Month: October 2022

From “Reminder” thread, posted this morning(10.8.22):

HE: “Thomas Alva Edison is not wrong, and many billions of earthlings have found the idea of lights-out finality intolerable and terrifying and have therefore constructed comforting mythologies to fend off the sense of devastation that many philosophers have used to describe contemplations of The Big Sleep. And yet…

“I experienced a seminal and transformative LSD trip when I was 19, and at that moment and forever after I knew that as indifferent and scientific or mathematical as the universe could be defined in the minds of your average wannabe Albert Einsteins out there, it was nonetheless magnificent and unified and sublime and finally spellbinding in the George Harrison lotus position sense of that term.

“I knew that an eternal hum of profound cosmic perfection hovered above, within and without my mortal coil.

“Einstein himself spoke endearingly of a sense of soul-soothing tranquility that permeated when he, without dropping a tab of Orange Wedge or sipping from a ground-up Carlos Casteneda broth of peyote buttons and whatever else, had sailed into the mystic. He wasn’t expecting to flutter around on angel wings or hover over the earth like Dave Bowman at the end of 2001, but he felt profoundly settled and comforted by the infinite eternal-ness of it all.”

Franny P to HE: “What the heck are you saying? Sounds like you’re still on LSD.”

HE to Franny: “That’s because when you finally slip into the mystical, it never leaves you. So in a sense I am still on LSD, or swimming in the spiritual waters that my long-ago LSD awakening introduced me to.

“I’m saying that the eternal perfection of the cosmic scheme of things has been in place for eons and will remain in place for eons, and if you, Franny P., don’t want to tune into the altogether because it doesn’t interest you or because you feel too constrained by logical rules and regulations, then that’s on you and go with God. I’m okay and you’re okay.

“Travelling into the mystic means giving up thought and reason and boilerplate logic and just ‘letting it in.’ Read the Bhagavad Gita or listen to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows‘….it’s all there.”

“How did one decade change American cinema — and culture — forever? Elvis Mitchell explores the history of Black** representation and the cultural impact of witnessing unapologetic Blackness.”

IS THAT BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?!? debuts on Netflix on Friday, November 11.

Off the top of my head, I’m presuming that the “one decade” in which everything changed for Black movie actors and filmmakers was the ’60s, right? Or more specifically 1963 (Lilies of the Field) to early ’70s Blaxploitation?

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There are five Gold Derby guys (Brian Truitt, Kevin Polowy, Clayton Davis, Shawn Edwards, Chris Rosen) who apparently believe Rian Johnson‘s Glass Onion is a credible Best Picture contender. Then again they’ve all got it ranked low so they’re probably thinking “place-holder until further notice.”

On the other hand EW and TCM‘s Dave Karger has Glass Onion ranked fourth on his 10.5 Best Picture spitball list. And I’m telling you there’s no effing way that a way-too-expensive film that combines the traditional plot-schemings of Agatha Christie (or, more recently, Johnson’s Knives Out) with Herbert Ross‘s The Last of Sheila…I’m telling you there’s no way for such a film to be Best Picture nominated.

Because (and this is not a putdown) it’s just an expensive, presumably clever whodunit wank-off flick that’ll make a lot of money. And that’s all.

Plus it has Dave Bautista in a principal role, and it’s explicitly stated in the 2022 edition of the AMPAS rules and regulations that any movie costarring a musclebound meathead type wearing a backwards baseball cap can’t be nominated for Best Picture. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and check…I’ll wait.

If Karger is going to fantasize an Oscar future for Glass Onion why not also predict a Best Picture nomination for Ticket to Paradise?

My default response to all the major Beatles album remixes (Abbey Road, White Album, Sgt. Pepper, Rubber Soul) has been to scoff. And then to buy them.

I’m no audiophile but I’ve always held that while the new versions sound agreeably enhanced they aren’t significantly different than the originals, and that these remixes, when all is said and done and digested, are mainly a marketing hustle. But I bought them anyway because of the lifelong emotional investment factor.

