Month: August 2021

Yesterday World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reported that Joe Wright‘s Cyrano (UA Releasing, 12.25), an adaptation of Erica Schmidt’s Goodspeed Opera House slash Terris Theatre production in 2018, will be at Telluride next week.

As he did onstage, the great Peter Dinklage will play the lead, except in this version (as in the 2018 musical play) Cyrano’s romantic handicap is not a big nose but dwarfism.

The musically-augmented feature costars Haley Bennett, Ben Mendelsohn, Brian Tyree Henry and Kelvin Harrison Jr.

I have no dog in this. I’m just repeating what J.R. seems to believe and going “okay, fine, whatever.” JR says it’s been “half-assedly” confirmed by a person associated with the film, so I guess what I’m doing is half-assedly passing along the news. I’ve seen a text message from this source that agrees with and/or doesn’t deny the news.

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Is there anyone out there who doesn’t feel Charles-and-Diana’ed out? Season #4 of The Crown (which I found rather good) has taken us through the whole, drawn-out decline of their relationship saga, chapter and verse. And now we have to endure Jackie, Part 2 — a feature-length study of Too-Short Diana’s emotional and psychological strain during a royal weekend in the country in which the decision to divorce is finalized. I don’t feel the fascination.

We all understand that John Derek‘s Tarzan the Ape-Man (’81) is one of the worst major-studio films ever released. But I’ve never described the rollicking experience of watching it in the MGM/UA screening room at 729 Seventh Avenue, sometime in late July of that year.

We’d all read or heard about MGM being reluctant or at the very least antsy about releasing Derek’s film, so no one was expecting anything great. (Filming in Sri Lanka had happened only five months earlier.) We were certainly braced for some Bo Derek nudity and Miles O’Keeffe beefcake and a certain amount of amusement.

Then it started and it wasn’t too bad — big-game hunter Richard Harris determined to shoot the white ape, doing his elocutionary blowhard thing, barking at Derek, etc. Then buffed-up O’Keeffe appeared and it was “oh, God, here we go.” Then came the lion on the beach scene.

The film was focusing on something gentle and disarming — probably Bo and Miles relating to each other in some playful way — when all of a sudden Derek and his editor, Jimmy Ling, hit us with a sudden smash cut of a big male lion strolling on a beach, and I mean not prey-stalking in the slightest. It was as if the lion was out for a Sunday stroll and enjoying the sunshine and warm air, and was incidentally moving in the general direction of the camera.

Derek and Ling wanted us to jump in our seats and go “oh my God, here comes a scary lion!” But the shot had the opposite effect — the critic-journos I saw it with immediately whooped and chuckled because the shot wasn’t set up. (Somebody joked “Whoa!” or something in that vein.) Because lions who intend to attack always crouch down as they slowly approach, fixing gaze on the prey.

The proper strategy would have been to show us the lion trudging through the jungle and looking for something to eat. And then he approaches the beach and steps onto the smooth sand and stops and eyeballs Derek and O’Keeffe 40 or 50 yards away. Cut to a close-up of his predator eyes, and then an MCU of the lion crouching down and beginning to stalk them. That’s how lions do it. But Derek and Ling decided against that.

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Jimmy Fallon‘s “Dennis Hope” in Cameron Crowe‘s Almost Famous: “If you think Mick Jagger will still be out there trying to be a rock star at age fifty, then you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”

MOJO editor John Mulvey: “One of the things I’ve been thinking about this evening is how the Rolling Stones have in some ways redefined what it means to grow older, for maybe 50 years now.

“And as they’ve been at the forefront of how we understand what older people can or should do, they’ve often appeared disdainful of the process of ageing; contemptuous even. Charlie less obviously so than Jagger, of course, but he was still a critical part of that process.

“Not that they appeared improbably youthful, but that they reconfigured a young person’s game as a lifelong pursuit, and made an infinite career seem plausible. Their defiant indestructibility could sometimes seem a bit ridiculous, but was always utterly inspiring.

“That’s gone now, with [Charlie’s death]. I’m wary of pronouncing ends of eras, or similar, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Stones kept going anyway. But this does feel like a line tentatively being drawn. Very sad, in lots of ways.”

