Year: 2020

Don’t Forget Almodovar’s Version

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I don’t know why I forgot to watch Bad Education on the HBO screener site, but it may have been a combination of exhaustion due to wall painting, general pandemic depression and day dreaming about sailing the South Seas. Then again it premieres two hours hence (8 pm Eastern) so I’ll catch it then.

Great reviews (RT 92%) during last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and yet — this is a minor point — of all the reviews I’ve read not one has mentioned that the aspect ratio of Bad Education is 2.39:1. Not one.

“Based on a real-life scandal, Bad Education is a small and economical movie, but not slight, as it gives us a good taste of the banality of greed and entitlement, never turning its compromised characters into easily dismissed comic monsters.

“Written by Mike Makowsky and directed by Cory Finley, it shows us just how good Frank is at his job and just how much he cares about his young charges, before it lets us discover the extent of his vanity and self-serving needs. Finley and Makowsky achieve a tone that swings expertly between pathos and dark humor.” — from Matthew Gilbert’s Boston Globe review, posted on 4.23.

And it’s not a six-parter! It actually does the job in less than two hours.

Between Two Extremes

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From “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?,” a 3.20 N.Y. Times op-ed piece by Dr. David Katz.

“I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.

“Worse, I fear our efforts will do little to contain the virus, because we have a resource-constrained, fragmented, perennially underfunded public health system. Distributing such limited resources so widely, so shallowly and so haphazardly is a formula for failure. How certain are you of the best ways to protect your most vulnerable loved ones? How readily can you get tested?”

Katz, a sane-sounding guy, expanded last night with Bill Maher. It boils down to “people are spiritually dying from inactivity and poverty and with a Second Great Depression looming…maybe there’s a sensible middle ground…if we don’t develop antibodies through exposure we’ll be stuck in this situation for another 18 months or longer, which is when a vaccine might be available. Maybe.”

Russian Anguish

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Herewith is a Russian Bugs Bunny coronavirus anxiety video. TikTok, totally unlicensed, etc, It’s struck a chord with Tatiana. The lyrics are as follows: “How should I live my life? How should go through my life? Stress. Problems. Pain. Panic. Loans. Hurt”

Untitled from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.

Getting It Right Is Hard

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I didn’t post anything today (Friday, 4.24) because finishing the painting of the kitchen took several more hours. I awoke late and futzed around, and finally began around 1 pm. It was mute nostril agony on Devil’s Island. The concentration you have to invest to make sure the painting looks just right is profoundly exhausting, and there are always mistakes and touch-ups and spilled droplets on the floor. (The paint is water soluble.) But now the kitchen is a yellow-white dream. It was all finally done around 7 pm. Now the entire place has been repainted. If it hadn’t been for COVID-19, we might not have made the effort.

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Fonzo in the Bonzo

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I’ve been asked to remove yesterday’s riff about Capone (Vertical, 5.12), which I saw the night before last. It wasn’t a “review” but I called it “a trip…plotless but flavorful and quirky as fuck thanks to Tom Hardy, and with one terrific, stand-up-and-cheer scene.” I was referring to the “If I Was King Of The Forest” sing-along. Nonetheless a Vertical rep asked me not to “react” to Capone until Monday, 5.11 at 9 am Pacific. The film opens (i.e., begins streaming) on Tuesday, 5.12.

So I’ve substituted the post for a comment-thread riff about why the producers dumped the original title, Fonzo. Which, trust me, is what the film should be called. Capone is nothing — a generic chickenshit title.

No doubt a certain percentage of the potential viewing public might have presumed that this now-discarded title had something to do with Henry Winkler’s Happy Days character, Fonzie. (Who was famously referred to, don’t forget, by Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman character in 1994’s Pulp Fiction).

Perhaps another group might have wondered if Fonzo might be somehow related to Ronald Reagan‘s Bedtime for Bonzo chimpanzee, perhaps a great-great-great grandson with a life and an identity all his own.

Still another demographic might have speculated that “fonzo” is a 21st Century manifestation of gonzo journalism a la Hunter S. Thompson.

Or perhaps a new kind of pasta (i.e., “fonzoni”) created by the people behind Rice-a-Roni, “the San Francisco treat,”

We can play these stupid word association games all day long. The American viewing public is brilliant at this.

Then again there’s always the remote possibility that prospective viewers might regard or respect “Fonzo” as a new permutation of the Al Capone legend — simply an Italian-American nickname used by friends of the famous Chicago gangster in the same way that “Fonzie” was a nickname for Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli.

Naahh, scratch that — too challenging.

I Hate This

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Then again it takes my mind off the fact that (a) the world has more or less ground to a halt and (b) “there ain’t no life nowhere” (to borrow from Jimi Hendrix). On top of which I’m really sick of painting. Felt like saying it twice.

Vegas Petri Dish Experiment

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I’m not saying I’ll be driving to Las Vegas any time soon. Unlike the mayor of Las Vegas, I’m not crazy or reckless or suicidal. Then again I’m presuming that normally expensive Vegas Strip hotel rooms are currently renting at basement rates. Naah, forget it.

VistaVision Monochrome

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VistaVision (large format) black-and-white films were a relative rarity in the ’50s, and they disappeared when VistaVision went away in ’61 or thereabouts. If you have a special affinity for black and white (as I do), you’re pretty much obliged to give the Amazon HD versions of William Wyler‘s The Desperate Hours (’55), Robert Mulligan‘s Fear Strikes Out (’57) and Michael Curtiz and Hal Wallis‘s King Creole (’58) a looksee. All shot in VistaVision. Four or five others went this way.

Posts Between Brush Strokes

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I’m committed to painting the kitchen today…Jesus. Straight white walls with chiffon lemon cupboard doors. After painting the living room (coral), bedroom (lily lavender walls with soft mint green cupboards) and the bedroom-bathroom foyer (white accented by SMG), I’m getting really sick of this. But at least it’ll be over after today. Or tomorrow as I might quit before day’s end. Maybe not.