Month: January 2023

BAFTA’s long lists are bringing me down, man. ’20 and ’21 were downish years, obviously, but so was ’22 to some extent. Several “good” films and performances here, but nothing really turns me on except for Top Gun: Maverick and Cate Blanchett‘s Lydia Tar. Not a single Best Picture long-list selection made me swoon…not really. Each creme de la creme film has stuff that irritates me. Example: I hated, hated, hated Todd Field‘s decision to run Tar‘s closing credits at the very beginning.

The whole year was like that. What happened to the concept of movies reaching into your soul and altering the way you see life? Half the time after seeing a film in a commercial megaplex I want to pick a fight with an usher, preferably a fat Millennial one. Well, not actually but I fantasize about this from time to time.

BAFTA’s Best Picture Long List (alphabetized) + HE reactions + my own preferred list of ten.

Aftersun (HE: Dreary, inconclusive, middle-of-the-night nothingness inside a Turkish coastal resort for British tourists…my eyes glazed over, my brain left the room.)

All Quiet on the Western Front (HE: “I respect and admire AQOTWF for what it is and what it’s worth. But in our current realm this kind of large-sprawling-canvas, chaos-and-brutality-of-war film can only sink in so far. And 147 minutes felt too long. 120 or 125 would have sufficed.”)

The Banshees of Inisherin (HE: “There are many sane people out there who’ve found this film mystifying. I respect many things about it, including Kerry Condon’s performance. It’s not ‘bad’ as much as infuriating.”)

Elvis (HE: “Elvis isn’t quite as bad as I feared, but several sections are punishing to sit through. It’s a flashy, pushy, often exhausting carnival sideshow, very primary and primitive, clearly made for the ADD peanut gallery…a fairly blunt tool. And Tom Hanks‘ Colonel Parker accent is impossible.”

Everything Everywhere All At Once (HE: “It made me want to jump off the top of a 50-story office building with the intention of pressing a hand grenade against my chest and pulling the pin halfway down.”)

The Fabelmans (HE: “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.'”)

Living (HE: “The descriptive terms are ‘low-key,’ ‘no hurry,’ ‘tonally and visually accurate” (it’s set in 1952 London) and ‘quietly affecting emotional undertow.’ One quibble: Whenever old-school British bureaucrats of yore sat down in their first-class train compartments and unfolded their newspapers, they took their bowler hats off. Not so in Hermanus’ film.”)

Tar (HE: “Atmospherically transporting, powerfully charged and yet curiously infuriating. Watching with subtitles definitely helps. The best of the bunch, but I almost wish it wasn’t.”)

Top Gun: Maverick (HE: “High-powered San Diego flyboy saga, great action sequences, unambiguously straight-while-male-ish, “Great Balls of Fire”, etc.

Triangle of Sadness (HE: Not as good as The Square.)

In this order, HE’s top ten picks of ’22 (originally posted on 12.20.22):

Empire of Light
Close
Happening
Vengeance
She Said
Emily The Criminal
Christian Mungiu‘s R.M.N.
Top Gun: Maverick
Avatar: The Way of Water
Tar (despite the many irritations)

This was the very first video sent to me by Tatiana during her Mexico-and-Cuba trip. It’s still my favorite. I’d really like to go there. Buena Vista Social Club, etc.

Having scored an early copy of Prince Harry’s “Spare” (Random House, 1.10), The Guardian‘s Martin Pengelly has posted a tale about Harry’s elder brother, Prince William, knocking him to the floor during verbal fisticuffs over Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle.

Brothers are allowed to slap each other around if they want to, and nobody should have anything to say about it. It’s between them.

I should add, however, that while I’ve never had any feelings or opinions about William up until now, reading that he bashed chickenshit Harry fills me with (I’m perfectly serious) newfound respect.

Harry has written that following the slapdown, his first telephone call was to his therapist. What a pathetic candy-ass! His therapist!

Friendo: “On Tuesday, 1.3, five ostensible Oscar contenders — Babylon, Empire of Light, The Banshees of Inisherin, Women Talking and Tar — made about $730,000 on 1,575 screens. Averaging three showings per day (or should I say four?), that’s about 10 people per showing, which just about matches my personal experience.

