Month: January 2024

And so, apart from respectful sympathy, I have nothing effusive or impassioned to share about the passing of David Soul, 80.

The only contact I’ve ever had with the Starsky brand was the 2004 Ben Stiller-Owen Wilson feature comedy, which was directed by Todd Phillips and costarred Vince Vaughn, Snoop Dog, Jason Bateman and Fred Williamson. Honestly? Even that is a fading memory. Pic opened two months shy of 20 years ago (3.5.04)

The original ABC Starsky & Hutch series ran for five years and change (April ‘75 to August ‘79).

Essence of Rod Lurie’s 1.4.04 THR piece about Hollywood filmmakers needing to step up to the anti-Semitism plate:

“What we should be hoping to see are movies and TV shows that highlight the extraordinarily powerful resistance the Jewish people have had against the forces that have long tried to destroy them.

“And we need those films to also highlight Jewish humanism. These are the kind of films that spit in the face of antisemitism.

“Probably the finest of this sort of film is Munich, Steven Spielberg’s 2005 depiction of the revenge that the Israelis sought out against the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972. No, let me rephrase that — it’s about the justice that was sought.

“We need more movies like Munich. But the truth is that many are scared to make them. Over the years, I have often tried to make Israel-centric films, and I have been stopped every time. If the Holocaust isn’t somehow at the center of the film, it barely stands a chance of being made — even with big stars attached.

Over the years, the greenlighting authorities have been squeamish about alienating audiences. ‘How will it play in France?’ ‘How will it play in Germany?’ ‘We don’t want protestors at our gates.’

Bottom line: “Munich would never have been made it if it didn’t have one of the greatest and most successful directors in history behind it.”

HE to Lurie: Here’s the only thing that’s hanging me up right now

What is the proper ratio of murdered Israelis to murdered Gaza residents?

How many Israelis were murdered on October 7th? The final death toll from the 10.7 attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139.

As of right now Gaza’s health ministry says 22,185 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7th.

In other words 20 times more Palestinians have died than Israelis killed on Oct.7th. More than 20 dead Palestians for every single dead Israeli citizen.

What is the proper ratio? 10 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli citizen? 25? 50? 100? When will the score be even?

That’s the only equation that bothers me right now.

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The last time I checked Truman Capote’s mid ‘70s social suicide (Esquire’s publishing of “La Cote Basque, 1965“, a roman a clef chapter from his never-published “Answered Prayers”), was more his story than the story of “the swans.”

But the trailer for Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (FX Hulu, 1.31) seemingly has it ass backwards. The scenario is all about Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), Slim Keith (Diane Lane), C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny), Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart) and Joanne Carson (Molly Ringwald), and secondarily about Capote.

I’ve no idea why the late Gloria Vanderbilt isn’t a character (she was certainly in “La Cote Basque, 1965“), but perhaps CNN’s Anderson Cooper, her son, presented the filmmakers with difficult terms.

That said, Tom Hollander seems to have his Capote impersonation well in hand.

The eight-part miniseries was directed by Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler and Jennifer Lynch, and written by Jon Robin Baitz.

Wiki excerpt: “Capote sold four chapters (‘Mojave’, ‘La Cote Basque, 1965’, ‘Unspoiled Monsters’ and ‘Kate McCloud’) of the novel-in-progress to Esquire at the behest of Gordon Lish in 1975 and 1976.

“’Mojave’ was published in the magazine’s June 1975 issue to little fanfare. However, with the publication of ‘La Cote Basque, 1965’ in the November 1975 issue, there was an uproar of shock and anger among Capote’s friends and acquaintances, who recognized thinly veiled characters based on themselves.

“Both ‘Mojave’ and ‘La Cote Basque, 1965’ were exposés of the dysfunctional personal lives led by the author’s social benefactors, including CBS head William S. Paley, his wife Babe (then terminally ill with cancer), Gloria Vanderbilt (depicted as being insufferably vacuous), Happy Rockefeller and Ann Woodward.

