From Richard Rushfield’s latest “Ankler” column: “Since time immemorial, the Sunday afternoon take on the box office was always at least equal parts spin — and compliant journalists — to reality. But in this reopening era, the reports are taking on a vaguely psychedelic gloss.
“So three weeks ago The Suicide Squad, [having cost] around $150M – $200M, opens for $26.2M + (plus) it’s on streaming, and that’s a catastrophe. A week later, Free Guy, with a budget of $150M-ish, opens to $28.3M and no VOD and it’s the success that saved cinema?
“No offense to either film. Maybe they are both great successes. Or both disasters. We can tackle that another day.
“But this analysis is no longer just moving the goalposts. We’re playing a Quickfire Challenge on a Quidditch field by the rules of Parcheesi at this point.”
Question: What the hell does Patton’s speech (largely written by Francis Coppola in the late ’60s) have to do with anything going on right now?
1:47: “Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost, and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.”
76 years ago the U.S. and its allies won a clear, clean, unambiguous triumph over the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) at the end of World War II, but things were never quite as clear, clean and unambiguous ever again.
The Korean War (1950-1953) ended in a stalemate. The U.S. managed a strategic “win” during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but without armed conflict. 13 years later the U.S. threw in the towel in Vietnam, starting phased withdrawals after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and with North Vietnam taking Saigon on 4.30.75. The six-week Gulf War (January-February of ’91) was a fast win. The justified response to the 9/11 attacks resulted in an eight-year conflict in Iraq and the creation of ISIS, and a 20-year war in Afghanistan that never went anywhere, and which the U.S. abandoned under Trump and Biden and now the Taliban rules.
A friend has persuaded me that going to CinemaCon for four days next week may not be the wisest course of action, all things considered. Right now I’m undergoing an agonizing reappraisal. I’m honestly leaning toward bagging it. I don’t want to flirt with danger only a few days before Telluride, which I regard as a much safer proposition.
It seems as if the infection potential will be rather high inside Caesar’s Palace, which is always jammed with Middle-American hee-haws, and I don’t want to be on pins and needles for 96 hours.
The general assessment is that Telluride will be a relatively safe and secure event (everyone has to be vaxed and needs to submit a negative CRP Covid test obtained no more than 72 hours before arriving), but not Cinemacon. How many thousands of unvaxed gamblers will I be hanging with inside Caesar’s all that time, and in a state with fairly high positivity, particularly in Clark County?
Some are going, and some have decided to bag it. Disney isn’t sending studio reps in for its portion — their plan is simply to screen Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Shang-Chi (Disney, 9.3), which I’ve read about and seen the trailer for and wouldn’t sit through with a gun at my back. I was kind of hoping that Paramount might surprise the exhibitor convention with a special advance screening of Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount, 11.19) but that’s not in the cards, I’m hearing.
Yes, attendees have to be vaxxed but breakthrough infections are happening regardless. (The vaccinated Rev. Jessie Jackson and his wife have both gotten it.) If I could somehow get a third jab before driving up on Monday morning, okay, but I won’t be eligible for my third until late September at the earliest and more likely October.
If Kenneth Branagh‘s black-and-white, semi-autobiographical Belfast (11.12) is Focus Features’ only serious Oscar contender, which is what they seem to regard it as, why would they decide to have the world premiere at the faint-pulse, seen-better-days Toronto Film Festival?
It’s nothing to be especially disturbed about — all films open in their own time and in their own way and pace. Before today I somehow hadn’t grasped that Belfast is in black-and-white.
Directed and written by Branagh and based on his Belfast childhood in the late’60s, the film has been described as “the humorous, tender and intensely personal story of one boy’s childhood during the turbulence [of this period]” — aka “the troubles.”
The costars are Jude Hill, Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, Caitriona Balfe and Ciaran Hinds.
Branagh: “I hope that there is humor and I hope that it’s emotional. It’s a look at a people and a place in tumult through the eyes of a nine-year old movie-mad kid.
“My experience of Belfast when I was growing up was to be part of a larger extended family, one that lived nearby each other, in a world in terms of television that had three channels in black and white. We listened to radio extensively, listened to records extensively and we went to see films extensively and when we weren’t doing that, we visited each other.”
For decades Paul Schrader, director-writer of the forthcoming The Card Counter (Focus, 9.10.21), has held director Robert Bresson (1901-1999) in high regard, and the latter’s austere, unpretentious character studies in particular.
Amazon summary: “Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state by means of austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness and editing that avoids editorial comment.”
