Month: March 2023

One, he’s done…he’s “Elvis at the end“…the power and the glory vibes are a fading memory. Two, his negatives are through the roof and certain to climb as the indictments accumulate. Three, he’s a proven crime boss and sociopath six ways from Sunday. And four, he lost the 2020 election, his election-denying MAGA brand was largely responsible for the Democratic gains in the ’22 elections, and he’s certain to come up short in ’24. And yet Republican nutters are determined to nominate him anyway.

Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty is an immensely satisfying real-world, fact-based thriller and easily one of the greatest films of the 21st Century…a touchstone that everyone has to see and re-see and think about often.

I’ve seen it a good six or seven times, and I could easily watch it again tonight with pleasure. I admire it so much that a part of me wants to purchase the 4K version, even though I know it’s not that much of a bump from the 1080p Bluray.

And I really get infuriated when I run into people who bring up the torture content as something that undermines the basic quality of the film (it doesn’t in the slightest) or who say they found it somehow boring or uninvolving.

From Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter enthusiastic review: “Whether you call it well informed speculative history, docu-drama recreation or very stripped down suspense filmmaking, Zero Dark Thirty matches form and content to pretty terrific ends.

“And yet [pic] will be tough for some viewers to take, not only for its early scenes of torture, including water boarding but due to its denial of conventional emotionalism and non-gung ho approach to cathartic revenge-taking.

McCarthy’s suspicion is that ZDT‘s “rigorous, unsparing approach will inspire genuine enthusiasm among the serious, hardcore film crowd more than with the wider public.”

“Even though it runs more than two-and-a-half hours, Zero Dark Thirty is so pared to essentials that even politics are eliminated,” McCarthy goes on. “There’s essentially no Bush or Cheney, no Iraq War, no Obama announcing the success of the May 2, 2011 raid on Bin Laden’s in-plain-sight Pakistani compound. [And yet] the film’s power steadily and relentlessly builds over its long course, to a point that is terrifically imposing and unshakable.”

Read more

I couldn’t think of anything to say about last Friday’s Chris Rock set in Baltimore. All that surfaced was (a) the lingering humiliation factor entitled Rock to say whatever the hell he wanted, and (b) his remarks about Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith seemed entirely fair and reasonable.

I strongly disagree with Clayton Davis’s Facebook remarks. The Variety columnist found Rock’s set “tasteless,” and said that “calling Jada a bitch is totally uncalled for.” Oh, it was called for, all right!

The forthcoming 2023 Telluride Film Festival will celebrate its 50th anniversary, and will run an extra day in honor of that — Thursday, 8.31 thru Monday, September 4th. And of course, the price-gouging locals are charging even more than the usual arm and a leg for habitats.

A friend who was looking to rent a three-bedroom condo reports that “it’s worse this year than ever…I wasn’t going to lay out 10 grand for four days…okay, that’s a slight exaggeration…when I was looking around the rates were from $6K at the cheapest up to $15K. $15K for four days! The cheaper stuff was up at Mountain Village.”

Telluride friendo who attends every year: “The housing thing is infuriating and happening everywhere. Price gouging is among the most horrific of sins. Weird fees, surge pricing and monopolies need to be regulated. Capitalism is fine but not as it’s currently constructed.”

Hollywood Elsewhere has always stayed at the Mountainside Inn, aka “the poor man’s Telluride flophouse.” I haven’t checked the ’23 rates, but I’m guessing it’ll be something in the vicinity of $1500 or $1600. That’s a lot for a glorified Motel 6 room that would run $110 per night in any rural part of the country.

I love this excerpt from Brad Pitt’s tribute speech to David Fincher during the Cesar Awards ceremony, which happened on Friday, 2.24.

Pitt: “Here are some things you might hear on a David Fincher set. (a) “Let’s shoot this, please, before we all lose interest in living.” (b) “Okay, we have the out-of-focus version — let’s try one that’s in focus.” (c) “If you pan to the right and see that in your frame again, you have my permission to take your own life.” And (d) “I want you guys to enjoy yourselves, but that’s what Saturdays and Sundays are for.”

Until this morning I had somehow never heard, and had certainly never used, the slang term “bougie.” Short for bourgeois, it means people with elite or pretentious airs who haven’t earned the cred. The Urban Dictionary examples suggests it’s primarily a Black culture term, but it’s okay for guys like me to use it. A white female friend used it this morning.

…is that it’s “great,” or so says one fellow. Another calls it “enormously entertaining and satisfying, with really strong work from Matt Damon and (especially) Chris Tucker.”

My first viewing of Gregg Araki‘s The Doom Generation happened at Sundance ’95 — 28 years ago and change.

Three months later I was working under Andy Olstein and the late Robert Sam Anson at Los Angeles magazine, and we’d all decided to run a big-spread piece about the new neo-noir fashion in movies (The Usual Suspects, Natural Born Killers, Leaving Las Vegas, the year-old Pulp Fiction, Araki’s film). I was the designated talent wrangler, and so I persuaded Araki, Bryan Singer, Benicio del Toro, Elizabeth Shue, Lara Flynn Boyle and Don Murphy to pose for photos at Smashbox.

I mainly remember the sploogey sexual stuff in Araki’s film, which I rather liked or was at least aroused by. It was basically a kind of hit-and-miss, hot-and-heavy, three-way relationship thing between Rose McGowan, James Duval and Jonathon Schaech. (An actual menage a trois happens toward the end with McGowan being love-muscled by both guys simultaneously.) The plot involved felonies and being chased around Los Angeles. If you want the chapter and verse, read the Wiki synopsis. Heidi Fleiss (whom I had done a fair amount of reporting about for Entertainment Weekly) has a cameo.

Tagline: “A Heterosexual Movie by Gregg Araki.”

McGowan was 21 or thereabouts during filming. On 9.5.23 she’ll hit the big five-oh.

A new 4K Bluray of a director’s cut will pop sometime in mid April or thereabouts. The NYC premiere will happen on April 6 at BAM. the following day it will begin shoewing at Manhattan’s IFC theatre; other bookings will follow in other cities.

Read more

Michael Fassbender speaking to self during initial negotiations: “I’ve kind of fallen into a career ditch — I know that. And I have to do something. Maybe stop glaring and brooding and looking haunted and pissed off. Maybe exude something looser and more conventionally romantic…more woman-friendly.

“Maybe making a Nancy Meyers film will work and maybe it won’t, but I should at least give it a shot. I need to smile and settle in and become Mr. Smoothie. Not Mr. Happy — that has a sexual connotation that I don’t need to get into after Shame — but Mr. Slip Slidey, and I don’t mean that in a Paul Simon sense. But not in a predatory sense either. Smooth and accomodating.”

“Adrienne Rich wrote, ‘I do know that art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.

“The world is beautiful. The world is impossibly complicated. And we have the opportunity to explore that. If we give that up for the carrot, then we might as well be the executives.

“I have dropped the ball, I have wasted years seeking the approval of people with money. Don’t get trapped in their world of box office numbers. You don’t work for the world of box-office numbers. You work for the world. Just make your story honest and tell it.

“They’ve tricked us into thinking we can’t do it without them. The truth is they can’t do anything of value without us.”

HE to Kaufman: Since when have the suits wanted to do “anything of value”? Haven’t they pretty nuch shut that shit down?

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond is nursing a hunch that All Quiet on the Western Front will win the Best Picture Oscar on Sunday. My gut says otherwise but if this turns out to be true…good heavenly God! If EEAAO loses the big prize there will be cries of joy heard across the land.