Okay, If The Commentariat Insists…

F1 Friendo: “In your 6.12 F1 riff you didn’t include my one reservation about the surprising over-reliance upon live voiceover race commentary…

“While F1 tells an affecting story, it would be impossible to follow were it not for the wall-to-wall, supposedly live stadium commentary during the multiple FI races…this is the only way for the audience to fully participate in 90% of it.

“It feels like they shot what they could of each race, edited the footage and then added race commentary to bridge the gaps and heighten involvement. All very effective, but F1 is obviously the first over-$200M film to rely on (at times) almost continuous voice over to explain key plot and action.”

HE to F1 Friendo: “Well, I didn’t want to pass along a quibbling comment. That sounds like a bit of a negative viewpoint.”

F1 Friendo: “Your regulars are complaining that your piece was too positive…that it was a puff piece.”

HE to F1 Friendo: “Well, it was a puff piece.  But if I’m going to post something contrary, it’s going to be based on my own viewing.  And I don’t think that wall-to-wall narration….well, maybe that IS a problem.  I just want to see it myself and go from there.”

F1 Friendo: “I’m not saying the loudspeaker narration is a problem. The film obviously works. It’s just that relying on wall-to-wall narration is a huge surprise for such a massive enterprise.”

“F1” Roars, Rumbles On-Screen in Playa Vista

Elite industry-ites were treated yesterday to a pair of F1 looksees (mid-afternoon and early evening) — Joseph Kosinski, Brad Pitt, Jerry Bruckheimer and Han Zimmer’s high-throttle gutslammer played at IMAX corporate headquarters in Playa Vista, and apparently in whoa-mama full IMAX (1.43:1) from start to finish.

Not even a capsule review, just notes: As you might expect and will be glad to hear confirmed, F1 delivers vise-like dramatic engagement with fully deployed, grade-A acting chops from consummate superstar Brad Pitt, Damson Idris (33 year-old Brit, excellent in the late John Singleton’s Snowfall series), the great Kerry Condon and the always on-target Javier Bardem

All hail the great, still-youngish Kosinski, who has certainly matched and arguably topped his work on Top Gun: Maverick (‘22).

A 156-minute, 21st Century big-boy compadre to John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (‘66) and Steve McQueen’s Le Mans (‘71), F1 revs and rouses and vibrates your rib/soul cage, leaving you buzzed, breathless and all the rest of that classic race-car-movie stuff….you know the drill.

Does anyone wipe out a la crash-boom-bang? You don’t want me to answer this so let’s drop it. Okay, someone does but I’m sworn to secrecy, etc.

We all think of howling, high-speed track racing as an individual sport, but the high-torque F1 game can involve a one-team, two-car strategy with one driver running interference for another, depending on the situation. Plus it’s important to know the difference between hot and cold tires, and of course the drivers and pit crew are constantly jabbering while the loudspeaker guy narrates what’s happening…whew.

Pitt’s 50something Sonny Hayes is great company, a great hang. His dominance blends his cocksure Once Upon a Time in Hollywood stunt guy Cliff with, shall we say, a note of approaching-the-big-upward-slope anxiety…fear of not cutting it like he used to.

As hotshot British driver Joshua Pearce, Idris holds his lane and then some, becoming a no-fucking-around foil for Pitt’s old-school Sonny.

And Condon, a deliciously charismatic IRA psychopath in 2023’s In The Land of Saints and Sinners, is the sexy, brainy love interest for Braddy-waddy…a heart-of-gold gal who’s run a few laps around the track herself.

The Hans Zimmer score is said to be double-triple exceptional, especially during the final race when it all happens within a completely visceral, all-alone, immersive, this-is-it, you-are-there fashion without the element of loudspeaker narration or cheering crowds or anything peripheral.…

That’s enough for now. There’s a big all-media IMAX screening on Tuesday, 6.24, as well as a smattering of early-bird AMC fan screenings on Monday, 6.23, not to mention more nationwide advance showings on Wednesday, 6.25

Slap-on-the-Wrist Reprimand Would Have Sufficed

It was obviously unwise of ABC News on-air correspondent Terry Moran to have tweeted a widely shared observation about chief White House rattlesnake Stephen Miller. Alas, cowardly ABC execs, fearful of being on the bad side of the Trump administration, have zotzed his ass. They could have suspended him for a month without pay…something like that. But that would’ve required balls.

Stunning Setback for #MeToo Suppressionists! Five and 1/2 Years After Debuting in Venice, Polanski’s “J’Accuse!” (aka “An Officer and a Spy”) Lands Two-Week Booking at NYC’s Film Forum

For five and a half years U.S. distributors have been terrified of the mere thought of releasing (even on a streaming-only basis) Roman Polanski’s utterly brilliant An Officer and a Spy (aka J’Accuse), his Grand Prix-winning Belle Epoque drama about the heinous Alfred Dreyfus case.