But guess what? This morning I compared the 2022 remix of “Taxman” vs. the 2009 version, and discovered to my surprise that the differences in the ’22 mix are striking. This is due to a technological innovation, engineered by Get Back director Peter Jackson, that allowed Giles Martin and Sam Okell to separate all the instruments and do a remix from scratch.

George Harrison‘s vocal track is on both sides now and not just the left, John Lennon‘s rhythm guitar is louder and more distorted sounding (in a good way), and the sound of the amplifier hum at the beginning of “Taxman” is now missing. You could argue that you’ve always liked the amplifier hum and that removing it kills the historic, low-tech 1966 vibe and I wouldn’t call you wrong, but if you listen on headphones the new “Taxman” is, I feel, a fuller, more alive rendering.

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Between my mid to late teens I was feeling more and more bored in school. Okay, not by everything. I liked English composition, literature and American history. But overall it seemed as if too much of school was a San Quentin experience, and I always felt instinctually suffocated by math (algebra, geometry) and science (biology, geology), to put it mildly.

It followed that I developed an intense loathing for certain professors who, I felt, were not only boring me to tears but giving me shitty grades and thereby harming my future.

Sorry for the ignorance and arrogance but I was young, angry and nihilistic, and this is how I saw things.

All to say that if the current Age of Zoomer and Millennial Entitlement Insanity had somehow been a thing during my years of educational agony, I definitely would have signed a petition to get some of my teachers fired. It wouldn’t have been fair but I saw these teachers as absolute villains who were bringing unmitigated misery into my life. So I understand the impulse of those 82 NYU students whose signatures on a petition managed to trigger the firing of NYU organic chemistry professor Maitland Jones Jr.

I don’t agree with whacking the poor guy and feel that the 82 students should have studied harder, but some teachers do have an almost magical ability to suffocate their students’ souls, and it’s possible that Jones was one of those.

From a letter to the N.Y. Times by Martin E. Ross of Boston: “The overpampering of children by parents and teachers combined with soaring tuition has turned students into entitled customers demanding to be catered to as such. The student-professor interaction has become far more transactional than in previous years, with administrators increasingly inclined to side with their customers. Students expect their professors to be like either Mister Rogers or Stephen Colbert, and woe to those less entertaining ones who dare to assign poor performers the grades they deserve.”

“The public, by now, has become wary of anything Hollywood puts out for fear of it being what most people call ‘woke.’ That means it will have some kind of ‘do better’ agenda somewhere in there.

“In simple terms, that means people are coming for the fish and chips, and they’re getting steamed broccoli and salmon. They’re on to it now so if they think there is a chance that the movie is going to deliver yet another lecture in this era of strident purity and cancel culture, they’re going to stay away.

“While it’s true that a good many people probably avoided Bros. for the same reason they avoided Lightyear — they’re just not up for it and maybe some of that is due to homophobia — the bigger reason is that Hollywood has shifted its role in society from offering up entertainment to offering up a lecture, or a ‘correction’ for human behavior.

“While that sells on social media where signaling one’s virtue ups their clout, it isn’t going to translate to people who can barely afford to put food on the table or gas in their tank.

“The broad majority of Americans don’t have much interest in Hollywood products overall, especially if it means driving to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and sitting down for two hours without access to their cell phones.

“Not that everyone adheres to that rule, by the way. I was in a screening the other night, and two people still checked their cell phones. At The Fabelmans.” — from Sasha Stone “It Isn’t Just Bros, It’s Hollywood Overall.”

Matt Walsh responds to a 10.4 Media Matters takedown piece, written by Ari Drennen and researched by Jason Campbell, Mia Gingerich & Alex Paterson.

