Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody is no masterpiece, but not my idea of a burn either. Roughly 70% of the film is composed of uninspired “this happened and then that happened” chapters, so much of the time you’re left with this feeling of being underwhelmed but not exactly bored. And yet Rami Malek‘s performance as Freddie Mercury is vivid and wild and a relishy contact high, at least from time to time, and there are portions of the film that really connect.
Don’t ask about the emotionally disastrous extra-marital affair that I fell into when I was an in-office freelancer at People magazine, and which continued until her husband found out. No relationship had ever delivered so much heartache, hurt or frustration. Graham Greene and Tom Stoppard had nothing on us. I was a man of almost constant sorrow. I mean I was so upset by one of our arguments that I made a reckless left turn on Pico Blvd. and got slammed by a speeding BMW, and for weeks I told myself it wasn’t really my fault — it was the married girlfriend’s.
The stupidest movie-plot development of 2018 happened in John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place. The more I think about it the more I’m persuaded that it’s actually one of the stupidest plot developments of all time, and certainly of the 21st Century. Most people reading this know what I’m about to mention, but here goes anyway.
The same spirit that spoke to Gen. George Patton in 1945 had visited Cary Grant and James Stewart the night of the Philadelphia Story premiere. They were standing on the red carpet, and he swooped down and whispered to both at once: “Enjoy it while you can, fellas. I don’t wanna say what’s coming but you can guess. One of you will become an LSD pioneer, another will become a staunch Republican and an Air Force Colonel. Other than that, I’m sorry. I wish it could last forever, but nothing does.”
I’ve been waiting for many, many years for a first-rate Bluray of Howard Hawks’ The Thing to be issued, and now that’s finally going to happen, lo and behold — Warner Archives, 11.20.18.
I’ve decided that it’s better to sleep on top of one of the quilts and then use other quilts (including the patchwork thing that my late sister wove) for warmth. I really don’t like sleeping on sheets — I never have. And if you ignore the sheets it’s easier to make the bed in the morning.
During the filming of Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, both just shy of 30, were “doing” each other. It was one of those “what happens during a shoot stays on the sound stage” affairs.
Just around the corner is Nobody’s Fool (Paramount, 11.2), a Tyler Perry comedy with Tiffany Haddish, Tika Sumpter, Omari Hardwick, Mehcad Brooks, Amber Riley and Whoopi Goldberg. It follows “a recently-paroled woman who tries to help her sister get revenge on the man who catfished her.”
Given the history and pedigree of the director-writer, I can double-triple-quadruple guarantee this won’t begin to measure up to the quality of Robert Benton‘s non-comedic Nobody’s Fool (’94) — no way, not a chance.
Perry is Atlanta fast food — Benton is haute cuisine.
It means something, I think, that Roger “Nick the Greek” Durling, director of the Santa Barbara Film Festival, has decided to gift Glenn Close with the festival’s Maltin Modern Master Award on Saturday, February 2nd. In doing so Durling is basically wagering that Close’s performance in The Wife will result in a Best Actress nomination for the 2019 Oscars.
“Nick” has been wrong a couple of times, but most of the time his instincts have been on the money
Close will be nominated because her role in Bjorn Runge’s film, a wife of a Nobel-winning novelist who has also been his secret literary and creative fuel, doesn’t just synchronize with progressive attitudes among professional-class women — it actually strikes a huge chord among 50-plus types. On top of the fact that Close has been nominated for six Best Actress Oscars and never won.
The 34th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival will run from Wednesday, 1.30.19 thru Saturday, 2.9.
To hear it from Indiewire‘s Ben Travers, the hyperbole about the sixth and final season of House Of Cards being all about Claire (Robin Wright) and a payback against the patriarchy theme (‘It’s my turn’) is mostly bullshit.
“Despite the hype, Season 6 isn’t Claire’s show,” he writes. “It’s still Frank’s, which undercuts the season’s many attempts at women-first stories and keeps momentum stagnant.
“The showrunners gave themselves the perfect out at the end of last season, a bit of fortuitous timing all but wasted. When Claire addressed the camera and said ‘My turn’ and all but erased her camera-whore hubby from control, there was no reason the audience should believe otherwise.
“Instead, five of the eight final episodes over-emphasize Frank’s importance and fail to create arcs worthy of Wright’s talents or Claire’s individuality. Worse yet, they weaken the show’s conscious effort to highlight the discrimination facing female politicians.
“There’s a scene, clipped in the Season 6 trailer, where Claire is stopped in the hallway to talk to a combative dissenter. As he speaks, she turns and sees a camera trained on her from another room, so she looks back at the guy setting her up and simply says, ‘The reign of the middle-aged white man is over.’
“These days, her statement is easy to get behind. But what House of Cards doesn’t seem to realize is timely words can come across as posturing when you’re just reciting them for the cameras.”
