Jeffrey Wells

I always thought that this scene — this speech — conveys very succinctly the feeling of being trapped in repetition and regimented banality that leads married guys with a fierce creative bent to go nuts, like a dog in a burning box. What’s worse? Inflicting criticism upon yourself or upon your partner?

It’s a bit odd that Peter O’Toole, 79, announced his retirement from acting today. Isn’t it more or less presumed that an actor’s career slows down considerably and often grinds to a halt when they’re nudging 80 or so? Actors don’t retire — they fade away. Very few go down swinging like the Wild Bunch.

And I’m not sure if running career recap pieces is the right thing as it makes it seem as of those writing these articles now consider O’Toole to be more or less dead and gone. O’Toole should be left alone and treated like a man in good health.

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Daniel Espinosa‘s Easy Money (a.k.a. Snabba Cash), a hugely popular Swedish-produced 2010 thriller that Espinosa a gig directing Safe House, finally opens stateside on 7.11, 18 months after it opened in Sweden. No more screenings or screeners — I’ll have to watch this one on the Mac also. Only 60% of Rotten Tomatoes…has to be better than that. Reactions?

18 or 19 months after opening in Denmark, Mikkel Norgaard‘s Klown will open theatrically and VOD via Drafthouse on 7.27. I missed the 6.27 L.A. press day so they’re sending me a link and a password so I can watch it with headphones on the iMac or Macbook Pro. The Todd Phillips-Danny McBride remake will probably emerge next summer, I’m guessing. Reactions so far from the HE regulars…?

Three or four hours ago it was announced that Sean Durkin‘s Joplin, about the last six months in the life of tragic-iconic rock-blues singer Janis Joplin, will star Tony-winning actress Nina Arianda (Venus in Furs). Her Ukranian heritage doesn’t allow for much resemblance, but Arianda, 26, has the emotionality and, one hears, the pipes. Durkin’s most recent film is Martha Marcy May Marlene. One presumes he’ll try to create a Joplin biopic that doesn’t feel like a “Joplin biopic.”

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My Masters of Cinema Region 2 Bluray of Double Indemnity arrived yesterday afternoon. I popped it in and immediately noticed that it looked pretty good and very much like “film”, which is fine, but not what anyone or his brother or cousin would call dazzling. It looked as good as it could, I suppose, but not that much better than it did on DVD six or even fourteen years ago. I went right to my favorite scene:

PHYLLIS: You’re a smart insurance man, aren’t you, Mr. Neff?

NEFF: I’ve had eleven years of it. That and the extermination business.

PHYLLIS: Extermination?

NEFF: Neff’s Digital Mosquito Removal. Started it a couple of years ago.

PHYLLIS: Doesn’t insurance keep you pretty busy?

NEFF: Yeah, but there’s a need for both, and I’m good at both. Everybody needs insurance and…well, look around us right now, right here in this living room. You and I are covered under billions of digital mosquitoes. I love that anklet, Mrs. Dietrichson, and I love that towel you were wearing a few minutes ago, but I also like clean air. I like to see things plain. I don’t think it’s all that attractive to live in the middle of an Egyptian mosquito swarm 24/7. And I don’t like that weird feeling of mosquitoes in my lungs every time I take a breath. How ’bout yourself?

PHYLLIS: You’re saying I have a choice?

NEFF: You bet you have a choice.

PHYLLIS: You can get rid of them entirely?

NEFF: No, not entirely. Mosquitoes are the basic molecules of grain, and grain is what we’re made of. It’s what keeps us together, gives us unity and cohesion. But it has to be kept in check. I’m not talking about killing all the mosquitoes but a significant percentage of them. So they wouldn’t feel so oppressive. So we could clear the air a bit.

PHYLLIS: How would it work?

NEFF: Three visits, $25 a shot. We come in here with our special vacuum cleaners and suck up the mosquitoes. And then two more times to make sure they’re gone. Or all but gone, I should say.

PHYLLIS: So $75 then?

NEFF: Except you’d get a discount, of course.

PHYLLIS: A discount?

NEFF: That’s right. (Two beats.) You know what I mean.

PHYLLIS: Then I’d say we have something to talk about, Mr. Neff.

She sits down again, in the same position as before.

NEFF: I wish you’d tell me what’s engraved on that anklet.

PHYLLIS: Just my name.

NEFF: As for instance?

PHYLLIS: Phyllis.

