Day: October 14, 2023

Ruimy’s Scorsese Poll

by

Jordan Ruimy‘s Best Films of Martin Scorsese poll popped yesterday. Ruimy tallied the preferences of 114 critics, and the top three — no surprise — are Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. I’m sorry but those are vaguely boring, right-down-the-middle choices. The Des Moines Realtors Association would’ve picked these.

HE’s top three are Raging Bull, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Last Temptation of Christ.

The two least admired Scorsese films on Ruimy’s list are Boxcar Bertha and Who’s That Knocking On My Door?, which got no votes.

The voted-upon Scorsese flicks with the lowest counts are The Color of Money, New York, New York and The Aviator, which snagged one vote each. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Shutter island and Gangs of New York got two votes each. Cape Fear got 3, Kundun, 4 and Silence, 7.

HE’s three least favorite Scorsese flicks are Kundun, Shutter Island and The Aviator.

Read more

Anti-“Ferrari” Prejudice Among Younger Critics?

by

HE commenter Manwe Sulimo: “Why do you think festival critics are meh on Ferrari?”

HE: “Perhaps because festival critics don’t like it when a movie is delivering two things at once, an emotionally intimate family drama along with an exciting, high-torque racecar flick. Maybe they think it should be just one thing and not both at the same time?

“Ferrari is mostly an intimate, dialogue-driven thing about Enzo Ferrari’s family and business matters and therefore doesn’t really commit to the racing stuff in a sustained, whole-hog, Steve McQueen-in-Le Mans way until the final 35 minutes or thereabouts.

“I’m guessing that younger (Millennial, Zoomer) critics might feel a tad removed or skeptical given that Ferrari isn’t set in an era that they personally relate to. 1957 (i.e., the year of the Mille Miglia tragedy) was 66 years ago. For critics who regard the 1980s as a long time ago, that may be a bridge too far.

“What I particularly loved about Ferrari is Eric Messerschmidt‘s cinematography, which carries the Gordon Willis torch and is very reminiscent of the palette of The Godfather, Part II.”

Rayfiel’s “Ferrari” History

by

The Ferrari wikipage has a section about the genesis of the project, and right at the top it says that director Michael Mann “first began exploring making Ferrari around 2000, having discussed the project with Sydney Pollack.”

This suggests why the late David Rayfiel, the screenwriting “colorist” who worked on several respected Pollack films (The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, The Firm) as an uncredited “pinch hit” guy…it suggests why Rayfiel, who died 12 years ago, has an IMDB credit for “additional literary credit” on Ferrari.

Having just noticed this credit, a friend asked me if I heard Rayfiel’s voice while watching Ferrari.

HE reply: “I could not hear David’s voice — not in the same way I’ve heard his voice in all those Pollack films. But what do I know?”

“JBM” in HE comment thread: “Mann was the final writer, combining two scripts by the late Troy Kennedy Martin (died in ’09) and Rayfiel (died in ’11). But Martin did the heavy lifting.”

Just Catching Up Due to “Ferrari”

by

Fair HE Statement: Even in the tragic and traumatic here-and-now, it’s not anti-Semitic to explain or acknowledge the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Familiar quote: “If the Arabs were to to put down their weapons, there would be peace. If the Jews were to put down their weapons, there’d be no more Jews in the Middle East.”

Funny: “I think we need to shut down Harvard University until we figure out what the hell’s going on.”

Read more