Month: May 2017

I Want To Play My Bicycle

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54 years ago on The Steve Allen Show, Frank Zappa played the bicycle. The future Mothers of Invention leader didn’t exactly create “music” but there was a certain emotionality to some of the sounds. I’m mentioning this because last night Evgueni Galperine, co-composer of the score to Andrey Zvaginstev‘s Loveless, told me he used a spinning bicycle wheel for two or three muscial passages in the film. Like the 1963 Zappa effect, it’s an eerie, whining sound that isn’t exactly melodious but is definitely affecting. Evgueni and brother Sacha, both of whom live in Paris these days, also composed the music for The Hunger Games as well as Barry Levinson‘s The Wizard of Lies. Evgueni, with whom I spoke during last night’s Loveless party, promised to send me a couple of mp3 clips from the Loveless score, including the bicycle one.


Loveless composer and musical bicycle aficionado Evguieni Galperine

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Not A Big Deal But…

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Yesterday morning (5.19) at 9:27 am, I received an invite to a Hotel Martinez discussion between Michael Moore (beamed in via Skype) and Harvey and Bob Weinstein about Fahrenheit 11/9, Moore’s forthcoming doc about the Donald Trump catastrophe. Six hours and 25 minutes later (or at 3:44 pm) I received an email from a Weinstein rep saying that “the conversation on Friday with Harvey, Bob, and Michael will no longer be an open event for coverage.” Meaning what exactly? The discussion will happen, I was told, but only for buyers, not press. Not a huge concern on this end but switching gears with the space of six hours feels a bit skittish on Harvey or Michael’s part. Antsy, insecure.

It would appear that Harvey or Michael had second thoughts about the tone of the potential press coverage. Perhaps a 5.16 HE post titled “Can Michael Moore Go Home Again?” gave them the willies. Opening paragraph: “I somehow doubt that Michael Moore‘s forthcoming anti-Trump doc, Fahrenheit 11/9, will shake up or double-clarify perceptions of the deranged Trump circus. I say this as a staunch fan and ally of nearly every Moore viewpoint and documentary going back to Roger and Me, but what can he say or show that isn’t on the web and cable news every day?”

Piece Of My Heart

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This poster broke two or three days ago. It went right by me until a friend asked “whaddaya think?” What I think is that until today I hadn’t imagined how nuts Darren Aronofsky‘s mother! (Paramount, 10,13) might be. Obviously a good thing. Directed and written by Aronofsky; costarring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Ed Harris and Kristen Wiig.

Getting Is Good

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During today’s early afternoon’s Loveless press conference — caption unnecessary.
 
I felt the same anguish that Deadline‘s Pete Hammond was going through, and at the exact same time. We were all waiting to get into the Grand Lumiere theatre for an 8:30 am of Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck, and the security staffers were taking forever, carefully inspecting every last bag and zipper packet.
 
 
 
285 euros for this? Palais Wifi isn’t working this year. I’m going down tomorrow and demanding a refund.
 
The great Andrey Zvyagnitsev discussing his latest landmark film in his usual mild, low-key way. Nearly everyone I spoke to was either knocked out or seriously impressed by Loveless, but what do they know?

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Inarritu’s Carne y Arena: Barefoot, On Your Knees

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Late this afternoon I submitted to Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Carne y Arena, a six-and-a-half-minute virtual reality trip that simulates with all-encompassing realism what Mexican immigrants often go through while attempting to cross the United States border in the Southwestern desert region. It was my first virtual-reality-plus experience (not just sight and sound but a realistic vibe and an atmosphere that I was walking around in barefoot), and I was so knocked out I’m returning next week for a second go-round.

I took off my shoes and socks, strolled into a red-lighted sound stage with a floor covered in sand, put on a virtual reality backpack and headset and…bing, there I was. Or there it all was. The headset screen was circular and not CinemaScope-like as I’d expected, but I was suddenly standing in the pre-dawn desert amid the sloping mounds and cactus and slightly damp morning air. Then a small group of immigrants, led by a “coyote”, approached in the semi-darkness.

