Day: January 19, 2022

I’m very sorry about the shocking ski-slope death of 37 year-old French actor Gaspard Ulliel. I thought he was fascinating in Bertrand Bonello‘s Saint Laurent, which I saw in Cannes in May 2014. I also respected his performances in Xavier Dolan‘s It’s Only The End of the World (’16) and, 12 years earlier, Jean Pierre Jeunet‘s A Very Long Engagement.

Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) and RPatz (also know as RBatz) are teaming for a futuristic sci-fi film based on Edward Ashton’s upcoming novel Mickey7.

From Justin Kroll‘s Deadline report, filed this morning “In Ashton’s book Mickey7 is an Expendable, a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world of Hoth Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous — even suicidal — the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration of Mickey dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.”

If it was within my power to produce a dream project for Bong Joon-ho to direct, I would choose a Parasite prequel titled Maid In The Rain.

I’m envisioning the full story of Lee Jung-eun‘s Moon-gwang, the once-employed housekeeper for the wealthy Park family who managed to somehow persuade the Kim family to let her into the Park home during a rainstorm while the Kims are drunk.

Maid in the Rain would explore all the whys and wherefores of this curious incident while exploring various alternate scenarios that might explain one if the greatest mysteries of 21st Century cinema.

“…and gender is between the ears.” — Addison Rose Vincent (they/them), the non-binary person in slacks and high heels and a short beard who was on Dr. Phil earlier today. Addison’s partner Ethan (he/they), an LGBTQ+ advocate was also on the show. Earlier today Addison and Ethan batted the tennis ball back and forth with Matt Walsh (he/him), author and host of the Daily Wire’s “The Matt Walsh Show,” who insisted (as others have over thousands of years) that gender is rooted firmly in biology.

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In late December 1974 I caught my first screening of The Godfather, Part II. It was fairly cold that day in Connecticut, and I clearly recall that the theatre, located somewhere north of downtown Stamford, was closed when my sister and I first arrived around 1 pm, and that the manager arrived a few minutes later and hurriedly opened the place up, and that the theatre was damn chilly inside. We kept our overcoats on.

My second viewing was back in Los Angeles the following month. I attended a mid-evening weekday show with a friendly acquaintance (i.e., not quite a friend) named Mitch. The showing might have been at the National Theatre in Westwood, and if not there then at a small theatre on Wilshire Blvd. near 14th Street in Santa Monica.

I was enthralled with Francis Coppola‘s film, of course, but Mitch was muttering about how cold and frosty Al Pacino‘s performance was. (He preferred the younger, more open-hearted Michael Corleone in The Godfather.)

And then Mitch did the unthinkable. He fell asleep! During The Godfather, Part II! He went out roughly a half-hour before the ending, and was snoring to boot. I got up and sat four or five rows closer to the screen so I wouldn’t hear his bear noises. I was furious with the guy. He had nodded off as an expression of critical disapproval by way of boredom, or so I believed, and I found that intolerable.

And so the film ended, and Nina Rota‘s music filled the theatre during the closing credits. And then the lights came up and I got up and walked by the still-dozing Mitch. The natural joshing “guy” thing would have been to nudge him awake and say “congratulations, asshole — you missed the last half hour” or something along those lines. But I was too consumed with disdain so I walked to the rear of the theatre and just stood there, thinking “fuck that guy, what a douche.”

I wasn’t going to leave on my own (we had driven to the theatre together), but I damn sure wasn’t going to wake him up. Mitch had to understand what a crime it was to fall asleep on a film that was obviously first-rate, and that would go on to win the Best Picture Oscar of 1974.

The theatre had been roughly one-third filled, and of course eventually the lights were turned all the way up and whole place was emptied out and only slumbering Mitch was left. Eventually the ushers started moving through the aisles and cleaning the place up. I stood my ground and watched as an older usher slowly roused Mitch with a couple of shoulder taps. He got up, sleepy-eyed and foggy-headed and a bit stumble-footed, and made his way up the aisle. He was seething.

