Day: September 30, 2018

Spotter

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18 months ago in a piece called “Taxi Driver”: “The best gig of my life has been writing Hollywood Elsewhere for the last 12 and 2/3 years, and especially since I adopted the several-posts-per-day format in April ’06. The second best was tapping out two columns per week for Mr. Showbiz, Reel.com and Kevin Smith‘s Movie Poop Shoot (’98 to ’04). General entertainment journalism for major publications (Entertainment Weekly, People, Los Angeles Times, N.Y. Times), which I did from ’78 to ’98, ranks third. But my fourth all-time favorite job was driving for Checker Cab in Boston. Seriously — the only non-writing gig I ever really liked.”

I didn’t want to over-complicate that paragraph, but there was another non-writing job I really loved. That was working as a celebrity-spotter at Cannon Film premieres and after-parties in 1986 and ’87. I would rank it right below driving for Checker Cab. It was so easy and so satisfying.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Come Again?

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White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier today: “I feel very empathetic, frankly, for victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment and rape. I’m a victim of sexual assault. [But] I don’t expect Judge Kavanaugh or Jake Tapper or Jeff Flake or anybody to be held responsible for that. You have to be responsible for your own conduct.”

HE response: I’m very sorry to hear this happened to Conway, but the person who assaulted her obviously needs to be held accountable for his behavior. Conway seems to be saying that victims of sexual assault need to take responsibility for allowing sexual assault to happen to them. Or something like that. She seems to be twisting herself into a pretzel in order to support the Lindsey Graham attitude about what happened to poor Christine Blasey Ford.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Bad “Jack” Arrival

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From “Loathsome Jack Is Dryer, More Meditative Than Expected,” filed from Cannes on 5.15.18: “I’m not saying Lars von Trier‘s The House That Jack Built isn’t repellent in more ways than you can shake a stick at. It’s an odious, ice-cold exercise in homicidal perversity, and one for the record books at that. It should probably be avoided by anyone with a weak stomach or…oh, hell, by anyone who feels that films should exude some form of love or worship or celebration, which probably covers 99% of the moviegoing public.

“I was expecting a diseased horror-murder tale so excessive that it might make me physically sick or prompt me to walk out or get into a fight with one of the security guys. It didn’t do that. It turned out to be more of a meditative guilt confessional — about LVT more or less admitting that he may not be a good enough artist to deliver worthy, lasting art, and that all he really knows how to do is shock and agitate. (That’s what I got from it, at least.) I’m not saying it’s a better film than I expected, but it’s dryer and more meditative and not as heinous as I feared.

“Portions of Jack are awful to sit through and the overall tone may be an equivalent to the professionally distanced, carefully maintained mindset of a psychological counselor in a hospital for the criminally insane. But for all the innate ugliness and sadistic cruelty on-screen, Von Trier is basically analyzing himself by way of Matt Dillon‘s Jack, a serial killer based in the Pacific Northwest, and casting a cold eye upon his shortcomings as a filmmaker.

“Dillon is a would-be architect but is only gifted enough to be an engineer, he gradually admits. This is Von Trier talking about himself, of course — admitting to his audience that he’s ‘not quite Ivy League’, and that after shooting his wad on Breaking The Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville that all he really knows how to do now is make shock-and-appall movies like this, Antichrist, the two Nymphomaniac films and so on.

I’m not saying Jack gets a pass, but at least LVT has tried to make it into something more thoughtful and meditative than just a series of clinical, cold-blood episodes showing recreations of this and that method of murder. It’s ugly and rancid, but about more than just that.”

IFC Films apparently intends to release The House That Jack Built on 12.28.

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Head-Scratcher

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We’ve all seen Hollywood depictions of Wall Street animal culture (The Wolf of Wall Street, Wall Street, Boiler Room), and somehow a gleeful, Ike Turner-like Don Cheadle bouncing around an office environment in an all-violet outfit and a modified Afro seems like an outlier. My first reaction was “huh?” Who wants to watch a series about the 1987 stock-market collapse? What is there left to say about greed in downtown Manhattan?

