Day: November 25, 2017

Everyone Loved Tom Jones

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A 4K Criterion Bluray of Tony Richardson‘s Tom Jones (’63) will pop on 2.27.18. A rompy, infectious, occasionally bawdy 18th Century comedy-adventure, it was one of the first critically respected films to break the fourth wall. Or was it the first? To audiences in JFK’s America it was really quite the amusing stunner when Albert Finney interrupted a conversation with some 18th Century character to glance at Richardson’s lens and offer a side quip or two.

Full of rude energy and goaded by the spirit of the British New Wave, Tom Jones also used jumpy handheld photography, freeze frames, whimsical narration and, as I recall, at least one instance of speeded-up photography. It felt like a prank, a lark, a mad bomb, and it completely jettisoned the steady-as-she-goes, well-regulated tone of mainstream cinema that was par for the course back then. On 4.13.64 it won the 1963 Best Picture Oscar along with Oscars or Best Director (Richardson), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.

A 2014 Backstage piece listed 14 films that broke the fourth wall (Annie Hall, Funny Games, Fight Club, Amelie, High Fidelity, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, etc.) but didn’t mention Richardson’s film…weird.

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Uh-Oh Moment

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True story: A director who’s been in the trenches for many years recently heard from a woman who worked as his assistant back in ’87. They hadn’t crossed paths in eons but suddenly an email arrived, and it was tersely worded: “I have something I need to talk to you about.” Right away he felt the fear. The director has always been a kindly gentleman sort, but things were different 30 years ago. He began to scratch his memory and ask himself, “Was there ever a moment in which I might have crossed some kind of line with this woman?” Please, God…tell me nothing even slightly improper occurred as I love my life and I don’t want to die. A current of anxiety began to creep into his bloodstream. Anyway, he reached out and the former assistant rang or something, and it turned out that she’d written a script that she wanted him to read. Whew.

Time To Forecast ’18 Hotties

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Adam McKay‘s Dick Cheney biopic with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell. Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, a space drama about NASA’s Duke of Dullness, Neil Armstrong. Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria. Saoirse Ronan in Mary, Queen of Scots. Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? Glenn Close‘s Best Actress campaign for The Wife. Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased starring Lucas Hedges. Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here. Alex Garland‘s delayed Annihilation.

Not to mention Clint Eastwood‘s The 15:17 to Paris. Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On The Basis of Sex. Garth Davis‘s Mary Magdelene. Gus Van Sant‘s Don’t Worry, he Won’t Get Far on Foot. Robert Zemeckis‘s The Women of Marwen. Felix von Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy with Steve Carell and Timothy Chalamet. Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favorite. And John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick.

All of them 2018 releases, and numbering 19. Not bad for a starting roster.

What follows is a copy of an 11.20.16 piece about likely award-season contenders of 2017, but with the links changed to 2018 forecasts:

It’s time to spitball what the Best Picture hotties will be twelve months hence, or just after the 2018 Thanksgiving holiday.

Every January I begin to compile a list of likely or at least promising-sounding goodies. I thought I’d start a little earlier so that by New Year’s Day I’ll have a half-decent 2018 roster to build from. It’s always hard to cut through the smoke and try to figure out what might poke through. Right now I can’t see much out there. If you check the usual sites and sources (Wikipedia, Box-Office Mojo release schedule) it’s all the same old nauseating crap — the usual mind-melting, idiot-brand, animal-friendly superhero franchise CG Asian-market slop.

Theatrical films are slowly dying, certainly if you go by the product being cranked out by the five families these days, but never say die. Netflix, Amazon, Megan Ellison, A24, Scott Rudin, Sony Pictures Classics…anyone and anything that turns the key. Ambitious theatrical fare…what is that these days? Most believe the form can only go downhill, but the discipline of having to put it all together and cram it into 95 or 110 or 125 or 140 minutes (as opposed to the relative ease of sprawling Westworld-like longforms)…there’s something so vivid and extra-feeling when movies somehow manage to do that thing and deliver like it matters. I wouldn’t want to live in a realm in which people aren’t trying like hell to keep doing this, each and every year.

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What Does HE Crowd Think of Luca’s Film?

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Posted on 1.24.17: As Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name is largely spoken in English and particularly given what a flat-out masterpiece it is, I don’t see why this sensual Italian-shot drama shouldn’t be a Best Picture contender a year from now.” And look what happened!

This is a landmark film that deserves its day in the Oscar sun. For Call Me By Your Name is not so much about a one-on-one relationship (although that is certainly a central thread) as much as the hearts and minds of a small, mostly English-speaking community in northern Italy (the film was primarily shot in Guadagnino’s home town of Crema), and how they all observe, absorb, nourish and comment upon in little affecting ways the central, slow-build love story between Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer.

What counts is that the mood and drift of this film isn’t really about straight or gay or anything in between. It’s about “being there” in every possible comprehension of that term — about sensual samplings, summer aromas, warm sunshine, fresh water and that swoony, lifty feeling, etc. You’ve read this stuff over and over, but after a ten-month wait CMNBYN (98% Rotten Tomatoes, 95% Metacritic) is finally starting to appear on commercial screens.

Masterful Shift

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There are several keeper scenes in Alexander Payne‘s Sideways, but this is the best, I feel, because it really sinks into classic manboy immaturity and a messy emotional collapse.

At first, right after Thomas Haden Church‘s “Jack” tells Paul Giamatti‘s “Miles” that “they” have to return to the home of the plus-sized waitress (Missy Doty) to retrieve his wallet and more particularly the wedding rings, Giamatti is going “naah” and shaking his head and waving it off. But then Church’s pleading and wailing becomes more desperate and adolescent, and at 2:30 Giamatti’s expression suddenly shifts from one of sadness and resignation to astonished pity and compassion.

This is great, world-class, pool-of-human-experience acting, and the great Giamatti wasn’t even Best Actor-nominated that year. The ’04 nominees in this category were Jamie Foxx in Ray (the winner), Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (c’mon!), Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator and Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby.

I remember agonizing over the Giamatti snub, and deducing soon after that he didn’t get nominated because of that first-act scene in which Miles helps himself to some cash out of his mother’s bureau drawer. I actually shared this suspicion with Giamatti at Olio y Limone during the ’05 Santa Barbara Film Festival. I did so out of compassion and a keen resentment of life’s unfairness. He apparently hadn’t considered the stealing-from-mom angle, as it seemed to hit him for the first time: “Damn! Damn!”