HE is nonetheless hearing that La Bola Negra, which was witheringly reviewed by Variety‘s Guy Lodge, is one of the worst films that’s been talked about as a Best Picture Oscar contender.
I’m actually hearing stuff like “unwatchable garbage…a stiff…an interminable slog that makes Emilia Perez look like Citizen Kane…stultifying,” etc.
The Best Picture race is a three-way between Chris Nolan‘s deeply loathed The Odyssey, the allegedly over-praised La Bola Negra and the organically crowd-pleasing I Play Rocky.
Barring some kind of mind-blowing, what-the-fuck-just-happened? reaction to La Bola Negra, HE stands with the crowd-pleaser.
Donald Trump‘s Bengal Tiger wrestling video is a putdown of the mentally-challenged British guy who was killed last weekend when he jumped a zoo fence, etc. This isn’t just cruel but deranged. Was Natalie Harp behind the AI animation and/or the social-media posting?
“…thought the ’60s could’ve existed. So there’s always hope.” — Tuli Kupferberg, co-founder (with Ed Sanders) of The Fugs (aka Village Fugs).
I know that “I Couldn’t Get High” is regarded as a seminal classic within certain depraved circles, but the drumming on this track isn’t substandard — it’s embarassing. And I’m saying this as one who was fairly described as a mediocre drummer. Trust me — my adolescent, clumsy-ass drumming was better than the drumming on this sloppy-ass track.
Beat poetry blended with the idiom of rock music…“a poetry-rock group that would combine the joy of verse with the noise of the streets” — Ed Sanders.
For me, the problem with Ben Affleck‘s Animals is that it ends too tidily. Call it a conventional-type ending with most of the noirish ambiguity removed and the loose ends tied into a too-neat bow. It doesn’t feel quite right.
But for roughly 95 minutes of its 108-minute length, Animals, which mostly adheres to the basic plot of Akira Kurosawa‘s High and Low (’63), is snappy, sharp-edged, convincingly performed and well-grounded. The Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scribes are scoundrels for having given it such a low rating. You can take shots at this or that third-act aspect, but there’s no way it deserves a rating in the ’30s…get outta here! I know when a kidnapping thriller is delivering the goods. This is not an “opinion”…I know what I know.
Greta Gerwig‘s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew (Netflix) will open theatrically (IMAX!) on 2.12.27. The Netflix streaming begins on 4.2.27.
I’m very much looking forward to the supporting performances by Emma Mackey, Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, Daniel Craig and Meryl Streep. Beatrice Campbell, who plays Polly Plummer, seems appealing enough, but hanging with the over-emoting, chubby-faced David McKenna, playing Digory Kirke, is almost certainly going to be a form of torture.
I’ll be seeing Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim‘s You Can See Everything (A24, 10.16) on Thursday, 10.15 at 3 pm, locally. Last week I asked a Ginsberg-Libby guy about seeing it earlier this week…vaporous response.
“it’s somehow more shocking, twistier, thornier and revealing than billed…a stupefying and gloriously destabilizing hall of psychological mirrors, a thrilling once-in-a-lifetime collision of director and subject.” — The Guardian‘s Adrien Horton.
The TV news reporting on the recently re-opened Hollywood Burbank Airport has been, by my sights, rather casual and sloppy, and so I’m asking the Los Angeles HE community to please clarify.
Elia Kazan to Richard Schickel: “America America says more about me than I’d care to say.”
Schickel: “What does it say about you?”
Kazan: “Go fuck yourself.” [Chuckling] “I’d say I essentially have the soul of an immigrant…I’m essentially an outsider.”
16 years ago, within the blessedly dark womb of the Walter Reade Cinema, I communed with Kent Jones‘ A Letter to Elia…once. And that was it.
Since then I haven’t been able to buy or stream this deeply confessional one-hour testament, largely written and voiced by Martin Scorsese, to the great Elia Kazan. For whatever dumbfuck bullshit reason it’s been an unattainable thing. No physical media purchase via Amazon, no Amazon streaming, no PBS streaming…fuck alla you guys.
And yet this morning, after trying all these years to rewatch this deeply touching film, I finally struck paydirt. A Russian guy named Tirdad Derakhshani is offering A Letter to Elia on his URL — https://ok.ru/video/8877128157794. All you have to do is sign up and there it fucking is. Amazing.
On 7.15.20 Paul Schrader (The Card Counter, First Reformed) ranted against an imagined (or real?) Elia Kazan cancel culture campaign. But even in his defense of the legendary helmer of East of Eden, On The Waterfront, Wild River, Via Zapata and A Streetcar Named Desire, Schrader passed along a misunderstanding that needs clarifying.
