Month: April 2023

In a 1997 speech called “Fighting the Culture War in America”, the late Charlton Heston, whom I regarded in the ’90s and early aughts as a wrong-headed guy because of his NRA representation, said something I agree with in a present-day context. Here, with edits, are Heston’s words:

“The law-abiding, Caucasian, middle-class Protestant or even worse, rural and apparently straight, or even worse, an admitted heterosexual, or even worse, a male working stiff…not only don’t you count, you are a downright obstacle to social progress. Your voice deserves a lower decibel level, your opinion is less enlightened, your media access is insignificant, and frankly, you need to wake up, wise up, and learn a little something from your new America. And until you do, would you mind shutting up?”

I didn’t relate to these words 26 years ago, but I do now. I didn’t even relate that much to the prickly political resentments that spawned Bill Maher‘s Politically Incorrect (’93 to ’02), or its title at least. I didn’t get on the anti-woke train until 2017 or thereabouts. What a difference a quarter-century makes.

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Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is authoritatively reporting that Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon is not three hours and 54 minutes, which is what the Movie Database had or reported on or about 4.14, but three hours and 26 minutes. Nearly a full half-hour shorter — not so bad!

Here’s Jordan Ruimy’s rundown of the various reported running times over the last several weeks.

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Taika Waititi‘s Next Goal Wins, a fact-based sports saga, and Terrence Malick‘s The Way of the Wind, a Jesus flick, share two similarities. They’re both between three and four years old, principal-photography-wise, and both are unreleased.

It was recently announced that Searchlight will release the Waititi film, which began shooting in November 2019 and wrapped in January 2020, on 11.17.23.

The Malick film, which wrapped in the fall of ’19, has no distributor and may not even peek through at a film festival this year, although that situation could change. This is par for the course for Malick. Typical post-production periods for his films occupy an average of a couple of years.

On 3.30.22 I wrote facetiously that “if Malick sticks to his usual post-production timetable, The Way of the Wind…will most likely open sometime in ’23.” It’s now almost certain that won’t happen and that a ’24 release date is the earliest possibility.

Delays of this length are fairly unprecedented. Both films are basically regarded as jokes at this stage, but Malick is the king of this realm.

It is my considered belief, supported by many years of arduous viewing, that Guy Ritchie is a highly skilled but superficial-minded hack. I’m not using the term “soulless whore,” but if someone were to accuse Ritchie of same I wouldn’t argue strenuously against this. And yet…

In the view of Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, The Covenant (MGM, 4.21) is proof that “against all odds, Guy Ritchie has become one of the best directors working.”

This Afghanistan war thriller “isn’t another Ritchie underworld caper,” Gleiberman claims. “He has put his confectionary flamboyance on hold. [For] The Covenant unveils something new: Ritchie the contempo classicist. We’re seeing a born-again filmmaker.

“The Covenant is a superbly crafted drama, [and] yet the most eyebrow-raising aspect of the movie, in light of Ritchie’s career, is the bone-deep humanity that animates the story. This is a war film dotted with heroism but dunked in despair.

“As a rescue thriller, it’s tinglingly suspenseful and real. What gives the film its power is the way that its climactic final act grows out of an organic metaphor for the flawed vision of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. We came in with the best of intentions, but got too lost in the quagmire to follow through on our promise to the Afghan people. And so we stranded them.

“In The Covenant, Ritchie tells a story of two men, but he’s really giving this war that never succeeded a kind of closure. He uses the power of movies to coax out the heart that fueled our actions, and that made our loss so hard to bear.”

It would have been heavenly if Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News had gone to trial. “Money is accountability,” of course, but the courtroom drama aspect is gone. Dominion had accused Fox of airing relentless bullshit charges about Dominion having allegedly fixed the results of the 2020 presidential election in Joe Biden‘s favor, and the case looked terrible for Fox and, by extension, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell and all the other fantasists who had insisted all along that the charges against Dominion had merit.

Alas, Fox and Dominion have settled and the fun factor has been sucked out the room. Fox will pay Dominion $787.5 million, Dominion has said. Over three quarters of a billion dollars.

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This is a fairly absurd hypothetical, but let’s imagine that somehow the raw, abrasive verite cop genre (Serpico, Report to the Commissioner, Busting, Prince of the City) never manifested in force during in the ’70s and ’80s, and that The French Connection was an explosive new film in 2023. Same style, same story, younger cast. Would it have a chance of winning the Best Picture Oscar, or would it be dismissed as impossibly racist and coarse and insensitive, etc.?

I know it’s a ridiculous supposition but kick it around anyway.

Note to 87 year-old director William Friedkin: I’ve scolded others about this before, but if you’re an over-70 celebrity interview subject you should never wear gray comfort sneakers or any kind of footwear that says “worn by an old guy because his feet would hurt otherwise.” Even if it hurts you should always wear uptown, expensive-looking, Italian-crafted leather footwear. And you should never wear baggy pants or dad jeans or anything in that realm — stick to fairly tight slacks, the kind that Thierry Fremaux always wears.

