Day: November 25, 2022

Temperamentally Unbound

by

And yet Elon Musk’s assessment of the current state of things (“woke mind virus”) is essentially correct. I wouldn’t say that civilization is edging towards “suicide”, but I know for a fact that the occasional surges of joy and even transcendence that I got from movies for so many decades have become fewer and farther between over the last six or seven years, and that this is largely due to (I need to occasionally refresh my doomsday terminology) the influence of the Maple Street seed pod monsters, and the chickenshit corporates who are afraid to show a little backbone.

I Confess

by

Although I’ve sampled color clips, I’v never actually sat down and watched William Wellman‘s Nothing Sacred (’37). There — I’ve admitted it! I don’t own the 2018 Kino Bluray, I’ve been too damn lazy to stream the HD version on Amazon, and I never saw the “experimental” restoration** that screened at MOMA for two weeks in August ’21.

** A version that allegedly replicates the look of the film as it appeared in first-run theatres in late November of ’37 — allegedly a creamy, faintly brownish, half-sepia color scheme.

Read more

I Felt His Pain

by

Noah Baumbach‘s White Noise (Netflix) opens theatrically today, and will hang in there until the streaming begins on 12.30.22.

Hollywood Elsewhere recommends that you wait for the couch experience. A theatrical viewing will most likely piss you off, given the expense and the vague feeling of obligation (i.e., imprisonment) that comes with sitting in a theatre.

I was more or less in agony during an opening-night screening at the New York Film Festival (9.30), or eight weeks ago. The following day I wrote that the only part I really liked was the closing musical dance sequence, set inside an early ’80s A & P supermarket.

That aside I was in hell. If I had more courage and conviction (which I unfortunately don’t) I would’ve bailed at the half-hour mark. I can smell a stinker less than five minutes in, and White Noise definitely had the fumes.

The guy sitting next to me felt the same way. Somewhere around the 50-minute mark he turned and crouched to his left and laid his head upon (what I assumed was) his boyfriend’s right shoulder. I chuckled under my breath — my first thought was “Jesus, this guy has no fear — he’s not worried if people sitting nearby will think him louche and undisciplined — he’s just going for it.”

I Know What “Wakanda” Amounts To

by

It’s an occasion for a kind of mourning (i.e., my own) when a film that sent me fleeing after 90 minutes has bagged $321,770,596 domestic and $279,200,000 overseas for a total of $600 million and change.

I know exactly how it feels when a film is doing everything just right and thereby building trust and affection with an audience. Or at least is up to something exceptional. I’ve experienced it hundreds of times over decades, and the first 90 minutes of Wakanda Forever (I couldn’t tolerate any more than that) definitely wasn’t doing this. A director friend told me “you missed the best part”, ands I’ve no reason to think otherwise. But dear God in heaven…who are we? What is our life when an obviously mediocre film like this is celebrated as a great “success”?

Unstoppable Spielberg Impulse

by

The over-praising of The Fabelmans among mainstream media types…what is there to say except “what else is new”? We’re all familiar with the industry-wide instinct to kowtow to the lore of Steven Spielberg-directed films…a syndrome that’s been locked into the psychological Hollywood bloodstream for several decades, as natural and inevitable as a mountain stream or even the weather.

It’s not that The Fabelmans is a bad film — of course not! It’s a fairly good one in several respects, but you also have to qualify this with a sensible “yes, okay but calm down.” I’ve said this two or three times, but a truly fair-minded, non-obsequious opinion would have to acknowledge that the saga of Spielberg’s teenage years (mostly Phoenix, some Saratoga) is neither boring nor hugely interesting. It’s diverting in an on-the-nose, broadly performed way, but it mainly boils down to “decent with three pop-throughs — the Judd Hirsch rant, filming the Nazi war flick in the Arizona desert, and John Ford lecturing 17-year-old Steven about horizon lines.”

Face it — that’s what The Fabelmans is. It’s not a put-down to call it “good enough” or “reasonably decent.” And Matt Patches is correct — the major roles (including Ford at the end) could have been eccentrically performed by Eddie Murphy in white-person makeup.

Chris Evangelista is also spot-on about The Fabelmans 2. I would truly love to see Spielberg’s struggling years at Universal dramatized — Amblin, directing that Night Gallery episode with Joan Crawford, SS bonding with his “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” colleagues, filming Duel and then The Sugarland Express.

This would have to be followed, of course, by The Fabelmans 3, which would cover the glory years of ’74 through ’82 — the making of Jaws, Close Encounters, 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T..