Month: May 2017

Trump Is Freaking

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Opening graph of today’s N.Y. Times story about President Trump shit-canning former FBI director James Comey: “President Trump has fired the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, over his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, the White House said on Tuesday.”

I seriously doubt that the reason for Trump’s action was about Comey’s handing of the Clinton email inquiry. I don’t think Trump gives one infinitesimal shit about that. I think the firing is an attempt to restrict or otherwise control the FBI’s investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the ’16 election.

Comey was guiding or overseeing that investigation. I’m presuming that Comey’s replacement will be chosen based on his or her skepticism about the Russia/Trump thing, and/or a less-then-ardent interest in pursuing the matter.

In short I think it’s a Nixon-firing-Cox episode all over again. Thoughts?

“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” Mr. Trump said in a letter to Mr. Comey dated Tuesday. “It is essential that we find new leadership for the F.B.I. that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission,” Mr. Trump wrote.

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Sense of Direction, No Urgency

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I wrote for two or three hours this morning (i.e., the Sgt. Pepper piece, half the action flick piece), did my interview with Long Strange Trip director Amir Bar Lev at the Smyth Hotel (Church and Chambers). I lunched with Jett in eastern Chinatown, and then roamed around a bit, looking for the right cafe or a Starbucks to settle into. I went to Will Leather Goods on Prince Street and asked them to repair my black leather computer bag. (They never charge for repairs — always stand by their stuff.) I eventually parked it at a Starbucks on Spring and Crosby. This evening I’ll be seeing Obit at the Film Forum.

 
 

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What’s Changed Over Last Four Years?

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“Best Action Flicks of the 21st Century” was posted on 5.9.17. What if anything has changed in the action realm in the four years since?

To most people “action film” means violent, whoop-ass shit with lots of leaping around, automatic rifle fire, squealing tires and non-stop adrenalin. But when it comes to deciding on the best action films, most viewers aren’t that demanding. They love their jizz-whiz and don’t care about the shadings and subtleties. But I am demanding, you see. To really love an action film I have to believe that (a) what I’m watching bears at least some relation to human behavior as most of us have come to know it and is therefore delivering a semi-believable, well-motivated thing, and (b) what I’m watching could actually happen in the real-deal world of physics (i.e., no idiotic swan dives off 50-story office buildings).

I don’t care, by the way, if the action content in a film takes up the first 10 minutes or the last half-hour or the whole damn running time. All I care about is whether or not I believe what I’m seeing, or…you know, whether I’m distracted or dazzled enough so that I don’t pay attention to logic or realism factors. Whatever works. As long as action defines character and vice versa.

If I’m enjoying an action flick it’s because I fucking believe it, and I never believe anything that doesn’t respect some grown-up concept of reality. Fantasy flicks can blow me for the most part. I want an action movie that will plant its feet, look me in the eye and tell the fucking truth.

Very few 21st Century action films live up to HE’s rules and standards, or even give a damn about doing so. The Fast and Furious franchise is notorious for spitting in the face of reality. Almost all superhero comic-book movies revel in the fact that their realm allows them to ignore logic and believability. Once in a great while and in a very blue moon, a first-rate action flick will come along that defies HE rules but gets away with it. One of these was Ang Lee‘s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (’00), but that’s a very rare occurence. On the other hand Crouching Tiger led to the stars of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle flying around on wires, and that was an awful thing to behold.

Here are Hollywood Elsewhere’s choices for the 11 craftiest, best-made, most believable action films of the 21st Century, and in this order:

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Don’t Ignore The Spiritual Awakening Aspect

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A 50th anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band will pop in early June — a six-disc, all-in, bells-and-whistles cash grab.

The selling point will be a a newly remastered stereo mix by Giles Martin and Sam Okell (a friend says it “sounds a bit more mono-ish” than previous editions). $117 and change. You can’t blame the keepers of the flame for trying to exploit the occasion, but no thanks. I’ve been all Pepper-ed out for longer than I’d care to acknowledge.

 

Expect a fresh torrent of looking-back assessments and tributes starting later this month. All will remind that Sgt. Pepper exerted a massive influence upon its time and realm, not just upon musicians and the music industry but the culture at large. I strongly suspect that a good portion and perhaps even a majority of these will ignore the psychedelic drug explosion that the album brought about. Those who do so will of course be ignoring the entire cultural earthquake that Sgt. Pepper incited, but that would be standard procedure for the corporate sector of 21st Century journalism.

Here’s an HE piece, posted in June ’07, about this very topic:

“Astonishingly and rather suddenly, beginning in June 1967 and continuing long after that, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band persuaded a significant portion of America’s middle-class youths to throw out the basic rock ‘n’ roll rebel handbook and embark upon chemically-fortified, radiant-vision journeys of the mind and soul. This in turn led to a mass injection of satori/Godhead consciousness that literally upended liberal American society.

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Rushed, Squeezed

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I don’t know what you want from me. My Fairfield train arrived in Grand Central Station around 8:50 am. I dragged my luggage up to Dolby 88 at Sixth and 55th Street, watched a reasonably decent, not-half-bad film that I’ll identify later, chatted over coffee with Variety critic Owen Gleiberman, took the IRT down to Chambers, dumped my stuff at the Murray Street Airbnb, and then wrote a bit at a Starbucks at Murray and Church (where I’m currently sitting). I now have to head uptown to a screening of Doug Liman‘s The Wall (Roadside, 5.12). 8:50 pm update: Sitting inside 57th Street Starbucks, about to get kicked out. I just can’t seem to get on it today.

 

Beautiful Dystopian Bleakscape

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We’ve already contemplated Ryan Gosling‘s grimy, haunted protagonist (i.e., LAPD Officer K) and the return of Harrison Ford‘s Rick Deckard. And we’ve absorbed the dusty mustard colors and neorish neon vistas. The fresh standouts are Jared Leto as the new version of Joe Turkel‘s Dr. Eldon Tyrell (i.e., a replicant manufacturer called Wallace) and Ana de Armas as Joi — i.e., the new Sean Young. Other costars include Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James and Dave “big fucking ape” Bautista. Blade Runner 2049 opens on 10.6. I intend to see it in 2D.

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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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