“The Paleys would never socialize with Capote again and led an exodus of ostracizing friends. Subsequently, ‘Unspoiled Monsters’ and ‘Kate McCloud’ were published in the periodical in May 1976 and December 1976, respectively.”

Here’s a summary of the “Cote Basque” nitty gritty, written by Madeline Hiltz of the Vintage News.

A month ago I briefly reviewed Jeff Pope‘s Archie, a four-part Britbox miniseries about the emotionally and psychologically fraught Cary Grant. I didn’t like it much, but after watching the final two episodes I was struck by a curious observation.

The series is based upon a 1992 tell-all by Grant’s fourth wife, Dyan Cannon, titled “Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant.” (They were married between 1965 and 1967.) Cannon, an executive producer of Archie, is played by Laura Aikman.

You would think, given the political circumstances, that Cannon would be portrayed sympathetically, but she isn’t. She comes off as anything but a day at the beach. Aikman portrays her, frankly, like a wife from hell — contentious, argumentative, feisty, completely uninterested in peace and placidity, and ready to take Grant’s head off at the drop of a hat.

One naturally presumes that Cannon was okay with this, but you have to wonder why. No marriage is ever a bed of roses, but my impression was “Jesus Christ, why did Grant ever marry that predator?”

Grant and Cannon began dating in 1961, when she was 24 and he was 57. They married on 7.22.65. Cannon filed for divorce in September 1967.

“I’ve made thuh preservationuharrAmerican democracy thuh central issue of my Presidency…agh believe in free and fair elections, the right to vote fairly and tuh have your vote counted…” — Joe Biden‘s opening words in new campaign ad.

It’s fair to say that this 60-second ad is primarily aimed at diverse rainbow types.

Until the one-third mark all the sympathetic faces are non-white. Footage of white, Confederate-flag-carrying yokels who marched in Charlottesville and during the Jan. 6th insurrection are shown between :12 and :18. A neutral-mannered 70something white bumblefuck type (i.e, blue plaid shirt) appears at the 19-second mark; another aging, white-bearded bumblefuck voter with a Home Depot baseball cap appears at the 24-second mark.

We’re shown a blonde Anglo Saxon female (40ish) with a ballot covering her face at the 40-second mark. The 1945 Iwo Jima guys (including Native American Ira Hayes) appear at the 52-second mark. But no white male Millennials and Zoomers, or none that I’ve noticed. And no middle-aged, beefy-faced white guys at all, most of whom are presumed to be Trump or RFK, Jr. voters.

At the 48-second mark Biden says, “That’s our soul…we are the United States Uhmerica.” He wanted to say “of” but it didn’t quite happen, and the ad guys decided against looping it in.

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Zelda Williams and Diablo Cody‘s Lisa Frankenstein (Focus Features, 2.9), which I will almost certainly hate, appears to be a blend of two basic ideas.

One, the trope of a headstrong teenage girl (Kathryn Newton‘s “Lisa Swallows”) falling for some kind of eccentric, misunderstood outlaw or anti-social weirdo (Cole Sprouse), except in this instance it’s a reanimated corpse who smells bad. (And probably has bad breath.)

And two, a riff on Winona Ryder‘s “Lydia Deetz” in Beetlejuice, a goth girl communing with the dead except in this instance it’s a rotting, stinky dead guy instead of husband-and-wife ghosts (Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis).

Plus Lisa Frankenstein is set in 1989, or one year after the release of Beetlejuice.

Ryder will return in Beetlejuice 2 (Warner Bros., 9.6.24). The Tim Burton-directed sequel stars Michael Keaton, of course, along with Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe “as a ghost detective who, in life, was a B movie action star.”

Yesterday afternoon Variety’s Clayton Davis reported that AMPAS has officially classified Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Barbie script as adapted and not original.

While this is good news for The Holdovers as far as its chances in the Best Original Screenplay competish are concerned, it’s an unfair call.

Gerwig and Baumbach didn’t adapt a previously written Barbie story — they created a story out of a situational Barbie template.

