Month: June 2022

“Jaws” & “E.T.” IMAX Re-Boots

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I’m presuming that the IMAX presentations of Jaws and E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial will be showing up-rezzed, large-format versions. If I were in charge I would convert both into actual IMAX film and perhaps even boost the clarity with a 60 fps enhancement.

But you also have to ask “why?”

Jaws, shot in widescreen 2.39:1, isn’t going to fill the IMAX screens, and you don’t want to slice off the sides to make the image taller. And E.T. at heart is a little movie — it was never intended to be a wow experience. Super-sizing it isn’t necessary — it’s the modesty, the intimacy, the little kid personalities, the humor, the American suburban vibe.

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The Wild Bunch

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Everyone knows about the myth of John Lennon‘s “lost weekend” — an allegedly boozy, party-animal, bachelor-on-the-loose period which lasted from the summer of ’73 until early ’75. Separated from Yoko Ono, living in Los Angeles with short-term girlfriend May Pang, romping around with Harry Nillson, Alice Cooper, Keith Moon and Micky Dolenz, collectively known as the Hollywood Vampires.

You’d presume that a documentary about this 18-month chapter, especially one actually called The Lost Weekend, would…I don’t know, catalogue the wild times and over-the-top-shenanigans and cocaine snorts and whatnot, and perhaps convey…oh, perhaps a meditation about the decline and fall of this ’60s wind-down, Hotel California, rich-rocker mentality, and how this sense of gradual drainage finally bottomed out and led to the birth of punk in ’75, or something along those lines.

There’s a Tribeca Film Festival screening tonight of Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman and Stuart Samuels‘ The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, and what a disappointment to learn from Roy Trakin’s 6.9 Variety article that it’s primarily a May Pang recollection-of-a-love affair thing and that it doesn’t really dig into the madman stuff.

Okay, maybe it does but Trakin’s piece discourages.

Most deflating passage: “Pang insists the celebrated Troubadour incidents — where John was thrown out of the iconic Hollywood club for heckling the Smothers Brothers and then for putting a sanitary napkin on his head — were anomalies in Lennon’s stay in Los Angeles, where he was relentlessly egged on by sidekick Harry Nilsson in particular.

“’John was drinking, but that was overblown in retrospect,’ says Pang. ‘The press keeps repeating the same stories over and over.'”

Second most deflating passage: “I decided it was time to reclaim my own history,” says Pang, 72. “It’s my version. I figured, if there was going to be a film about my life, I should be involved. Who better to tell the story than me? I lived it. These are my memories. No one experienced it like I did. Why should I let somebody else talk about my time with John?’”

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Touched-by-God Composer

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In early ’16 I had the honor of shaking hands and briefly speaking with genius composter Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Revenant, Call Me By Your Name, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and a Guadagnino short film, The Staggering Girl).

I met Sakamoto at a Revenant Oscar party; I said emphatically that I regarded his Revenant score as the best of the year, and that despite the Academy’s petty refusal to nominate the score he and collaborator Alva Noto should have won an Oscar for it.

Three days ago Sakamoto, 70, announced that he’s battling stage 4 cancer.

I had heard in ’14 or ’15 that he had been afflicted with throat cancer. Writing for the Japanese literary magazine Shincho, the legendary composer and Yellow Magic Orchestra member wrote that he’s undergone surgery late last year to remove cancer that had spread to both lungs. Stage 4 generally means that the patient should get his/her affairs in order.

My deepest sympathies to Sakamoto and his family, and to his many creative collaborators including Alejandro G. Inarritu and Luca Guadagnino and everyone else who has known or worked with him. One of the all-time greats. The Mr. Lawrence theme still sets my heart aflutter.

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Random “Dominion” Darts

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Jurassic World Dominion is dino crap, all right. I was bored, distracted, texting, daydreaming, thinking about high-school girlfriends, etc. But what bothered me primarily — what has always bothered me about the Jurassic films — is the fact that only your ethically compromised bad guys get eaten.

If I knew that one of the caring, compassionate good guys might get chomped to death, I would sit up in my chair and pay a lot more attention.

There are eight good-guy characters in this film (played by Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Isabella Sermon) and every one survives. Where’s the suspense in that? And this isn’t a spoiler, by the way, because ethical characters never die in these films…never!