Mortensen Is Leading Best Actor Contender

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I’ve thought and thought about it, and there’s no way award-season handicappers can argue that Viggo Mortensen‘s Sopranos-styled performance in Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book isn’t the current Best Actor champ. Odds-wise, I mean. Or destiny-wise.

Not that anyone is arguing against Viggo, but you get my drift. His amiable goombah guy — a nicely shaded, carefully measured performance that conveys an emotional journey that you can’t help but admire — reaches out and touches. It hits the classic sweet spot. No other performance so far is on this level. Please tell me how I’m mistaken.

Bradley Cooper‘s Kris Kristofferson-like performance as a drawlin’ drunk in A Star Is Born is pretty good, I have to admit. He’ll almost certainly be nominated….right, Bobby Peru?

But Hugh Jackman‘s Gary Hart in The Front Runner is, I feel, more formidable. Watching him play a considerate, highly principled guy who didn’t do anything all that bad or who at least feels that infidelity is a private matter…to watch this decent guy get taken down for no reason other than the fact that tabloid scandals drive ratings and sell newspapers is just tragic. I can’t get his performance out of my mind.

And what has happened, by the way, to general Gold Derby support for Ethan Hawke‘s career-peak performance in Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed? It’s an absolute scandal that he’s not on each and every spitballer’s top-five Best Actor chart right now, as opposed to just lists from Claudia Puig, Timothy Gray, Chris Rosen, ESPN’s Adnan Virk and myself.

As we speak, 17 Gold Derby handicappers are blowing Hawke off. Not because his masterful performance as a small-town minister isn’t a primal, conflicted, straight-from-the-gut vessel of anguish and longed-for redemption, but because A24 released First Reformed last May. By the tired-thinking standards of your go-along, follow-along prognosticator, this means that Hawke isn’t really in the game — respected but an awards-season also-ran. Not because of the quality of performance, but because of A24’s release strategy. Which is absolute bullshit. Shame on those 17.

A lot of people are behind the idea of Willem Dafoe‘s performance as Vincent Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel‘s At Eternity’s Gate. I am among them, but who’s actually seen the film? It played at the Venice Film Festival, will screen at the New York Film Festival on 10.12, and will open on 11.16.

Others are excited about Christian Bale‘s unseen performance as Dick Cheney in Adam McKay‘s Vice, which won’t open until 12.25. My gut is telling me that fat Bale playing a real-life Satan is not going to be nominated for anything. Not in this climate. You don’t get nominated for gaining weight and wearing great make-up. It may be that Bale’s actual performance will turn out to be the real deal, but I’m holding off on Bale for now.

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I’ve Read This Story Five Times, And…

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“Details of F.B.I.’s Kavanaugh Inquiry Show Its Restricted Range,” a 9.29 N.Y. Times report by Michael D. Shear, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt. The article blatantly argues with itself — paragraph #1 is a mixed bag, paragraph #4 emphasizes “free rein” and #2 and #3 emphasize the opposite. And Julie Swetnick’s allegations aren’t even mentioned.

“President Trump said on Saturday that the F.B.I. will have ‘free rein‘ to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, but the emerging contours of the inquiry showed its limited scope.

“Four witnesses will be questioned in coming days about aspects of the assault accusations against Judge Kavanaugh, according to two people familiar with the matter. Left off the list were former classmates who have contradicted Judge Kavanaugh’s congressional testimony about his drinking and partying as a student.

“The White House will decide the breadth of the inquiry, though presidential advisers were working in concert with Senate Republicans, said the two people, one a senior administration official, who both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation.

“The White House can order investigators to further examine the allegations if their findings from the four witness interviews open new avenues of inquiry, and Mr. Trump seemed to stress that part of the plan in a tweet late on Saturday.”