Month: June 2017

Tony & Manohla’s Top 25 of the 21st Century

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N.Y Times critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis have posted their picks for the Best 25 films of the 21st Century. There are no right or wrong picks in this regard, of course, but Inside Out being called the seventh best film of the century thus far feels…I’m not sure how to put this. A little head-scratchy?

Tony and Manohla’s top ten in this order: (1) Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood (’07), (2) Hayao Miyazaki‘s Spirited Away (’02), (3) Clint Eastwood‘s Million Dollar Baby (’04), (4) Jia Zhangke‘s A Touch of Sin (’13), (5) Cristi Puiu‘s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (’06), (6) Edward Yang‘s Yi Yi (’00), (7) Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen‘s Inside Out (’15), (8) Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood (’14), (9) Olivier Assayas‘ Summer Hours and (10) Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker (’09).

Remember that BBC.com roster of the 100 finest films of the 21st Century, which was posted last August? The general response was “who are these guys?…their choices are so scholastic, so self-regarding, so dweeby.” I’m getting somewhat the same vibe from Tony and Manohla’s list.

I posted my own top 25 picks on 4.22.16: Zodiac, Zero Dark Thirty, Manchester By The Sea, Leviathan, The Wolf of Wall Street, A Separation, The Social Network, No Country For Old Men, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, The Lives of Others, Michael Clayton, Almost Famous (the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Love & Mercy, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, In the Bedroom. To these I would add five ’17 films — Call Me By Your Name, Loveless, Personal Shopper, The Square and The Big Sick.

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Remember Esperanto?

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The idea behind Esperanto, which was first hatched in the late 1880s, was that everyone would speak or at least understand the same language. Well, that problem has been solved. English is Esperanto and vice versa. Just about everyone speaks it to some degree, especially in the big cities, and many European merchants use English street signs. My first time in Paris was in ’76, and if you spoke only English back then you were a hopeless American donkey. As mortified as I felt back then, I miss that culture to some extent. A certain romance has been rubbed out. I certainly wish Americans weren’t so culturally dominant over here now. Last night Tatyana and I were sitting at an outdoor cafe/restaurant in the Marais, and there were four bellowing, yaw-hawing American assholes sitting 10 or 12 feet away. Everyone was giving them the stink-eye. I’ve no love or compassion for generic “Americans” (i.e., loud, entitled, self-absorbed) as a rule in any country, but I really hate them when I’m in this, the fairest city of all.

 
 

Yes — the Silencio bar bill for a champagne spritzer and a Diet Coke was 26 euros.

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Revolutionary Mold-Breaker?

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Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Detroit (Annapurna, 8.4) is looking to break the conventional award-season mindset by opening nearly a full month before the kick off of Venice-Telluride-Toronto, and at the start of a notorious “dump” month at that. Detroit will be on screens only eight weeks hence. It should begin to screen for the know-it-alls by sometime in early July, possibly within three weeks. This is a TV spot, by the way, that’ll play during NBA Finals:

Time To Bite Into Apes Finale

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20 months after the start of principal photography (i.e., 10.14.15) and almost exactly a month before the 7.14.17 opening, Matt Reeves‘ War For The Planet of the Apes will have a peek-out screening for elite journos. Plus a little post-screening schmooze time with filmmakers. The grand conclusion to a great and terrible war between civilizations. Spoiler: Apes win. Stand-up hurrahs for Andy Serkis (“Caesar”), Woody Harrelson (Trump-like Colonel), Steve Zahn (“bad ape”), Karin Konoval, Terry Notary, et. al. Nothing especially mind-boggling or even newsy in this, but the invite art hooked me.

Maher: “I Did A Bad Thing”

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Bill Maher has weathered the storm, been schooled, is out of the woods. The charge is/was unconscious white privilege. Quote: “A guy said a weird thing, and I made a bad joke. I’m just a product of the country like everyone else. I was born in 1956, and grew up in an all-white town in New Jersey. [But] that word brought back pain to a lot of people, and that’s why I apologized and why I reiterate [that] tonight. I transgressed a sensitivity thing [but] everyone makes mistakes.”

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The Avenger

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A sharp, nicely energized teaser-trailer for yet another historically significant, cultural-benchmark superhero flick, eight months prior to opening. Chadwick Boseman mostly doing the stoic, observant, holding-back thing — the action part will come later. Lupita Nyong’o finally scores a significant, attention-grabbing role in the wake of 12 Years A Slave (i.e, Maz Kanata in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Nakku Harriet in Queen of Katwe didn’t count). Andy Serkis always scores when he plays maniacally self-absorbed nutters.

Premise: “After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther (aka King T’Challa) returns home to Wakanda only to face a challenge from Michael Jordan‘s Eric Killmonger, among others. When two enemies conspire to bring down the kingdom, BP joins forces with C.I.A. agent Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) and members of the Dora Milaje—Wakanda’s special forces—to prevent a world war.”