White-haired Campbell Scott (who’s only 60 but looks older — he should think about visiting my Prague guy for neck work) plays the only twirling-moustache villain, and of course he gets it…big deal! Neill is pushing 72, but he’s aged much more attractively. In the third act, by the way, Neill wears one of the greatest looking color-combo outfits ever — a tan deerskin jacket with a matching deep royal blue shirt and tie…fantastic!

In fact everyone looks good in their own way. Everyone has dieted and is graced with perfect lighting and shot at just the right angle and wearing perfect coifs and killer wardrobes. They’ve all practiced their cool attitudes and poses in the bathroom mirror.

We all recall that the last entry, Fallen Kingdom, ended with herds of dinosaurs escaping into the forest. Now, in Dominion, they’re all over the world, grazing and feeding and hunting like elephants and giraffes and Bengal tigers. And of course there are evil people looking to exploit them, as well as good people looking to protect and shelter the poor beasts. Including the fucking raptors, mind.

And the question is, will I have the energy to pass along the basic story points or will I just say “due respect but go see it yourself”? The latter, I think.

The Bedford Arts Center is one of the finest movie theatres in the world. I saw West Side Story there last December and was blown away by the technological perfection. But the Dominion sound mix is awful. (And that’s on Universal, not the theatre.). The music and effects tracks were constantly competing with, and at times overwhelming, the dialogue. The characters sounded muffled, whispery — you couldn’t hear the damn consonants. I could hear some of what was said, yes, but it was a struggle. The roars, growls and yelps are fine, and the music blares. But the mix is shit.

I know that if I watch this crummy movie on Bluray or streaming in six months, the dialogue will be perfectly clear. Not to mention the subtitle option.

I’m speaking the absolute truth when I say that Neill’s deerskin and dark-blue-shirt outfit is the only thing that really turned me on about this film. Oh, and one other thing: A shot from a climbing plane above the coast of Malta in which…naaah, I won’t spoil it.

Like everyone else, I am giving Jurassic World Dominion an overall failing grade…sorry. But the hair, makeup and wardrobe guys deserve stand-up applause.

Decent Focaccia

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During the recent 2022 Cannes Film Festival my taste buds were ignited by the most delicious focaccia (salted, heated, pizza-like garlic bread) of my entire life. It was (and presumably still is) served at La Piazza, which is more or less across the street from the famous La Pizza.

Ever since returning I’ve been poking around various Italian restaurants in the neighborhood (Wilton, New Canaan, Westport), and these places have never heard of focaccia. I’m naturally presuming that several Manhattan eateries serve focaccia; I just haven’t done the research. If anyone has any suggestions…

Late-Arriving Inciting Incidents

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For decades (or at least since the formulaic, high-concept ’80s) common Hollywood wisdom has decreed that inciting incidents (i.e., the action or decision that ignites the story tension in a script) need to happen within the first 20 to 25 minutes. What are the most noteworthy films that haven’t done this?

The inciting incident in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds (i.e., that seagull swooping down and drawing blood from Melanie Daniels‘ forehead) happens at the 53-minute mark. In Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire, the kick-off moment (i.e., the kidnapping of Dakota Fanning‘s Lupita Ramos) doesn’t happen until somewhere between the 45- and 50-minute mark — before that it’s all character shading, character shading, character shading and more character shading. In the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin‘s “steak knives” speech comes around…what, the half-hour mark? 35 minutes? In Cristian Mungiu‘s R.M.N., the inciting incident (i.e., the townspeople saying “we don’t want any Sri Lankans working here”) arrives around the 45-minute mark.

Others?

Rainfall at Dawn

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I haven’t felt, gazed upon, heard, smelled and marveled at an early morning rainshower in years. This was somewhere between 5:30 and 6 am this morning. The cats and I shared the same bedroom-window view…the sound alone plus the cool air…awesome.

“Most Reddit-Approved Movie Ever Made”

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Since Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert‘s Everything Everywhere All At Once appeared last March, I’ve been in the grip of opposing instincts. I’ve been dying to hate on this A24 release, and at the same time fearful of watching it. (Right now a 720p streamer is my only option, as I refuse to pay to see it theatrically.)

Since learning that a majority of critics have recently placed it at the very top of their Best of 2022 lists (as complied by World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy), I’ve been determined to hate it all the more. I can say with absolute confidence that I’ve never hated a movie that I’ve never seen more than EEAAO. I was therefore comforted by Jordan Ruimy’s 6.7.22 pan — actually a review of a re-watch.