(a) “I will never forget The Green Knight, and I will never, ever watch it again. It’s an exacting, carefully crafted, ‘first-rate”‘ creation by a director of serious merit, and I was moaning and writhing all through it. I can’t believe I watched the whole thing, but I toughed it out and that — in my eyes, at least — is worth serious man points.
(b) “The Green Knight is a sodden medieval dreamscape thing — a trippy, bizarre, hallucinatory quicksand movie that moves like a snail and will make you weep with frustration and perhaps even lead to pondering the idea of your own decapitation. What would I rather do, I was asking myself — watch the rest of The Green Knight or bend over and allow my head to be cut off? Both would be terrible things to endure, I reasoned, but at least decapitation would be quick and then I’d be at peace. Watching The Green Knight for 130 minutes, on the other hand…”
(c) “Film critics generally don’t acknowledge audience miserablism. For most of them visual style is 90% to 95% of the game. If a director shoots a film with a half-mad, child-like sense of indulgence with a persistent visual motif (i.e., everything in The Green Knight is either muted gray or dispiriting brown or intense green)…bathing the viewer in mood and mystery and moisture…filmmakers like Lowery adore mist, fog, rain, mud, sweat, rivers, streams)…that’s it and all is well.”
Tatiana Antropova officially became a U.S. citizen this morning at 10 am. Trust me, she knows more about how this country works and its history than 97% of the idiots out there who have no idea what the 13 stripes on the flag symbolize or how many justices are on the Supreme Court or who wrote the Declaration of Independence, etc. She got a little choked up just after the ceremony. The next step is to get a U.S. passport.
We’re trying to sell the car so we had to remove a dent, a scrape and a scuff. A guy I know and trust wanted $350 but his schedule was too jammed, so last weekend I went with a mobile auto-body team — a couple of 30something guys from back east. One of them, a stocky, fast-talking, type-A dude, called himself “Charlie” but his phone ID read “Nicholas Grant” — a red flag.
They charged $425 and were fast and efficient, except “Charlie Grant” and his partner left the passenger side door with a kind of soapy residue over the dented area. Don’t wash it off for 48 hours, I was told. When I finally washed it off it was clear that Charlie hadn’t used the right shade of black paint — it should’ve been glossy, not flat black.
I asked Charlie when could he return and do it right. He ducked me for hours, and then finally texted back. The most I could get out of him was “I’ll let you know” and “we’ll figure it out.” He didn’t do the job right so we (he and I, the technician and the client) would have to “figure it out”?
Earlier today World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimyreported that Aaron Sorkin‘s Being the Ricardos was research-screened last night, and that Javier Bardem‘s performance as Desi Arnaz is the big stand-out.
Two who attended have told Ruimy that “the audience absolutely ate up his performance.” So that’s it — Bardem will be nominated for either Best Actor or Supporting Actor…whatever seems like the right strategy.
I haven’t read Sorkin’s script, but the big challenge of the marriage between Desi and Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) was Desi catting around.
Ruimy: “This is another glossy film from Sorkin, a very slick affair that is meant to be seen by as wide an audience as possible. The person I spoke to compared it to the straightforward style of Bombshell.
“Those who attended the screening last night were told not to post any thoughts on social media about the film until January 2022.”
The famous chocolate factory scene is another standout element, Ruimy reports.
Hollywood Elsewhere will be attending CinemaCon in Las Vegas for…well, probably all four days but let’s take it one day at a time. The plan is to drive up on early Monday morning, collect the pass, attend the evening show, ask questions, take notes, etc.
In his latest (7.19) column, What I’m Hearing‘s Matt Belloni has called CinemaCon “CovidCon” — a nasty remark. Yes, the general culture of Caesar’s Palace (Las Vegas being more of a Trumpian than a Bidenesque realm) is concerning, but I’m going with the idea that I’m double-vaxxed and strong of constitution** to begin with.
Speaking of Covid concerns I have to make sure to get a PCR test (which I’m naturally assuming will be be negative) conducted within 72 hours of arrival in Telluride.
Belloni: “Depressed yet? At least you’re not attending CovidCon — er, CinemaCon — the annual theater owners convention, which, amazingly, is still happening next week at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas—albeit without the stars and media stunts that usually generate headlines.
“I’ve always found CinemaCon amusing, and not just because I enjoy perusing the large ‘concessions’ ballroom displaying the latest bizarre flavors of Icee and nacho cheese.
“What’s funny is that while Hollywood is so often painted as the exclusive province of out-of-touch, bicoastal liberals, the people who actually sell movie tickets are Red State exhibition executives based in places like Kansas (AMC Theaters), Tennessee (Regal Cinemas), and Texas (Cinemark).
