Day: November 26, 2019

Paris Redux

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Hollywood Elsewhere proposes that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences give Netflix a special Attaboy Oscar for re-opening the Paris theatre and pledging to keep the lights burning. Take 90 seconds during the 2.9.20 Oscar telecast and give Netflix a big old bear hug for this.

A beloved midtown Manhattan movie theatre is no longer dark! This might be the happiest film industry event of 2019.

Great lead paragraph by N.Y. Times‘ Nancy Coleman, posted on 11.25: “When the Paris Theater, New York City’s last surviving single-screen movie house, shut its doors in August, it wasn’t just a heart-wrenching loss for film lovers: It was a physical symbol of the ways streaming services are fundamentally changing the film industry.

“Now, a streaming platform is coming to its rescue.”

When the death of the Paris was announced in mid June, an HE commenter suggested that Netflix could step in and turn the Paris into a prime exhibition opportunity for original Netflix features. Lo and behold!

Netflix announced its agreement to lease the space yesterday (11.25).

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More Buttigieg Grumbling

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POC wokesters are snarling at Pete Buttigieg for having said the following eight years ago, during his first mayoral campaign: “Kids need to see evidence that education is going to work for them. You’re motivated because you believe that at the end of your education, there is a reward, there’s a stable life, there’s a job. And there are a lot of kids — especially [in] the lower-income, minority neighborhoods — who literally just haven’t seen it work. There isn’t someone they know personally who testifies to the value of education.”

HE comment: Buttigieg was completely correct when he said that kids need to absorb positive cultural and community values regarding the benefits of higher education. Kids need to see and consider these benefits for themselves, repeatedly, to become believers.

I speak from personal experience because I wasn’t positively imprinted about college, mainly because of the example of my own father.

Going by my dad’s behavior, I had two distinct impressions. One was that higher education resulted in a better job and the ability to earn more money so you could afford to live in a nice home and own a nice TV and go on summer vacations. All of which I took for granted. The other impression was that living this kind of life, “pleasant” and settled as it was, would probably be accompanied by emotionally brusque behavior, acting like a grump half the time, having a stiff drink when you come home on the commuter train, and basically living a glum, sour-faced life.

I consequently felt, by the time I was in my early to mid teens, that living a semi-flush, middle-class, college-educated life wasn’t necessarily a happy, desirable thing.

I would imagine that all kinds of negative, less-than-encouraging messages and indications are fed into the heads of lower-income kids. Some may emerge from a difficult economic family situation with the idea that getting a higher education is a very good thing. Some may also emerge from a difficult upbringing with an idea that there’s probably no way out and that the best you can hope for is occasional relief by way of good music, good laughter, family support and a fun social life.

Guys like Michael Harriot can throw 2019 woke values at something someone said ten or twenty years ago, and call them racist or patronizing. It’s very easy to do this. This kind of sneering SJW condemnation is par for the course in the twitterverse. This is exactly the kind of thing that President Obama lamented a couple of weeks ago.

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DuVernay Whispers

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Hollywood Elsewhere sympathizes with the 11 white industry people who’ve congratulated Ava DuVernay for her direction of Queen and Slim as well as Harriet. This is an embarassing whitey thang, mistaking one person of color for another without looking deep into their souls and speaking to the individual.

Honestly? This is why so many POCs aren’t supporting Pete Buttigieg — because he doesn’t really know any black people all that well and when he greets this or that person of color he sometimes says the wrong first name.

What these above-referenced Anglo Saxons don’t realize is that DuVernay also shadow-directed The Lighthouse. Okay, Robert Eggers technically “directed” it, but DuVernay was the secret creative power behind the throne. It was DuVernay, for example, who suggested the idea of a hostile seagull.

One of the best-kept Hollywood secrets is that DuVernay is a film-set “whisperer” — she hangs around shoots, watches everything, and offers advice when the director runs out of ideas or otherwise gets stuck.

Seriously, Melina Matsoukas (who’s slightly thinner and has a lighter complexion than DuVernay) directed Queen & Slim while Harriet‘s actual director is Kasi Lemmons.

Yo…”Da 5 Bloods”

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I’m told there’s a possibility that Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods, a kind of “Last Flag Flying meets a buried-gold-treasure hunt” scenario set in Vietnam, may premiere at Sundance 2020. Possibly, maybe not, who knows?

Lee’s lengthy, Asian-set, character-driven drama sounds unlikely given that Bloods doesn’t sound woke enough for Park City, but we’ll know later this week (or early next week) when the Sundance slate is announced. It would be a huge score if Sundance lands Da 5 Bloods, as it would constitute a noteworthy exception to the SJW Sundance template.

Lee and Netflix would prefer a Cannes debut, I’m hearing, but the last time I checked Cannes was a no-go for Netflix…right? At least for the foreseeable future.

Wiki boilerplate: “Four African American Vietnam veterans return to Vietnam. They are in search of the remains of their fallen squad leader (played by Chadwick Boseman in flashback) and the promise of buried treasure. The fellow battle forces of man and nature while confronted by the remaining ravages of this half-century-old conflict.”

I’ve heard from a guy who attended a recent NYC-area screening of Lee’s film, which he says had a running time between 160 and 165 minutes and is pretty much completed with the credits in place. Here’s how he put it (although I’m skeptical of some of his impressions):

Tipster: “It’s a slick, fast-paced, 165-minute Vietnam War film.” HE: Bullshit — what he means is that it’s a film about the Vietnam War’s legacy. Tipster: “It’s not your typical type of war flick though. It’s a present-day thing about four aging veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock, Jr., Norm Lewis) returning to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to find the remains of the “fifth Blood” (played in flashback by Chadwick Boseman) who was killed in action. They’re also looking to retrieve a pile of gold that they buried during their Vietnam service.

“And so they head off into the jungle and reconnect with one another in various ways. There’s a sort of Last Flag Flying sense of bonding between these men, all living different lives from when they knew each other, and all of them they sharing a similar sense of fear with age and time closing in, and all haunted by the wartime histories.

“Spike opens with a montage of the violence of the late 60s and early 70s, set to the music of Marvin Gaye — there’s a lot of Gaye in this, actually, and he uses it so well, all fitting in smoothly and providing momentum from the start.

“I saw Bloods with two other critics, and they both loved it. Apparently Netflix gave him creative control to create his vision. I think Da 5 Bloods is a little too big for Sundance — if it weren’t for the Netflix blockage Cannes would be a better fit. Maybe they should wait until Venice, Telluride or Toronto. Either way it will be a major success for both Spike and Netflix, and I could even see a directing and picture nomination depending on how they decide to release it.

“The movie was practically finished — just some small things like explosions that were just a tad too loud and needed to be mixed a little bit, but nothing that major.”

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