Year: 2018

I don’t know who “Jake C.” is and I’ve never visited discussingfilm, but he’s posted an “exclusive” about Baz Luhrmann having “officially signed” to direct an Elvis Presley biopic, and to revise a script that Kelly Marcel and Jeremy Donner have previously worked on.

Production is expected to begin in March 2019, according to this report. Collider‘s Jeff Sneider first reported about a possible Luhrmann/Presley biopic four years ago, and apparently the story is half-legit “Jake C.” reports Luhrmann will also produce with Catherine Martin, Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman.

He adds that casting director Kristy Carlson is “looking for two guys to play Presley, one between 18-22 and another around the age of 35.” ATROCIOUS IDEA! Hire one cool dude to play young Elvis and then age him up slightly, which is beyond easy to do. Remember that Elvis didn’t really get fat until he was 40 or thereabouts (i.e., ’75), and that he was reasonably slender and undessicated before that. Elvis turned 35 in 1970, during the peak of his Las Vegas white-jeweled-jumpsuit era. An 18 year-old actor could easily be made to look 17 years older without anyone blinking or doing a double-take.

What’s the point of making a movie about Elvis in his late teens to early 20s (’53 to ’57), or from his Sun/Memphis years to his peak period as the king of RCA Victor ’50s sideburned bop-rock, and then fast-forwarding to the beginning-of-the-end period when he first started to perform in Las Vegas but before he became fat and drugged out and wound up dead on a bathroom floor in Graceland? Who cares?

What is there to say about Presley, really, that hasn’t been said over and over for decades? The man died nearly 41 years ago. Fame comes early to a conspicuously gifted fellow, too early for such a sensitive soul. The pressure warps the frail creative vessel, resulting in seclusion, addiction and early death, blah blah.

Eugene Jarecki‘s The King says it all, knows it all.

Read more

This morning I read a week-old Guardian piece about the most successful movie formula — i.e., “man in a hole.” Part of the article reads like an Onion satire, but the author, Mark Brown, is dealing straight cards.

Ignore the lede and consider the second sentence: “After analyzing data from 6,147 movie scripts and filtering it through a series of algorithms, a team of UK scientists has identified the emotional arc that makes the most money, called the ‘man in a hole’ arc.”

This sounds reasonable and most likely accurate. Stories about characters gradually pulling themselves out of a bad situation (Tender Mercies, 12 Years A Slave, Birdman, Gladiator, Places in the Heart, Ordinary People, Warren Beatty and Buck Henry‘s Heaven Can Wait, Slumdog Millionaire, The Verdict, Zero Dark Thirty) always deliver a measure of comfort if not a balm to the soul.

The howler arrives in the third sentence: “[This discovery] could be game-changing for both film producers and audiences, said Ganna Pogrebna, a professor of behavioral economics and data science at the University of Birmingham, who led the research team. ‘We know that when we talk about movie production it is a small group of people that make decisions for the viewers. We were essentially trying to listen to the viewer, to see what they actually want.”

Brown explains that the Birmingham scientists have “categorized movies according to six emotional profiles or clusters, which were previously applied to novels.

“These are (1) rags to riches — an ongoing emotional rise as seen in films such as The Shawshank Redemption; (2) riches to rags — an ongoing emotional fall; (3) Man in a hole; (4) Icarus – a rise followed by a fall (On the Waterfront); (5) Cinderella — a rise followed by a fall followed by a rise (Babe); and (6) Oedipus, a fall followed by a rise followed by a fall (All About My Mother).”

Pogbrena believes that “riches to rags movies could be financially successful if they’re epic and made with a huge budget, such as Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies.” He’s also concluded that “Icarus films are most successful with a low budget, and that Oedipus films do not do well at awards ceremonies.”

The research data claims that The Godfather is a “man in a hole” movie, or one in which the lead character (i.e., Michael Corleone) starts out more or less happy or at least content, falls into a pit of danger and misfortune and then gradually climbs out of it. In fact Francis Coppola‘s 1972 film has two lead characters — Marlon Brando‘s Vito Corleone + Al Pacino‘s heir apparent — who experience this fate.

Read more

“The normal rules of politics do apply to Donald Trump, after all.

“Four years ago, he became the fifth man to win the presidency while losing the popular vote. Now he becomes the fourth of those five — along with John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes and Benjamin Harrison — to serve only a single term, and to be unpopular during most of it. The exception is George W. Bush, who benefited from being a wartime president.

