The just-released Film DetectiveBluray of Fielder Cook‘s Patterns (’56) has been mastered at 1.66, which is fine by HE standards. I saw it for the first time last August via Amazon Prime streaming (here’s my mini-review), and I’m sure Film Detective will understand my preference for watching it at 1.33, which is how Amazon Prime presents it. Cook directed the live TV version a year before the film came out, remember, and had therefore already composed with a boxy visual scheme. Again — I’m not saying the 1.66 a.r. isn’t acceptable. I’m just a boxy obsessive. In the realm of mid 50s black-and-white films, 1.66 is certainly preferable to Paramount Home Video’s Bluray cleavering of Billy Wilder‘s Sabrina at 1.78:1. I happen to own an Amazon streaming version at 1.33, and it’s quite beautiful.
When actors get into strident on-screen arguments and start jawing their opponents with a challenge of some kind, they always add a “huh?” to the end of each statement. Such as “what will you do if you knock on her door and her husband answers…huh?” or “what kind of brilliant move will this be if your friends wind up hating you…huh?” I’m mentioning this because people in real life never say “huh?” — only actors. It’s something they all pick up in acting school or whatever. I can only say that I’ve never argued with anyone in my life who has ever used a “huh?” at the end of any sentence. Tell me I’m wrong.
I haven’t seen Paul Schrader‘s American Gigolo since it opened in February 1980. I may have actually caught it at a Manhattan press screening a few weeks before, come to think. Soon after I sat down with Schrader for a Films in Review interview piece (Vol. XXXI, issue 5, pages 284 — 276, “Paul Schrader: AmericanGigolo and Other Matters”). It was the beginning of a slicker, less gritty era mixed with the currents of darkness and depravity that you get with any Schrader film.
Richard Gere was young and beautiful then, of course, and the world of Manhattan was a smooth and seductive realm that was at the forefront of change. I recall thinking as I was writing the Schrader piece in my West 4th Street studio that the ’70s were being jettisoned and that “the 80s!” was a whole ‘nother state of mind. Glammy, greedier. Reaganism was waiting in the wings.
I was working hard and feeling anxious about money 24/7. I regarded myself as a so-so writer, at best. I would do cocaine and/or quaaludes whenever fortune smiled, and every so often I’d succumb to momentary feelings of shallow ecstasy. I used to dream about wearing great-looking Italian suits and shoes just like Gere does in this clip, except I couldn’t afford them. And yet somehow my impoverished circumstances didn’t interfere with my batting average, which was around .400.
A few months before seeing Gigolo I had donned a pair of black Raybans at a New York Film Festival opening-night party, and Andrew Sarris, standing nearby, cracked that I looked “like a Roman pimp in a Fellini film” — a moment of brief comfort. No big-gun critic had ever spoken to me with even a hint of affection or bonami before.
I haven’t seen Gigolo in 36 years, and I’m thinking I’d like to catch it again at the Aero this evening, but watching a 35mm print concerns me. How pink will it be? A DCP of Schrader’s Hardcore (’79) will follow. Schrader will drop by for a brief q & a at some point during the evening.
I have so completely given up on Tim Burton that I didn’t even flirt with the idea of seeing Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (20th Century Fox, 9.30). I figured it would just be another design-driven film aimed at the family trade, which is what many are calling it. With the exception of Mars Attacks!, I was with Burton all the way from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure to Sweeney Todd. For me Ed Wood was the creative peak with Beetlejuice right behind it. But I lost patience when Burton began focusing mostly on CG-driven films that seemed to be more about production design than characters or hip attitudes — Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice In Wonderland, Dark Shadows, Frankenweenie. Yes, Big Eyes repped a swing back to adult-level material but it didn’t get me.
Posted on 9.25 by Vanity Fair‘s Richard Lawson: “I don’t want to oversell Miss Peregrine as some sort of ruminative mood piece about the human experience. It’s not. It’s a kid’s film, co-starring Samuel L. Jackson as an eyeball-eating mad scientist. But it’s the rare kid’s film that has a sense of risk and stakes and tension to it, that admirably dares to be violent and unsettling and sad.
“Those qualities have long been Burton’s bailiwick — but here, he finally synthesizes them together in a way that’s coherent and thoughtful. Miss Peregrine is a testament to finding the perfect material to match a director’s tastes, rather than trying for some hideous compromise, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alice in Wonderland. As Tim Burton’s best film in almost a decade, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children has an exciting air of rejuvenation about it. It’s confident and judicious with its peculiarities, while letting its heart and intellect—not Johnny Depp in a bad wig—be its stars.”
It’s 9:41 am and I’ve nothing to say here. West Coast twitter coverage of last night’s SNL Trump-Clinton debate spoof surged around 10 or 10:30 pm, and was all but spent when I awoke this morning at 7 am. Okay, Kate McKinnon‘s cough, cane + somersault introduction was special. She was the life of the party. Alec Baldwin nailed Trump’s voice, posture and hand gestures (SNL even got the makeup right with the reverse-raccoon white circles around his eyes) but Trump’s relentless self-parody on the campaign trail (his Hillary imitation last night in Manheim, Pennsylvania is an instant addition to his reel) makes a comedic spoof, no matter how sly or skillful, a moot point.
