Month: September 2022

Several weeks ago I was chatting with a Westport hairdresser. An Asian woman in her mid to late 40s. I suspected she might be Vietnamese (I’ve been to Vietnam three times) but I didn’t want to sound like a dumb Anglo who doesn’t know the difference between people from Vietnam, China, Japan, Burma, Malaysia or Korea.

But I took a risk anyway and asked if she was from Vietnam. Bingo! Born near the end of the Vietnam War, she had grown up near Saigon and emigrated to this country around 1990, she said. So let’s allow that I might have a certain ability to recognize people from certain regions, or at least that I got lucky that one time.

Yesterday around lunch hour I was speaking to a Latina counter waitress in her early 20s. There was something in her features that suggested…I couldn’t be sure. Possibly lower Mexico or perhaps Guatamela. She vaguely reminded me of Yalitza Aparicio, who played the housekeeper Cleo in Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, only a bit prettier.

I had no real idea, in short, but I took a wild stab and asked, “Have you ever been to Belize?”

Waitress: Where?
HE: Belize.
Waitress: No, I…I don’t know that. Where is that?
HE: South of Mexico. You know…the Yucatan Peninsula. Caribbean coast.
Waitress: Near Mexico?
HE: Actually closer to Guatemala.
Waitress: Huh.
HE: Mostly English speaking.
Waitress: Huh.

I’m not judging, mind. I recognize that we all have our own journeys and that we reach enlightenment at different times in our lives, and that includes me. But this woman had never heard of Belize until that moment. She may not have even heard of Guatemala.

What does this say about the teaching of geography in Fairfield County high schools? When I was 21 I had at least heard of all the countries in Central and South America, and about most of the Caribbean islands.

13 and 2/3 years ago a desecrated version of The French Connection — grubby, splotchy, desaturated — was released on Bluray, and fans hit the roof. It was a bizarre experimental remastering from director William Friedkin that everyone (including director of photpgraphy Owen Roizman) hated. A much more palatable version was released on 2012, and the complaints stopped.

I may be mistaken but I seem to recall that the only person in the world of critics and columnists who gave a thumbs-up to the 2009 version was David Poland. From that point on the term “Poland Curse” applied to every which way.

Now another Bluray debacle is upon us, and it took me six damn weeks to pay attention. The new 4K Heat Bluray, approved by Michael Mann and released by Disney’s 20th Century video division, is covered or more precisely smothered in needless shadow and murk, like a black scrim thrown over everything.

I watched the 4K version last night, and right away I knew something was wrong. “Why is everything darker?’, I asked myself. We naturally expect 4K to deliver some degree of enhancement — a noticable “bump” or upgrade of the film’s well-known visual quality. Well, the 4K does not deliver a noticable uptick. In fact it’s another desecration. It’s Heat with the lights turned down and a heavier emphasis on blue-gray. It’s Heat covered with a black stocking. It’s basically a vandalizing.

I was so pissed off by the 4K disc tHat I took it out and popped in the 1080p Bluray version. The Bluray is much, much more pleasing to the eye./

From HE’s 9.4.22 Telluride review of Todd Field‘s TAR (Focus Features, 10.7): “The focus of this chilly but fascinating film is (a) the magnificent work and lifestyle of Cate Blanchett‘s Lydia Tar — I wanted to move into this movie and live there and never come out — but primarily (b) the fanatical determination of “Millennial robots” (as Lydia calls them) to destroy careers of people they see as cruel and abusive.

“It’s mainly about a faintly alluded to, stubbornly non-dramatized relationship between an ambitious student and Lydia, a powerful God-like figure in her realm, and how it went wrong and why, and how this resulted in a kind of blood feud — a deliberate act of career assassination and a form of sexual harassment.

“But who rejected who exactly, and why do reasonable intelligent viewers of Tar have to argue about this hours later and still not be certain about what happened?

“All kinds of exposition is deliberately left out of Tar, and it’s triggering. I’m sorry but Tar takes forever to get going (at least 45 minutes if not longer), and once it does it’s too elliptical, too fleeting, too oblique, too teasing and (I guess) too smart for its own good. It made me feel dumb, and I really hate that.

“But I loved the flush world of brilliant, arrogant, confident Lydia. Not to mention the textures, the autumnal Berlin atmospheres, the perfect scarves, the dinners….I wanted to live in it forever.