Distribs feared running afoul of #MeToo activists who might have made a lot of noise about Polanski’s sullied reputation due to two or three allegations of sexual assault in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

On 4.2.20, a rep from Playtime, the film’s French distributor and rights holder, explained the Officer and a Spy situation as follows (his English being a bit lumpy):

Well, somehow or in some way a brave soldier or two has managed to arrange a twoweek booking of this 2019 masterpiece at Manhattan’s Film Forum, starting on August 8th.

Although I’ve seen An Officer and a Spy three times (I own an English-subtitled Russian Bluray version), I will nonetheless proudly and excitedly attend one of the Film Forum showings, and perhaps even a second. This is a very big deal for me.

And what about select smarthouse bookings in other major cities? And a down-the-road streaming release? And a Bluray?

An Officer and a Spy is gloriously assembled and altogether glowing with genius — a perfectly realized, sharply written capturing of institutional, anti-Semitic Belle Epoque mobthink, not to mention an exquisitely composed timepiece revisiting of a bygone era, and a film that wholly respects the intelligence of (some) viewers. It is easily among the finest films of the 21st Century.

And the subtly shaded, steady-at-the-helm lead performance by Jean Dujardin is masterful — perhaps his all-time finest.

People of some experience with a semblance of wisdom understand that artists (yes, Polanski was apparently or at least to some minor extent a selfish sexual beast in the ‘70s and ‘80s) and the art they produce belong in two separate boxes. In the realm of cinema you can’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Great cinematic art is too rare of a commodity to be treated politically, carelessly or callously.  

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Come Again?

I’m sorry but for the last few months I’ve been under a distinct impression that everyone hates the obnoxiously aggressive Blake Lively for trying to destroy the life and career of poor Justin Baldoni.

So what’s going on here? “Accusations of sexual harassment” are “legally protected”? But trying to destroy a man’s career with questionable claims and agitated #MeToo hyperbole is cool?

Will someone please explain this dismissal to me in “regular guy standing on a sidewalk and eating a hot dog” terminology? Like I’m a six year old? King Henry II to Thomas Becket: “I’m an idiot then! Talk to me like I’m an idiot!”

Strauss’s Obnoxious “Get Out” Praise Translates to Zero Trust on “Materialists”

Being a mostly rational adult, I understand and accept the rationale behind Lorelei Lee-styled moneywhoring. Way of the world since time began, the nice things in life, girls just wanna, etc.

But in my heart of hearts and as unrealistic as that Picnic finale may be (i.e., Kim Novak deciding to take a flying leap with penniless William Holden), I want to believe in the unreliable, idealistic, non-transactional coupling of hearts and dreams. Teresa Wright and Dana Andrews at the finale of The Best Years of Our Lives…that kind of thing.

Money-whoring is to be expected, yes, but it’s bad for the soul.

I do, however, trust Variety’s Owen Gleiberman:

We All Look Good When Young

And the aging process, especially after the big six-oh, is rarely a kind or compassionate thing. But it cuts some of us a slight break.

Those favored with good genes, I mean, and who haven’t overly abused their bodies and souls with drugs and alcohol. If you at least half-resemble the person you were at age 21, you have reason to give thanks.

The Flatness, The Flatness

Consider what the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley and Mission San Fernando in particular looked like in 1873. I somehow never knew until this morning that the remains of Bob Hope, his wife Dolores and other Hopes are buried in a Mission-adjacent garden.

What the San Fernando Valley needed back then was water, but it took a visionary sociopath like Noah Cross** to make it all happen.

** Kidding — I meant to say William Mulholland.

Please, God…Let The Whores Be Right This One Time…I Really Want This To Happen

HE to easy-lay types who recently saw and loved F1:

Please guys…please let me know who dies in F1 (6.27, Warner Bros.). You’ve all presumably seen Grand Prix so you know what happens to Yves Montand’s race-car driver. Death is built into this sport. It constantly hovers.

It can’t be Damson Idris because POCs aren’t allowed to die because the filmmakers would surely be accused and most likely found guilty of racism…they’d be tarred and feathered and run out of town.

So that leaves Pitt, but nobody (with the possible exception of Shi Joli) wants poor Brad to buy the farm so who dies? Surely not Javier Bardem or Kerry Condon.

The all-media screening happens on Tuesday, 6.24, only two days before the first commercial showings on Thursday, 6.26

There’s an earlier screening next week for “special people”.

This Standee Injected Nausea Into My System

Snapped last night inside the big Danbury AMC, prior to catching Ballerina. Obviously the people behind Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney, 7.25) have no shame. Has Pedro Pascal ever said no to anything or anyone? And the gingered Joseph Quinn, who will play the physically dissimilar George Harrison for Sam Mendes later this year…this, ladies and germs, is whoredom personified.