Day: October 27, 2021

“I’m watching episode #8 of Impeachment, and there’s a moment when Colin Hanks reads the label of the fabled blue dress and says “size 12.” And I’m scoffing and thinking “there’s no way Beanie Feldstein is a size 12. She’s a 14 minimum, or a 16. Monica herself could be a 12…”

The Cinematheque Francaise tribute to Phillip Noyce kicked off Wednesday night (10.27) and will run until Sunday, November 7. The after-event happened at L’auberge Aveyronnaise. Congrats and best wishes to Phillip, wife Vuyo Dasi, beautiful daughter Ayanda, colleagues & collaborators Jason Clarke and Svetlana Cvetko, et. al.

I wish I could’ve been there. I wish I was in Paris, period. I miss it.

All hail Newsfront (my first taste, way back in ’78), Heatwave, Dead Calm, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger (my personal favorite), The Saint, Rabbit-Proof Fence. The Quiet American (my second favorite), Catch a Fire, Salt, the under–rated Above Suspicion and Lakewood.

A big hoo-hah dinner at the Australian embassy is slated for Friday night. I’ll be missing that one also.

…and you were choosing one of the five nominees for the Best Picture Oscar, which would you go for and why? The fucking nominees were Patton, Airport, Five Easy Pieces, Love Story and M*A*S*H.

Hollywood Elsewhere would have definitely voted for Five Easy Pieces, which today is easily the sturdiest and most haunting of the five. Especially that manic goofy piano-playing on the back of the truck scene near Bakersfield, and also the rainy-foggy truck-stop finale (Jack left his jacket in the men’s room!).

Patton is also an excellent watch by today’s standards, and no one will argue against the idea of George C. Scott‘s magnificence as the proud and suffering general, and the ending (“All glory is fleeting”) is one of the best ever, but it seems a bit stodgy now.

My third favorite is M*A*S*H, which has great comic chops and a nice serving of zeitgeist-channelling anti-establishment attitude, but isn’t all that substantial at the end of the day.

Love Story and Airport were regarded as embarassments even back then, and nominating them for Best Picture…please.

In actuality Patton won. The Oscar telecast happened on 4.15.71.

Nope, another five weeks to go. Why is it that I feel Benedetta‘ed out?

In Nora Fingscheidt‘s The Unforgivable (theatrical 11.24, Netflix 12.10), 50ish Sandra Bullock plays a woman who moves in with her younger sister after serving a 20-year sentence for a violent crime.

In Philippe Claudel‘s I’ve Loved You So Long (’08), Kristin Scott Thomas played a 40ish doctor who moves in with her younger sister after serving 15 years for the murder of her son.

13 year-old HE blurb: “In the remarkable, deeply penetrating I’ve Loved You So Long (Sony Classics, 10.24) , Kristin Scott Thomas gives an immensely sad but highly sensitive and attuned performance that you just know, minutes into it, will be with you the rest of your life. She draws you in like some sad-eyed lady of the lowlands, but she never sells anything. Start to finish, she dwells in this fascinating zen-grief space that just ‘is.’ She owns it…and from the moment the film begins, owns you.”

Deadline‘s Denise Petski is reporting that FX has sprung for a pilot of Belated, a half-hour comedy series that’ll be directed, written and executive produced by Peter Tolan (Rescue Me).

Belated “follows an unexpected intergenerational friendship between Owen, a recently out man in his 40s, and Clay, a 17-year-old trans teen, as Owen and his ex-wife and children attempt to find their new normal.”

HE questions: (a) Will Owen be played by a deep-voiced, sharp-witted African American whose head is shaved clean and who likes to occasionally smoke cigarettes?, (b) Tolan will presumably keep his characters from engaging in any sort of sexual activity with each other — Owen can’t “do” Clay or vice versa. Owen’s ex-wife needs a straight Republican boyfriend who has a voice like Ben Shapiro‘s and a snippy attitude about guys who wait until their mid 40s to decide that they’re gay. Clay and the ex-wife also have to steer clear of each other. And yet sexuality is a big, big part of who they are.

Director-writer friend: Woke comedies are being embraced right now. Alternate titles: Pandering, Curb Your Genderism, The Woke Couple, Nonbinary in the Park.

