Day: May 23, 2022

How could there be negative reactions to this trailer for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One? It looks great, especially the footage of Tom Cruise riding on horseback through sand dunes, dressed in Middle-Eastern commando garb?

The only negative I can think of is the fact that this Paramount release doesn’t open until 7.14.23 — 14 months hence.

In a 5.22 chat with Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro, Armageddon Time director-writer James Gray delivered a neat assessment of the stink factor in mainstream gladiator cinema.

He basically said that CG comic-book spectacle films are systematically draining the poetry, music and gravitas out of the moviegoing experience.

Once in a blue moon a big franchise film will hit the magic button and deliver something transcendent. One example was last December’s SpiderMan: No Way Home, which I said over and over should be Best Picture-nominated. But mostly they don’t do this. Mostly they just make money.

Gray argues that the big studios “should be willing to lose money for a couple of years on art film divisions, and in the end they will be happier.”

In less extremist terms, Gray is suggesting that the big boys should consider reverting to the ’90s and early aughts system in which specialty divisions made smaller films — films that weren’t expected to bring in huge profits but didn’t necessarily lose money. Which means, of course, that above-the-title talent would have to accept lower fees for making these films. (And there’s the rub.)

HE version: The studios should at least be willing to make smarthouse flicks with a reasonable shot at breaking even or becoming modestly profitable.

Francois Truffaut once said that when one of the films produced by his company, Les Films du Carrosse, reached break even he and his colleagues would pop open a bottle of champagne.

#Cannes2022 ‘Armageddon Time’ Director James Gray On Why Studios Should Be Able To Lose Money On Art Specialty Divisions https://t.co/SgodYB80uM pic.twitter.com/Zno5g6uVQz

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) May 22, 2022

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So far the 2022 Cannes Film Festival has felt weak. Okay, pretty good but not good enough. A pair of triples (R.M.N., the first half of Triangle of Sadness) but in terms of terms of excellence or ambition or primal goading madness, no homers or grand slams.

You know what probably would have been regarded as an exercise in primal madness if it had been screened at this festival? Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde.

Cannes topper Thierry Fremaux saw it and wanted it, but the longstanding Cannes-Netflix contretemps was insurmountable.

Pedro Almodovar, quoted by Jordan Ruimy on 5.10:

“I must be one of the few to have seen Blonde, Andrew Dominik’s great film, where Ana de Armas plays Marilyn Monroe in a chillingly real way.

“There is a sequence (if it does not disappear from the final cut) of the harassment she suffered in the hands of President Kennedy. The sequence is explicit enough to make you feel Marilyn’s revulsion and pain.

“The film is a novel by great writer Joyce Carol Oates, it tackles Norma Jean Baker more so than [the]’Hollywood creation ‘Marilyn Monroe‘. Norma Jean fought all her life for men around the world to understand that Marilyn was the result of her extraordinary work as an actress.

“Shortly after, when Norma Jean, already a zombie, was invited to famously whisper-sing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President.’ I can only imagine how poor Norma must have felt, in the face of patriotic duty, to sing ‘happy birthday’ to the same man who abused her (as seen in the film) dressed in a skintight dress that became iconic.”

Wait a minute…JFK is shown “abusing” Monroe? What’s that supposed to mean? That he muscled or mauled or raped her or something? He was a thoughtless, rambunctious user as far as women were concerned, but the energy required to abuse a famous movie star wasn’t required of the President of the United States at that time. All he had to do was wink and raise an eyebrow. I don’t believe Almodovar.

A passage from the Oates novel, from a chapter titled “The President’s Pimp”:

“Sure, [Peter Lawford] was a pimp.

“But not just any pimp. Not him!

“He was a pimp par excellence. A pimp nonpareil. A pimp sui generis. A pimp with a wardrobe, and a pimp with style. A pimp with a classy Brit accent. Posterity would honor him as the President’s Pimp.

“A man of pride and stature: the President’s Pimp.

“At Rancho Mirage in Palm Springs in March 1962 there was the President poking him in the ribs with a low whistle. ‘That blonde. That’s Marilyn Monroe?”

“Lawford told the President yes, it was Monroe, a friend of his. Luscious, eh? But a little crazy.

“Thoughtfully, the President asked, ‘Have I dated her yet?'”