The special joys of what the HE lifestyle used to be on a year-round basis for nearly 20 years…”it’s not about the money…it’s the charge, it’s the bolt, it’s the buzz, it’s the sheer fuck-off’edness of it all…am I right?”…this kind of bracing, half-mad, snorting, surging life…the laughs and encounters, the luscious flavors and intrigues, the traveling and the airports at dawn and the cavernous European train stations, the occasional set visits, cool parties, subway intrigues, Academy screenings, small screenings, all-media screenings, press junkets, visiting the homes of friends near and far, noisy restaurants, walking the crowded streets of Rome, London, Paris and Hanoi, writing in crowded cafes, hitting the occasional bar with a pally or two, the aroma of exotic places and the hundreds upon hundreds of little things that just happen as part of the general hurly-burly…”
Seven are dead from a mass shooting at the Covenant School, an elementary school on the outskirts of Nashville. The cops are saying that the shooter was a female in her teens, armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun. Three students and three faculty members are dead along with the shooter. When the officers got to the second level of the school, they saw a female shooter, apparently in her teens, and they drilled her right quick.
…had been featured in John Wick: Chapter Four, I would have suspended my disdain and said “okay, not bad, impressive…especially the part with the crazy, lone-nut, vengeance-driven tire colliding with the destroyed SUV.” But of course, JW4 didn’t contain such a scene because Chad Stahelski is who he is and thinks like he thinks.
“It’s hard to imagine a film as radical or pessimistic [as this one] being made today,” he wrote. “Douglas’s lead character Jack Burns refuses to carry ID or listen to reason. He disrespects the power company by cutting its barbed-wire fences; the county jail, by breaking out; the sheriff, whose manhunt he eludes; the military-industrial complex, whose helicopter he shoots down; and us, the viewers, who — when the lights go up or the DVD ends — return to a life played mainly by the rules.
“Remarkably for a low-budget western, Lonely Are the Brave poses uneasy questions about the idea, and value, of heroism,” Cox concluded.
All my life I’ve been telling people that Lonely Are The Brave is one of Douglas’s finest films, and that it certainly contains one of his best performances. I told Douglas this when I interviewed him 41 years ago in Laredo, Texas, and he agreed without hesitation. I actually first said this to him a month or so earlier during a press meet-and=greet at Elaine’s, which Bobby Zarem had arranged.
I respect Lonely Are The Brave for what it does right. I love the plainness and simplicity of it. I love Walter Matthau‘s performance as the sheriff who gets what Jack Burns (or the Burns metaphor) is basically about, and who sympathizes with him. I love widescreen black-and-white photography by Philip Lathrop (Experiment in Terror, Days of Wine and Roses, Point Blank). And early on there’s a very well-handled scene between Burns and an ex-girlfriend, played by Gena Rowlands.
But Burns is too much for me these days. He’s such a romantic fool, a stubborn nine year-old, a middle-aged guy who never thinks farther than the next job, the next pretty girl in a bar, the next shot of rye, the well-being of his horse. He’s basically just swaggering around and saying “fuck it…I’m just not one of those guys who thinks practically about anything…fact is, I’m a romantic construct…a metaphor for the last sentimental cowboy battling the encroachments of civilization.”
I still like Lonely Are The Brave, mind. But not as much as I used to.
…to fully examine who was primarily at fault in a ski-slope collision that happened seven years ago (2.26.16)? Alleged victim Terry Sanderson, now 76, waited almost three years to sue Gwyneth Paltrow for $3.1 million, claiming she wham-slammed into him on a Deer Valley ski slope, breaking four ribs and knocking him cold before “bolting” down the hill.
On 11.26.12, IndieWire‘s Oliver Lyttletonfiled the following: “One of cinema’s most enduring urban legends is that Ronald Reagan was originally cast as Rick in the project. In fact, it was never true, but there is at least fair basis for the rumors. Reagan was named, along with Ann Sheridan (AngelsWithDirtyFaces) and Dennis Morgan (River’s End) in a studio press release as taking the lead roles in the project in early 1942.
“But in fact, none were actually involved. Having been called up to active army duty after Pearl Harbor, Reagan had been ruled out. He was, however, seemingly mentioned by publicists along with Sheridan and Morgan in an attempt to keep their names out there. George Raft also famously turned the project down, but again, the truth of that is in doubt.
