Winslow and Holbrook, specifically. Poor Winslow isn’t exactly down-at-the-heels, but it doesn’t seem all that economically robust. It has a swanky Spanish-styled hotel and two or three nice bars or restaurants (maybe more), but the atmosphere feels a bit flat. If it weren’t for that Jackson Browne-Glenn Frey song “Take It Easy,” things would probably be that much leaner. There are statues of Browne and Frey dead smack in the center of town.
Jeff Sneider and his ilk are claiming that David Gordon Green‘s Halloween remake is one of the hottest TIFF tickets. News to me. I spit on any attempt to reactivate the Halloween franchise because excepting the John Carpenter original, all Halloween films are aimed at horror-fan knuckle-draggers. Hollywood Elsewhere supports elevated horror (i.e., Hereditary, The Witch). On top of which HE doesn’t do midnight screenings. Especially ones cowritten by Danny “warlock eyes” McBride. I’ll catch it at a Scotiabank p & i screening at a reasonable hour or not at all.
On the 15 north toward Barstow, and internet connectivity is spotty. I’ve nonetheless managed to watch this Other Side of the Wind trailer twice, and I’m thinking that the choppy, whiplash editing might prove a bit taxing if the whole film is like this. I shouldn’t say anything more — it’s just a trailer. I’m told that I should watch Morgan Neville‘s Orson Welles doc, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, before watching the main feature. Netflix streaming for press, etc.
From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review of Damian Chazelle‘s First Man: “The fact that space travel, viewed from the inside, could look and feel so much more abrasive and hazardous than we might ever have thought is part of the raw dramatic power of First Man. The movie captures that death was always part of it. The steep risk factor, the sheer number of pilots and astronauts who lost their lives, the scary macabre thrust of the voyages — it was all a dream poised on the edge of an abyss.
“First Man bears the same relation to the space dramas that have come before it that Saving Private Ryan did to previous war films. The movie redefines what space travel is — the way it lives inside our imagination — by capturing, for the first time, what the stakes really were.”
The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney says that “this sober, contemplative picture has emotional involvement, visceral tension, and yes, even suspense, in addition to stunning technical craft.
“The extent to which mainstream audiences will respond to the lengthy film’s unfaltering restraint remains to be seen” — in other words, portions of the popcorn crowd may feel unfulfilled in terms of standard jingoistic rah-rah vibes. “But this is a strikingly intelligent treatment of a defining moment for America that broadens the tonal range of Chazelle, clearly a versatile talent, after Whiplash and La La Land.”
