Day: February 23, 2019

Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk has won the Best Feature Spirit Award, and Jenkins has won for Best Director. Congrats are in order, but at the same time I have to repeat what I’ve known (i.e., not “felt” but absolutely known) in my gut for the last five months, or since catching Beale Street at the Toronto Film Festival: It’s a nice, dreamy, Wong Kar Wai mood piece minus any sort of engaging narrative (certainly not my idea of one) or any story tension to speak of.

As Jenkins’ film strictly adheres to the downish arc of James Baldwin‘s 1974 novel, the film radiates integrity. Which I respect. But I didn’t find Beale Street dramatically satisfying. I can’t imagine how anyone could find it so. I was therefore flabbergasted when the critical community flipped for it.

My Toronto review called it “a decent film in a sluggish, warm-hearted, ‘I love you baby’ sort of way. The two leads, Stephan James and Kiki Layne, are highly appealing in all respects, not the least being that they’re physically beautiful. And I agree that Regina King (who plays Layne’s mom) might land a Best Supporting Actress nomination. James Laxton‘s cinematography and Nicholas Britell‘s musical score are probably the two best elements.

“The fact is that Beale Street is all about mood and faith and dreamy lovers giving each eye baths. It has no narrative tension or snap, no second act pivot or third-act payoff or anything in the least bit peppy or penetrating, much less reach-for-the-skies. It’s languid and sluggish and awash in feeling that isn’t pointed at anything but itself. Not a disaster but definitely minor.”

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That “brutally honest” female sound branch member who shared her thoughts with THR‘s Scott Feinberg about the leading Oscar contenders sounds, no offense, like a none-too-bright. She’s clearly someone who lacks depth, devotion, curiosity and sufficient education. She admits she hasn’t seen half the films and performances up for this or that. She never saw Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed — “no interest whatsoever, I guess because of the subject matter, particularly during the holiday season.” Except for the fact that this Bressonian moral tale opened eight months ago. I don’t fault her for having done the nasty with Buzz Aldrin (“The only person I ever slept with just because of who he was…I just wanted to say, ‘I slept with someone who was on the moon'”). As the saying goes, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust into them.” She says she never saw At Eternity’s Gate. The last “brutally honest” guy didn’t see it either. Did any non-SAG member see At Eternity’s Gate?

Sorry for being under the ice and not reacting like a jackrabbit to the passing of the great Stanley Donen. The 94-year-old boyfriend of Elaine May was a supreme maestro of those robust, high-style, bursting-wth-color Hollywood musicals of the late ’40s and ’50s. Millennials and GenZ types are incapable of giving a damn about this luminous chapter in Hollywood history. Their loss, of course, but they don’t care about that either.

Donen’s peak creative period (late ’40s to late ’50s) was all about singing, dancing and dynamic, envelope-pushing choreography. It lasted almost exactly a decade, beginning with 1949’s On The Town (the first location-based musical, co-directed with Gene Kelly), continuing with the legendary Singin’ in the Rain (’52, also co-directed with Kelly), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (’54), It’s Always Fair Weather (’55), Funny Face (’57), The Pajama Game (’57) and Damn Yankees (’58).

Donen began to shift into light romantic comedies in the late ’50s, which led to a successful, slightly less flush decade — Indiscreet (’58), Once More With Feeling (’60), The Grass Is Greener (’60), Charade (’63), Arabesque (’66), Two For The Road (’67 — Pete Hammond‘s all-time favorite) and Bedazzled (’68).

A 15-year downshift period followed — Staircase (’69 — Rex Harrison and Richard Burton as a gay couple), Lucky Lady (’75 — a bust for Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman), Movie Movie (’78 — a dud), Saturn 3 (’80 — piece of shit sci-fi with Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas, Harvey Keitel), Blame It On Rio (’84 — middle-aged horndog comedy with Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna, Demi Moore, Michelle Johnson).

18 years ago legendary publicist Bobby Zarem lured Donen to the Savannah Film Festival with a special career tribute. That was my first year at that festival, and Zarem invited me to dinner with he and Donen — just us three. I played it loose and casual, of course. I could have easily subjected Donen to 150 or 200 questions, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. He struck me as confident, casual, sophisticated.

To have lived a life as electric and bountiful as Donen’s and to have lasted 94 years…we should all be so lucky.

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