“The bottom line is that Field can’t be bothered to tell a story in a way that most people would find satisfying. He doesn’t show the stuff that we’d like to see and be part of, obviously because he feels that’s the most interesting way to deal the cards. But not for me. Elusive narrative games and coy hintings and teasings and dingle-dangle maneuvers…nope. Maybe if I watch it again it’ll somehow come together?
Note: I saw TAR a second time at Telluride and I’m afraid it didn’t improve much.

“I still can’t decide if TAR is a damning indictment of cancel culture or if it’s slyly dissing Blanchett‘s brilliant but callous conductor and more or less saying ‘well, she made her bed.'”

We’re all conscious of a Best Actress campaign underway for Ana de Armas‘ Marilyn Monroe performance in Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix, streaming on 9.28).

For what it’s worth I think de Armas has done an excellent job of bringing Dominik’s version of Monroe (wounded, broken, extremely vulnerable) to life. She gives it her all, and I would have no argument with her being nominated for Best Actress. Nobody would.

I wrote a while back that Blonde is “artful torture porn.” Because it is.

I also agreed that her performance as the relentlessly brutalized and victimized Monroe is analogous to Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ. Excerpt: “I’m thinking not just of the incessant dismissals and degradations and spiritual uncertainties, but the anguished and agonized relationship between the main protagonist and the elusive ‘father.’”

Variety‘s Clayton Davis believes, with at least some sincerity, that de Armas is Netflix’s strongest acting contender and that her performance has the “best shot for Latina Oscar attention.” (Should Best Latina Performance become a new Oscar category? If Clayton wasn’t a Variety columnist he could become a top-tier Oscar strategist and lobbyist on behalf of BIPOC contenders.)

But let’s be honest — Dominik’s honest but demeaning remarks about Monroe in a 9.27 Sight & Sound interview by Christina Newland have hurt the film’s Oscar chances, and possibly even damaged de Armas’s campaign.

Actually it’s not so much the interview itself as Twitter-ized outtakes from her Zoom chat with Dominik that have caused all the trouble.

Fascinating Dominik quote: “Blonde is supposed to leave you shaking. Like an orphaned rhesus monkey in the snow. It’s a howl or pain or rage.”

Consider the following and post whatever reactions that may come to mind:

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Out of 40something films he’s made since the mid ‘80s, Tom Hanks has said that only four cut the mustard. And that doesn’t even mean that the un-named four are great or A-level films — Hanks is only allowing that they’re “pretty good.”

Which films could he be referring to? I’m guessing Big, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump and Saving Private Ryan.

“Road to Perdition Was Hanks’ Last Big Serious Score,” posted on 4.23.16: I would say that Hanks peaked from Splash (’84) to Road to Perdition (’02), or a run of 18 years. Okay, 14 years if you feel that Hanks’ career really took off with Big in ’88.

And yes, I would say that since Perdition luck was not really been with him except in the case of Charlie Wilson’s War (’07) and Captain Phillips (’13).

Once your cards have gone cold, it’s awfully hard to heat them up again. There’s nothing more humiliating than for a man who once held mountains in the palm of his hands having to push his own cart around the supermarket as he buys his own groceries and then, insult to injury, has to wait in line at the checkout counter. Then again he’s stinking rich.

Hanks’ finest early-career-building films: Splash (’84), Dragnet (’87), Big (’88), Punchline (’88).

Hanks’ amazing six-year, nothing-but-pure-gold period: A League of Their Own (’92), Sleepless in Seattle (’93), Philadelphia (’93), Forrest Gump (’94), Apollo 13 (’95), Toy Story (’95), Saving Private Ryan (’98), You’ve Got Mail (’98), Toy Story 2 (’99).

Hanks’ first big-time stinker — a movie I’ll hate with every fibre of my being for the rest of my life: The Green Mile (’99).

Commendable:  Cast Away (’00)

Hanks’ last, best serious role after his ’90s kissed-by-God period: Road to Perdition (’02).

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Chloe Okuno‘s Watcher (IFC Midnight, 6.3.22) is a quietly unnerving Polanski-like thriller. Filmed on a modest budget in Bucharest in the early spring of ’21, it has creepy undercurrents running beneath the standard urban-stalker plot. A meditation about feelings of isolation in an Eastern European city, about a cis relationship in trouble due to a lack of empathy on the man’s part.

