Month: April 2021

The 4.12 announcement that the beloved Arclight theatre chain would close with no apparent scheme for re-opening shocked every local movie fanatic to the core. Culturally and emotionally it was one of the most traumatic events this city and certainly this industry had suffered in many years, and one that arguably rivalled the impact of the tragic Notre Dame fire in Paris on 4.15.19.

But remember what happened right after that tragedy on the Ile de la Cite? Super-rich people pledged funds to rebuild almost immediately. It was obvious within hours that things would be okay. Not so much with the Arclight. Discussions may be underway as we speak between Arclight honchos and, say, the Cinemark or Harkins chains to possibly relaunch. Or reps from Netflix, Amazon or Apple may be poking around and kicking the tires…who knows?

But the expressions of shock and devastation were so great earlier this week that I thought we might’ve heard about a possible solution by now.

The apparent belief among certain Minneapolis citizens who’ve been rioting over the killing of Daunte Wright is that now-resigned police officer Kimberly Potter lied about accidentally shooting Wright with her pistol instead of her holstered Taser…right? She flat-out lied instead of admitting that she intended to plug the kid with her Glock 22 when he started acting up…right? Because how could she possibly mistake her sidearm, which weighs a little more than two pounds, with a Taser that only weighs eight ounces…right?

Potter’s mystifying behavior aside, the apparent view of woke lefty culture and the African-American community is that cops should stop trying to strong-arm suspects of color when they pull them over for whatever, and if the situation comes down to an either-or to basically err on the side of “let ’em skate.” Because if they pull them over and suspects-of-color resist or refuse to comply or run for the hills (which often happens), another tragedy will ensue and more crowds will attack more police stations and loot more stores.

The general solution, therefore, would be to adopt a hands-off, not-worth-it policy in the matter of routine pull-overs. If a suspect of whatever ethnicity is pulled over or questioned regarding an alleged felony, law officers obviously need to do their duty. But if a person-of-color has an air-freshener hanging from a rearview mirror or if his/her car has an expired registration tag, let it go. If cops are about to cuff a suspect and he wriggles away and jumps into his car, watch the suspect peel out and don’t pursue. It’s not worth it. The cops can always sneak up and cuff him/her later.

Read more

I honestly feel that this 88 year-old fight sequence, shot and choreographed by Willis O’Brien and assistant animator Buzz Gibson over a period of seven weeks, is more gripping in a visceral boxing-match sense that any of the similar scraps in Adam Wingard‘s Godzilla vs. Kong. I didn’t believe anything in that ridiculous film…not a line, not a shot, nothing. What’s still great about the oldie but goodie is that amplified Kong roar and the whites of his eyes.

“If Gunda never subjects us to gruesome images of slaughter a la Georges Franju’s Blood of the Beasts, it nevertheless closes with a prolonged single-shot sequence that’s more heartbreaking than any depiction of the goings-on in an abattoir ever captured on film.

“In this sequence, a truck pulls up to the barn where the pigs live and drives off with the piglets, leaving the mama pig in a state of grief-stricken perplexity. For minutes on end, we watch her pacing around, clearly distressed and unable to fathom why her piglets have been taken from her. It’s the kind of viscerally upsetting moment that, as Orson Welles said of Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, would make a stone cry.” — Posted by slantmagazine‘s Keith Watson on 9.19.20.

“Like everyone else who is projecting their human feelings onto Gunda, I was sad for her at the film’s fateful end. But there was also a sense of relief. Farm life isn’t easy for anybody, and Gunda has more than earned a rest.” — Bob Strauss, 4.14 review in San Francisco Chronicle.

Ditto Zoomers and younger GenXers…eternal condemnation from Sophocles, Euripides, O’Neill, Chekhov, Wilde, Pinter, Stoppard, etc.

From “New Rules, New Realm,” posted on 6.14.18: “Meanwhile the art of delivering a powerful, well-honed one-off — strong characters, a thought-out story, a resonant theme and a satisfying resolution within 90 to 150 minutes — seems to be falling away, certainly in terms of theatrical and to an increasing extent in the cable-streaming arena. Things have changed a helluva lot since The Sopranos popped in ’99.

“But what about the one-off? It was the only game in town in theatres for over 2500 years, going back to the days of ancient Greek classics. It was the only game in town in cinemas during the 20th Century. It was mostly the only game in town for the first eight to ten years of the 21st Century. But within the last decade it’s been losing ground, and now — only since 2008 or 2010 or thereabouts — it’s actually starting to be spoken of as a form that’s losing its grip on the culture and may one day be relegated to second-tier status. Less essential, losing ground, pushed aside…maybe.

HE to Younger, Present-Day Viewers: How does it feel to be the first generation, and I mean after 2500 years of serious dramatic endeavor (Sophocles, Billy Wilder, Euripides, Harold Pinter, Shakespeare, Jane Campion, Eugene O’Neill, Oscar Wilde, Diablo Cody, Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner, Paul Schrader, Tom Stoppard, Elaine May, Quentin Tarantino, David Hare, Christophe Marlowe, Aristophanes, August Strindberg, Woody Allen, Paddy Chayefsky, Greta Gerwig)…how does it feel to be the first generation to say “ehhh, maybe not so much” to the concept of the stand-alone drama or comedy?

Remember the antiquated, wholly discriminatory term “chubby chaser”? It used to be an okay, to-each-his-own thing but now only a terrible person would even mention the “c” words, especially given the fact that there are no descriptive body types or classifications these days — there is only body positivity, different sizes and strokes, and of course different folks.

