the luggage over to 40 rue de Saintonge.

I had texted Romain yesterday and explained I’d be there around 3:30 pm. But when I texted him today as I stood by the street entrance, he told me the keys were sitting inside a code-entry lock box inside Bistrot de la Gaite (7 rue Papin), which is ten blocks to the west. I scrolled back through my Airbnb inbox and found a message, sent on 3.9, explaining this procedure, so my bad. I should’ve double-checked.

So I hailed a cab and went over to this place, bags and all. But then the code Romain gave me in the original message didn’t work. Punched it out four times — no dice. So I texted Romain, blah-dee-blah, “not working, brah.” He eventually gave me another code that worked. Keys and bags in hand, I taxied back to the pad.

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Late this afternoon I saw a great documentary that I can’t talk about until Friday. My Paris flight leaves in less than an hour. I’ll be there at 6:40 am eastern, 3:40 am Pacific. Should be at the pad by 3:30 pm Paris time.  An occasional Percocet is good for the soul.

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Yes, it looks like a retread, a Stand By Me ensemble threatened by a demonic Clarabelle. But something tells me that It (9.8.17, Warner Bros., New Line) may be up to something good. I’m basing this suspicion partly on the last two-thirds of the new trailer, and partly on the fact that it was directed by Andres Muschietti, who delivered the superb Mama four years ago.

From Todd McCarthy’s 1.15.13 Hollywood Reporter review of Mama:

“Being sold primarily on the name of its godfather, Guillermo del Toro, this Canadian-Spanish co-production from Universal is refreshingly mindful of the less-is-more horror guidelines employed by 1940s master Val Lewton, not to mention Japanese ghost stories, but the PG-13 rating might prove too restrictive for the gory tastes of male core genre fans.

“In essence, Mama represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out. With fine special effects and a good sense of creating a mood and pacing the jolts, [Andres] Muschietti shows a reassuringly confident hand for a first-time director, pulling off some fine visual coups through smart camera placement and cutting, and not taking the whole thing so seriously that it becomes overwrought.”