Month: August 2019

“Make no mistake, my friend — we’re in the midst of a full-scale invasion here.”

So says rightwing radio host Lionel Macomb (Steve Coogan) at some point in Hot Air (Lionsgate, 8.23). The basic premise feels like a Trumpian pancake-flip of Oliver Stone‘s Talk Radio with Macomb dealing with family issues, particularly his 16-year-old niece, Tess (Taylor Russell). Frank Coraci is a longtime Adam Sandler collaborator who’s directed The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy, Around the World in 80 Days, Click, Zookeeper and The Ridiculous 6. The screenplay is by Will Reichel.

Just when I was wondering why I hadn’t heard about Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life appearing at any of the early-fall festivals, I was told it will in fact screen at Telluride. Which makes sense as a fair number of critics praised it in Cannes, not to mention Fox Searchlight having paid at least $12 million to acquire it.

HE’s new Telluride rundown is as follows:

Marriage Story, d: Noah Baumbach
Ford v Ferrari, d: James Mangold
Judy, d: Rupert Goold
Uncut Gems, d: The Safdies
Motherless Brooklyn, d: Edward Norton
A Hidden Life, d: Terrence Malick
The Truth, d: Kore-eda
The Aeronauts, d: Tom Harper
Wasp Network, d: Olivier Assayas
The Two Popes, d: Fernando Mereilles
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, d: Celine Sciamma
Pain and Glory, d: Pedro Almodovar
Parasite, d: Bong Joon-ho
Beanpole, d: Kantemir Balagov
The Whistlers, d: Corneliu Porumboiu
First Cow, d: Kelly Reichart
Varda by Agnes, d: Agnes Varda

Possibly Scott Burns‘ The Report. Possibly Werner Herzog‘s Family Romance LLC. And possibly the new Todd Haynes. And possibly Michael Covino‘s The Climb.

In a tweet deploring the Venice Film Festival’s decision to screen Nate Parker‘s American Skin under the fest’s “Sconfini” banner, Memphis Film Festival senior programmer Miriam Bale added that the Venice honcho Alberto Barbera “is a strident version of a quiet backlash that I see everywhere now, especially in liberal film circles.”

A backlash against what again? Wokester militancy? For help I turned to a Los Angeles-based friendo.

“The moment is fraught with peril on all sides,” he replied. “Social media means never having to confront anything you didn’t endorse. So everything now is people swatting away difficult thoughts [that might] pierce their cocoons. Provocation is now seen as an indictable death penalty offense. Conflicting ideas are drive by assaults. Remember all those lessons of youth? Turn into the curve. Don’t fight the riptide. Stay still or the quicksand will pull you down.”

HE to friendo: “Heed these, you’re saying. Stay still or the wokesters will pull me down…got it. But specifically and clearly, are you sensing some kind of anti-woke backlash? Talk to me like I’m a dumbshit who doesn’t get veiled references.”

Friendo: “35% of Americans believe Trump is their salvation. 35% of Americans believe Trump is Satan. 30% of Americans are on fentanyl. Calcification is the new woke.

“My bitch this week [is that the] MSM doesn’t want to talk about what it could mean if the Dayton shooter is an Antifa nutcase. Too complex for simple CNN/MSNBC headlines and the whole gun nut thing runs counter to the Fox doctrine, so we get more simplistic, well-meaning as well as unbelievably cynical soundbites and nothing changes.

“Try to ask someone what it means that El Paso was a rightwing nut and Dayton is a leftwing nut. No one can process complex thoughts anymore. So everyone hunkers down in their own calcium pits.”

HE to friendo: “At the end of the day do you think history will be kind to woke McCarthyites?”

Friendo: “History is kind to those who draw attention to oppression and abuse. You’re reacting to the current mood of social-media-induced cocooning. It’s not about woke. It’s about ‘I’ve got my beliefs so don’t confuse me with more facts!’ It’s the 21st century version of Paddy Chayefsky‘s Network speech — “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”

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As far as I can tell from the trailer, Craig Zobel‘s The Hunt (Universal, 9.27) is a social satire about deplorables being hunted for sport by enraged liberals. Despite my admiration for Zobel’s seven-year-old Compliance, my immediate reaction was “no thanks.” Now Universal is “re-evaluating its strategy for the certain-to-be-controversial satire,” according to a 8.6 Hollywood Reporter story by Kim Masters. A Hunt ad that was slated to appear on ESPN was yanked, Masters reports. Also: “An ESPN source says no spots for the film will appear on the network in the coming weeks.”

A friend sent me the news about casting director David Rubin having been elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences earlier this evening.

“He looks so bland, so vanilla,” I replied. “Like a real-estate agent or a tax attorney. A very safe face. Why can’t they elect someone who looks like a novelist…someone who knows what art and risk are about…a person with gusto and passion and character in his or her veins? Look at him — he looks like the manager of WeHo Pavilions.”

“It’s political,” the friend replied. “And you need to have nothing better to do.”

A backfiring motorcycle caused a brief panic in Times Square early Tuesday evening. People have been conditioned to expect mass shootings at any time, in any place. We’re all living in 1880s Hadleyville before Will Kane came along. A NYPD spokesperson said they received multiple 911 calls and urged people not to panic. Officials assured that the “Times Square area is very safe.”

I recently read somewhere that most U.S. citizens have never visited more than eight states. It goes without saying that most of us who drive or fly around tend to avoid the poor land-locked states or those known for bumblefuck, hee-haw, shotgun-rack mindsets. We also tend to favor the coastal states or those with extra-beautiful scenery (Colorado, Utah, Montana, northern California).

