Month: October 2022

So Will Smith had a recent private screening of Antoine Fuqua‘s Emancipation (Apple, 12.2), but he invited only celebs of color. The same thing happened with that recent D.C. screening, which reportedly was mainly composed of African-American groups. Why am I hearing that the earlybird audiences been racially segregated? It feels like Smith is going for a stacked-deck consensus. The advance word of mouth on Emancipation will not travel unless a certain percentage of tough white critics give it a thumb’s up. Non-invested critics, I mean, who have no particular dog, etc.

In his 10.20 piece called “Will She Said Hit Too Close to Home for Oscar Voters?,” Variety‘s Clayton Davis is trying to guilt-trip older Hollywood males into applauding this first-rate docudrama about how Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey took down Harvey Weinstein.

Except She Said doesn’t need Clayton Davis’s help — it stands confidently and efficiently on its own two feet.

If you ask me Davis has invalidated himself by putting quote marks around cancel culture in the third-to-last paragraph.

Quote marks bookending this term is a standard wokester move. It’s meant to suggest skepticism about the validity of the term itself. It’s the same thing as writing “so-called cancel culture.”

So let’s understand this clearly — by attempting to cast doubt or suspicion upon usage of cancel culture, Clayton has made it unambiguously clear that he stands with the bad guys.

Three oldies costar in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania —Michael Douglas, Michele Pfeiffer and an uncredited Bill Murray as a villain of some kind. I adored the original Ant-Man (’15) but not so much Ant-Man and the Wasp (’18). I’ll probably have difficult with this one also. Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Kathryn Newton, Jonathan Majors, Randall Park

I had to catch an 11:30 am train to Grand Central in order to arrive early for a 2 pm Bardo screening at the Paris theatre. It all happened according to plan.

Alejandro G. Inarritu’s 8 and 1/2-like epic about a filmmaker’s interior journey of guilt, love, identity, marriage, family and creative frustration is now 20-odd minutes shorter than the version that played in Telluride. I was mostly a thumbs–upper then and I liked today’s version even better. As you might imagine it’s now tighter, trimmer…a tad more concise.

Alejandro and leading cast members Daniel Gimemez Cacho, Ximena Lamadrid and Iker Solano sat for a half-hour q & a following the screening, which began at 2:15 pm and ended at 4:45, not counting closing credits.

I’ll amplify later on my reactions.

It’s now 6:30 pm. I’m sitting in the upstairs dining area at Smiler’s Deli (Madison and 54th) — no wall plugs, no wifi (Smiler’s don’t want no wifi bums) and attempts to use my iPhone as a personal hotspot have failed miserably. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss’s 42 year-old successor, will soon become the youngest Prime Minister in British history. He and wife Akshata, daughter of Indian billionaire N.R. Narayana Murthy, have a combined fortune of $730 million and perhaps over a billion dollars.

Born on 5.12.80, Sunak would be a Millennial if he had begun life a year later. He’s technically a very young GenXer.

From a certain angle Sunak almost seems like a conservative JFK — young, slim, good-looking, loaded. The non-JFK factor, according to British broadcaster and former politician Nigel Farage, is that Sunak lacks charisma. “He’s very, very dull and detached, and doesn’t connect with ordinary folk,” Farage recently told Sky News.

Autocorrect is giving me all kinds of trouble when I attempt to spell the names of Rishi, Akshata and her father N.R. Narayana…stop pestering me!

Tim Burton to Deadline: “My history is that I started out [at Disney]. I was hired and fired like several times throughout my career there.

“Dumbo is why I think my days with Disney are done. That movie is quite autobiographical on a certain level [because] I realized that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus, and I needed to escape.”

“Big, Over-Produced Dumbo Lacks The Original’s Gentle Soul“, posted by yours truly on 3.26.19:

I tried watching Tar again last night — my third viewing. It happened at Stamford’s Avon, which turned out to be a mistake. My next viewing will happen when Tar starts streaming. I’m very much looking forward to reading the subtitled dialogue as there are still passages (particularly when Cate Blanchett‘s Lydia Tar is whispering to her young adopted daughter) that I can’t make heads or tails of.