Imagine if someone had written an original screenplay about Jesus of Nazareth returning to the earth in 2023 and becoming a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur. By the Academy’s thinking this would be classified as an adapted screenplay because it borrows from the lore and template of the New Testament.

But of course screenplays aren’t about templates but stories (initial intrigue, structure, tension, second-act pivot, third-act payoff). Using Jesus or Barbie as a central character does not a screenplay make.

In his latest THR Oscar forecast column Scott Feinberg is claiming that Past Lives helmer Celine Song is a more broadly popular Best Director nominee than Poor Things’ Yorgos Lanthimos, The Holdovers’ Alexander Payne and Maestro’s Bradley Cooper.

This is insanity! What kind of woke-ass, gender-focused sewing circle is Feinberg having tea with?

Past Lives is a nicely assembled but unsatisfying relationship film that doesn’t do the thing or bring it home (i.e., in crude terms it doesn’t let you come). It has been written off as a decent try by sensible industry folk, and yet Feinberg is allowing himself to be fiddle-fiddled by the A24 safe-space mafia…the identity fanatics who are whispering “we need a woman of color in the mix.”

Wanting to become a Catholic deacon is “better” than wanting to become a heroin addict or an Islamic terrorist, but in the realm of Shia LeBeouf it’s the same basic dynamic — an inability to trust his own mystical realm and an urge to submit to a stronger external current.

Meanwhile we all want to see Abel Ferrara’s Padre Pio…seriously.

I just want to come clean and admit that despite my projecting a devotional film buff profile all my life or at least since the ‘80s, I never got around to seeing Carl Dreyer‘s The Passion of Joan of Arc (’28) until last night.

But I finally went there, man, and now I’m “experienced” in the Jimi Hendrix sense of the term.

An English-subtitled version of the definitve director’s cut (i.e., the 1981 Oslo version) became available for free public domain streaming on 1.1.24, you see, and that’s what I watched. Lying in bed, MacBook Pro, best headphones.

Good God, what a lapel-grabbing, no-way-out masterpiece! Right away it leaps out at you and says “stop scrolling and whatever the hell else you’re doing and grim up and give it up and watch this, will you?”

I knew right away it was made by a genius…a no-bullshit artist from the same general gene pool as Eisenstein, Murnau, Fincher, Eggers, Kubrick, Ford, Bresson, Fellini, Kurosawa, Scorsese, Powell.

The incessant close-ups, the feeling of Dreyer being in total control, the penetrating focus, the brilliant use of montage, the tracking shots, the sets (painted pink so as to stand out against the white sky), the anguish, the purity, the pain and the cruelty.

What a bleeding, bllistering, open-hearted titular performance by Renee Jean Falconetti.

And the cinematography by Ruolph Mate, who also shot Foreign Correspondent and Gilda and directed D.O.A., When Worlds Collide and The 300 Spartans (a decent sword-and-sandal epic).

I can’t stand tapping this out on the iPhone with the car running…more later.

We haven’t seen much snow in the northeast recently, and the odds are that with global warming and all we’re not going to see much of the stuff from here on. Spotty, half-assed snowfalls at best.

I grew up in New Jersey and Connecticut, and each and every winter we were pretty much blanketed with snowfalls between December and March. Two or three and sometimes four, I mean. Shovelling out the front steps and pathways. Shovelling out driveways. Snowball fights. Carrot-nosed snowmen in the front yard.

Blizzards, I fear, are pretty much a thing of the past. I endured an astonishing blizzard in NYC in ’81 or thereabouts.

It’s going to snow this weekend, I’m hearing, but not that much. It didn’t snow at all last year. Be honest — the world that some of us knew in the mid to late 20th Century is going away. Climate change is affecting everything. We’re all melting.

Otherwise all I can say is that (a) Zac Efron sure looks better without the buffed-up wrestler bod and that godawful Prince Valiant hair, and (b) award–wise Colman Domingo, due respect, isn’t happening,