Day: June 29, 2017

Random Scratch-Outs on Ellwood’s Best Picture Projections

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In a 6.28 Playlist piece, Greg Ellwood floated several 2017 Best Picture candidates, breaking them down into likely contenders vs. potential nominees. Here’s a fast assessment of the first category with some titles dismissed because of some hair-trigger, highly subjective, highly personal rationale or perception. 22 films are assessed here; Ellwood has more on his lists:

Ellwood’s Likely Contenders (alphabetical order):

1. Denis Villenueve‘s Blade Runner 2049 / HE says nope — high-end sci-fi stuff walks — that test-screening report about Harrison Ford not showing up until the very end doesn’t help matters.
2. Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name / HE says you bet your booty.
3. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s The Current War / HE says nope — smells dicey — Benedict Cumberbatch delivering another eccentric genius scientist performance in the wake of The Imitation Game? — Ben-Hur director Timur Bekmambetov having produced (along with Basil Iwanyk and Steven Zaillian) implies trouble.
4. Joe Wright‘s Darkest Hour / Gary Oldman will obviously compete for the Best Actor Oscar, but no one has a line on the film itself.
5. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Detroit / HE says you bet your booty, especially with those raised eyebrows over that August 4th release date having recently been lowered.
6. Alexander Payne‘s Downsizing / HE says probably, most likely …remember that Payne’s Cinemacon product reel sold everyone on this puppy…darkly funny while delivering an allegory that the dumbest popcorn-muncher will get…audacious concept, first-rate VFX, etc.
7. Christopher Nolan‘s Dunkirk / HE says senses uncertainty at this stage…post-production rumblings about it being more of a grand technical exercise than anything else….curious history lesson (“they got their asses kicked but they did it together, as a nation!”) mixed with knockout IMAX visuals.
8. Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project / HE says strictly Gotham and Spirit Awards.
9. Jordan Peele‘s Get Out / HE has been saying all along that this clever, racially attuned horror comedy, the kind of thing that John Carpenter might have directed in the ’70s or ’80s, has been way overhyped. Will this stop Academy members from nominating it for Best Picture? If you have to ask this, you don’t know the Academy kowtows.

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Foam At The Mouth NRA Insanity

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Get out your guns and think about drilling those pathetic bitch liberals for “bullying and terrorizing the law abiding with their lying protests.” Stand up for freedom, stop the madness, and show these lefty assholes who’s boss. This is a real NRA ad, posted on 4.7 but breaking within the last 24. NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch sounds to me like a seriously dangerous person. Her rhetoric is meant to sound serious but it feels freaky, seemingly pushed to the edge of parody.

Carne y Arena Sneaking Into LACMA Without Fanfare

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Last month a slew of Cannes-attending journalists and critics raved about Alejandro G. Inarritu and Emmanuel Lubezski‘s Carne y Arena, a virtual reality Mexican immigrant experience.  It happened inside a hangar at the Cannes Mandelieu airport. Here’s my reaction piece, posted on 5.18.17. Everyone said the same things — immersive, visceral, jolting, head-turning, thought-provoking, unforgettable, etc.

The basic drill is “you’re really there” in the sense that you’re not watching but living it on your feet…feeling the vibe, smelling the fear, grappling with the trauma of getting busted and pushed around deep down. Border guards yelling and pointing guns as you stand barefoot on the cool desert sand at dawn, and then you drop to your knees with your hands on your head.

A longterm engagement of the exact same experience will debut at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art three days hence — i.e., Sunday, 7.2. It’ll cost $45 a pop if you’re not a LACMA member, student or senior. But in sharp contrast to the celebrated Cannes installation, there’s been zero promotion behind the LACMA thing. I’m guessing this is because the LACMA installation can only accommodate one person at a time (the experience lasts 6 1/2 minutes), and that the costs of presenting it will far outweigh whatever income might result so no one wants to spend too lavishly.

I understand that, but I wanted to experience it a second time and this time bring Tatyana, whom I tried to escort to the Cannes installation before being told by the IDPR guys that there was a strict “no friends or partners, only credentialed journos” policy in place. Alas, I was just told by the IDPR guys yesterday that there’ll be no assistance in visiting the LACMA thing, and if I want to catch it again I should just fork over the $45 ($90 for two of us) like anyone else. Okay, fine, but how about allowing me to see it sooner rather than later, without having to arrange my own visit from the back of the line like the rest of the citizens? Nope — you’re on your own, I was essentially told. Okay, fine. But in retrospect I wish they hadn’t been so strict in Cannes about not letting journos bring girlfriends.

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Contrary To Popular Belief

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John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Alfonso Bedoya, among many others, didn’t shoot The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (’48) from inside a silvery black-and-white membrane, but within a normal, full-color reality realm like anything else. I feel safe in saying that the first two shots were probably captured in real photographic color; the last one is colorized.