Month: April 2022

Every three or four years I post the mesmerizing single-shot finale from Michelangelo Antonioni‘s The Passenger — six minutes and thirty-six seconds, slow and deliberate and about as fascinating as this kind of “one-er” has ever been.

I keep posting it because someone who’s never heard of this film might be inspired to watch it. And yet I honestly suspect that your typical Millennial or Zoomer would not have the patience to stick with this 1975 release. Plus it’s a lot less catchy and diverting than Blow-Up, which most Antonioni novices respect and appreciate once they finally sit down with it.

The Passenger is a little tough to watch, and is certainly not a grabber. You have to commit yourself to the whole thing start to finish or it won’t work. It represents a good kind of narrative slowness…the nutritious kind.

I’ve always regarded The Passenger as a despairing mood-trip thing…end-of-the-road nihilism for people of taste. Like Michel Franco‘s Sundown, it’s a “fuck it” film that stays with you.

An hour ago I happened upon “The Passenger: One Epic Shot,” an ASC 8.24.20 article by David E. Williams. The subtitle reads “How a cinematographic challenge became a sublime piece of production virtuosity in the hands of [dp] Luciano Tovoli.”

The article contains a great shot of the ceiling-mounted camera rig that allowed the shot to happen.

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I was all set to attend last Monday’s all-media screening of Mark Wahlberg and Rosalind Ross‘s Father Stu (Sony, 4.13). I was concerned last May (almost a full year ago) when I saw those photos of a fat Wahlberg in a crew cut. (I wrote a riff about them titled “Leapin Lizards!“.) Then I thought a bit about religious inspirational aspect, which doesn’t sit well with mystical types like myself. Especially when it’s coming from conservative types. Then I realized Stu’s story is partly about coping with a degenerative muscle disease.

I wound up missing the screening because of a car issue, but I might have found an excuse to miss it anyway. Not to mention the 44% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Yes, part of the reason Father Stu isn’t doing well with critics is because of the right-wing Catholicism associations, and probably because of Mel Gibson costarring. Critics don’t want to be friendly to rightwing faith movies. I understand that. Then again I don’t like rightwing Catholic faith movies either.

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Devoted admirers of John Ford The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (‘62) have long acknowledged that the weakest feature is the casting of the 53-year-old James Stewart and the 54 year-old John Wayne as Ransom Stoddard and Tom Doniphon, characters who are (or should be) at least 20 if not 25 years younger. No one disputes this.

You can “accept” Stewart and Wayne, as I have all along, but there’s no believing them as youngish fellows (late 20s, early 30s) in the prime of their lives.

Would you theoretically be interested in streaming a digitally de-aged Liberty Valance in which Stewart (born in 1909) looks like he did in, say, Destry Rides Again (‘39) or Call Northside 777 (‘48)? And Wayne (born in ‘07) looks like he did in Stagecoach (‘39) or in the first 25 minutes of Red River (shot in ‘46)?

Purists (Ford biographer Joseph McBride comes to mind) would be horrified at such a prospect, but I for one would be fascinated. I would love to see digital artists take a crack at this.

Sidenote: McBride and Howard Hawks biographer Todd McCarthy need to explain why the last name of Lee Marvin’s Liberty Valance character is pronounced VAHLance while the last name of John Ireland’s Cherry Valance in Red River is pronounced VuhLANCE. I’ll wager that no one in the history of film criticism has ever contemplated, much less addressed, this question.

Posted earlier today in comment thread:

Persuasively de-aging Stewart for the “young idealistic attorney in early Shinbone” sections of the film would definitely help The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (‘62).

Stewart’s young “Rance” is supposed to be in his late 20s or very early 30s at the oldest. Stewart was 53 when Valance was filmed in mid to late ‘61. The viewer is obliged to go along with actors (John Wayne was 54 during filming**) who are 20 to 25 years too old for their roles, but there’s no “buying” this. So yes, convincing, state-of-the-art digital de-aging of these two would help somewhat.

** Wayne’s Tom Doniphon is supposed to be no older than his mid 30s — young enough to be courting and wooing the 32-year-old Vera Miles & building their marital home. With his bulky physique and creased saddlebag features, Wayne looks old enough (not a day younger than his actual biological age) to be Miles’ father.

Second sidenote: The snow-white wig worn by Stewart’s 25-years-later version of Stoddard, a U.S. Senator in his mid to late 50s, makes him look like an actor wearing a white wig. Think of how much more convincing it would’ve been if Stewart, who had been gradually balding since the late ’40s or early ’50s, had simply not worn a wig at all.

Whatever the decade, Gilbert Gottfried was having none of it.

Michel Franco‘s Sundown has been streamable for a few weeks now. (Apple, Amazon, Vudu.) Surely a few more HE regulars have seen it by now? 2022 is nearly one-third over, and I still think Sundown is the strangest, most unusual, most off-on-its-own-wavelength film of the year so far.

Here are some riffs from 2.11.22 and 2.13.22:

Sundown is basically a drop-out movie like Michelangelo Antonioni‘s The Passenger (’75), but I wish it had less plot, which is to say less motivational explanation. I was wishing it would just devote itself to the idea of pissing off and nihilistically doing whatever the hell. But it’s not, and that, for me, is a slight problem.

It’s about Neil (Tim Roth), a wealthy co-heir to a pig-slaughtering business who’s vacationing in Acapulco with his sister Allison (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two teenage children.

Allison and the kids pack and leave when news comes that she and Neil’s mother has died. But Neil decides against going — he lies that his passport is missing, and returns to Acapulco, and then checks into a shitty little hotel. And that’s it, at least for a while. Neil drinks a lot of beer, finds a thritysomething girlfriend (Iazua Larios), hangs out and basically does jack shit.

From Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review: “Here, we realize, is that most scandalous of creatures: the human who wants nothing. I’ve seen enough films about people who rush to make the most of their mortal span, ticking off bucket lists and reaping rosebuds while they may, so it’s a relief to come across Neil, the lolling foe of the upbeat. The title of the movie doesn’t do him justice. It should be called ‘The Fuck-it List.’”

Roth’s indifferent, nihilist-minded “Neil” instantly registers as one of the greatest-ever character studies of an older guy who just doesn’t care about anything.

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I haven’t changed my mind about wanting some saint of vengeance to murder Vladimir Putin.

Are you telling me that some sort of totally independent, non-aligned, soldier-of-fortune mercenary team couldn’t be contracted to somehow “get” Putin through some kind of subterfuge? That it’s utterly impossible? I’m talking about the kind of mercenaries that Warren Zevon used to sing about.

Putin shot or stabbed or blown to shards is the only sure-fire way to end the Ukrainian slaughter. So many thousands of people want God to step in and spill his blood and for the dogs to lick it off the floor.

If this was a movie, somebody would get him somehow. The assassins (it would have to be a team) need to be phantoms — people with no ties or alignments or driver’s licenses or email addresses.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s “Ukraine Needs a Lot of Things, but Sean Penn’s Drama Isn’t One of Them“, posted earlier today:

“I don’t want to see Sean Penn, no matter how valiant his efforts at humanitarian relief have been, advocating for policies that could lead us closer to a nuclear conflict, all because it makes him feel like he’s seizing the day.

“Penn, to demonstrate his ability to rise above America’s ideological fractures, made a point of going on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, even though he admitted he didn’t trust Hannity.

“No one wants to see a nuclear conflict,” he told the right-wing host. “At the same time, if only one bully is going to be able to use those weapons as a threat, we gotta rethink what we’re doing.”

“It sounds [like] Penn has a jones for speaking in terms of escalation, because that’s the strategy that best expresses the fervor of his commitment. Hannity, who Penn is right not to trust, started going on about how Democrats start wars (like Vietnam and Afghanistan) that they don’t have the stomach to finish. He talked about drones, Stinger missiles, MiGs. ‘Fight the war to win it,’ said Hannity. ‘We agree,’ said Penn.

“The actor added, in reference to Putin, ‘If there is a God, there will be vengeance beyond all possible comprehension.’ I don’t doubt Sean Penn’s commitment, but if he wants to keep making public statements about the war in Ukraine, maybe he should think about sounding a little less like he’s in a movie.”

Whatever the actual particulars, that 2016 TMZ tape convinced most of us that Johnny Depp had been exhibiting loutish, hair-trigger behavior — standard angry alcoholic stuff — when his marriage to Amber Heard was on the downslope. In this instance “most of us” would almost certainly include the jurors at the currently underway libel trial in Virginia.

On top of which Heard’s 12.18.18 Washington Post op-ed piece, the focus of the defamation trial, didn’t specifically reference Depp (although we all knew she was alluding to her marital history with him).

People have been saying this for years, but Depp’s smartest play would be to move on and demonstrate that he’s a changed man and that he wants to focus on the future rather than the past. But of course he’s not doing that. I don’t see how he could possibly prevail against Heard. At best the jury will end up deadlocked.

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Bill Maher to Joe Rogan (4.12.22): “We’re both seen as people who are common-sensical, and right now there’s a hunger for that in America, more than anything else. Common sense, away from the extremes.

“People say to me, ‘Don’t you think you’ve gotten more conservative?’ No, I haven’t. The left has gotten goofier so I seem more conservative, maybe. But it’s not me who’s changed. I feel I’m the same guy, but five years ago no one was talking about defunding the police. There was no talk about pregnant men. Looting was still illegal.

“Centrism is such a wishy-washy word, but that’s sort of what it is. I’m always saying to the Democrats, ‘Just don’t be the party of no common sense.’ Avoid that and you will be surprised at the amazing success you will have. As opposed to what’s going to happen, which is that they’re going to get their asses kicked in November.”

One of the most realistic line-readings in The Godfather happens when James Caan’s Sony Corleone warns the beaten and bloody Carlo (Gianni Russo) to never again brutalize his sister Connie (Talia Shire), Carlo’s wife. What makes it great is that Sonny is so winded from beating up Carlo that he’s forced to take a breath after saying “touch” (beat) and then “…my sister again I’ll kill ya.”

And yet this scene has been blemished for a half-century by a small but memorable error that could have been easily fixed.

“There’s Still Time, Brother,” posted on 9.19.08:

Early this morning HE reader Frank Booth, commenting about the Francis Coppola/Robert Harris restoration of the Godfather films, made a good point about an irritant in the original 1972 film — one that’s been bothering me for decades.

He was speaking of the second-act beating scene in which Sonny laughably air-punches Carlo. There’s no missing the mistake because the shot is perfectly positioned to catch it — a nice clean side-angle. And it’s so distinct that it takes you right out of the film. When Booth saw a theatrical screening “it took a minute or so of the Sicilian wedding for the audience to stop giggling,” he says.

And yet despite all the digital refinements and restorations, not to mention that massive re-edit of Parts I and II that resulted in The Godfather Saga in the mid ’70s, Coppola has left that mistake in — minor, yes, but one that slightly interferes with the enjoyment of this film each and every time.

All Coppola would have to do is cut away from the Sonny-Carlo beating for a a second or two and show…whatever, one of the hoods standing nearby, one of the little kids watching the fight, a master shot from a different angle. There must be extra footage lying around. All Coppola would need is 24 to 36 frames.

If you had directed The Godfather, would you want that mistake to remain in the definitive print for centuries to come? I wouldn’t. If George Lucas can make Greedo shoot first, Francis Coppola can fix Sonny’s air punch.