Day: April 2, 2018

15 months after debuting at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Andrew Dosonmu‘s Where is Kyra? is opening this Friday (4.6). I’ve been saying all along that it’s “grade A within its realm” and that Michelle Pfeiffer‘s performance is quite the tour de force, but it’s the kind of film that will empty your soul and drain you of any will to live.

I’m not disagreeing with Village Voice critic Bilge Ebiri, whose just-posted article, “Michelle Pfeiffer Gives the Performance of Her Life in Where Is Kyra?“, teems with high praise; I’m saying “yeah, it’s very well made but don’t see it if you’re the type that occasionally thinks about suicide because it’ll push you into the abyss.”

I mentioned this impression to Ebiri this morning, and he replied “good…a movie that can convey the exhaustion and desperation of poverty to that degree is essential, and rare.” Yeah, it conveys that, all right, but I know if I consider this kind of creative deliverance to be “essential.”

Here’s how Ebiri puts it in his Voice piece: “[Dosunmu] and cinematographer Bradford Young sheathe Kyra in oppressive darkness, and they hold on her for extended periods, even when other characters are speaking or acting. Close-ups often show her half-concealed in the gloom, emerging from pitch-black corners of the screen. No lamp gives off enough light, no street scene is bright enough. A pall has descended over this woman’s life. Rarely on film has the sheer debilitating exhaustion of poverty been conveyed so clearly.”

Here‘s how I put it on 1.24.17: “A funereal quicksand piece about an unemployed middle-aged woman (Pfeiffer) in a terrible financial jam, and about a relationship she has with a fellow down-and-outer (Keifer Sutherland), Where Is Kyra? is a carefully calibrated, well-acted gloomhead flick that feels like it’s happening inside a coffin or crypt.

“This is Dosunmu’s deliberate strategy, of course, but the end-of-the-road, my-life-is-over vibe is primarily manifested by the inky, mineshaft palette of dp Bradford Young — HE’s least favorite cinematographer by a country mile.”

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Most of yesterday afternoon was about hiking in Sullivan Canyon, a leafy, horse-trail community just west of Mandeville Canyon. We defied the posted warnings and parked on Old Ranch Road, about 1/2 mile north of Sunset. We walked up a horse trail to Sullivan Canyon trail, which goes on and on. By the time we were back to the junction of Sunset and Old Ranch we’d hiked five miles.

We also checked out Diane Keaton’s super-sized, industrial-chic home, which was written about last October in Architectural Digest. Keaton also published a book about it — “The House That Pinterest Built.”

We only scoped out the exterior, of course. It’s magnificent and exacting, so beautifully textured and all of a piece in so many ways, but at the same time (here it comes) so immaculate that it feels more like the workspace of an enlightened, forward-thinking company (it reminded me a bit of J.J. Abrams‘ Bad Robot headquarters) than what most of us would call a “home.”

Homes need to feel imperfect and lived in and just a little ramshackle — a tad sloppy and messy with the scent of white clam sauce and peanut butter and sliced lemons, and maybe a hint of cat poop. A good home always has magazines and books and vinyl LPs all over the place, not to mention flatscreens and blankets draped over couches and at least three or four cats and dogs hanging around. Keaton’s place might feel homier inside, but the exterior seems a bit too precise.

Oh, and there’s hardly any tree-shade in the front yard of Keaton’s place. Warren Beatty once said that great-looking hair constitutes 60% of a woman’s attractiveness; by the same token a great-looking home needs great trees (sycamores, jacaranda, lemon eucalyptus, pin oak) to drop a few thousand leaves and shade the place up.

6:15 pm update: I just ran into Warren Beatty and Annette Bening at Le Pain Quotidien on Melrose…honest! I told him I loved the quote about hair constituting 60% of a woman’s beauty or appeal, and he said, “I don’t think I ever said it.” Huh. “You read this somewhere?,” he asked. Yeah, I said. In an article about Diane Keaton or about her home, and just this morning. I definitely didn’t invent it, I emphasized, but I love the observation regardless.

Diane Keaton’s spacious, self-designed home, just around the corner from Old Ranch Road and exactingly designed like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Built in Sullivan Canyon in 1956, Mandalay (2200 Old Ranch Road) was a sprawling, one-story home designed by architect Cliff May, who is regarded as the creator of the California Ranch-style house (i.e., early 1930s). May died in 1989. The Mandalay property was bought, destroyed and redeveloped. The big gate looks like the entrance to Jurassic Park.

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Self explanatory but for clarity’s sake, HBO’s John Oliver has summarized the situation as follows: “Nothing says ‘we value independent media’ like dozens of reporters forced to repeat the same message over and over again, like members of a brainwashed cult.”

How America's largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump's war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycL pic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018

The across-the-board Orwellian script was obtained and published by the Seattle Post Intelligencer last Thursday:

“Hi, I’m (A) ____________, and I’m (B) _________________…

(B) Our greatest responsibility is to serve our [local] communities. We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that KOMO News produces.

(A) But we’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media.

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Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. Sometime in early ’97. Scroll forward to the 17-minute mark:

From critic, documentarian and film series host Marshall Fine: “My favorite movie of the moment is A Quiet Place (Paramount, 4.6). Much more emotionally compelling than Don’t Breathe or any of your average thrillers. Showed it at my film club (had the producers there for a q & a), which is a suburban NY 60-plus crowd — they walked in not knowing what they were going to see (they never do). Three older women walked out an hour in (one said ‘it’s good but it’s too intense for me’); otherwise, a hit with my audience, which is quite a different thing than, say, a SXSW gathering.” John Krasinki‘s film premiered in Austin on 3.9.