Month: January 2019

70mm Celluloid “Roma” Delivers No Bump

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Last night I visited the Aero, Hollywood Elsewhere’s favorite one-screen theatre in the western hemisphere, for a 70mm presentation of Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma. I love the film but transferring digitally-shot images to celluloid delivered nothing that struck me as wowser or extra-distinctive. It looked perfectly fine (clean, sharp, silvery), but my eyes never popped out of their sockets. It actually looked a little better when I watched it a week or two ago via Netflix streaming, specifically on my Sony 4K HDR 65-inch monitor.

Genial, silver-haired Alfonso dropped by for a quick q & a after it ended. Standing ovation, waves of love and worship, Alfonso offering the prayer gesture, etc. I didn’t have the nerve to ask about whether the dogshit in the driveway was intended to serve as some kind of metaphor of some kind or if Alfonso simply remembered it that way.

Jihadism + Turdballs

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Francois Margolin and Lemine Ould M Salem‘s two-year-old Jihadists (aka Salafistes), an allegedly immersive and “grueling” documentary about cadres of radical Islam, will open in New York and Los Angeles on 1.25.

An invitation to view the film with a video link was accidentally sent out within a cc format, so simple rsvps were received by everyone on the mailing thread.

I cheerfully responded as follows: “Hey, [publicist’s first name] — Happy New Year & please send a link. How many heads are cut off in this thing? — Jeffrey Wells.” One guy replied, “Actually it’s not heads I’m worried about!” (I didn’t get the allusion.)

Another guy wrote the following: “So do you genuinely not understand the difference between ‘reply’ and ‘reply all’, or did you just want everyone to enjoy your golden witticism?” HE reply: “I thought I was just hitting reply. If you’re telling me you didn’t at least briefly flash on the possibility of decapitation footage in this doc…well, I don’t know what to say to you, Pinocchio.”

You can’t have a polite or even a civil discussion with journalists these days. Someone is always flinging turdballs about something or other, which means I have to throw them back, and then it’s all downhill.

Does National Society of Film Critics Know Best?

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Straight from twitter, balloting as we speak…

‏BEST PICTURE: THE RIDER (44 points) / HE comment: No comment.

RUNNERS-UP:
ROMA (41 points)
BURNING (27 points)

BEST DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuarón, ROMA (60 points) / / HE comment: Fine.

RUNNERS-UP:
Lee Chang-dong, BURNING (22 points)
Chloé Zhao, THE RIDER (22 points)

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM: ROMA (44 points) / HE comment: Cold War should have won.

RUNNERS-UP:
COLD WAR (34 points)
BURNING (30 points)
SHOPLIFTERS (30 points)
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BEST ACTOR: Ethan Hawke, FIRST REFORMED (58 points) / HE comment: Of course!

RUNNERS-UP:
Willem Dafoe, AT ETERNITY’S GATE (30 points) / HE comment: Dafoe should be one of the five.
Ben Foster, LEAVE NO TRACE (25 points)
John C. Reilly, THE SISTERS BROTHERS and STAN & OLLIE (25 points)

BEST ACTRESS: Olivia Colman, THE FAVOURITE (36 points)

RUNNERS-UP:
Regina Hall, SUPPORT THE GIRLS (33 points)
Melissa McCarthy, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (27 points)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Regina King, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (47 points) / HE comment: If you guys say so…whatever.

RUNNERS-UP:
Elizabeth Debicki, WIDOWS (37 points)
Emma Stone, THE FAVOURITE (24 points)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Steven Yeun, BURNING (40 points) / HE comment: Green Book‘s Mahershala Ali.

RUNNERS-UP:
Richard E. Grant, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (35 points)
Brian Tyree Henry, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK, WIDOWS and SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (32 points)

BEST SCREENPLAY: Armando Iannucci, David Schneider and Ian Martin, THE DEATH OF STALIN (47 points)

RUNNERS-UP:
Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (27 points) / HE comment: Holofcener and Whitty deserved to win.
Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, THE FAVOURITE (24 points)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Alfonso Cuarón, ROMA (70 points)

RUNNERS-UP:
James Laxton, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (26 points)
Lukasz Zal, COLD WAR (24 points) / HE comment: Zal’s juicy monochrome images should have won the top prize.

“How Do I Appreciate Thee…?”

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I understand there are no secrets these days — that everything’s on the table. And I realize that you’re definitely in trouble if you don’t thank your significant other during an award acceptance speech. But there’s something to be said for understatement and deft allusions rather than specific, heartfelt affirmations that sound like they were written for a speech.

Two days ago in Palm Springs Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek went the latter route. He and Bohemian costar Lucy Boynton, 24, have been doing the bop ** since at least last May, but he confirmed their relationship anyway while accepting the Breakthrough Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

“Thank you, Lucy Boynton,” he said. “You have been my ally, my confidante, my love…I appreciate you so much.”

Hearing from someone near and dear that I’m “appreciated” doesn’t exactly warm the cockles of my heart. The word is a rote-sounding, dryly positive blanket term. Everyone in the world uses it because anybody can appreciate anything without getting their feet wet. It’s a businessy, daylight-hour, arm’s-length word. “I appreciated the kind gesture” or “I deeply appreciate your donation to my son’s cub scout troop”…that line of country. Percy Bysshe Shelley would have put it some other way.

** Otherwise known as “rop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom.”

Hart Is Over. Again.

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How does the Academy move forward on re-hiring Kevin Hart as the next Oscar host after all the pushback plus Don Lemon airing a special opinion piece that says “no can do, this doesn’t work, Kevin needs to walk away”?

