Jeffrey Wells

Posted earlier today by gfoshizzle:

“Hey Jeff — I watched Grand Prix yesterday. For whatever it may be worth, it STILL is the quintessential car-racing film. Just a technical masterpiece from John Frankenheimer. I caught F1 in IMAX on the 23rd and enjoyed the hell out of it. But GP reaches for and finds a deeper place when it comes to super-fast, 180 mph racing and the competitive human spirit. The racing scenes are absolutely remarkable in their construction — you really do feel the speed in the final product. I had seen scenes of it before but had never sat for a full viewing, so glad I finally did. Thanks for recommending it.”

HE to MGM marketing (LBJ era): This 1966 poster art is shameless bullshit The mood of Grand Prix is tense, pensive, anxious, even melancholy at times. “I have a rendezvous with death” = nobody’s having a rollicking good time.

[SPOILERS HEREIN] Jurassic World Rebirth is a competent diversion, but I was bored. No awe or shock left in this 32-year-old franchise. Same old chain-jerkings, reptilian jolts and snarls, CG crap. You can’t go home again.

Well, you can if your audience is young enough and gripped by primitive expectations. My three and a half year old granddaughter would be wowed by Rebirth.

The predicting game we all play is “which characters will be eaten?” It’s understood, of course, that the proverbial white yuppie hardhead (Rupert Friend) will be chomped. And don’t you dare call this a spoiler! Bottom-line shitheads always end up in dino stomachs.

We know that 40-year-old Scarlett Johansson (talented veteran, no longer young and peachy but in good shape, looks great in her tight T-shirts) will survive to the end. Ditto the kindly, saintly Mahershala Ali.

But we’ve all been trained by the woke playbook to expect that the other significant black dude, Bechir Sylvain (good looking, buff, smooth manner), will survive also because POCs don’t die in these films — only venal scumbag whiteys. So it’s quite a surprise when Sylvain is swallowed. HE to movie: “Wait, wait…did you just kill a handsome, muscle-bound black dude? That’s not right!”

We know the Mexican / LatinX family (dopey dad, two pretty daughters, dumb-as-a-rock boyfriend) won’t get eaten, even though it would be shocking (and therefore perversely satisfying) if one of the pretty daughters were to die howling and shrieking. Or at least the dumbshit boyfriend.

But no — despite this family’s rank stupidity they aren’t consumed. I really wanted the moronic dad to be ripped apart and chewed to death…(“die! Eat that stupid fucker!…die!!”)…but no.

Okay, there’s one quiet, pastoral scene in which the scientific explorers on the proverbial dino island (the natural settings are in Krabi, Thailand) stand next to and stare at a pair of towering, passive, cow-like brontos with absurdly long skinny tails — this is the only majesty-of-dinos scene that really grabs you.**

But they’ve simply gone to this well too many times.

The people in the theatre were “tee-hee”-ing, chuckling and “hoo-hoo”-ing like it was a comedy.

Sick to death of hearing John Williams’ “Jurassic Park” theme, which is dutifully adapted and recycled by Alexandre Desplat.

Excellent CG, but I didn’t believe a frame of any of it. Fake acting, the feigning of extreme fear, stupid or reckless behavior. Go fug yourselves.

A team of scientists (led by Johansson and Friend) are looking to extract blood vials from three species because their blood has properties that can combat or eradicate heart disease, blah blah.

** But director Gareth Edwards ruins this scene by craning upwards a couple of hundred feet to show that these two brontos are part of a huge grazing herd…dozens! HE to Edwards: Why not hundreds? More is better, right?

Flat narration over a sprawling sea. What about this or that? Can’t figure it out. Nolan dialogue isn’t meant to be understood. Brackah-brackah-brack.

The huge shadow of a Trojan horse cast upon a beach. Long shot of same beached, half-buried horse being approached by several men.

Where is Odysseus? Is he dead, lost, searching around…what?

A bald, bearded and tattooed Jon Bernthal speaking with an American accent and gesturing in a semi-exasperated, guy-sitting-in-Yankee-Stadium-bleachers sort of way…Bernthal! Tom Holland’s Telemachus looking like a total twat…bad haircut!! “Where is my father?”, other urgent words to that effect. Holland looks anxious. Bernthal rolling eyes, vaguely annoyed.

Back to the wide sprawling sea and a dude (presumably a bearded, muscle-bound Matt Damon) floating on a slab of wooden ship wreckage. Cut to black…finito.

HE sitting in third–row seat: “That’s it? That’s all?”

It’s nothing, nothing, nothing.

“Something of a victory”, according to N.Y. Times reporters Ben Sistasio abd Julia Jacobs.

It’s not accurate to say that Combs has “walked”, but he’s certainly dodged heavy penalties and a long prison sentence.

I confess to not having read the fine print within Trump’s “Big Beautiful” bill — a Poor-Screwing, Medicaid-Gutting, Tax-Slashing, Debt-Increasing Enactment which the Senate has passed but has yet to clear the House — but Elon Musk’s five-alarm, total-war resistance is theatrically striking to say the least…very emotional and absolutist.

Located in Montvale, New Jersey, the Garden State Parkway’s James Gandolfini service area feels like a place of semi-solemn observance — well north of Satriale’s pork store in Kearny, northeast of Saddle River, northwest of Gandolfini’s birthplace of Westwood, just south of the New York State line.

It’s not quite on the level of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello or JFK’s Hyannisport or FDR’s Hyde Park, but it’s a place that seems to culturally matter…”take your hat off, they serve hot dogs here.”

Gandolfini was a very young boomer (born on 9.18.61**, technically a member of Generation Jones, a cusp between boomers and GenXers). Way too young to have been a ground-floor Beatles or Bob Dylan fan or to have even sniffed the hippie thing…came of age in the early Reagan era…B-52s, Blondie, The Police, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”.

Gandolfini was 37 when season #1 of The Sopranos began filming in mid ‘98, and only 51 when he died in Rome of a heart attack on 6.19.13.

** Six weeks after Barack Obama.

Blue skies, hot temps, no breezes.

Posted on 2.13.23:

Norman Lloyd‘s falling finale would’ve been better if Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t relied on that fake-looking process shot.

If I’d been in Hitchcock’s shoes, I would’ve had Universal’s prop department build a special wind-up mechanical dummy, one capable of moving its arms and legs a bit. Then I would’ve mounted the downward-facing camera on the railing of the actual Statue of Liberty torch, and then I would’ve simply dropped the dummy and filmed the long fall.

Then, in the editing phase, I would’ve shown Lloyd losing his grip and starting to fall, then a quick shot of Robert Cummings‘ horrified expression, and then cut to the falling dummy and stay with it until hits the pavement below. I would also have recorded the sound of a pair of tied-together watermelons slamming into the pavement from a height of, say, four or five stories.

Happy 104th #NormanLloyd
Saboteur, 1942, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Robert Cummings and Norman Lloyd.
"Statue of Liberty" scene.
pic.twitter.com/T4NDXyQWUD

— Sergio Rodríguez (@Sergiofordy) November 8, 2018

THR’s Ben Svetkey stating that Denis Villeneuve “has no sense of humor” is trade press code for “he looks like a bit of a dweeb and has almost certainly never catted around.”

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This line was spoken by Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back (‘80).

What are we supposed to get exactly from this image of a chick-of-color (presumably Chase Infiniti) holding a pistol outdoors? What’s the message? Who cares? Where’s Leo?

A Venice Film Festival debut, right?

Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro on Friday morning:

A likely weekend tally of at least $55 million, and perhaps higher.