Day: June 20, 2019

Yesterday Facebook’s Tom Brueggemann attempted to paint Pauline Kael with a racist brush. His weapon was a paragraph from Kael’s March 1966 McCall’s review of Stuart Burge and Laurence Olivier‘s Othello.

My first thought was “it’s very easy to accuse someone of racial insensitivity or clumsy phrasing a half-century later.”

Obviously no white actor today would even think of trying to portray an African or Moorish character, but Kael, hardly beholden to rube attitudes, was thinking beyond the usual confines.

She was merely saying that Olivier, a burning furnace beneath the surface, was conveying a certain unhinged madness or mania that prominent black actors of the mid ’60s, in her view, had been or would be reluctant to wade into.

If Jerry Schatzberg‘s Street Smart (’87) were to be remade today, I wonder if any black actor would dive into Morgan Freeman‘s “Fast Black” character with as much relish? Freeman was amazing in that film, but also quite scary. Not concluding — just thinking out loud.

Paul Schrader‘s response to Brueggemann: “A valid observation. Sorry if it’s not p.c. enough for you.”

At least read Kael’s entire review before forming a judgment.

What percentage of regular-ass Netflix viewers have even heard of the original, 52-year-old Point Blank? Which wasn’t just a great revenge flick but a major genre game-changer by way of merging shootings and beatings with an impressionistic art-film aesthetic? 1% or 2%, if that. It’s okay, I suppose, if you’re using the title for a nine-year-old French-produced thriller, but it seems to me that in the good old U.S. of A. the Netflix guys are tredding on hallowed ground.

Falling Down is easily the best film that Joel Schumacher ever directed. (Or so I recall.) It couldn’t and wouldn’t be made for theatrical today, of course, and perhaps not even for streaming. Because no one today wants to sympathize with or feel a touch of mixed empathy for a middle-aged white guy under any circumstance, let alone one who feels he’s had enough and has begun to lose his ability to control himself.

At the same time no one would want to greenlight a film about a middle-aged POC (a Samuel L. Jackson or Idris Elba type) losing his shit and becoming a public menace. That would be too negative and/or against the current p.c. narrative. So those who might respond with interest or even perverse enjoyment to a Falling Down-type film will have to be content with the original, which opened over 26 years ago

It’s streaming on Amazon for a lousy $2.99.

N.Y. Times “Carpetbagger” Kyle Buchanan has posted a fascinating state-of-things piece called “How Will the Movies (As We Know Them) Survive the Next 10 Years?” Not an article but a collection of quotes from 24 Hollywood hotshots, including J.J. Abrams, Jason Blum, Tom Rothman, Barry Jenkins, Kumail Nanjiani, Jon M. Chu, Joe and Anthony Russo, Jessica Chastain, Elizabeth Banks, Ava DuVernay, Octavia Spencer, Lena Waithe, Nancy Utley, Paul Feig, Michael Barker and a few others.

It’s probably the best thing that Buchanan has posted since he became the new “Carpetbagger” a little less than a year ago.

All 24 sound engaged and forward-looking as opposed to “Jesus, what is this business coming to?…I hate what Millennials and GenZ and their fucking phones have done to this business… I liked it better in the ’90s when people actually went to theatres” and other such laments. Don’t kid yourself — these sentiments are more common than you might think, to go by industry people you might talk to privately or run into at Academy screenings.

A thought that came to mind after finishing the article: “Thank God for elite film festivals…wall-to-wall theatrical showings, and in the company of people who actually get it, which is to say Movie Catholics.”

The most depressing comment by far comes from Feig. It actually implies why Feig isn’t as good or crafty as people thought he was after the success of Bridesmaids, and in fact may be an argument for Feig being immediately seized, driven out to Bakersfield and thrown into Movie Jail. The second most depressing quote is from Nanjiani. (The in-between remark about kids not going to “movies” but to “a movie” is from Rothman.) The third remark is from Whiplash producer Blum, which I’ve included because of the Hollywood Elsewhere “Yo, Whiplash!” factor.

Feig:

Nanjiani:

Blum:

I bailed on the Toy Story franchise after the second installment (’99), which I saw because the kids weren’t quite tweenish enough to be snide about family fare. It was okay, engaging for what it was, good enough…zzzzz.

But I completely ignored Toy Story 3 (’10), and proudly at that. Yeah! It goes without saying that I wouldn’t watch Toy Story 4 on a long flight to Seoul in which I had no wifi, nothing to read, no Percocets and absolutely nothing else to do. Which is why I politely bypassed last night’s all-media screening at the El Capitan…no offense.

I’m not sorry about missing either one. But if I had seen Toy Story 3 I would at least be able to appreciate Peter Bradshaw‘s lament. He’s basically saying that the third installment “had that staggering and triumphant sense of what we all yearn for in the cinema — a sense of an ending. The glorious finality [of Toy Story 3] is what made it such a triumph in many ways, and so I have to say, if this doesn’t sound too absurd, that Toy Story 4 kind of loses the integrity of the existing Toy Story trilogy.”

On the other hand thank God I don’t have to even consider such concepts.

Three and a half years ago the catastrophic demise of the legendary Ziegfeld theatre was announced, and now comes Michael Fleming’s Deadline report that the uptown Paris theatre (58th Street near Fifth, right next to Bergdorf Goodman) will shutter in late July or August.

Obviously depressing, deflating, food for despair. The closing of another hallowed theatrical landmark — a move that will further diminish the character, personality and soul of midtown Manhattan.

Since opening in 1948 the mere existence of the Paris, a comfortable, well-maintained, mid-sized arthouse smack dab in the heart of one of the most flush, culture-rich areas of NYC and directly in the shadow of the historic Plaza hotel, was a statement by Manhattan itself — “This theatre never shows crap, and we’re immensely proud of this as well as thankful…only the best or at least the most interesting films of the moment…and so we, the Manhattan coolios, are delighted and honored that the Paris has such a great location, because it reminds passersby what a great and necessary thing it is to support and celebrate first-rate cinema.”

I’m really sick about this. I’ve been attending occasional premieres at the Paris since ’79 or thereabouts. My mother and I went to see Alain Resnais‘ Mon Oncle d’Amerique there in ’80. I attended a Green Book premiere there last November, and a very cool premiere for Lone Scherfig‘s An Education in the fall of ’09.

As surely as Julius Caesar was knifed to death by political rivals, the Paris has been suffocated by HD streaming. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends…not with a bang but with another theatre closing.