“The fuck you leave me there for?”, Mitch said. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I should have said “Sorry, man, but you needed to be lightly punished for falling asleep during a great film.” Instead I lied and said, “I don’t know, you looked so comfortable…I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

Mitch had been a comme ci comme ca pally but was nothing close to a good friend. I never saw another film with him — I can tell you that much.

Last night I rumble-hogged over to the Grove and caught Guillermo del Toro‘s black-and-white version of Nightmare Alley (subtitled “Vision in Darkness and Light”). I generally felt that the whole thing looked too dark and muddy. Not each and every shot, mind, but a good portion of it. Especially the travelling circus section, which accounts for the first…what, 35 or 40 minutes?

I’m sorry but my eyes want what they want, and they wanted more light, more contrast and less shadow and murk.

Plus I had an even worse time with Bradley Cooper‘s Stanton Carlisle character. I didn’t care for his slimey company the first time around (I saw it in Manhattan in late December), but “monochrome Stan” was somehow even worse. I was sitting there going “I don’t like you and your fucking moustache and your fucking cigarette habit” — the actual subject of Nightmare Alley is unfiltered cigarette addiction — “and I really wouldn’t mind it if someone killed you with a pick-axe. In fact I’d prefer it. I don’t like hanging out with scumbags.”

Yes, the ending in which Stanton has a good hearty laugh about how he’s screwed his life up and is doomed to misery…this is still the best scene in the whole film.

Two comments from yesterday were spot-on, as it turned out

Michael Gebert: “These straight conversions of a movie shot for color rarely work well. It’s worth looking at Warner Archive’s disc of Doctor X, which was shot in both two-strip Technicolor and black-and-white, but it’s not a conversion– the black and white version is plainly lit differently, to work in black and white with proper highlights and shadows. while the color is shot to deliver the novelty of color. (There were even two cinematographers — Ray Rennahan, who shot Becky Sharp, the first three-strip Technicolor feature, as well as Duel in the Sun, The Court Jester and others, did the color version.)”

Brenkilco: “You’re not going to get anything like the chiaroscuro of a ’40s noir, specifically lit for monochrome and photographed on black-and-white filmstock, by draining the color out of a digital movie originally shot in color.”

We all understand that discussing women’s facial work is totally verboten these days, as the Renee Zellweger vs. Owen Gleiberman facial work kerfuffle of June 2016 made clear. While HE is willing to play along, it has long been my position that expert, quality-level work should be respected. (I can say this as a recipient of certain Prague-based procedures myself.) Consider this before-and-after of Marilyn Monroe. Obviously an excellent adjustment — one that requires appropriate praise for plastic surgeon Michael Gurdin, who obviously knew what he was doing.

Last night I read Lila Shapiro’s “Joss Whedon Exposed.” It had been described as an urgent must-read. It’s certainly long and well-written in a semi-dramatic sort of way, and seemingly thorough as far as these types of articles (i.e., saga of a reputed shitheel) tend to go.

Over the last two or three years (longer?) there’s been an emerging consensus among co-workers that Whedon, once regarded as a feminist-minded creative producer & show-runner who understood and celebrated women, has behaved in a cruel, callous, dishonorable way (including sexually), and that he’s now, to quote the “Vulture” subhead, “an outcast accused of misogyny.”

Shapiro’s piece, based in large part on an interview with Whedon that happened last spring, reiterates and expands upon these claims. The basic thrust is “Whedon, a bad man, has become a toxic figure whom many if not most producers and distributors and streamers don’t want to work with any more, but his full, harmful toxicity hasn’t been fully understood, not really, and so Whedon must continue to be lashed & shamed for these failings.”

It led me to conclude that as powerful Hollywood types go, Whedon may have behaved as badly as Kirk Douglas’s Jonathan Shields character did in The Bad and the Beautiful. (Or worse.) He may have been as cruel and exploitive as Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, Daryl F. Zanuck, Jack L. Warner, David O. Selznick and other producer kingpins may have been in their day. (Or something like that.) Hollywood has long rewarded or at least not interfered with powerful abusive types for many decades, and sometimes the karma snaps back and the chickens come home to roost . And…?