NEFF: Phyllis. I think I like that.

PHYLLIS: But you’re not sure?

NEFF: I’d have to drive it around the block a couple of times.

PHYLLIS: (Standing again) Mr. Neff, why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening about eight- thirty. He’ll be in then.

NEFF: Who?

PHYLLIS: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him weren’t you?

NEFF: Sure, only I’m getting over it a little. If you know what I mean.

PHYLLIS: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.

NEFF: How fast was I going, officer?

PHYLLIS: I’d say about ninety.

NEFF: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.

PHYLLIS: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time?

NEFF: Suppose it doesn’t take?

PHYLLIS: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles?

NEFF: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder?

PHYLLIS: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder?

NEFF: That tears it.

This morning Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and I kicked it around. I talked about The Amazing Spider-Man, and Contrino talked about Spider-Man numbers. We talked about Beasts of the Southern Wild, and then we finished off with some Best Picture spitballing. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

Yeah, I saw The Amazing Spider-Man at 3 pm yesterday afternoon at the AMC Century City plex…and what of it? What have I got to do with it? Isn’t it enough that I went? I didn’t hate it. I could’ve done without the lizard but it’s…well, it’s not too bad. Better than Sam Raimi‘s last two Spider-Mans. Certainly better than the last one. But c’mon…another origin story?

I really, really liked Andrew Garfield‘s performance as Peter Parker — deft, skilled, quietly charismatic. Emma Stone delivers her usual pluck, Rhys Ifans provides soulful anguish, Dennis Leary is a pain-in-the-ass flatfoot, Sally Field over-emotes, Martin Sheen looks out of breath, etc.

But it’s just another loud throbbing 3D tentpole, delivering the same atmospheric whomp, the same vibe, the same aural-visual gutslams that say “you’re watching a really expensive flick with the requisite heart beats and thematic uplift, and with a big loud CG lizard with a tail that whips around and smashes test-tube beakers…and what do you care? All you want is the same basic fundamental crap that you’ve always shown up for time after time, and that’s why you’ve once again paid $35 bills for two tickets plus another $15 for two popcorns and a Coke.”

I felt like such an asshole, such a chump, such a pathetic stooge as I walked in. Sony and Marc Webb got my money, all right. Close to $50 bucks so I could put on my 3D glasses and munch the popcorn and slurp the Diet Coke and sit in my seat and go “mmm-uhm-hmmm”….whatever.

I always stay to the right when I’m driving down a two-way residential street. One, because that’s the law and two, because I want people coming towards me to know they’ll have room to breathe when we pass each other. But day after day, time after time, the vast majority of people driving toward me have no such notion.

They’re driving right down the middle of the street, coming right for me…like it’s their street or like we’re on a narrow driveway and they have no choice. I see them coming and say to myself, “Uhh, guys?…two-way?…hello?” And they keep on coming. And then at the very last second they swerve to the right, leaving me just enough room to get by. Jerks.

The bottom line, it seems, is that they’re much more concerned about clipping a parked car (knocking off a sideview mirror, for example) than being polite to other drivers. Their attitude is “okay, don’t get worried…I’ll pull over a second or two before you get close…but until that happens, I’m gonna stay as far away from the parked cars as I can.” Assholes.

My loathing of Comic-Con (7.12 thru 7.15) means I’d never apply for press credentials, but I really want to attend the presentation of Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit at 48 frames-per-second. I want to see if the regulars like the 48 fps experience like I did or like the Cinemacon-ers did (i.e., 70% negative). So I asked my Warner Bros. pallies about snagging a special pass…nope, sorry. So that’s that.

But I’d like to see if the high-def video-like footage we saw in Vegas has been tweaked or slightly grained up to some extent. I heard from a couple Cinemacon sources that the Warner Bros. guys, smarting from the negative reaction, were talking about massaging the look of it.

It’s only fair to point out that In Contention‘s Kris Tapley wrote his own “Matthew McConaughey has turned his career around” article on 5.17.12, or six weeks before N.Y. Times contributor Dennis Lim wrote the same thing on 7.5.

Then again I said 16 months ago that McConaughey appeared to be on the right track, as indicated by his Lincoln Lawyer performance. But Tapley, it would seem (and unless somebody knows different), was the first name-brand columnist to say “olly, olly, in come free” and “stop beating up on McConaughey for making too many vapid romcoms.”