A little subtitled taste of Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Perez…before defaulting to streaming, Netflix will undoubtedly open this nervy, trans-friendly musical drama theatrically in October or November. As I recently suggested, the smart move will be to campaign Karla Sofía Gascón in the supporting actress category. An almost guaranteed win.
I decided at a very young age to avoid seeing Hawaii (’66), and I’ve never seen it since. It was directed by George Roy Hill, who was 44 during filming, when the more seasoned Fred Zinnemann withdrew.
As a kid I’d always hated going to church on Sundays, and so I really didn’t want to submit to Max Von Sydow‘s Reverend Abner Hale character, a classic stick-up-his-ass preacher character. I never wanted to know the story or anything, and until today I didn’t know Julie Andrews‘s Jerusha Bromley Hale character dies in Part Two. I only just learned today that Gene Hackman and Carroll O’Connor had costarred. I never knew Bette Midler had a non-speaking background role.
A friend has seen it and swears Richard Harris‘s performance as Capt. Rafer Hoxworth, a whaler, was “really underrated”. The Bluray has both the roadshow version (189 minutes) as well as the general release version (161 minutes),
I forgot to mention yesterday that Lionsgate has acquired U.S. and Canadian distrib rights to Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. The $120 million mindfuck flick will open theatrically on 9.27.
Seven observations from my 5.16.24 Cannes review…
(a) “Coppola has seemingly lost his mind. Watching Megalopolis just now and listening to random moo-cow boos as the closing credits began to roll was a very sad and sobering experience. It’s not just an embarassment and a calamity — I almost feel like weeping for the poor guy — it’s a film that hasn’t a prayer of attracting any Average Joes or Janes whatsoever, and you can totally forget any sort of fall awards campaign or any distributor even flirting with paying for same…no way, man!”
(b) “On the other hand…Jesus, I don’t know what to say or think as I don’t want to dump on a film that is so nervy and creatively ludicrous and out-there bonkers. I’m not surprised by how Megalopolis played with the Salle Debussy crowd, and I’m certainly not angry about having sat through it, but holy fucking moley.”
(c) “It’s such a head-in-the-clouds goofball thing with such an overload of pompous-sounding, smarty-pants dialogue that it’s almost like a 1965 philosophical psychedelic fantasy flick by the Merry Pranksters, shot in 16mm and edited by a guy who’d been chewing peyote buttons.”
(d) A friend has compared portions of the dialogue as well as the narration (voiced by Larry Fishburne) to Ed Emshwiller‘s “Unveiling The Mystery Planet.” HE is hereby advising the readership to see Megalopolis while tripping. (Not acid necessarily but maybe some soft mescaline?)
(e) Jon Voight‘s Crassus character, adorned in black silk pajamas, during a third-act comic-detour scene: ““Whadaya think of this boner I’ve got here?”
(f) “All this said, I feel MUCH better about having seen Megalopolis than having seen Fast X or any of the shitty, soul-draining, post-Iron Man franchise movies because at least it’s about something other than the usual corporate bullshit and is at least alive with quirky indivduality, and that ain’t hay.”
(g) Journalist friend to HE five minutes after Megalopolis ended: “What the fuck was that?”
With the suggestions and admonishings of the HE commentariat, I’ve added seven films to my 1966 roster for a total of 22.
My hands-down choice for 1966’s three finest are Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blow-Up, Robert Bresson‘s Au Hasard Balthazar and Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals.
My second group of 12 include Robert Wise‘s The Sand Pebbles, Bernard Girard‘s Dead Heat on a Merry Go-Round, Fred Zinnemann‘s A Man For All Seasons, John Frankenheimer‘s Grand Prix and Seconds, Jack Smight‘e Harper, Mike Nichols‘ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Arthur Penn‘s The Chase, Irvin Kershner‘e A Fine Madness, Charles Walters‘ Walk, Don’t Run, Claude Lelouch‘s A Man and a Woman and Billy Wilder‘s The Fortune Cookie.