Tar is exactly the same mindfuck that I saw in Telluride several weeks ago. I still find it complex, ravishing, brilliant (certainly as far as Blanchett’s performance is concerned) and more than a little frustrating at times.

I still don’t get the ticking metronome in the middle of the night or the unseen shrieking girl in the woods scenes. I’m still deeply bothered by the crude table manners of the young Russian cellist. I get that the black dog or wolf in the old tenement buildjng is a metaphor for secrets that Lydia is afraid might come out, but it’s presented as a half-real thing and not a dream sequence so it left me puzzled at first.

I finally realized that the grubby two-bedroom home that Lydia crashes in toward the end is her childhood home, and that the insolent guy at the bottom of the stairs is her under-educated brother, and that her real first name is Linda. (I’ve no explanation for missing this the first time.) I still think it’s absurd that Lydia’s career would be completely destroyed over the Christa thing. And I still think that anyone who would call the last shot racist (a slow tracking shot of cosplaying fans at a kind of Asian ComicCon gathering) is demented.

Alas, the whole experience was diminished due to the Avon’s crummy screening conditions. Yes, it’s an independent theatre and a beloved Stamford mainstay but I’ll never see a film there again. Three bad things — the screen is too small for the auditorium, the screen lighting was way too dim (the minimum SMPTE standard is around 14 or 15 foot lamberts — I’d be surprised if last night’s Avon image was more than eight or nine) and the sound was way too soft.

I complained to the manager (a chubby woman in her 40s or early 50s) and I suspected right away that she didn’t even know what “foot lamberts” means. I returned to my seat, resigned to sit through two hours and 38 minutes of shadows and mud and murky, often indecipherable dialogue.

Basically a shit show and money down the drain.

Incidentally: Owen Gleiberman‘s “Is Tár Rooting For or Against Cate Blanchett’s Superstar Predator Conductor?” is worth reading.

The idea or concept of Jack Nicholson-style insouciance (i.e., that vaguely grinning, self-amused, slightly paunchy, middle-aged swagger hound attitude) didn’t really come into being until his Garrett Breedlove performance in Terms of Endearment, which opened 39 years ago.

Today the Breedlove routine would be shut down so fast that Nicholson’s head would spin. The world that half-chuckled at such antics is dead and gone.

Okay, it’s not dead and gone but people in the heady Hollywood heat of things are too terrified to admit this so it might as well be. Okay, there’s still room for “you need a lot of drinks to kill the bug that is up your ass”…that still works. Just don’t ask IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson, who served as the unit publicist for Terms. Different era.

HE to Beverly Walker: “I’m re-reading your 1985 Jack Nicholson Film Comment interview, and I’m wondering what you’re hearing, if anything, about Jack’s well-being or health or whatever. He’s 85 now, and I know he doesn’t say anything to anyone these days, largely due to diminished capacities.

“But dear God I would love to hear the old Jack weigh in on woke Stalinism and the idea that any actor or filmmaker whose personal behavior has resulted in a blemish or two needs to be expelled or at least discredited. I don’t know what he’d say exactly, but I can guess. To hear it in his own words, his own phraseology…”

HE: “Malibu is an over-crowded car community with a side order of beachside real estate. It’s arguably the most unpleasant coastal region in the civilized world.”

Overlord: “Then why go there at all. or are you a masochist?”

HE’s Own Insect Antennae: “The same reason all their hikes are through residential Hollywood. He enjoys the proximity to wealth.”

HE: “Because when you finally arrive at the mostly empty and semi-secluded El Matador, La Piedra and Leo Carillo state beaches, the effort feels worth it. For a while.

