Month: October 2018

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.

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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?

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).

One of the observations in Jamie Dunn‘s 10.23 Guardian piece about such appearances (“Full frontal: why the fuss over Chris Pine’s ‘dazzling’ penis?“) is that gay journalists over-react when this or that actor goes willy-nilly.

“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.

I’ve been a Tweetbot user for four or five years now (longer?), but version 5.0, which popped a few days ago, is exceptional. Deep black background. Redesigned profiles. Audio-video (giphy) playback within the timeline. A whole new realm.

Tweetbot, a creation of Tapbots (Paul Haddad, Mark Jardine, Todd Thomas), was reportedly forced to disable or degrade some features a couple of months ago due to some Twitter API changes that hurt third-party apps, blah blah…you’re making my head spin. All I know is that Tweetbot 5 is the coolest, slickest-looking twitter app I’ve ever fiddled with.

It’s okay with me if The Favourite‘s Olivia Colman wants to go for Best Actress, even if she’s not playing a lead role. I’ve accepted her strategy because you can’t fight City Hall, but I will not accept the forehead-slapping notion that the film’s two actual leads, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, are now Supporting Actress contenders. Stone and Weisz’s characters, Abigail Masham and Sarah Churchill, are the main protagonists and manipulators — characters who are driving the palace plot and carrying the whole equation in their heads. I’ll bend over for Colman but I won’t prognosticate the other two as supporting contenders…no!

So who’s the Best Supporting Actress front-runner? You tell me. I’m still figuring it out.

It’s not If Beale Street Could Talk‘s Regina King, I can tell you that. She’s probably one of the five but that’s mainly because everyone keeps including her as one of the hotties — I honestly didn’t think her performance (i.e., the strong, compassionate mother of Kiki Layne) is more than a line-drive single.

What if I choose the supporting performance and supporting character whom I liked and admired the most? If I did that would be Green Book‘s Linda Cardellini. Second place is First Man‘s Claire Foy, I suppose, but I wonder how many people are saying “wow, great hand-wringing wifey-wife!” Then comes Vice‘s Amy Adams, whose performance as Lynne Cheney I’ve been hearing about since last spring. And then Roma‘s Marina de Tavira — a solid, planted performance that radiates ripe, feminine humanity.

I’ve given the fifth slot to Margot Robbie‘s performance as Queen Elizabeth in Mary, Queen of Scots because — I’m serious — of her deglamorized makeup (flaming red hair, pale complexion, blotchy skin). People are always impressed when a pretty actress goes semi-ugly.

Most film sites point to general audience enthusiasm (vigorous box-office, social-media mentions, what their friends are tweeting) and say “wow, isn’t this great? Let’s talk about this, get into it…commercial success is such a joyous and fascinating thing! And it brings a little money into our own pockets if we show the right kind of enthusiasm.”

Other sites say “okay but wait…this or that film isn’t very good…in fact it’s mostly a drag so who cares if the popcorn inhalers are paying to see it in sizable numbers? They’re lemmings, pigs at the trough, no taste.” Or “this film is so well done, so on-the-stick, so world-class….why is it limping along at the box-office?”

Same thing with Oscar prognostication. Four years ago I did a couple of podcast threesomes with Sasha Stone and Awards Watch‘s Eric Anderson, and Anderson had this pet theme that he kept repeating over and over, to wit: THEY (the Gold Derby and Gurus of Gold know-it-alls plus his own Awards Watch community) like this movie for Best Picture or this actor for Best Actress or whatever, and so the odds favor a win.

And I would say from time to time, “Okay, but this alleged Best Picture favorite isn’t very good or is actually pretty bad…why are we pointing out over and over that it’s highly ranked by the usual suspects, the award-season sheep? All they know is which way the wind is blowing. Except their sense of wind direction is nothing more sage than that of a local TV news weather guy. Yappity-yap-yap-yap-yappy.”

Anderson finally got sick of me and excused himself from all podcasts that I was part of, but I was right then and I’m right now. Listening to the go-alongs will sap your soul.

The thing to listen to now as we head into Halloween are the societal undercurrents and profound cultural weather patterns. “Popularity” among the baah-ing critics, prognosticators, guild and Academy members has obviously been a deciding factor in many if not most races, but never forget those surprising turnarounds. Never forget the Roman Polanski and Ronald Harwood Pianist wins and the look of quiet smiling terror on the face of Harvey Weinstein when it seemed as if the Best Picture Oscar for Chicago might not happen after all.

And never forget the gulf between Manohla Dargis’ rave review of A Star Is Born and last night ‘s tweet by Jonathan Katz.

Yesterday I was once again taken to task about having left a film before it was over — around the 90-minute mark. When I’m in terrible pain that’s about how long I last. I usually know I’m going to hate a film five or ten minutes in, and so I endure about 80 minutes worth before I can’t stand it any longer. Here’s a rationale that I posted early this morning:

“My impressions of the first 90 minutes of any film count for quite a lot. Name me one universally praised film in which the general richness of appeal and absorption levels (narrative, stylistic, thematic) aren’t 100% obvious during the first 90 minutes. At the 90-minute mark of a first-rate film you’re always saying ‘this is really good…please let me stay until the finish…in fact I never want it to end.’ With a gnarly, punishing film you’re looking at your watch every 10 or 15 and forcing yourself to tough it out, or you’re saying to yourself, ‘This is agony, life is short, I’m bailing.’ That’s the difference.”

23 years ago I was sitting right next to Jack Nicholson when he bailed on Showgirls, so don’t tell me.