Logic Exercise

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For me the biggest aspect of James Comey’s Senate testimony was the return of interest in the infamous pee-pee tape. Mainstream media pushed the pee-pee aside a long time ago, and nobody outside this realm wanted to wish for it for fear of disappointment and despair, but it’s probably real. I think. During the Cannes Film Festival I asked Loveless producer Alexander Rodnyansky, a rich Russian guy who knows people, if he’s at least heard that the pee-pee tape is genuine, and, if so, if there seems to be at least a fighting chance it’ll turn up one of these days. I regret to say Rodnyanksy gave me no encouraging replies, and so doing broke my heart.

Decently Made, Culturally Significant Benchmark Flick

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Late yesterday afternoon I finally saw Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman. I found it stirring from time to time, and, like everyone else, I loved the fresh company of a canny and compassionate female superhero who knows all the angles and pretty much can’t be defeated. Or shouldn’t be. I was thoroughly swimming in Gal Gadot‘s performance as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, and particularly her character’s loathing of war and a nurturing, humanist determination to rid the world of this pestilence.

I wasn’t a fan of the bluish smokey gray color scheme during the World War I section, but I enjoyed some of the humor and the general winking attitude and professional aplomb. It’s a good film of this type as far as it goes. I didn’t mind a lot of it and I loved certain portions. Really. It’s not good enough to become a Best Picture contender in the fall, but I can understand why some who are super-thrilled by the cultural connotations would want to see this happen.


Wonder Woman poster in Paris metro

I also found Wonder Woman depressingly familiar. For this is yet another D.C. Comics superhero flick, and that means submitting to the same old D.C. formula elements — a draggy origin story that goes on too long, a romantic interest (Chris Pine‘s Steve Trevor), a team of colorful allies (Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Lucy Davis), several action set pieces, a pair of formidable but vulnerable villains (Danny Huston‘s Erich Ludendorff, Elena Anaya‘s Doctor Poison) and a super-demonic uber-villain whose cover identity is only revealed at the end.

To watch one of these films is to sit in a cage or a straightjacket and wait for the usual-usual to happen. It’s stifling. You’re watching it and saying to yourself, “I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming,” etc.

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At Best, We’re Probably Stuck With Trump Until Sometime In ’19

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From Sasha Abramsky’s 5.18 Nation piece, “Trump Is a Cornered Megalomaniac”: “Yes, it’s a cause for celebration that this miserable, cruel man is on the ropes. [But] men like Donald Trump do not fade gently into their political night.

“Rather, with all nuance sacrificed in pursuit of their senescent need for the spotlight, they scrabble and scratch, lash out and fight. With no self-limiting or self-correcting moral gyroscope, they go down whatever paths they believe offer them the best chance of survival.


There’s something vaguely underwhelming about this N.Y. Daily News cover headline. Not bad, but it doesn’t quite slam it home on some level.

“[This] is a soulless, amoral thug, a con artist now fighting for his life. I do not doubt that, in the end, Trump will be destroyed, that all of those craven, fair-weather friends, those men and women in the GOP whom he embarrassed and humiliated, mocked and deliberately hurt throughout the primary process but who embraced him upon his electoral success, will turn on him as soon as they believe they can so do without destroying their own political careers.

“I do not doubt that he will be derided in the history books as an unmitigated catastrophe for the country. But while those fair-weather friends are still girding for their fight, and the historians are still whetting their pens, Trump, our wounded despot, remains a clear and present danger.”

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A Florida Guy Just Redefined Pathetic

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A 6.5 Smoking Gun post says pint-sized porn actress Lauren Kaye Scott (aka Dakota Skye) was arrested and charged with domestic battery after allegedly punching her boyfriend, Robert “Bobby” Anderson, after having sex with him.

Smoking Gun excerpt: “According to an arrest affidavit, police arrived at the Pinellas Park, Florida, residence of [Anderson], and were told that Scott had struck Anderson in the face with an open right hand, causing him to suffer a swollen lip with a cut.”

Scott “would not get off the phone after the two had sex,” Anderson allegedly told cops. Words ensued, Anderson said he asked her to leave, and Scott “became upset and hit him in the face.”

In other words, she didn’t “punch” him — she slapped him. Like angry women sometimes do. Like femme fatales have done to tough-guy actors in dozens upon dozens of Hollywood potboilers, gangster flicks and film noirs for decades.

Movies are movies and real life is real life, but what kind of pathetic wimp calls the fuzz after his girlfriend whacks him? Women will sometimes call the authorities if a guy gets rough (and well they should) but guys never do this. Ever! Just as surely as there’s no crying in baseball, a guy never calls the fuzz unless there’s been a shooting or stabbing.

There’s only one way to respond if your girlfriend slaps or punches you, and that’s to just stand there and take it like Lee Marvin did when Angie Dickinson walloped him in Point Blank — just stand there and let her go to town until she gets tired. Only chickenshit candy-asses whine and complain when this happens, much less pick up the phone and call John Law…God! Anderson needs to get in touch with that Vietnamese asshole who whined and howled when he was thrown off that United flight.

Good For Silencio

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I don’t give a damn if I ever visit a late-night club ever again. Clubs and bars are strictly for under-45 salmon looking to spawn, and for me that notion disappeared a long time ago. But Loveless composer Evgeny Galperin, who resides in Paris and knows a few people, has told me that Tatyana and I can drop by Silencio, the club that David Lynch designed and opened six years ago, if we’re so inclined. Why not, right?