“But getting there is hell unless (a) you’re on a motorcycle or an HE-approved rumblehog or (b) you manage to avoid peak traffic by traveling between 11 pm and 6 am. Most of the time there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between PCH and the 405. It’s basically about cars and foggy haze and the near-futility of finding a parking spot (unless you’re visiting the afore-mentioned, Trancas-area beaches) and that constant whahhh of traffic and that atmosphere of speed and aggression and predatory restaurants and the suffocating howl of it all. It just drains your soul.

“I’ve visited so many tranquil, extra-beautiful, far-from-the-madding-crowd beach areas around the world. The Florida keys, Northern California and Oregon, central Vietnam, Maine, New Jersey’s Long Beach island…yes, even New Jersey!…France’s Côte d’Azur, Marina del Campo on the island of Elba, Baja California, Cape Cod, San Blas, the Spanish coast near Almeria, Placencia in Belize and Playa del Carmen and Cozumel in Mexico.

“I’m sorry but alongside these havens the Malibu region is nothing to cherish or speak fondly of.

“It’s one thing if you own a nice canyon home or cliffside spread or if you’re jogging along the track at Pepperdine U., but otherwise ‘later.'” — from “Paradise Cove Overchqrge,” posted on 12.1.19.

From “Compassion for Littlefeather,” posted two months ago (8.16.22)…

Last night I submitted to roughly 80 minutes’ worth of Ol Parker‘s Ticket to Paradise (Universal, 10.21), the George Clooney-Julia Roberts South Seas bitchcom. That’s right, I bolted because I couldn’t stand it any longer.

It’s all cynicism and luxury travel porn and infuriating superficial bullshit from each and every lightweight character. There’s no river running through or beneath this piece of shit. It’s not tethered to anything except its own smugness.

Kaitlin Dever, playing Clooney and Roberts’ daughter, still doesn’t resemble either of them even slightly. You can almost set your watch by mainstream Hollywood’s refusal to cast younger actors who bear even a FAINT resemblance to the older actors they’re supposed to be the sons or daughters of.

Plus the shrimp-sized Dever (5’2″) is way too short to be the daughter of Clooney and Roberts (5’11 and 5’8″ respectively). I’m sorry but tallish parents almost never produce Hobbitt-sized children.

And if I’d just graduated from law school (which Dever’s character does as the film begins) I would never, ever decide to marry a guy who works as a Balinese seaweed farmer. At the very least I would make sure I could practice English-language law in Bali, and if that wasn’t an option then I just wouldn’t marry the guy…period.

Have I mentioned that I hated Mr. Mellow Seaweed (Maxime Bouttier) and especially his hideously serene and cheerful family? Well, I did. I loathed everyone in this film, in fact, and particularly Lucas Bravo as Roberts’ 35 year-old boyfriend who actually gets down on his knees to propose to 55 year-old Roberts…embarassing!

Plus I hated the couple sitting next to me, and more particularly the guy who ate three courses of food (including a fries-and-gravy dish…slurp!…slurp!) and who had to discuss every turn of the plot with the wife-girlfriend. It never occured to either of these animals to simply watch the film without commentary. Did I give them the HE stink-eye? I should have but I wimped out. I didn’t care so I just left.

Every seat in the theatre was filled, and a terrible psychic weight dissolved into thin air when I finally summoned the resolve to get the hell out of there.

By the way: “Thank you for your application for voter registration. You are not a voter until your application is approved by the registrar of voters. You should receive a confirmation within 3 weeks. If you do not, contact the registrar of voters in your town hall. Registrar of Voters, Town Hall, 238 Danbury Road, Wilton, CT.”

The last time I paid close attention to Jake Hoffman (born 41 years ago, son of 85 year-old Dustin) was when he did a cameo as Steve Madden in The Wolf of Wall Street. Now I’m looking and listening again, this time at a trailer for Same & Kate (Vertical, 11.11), obviously a light and harmless four-way relationship thing costarring Jake, Dustin, Sissy Spacek and Schuyler Fisk (Sissy’s daughter). And you know what? Jake has a nice-sounding voice and a steady planted vibe — my immediate response was one of approval. I trust him.