Watcher is too intelligent and subtle for low-rent horror fans (it’s only made $2.5 million worldwide over the last three months) but it’s an agreeably creepy thing with a vibe all its own, at least in 21st Century terms.

And then along comes some downmarket competition from Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan and Netflix — a seven-episode series called The Watcher. It’s like Netflix barging into the room and telling Okuno and her film that they can leave now (or at least will have to endure a brand takeover) because a bigger, richer, more American-friendly thriller has arrived.

My first instinct was to think “jeez, who invited you guys?…you can’t show a little respect for Okuno’s film by going with a different title? You have to muscle your way in and bulldoze her film to the side?”

What matters, I feel, is that Okuno’s film has been a respected elevated-horror thing for nine months now, going back to Sundance ’22. It has a place in the sun and should be left alone.

Based on a true story that happened in Westfield, New Jersey (HE’s home town), it’s about a normal, middle-class couple (Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale) being terrorized in somewhat the same that Maika Monroe is creeped out by Burn Gorman in Watcher. It looks to me like just another Amityille Horror thing…a formula flick about a suburban family getting freaked out and screaming and whatnot. Pure formula.

The Watcher costars Mia Farrow (!), Noma Dumezweni, theatre director Joe Mantello, Richard Kind, Terry Kinney, Margo Martindale and Jennifer Coolidge.

I was walking back to the car after visiting a shoe repair place on Van Sant Street in East Norwalk when all of a sudden this ruddy-faced, shaved-head guy wearing long baggy shorts is right next to me and saying the following in quick succession, like a Gatling gun: (1) “Whassup, Elvis? “, (2) “I like your shoes” and “put it there.”

A voice told me not to shake his hand, and I knew I’d made the right call when he said a second later, “Don’t wanna be friends, huh?”

I’ll shake hands with a stranger over a point of mutual agreement (i.e., “You don’t want a trans person with monster elephant boobs teaching your five-year-old? Put it there, pardner”) but I’ll never shake hands just to shake hands, especially with a skeezy guy.

This really actually happened around 3:15 pm today.

** He didn’t actually say what I said he said. He actually said “whass goin’ on there, Elvis?” I didn’t like how that looked as a headline so I shortened it. Then the lie began to burn through my soul.

At least once a year I stare at the night sky and think of all the hundreds or thousands of intelligent civilizations living on hundreds or thousands of planets out there. Tonight is one of those nights.

Note: This doesn’t change HE’s negative opinion of Jupiter, a pretentious gas planet that you can’t even land on. I used to think of Jupiter as the home of the 2001 black monolith as well as the site of Dave Bowman’s 18th Century condo. No longer!

Since glimpsing this college film-course chart, I’ve been reading about the influential Dziga Vertov. who was very close to Vladimir Lenin. But before this morning I had never heard of the guy. At least I’m willing to admit it.

N.Y. Times writer Kim Severson shares some scoopy material in Charles Leerhsen‘s “Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain.”

We’re mainly talking abut the contents of some “raw, anguished” texts between Bourdain and his ex-wife, Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, as well as Bourdain’s hellcat lover Daria Argento, whose aloof and callous behavior just prior to his death…uhm, may have had something to do with his decision to hang himself. Or not. Who knows?

AB to Busia-Bourdain: “I hate my fans, too. I hate being famous. I hate my job. I am lonely and living in constant uncertainty.”

HE comment: “Living in constant uncertainty, eh? I eat constant uncertainty for breakfast, hoss. But I certainly understand your despair about your job, and about being famous. What a shitty, soul-draining way to spend your life…God! Constantly travelling from one fascinating destination to another, eating scrumptious food, meeting fascinating people, discovering and re-discovering the soul of things in every new situation. We all have our crosses to bear, and you certainly had yours.”

AB to Argento #1: “I am okay. I am not spiteful. I am not jealous that you have been with another man. I do not own you. You are free. As I said. As I promised. As I truly meant. But you were careless. You were reckless with my heart. My life.”

AB to Argento #2: “Is there anything I can do?” Argento to AB: “Stop busting my balls.” AB to Argento: “Okay.”

Hours later he offed himself.

Eric Clapton and Van Morrison earned their disrepute for Covid-ignoring, mask-refusing obstinacy. But Roger Waters has outdone them by becoming a Putin admirer, or at least a supporter of Russki slaughter in Ukraine.