“Based on total box office, these films have collectively drawn about four million ticket buyers since their release. One presumes that very few righties are paying to see these films. Using the Biden vote total of 80 million as a yardstick, it’s obvious that lefties are not patronizing them either. Not really.

“Traditional liberal adults simply aren’t going to see these things. Not to any appreciable degree. Even wokesters aren’t. The filmmakers may be liberal and their films may also qualify, but even if every ticket buyer to these films was a leftie, the under-attendance factor (to put it mildly) would still be there.

“Everything Everywhere All At Once ($70 million domestic, $100,814,600 worldwide) has only been seen by about five million U.S. adult residents, of which there are over two hundred million (209,128.094) in the US. That’s roughly four per cent of the adult population. Okay, 4.5%.

“Even if they are all libs, that is a tiny percentage of them. If Hollywood made movies that actually appealed to the Average Joes and Janes, they could make piles of cash. But their prestige films are barely attracting anyone.”

Purely from memory, but my memory’s pretty good when it comes to Paddy Chayefsky….a post-coital scene between the late Diana Rigg and the late George C. Scott, from Chayefsky and Arthur Hiller‘s The Hospital (’71):

Rigg: “I love you, Herb, and want to marry you and have children. And of course, you love me. I mean, you ravaged me three times.”

Scott: “Three times?”

Rigg: “You were as puffed up as a toad about it. Punched a slight hole in your crusade for universal impotence, didn’t it?”

Scott: “Diana, I raped you last night in a suicidal rage. Where did we get love and children out of that?”

Rigg: “For heaven’s sake, Herb. I ought to know whether a man loves me or not. Last night you screamed it, bellowed it, shouted it from an open window.”

Scott: “Well, I think those were more feelings of gratitude than anything else.”

Rigg: “Gratitude for what?”

Scott: “Well, my God, for resurrecting feelings of life inside me that I thought dead!”

Rigg: “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Herb…what do you think love is?”

Scott: “All right, I love you! I’m not about to argue with so relentless a romantic.”

Duel, the made-for-TV thriller that launched Steven Spielberg’s career, originally aired on 11.13.71. The original length was 74 minutes.

To the best of my knowledge the original TV version hasn’t been in circulation, if ever. The Duel Bluray contains only the extended 90-minute version that was assembled for theatrical release in Europe and Australia. Here are two links for the original version, in two sizes — 74 minute version #1 (3.7 GB) and 74 minute version #2 (700.9 MB).

Filming happened in a desert region northeast of Los Angeles (Sierra Highway, Agua Dulce Canyon Road, Soledad Canyon Road, Angeles Forest Highway). Principal photography took 13 days (three longer than the scheduled), leaving 10 days for editing prior to broadcast as the ABC Movie of the Week.

The positiveresponse was such that Universal decided to release Duel theatrically in Europe and Australia. Wiki excerpt: “The TV movie, however, wasn’t long enough for theatrical release, so Universal had Spielberg spend two days filming several new scenes, turning Duel into a 90-minute film.

The 90-minute Duel Bluray was released on 10.14.14, as part of the eight-film box set Steven Spielberg Director’s Collection. It was also released as a separate Bluray on 5.5.15.

A few days ago I reminded that the RRR cult is 85% about white critics doing the virtue-signalling dance. Earlier today World of Reel commenter Braylon Thompson said more or less the same thing:

All hail Normal World creator Dave Landau. Which comedy satire TV show wouldn’t dare present a sketch like this? These are the soft-spoken monsters who have brought terror into all of our lives. The Millennial fatass I tangled with a few nights ago in Milford was cut from this exact same cloth.

Last night a six–month–old Substack piece called “The Importance of Being Earnest,” penned by Sherman McCoy, was passed along, I blame the whole trend of irony-poisoned, meta-commentary dialogue on the Marvel/D.C. plague as well as Millennials and Zoomers in general. I for one would love it if sincere dialogue and plotting where to make a comeback.

Anyway…