Two other things: Friedkin would also look a bit younger if he would wear his usual tinted distance glasses. And he should use a little hair thickener (Crew).

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Update: At long last IFC films has finally invited media members to a couple of BlackBerry screenings. The highest profile one is also open to the public — a 7 pm screening at the IFC center on Thursday, May 4th. Director, cowriter and costar Matt Johnson will sit for a post-screening q & a. Pic opens on 5.12.23.

Earlier: It’s been two full months since Matt Johnson‘s BlackBerry played the Berlinale and all kinds of “oh, wow!” responses were heard. Ever since I’ve been gently pestering IFC Films about Manhattan BlackBerry screenings or at least links. The film opens on Friday, May 12th, or three and a half weeks from now. It’s just around the corner and I’ve asked a few critic friends if they’v heard anything…zip. Actually there was a positive tweet yesterday by the Albany-based Lights Camera Jackson (i.e., Jackson Murphy), but I’m not sensing a lot of energy or enthusiasm from IFC Films.

Just screened #BlackBerry. I'll have some full thoughts closer to its May 12th release. For now I'll state that you should message your friends (on whichever device you choose) to make plans to see this in theaters. Jay Baruchel and @GlennHowerton are OUTSTANDING. @IFCFilms pic.twitter.com/AmzlAsnAkR

— Lights Camera Jackson (@LCJReviews) April 18, 2023

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Despite what happened in Chicago’s Loop district last weekend, which was basically sporadic violent chaos by roving mobs of urban youths, nobody’s allowed to sound too angry or draconian. Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson warned against demonizing the hordes who smashed car and store windows, beat people up, started bonfires, clashed with cops, etc.

“In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend,” Johnson said. “It is unacceptable and has no place in our city, [but] it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”

Translation: “Many non-white Chicago kids have been leading difficult lives and are understandably hot-tempered and economically frustrated, so we don’t want to racially simplify matters if they trash the Loop district and bust a few heads. We can’t tolerate this kind of thing, but at the same time we need to try and turn the other cheek because decades of political white power structure oppression have had an unfortunate effect.”

Chicago Tribune editorial: “Mr. Mayor-elect, this is not going to work.”

Everyone understands that they’re not allowed to say anything that even vaguely resembles alarmist sentiments heard in early April of 2010 after incidents of “wilding” in Times Square, and certainly nothing that resembles what Orange Plague and other riled-up, short-tempered Manhattanites said about the Central Park Five incident (and the wilding that preceded it) in 1989.

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Dumbest, funniest MAGA moron fantasy, etc. Straight or satirical…doesn’t matter.

The 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination will be upon us before we know it (concurrent, by the way, with the 11.22.23 opening of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon) and I’m asking myself something.

Why after all this time has no one ever suggested that Lenny Bruce may have been on to something when he suggested that Jackie Kennedy was simply, immediately terrified about being shot herself (as anyone would be) and was following a blind instinct to avoid a similar death by getting the hell away from the line of fire by climbing out of the back seat and onto the limousine trunk?

That has always seemed to me like a very natural and default kneejerk response — haul ass in order to save your own terrified, freaked-out ass.

And yet every last person who’s ever analyzed what happened during those fateful seconds in Dealey Plaza…they ALL say she was trying to retrieve a piece of her husband’s skull that had been blown onto the trunk. And maybe she was, but why has no one ever suggested that Bruce’s interpretation was at the very least a reasonable possibility?

If so, Jackie wasn’t behaving in some cowardly or ignoble fashion. She’d just seen half of JFK’s head — very close, only inches away — explode into blood and skull and brain matter and vapor — soaking her gloves bright red and all that cranial flotsam spraying upon her own face. Naturally she came to a split-second realization that she might be next and immediately thought about saving herself from a similar fate and, not incidentally, staying alive in order to care for her two children.

Would that have been such a terrible instantaneous reaction?

Spike Jonze‘s “Pardon Our Dust” ad (’05) is great and mythical because it’s about something much bigger and deeper than promoting the Gap brand. It’s about rage…rage against monolithic corporate design, against corporate uniformity and control, against wealthy have-it-alls…rage in favor of freedom, anarchy and all-around madness.

It might be the most liberating TV ad I’ve ever seen in my life. And every three or four years I intend to celebrate the fact that it was (a) made and (b) shown a few times (but not often).

Last posted on 4.30.20: HE hereby apologizes to Spike Jonze for having posted the badly-scored version of his landmark 2005 Gap commercial, “Pardon Our Dust,” instead of the correct one.

The correct version [directly below but shitty looking] uses Edvard Grieg‘s “In The Hall of The Mountain King,” which lends an arch, mock-bombastic air to the raucous destruction of the Gap store. The incorrectly scored version, posted yesterday, uses a sickening Up With People recording of “Don’t Stand Still.”

Between the two videos is a 2005 paragraph (written, I think, by an Ad Age reviewer) about the differences.