Excerpt #1: “It didn’t do a damn thing for me. Yes, the cast is great, the photography nicely chosen, Chinese culture effortlessly represented, etc. But it felt as though the Daniels were just throwing every idea at the screen, and the result felt rather shallow, especially at a whopping 142 minutes.”

Except #2: “I’m not going to imply that the praise stems from this being a minority story, inventively told, with a dash of social commentary for good measure. There are [so] many people creaming their pants over this film that it can’t just be a virtue-signaling thing. It’s very well made, I’ll give it that, and its success is somewhat groundbreaking for Asians in Hollywood, so I’ll let it slide.”

Except #3: “The top-billed performances are also fantastic (especially Michelle Yeoh), the fighting choreography is visually inventive, and it’s just a very ambitious venture for these indie filmmakers. The first hour is actually fairly solid, but boy,=M does it also overstay its welcome.”

Except #4: “This is the most ‘Millennial’ movie I have ever seen, as a certain philosophy ruminates throughout the film. Cue in the nihilism. The movie basically says the world is a place that’s chaotic and devoid of meaning, so any kind of social development or progress is just an illusion, unless, of course, you learn to love. It might be the most Reddit-approved movie ever made, and its very nihilism, despite the trite messaging, renders it almost meaningless.

“So what, in the end, do we finally get from this film? An overabundance of slapstick, a fetish for over-the-top fighting, multiverses stamped upon more multiverses, and a soapy message about family and love. But at the same time it’s ice-cold…a relentless ADD-infused assault on the senses. There’s nothing cinematic about what the Daniels have done here; it feels rather like a 140-“minute music video devoid of human feeling.”

Ruimy to HE: “You need to watch it just to see how long you can last before you turn it off.”

Why Schmoes Don’t Like Biden

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I’ve said time and again that what most people want from an American president right now is sensible, practical, fair-minded, JFK-styled liberalism. By today’s political barometer that translates into some kind of left-moderate centrism — responsible, measured, forward-thinking governance that respects the various tribes, but not too wokey-woke. Respect for the hard-working middles, roosters don’t lay eggs, no more homeless bums ripping off CVS stores, etc.

Biden wasn’t so much triumphant in late 2020 as most voters understood that Donald Trump was an anti-democratic, frothing-at-the-mouth sociopath, and therefore had to go. And so Joe Biden won fair and square.

Then the Biden team turned right around and got the pandemic under control and invigorated the job market and withdrew clumsily from Afghanistan and whatnot, and then (this is where some of the trouble started) became cheerleaders for progressive change across the board — a government that seemed to be more in the equity-over-meritocracy camp than vice versa. And then came the Ukraine War, ridiculous gas prices (bad), out-of-control inflation (cancer).

The guy in charge always takes the blame for everything, and the coming anti-Democratic slaughter in the November mid-terms won’t be the half of it. Nobody wants another Biden-vs.-Beast election in ’24, but this, dear God, might happen. Many of us are very, very afraid of Trump returning to the White House — a prospect too horrible to contemplate and yet contemplate it we must. People still want to vote for a sensible, not-too-extreme left-moderate or right-moderate, but the system is apparently unwilling to cough up that possibility.

Therefore: Vote in November ’24 for an amiable, hoarse-voiced, woke-favoring, 80-year-old grandpa whose job performance most voters (to go by polls) disapprove of, or for a deranged, diabolical, anti-democratic, crime-boss grandpa who deserves to be wearing an orange jumpsuit but may not even be prosecuted because Attorney General Merrick Garland doesn’t have the sand.

The bottom line is that Biden might have a shot if he was 55 or 60 or even 65, but people really, really don’t like the idea of a doddering old fellow at the helm. Most voters believe that Joe’s a decent human being but they suspect he’s too much in the pocket of the wokes, and that he’s not strong or sharp enough to crack the whip the way it needs to be cracked. His instincts are sound but people want younger…they just do.

I hate to say it as I like and admire Joe Biden, but someone strong and moderate and JFK-like (a GenXer in their 50s or early 60s) needs to challenge him in the primaries, and that means starting next year. I’m sorry but I’m scared. Who isn’t?