Day: January 16, 2018

Congrats to Criterion for releasing a new 4K digitally restored Bluray of Leo McCarey‘s The Awful Truth (’37), a classic screwball comedy about wealthy urbanites Jerry and Lucy Warriner (Cary Grant, Irene Dunne) attempting a divorce but failing to follow through. But Grant’s top hat on the jacket cover is like something out of the 19th Century, and it really spoils the art. I saw it and I scowled.

Unless I’m greatly mistaken Grant never even wears a top hat in The Awful Truth, although he does wear one in a nightclub scene in Bringing Up Baby. Secondly, the hat Grant is wearing on the Criterion jacket cover is way too tall — it looks like Abraham Lincoln‘s famous stovepipe. Stylish top hats of the 1930s were more modestly scaled, as an after-the-jump photo of Grant makes clear.

Screwball aficionados know that in The Awful Truth Grant’s character made light, sophisticated fun of Ralph Bellamy‘s Oklahoma Dan Leesen, Lucy’s new suitor, in exactly the same way that Grant’s Walter Burns would gently mock Bellamy’s Bruce Baldwin, another country bumpkin, in His Girl Friday three years later.

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Senator Corey Booker‘s tongue-lashing of U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen earlier today was a humdinger. Nielsen worked for John F. Kelly during his term as Secretary of Homeland Security (January to July 2017), and then as Principal Deputy White House Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump (September to December 2017). It’s not sexist to note that Nielsen fits that Nordic ice-blonde quality that Republicans and Trump administration appointees often seem to cultivate or favor in terms of hires. Fox News management also seems to favor women who fit this profile.

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If I were going to be in Los Angeles tomorrow evening I’d be attending “Focus on Female Directors 2018” at the American Cinematheque Egyptian. The shorts will include Robin Wright’s The Dark of Night, Svetlana Cvetko’s Yours Sincerely, Lois Weber, Autumn de Wilde’s I Love L.A.”, Marie Dvorakova’s Who’s Who in Mycology, etc. There in spirit.

I have to stop filing for a while, mainly because I have to pack and prepare for tomorrow morning’s very early departure for Salt Lake City and the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. I should be in Park City by 12:30 or 1 pm. A day of checking in, preparing, thinking things through, etc. I might post a rundown of the films that I feel are completely necessary to see (Wild Life, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, Marina Zenovich‘s Robin Williams doc, etc.), but it’s all a big crazy salad. All catch-as-catch-can. You see everything you can and find your way through it film by film, and you stay the hell away from 90% of the parties.

Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a doc about the life and legacy of Fred Rogers, will premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. An ordained Presbyterian minister before becoming a children’s TV star, Rogers was everyone’s idea of a gentle, kindly, compassionate fellow. Rogers passed in ’03, but he was the personification of everything Donald Trump never was, isn’t today and never will be. I love guys like Fred Rogers, and he was also something of a progressive, forward-thinking lefty, which makes me admire his memory all the more. And I’m a longtime admirer of Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal, Keith Richards: Under the Influence). But I can’t honestly say that Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is at the top of my Sundance gotta-see list. I’m just being honest.

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I don’t always catch trending YouTube clips, but this is the most persuasive argument for Gary Oldman winning the Best Actor Oscar that I’ve seen since award season began. I admired his performance as Winston Churchill as far as it went, but except for the London Underground scene + the House of Lords finale I didn’t really “like” it. But I like James Brown. Has Oldman said anything about the Woody Allen situation, or is he steering clear?

What is Alec Baldwin‘s problem? Doesn’t he understand which way the winds are blowing? The Time’s Up kangaroo court (Greta Gerwig, Mira Sorvino, Rebecca Hall, Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon) has thrown Allen over the side and Baldwin tosses him a life preserver? Does Baldwin want to work in this industry or not?

Seriously, Baldwin is almost Edward R. Murrow talking back to Sen. Joseph McCarthy right now. Almost.

Did the blood drain from Timothee Chalamet‘s face the instant he read Baldwin’s tweet? Did the Call Me By Your Name star and likely Best Actor nominee run out of the room and into the traffic-congested street like Kevin McCarthy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Has he been telling friends “I didn’t know what to say or do! My agent told me to do it! I just want to be nominated and have a great career, and I didn’t want the Time’s Up gang to be mad at me…can you blame me?”

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Let there be no doubt that John Lennon‘s “Isolation,” recorded 48 years ago, is one of the gentlest and most scalding pieces of confessional, self-lacerating poetry of the immediate post-Beatles era, bar none and hands down. Just as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is one of the greatest rock albums ever — so lean and stripped down and revealing on a raw, exposed-nerve level.

Now “Isolation” is back and part of the bustling, pulsing realm of 2018. The teaser-trailer for Gus Van Sant‘s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (debuting in Park City this weekend) has made it relevant and fresh again. Plus the subject matter of the film and the story (i.e., about crippled alcoholic cartoonist John Callahan) and the hippy-dippy period blend so well that you can’t help but think “wow, this looks really good!” Probably. You can’t read too much into a trailer. But this one is brilliantly assembled.

All hail Joaquin Phoenix‘s temporary abandonment of his beardo gloomhead persona, and all hail Jonah Hill, as always.

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