I haven’t so much as glanced at a Playboy cover or layout in many years (the last time may have been when Lindsay Lohan was the cover subject) but isn’t nudity still more or less the basic idea when it comes to posing for Playboy? Or has life passed me by? I ask because Hayley Hasselhoff, the plus-sized, history-making model on the cover of German Playboy, was fairly well covered with lingerie when she posed. Hasselhoff says she appeared “tastefully topless.”

Hayley Hasselhoff: “I think it’s very empowering. We’re in 2021 now…we’re in a place in the world where I think it’s all about being able to celebrate your body for you…at a time when we’re all worried about our self-image…it was this revolution for my own self-worth as well.”

Hollywood Elsewhere totally approves of the prospect of Andra Day winning the Best Actress Oscar for her lead performance in The United Sates vs. Billie Holiday. It would be a moment of highly righteous and appropriate satisfaction — a bull’s-eye award, approved by the Movie Godz — in an otherwise lackluster Oscar year.

…for the winners of the Covid Oscars…the flattest, grimmest, most anti-Joe Popcorn, least pizazzy, most who-gives-a-shit? Oscars in Hollywood history.

Read more

Christopher Moltisanti to Tony Soprano: “I’m gonna kill myself? The way you fuckin’ eat you’re gonna have a heart attack by the time you’re 50!”

In actuality James Gandolfini, whose weight ballooned more and more over the years, died of a heart attack in Rome at age 51. Art echoes tragedy and vice versa. Just sayin’…

The TCM Classic Film Festival (Thursday, 5.6 through Sunday, 5.9) is virtual this year. That means no waiting in lines outside the Hollywood Blvd. Chinese with pot-bellied, out-of-towner galumphs dressed in shorts, plaid shirts and sandals with brown socks.

Significant portions will be viewable on HBO Max, but the only film I’m hot to see — a 4K restoration of the full-length They Won’t Believe Me (’47) — is hiding somewhere in the schedule. It’s slated to be shown on Saturday, 5.8… somewhere, somehow.

Do I need to pay to see this glossy old-time noir with Robert bad-to-the-bone Young in the lead role? Fine…show me how. Just don’t play any games. I hate that.

Irving Pichel‘s noir is about a ne’er-do-well rake and gold-digger (Young) and his disloyal hound-dogging in the company of Jane Greer, Rita Johnson and Susan Hayward. A truncated 80-minute version was shown upon a re-release, but TCM is showing the 95-minute version.

Read more

Published in ’65, Fletcher Knebel‘s “Night of Camp David” was a chilling, half-gripping “what if?” thriller about a first-term Senator who comes to believe that President Mark Hollenbach has become a mentally unstable paranoid nutbag and needs to somehow be relieved of his duties.

51 years later Donald Trump was elected president, and right away people were saying that Hollywood should adapt Knebel’s book before reality overtakes fiction.

And then reality did overtake fiction, and Trump…I don’t think I need to re-summarize his presidency but his calamitous four-year-term ended with (a) the needless deaths of tens of thousands due to Covid, (b) the storming of the U.S. Capitol based on the Big Lie about the 2020 election having been rigged, and finally (c) Trump’s second impeachment trial.

If someone had suggested such a scenario to Knebel while he was outlining “The Night of Camp David” in ’63 or ’64, he would have rejected it for being too extreme. Critics and readers would regard such a tale as a deranged farce, he probably would’ve thought — Dr. Strangelove meets psychotic delusion.

It goes without saying that in the world of 2021, a film based on “The Night of Camp David” would be a so-whatter. It would have been a bracing thriller in the mid ’60s and possibly a dark unhinged farce if adapted at the start of the Trump administration, but now? Seriously?

Yes, seriously — THR‘s Borys Kit is reporting that Paul Greengrass (News of the World, Captain Phillips) has cut a deal with Universal to develop and direct Knebel’s novel.

“The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui,” posted on 11.28.16:

In Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove (’64), it is made clear early on that General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) is insane. The basic proof is Ripper’s adamant belief in what he calls a “monstrously conceived” Communist plot to inject fluoride into the U.S. water system.

Those who insist on their own facts are, by any fair measure, detached from reality and therefore short of a 52-card deck. There are other signs of mental instability but surely the key factor must be a commitment to fantasy and imagination over anything else.

Read more

From HE’s John Heard obit, 7.22.17: I knew Heard slightly in the early ’80s. He wasn’t a friend but I was close at the time with Keith Szarabajka (Missing, Marie, A Perfect World, The Dark Knight, Argo) and he was genuinely friendly with Heard and so I kind of absorbed the camaraderie of that. (Szarabajka and I met while working as waiter-busboys at the Spring Street Bar & Grill in the late ’70s.)

I ran into Heard a few times at Cafe Central and The Allstate, another popular actor haunt on West 72nd Street. He had an off-and-on alcohol issue at the time, but he was a good egg and a seriously emotional guy.

In ’82 or thereabouts Heard experienced a momentary attraction to a woman I’d been involved with a few months earlier — i.e., photographer Sonia Moskowitz. He approached her at a bar one night with “you wanna get married?” But when I told him a day or two later that Sonia and I had gone out two or three months earlier, Heard apologized, as if he’d done something improper. “No, no, it’s cool, man…life moves on,” I said, but Heard was all “Jesus, man, I didn’t know…shit, sorry.”

In the spring of ’83 I saw Heard knock it hard and straight in Total Abandon, a courthouse stage drama written by Larry Atlas. Or so I recall. I certainly remember going up to Heard after the matinee ended and saying “Wow, man…that’s a tough role to play twice a day” and him smiling and shrugging and saying “naaah, just a workout.”

Heard’s Vin Makazian, a Newark detective with a gambling-slash-alcohol problem, was one of the most indelible Soprano characters.

Read more