Day: December 18, 2018

William Shatner didn’t say the name “Maximilien Robespierre” but he did say the #MeToo movement has become “hysterical” and likened it to the French Revolution.

That’s it for Shatner, right? But what measures should be taken? Should he be shunned, shut down, subjected to a harsh backside paddling? Or should we just treat him like a drooling old guy and ignore him to death? Whatever the comintern wants to do is okay with me. I’m all ears — I just follow orders.

Shatner: ‘In 2018 we have the #MeToo movement, which I think is great, that these hidden forces are exposed and not to be allowed and women have equal rights. I’ve got three daughters [aged 60, 57 and 54], I’m all for that.”

Letter to friend about Woody Allen-Christina Engelhardt thing: “Last night a Facebook guy mentioned Christina’s interview about Woody and she having had a long-term consensual thing in the ’70s and ’80s, and is so doing called Allen’s behavior ‘ugly.’ Perhaps a bit selfish and exploitive to some extent but hardly cruel or demonic. Remember that Christina stayed in that relationship for seven or eight years and that she isn’t condemning Allen or expressing regrets now. Did Allen behave like an opportunistic libertine? Yeah, but to my knowledge he didn’t do anything of a criminal or horrid nature. The ’70s and ’80s exuded a different climate — there was a different sexual ethos in the wind. It used to be okay to be semi-open about stuff like this, but no longer.”

Poor Penny Marshall has passed at age 76. She was a highly significant actress-turned-director who had her hand in and mattered a great deal for roughly 30 years, give or take. As a director Marshall was a respected craftsperson who understood emotion and knew how to deliver it in just the right way when the script and the casting were right. By any measure she was pitching cultural fastballs right into the mitt of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and she counted as a producer into the mid aughts.

Marshall’s first TV series breakthrough gig was playing Jack Klugman‘s secretary, Myrna Turner, on the ABC sitcom of The Odd Couple (’79 to ’75). Then she and Cindy Williams became costars in their own right when Laverne and Shirley became a hit series from ’76 to ’83. Marshall collected three Golden Globe noms for Best Actress during that seven-year run.

She mattered even more when she became a director, initially with the so-so Jumpin’ Jack Flash (’86) but especially with the triple sockaroonie Big (’88), which was pretty much her peak achievement, in part because it was the first woman-directed film to gross more than $100 million.

Marshall also did herself proud with the Oscar-nominated Awakenings (’90) and the seminal A League of Their Own (’92).

She also directed Renaissance Man (’94), The Preacher’s Wife (’96), and Riding in Cars with Boys (’01). Marshall also produced Cinderella Man (’05), which I admired, and Bewitched (’05), which I hated with a passion.

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I have two chances to catch Dial Code Santa Claus at the Alama Drafthouse Brooklyn — on Wednesday, 12.19 or Sunday, 12.23. But on both days they’re showing it only once at 10 pm, obviously because they think it’ll appeal more to a midnight crowd. That view isn’t shared by the programmers at Hollywood’s American Cinematheque, which is screening it on 12.19 at 7:30 pm.

From the Alamo press release: “Dial Code Santa Claus (’89) actually pre-dated Home Alone, annihilating a generation of French kids weaned on action-packed Christmastime gems such as Gremlins and Die Hard. It disturbed critics and the moviegoing public with its uncompromising look beneath the surface of the beloved holiday. From there, the film went on to worldwide distribution except in the U.S., where it had yet to see an official release until now.

“The French-made film had its North American Premiere this year at Fantastic Fest, where it thrilled audiences and critics alike,” blah blah.

I’ll probably wind up hating it, but I feel strangely attracted to the idea of catching it anyway.

After two days of getting grilled by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee about Hillary Clinton and the Steele dossier, former FBI director James Comey yesterday shared some nail-hard truths during an impromptu presser: “People who know better, including Republican members of this body, have to [find] the courage to stand up and speak the truth. Not be cowed by mean tweets or fear of their base. There is a truth and they’re not telling it. Their silence is shameful. I hope they overcome [this]. They [surely] realize some day they’ll have to explain to their grandchildren what they did today.”

There’s a divergence between the trailer for Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (Annapurna, 3.19) and the Wikipedia synopsis, to wit: “Bernadette hates people, she hates leaving the house, and more than anything, she hates the other parents at her daughter Bee’s school. When she disappears, it’s Bee’s mission to find out where she’s disappeared to and what really happened to her.”

Does anyone detect anything in the trailer that suggests that Cate Blanchett‘s Bernadette hates anyone, or that she suffers from agoraphobia? There are hints of edge and attitude, but that’s all. I haven’t seen Linklater’s film, but it feels as if the trailer editors have tried to make the film seem as alpha and swoony and effervescent as possible.

In short, it seems as if the trailer is lying. Almost, I’m sensing, on the level of that famous upbeat Shining trailer of 2007. This obviously isn’t an assessment of the actual film, but of the marketing.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? costars Billy Crudup, Emma Nelson, Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and James Urbaniak.

It’s been two and a half years since I saw Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some. I was initially of two minds — more or less okay with it but also a wee bit irritated. It’s basically an intelligent college fraternity hang movie that doesn’t do the usual horndog thing and occasionally exudes depth and angularity. Will I stream it some night when I’m bored? Probably not.

But maybe I’m an outlier. Maybe a lot more people have streamed Everybody Wants Some than went to see it in theatres. (It topped out domestically at $3,400,278.) Who didn’t catch it theatrically but has streamed it sometime over the last 30 months? It was released eight months before Donald Trump’s election, remember. And a year and a half before the launching of #MeToo. Different currents, different pollen.

Posted on 3.29.16: The good news is that Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some! is cool, smart, fresh, atypical. It’s a period campus ramble-on, set in the climes of Texas State University in 1980, and more particularly a situational thing that feels enjoyably realistic and familiar in at least a couple of hundred different ways.

The bad news is that it’s mostly about a bunch of baseball-star jocks sharing a fraternity house, and athletes, I feel, are always often a drag to hang with because they’re mostly a bunch of pea-brains — hormonal, relentlessly competitive, single-minded, somewhat conservative, egoistic, and lacking in curiosity. I’m sorry but I’ve been around the track a couple of hundred times and that’s my opinion. Are there exceptions to the rule? Yes, of course.

Then again Everybody Wants Some! is a refreshingly unusual jocks-on-a-college-campus comedy, which is to say something quieter and more oblique and introspective and curious about what makes this or that guy tick. It spends a whole lotta time answering that last line of inquiry.

Yes, it’s frequently amusing but I’m not even sure if it’s fair to use the word “comedy.” It dispenses a steady torrent of little laugh sliders that make you chortle or grin or guffaw, but it never strains to be “funny.” Either you’re paying attention and enjoying the observational servings or you’re not.

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