A few seconds later an overhead chopper approached, and then a blinding light hit my eyes. Border guards pulled up in a pair of SUVs, shouting and aiming their weapons and telling me to get the fuck down on my knees. I put my hands up and dropped to the ground, looking around and behind and all over. Then I got back up and started roaming around in a crouched combat position, feeling like Charlie Sheen or Willem Dafoe in Platoon. Then I got yelled at again: “Down on your knees…hit the ground…now!”

In short, within seconds I had forgotten the tech aspects and fallen into the reality of it. It wasn’t a viewing experience — it was a being experience. You can do a 360 any time to see what’s happening here or there. There were dozens of things I could have done including (I assume) challenge the guards and tell them to back off or say “yo…my personal hotspot isn’t working…do you know where I can find a reasonably decent wifi signal?” Mostly I crouched and watched and just took it all in. I was half-expecting to get shot at any moment. Which would have actually been cool, especially if the VR assistant had punched me in the chest at the exact moment the muzzle flash appeared.

Carne y Arena is an all-CG creation but sourced from actual footage with real actors. It was easily the most immersive, head-turning viewing I’ve ever sampled, tasted, felt and touched. And yet it also delivered in emotional terms, prompting me to feel compassion for immigrants all over. So yes, I now know a little bit about what it’s like to go through something like this for real. I felt intimidated, fearful. But I have to say that I simply loved the primal juice of it. I especially liked walking around that big desert sandbox barefoot.

Carne y Arena director Alejandro G. Inarritu, inside viewing hangar at the Cannes Mandelieu Airport — Thursday, 5.19, 3:35 pm.

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Roger Ailes Dies, Goes To Hell

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Roger Ailes, the founder and chairman of Fox News from the mid ’90s to his resignation over sexual harassment allegations last July, has passed at age 77. I’m not sorry. If I was still drinking I’d be popping a magnum of champagne right now. I’m sure he was regarded as a nice guy by some, but what is that in the greater scheme?

When I heard the news my reaction was “good…a fundamentally evil guy is no more.” As the architect and maestro behind Fox News, Ailes promoted a daily dose of distorted rightwing talking points and malicious ignorance across the land, which struck a chord among millions of dumb-as-a-fencepost rurals and old white guys and their wives. He made rightwing bullshit into a highly profitable brand, and energized the dumbshits like nobody before or since. Right now he’s roasting on a spit in the hottest cavern in hell. For Ailes was a liar and the father of America’s political toxicity for 20 years. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on, but cheers to the gallant steed that carried him out.

Greatness of Loveless

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As I suspected it would be, Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless is a chilly, anguished and entirely brilliant film. Sad but so good. Every shot, every frame, every line is dead cold honest — it deals straight cards without a smidgen of bullshit. Plus it’s beautiful to look at and exquisitely performed. It’s a story about a marriage gone bad — a moribund mismatch, utterly ruined — and a 12 year-old boy, the emotionally aloof son of this mournful couple, gone missing. But like Leviathan, Loveless is about much more than just the tale.

It deals in specifics (certainly in terms of finely-drawn character and investigative logistics when it comes to searching for the boy) but it delivers a rich, reflective look at everything and everyone under the gray Russian skies. It’s about the whole undertow of Russian life right now, or more specifically five years ago as it takes place in 2012 — a capturing of things not right and depleted, of self-absorption and a lack of wholeness and fulfillment, a case of bitterness and uncertainty and a general sense of downswirl, the whole current of a culture no longer thriving with spirit and tradition and togetherness but starting to fray from a lack of these things.

If Leviathan was about Russian corruption from the top down and a populace drowning in hopelessness and vodka, Loveless is about spiritual attrition through vanity, selfishness, manipulation and too many ambivalent, disloyal people seething and shouting and staring at smartphone screens. Or into the abyss.