“So here’s my official answer, for the record: Kiss my ass. I do not apologize, and in fact, by all rights, you sick freaks should be the ones apologizing to me. For lying and defaming me, and doing it all because I’m trying to prevent you from sexually mutilating children. I apologize for nothing. You damned monsters. You child-abusing psychopaths. I wouldn’t apologize to you soulless parasites if I had a gun to my head. I apologize for nothing. I concede nothing. I will never surrender a single inch of ground to a pitchfork mob of degenerate morons.”

…and you can barely feel it. Because in a certain sense, it isn’t quite “there.”

Remember that old story about Marlene Dietrich calling Fred Zinnemann to tell him that mobs of people were lined up for an opening-night showing of From Here to Eternity at Loews Capitol (B’way & 51st) and Zinnemann said “but there hasn’t been any promotion and publicity!” and Dietrich telling him “they can smell it”?

That’s what’s not happening with TAR right now. No one can “smell” a thing apart from highly suspicious assertions from critics (whom no one trusts at all) that it’s very good. And the safe assumption that Cate Blanchett is going to be Best Actress-nominated. Which I agree with.

Let me start again…

I’m not sure which trailers are more depressing to me personally — Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Disney, 11.11), Black Adam (Warner Bros., 10.21) or Halloween Ends ((Universal, 10.14). They all feel like ironclad guarantees of this or that kind of dungeon entrapment.

The only trailer I can think of that doesn’t send me into a tailspin is Ticket to Paradise (Universal, 10.21), but that’s only because it promises a familiar and amiable ride — the bickering Bickersons (George Clooney, Julia Roberts) in Bali, trying to dissuade their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever, who doesn’t resemble either of them in the slightest way) from marrying a guy she doesn’t know all that well. The trailer says “this movie will not bite you or make you feel badly…it’ll be an easy sit.”

I was just thinking how I’d like to see Todd Field‘s about-to-open TAR yet again, but then I realized it’s only playing in a couple of Manhattan houses (Loew’s Lincoln Square, Angelika) with the wide break delayed until 10.28. A friend who saw it with me in Telluride says she’s having trouble remembering parts of it…that certain portions have liquified or vaporized in her brain.

From Michael Cieply‘s “The Movies Are Playing An Insiders’ Game” (10.6):

“There’s no promise of an October blockbuster, like Venom: Let There Be Carnage or No Time to Die in 2021. Instead, the release schedule is peppered with tough little films of the sort that light up festivals, win awards and make critics fight — Tár, Till, The Swimmer, Call Jane, The Banshees of Inisherin, Armageddon Time and such.

“These are movies for insiders, to which outsiders — mass consumers — are invited on a very limited basis. That’s how the seasonal game is now played.”

TAR is such a brilliant, odd-duck, upper-stratosphere thing — elliptical and elusive, neither here nor there but at the same time alluring and fearless — that it makes insider types feel like outsiders.

It’s more about aroma than actual taste, and it refuses to come to you. And for a while that’s a turn-on…”piece by piece I’m putting it together,” you tell yourself during the first hour, “and eventually all the strands will come together…all will be revealed and known.”

Field is saying “no, you come to the film…it’ll require work on your part and maybe some feelings of uncertainty or frustration even, but when you finally get there you’ll feel sated and satisfied.”

Except a certain itchy feeling builds up as it goes along, and although TAR tantalizes and intrigues as it feeds you little hints of information and motivation (it’s basically about a brilliant Berlin-based conductor getting #Me-Too’ed to death) but without any of the meat-and-potatoes, Adrian Lyne-ish plot points and shock revealings that would tie it all together, at least for the dumb people in the room.

That’s what I didn’t like about TAR — it made me feel like a dumb-ass. I had to ask friends what had actually happened (or had seemed to happen) and even now I still don’t really get it. That’s why I want to see it for a third time, crazy as that might sound. Plus the fact that I love the cushy affluence of it all. The scarves, the great apartments, the five-star restaurants, the sublime lighting, etc. I wanted to move into TAR and never leave.