“The studio’s records suggest that Bogart had always been producer Hal Wallis‘ first choice for the part, though Jack Warner may have preferred Raft. There were other actors considered for other parts, though. Hedy Lamarr — who also starred in “Algiers” — was mentioned for the role of Ilsa, but MGM wouldn’t release her from her contract (Lamarr went on to play the role in a 1944 radio adaptation opposite Alan Ladd as Rick). French actress Michele Morgan (Le Quaid des brumes) did test for the part, but RKO wanted a whopping $55,000 to loan her to Warners, so the studio went for Bergman as David O. Selznick was asking half as much money for her, so long as Warners would lend him Olivia de Haviland in exchange.”
Pretty mucb every panting admirer of John Wick: Chapter Four is aroused by the logistics of making it…magnificent visual dynamic, breathtaking Parisian backdrops, magnificent set dressings, brilliant choreographic energy, a relentless violent ballet, etc.
None of them are addressing what the film actually is…what it’s saying…what it actually amountsto.
A highly unusual and disturbing thing happened in bucolic Wilton on the morning of Tuesday, 3.21, or five days ago. A 39 year-old married guy was stabbed to death by a 31 year-old nutbag neighbor. The victim’s name was Arinzechukwu “Red” Ukachukwu (tough pronounce), and the killer was and is Sebastian Andrews, a 31 year-old guy who was living with his father and an older brother on Wilton’s Indian Hill Road.
The victim and his wife, Alisha Lager, bought their home “after the pandemic,” according to a toothless story by Hearst Media Group’s Peter Yankowski. Lager is left to care for their two-year-old son.
I found an attractive, magic-hour photo of the couple on Lager’s Facebook page. The victim, the assailant and Lager — all Millennials.
Yankowski: “Born on 1.12.84, Ukachukwu was a creative entrepreneur, musician and a tech wizard. He was raised in Brooklyn by parents who were active in the Nigerian community. He attended private schools and then Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. In 2005 he graduated from the University of Albany with a degree in economics.”
Fox61’s Matt Caronreported that at last Wednesday’s hearing Andrews asked to speak and was advised by his attorney, Kevin Black, not to say anything. The state’s attorney said that “there appears to be some sort of psychological issue involved.”
The arrest warrant reports that Andrews alleged that he found Ukachukwu “trespassing on [his father’s] property several times.” This appears to be an unsubstantiated claim.
Compounded with the “psychological issue,” facts suggests that the killing was some kind of bizarre racial hate crime, perhaps in a vein vaguely similar to the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Who stabs a neighbor with a kitchen knife and then drags his body into a garage and then takes a shower and calmly waits for the cops to arrive?
The crime was reported by Andrews’ father, who saw the killing happen in real time. Nobody has spoken to him, nor has anyone explored if his now-jailed son had some kind of social media history. I poked around and found nothing.
In yesterday’s pan of the revolting and deplorable John Wick: Chapter Four, I should have mentioned my grudging respect for an extended, uncut overhead shot of Keanu Reeves going from room to room and blasting bad guys at every turn with the camera constantly maintaining its God’s-eye viewpoint.
In a 3.25 interview with TheWrap‘s Scott Mendelson, dp DanLaustsen (totally unpronouncable) explains that the scene utilized a set built on one of the Studio Babelsberg sound stages.
Laustsen: “It’s one crane shot and one spider cam shot where we are starting on the stairs and flying around. We did in eight or ten takes. The light must be outside the set. We see the whole set. That’s the challenge when your shots are wide and the entire set is in view.”
John Wick 4’s god’s-eye gunfight has been called the “Hotline Miami” scene but I was surprised to see Chad name an even more obscure indie game as inspiration
HONG KONG MASSACRE is Hotline Miami x John Woo, and JW4 beautifully adopts its top-down look & gargantuan muzzle flashes pic.twitter.com/hGU3A47icE
Until last night I somehow didn’t realize that there’s a real possibility that TikTok might be forced to sell, at least as far as this country or North America is concerned. I thought it was just political sturm und drang. I didn’t think anything would actually happen.