You have to know how to read Scott Feinberg‘s regularly updated Hollywood Reporter articles about Oscar spitball guesses. Yes, they reflect his “best attempt to predict the behavior of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and not his personal preferences,” but they also reflect a mid-fall decision that many handicappers make — i.e., it’s easer to insincerely approve of certain mediocre contenders because it’s early yet (not even Halloween!) and why not shrug our shoulders and go with the flow?

Feinberg’s Best Picture Frontrunners:

King Richard (Warner Bros., 11/19, trailer) / HE says: Almost certainly fated to win the Oscar.
Belfast (Focus, 11/12, trailer)
The Power of the Dog (Netflix. 11/17, trailer) / HE says: Will be nominated but that’s all.
A Hero (Amazon) / Excellent film, but belongs in Best Int’l Feature category.
C’mon, C’mon (A24, 11/19, trailer) / HE says “tech categories, otherwise not a chance.”
The Hand of God (Netflix, 12/3, trailer) /
CODA (Apple, 8/13, trailer) / Crowd-pleasing, sitcom-level, calm down.
The Harder They Fall (Netflix, 11/3, trailer) / Why?
Summer of Soul (Searchlight, 7/2, trailer) / a found footage documentary, doesn’t count.

In The Realm of Feinberg-Speak, “Possibilities” means “unlikely but who knows?”

Flee (Neon/Participant, TBD, trailer) / NC
Titane (Neon, TBD, trailer) /
Parallel Mothers (Sony Classics, 12/24, trailer) / HE says “utterly brilliant Pedro, his best in years!”
The Lost Daughter (Netflix, 12/31, TBD)
Spencer (Neon/Topic, 11/5, trailer)

In The Realm of Feinberg-Speak, “Longer Shots” means “dead in the water”

The Tragedy of Macbeth (A24/Apple, 12/25, trailer)
Cyrano (MGM/UA, 12/31, TBD)….wrong! Beautifully made, wonderfully acted by Peter Dinklage!
Tick, Tick…Boom! (Netflix, TBD, trailer)
Red Rocket (A24, 12/3, trailer)…grim silence after it played in Telluride’s Galaxy theatre.
The Green Knight (A24, 5/29, trailer)…one of HE’s worst endurance tests of the year….even worse than Dune in this respect.

Earlier today Variety‘s Gene Maddaus and Ellise Shafter reported portions of a new affidavit regarding last week’s fatal Rust shooting, and that one portion says that Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed has told investigators that “no live ammo is ever kept on set.”

And yet Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told reporters today that “police have collected 500 rounds of ammunition, including what they suspect to be several live rounds,” according to Forbes‘ Marisa Dellatto. The rounds are “a mix of suspected live rounds, blanks and dummy bullets, and three firearms: the working gun discharged by Baldwin — which they found other rounds in — a real gun modified so that it was non-functioning and a plastic gun that does not shoot.”

I don’t want to go out on a limb or come to conclusions without every last fact considered, but if you were an impartial investigator whom would you be more inclined to believe at this stage — Hannah Guiterrez Reed or Adan Mendoza?

Remember when Bill Clinton said he “never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski,” when what he really meant that he hadn’t had classical missionary sex with her? Maybe the same thing is going on here regarding the definition of “on set.” Maybe Guiterrez Reed believes that “on set” means “in the immediate vicinity of actual filming of a scene” while Mendoza believes that “on set” means within a few hundred yards of where filming is taking place.

Everyone knows that Vittorio Storaro‘s default, go-to aspect ratio is 2:1 — not 2.2:1 (70mm) or standard Scope (2.35:1) but 2:1. On 2.25.08 it was confirmed by Criterion’s Peter Becker that the intended aspect ratio of Bernardo Bertolucci‘s The Last Emperor, which Storaro shot, was 2:1.

On 10.17.21 a Team Deakins podcast it was confirmed by The Northman director Robert Eggers and dp Jarin Blasche that their upcoming has been shot in Storaro’s a.r.

I riffed on the “Viking Hamlet” aspect last January (“More or Less Hamlet“).

Focus Features will release The Northman on 4.8.22.

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