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46 and 1/3 years ago, a hurried (some would say panicky) evacuation of Saigon, called Operation Frequent Wind, was underway. During the last days of the Vietnam War, OFW was the final phase in the evacuation of American civilians and at-risk Vietnamese before the takeover of the city by the North Vietnamese People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

OFW was carried out on the 29th and 30th of April 1975. More than 7,000 people were evacuated by helicopter from various points in Saigon.

Since the fall of Kabul on 8.15.21, more than 70,700 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan as of Tuesday evening. Nearly 6,000 American troops are protecting the international airport in Kabul, the capital. And additional U.S. flights are leaving every 45 minutes.

7000 in ’75; 10 times that amount evacuated out of Kabul.

From an 8.24.21 N.Y. Times report, filed by Laura Jakes: “The Biden administration has provided a stream of updates about its airlift of Americans, Afghans and others since Aug. 14, when the Taliban closed in on Kabul. Yet U.S. officials are reluctant to offer an estimate of the one number that matters most: How many people ultimately need to be rescued.

“U.S. officials believe that thousands of Americans remain in Afghanistan, including some far beyond Kabul, without a safe or fast way to get to the airport. Tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government over the last 20 years, and are eligible for special visas, are desperate to leave.

“Refugee and resettlement experts estimate that at least 300,000 Afghans are in imminent danger of being targeted by the Taliban for associating with Americans and U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.”

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After George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr‘s Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the best doc about the making of a Hollywood film that became a huge headache for all concerned is Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau. My recent exposure to Val led me back to David Gregory’s 2014 film. All you can think of while watching it is the inexplicably horrible movie-star behavior of Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. I did a search for my review, and realized I never posted one…odd. I want to watch it again.

I’d forgotten that Martin Brest (Scent of a Woman, Midnight Run, Going in Style, Beverly Hills Cop) directed WarGames (’83) for 12 days before being fired. Then the producers brought in John Badham to lighten up the mood. I tried watching War Games last night but…let’s just say that 21st Century computer technology has surpassed the plot mechanics.

What is the one thing that comes to mind when you try to recall a scene or a line of dialogue? That’s right — Barry Corbin‘s General Beringer saying, “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”

I’ve heard talk about Benedict Cumberbatch possibly being Best Actor-nominated for what I understand is some sort of histrionic, Daniel Day Lewis-resembling performance in Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog (Netflix, 11.17).

Back in the old days (a decade or more ago) you could theorize that costarring in a presumably overwrought, animal-friendly popcorn flick a month after your hotshot, Oscar-baity prestige film has opened…you could at least speculate if the latter might somehow mitigate the former.

But nobody cares any more. The degradation effect is everywhere, everyone has their hand out, nothing matters.

The best humor is either the silliest or the cruelest, but let’s focus on the former for now. There are two dumbshit lines that have made me chortle or at least smile for years. (Every so often a guffaw will break through.) No matter how many times they’ve flown in and out of my head, the reaction is the same.

And I’m not mentioning them because I think they’ll “get” anyone else. My point is that we’re all susceptible to dopey chuckle pellets.

Pellet #1 happens every time I visit the default representation site, www.whorepresents.com, and say to myself “yup, whore presents.” The site has been apparently been healthy and solvent for 21 years now.

Pellet #2 is a bit from Woody Allen‘s horribly racist and deeply nauseating What’s Up, Tiger Lily (’66). I’m overdoing the adjectives, of course — I love this dopey film. At the same time you know that if the right kind of Millennial or Zoomer fanatics were to happen upon it, they’d emerge all the more convinced that Allen needs to be triple-shunned, scalded with molten lead and dropped into the hottest cavern of hell.

I’m speaking of an exchange inside an ornate golden palace or temple of some kind. The players are Tatsuya Mihashi‘s “Phil Moskowitz” (amiable zany, lovable rogue) and Tetsu Nakamura‘s “Grand Exalted High Macha of Rashpur.” The subject is ruthless Tokyo gangster and egg-salad recipe thief Shepherd Wong (Tadao Nakamaru).

At one point the GEHMR reaches into a breast pocket and, for Moskowitz’s edification, unfolds a hand-drawn map of a residence. High Macha to Moskowitz: “This is Shepherd Wong’s home.” Moskowitz reply: “He lives in that little piece of paper?”