Month: May 2020

Posted from the Toronto Film Festival on 9.12.07: “Sidney Lumet‘s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (ThinkFilm, 10.26) is, for me, a major Toronto Film Festival revelation…a knockout I’ll never forget.

“It’s a New York family crime drama like nothing Lumet (83 friggin’ years old and cooking with high-test like he was in the ’70s and ’80s) has ever attempted, much less achieved. And with a killer cast giving exceptional perfs — Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei. It’s like something out of Shakespeare or Greek tragedy…it’s the House of Borgia. And a great suspense film to boot.

Shout Factory Bluray pops on 5.26; also available on Amazon Prime.

“I don’t have time to get into this now (have to hit the I’m Not There party and then another film) but I’ll elaborate tomorrow. But I immediately knew this would be exceptional. How did I come to this conclusion? I figured any film that starts off with a naked Hoffman doing it doggy-style with a naked Tomei — a ‘whoa!’ shot if I’ve ever seen one — has to be dealing from a fairly exceptional deck.

“Lumet had lost the beat from time to time. The ’90s were not a glorious period for him. Critical Care (’97), Night Falls on Manhattan (’97), Gloria (’99), Guilty as Sin (’93) and A Stranger Among Us (’92) were all problem films. Q & A (’90) was the last truly decent Lumet film until Find Me Guilty came along in ’06. And now Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, a better film than Find Me Guilty (which is saying a lot) and Lumet’s best since Prince of the City.”

Here are HE’s top 25 films released in 2007 — Zodiac, American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, I’m Not There, Once, Superbad, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Things We Lost in the Fire, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, Sicko, Eastern Promises, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control, The Orphanage, 28 Weeks Later, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Darjeeling Limited, Knocked Up and Sweeney Todd.

What a year! Just as strong as ’99, and perhaps a touch better. And every one of them played in theatres. Remember theatres?

On 2.24.08, No Country For Old Men won four Oscars — Best Picture, Best Directors (Joel and Ethan Coen), Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem) and Best Adapted Screenplay. A Parasite-level sweep. But three and a half months earlier, this Miramax/Paramount Vantage release seemed like an iffy prospect to Oscar prognosticators Tom O’Neil and Pete Hammond.

Here’s how I reacted to their mid-November podcast about same, posted on or about 11.12.07.

“Although he’s now allowing that No Country for Old Men will probably eke its way into one of the five Best Picture slots, The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is reporting, based on five or so conversations, that the widely-admired Coen brothers film is eliciting respect but not a lot of passion among Academy fudgeballs.

“O’Neil himself isn’t a great No Country admirer (he admits this), but if you know Tom you know he isn’t really speaking about quality judgment as much as the proverbial ‘longing for comfort’ factor. We all understand, I think, why O’Neil and his Academy chums are cool to this landmark film, and it starts, oddly enough, with what N.Y. Press critic Armond White called it — “a crime movie for a world at war.”

“In saying this White is rehashing an old truism, which is that all great films reflect the world in which they were made as much as the literary source material that they’re based upon. A-level artists are always responding to the electric here-and-now, and the Coen brothers were certainly in this groove when they shot and cut this film in ’06 and early ’07.

“No County for Old Men is a period film set in 1980, but it’s saying four dark things about the world of 2007. One, you can’t see what’s coming. Two, you can’t stop what’s coming. Three, the decent people are starting to be outnumbered by the indecent ones. And four, a kind of spiritual apocalypse is gathering like storm clouds and surrounding our culture.

“So there is no comfort for old Academy members in this film, even though it embodies lasting art and immaculate craft. Especially with that ‘unsatisfying ending’ that I’m sure is sticking in their craw — that kitchen-table scene with Tommy Lee Jones lamenting the loss of decency and dependability (as embodied by his late father) in his own life, and again admitting to himself and to us that he’s feeling overwhelmed and outflanked by the bad guys.

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The most ahead-of-his-time rock ‘n’ roller in world history has passed on — a gay (i.e., “bisexual”) guy who wore makeup, flashy duds and a foot-high pompadour, and who recorded a hit 1955 song that was covertly about anal sex…c’mon! Every rocker who followed in Little Richard’s wake (i.e., everyone) has acknowledged his seminal lordship and influence. In a break-out time of bland repression and all through the decades that followed, Richard Wayne Penniman stood alone, flew his own flag, made the usual mistakes, kept pushing, kept going. Little Richard, James Brown, Chuck Berry…their legends endure.