I’ve always understood (partly based on a 2005 Kazan bio by Richard Schickel) that Kazan didn’t “name” names but confirmed them.
Specifically, according to Janet Maslin‘s 11.14.05 review of Schickel’s book, Kazan “gave names that were already known to the committee, [and] two individuals [who] were dead anyway.”
Some may argue that “confirming” and “naming” belong in the same ignoble bin, but the difference is worth noting
Amy Ferris‘s reply to Schrader is wonderful. It not only captured the Kazan contradictions but the contradictions that apply to just about every creative person on the planet — past, present and future.
“Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones‘ A Letter To Elia (’10) is a delicate and beautiful little poem. It’s a personal tribute to a director who made four films — On The Waterfront, East of Eden, Wild River and America America — that went right into Scorsese’s young bloodstream and swirled around inside for decades after.
“Scorcese came to regard Kazan as a father figure, he says in the doc. And after watching you understand why.
“Letter is a deeply touching film because it’s so close to the emotional bone. The sections that take you through the extra-affecting portions of Waterfront and Edengot me and held me like a great sermon. It’s like a church service, this film. It’s pure religion.
“More than a few Kazan-haters (i.e., those who couldn’t forgive the director for confirming names to HUAC in 1952) were scratching their heads when Scorsese decided to present Kazan’s special lifetime achievement Oscar in 1999. Letter to Elia full explains why, and what Scorsese has felt about the legendary Kazan for the last 55, going-on-60 years.”
Bob Hightower (6 years ago):
“It’s what he did to the industry that mattered. I was one of about 500 people protesting outside the Oscars that year, urging people ‘Don’t stand for Kazan!’ Army Archerd, who was inside the hall, told me the protest was quite successful, since more than half the people in the hall refused to stand to honor Kazan, although the TV cameras didn’t show the extent of it. Across the street from our protest was a small group of rightwingers from some Ayn Rand society supporting Kazan and other blacklist informers.”
Hardcore Henry to Bob Hightower
“It was an unfortunate decision, to be sure, but I think it’s fair to speculate that — on the whole — Kazan probably gave more to the industry than he took away. That should matter, too, n’est pas?”
Bob Hightower:
“Kazan was a major director who was suitably honored with two Oscars for that role. That said, he also damaged his colleagues and the industry by informing, and his importance as a director — someone who might have been able to fight the blacklist and survive — made it worse. You can hold two ideas in your head at the same time. The honorary award seemed an attempt by the Academy to whitewash his informing and the period of blacklisting, in which the Academy itself was complicit. His honorary Oscar was not for a specific film but for a career that continued and flourished on the backs of others’ destruction after his informing. That was the issue at stake. That is why the AFI and the LA Film Critics Association refused to give him their career awards.”
Due respect offered to Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart’s feminist-fevered EastofEden miniseries (Netflix, 10.1), but I immediately fell into a squalid misery pit during the watching of “Brothers”, the opening chapter. Directed by Garth Davis, it primarily costars Chris Abbott, MikeFaist and Tracy Letts.
I’m very sorry but I was instantly, instinctually opposed to hanging with the glum-faced Adam and Charles Trask (AbbottandFaist). You can bet I was immediately rooting for some kind of agonizing death to befall Cyrus Trask (Letts), their strict and pompous-mannered father.
Too many zero charisma actors (I brushed aside theoverlymorose Gus Turner and Tom Sweet) playing too many brothers…fuck all you guys.
A friend had talked me into watching this seven–episodelimitedseries, and here’s what I texted as I trudged through it:
I’m instantly hating the overly shadowed EastofEden. Florence Pugh hasbeenwaytoobloodiedupasshecrawlstowardtheTraskhome.
Theyshotitinthe Oamaru region of southern New Zealand, whichdoesn’tbegintoresembleSalinas. I’ve wandered around Salinas so don’t tell me.
Back to 1874?…fuckthatjazz. FuckTracy Letts. Ihateeverysingleaspectofthis…everyface, everyline, everyshot, everyNew Zealandlocation.
“Adam? Don’t you see? I love you better.” Kissmyass, Letts!
Andtheprostituteisfat!
Friendo: “It gets better. Sort of. Hang in there.”
Fuckthisinauthenticlimitedseries! Indian massacres! The evil that men do!
What has happened to poor Mike Faist? He was so hot after West Side Story, and now look at him. He and Abbott summon the void. This miniseries is death to me. Thank God Tracy Letts has died of galloping pneumonia!
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson‘s Wicker (Black Bear, 10.23) and Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water are joined at the hip.
Wicker Man, meet Fishman. Both are focused on a lonely, ostracized woman (Sally Hawkins, Olivia Colman) who finds profound emotional and physical fulfillment with a non-human entity, blah blah.
