Month: August 2017

Early this morning an unnamed stuntwomen bought it performing a motorcycle stunt for Deadpool 2. Of all the things to lose your life in the service of! Travelling around 60 kph (or 40 mph), the female rider went airborne around 8:20 am, crashing through the glass of the Shaw Tower ground-floor studio. From a Global News story: “People were running on the sidewalk, the motorcycle comes flying across the street, looks like from a ramp because it was in the air,” said one witness. “[The rider was] standing on the bike, slams into that building, clearly hit and out-of-control and clearly not planned.” Deadpool 2 is being directed by former stuntman David Leitch.

BoxOfficeMojo figures indicate that Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Detroit, which opened limited on 7.28 and wide on 8.4, is at best sputtering along. You’re not supposed to dwell on this lest you be suspected of having the wrong attitude about black-history films, but Detroit made a lousy $13,421,464 after 10 days of nationwide play. That’s not a horribly shitty figure, but it’s not very encouraging.

The opening weekend tally was $7.3 million, on 3007 screens. Boxoffice Mojo reported a $2370 average after the 8.4 opening weekend, but if (I say “if”) it was still on 3007 screens as of last night and if you presume that the ten-day wide total is around $13 million ($13,421,464 minus the limited 7.28 first-weekend haul of $350K), the per-screen average is $4323, which doesn’t sound like an absolute calamity.

At least Detroit is doing better than Rules Don’t Apply did after opening on 11.23 — $1,589,625 in 2,382 theaters for a $667 average.

What kind of award-season bump can Detroit expect when it becomes a Bluray-and-streaming title in the mid to late fall? I’m sorry to say I don’t see anything happening on that front. The only performance I felt even mildly stirred by was John Boyega‘s as Melvin Dismukes, but it’s not expansive or arc-y enough. Are you honestly suggesting that Will Poulter‘s performance as the fiendish Philip Krauss is award-worthy? Not in my book, it isn’t.

Were the Metrograph guys being upfront by tweeting that the “X-rated” version of Frank Perry‘s Last Summer (’69) would play there last Friday and Saturday (8.11 and 8.12). Okay, they didn’t specifically claim that the 97-minute X-rated version would show, but they certainly implied this by describing the film as “an X-rated cult coming-of-age classic.” Their web page, however, says that the film runs 95 minutes. This indicates they showed the tamer R-rated version as opposed to the 97-minute version that the MPAA gave an X rating to.

The Metrograph showed the only existing celluloid copy of the film, a 16mm print supplied by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. The Wiki page says all 35mm prints “have been lost for years”, ditto the X-rated version.

I called and wrote the Metrograph guys about this…zip.

By the way: There’s an outfit called The Video Beat that claims to be offering a Last Summer DVD containing both the 97-minute and 95-minute versions. Their copy states that “the longer version contains full frontal and rear nudity and a brutal rape scene. The shorter version is edited to remove nudity and some extreme cruelty. We have both versions. The 95-minute version is excellent quality. The 97-minute version is very good quality but a notch below the 95 minute version. When you order this title you will receive both versions, each on a separate disc.”

I’ve written these guys to double-confirm and ask how they found and mastered the X-rated version. I’ll believe that their DVD actually contains this when I see it.

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Jason Kessler, the white nationalist behind the “Unite the Right” demonstration that sparked deadly violence in Charlottesville, was chased away from a brief outdoor press conference Sunday afternoon as an angry crowd jeered and attacked him. He scurried away like a bitch, but not before taking a punch and being tackled. Charlottesville cops stepped in to save his sorry ass.

Jason Kessler, white supremacist who organized #Charlottesville rally, was just literally chased out of town.pic.twitter.com/EhAySdmOlU

— Rogue CPI (@RogueCPI) August 13, 2017

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Several…okay, a few critics are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Warren Beatty, Arthur Penn, David Newman and Robert Benton‘s Bonnie and Clyde. Except the real 50th anniversary was four months ago. This landmark, culture-changing film opened twice — half-heartedly on 4.14.67 (which resulted in Bosley Crowther‘s N.Y. Times pan) and then was re-released on 8.13.67. Remember also that Pauline Kael‘s legendary New Yorker praise piece appeared two months later, in an issue dated 10.21.67. Things sure moved a lot slower back then.

I’ve seen Bonnie and Clyde at least 10 or 12 times. I own the WHV Bluray, of course. Moments and images (the first motel shootout, half of Gene Hackman‘s head blown off, Michael J. Pollard weeping after screwing up the escape from the first bank job, the look on Gene Wilder‘s face when his fiance reveals her actual age) have been in my blood since my 20s. “Don’t sell that cow!”

I’ve always regarded the final machine-gun slaughter scene as not just an all-time shocker but (this is going to sound a little weird) strangely sexual. Yes, I still hate Estelle Parsons‘ performance as Blanche Barrow. (That awful scream, I mean. The real Blanche hated it too.) I chuckle every time Denver Pyle sneaks up behind a heavily-bandaged Parsons, leans down and says “Blanche Barrow!”

Remember how A.O. Scott claimed on the 40th anniversary of Bonnie and Clyde that Crowther was half-right in his condemnation?

“Bonnie and Clyde‘s hero and heroine are not fighting injustice so much as they are having fun, enjoying the prerogatives of outlaw fame. They exist in a kind of anarchic utopia where the pursuit of kicks is imagined to be inherently political. In this universe the usual ethical justifications of violent action are stripped away, but the aura of righteousness somehow remains.”