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All been said, once more for emphasis…

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I suddenly felt sorry this morning for my distressed leather shoulder bag, which I used to lug around everywhere. It’s big enough to carry two 15″ computers plus cords and batteries and whatnot, and I was thinking in a kind of dopey, children’s book sort of way that the bag must feel so unloved these days. Because all it does is sit there on top of a small faux-leather chest and collect dust.

I really love this rugged-looking saddlebag, and wish I could talk to it and say that it looks and feels (and smells!) so cool. If John Wayne‘s Tom Dunson needed a computer bag at the start of the cattle drive in Red River, he would have chosen this without hesitation.

Yes, it’s moronic to feel badly about a leather bag being left alone and ignored, but as strange as it sounds I feel the same way about this bag that my little brother used to feel about “fig fat”, a stuffed Panda bear that he used to carry around.

Forgive me but I’ll be taking the rest of the afternoon off in order to (a) watch a very big movie (a June release) and also (b) re-paint a couple of doors. What difference does it make?

How did it get to be Friday already? Last weekend ended only a day or two ago.

Bill Bramhall‘s latest alludes to the sudden dropping of all charges against Michael Flynn, carried out by Attorney General William Barr at the behest of President Donald Trump. For context, please read “The Appalling Damage of Dropping the Michael Flynn Case,” a N.Y. Times op-ed by Georgetown law professors Neal K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer.

I’ve been down with Saul Bass tributes for so long they look like up to me. The man with the golden arm (or the golden eye or pen of what-have-you) was born 100 years ago today, and passed just over 24 years ago at age 76. My three favorite Bass-designed title sequences remain the same (and in this order): Ocean’s 11 (’60), North by Northwest (’59), The Man With The Golden Arm (’55). And one of best tributes ever, I feel, was the decision to go solely with the crooked-arm visual on the marquee of Times Square’s Victoria theatre. That was enough, United Artists believed.

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In “False Prophet,” the object of Dylan’s derision seems to be some kind of slick, double-talking Beelzebub. Donald Trump? Himself? You tell me. “I’m the enemy of treason / Enemy of strife/ Enemy of the unlived meaningless life / I ain’t no false prophet / I just know what I know / I go where only the lonely can go.” Roy Orbison?

I love the choppy, bluesy rhythm guitar…bah-dahm, bah-dahm. Cuts right through.

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My beloved Souplantation, a citadel of nutrition and communal comfort eating, is no more. The self-serve cafeteria chain, which launched in San Diego in 1978, has been killed by COVID-19, or by an FDA regulation that says communal salad and soup bars are too dangerous in the current environment.

I began eating at my favorite Souplantations (11911 San Vicente Blvd. in Brentwood, the other at 100 No. La Cienega Blvd. or inside the Beverly Grove complex) sometime in the early ’90s. Those salads, soups, blueberry muffins and pasta bowls, and especially the soft ice cream covered with chopped nuts and chocolate syrup!

In the summer of ’97 (or was it’ 98?) O.J. Simpson and two or three pallies strolled into the Brentwood location, where I also happened to be. Scooped up vittles, sat and joked and smiled. Everyone did a reasonably good job of pretending they weren’t thinking what they were thinking. Quite the moment.

Over the last decade or so my Souplantation visits were less frequent. Maybe two or three times a year, if that. But it was nice knowing I could go there almost any time and not have to spend much for a nice healthy salad and a tall glass of lemonade, etc. I’m very, very sorry that this beloved chain is dead and buried.

A month ago I abandoned my Joe Rogan allegiance when he said he’d “rather vote for Trump than Biden” due to concerns about cognitive issues — that was a horrible take, a repulsive thing to say. But his view of the Adele weight-loss thing (a couple of days old) is sensible and straight. Only in our deranged p.c. culture would an obviously healthy thing be responded to with anger and dismay.

Rogan: “If you’re an Adele fan, wouldn’t you want her to be healthier? Yet people are mad…[they’re saying] ‘I don’t want her to be applauded for losing weight.” The below clip was posted earlier today.