Month: May 2024

“Scarface” Congregation at IFC Center

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To promote the just-published “The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface,” author Glenn Kenny hosted a Wednesday evening (5.8) IFC Center screening of Brian DePalma’s 1983 gangster classic.

After the show GK discussed aspects of the production saga, took questions and signed a few books with a felt-tip pen.

HE has read the first 40 or 50 pages and heartily approves. A very tasty and nourishing Hollywood story with dozens of first-hand sources. The prose is smooth and confident…swaggering even.

Al Pacino didn’t speak to Kenny because his own personal Scarface saga account will appear in the autobiographical “Sonny Boy,” which will publish in October.

I was devastated to learn that Kenny wasn’t able to locate the whereabouts of that legendary 10–foot–tall oil painting of Tony and Elvira.

Sometime Within the Next Two or Three Years

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…Glenn Powell, youngish but no spring chicken, is going to have to star in a movie that isn’t mechanized, prefabricated, power-pumped, big-studio bullshit.

No, I still haven’t seen Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man (Netflix, 6.7), which began screening eight months ago and still hasn’t opened.

You can’t just spew jizz-whizz all the time. Every now and then it’s really necessary to put some nutrition into the cereal bowl.

Why So Cheerful?

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And what happened to the sideburns?

When Elvis Presley died in August 1977, John Lennon was famously quoted as saying “Elvis died when he went into the army in ’58.” While it’s arguably true that Presley’s peak years were from ’55 to ’58 (a four-year run), Lennon unfairly dismissed Presley’s televised comeback special, which aired on 12.3.68. He reclaimed his essence that night.

“Retuuurn to sinduhh!”

Rasoulof’s “Sacred Fig” Likely To Be Hailed, Awarded in Cannes

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It was reported this morning by Iranian cinema journalist Mansour Jahani that Mohammad Rasoulof, director of the forthcoming Cannes competition selection The Seed of the Sacred Fig, has been sentenced by the 29th branch of the Islamic Revolution Court of Iran to eight years in the slam.

Rasoulof (Manuscripts Don’t Burn, A Man of Integrity, There Is No Evil) will also be whipped, fined and have his property confiscated.

Babak Paknia, Rasoulof’s attorney, originally reported this on X. This ruling was recently confirmed in the 36th branch of the Court of Appeals. The case has been sent to enforcement.

Sacred Fig summary: “Iman, an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, grapples with mistrust and paranoia as nationwide political protests intensify and his gun mysteriously disappears.”

HE to Rasoulof: Blow this pop stand, move to Paris, live in glorious exile. Don’t give those fuckers eight years of your life.

Does Anyone Even Remember “Love Simon”?

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Posted on 3.15.18 — six years and change…feels like a lifetime ago…

Greg Berlanti‘s Love, Simon (20th Century Fox, 3.16) is definitely somewhat decent — an antiseptic, intensely suburban gay teen romance that’s also about coming out. It’s the first big-screen adaptation of a YA novel (Becky Albertalli‘s “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”) that I’ve actually half-liked, and it is kind of a big cultural deal that Fox is releasing a gentle, emotionally pliant, same-sex love story in 2400 theatres.**

Love, Simon is smartly written (the screenplay authors are This Is Us showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger) and straight-friendly, but — here come the caveats — it feels like a professional sell-job. Like an advertisement for the way things ought to be in Young Gay Utopia. It feels too tidy, too TV-realm, too “produced” and not, you know, laid-back enough. (Like Call Me By Your Name, say — a totally settled, unforced vibe flick from start to finish.)

But Simon‘s heart and head are in the right places, and it’s a whole lot better than Kelly Craig‘s The Edge of Seventeen, which struck me as vaguely similar and which I hated with a passion when I saw it a couple of years ago.

Amiable, mild-mannered Simon (Nick Robinson) is a closeted high school senior living with his parents (Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner) and younger sister (Talitha Bateman) in a well-tended Atlanta suburb. But the realm is essentially a blend of Disney World and a 21st Century update of John Hughes Land — an affluent, multi-cultural, progressive-minded hamlet where almost everyone (except for one appalling sociopath, played by Logan Miller, who causes all the trouble) is cool about everything.

Although his parents and friends are fair-minded and accepting of whatever, Simon has decided to wait until college to announce that he’s gay. But then he falls into this anonymous online chat with another gay guy — a local kid who calls himself Blue. The movie is partly about guessing who Blue might be. It’s also about Miller’s batshit-insane character, Martin, who discovers Simon’s flirtation with Blue and uses this knowledge to blackmail him into helping him get together with one of Simon’s close friends (i.e., a girl). I was saying to myself “if this was Goodfellas Martin would get an ice pick in the back of the neck.”

Simon suspects (and we are led to presume) that Blue might be one of three guys — all good looking, one of a POC persuasion and the other two Caucasian, one dark-haired and one semi-blonde. They all seem like good candidates, but I was a bit disappointed when the real Blue was revealed. (Not my choice.) Simon, however, is ready to roll with all of these guys. He’ll fuck anyone or anything.

Want a better, less conventional ending? Simon is really attracted to A, vaguely attracted to B and not that attracted to C, and then Blue turns out to be C. And Simon says, “Aaah…okay…life is unfair. But it’s nice to know ya, brah. I like what you have to say.” And they become good friends.

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For The Morons

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…who won’t stop saying, “Okay, so Trump cheated on his Eastern European trophy wife by fucking Stormy Daniels…that’s who Trump is, what he does, total animal…so what?

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