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Since he began starring almost exclusively in action thrillers, Tom Cruise has been the energizer bunny. Major muscular, toned and buffed, rough and ready. Well, yesterday the bunny slammed into a wall. It had to happen. This kind of accident could’ve occured 20 or 10 years ago, but Cruise is 55 now, and at that age…well, I’m sure he’ll be okay. I’ve been there. I fell off a moving scooter in Paris in ’03, banged my left leg up pretty badly. I hobbled, I groaned. The bruise on my left thigh was green and gray. Have I stopped riding scooters and motorcycles since? Of course not! Nonetheless, this was fate and biology sending Cruise a message.

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What is wrong with the NewsTube guy who decided to overdub footage of yesterday’s Charlottesville car tragedy with a pathetic organ riff?

The driver of the Dodge Challenger that killed Heather D. Meyer and wounded 19 others yesterday is James Alex Fields, Jr. — 20 years old, hailing from Maumee, Ohio.

Has there ever been a mass-murderer or domestic terrorist who hasn’t been described in day-after reports as a “quiet” type who “kept to himself”?

From 8.13 N.Y. Times story: “Caitlin Robinson, who attended Ockerman Middle School in Florence, Ky., with Fields, suggested that his interest in far-right ideologies dated back years. She said Fields ‘mostly kept to himself’ and ‘didn’t start fights or try to fight,’ but she described him as ‘exceptionally odd and an outcast to be sure.'”

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CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewed Real Time‘s Bill Maher last Friday night. Start at 1:35: “There is that part of the Democratic party that is plainly obnoxious, humorless, too politically correct. If you talk to Trump people, they’re not unaware of his flaws, but what they always say, what they love about him, is that he’s politically incorrect. As bad as he is in some ways, they would rather be on his team than those insufferable people on the left. That’s how [Trump supporters] think.

“And the puritanism of the politically correct is getting worse. I don’t know how long I’m going to last, really. It’s worse every year. The things that they go after people for now. Your colleague — I don’t agree with him — Jeffrey Lord, CNN got rid of him because he said ‘sieg heil’ on a tweet. It was a joke.

“This has got to stop, this idea that people have to go away if they’ve offended me even for one moment. How about just move on, turn the page, go to the next thing in your life? This idea that you cannot suffer one moment of pain. These are the kids, the millenials, who grew up yelling at their parents, something that never ever crossed my mind [when I was a kid] and parents negotiating everything, and this sense of entitlement, that I should never feel any pain, even the pain of someone disagreeing with me. There’s an alarming number of millenials who don’t even believe in free speech, because free speech could lead to hurt feelings.”

Presumably a few have seen Benny and Josh Safdie‘s Good Time. HE would be delighted to post whatever negative assessments you’d care to forward. (Okay, positive reviews are fine too.) And if anyone wants to shit on Marc Webb and Allan Loeb‘s The Only Living Boy in New York, feel free.

A well-written passage from A.O. Scott‘s N.Y. Times review of Good Time: “The Safdies are as clever and crafty as Robert Pattinson‘s Connie is inept and impulsive. Good Time moves smartly and propulsively to the stressed-out strains of Daniel Lopatin’s edge-of-a-heart-attack score. The smudgy, grimy urban landscape — emergency rooms, fast-food restaurants, blocks of modest, over-mortgaged, squeezed-together houses — is shot (by Sean Price Williams) with a fastidious avoidance of prettiness.

“The story doesn’t twist and turn so much as squirm and jump like an eel in the bottom of a rowboat. The biggest surprises confirm what an unbelievable slimeball Connie is. He’s about as hard to root for as any movie outlaw you can think of.”

Second reposting of my 5.26 17 Cannes review: “The Safdie brothers know how to whip action into a lather and keep the kettle boiling, and there’s no doubt that Good Time felt like the punchiest and craziest film to play during the festival, which is why so many critics, underwhelmed by a relatively weak lineup, responded with such fervor. But I can’t abide stupidity, and after 40 minutes of watching these simpletons hold up a bank and run around and ruthlessly use people to duck the heat I was praying that at least one of them would get shot or arrested. I can roll with scumbags and sociopaths, but I need a little something I can relate to or identify with. If the repulsion factor is too strong, I check out. And that’s what I did in this instance. And good riddance.”

Martin Guigui‘s 9/11 (Atlas, 9.8) might be an okay thriller (who knows?) but does anyone want to see it? Charlie Sheen has always been a professional-grade actor — presence, gravitas, good instincts — but of all the middle-aged males who could’ve starred in this thing, Sheen is…well, not the best choice. Honest admission (and please don’t take this the wrong way but this trailer implanted a thought): If Sheen himself had, God forbid, been a victim of the WTC attacks, he would be remembered today as the guy who’d starred or costarred in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Platoon, Wall Street, Eight Men Out, Major League, The Rookie, Hot Shots!, Hot Shots! Part Deux and Being John Malkovich. But post-9/11 he started to become someone else, and this second incarnation began to happen about 15 years ago, or beginning with his marriage to Denise Richards and his empowering eight-year run with Two and A Half Men. I’m basically saying that Guigi’s 9/11 film needed a star with less baggage…that’s all. The costars are Whoopi Goldberg, Gina Gershon, Luis Guzmán, Jacqueline Bisset.

In a follow-up statement on today’s racial violence in Charlottesville, which included an incident of vehicular assault that resulted in the death of at least one person, President Donald Trump put the blame “on many sides.” In other words, the counter-protestors were as much to blame as the scurvy racist scumbags who assembled the white-power rally in the first place. Trump naturally didn’t mention the motives behind the rally, but he did lament that “no child should ever be afraid to go outside and play or be with their parents and have a good time.” Then he pivoted and boasted about his administration’s accomplishments — “absolute record employment, unemployment the lowest its been in 17 years, companies pouring into our country…we have so many incredible things happening in our country, so when I watch Charlottesville to me it’s very, very sad.”

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