The third group of seven include Gillo Pontecorvo‘s The Battle of Algiers, Sergio Leone‘s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (I didn’t post it yesterday because I’ve never liked Leone, but I have to at least recognize this film’s iconic status), Ingmar Bergman‘s Persona (I’m ashamed for having forgotten it), Jiri Menzel‘s Closely Watched Trains (intriguing Czech new-waver), Michael Anderson and Harold Pinter‘s The Quiller Memorandum, John Ford‘s 7 Women (saw it once back in the ’80s — a respectable ensemble film), Jean-Pierre Melville‘s Le deuxième souffle
I’ve never seen Milos Jancso‘s The Roundup. Howard Hawks‘ El Dorado didn’t open stateside until 6.7.67 so it doesn’t count. Jean-Luc Godard‘s Made in USA doesn’t count because it was blocked for over four decades over a rights issue and wasn’t released until 2009.
Wait…Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain doesn’t open until 10.18, or four months from now? I’d like to see it right now. It premiered six months ago at Sundance but this shouldn’t prevent it from playing at Telluride…right?
From Owen Gleiberman’s 1.21.24 Variety review: “Keiran Culkin‘s Benji is a loose cannon — a bro who never grew up, the kind of dude who says ‘fuck’ every fifth word, who advance-mails a parcel of weed to his hotel in Poland, and who has no filter when it comes to his thoughts and feelings. He’ll blare it all right out there.
“Since he’s a brilliant and funny guy who sees more than a lot of other people do, and processes it about 10 times as fast, he can (sort of) get away with the running monologue of hair-trigger nihilist superiority that’s his form of interaction. He can also be quite nice, and knows how to play people. Yet he is, at heart, an anti-social misfit, one who’s clinging to the recklessness of youth just at the moment he should be leaving it behind.”
Ms. Hardy passed on 6.11.24 at age 80. Ms. Aimee left the earth on 6.18.23 (earlier today) at age 92
Afterthought: I’m not saying Aimee and Hardy’s passing “doesn’t matter”. I’m not saying that at all. I was simply replying to Shawn Levy by saying we didn’t lose them this week, but we kinda sorta lost them gradually over the decades. Which is what happens to almost all showbiz careers. Careers ignite, heat up, peak for a certain period and then start to cool off. Everyone knows this.
I don’t know where this started, but there’s a certain vein of speculation that Donald Trump, fearful of addressing his recently earned status as a convicted felon, might blow off the Thursday, 6.27 debate with Joe Biden in Atlanta. His followers worship his defiant outlaw attitude and certainly don’t care about establishment standards or protocol, so maybe skipping the debate is a viable optioon?
Or, even worse, the apparent fact that Trumpies believe that “evil” — Donald Trump’s shameless criminality, thuggish vindictiveness, anti-fact, anti-democracy, a sociopathic loathing for the “other”, a complete absence of any sort of educated or insightful understanding of anything — isn’t such a bad deal at the end of the day.
Trump supporters are among the lowest forms of life on this planet right now. I hate wokesterism and deplore its pernicious influence more than most, but Trumpsters are pure poison. By blindly supporting a clearly destructive social virus they themselves are viruses. They would destroy democracy in order to suppress woke fanaticism.
Put them all on a large raft, tow it into deep water and sink it.
Last night I watched all three episodes of Hulu’s Cult Massacre, a new, well-honed, very thorough doc about Jim Jones. He was a paranoid user and obviously a stone sociopath, but if you ask me the real villains were his followers, which is to say his enablers.
By the same token the real monsters today are the Trump followers, or so says an HE reader who urged me yesterday to catch Cult Massacre.
“You look at Jones and his heavy-set face and tinted glasses, and listen to his maniacal repeating of cult slogans and phrases, and he really does remind you of Trump, especially against a backdrop of Kool-Aid drinkers.
“Jones’ baseline atttitude, caring for nobody but himself and willing to pull down the temple walls as long as his hold upon his devoted flock is rapt and absolute to the end…that’s about as Trumpian as it gets.
“The story is old, but the comparisons felt new to me. I’ve compared Trump to Hitler before, as many have. But Jones feels like a closer fit.”
