Day: October 4, 2019

Nightmare

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Your flight finally lands in Los Angeles, and you’re feeling the usual relief mixed with lethargy as you wait for your luggage. But at least a taxi or an Uber ride won’t be hard to snag, you tell yourself, and the pick-up location is only a short walk. Except starting later this month, the pickup location (an outdoor lot called LAX-it) will be a long walk, and the only way to get there if you’re not in a long-walk mood will be to hop on a shuttle bus.

In other words, the process of escaping LAX congestion after you land will soon take an extra 20 or 30 minutes, minimum. Thank you very much, genius bureaucrats, for making that tedious airport even more of a traffic prison than it already is.

Comparing Two Biggies

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Last month I mentioned something I’d heard about award-season calculations inside the Netflix compound. It crossed my radar screen just before Telluride, and it came from a trusted colleague who gets around. The rumble was that Netflix was placing most of its award-season hopes upon Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, which has an emotionally relatable story, a well-honed screenplay and dynamic, heartfelt performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson.

“Not that Netflix doesn’t respect or believe in Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman,” I wrote, “but that they’re unsure how well a sprawling Lawrence of Arabia-sized gangster film will play with Academy and guild members.”

I didn’t immediately recall this observation after being floored by The Irishman last Friday. It actually didn’t hit me until today, to be honest, but I was fairly taken aback once I started thinking about it. How could anyone who’d seen Scorsese’s masterwork believe that Marriage Story, which I totally fell for during Telluride and regard as one of the best of the year so far…how could anyone conclude that Noah Baumbach‘s film had a slightly better shot at Best Picture than the Scorsese?

The thinking, I was told in late August, was that Marriage Story delivers a stronger emotional current than The Irishman, and that emotion always wins the day at the Oscars. That’s true, but the last half-hour of The Irishman delivers a current that feels like melancholy, hand-of-fate heroin, and which sinks right into your bloodstream and stirs you deep down. There’s nothing in Marriage Story, due respect, that comes close to this . It’s a very fine film, but it’s coming from a different place, and generating a different kind of vibe.

On top of which Marriage Story ain’t Kramer vs. Kramer. It’ll be respected and saluted all around, but I’m sensing that the emotional reception…well, we’ll see. Right now Driver and Johansson are in the best shape of all the senior Marriage Story contributors.

Big Stumble

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I somehow can’t accept that the great Ang Lee, a serious filmmaker and two-time Oscar-winner, has made a problematic action film. Despite, I realize, ample evidence that says I’m in denial — namely a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 41% plus an even-worse Metacritic tally of 33%. I swear to God you can feel the resignation wafting out of Paramount publicity right now, and yet Hollywood Elsewhere wants to like it…really! My soft spot for Gemini Man is a serious admiration for high-frame-rate cinematography. I didn’t attend the 10.2 Grove screening, and I can’t be at Monday’s all-media because of a conflict. My only shot is the Sunday evening premiere. I understand that Gemini Man has issues, but maybe on some level they aren’t so bad.

All The Hits

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Hollywood Elsewhere last attended the Middleburg Film Festival in 2015 — i.e, the Spotlight year. I’m happy to announce that I’ll be returning for this year’s festival between Thursday, 10.17 and Sunday, 10.20, and that Tatyana will join.

An LAX-to-Dulles red eye on Wednesday night (no sleep to speak of), and then a three-and-a-half-day stay at the five-star Salamander Inn. We expect to catch nine or ten films, minimum. And then a two-and-a-half day roam-around in the nation’s capital, and then a flight back to Los Angeles on Tuesday evening, 10.22.

The Middleburg slate is lively, necessary, and all-encompassing. The Irishman, Ford v, Ferrari, The Cave, The Capote Tapes, Clemency, Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life, Honey Boy, JoJo Rabbit, Just Mercy, Knives Out, Marriage Story, Motherless Brooklyn, Parasite, The Traitor, The Truth, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Report, Varda by Agnes, Waves plus panel discussions plus leisurely nature strolls and some roam-around time in historic Middleburg.

Tatyana and I would be delighted to pay $135 each for a clop-clop horse ride along a nice woodsy trail. Whether we’ll actually do that is another matter.

“Joker” Reactions Requested

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After last weekend’s Joker premiere screening I heard a couple of predictions that at least a portion of the Joe and Jane Popcorn community might find it too unsettling, too severe, too fuck-all. Because it doesn’t deliver the usual safe spaces and comfort zones, and by the finale seems to more or less endorse the idea of mass anarchic rebellion in the streets. It leaves you with no one to care for or identify with except loony Arthur Fleck. Obviously not your dad’s D.C. movie.

HE to comment-thread gang who saw it last night or earlier today: What was the after-aroma in the room as everyone was filing out? Too heavy-creepy? A mad, daring bull’s-eye? Somewhere in between? The drag-assers at CinemaScore haven’t posted a grade yet.

Last night’s $13 million take apparently means a $90 million tally by Sunday evening. Nobody cares about the carpings by wokester critics. Joker is an essential activity for the next 60 hours.

Expanded

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Sam Mendes‘ 1917, one of three presumed Best Picture heavy-hitters yet to be screened (along with Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women and Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell), will probably have its big peek-out during AFI Fest 2019 (11.14 to 11.21).

Crusader

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Diahann Carroll, the respected actress and racial-barrier pathfinder, has passed at age 84. When I heard the news I immediately flashed to her Tony-award-winning role in Richard Rodgers‘ No Strings, a 1962 stage musical in which she played Richard Kiley‘s lover — regarded at the time as a big barrier-breaking deal.

Six years later Carroll broke another barrier in Julia (’68 to ’71), a TV series about a nurse and her son — the first time that a woman of color had played a non-servant role on TV. (I know, I know.) The series was criticized at the time for presenting an unrealistic, overly sanitized portrait of a single black mom. Wiki excerpt: Gil Scott-Heron‘s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (’71) “referred to Julia in the same breath as Bullwinkle, implying that the character was something of a cartoon.”

Carroll was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Claudine (’74), as another single mother (of six!) who finds romance in Harlem with a sanitation engineer (James Earl Jones).

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Not A Single “Daddy-o”…Please

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After shooting in the NYC-New Jersey area for 11 weeks, Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story wrapped a week ago — on 9.27.19. The Daily Mail posted the below video today (10.4). Yes, that’s Spike Lee paying a visit.

HE continues to maintain two things:

(1) It was probably a bad idea to remake West Side Story for 2020 audiences. The original idea came from early to mid ’50s NYC gang culture, and the original B’way stage play opened in 1957 — 62 years ago. The 1961 film version was derided up and down for being glossy and inauthentic. Spielberg will almost certainly deliver a more realistic ’50s milieu, but the basic, strongly emotional song-and-ballet material probably won’t connect with under-35s, who will probably regard it at arm’s length. Romeo and Juliet is eternal, but West Side Story has essentially become a nostalgic timepiece for boomers;

(2) If a single young actor (either a Jet or a Shark) says “daddy-o”, West Side Story will collapse like a house of cards.

Incidentally: It’s nobody’s business if costars Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler have developed an off-screen relationship of some kind. (Or not.)

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