“In short, CinemaCon is a steakhouse owner’s dream. I once played blackjack next to a mid-level exec based in Knoxville who tried to get me to explain why the #OscarsSoWhite movement was, you know, ‘a thing.’ The loudest ovation I heard was in 2015, when Tom Cruise showed up to unveil that MissionImpossible stunt where he hangs off the side of a plane. You get the point.”
Bill Maher to Vox‘s Sean Illing: “The word problematic, to me, is problematic…I don’t like that word, those weasel words…problematic is such a cheap way to be enlightened. They’re scared, cowed…they’re afraid of being cancelled.
“It’s not ‘a lot of people on the left’ who don’t like me…it’s the loudest people on the left. The progressophobes. [Because] in their world there’s only one true opinion. Who’s on Twitter? The crybullies…a bunch of pussies. They only want to stay in their silos, and be reconfirmed. They think not being offended is much more important than free speech.
“The right is playing with a kind of fire that even they haven’t played with before. Woke, to me, is an offshoot of liberalism that bastardized liberalism. The way, sometimes, that happens with sects in religions. [Wokeness] inverts liberalism in so many ways. Liberalism, for example, was about achieving a color-blind society. Wokeness seems to be about always seeing race everywhere.
“Those kids, who grew up spoiled and entitled and coddled — they can’t stand one second of something being uncomfortable. This is where you get trigger warnings and stuff like that.
“Anything I would want to say on Twitter, I can’t say on Twitter. So what’s the point of it?”
“You wind up with this world where everyone is like the press spokesperson for the President — watching every word so carefully, walking on eggshells. No wonder why people turn against Democratic politicians who don’t stand up against that.”
Like a strange virus I had absorbed but hadn’t yet settled into my system, I could feel my latent loathing for David Lowery‘s The Green Knight early on. I didn’t watch it when it first came out because I “knew” (i.e., strongly sensed) I would hate it.
I finally streamed this fucker late last night, and I felt smothered in thick swamp-like boredom within seconds. Drugged, oxygen-starved, submerged in medieval muck, and facing a terrible two-hour slog.
I will never forget The Green Knight, and I will never, ever watch it again. It’s an exacting, carefully crafted, “first-rate” creation by a director of serious merit, and I was moaning and writhing all through it. I can’t believe I watched the whole thing, but I toughed it out and that — in my eyes, at least — is worth serious man points.
The Green Knight is a soddenmedievaldreamscapething — a trippy, bizarre, hallucinatory quicksand movie that moves like a snail and will make you weep with frustration and perhaps even lead to pondering the idea of your own decapitation. What would I rather do, I was asking myself — watch the rest of The Green Knight or bend over and allow my head to be cut off? Both would be terrible things to endure, I reasoned, but at least decapitation would be quick and then I’d be at peace. Watching The Green Knight for 130 minutes, on the other hand…
It’s a kind of Christmas movie or, if you will, about a game of strange beheadings. Dev Patel‘s Gawain is one of the Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table — a drinking, whoring fellow who sweats a lot and often smiles when spoken to and regards much of what he sees with his mouth half open.
It must be said that Gawain splashes water onto his face and hair a lot…he’s often dripping.
The film more or less begins with the Green Knight, a intimidating ghostly figure, appearing at King Arthur’s court on Christmas Day and declaring — bear with me here because this makes no sense — that anyone can cut his head off as long as the head-chopper will agree to let his own head be sliced off by the Green Knight a year later, at the Green Chapel.
Why kind of blithering moron would say “okay!” to a suggestion this ridiculous?
Why is Patel, the son of British-residing Indian Hindus, playing Gawain, a medieval Englishman with the usual Anglo-Saxon characteristics? You could just as well ask why Patel was cast in the lead role in Armando Iannucci’s David Copperfield (’20). Because in today’s realm it’s cooler to embrace “presentism” than to adhere to any sense of general historical reality, or at least the historical reality that filmmakers tended to prefer before anti-white wokesterStalinism became a thing. Call it subversive casting, if you want.
Everything that happens is dream-logical. None of it adds up or leads to anything else. You could claim that Lowery’s film is about character and morality and karma and facing the consequences of one’s own actions, and I would say “okay, sure…if that works for you, fine.”
There’s a talking fox. There are giant bald women seen in the misty distance. Patel’s head explodes in fire at one point…whoa.
Barry Koeghan, an Irish actor with tiny rodent eyes and a deeply annoying swollen nose, plays a scavenging asshole of some kind. Alicia Vikander plays two roles, a commoner with a Jean Seberg-in-Breathless haircut, and a married noblewoman who has sex with Gawain at one point. You’re thinking “gee, she’s bringing Patel to orgasm…am I supposed to give a shit one way or the other?”
