Day: February 5, 2018

Quentin’s Recollection

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Not too many hours ago Quentin Tarantinogot in touch with Deadline‘s Michael Fleming to discuss the Uma Thurman car crash incident on the set of Kill Bill, as passed along in a 2.3 article by the N.Y. Times‘ Maureen Dowd.

The article’s implication was that Tarantino had strong-armed Thurman into performing an unsafe driving stunt and thereby caused her much grief and pain. Except it wasn’t that simple, Tarantino explains in the transcript. He made a mistake, he says, by reversing the direction of the shot but without test-driving it himself. He knew Thurman “was a shaky driver, but she had a license,” he says. The stunt was “a little thing” but he fucked up all the same. Ever since, he says, he’s been upset and sorry that he allowed it to happen.

Here’s a key portion of what QT told Fleming:

“Watching [Uma] fight for the wheel…remembering me hammering about how it was safe and she could do it. Emphasizing that it was a straight road, a straight road…the fact that she believed me, and I literally watched this little S curve pop up. And it spins her like a top. It was heartbreaking. Beyond one of the biggest regrets of my career, it is one of the biggest regrets of my life. For a myriad of reasons.

“It affected me and Uma for the next two to three years. It wasn’t like we didn’t talk. But a trust was broken. A trust broken over a year of shooting, of us doing really gnarly stuff. Doing really big stunt stuff. I wanted her to do as much as possible and we were trying to take care of her and we pulled it off. She didn’t get hurt. And then the last four days, in what we thought would be a simple driving shot, almost kills her.

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Blip on Eastwood Radar Screen

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A friend who’s seen Clint Eastwood‘s The 15:17 to Paris (Warner Bros., 2.9) says it’s nothing to write home about. A brief episode inflated into an okay but no-great-shakes 94-minute film. Padding, back-story and whatnot. Starring the real-life Thalys train hero guys — Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, and costarring Judy Greer and Jenna Fischer.

The all-media screening is on Wednesday night, at more or less the same time as Universal’s Fifty Shades Freed screening.

Dorothy Blyskal‘s screenplay is based on “The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Soldiers” by Jeffrey Stern, Stone, Sadler and Skarlatos. Judy Greer and Jenna Fischer costar.

Ranking Ronan’s Performances

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23 year-old Saoirse Ronan, who was honored last night at the Santa Barbara Film Festival but is also unjustly destined to lose the Best Actress Oscar to Three Billboards‘ star Frances McDormand, is at the top of her game right now. She’s obviously got it, and is certain to fortify her Streep-like portfolio by leaps and bounds over the coming decades. Everyone at the Arlington theatre, including moderator Anne Thompson, was thinking this last night.

But for all her intensity and brilliance Ronan has chosen to star or costar in more than a few iffy films over the last decade, and when you get right down to it she’s scored big-time in a stellar, triple-A, bull’s-eye fashion only twice — as the titular character in Greta Gerwig‘s Lady Bird and as Eilis Lacey in Brooklyn (’15).

She made a brilliant debut at age 13 in Joe Wright‘s Atonement (’07), playing a nearly demonic provocateur, and she acted the blazes out of her Susie Salmon role in Peter Jackson‘s The Lovely Bones, but the film was too Jackson-y and CG’ed to death. And she was completely delightful in Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel (’14). And that’s as far as it’s gone so far.

Ronan has three films due for 2018 release, but the only one of real consequence will be Josie Rourke‘s Mary, Queen of Scots, which Focus will release on 11.2. Reactions to Dominic Cooke‘s On Chesil Beach (Lionsgate, 6.15) have been muted, and her other ’18 release, Michael Mayer‘s The Seagull, was shot in the summer of 2015 — do the math.

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Penske Handicapper Swamp

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“Pete, it’s this kooky preferential ballot…” HE to sane people: For the 47th (or is it the 48th?) time, the three best films of the year are Dunkirk, Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird. And what about the groundswell movement for Phantom Thread? Will someone please upset the Oscars in some way, shape or form? Could the Price Waterhouse guys arrange for another envelope screw-up?

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Steers Invading The Compound!

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“We’re not gonna take it! / No, we ain’t gonna take it! / Oh, we’re not gonna take it anymore!” — anthem of the long-horned steers who rebel against the Westworld owners and engineers in Season 2, which launches on 4.22.18.

From “Westworld Hate Will Continue To Spread,” posted on 12.5.16: “Like many others, I’ve gone totally negative on Westworld over the last three or four episodes. The HBO miniseries finally ended last night, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a major revolt going on. I hate this series with a passion for just layering on the layers, for plotzing, diddly-fucking, detouring, belly-stabbing, meandering and puzzleboxing to its heart’s content.

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All Dwayne Johnson Films Blow Chunks

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Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno with Dwayne Johnson, a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 or even ’20, leaping off a construction crane 85 floors up in hopes of landing in a windowless area in a nearby skyscraper. Plus he’s wearing a prosthetic left leg. Plus he’s a family man who needs to clear his name like Denzel Washington did in The Taking of Pelham 123. And with Rawson Marshall Thurber at the helm!

With the exception of Michael Bay‘s Pain and Gain, Johnson has demonstrated time and again that he’s fundamentally opposed to appearing in films that are (a) good and (b) at least semi-believable. He makes big, dopey, adolescent cartoons. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was a perfect fit. Originally posted on 12.8.16: “If Dwayne Johnson Is Starring, It’s Probably Empty, Glossy Dogshit.”

Hey, Wait A Minute…

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He calls himself Han Solo, but his voice, though residing in the deeper registers, has a kind of thin, reedy quality. Don’t tell me this guy is Han Solo because he’s not.

He’s around four inches shorter than Harrison Ford, for one thing. Sure, he’s trying to generate the old cavalier swagger and is half pulling it off, but his eyes are dark and drill-bitty and he’s, well, you know, Jewish. All my life Han Solo has been a tall, WASPy, casual-frat boy-with-an-attitude, but now he’s suddenly a 5′ 9″ Rabbinical student with narrow shoulders, doing his best to give off that devil-may-care and offering a passable substitute, but he’s not Han Solo.

In late 1942 Humphrey Bogart appeared on the screen as Richard Blaine, a sly, cynical, broken-hearted owner of a popular saloon in Casablanca. Forty years later David Soul played the same character in a 1983 one-hour TV series called Casablanca. For some hard-to-fathom reason the series was yanked after only three airings.