Let’s be charitable or at least forgiving and call Woody Allen‘s Crisis in Six Scenes, a new six-part, 140-odd-minute Amazon miniseries, a dud that causes no pain. Tolerably substandard, it’s basically The Man Who Came To Dinner set in the politically incendiary climate of the late ’60s with Miley Cyrus as a kind of Sheridan Whiteside. I binged through the whole thing last night, and didn’t feel the least bit angry at the general lackadaisical atmosphere. A little bit bored, perhaps, but I got through it. I felt placated. And then I finally made it to the payoff, which happens during the final two episodes.
I don’t regard Allen’s failure to consistently churn out films along the lines of Match Point or Midnight in Paris to be a prosecutable offense. He’s pushing 81 and is naturally going to show signs of slowing down. Over the last half-century Allen’s films have almost always been satisfactory (original stabs at personal excavation, ambitious concepts, pointed urban humor, etc.) and have sometimes achieved greatness, but now the best that can be hoped for is that he might just luck into an extraordinary idea or hook of some kind and deliver another gem. Please, just one more.
Yes, eventually the biological odds are going to overwhelm and it’ll be time to hang it up. At the same time I admire his no-retirement, bop-til-you-drop attitude.
“Not everyone driving down Sunset Blvd. senses the ghosts of Old Hollywood. But to Karina Longworth, a 36-year-old film historian who hosts the podcast You Must Remember This, the era of Bogart and Bacall is as present as TMZ.”
So begins a 9.30 N.Y. Times profile of Longworth and her podcast by Michael Schulman, and that’s all that needs saying. As much as I’ve enjoyed listening to You Must Remember This (the episode about the adventures of young Elizabeth Taylor is one of my favorites along with that six-part series on Charles Manson), I channel ghosts all the time on my lonesome. Because I’m a rapt believer in lingering spirits of all shapes, persuasions and locations. The past is eternally present and vice versa, and if you insist on residing only in the dull and somewhat oppressive glare of the now, you are missing half of the atmosphere. No ghosts = no soul, no echoes, no historical currents, no dimensionallity.
The fact that I don’t wear baseball caps means I would be a miserable failure as a feature or cable series director. (It’s actually written into most DGA contracts that directors will not wear headgear other than a baseball cap.) When and if there’s a need for headgear (like when I’m at Sundance in 30 degree weather) I only wear cowboy hats, and black ones at that. The Sully cap is cool — not one of those stiff, felt-like caps that most pro baseball teams use, but made of a light but sturdy weave.
Filed this morning by Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg following last night’s NYFF screening of Ava Duvernay‘s 13th, which seems (emphasis on that word) to have a good shot at winning the Best Feature Doc Oscar:
“It will be interesting to see how the Academy’s documentary branch responds to this film. It’s certainly well made and impactful” — okay, here comes the downside — “but DuVernay has made herself into a divisive figure within the Academy, having essentially suggested that the organization’s old white members can’t consider diverse Oscar contenders objectively — even though her own breakthrough film, Selma, received a best picture Oscar nom and was awarded a best original song Oscar.
“Moreover, the doc branch is this year considering an even more ambitious and epic film about race in America, ESPN’s O.J.: Made in America. Will there be room on the shortlist of 15 films for both of them?”
Jesus, Feinberg is suggesting that 13thmight not even make the shortlist? Or is…what, suggesting that there may be only room for one 2016 shortlist doc about the African-American experience? I wrote yesterday that Duvernay would have to attend Feinberg’s Savannah Film Festival documentary panel for that event to seem complete and comprehensive, but I guess that won’t happen now.
I love watching respected people express impatience and exasperation. The way they do this tells you who they are deep down. It happened after the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres in Tel Aviv. President Obama kept his cool about Bill Clinton holding up the flight because he knows most of us can’t change our natures. Clinton lives to schmooze and philosophize and feel his way through as things occur — his handlers usher him along but on his own Clinton doesn’t live by a tight clock. He’s a jazz musician. You’ll notice Obama was muttering something to his aides as Bill continued to chit-chat on the tarmac — I would’ve loved to be a fly on that wall.
You can take the following three statements about Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper (IFC Films, 3.10.17) to the bank: (1) It’s one of the coolest, creepiest and most unusual ghost stories ever made, although it’s definitely not for easily seduced fans of typical moron-level horror flicks; (2) It didn’t get booed in Cannes — I was in the audience and I’m telling you the truth — the ending is what got booed; and (3) It contains Kristen Stewart‘s finest performance ever — nobody can match her antsy, anxiety-ridden behavior and vocal-fry delivery here. The whole jittery undercurrent of urban, upscale life in 2016, that “okay but what’s gonna happen next?” feeling tugs at her manner, throws shade upon her features.
Here are three more: (4) This new trailer is suggesting that Personal Shopper is a lot more “oh my God!” and emotionally on-the-nose than it actually is — very little of it actually goes “boo!”; (5) Some of the most perceptive, clear-light critics of our time — Guy Lodge, Richard Lawson, Eric Kohn, Stephanie Zacharek, Peter Bradshaw, Robbie Collin, Tim Grierson, Jake Howell — are Personal Shopper loyalists; and (6) IFC Films execs intend to repeat their Clouds of Sils Maria strategy by releasing this film, which was shot in ’15 and exploded at last May’s Cannes Film Festival, over five months hence, or two months into Hillary Clinton‘s first term.
The “Coming Soon” at the end of the trailer is therefore…what, a typo? Personal Shopper had a full tank of gas after debuting last May — it reflected the under-zeitgeist and vice versa in spades; that tank will be all but empty by the time 3.10.17 rolls around. Pic is opening in France and Belgium on 12.14.16.