The states I’ve visited (36) are boldfaced below with certain designations. My faves are California, New York, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Florida, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Georgia.

U = have visited, driven through, meh
V = have lived there for years
W = have never visited, and probably never will
X = visited, liked the architecture and/or atmosphere, liked the people and the vibe, would like to return.
Y = briefly visited because I wanted to leave as quickly as possible, and did.
Z = have flown over.

Alabama / Y; Alaska / W; Arizona / X; Arkansas / W; California / V; Colorado / X; Connecticut / V; Delaware / Y; Florida / X (Miami, Key West); Georgia / X; (Savannah, I mean); Hawaii / X; Idaho / U; Illinois / U; Indiana / U; Iowa / Z

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Posted on 12.21.15: Back in the 20th Century people used to ask actors for autographs instead of cell-phone selfies. Eccentric as it may sound, fans would actually carry around autograph books for this purpose. It’s been suggested that now and then hardcore fans would ask for more than just a signature — they would ask the celebrity to write a quote he/she is famous for uttering in a film.

If you ran into Gloria Swanson, let’s say, you would ask her to write “I am big…it’s the pictures that got small.” If you bumped into William Holden you’d ask him to write “if they move, kill ’em.” And so on. I would never do this, of course, but some allegedly have.

Today Daily Beast contributor Tom Teodorczuk posted an interview with 45 Years costar Tom Courtenay, and about halfway through Courtenay mentions that he was recently approached by an autograph hunter asking him to sign a piece of paper underneath the words “the personal life is dead” — one of the utterances of Strelnikov, his character in Dr. Zhivago. Courtenay tells Teodorczuk that the quote is “a load of bollocks,” but did he oblige?

Four years ago I recalled a moment in ’81 when I ran into In Cold Blood costar Scott Wilson in a West Hollywood bar, and that I stifled an instinct to ask for an autograph along with the words “hair on the walls” — a Dick Hickock line from Truman Capote‘s nonfiction novel.

If I could persuade Brad Pitt to give me an autograph, I’d ask him to write “don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.” If I’d run into Marlon Brando in the ’70s, I would have asked him to write either “whatta ya got?” (a line from The Wild One) or “Don’t be doin’ her like that” (from One-Eyed Jacks). If I’d enountered Montgomery Clift I’d ask him to write “nobody ever lies about being lonely” — a Robert E. Lee Prewitt/From Here To Eternity line. If I saw director-actor Alfonso Arau I would ask him to write “damn gringos!” Further suggestions along these lines?

Robert De Niro: “Are you talkin’ to me?” Samuel L. Jackson: “I don’t remember askin’ you a goddam thing!” Seth Rogen: “Heh heh heh heh yuk yuk yuk!” Bruce Willis: “Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!” or “Welcome to the party, pal!” Al Pacino: “Hoo-hah!” Jonah Hill: “Are those my only two options?”

Too much tonnage, the horse decided. Unable to handle the strain. So like Sean Connery pushing the ejection button in that scene from Goldfinger, he did something about it. (That said, I’m glad the couple wasn’t hurt. Luckily they landed in water and soft mud.)

Sorry for previous distractions and being the last daily columnist to riff on the 2019 New York Film Festival slate. The three hotties are still Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story (which the other three major festivals are also showing) and Edward Norton‘s Motherless Brooklyn — all previously announced, all with special berths.

Among 2019 NYFF selections that were first seen in Cannes, I was respectfully mixed on Kantemir Balagov‘s Beanpole and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne‘s Young Ahmed, and I was no fan of Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles‘s metaphorical, ultra-violent Bacurau. On top of which I was completely unimpressed by Corneliu Porumboiu‘s The Whistlers. But I admired Marco Bellocchio‘s The Traitor, and I loved — worshipped — Diao Yinan‘s The Wild Goose Lake.

The main intrigue (for me, this morning) is the inclusion of Kelly Reichart‘s First Cow. Women and Hollywood, posted 11.2.18: “Set in 1820s Oregon and China, the film follows Cookie Figowitz, a cook for a party of volatile fur trappers trekking through the Oregon Territory in the 1820s, joining up with the refugee Henry Brown…the two begin a wild ride that takes them from the virgin western territory all the way to China and back again.” Cowritten by Reichart and Jonathan Raymond (cowriter of Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves), and based on Raymond’s novel “The Half Life”. No clue who’s playing “Cookie,” but the costars are John Magaro, Rene Auberjonois and Dylan Smith.

I missed Mati Diop‘s Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story in Cannes, so it’s a welcome inclusion here.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy: “A big surprise is no Uncut Gems from New York’s very own Josh and Ben Safdie. What does that say about the movie itself? A heavily NYC-based movie side-stepping the biggest NYC film festival does make you wonder what happened Pic is set to premiere at Telluride and then Toronto.

“Also not going to NYFF is more mainstream Hollywood fare such as Jojo Rabbit, The Aeronauts, The Laundromat and The Two Popes, not to mention Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth, Roy Andersson’s About Endlessness and Pablo Larrain’s Ema. So basically, the NYFF has decided that this year’s fall lineup of Hollywood films just isn’t for them, with the exception of The Irishman, Marriage Story and Motherless Brooklyn.”

Other NYFF standouts: Pedro Almodóvar‘s Pain and Glory, Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite, Olivier Assayas‘s Wasp Network, Albert Serra‘s Liberte, Arnaud Desplechin‘s Oh Mercy!.