“Bohemian Rhapsody is very good, even terrific in places. The Live Aid ending is a huge wow.
“The annoying thing is how ordinary it is in so many moments early on. Freddie [Mercury]’s first meeting with the band members, shopping in the ladies department, his on-the-nose realization that he’s bisexual. The script is giving us Lifetime movie moments. And then there’s Malek’s performance. He sinks his teeth in, no question. But sometimes I’m watching a really good actor and sometimes I’m watching an SNL sketch performer.
“Now the real question, and I admit it’s a rude one. Was Queen ever really THAT popular? That Live Aid audience got an incredible performance, but I think they were there to see everyone else on the bill and Queen just showed up.”
HE reply: I didn’t seriously fall for Queen until after Freddie’s death (i.e., early ’90s). But I’ve been a hardcore Queenie ever since.
The Mirror‘s Chris Kitching is reporting that “parts of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi‘s body have been found at the Saudi consul general’s home in Istanbul, according to a Turkish opposition leader. Dogu Perincek, leader of Turkey’s Rodina party, claimed in an interview that body parts were discovered in a well in the Saudi consul’s garden.”
If you’ve been involved in a murder you don’t hide evidence on the property of allies or co-conspirators. You bury the body parts in some remote wooded area or put them into a weighted bag and dump it into the sea. How dumb are these guys?
Middle East Eye has reported that Khashoggi, 59, was tortured and murdered by a hit squad, known as the Firqat el-Nemr or Tiger Squad, that operates under the guidance and supervision of Saudi Crown Prince MohammedbinSalman (MBS).
Kashoggi’s fingers were chopped off before he was killed, and the severed digits were put in a bag and flown back to Saudi Arabia in a private jet and presented to MBS. A Middle East Eye source: “MBS always said that he will cut off the fingers of every writer who criticizes him.” What kind of a primitive beast is MBS? These guys are animals.
Yesterday Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told lawmakers that the Saudi plot to murder Khashoggi began days in advance.
Hollywood Elsewhere will have to cease operations for the next four or five hours due to an 11 am Manhattan screening of Jon Baird‘s Stan & Ollie (Sony Classics, 12.28). Update: Didn’t make it — late departure, traffic. The next screening is on 11.6.
An excerpt from Guy Lodge‘s 10.21 Variety review: “Baird opens proceedings with a virtuoso prologue that proves deliberately misleading: a sustained six-minute tracking shot that follows Laurel and Hardy, at the zenith of their fame in 1937, through a whirling, chattering carnival of backlot business as they walk and talk their way to the set of their latest throwaway comedy.
“Executed with aplomb by Ben Wheatley’s regular d.p. Laurie Rose, it’s a high-impact magic-of-the-movies setpiece swiftly undercut by the tetchy, contract-related squabbling that ensues between Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and oily producer Hal Roach (Danny Huston), with the former pursuing a new partnership with 20th-Century Fox. Yet once the cameras roll and the pair launches into a daintily choreographed comic dance number, the magic’s back on — even amid conflict, Laurel and Hardy turn on their sweet silliness as if flicking a light switch.”
Have you heard? Chris Pine‘s schlongstuffer can be glimpsed (a) from a distance and (b) for “less than a second” in David Mackenzie‘s Outlaw King (Netflix, 11.9).
“Is this the reason so many young actors are squeamish about getting naked for their art?,” Dunn asks. “Speaking in these pages back in March, James Ivory was irate that nude scenes in his Call Me By Your Name screenplay were altered to conform with Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet’s no-nudity contracts. We can understand Hammer and Chalamet’s trepidation. Just imagine, for example, if one of them were a grower and not a shower? Or, God forbid, their junk turned out to be a bit funny looking? The body shaming would be relentless.”
I happen to believe that growers who do nude scenes risk career damage. The nude wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Ken Russell‘s Women in Love didn’t exactly suggest associations with horses or elephants, but the editing saved them. Cillian Murphy did himself no favors when he allowed Danny Boyle and Anthony Dod Mantle to briefly glimpse his package in 28 Days Later. There was a scene in Patrick Brice‘s The Overnight (’15) in which Adam Scott (whose character was deeply bothered about having a small junk) did a nude scene — Scott was wearing a small-dick prosthetic but most audiences didn’t know that.
Guys performing nude should always work up a little heft before the director says “action!” A former girlfriend who used to work for Viva, the women’s magazine that ran nude male centerfolds, once told me that photographers always wanted their male subjects to be in a state of “maximum tumescence in repose.” One way not to look like you’re “hung like a cashew” (a devastating phrase coined by James Ellroy) is to pop Viagra or Cialis. In the military drill sergeants refer to low-level soldiers as “swinging dicks” — said medications actually allow that condition to manifest.