“In hindsight, the extraordinary nature of the circumstances that propelled Trump in 2016 have become obvious: the unpopularity of his opponent, Hillary Clinton; the help from Russia; the late involvement of James Comey, the then-F.B.I. director who now hosts an ABC talk show; and Trump’s razor-thin victories in several states.

“Without that good fortune this year, Trump still won roughly 90 percent of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning voters. Yet it was not nearly enough.

“’Trump said he was going to fix things, and he didn’t,’ said Kevin O’Reilly, 54, of Manchester, N.H., who voted for Barack Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016 and Elizabeth Warren this year. ‘I don’t think he really cares about the middle class. He cares about himself.'” — from David Leonhardt‘s “How Trump Lost Re-election in 2020,” posted in N.Y. Times on 7.29.

It’s been seven days since my stolen iPhone 6s Plus was blacklisted (i.e., deactivated) through AT&T, and the losers at Apple are still dragging their feet, scratching their heads and not correcting the 8 Plus passcode situation.

Ten days ago Michael Newman, friend and tech ally of that name-brand director friend (i.e., “Mr. Hotshot“), told me to forward the IMEI # of the stolen iPhone 6 Plus to the AT&T people and ask them to kill it. Which I did. The thinking was that once Apple iCloud technicians understood that the stolen iPhone 6 Plus was no longer a working device, much less a valid or trusted one, the Apple security passcode lockout problem (caused by Apple’s six-digit, second-step security code being continually if nonsensically sent to the thief who stole the iPhone 6 Plus on 7.5) would stop being an issue. Apple would then send me the six-digit passcode and everything would be jake.

Except it’s not, thanks to Apple procedure and professionalism. Things are still tangled up in blue.

HE to Mike: “How can Apple fail to recognize or act upon the obvious and proven, which is that (a) the iPhone 6 Plus was stolen and bricked, (b) the same iPhone 6 Plus has been killed — rendered inactive — by AT&T and therefore needs to be un-trusted by Apple, and that (c) the six-digit verification code therefore needs to be texted to MY phone?

“It’s very simple now. It’s obvious. It’s all settled and figured out. I’ve forwarded proof of theft and proof of purchase of the iPhone 6 Plus and 8 Plus, etc. So what’s the problem? The Apple people are perverse. It’s like they have some kind of disease.”

Mike to HE: “At this point the phone itself is out of the picture. Now it’s the phone number” — the thief’s, ending in 9114 — “that needs to be removed from the account. Previously the escalation to the security group happened, but they were confused between the iPhone 8 receipt and the 6s that was stolen. They will call me Monday. We are 90% there. Hang in there — will speak to you Monday afternoon.”

HE to Mike: “I hear you & thanks so very much again. I’m hanging in there. One question: How could those brainiacs possibly be ‘confused between the iPhone 8 receipt and the 6s that was stolen’? Receipt of purchase for both phones has been provided. The iPhone 6s Plus was bought on 9.6.16 in New York City (receipt provided), and the current iPhone 8 Plus was purchased at the West Hollywood Grove Apple store on 7.5.18 (receipt provided). There’s just no possible basis for confusion. Everything is quite clear in the notes and documents they’ve been sent.”

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, quoted in David Smith‘s 7.20 Guardian article, “Do Republicans disapprove of Trump’s meeting with Putin? ‘They couldn’t care less‘”: “You’ve got to really examine the flyover states. They couldn’t care less about what happened in Russia. They love this guy, they think this guy’s for them. These are low information emotional voters and they like what they see in the president. They think he’s working for them.”

The best thing about this non-teaser for Matthew Weiner‘s The Romanoffs is the music. Beyond this my reaction is basically “what?” An Amazon anthology series debuting on 10.12, The Romanoffs “centers on separate stories about people who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family.” In other words, people who (a) believe themselves to be hot shit in some primal, genetic way and (b) need the Russian royal blood association to augment a frail sense of self-worth. Socially insecure people are interesting subjects for a $70 million series? Costarring Aaron Eckhart, Christina Hendricks, Isabelle Huppert, Jack Huston, Marthe Keller, Diane Lane, Amanda Peet, Paul Reiser, John Slattery, Corey Stoll, Noah Wyle, Kathryn Hahn, Mary Kay Place, Griffin Dunne, Ron Livingston, etc.