For me, Loveless is somber and dazzling at the same time. By no means a feel-good thing but definitely a movie that you’ll believe and trust in every way imaginable, and in that sense it’s the kind of immersive experience that you can’t help but feel nurtured by and delighted with. I was 100% engaged and enthralled. Hell, I was spellbound.

Zyagintsev is a major-league, genius-level hombre, no question, and this movie is another serving of that recipe, that stew, that vibe that makes you lean forward in your seat and just go “wow, I need to see this again as soon as possible.” Is that “entertainment”? For me it is. Will the megaplexers have the same reaction? Of course not. They’re too dull and stupid to get a movie like this, but if you have even a shred of longing for the rock-solid elements that Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, Leviathan and Elena provide, it’ll fill you up like a big juicy steak.

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Carell’s Oscar Nomination In The Bag

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Battle of The Sexes (Fox Searchlight, 9.22) will obviously be a hit. With Emma Stone having won a Best Actress Oscar for her La La Land performance three months ago, Steve Carell, who is totally on fire as Bobby Riggs, is going to get most of the award-season action. Cheers to co-directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (who delivered Little Miss Sunshine) for lucking into good material plus the right people to work with. The story boils down to (a) obnoxious if indefatigable asshole gets his comeuppance and (b) a gay, closeted tennis player has to cope with a huge professional challenge while sorting out emotional matters with her lover (Andrea Riseborough) and male husband (Austin Stowell). Costarring Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming and Elisabeth Shue.

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Opening Night Stiff

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“Just saw the Despleschin,” I wrote a friend early this afternoon. “Indulgent, too long, at times overheated, generally undisciplined, taxes the patience, no tension to speak of and all over the place. In a word, minor.”

It’s called Ismael’s Ghosts (aka Les Fantomes d’Ismael), and I can’t imagine it’ll make the slightest dent in the U.S., even among admirers of the kind of talky, drifting, oh-so-French films that over-40 urbans used to pay to see at urban arthouses on slow Sunday evenings. Back before streaming lessened their interest in seeing them in theatres.

The story (which is a kind of free-associating fantasia) concerns an impulsive, immature film director (Mathieu Amalric…frequently shouting, slurping alcohol, smoking cigarettes and doing his bug-eyed, intense man-child routine) whose imagination heats up and starts to merge with reality when an ex (Marion Cotillard) returns after a long absence, and thereby stirs up a hornet’s nest of emotions. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Almaric’s wife, often with a quizzical expression. Louis Garrel plays some kind of handicapped…you know what? Forget it. I don’t care to explain who he plays. All I could think during his scenes was “wow, I hope he’ll be better as Jean-Luc Godard.”

The stand-out scene, or at least the one that many critics have mentioned, comes when Cotillard dances to Bob Dylan‘s “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” I was reminded, of course, of Ralph Fiennes dancing in a similar fashion to the Rolling Stones‘ “Emotional Rescue” in Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash. Fiennes totally nailed it; Cotillard is okay.

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Stink of Micro-Waved Cheeseburgers

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A 20something guy sat next to me during yesterday’s train trip from Gare de Lyon to Cannes. About 90 minutes after departure he got up and went to the food car, an all-metal enclosure on the upper deck, mostly serving McDonald’s-like eats and drinks. But instead of wolfing his food up there, the guy brought it back to our first-class haven.

Right away the smell of microwaved cheese, pickles and burger meat filled the air. And then he opened the wrappers and it was even worse.

I knew that giving this animal two or three stink-eye glances wouldn’t matter, but I did it anyway.

It would be one thing if he returned with an apple or a cappuccino or a cold sandwich, but subjecting travellers to toxic fast food fumes is only a step away from cutting a series of elephant farts.

On top of which the guy darted outdoors every time we stopped at a big city (Lyon, Toulon, Marseilles) to smoke a cigarette, and when he returned the putrid aroma of nicotine and cheap tobacco was nearly as bad as the cheeseburger.

Did it occur to this guy that that his fratboy manners were a problem? Naaah. One of the key traits of assholes worldwide is not being even faintly aware that they might be irritating others. The thought never even occurs.