From 1.5 edition of Richard Rushfield‘s The Ankler: “Why should we have [an Oscar] host? Who in their right mind would step into this mess? There hasn’t been a gig in showbiz as certain to take a wrecking ball to a performer’s reputation since someone hired a stand-up comic as a joke-telling mohel at Barry Diller’s grandson’s bris.”

Jig’s Up

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“Nicole Kidman is indeed remarkable [in Destroyer], as rumor suggests, but mainly because you can’t stop remarking her. It’s an over-cover performance in an undercover role. Though aiming to blend in, she’s so dramatically busy that she ends up sticking out, like a chameleon who’s praying for an Oscar nod.

“The rule seems to be that the more makeup and prosthetics she piles on the more likely we are to cry out, in unison, ‘Oh, look, it’s Nicole Kidman!'” — from Anthony Lane’s review in the 1.17.19 issue of The New Yorker.

From “Pains of Hell,” my 9.1.18 Telluride review: “Destroyer is mostly about the way Kidman looks, like a combination vampire-zombie with dark eye bags and a complexion that suggests a heroin habit mixed with twice-daily injections of embalming fluid. Plus a Desolation Row, gray-streaked hair style. It’s also about the whispery way in which she speaks. I swear to God I missed over half of her dialogue.

“Kidman and Kusama are basically saying to us, ‘Have you guys ever seen such a badass, hardass undercover female cop in your moviegoing life? Even in a zombie movie?’ HE answer: No, I’ve never seen a cop character who looks this wasted, this dead-to-the-world, this gutted, this excavated, this George Romero, this Bela Lugosi-ish. Hats off.”

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Know-It-Alls Freaking Over PGA Noms

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This morning the Producers Guild of America revealed 10 nominees for their Best Picture prize (i.e., Daryl F. Zanuck award). The elite arbiters are freaking about the mildly mediocre but well-liked Bohemian Rhapsody being among them. For me the more appalling nominee is Crazy Rich Asians, which was included because of the all-Asian cast and the fact that it made boatloads of money. The other nominees are Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, The Favourite, Green Book, A Quiet Place (another outlier), Roma, A Star is Born and Vice.

None So Blind As Those, etc.

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If you wanted to be snide about it, which of the favored Best Picture contenders could be regarded as a kind of soap opera? A Star Is Born, The Favourite or If Beale Street Could Talk…right? So which is being referred to in this tweet?

Hart Seems Shifty, Slippery, Uncentered

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2:40 pm Update: Variety‘s Matt Donnelly is reporting that “key parties involved in the annual Oscars telecast are open to the return of Kevin Hart as host, following an alternately contrite and defiant appearance on The Ellen Show on Thursday.”

Earth to Academy honchos: Did you guys read what Hart told Kris Tapley only hours before chatting with Ellen?

Sir Thomas More to Kevin Hart: “When you spoke to Tapley you said you wouldn’t host the Oscars…’it’s done, it’s done.’ Hours later you told Ellen you might want the gig after all. We must just pray that when your head’s finished turning, your face is to the front again.”

Previously: Hours before visiting with Ellen DeGeneres and suggesting to viewers that he’s re-assessing the Oscar hosting gig, Kevin Hart firmly told Variety‘s Kris Tapley that he would not host the Oscars…no way, no how, nopeski.

Hart #1: “Would I ever do it? No, it’s done. It’s done. The moment came and it was a blessing and I was excited at the opportunity and I still am.”

Hart #2: “In my mind I got the job, it was a dream job, and things came up that simply prohibited it from happening. But I don’t believe in going backwards. When I go on that stage, it will be because I’ve somehow figured out a way to win the Oscar. Somehow I’ll get to the stage but it’s not going to be in this way because it just comes with such a weird cloud at this point.”

So now there are two arguments about Hart filling the presumably-still-open Oscar gig. One, the LGBTQs have doubled-down on him for not really apologizing for those old ugly tweets and for generally being a bad fit in 2019. And two, he’s all kinds of shifty and dodgy about what he really wants, telling Ellen one thing and Kris another.

Very Small Quibble

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Throughout most of Cold War, which spans about 14 or 15 years (1949 to the early-mid ’60s), Tomasz Kot‘s piano-man character wears hipster whiskers. Nobody and I mean nobody adopted this look until the debut of grubby-chic manbeards in the mid to late ’80s (GQ, Don Johnson, Miami Vice). Anyone who wore three-week-growth whiskers before that late-Reagan era was universally regarded as an alcoholic bum, a hobo, a down-at-the-heels loser.

Dance, Part 1

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“War” is one thing and political conflict another, but there’s a certain amount of overlap. The slight irony is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is probably more dug into the idea of pitched-battle politics than any of the new generation of Congressional legislators. To her credit, of course, but she’s certainly not averse to using social-media grenade launchers and other tools of political warfare. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.

Hart Actively Reconsidering Oscar Gig

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Is this an even worse Kevin Hart debacle than the first one? I kinda doubt that the LGBTQ community is going to follow Ellen Degeneres‘ lead by saying ‘okay, Kevin…we forgive your homophobic tweets, host the show, all is well,” etc. Or am I misreading the situation?

Sopan Deb‘s N.Y. Times report contains the following Ellen quote: “So I called [the Academy]. I said ‘Kevin’s on.’ I said, ‘I have no idea if he wants to come back and host. But what are your thoughts?’ And they were like, ‘Oh my god. We want him to host. We feel like that maybe he misunderstood or it was handled wrong or maybe we said the wrong thing but we want him to host.’”