Jeffrey Wells

I’ve agreed to submit to a kind of monk-like withdrawal from the hurly burly for three days — Tuesday, 5.29 through Thursday, June 1. Never mind why. Suffice that while I’ve had the occasional sluggish day since HE went hourly-daily in April 2006, I’ve taken no days off during that time. So I’ll be mostly off the treadmill for these three days, but to keep things going I thought I’d offer HE readers a shot at running an essay or a review or any kind of rant or recollection or looking-forward piece — you name it as long as it has something to do with features or Blurays.

Just keep submissions to 1000 words or less, and please send photos to go along with the article, sized to 460 pixels wide. Send them to me today and tomorrow, and they’ll start posting on Tuesday. If you’re a journalist and want to double-post a new article on HE as well as your own site, fine — just make it special. Anyone can say anything except for LexG-type stuff about libidinal matters. And absolutely no rightwing pro-Romney stuff of any kind.

In fact, that’s a topic to write about. Now that the 2012 campaign is about to kick in to full gear I’m thinking it’s time for another Stalinist purge of all Duluoz Gray-like hammerhead rightwing contributors. I did this in ’08 as I just couldn’t stand providing a forum for conservative scum, and I would be able to stand it this year either. What does everyone think about this? Throw the bums out or let it ride?

Where is Bob “all ’50s and ’60s films must be Blurayed at 1.78 or 1.85” Furmanek when we really need him? Is he going to let this outrageous British Film Institute Bluray of John Cassavetes Shadows stand unchallenged? Because it’s being presented at 1.33, and that’s a blatant defiance of Furmanek’s belief that all non-Scope movies were presented at 1.85 starting in April 1953. C’mon, Bob — either the 1.85 rule was applied across the board or it wasn’t. No exceptions, no side-stepping.

For a good 20 or 30 minutes six or seven drunken animals were joking and bellowing under my second-floor bedroom window this morning, starting around at 5:30 am. They eventually woke me up. If this happens tomorrow I’m pouring a pan of water out of my window and right onto their heads. Prague’s Stare Mesto has become a Ground Zero for submental 20something louts — German, French, British, American. The pestilence is everywhere. Plus they’ve been spray-painting the bases of several old buildings with moronic slogans…cool!

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To some it wasn’t obvious that the part 3 syndrome (followup to a sequel to an original) would automatically diminish interest in Men in Black 3. Obviously not to a great extent — $19.6 million yesterday plus an $18 million Friday for a likely $56 million for the three-day weekend and $70 million including the Monday holiday — but how did anyone calculate it would make $90 million over four days?

Quality has nothing to do with an opening weekend haul. It’s always about lazy-brained Joe Schmoe expectations based on marketing. If you want to know how a film will do, ask the dumbest, least educated friend you know to drink nine or ten beers and eat junk food and then go to bed late after hitting several bars. At 7 am go over to his home and wake him up — “Whuh?” — ask him what he thinks about a film opening in two or three days time. Whatever he grunts out in his gunked-up, half-comatose state will tell you just about everything.

If you had asked this guy about MIB3 last Tuesday or Wednesday, he would have said, “Yeah, I don’t know, I guess so, I’ve heard Brolin’s good…but fucking part 3?”

If you want to be right on top of the movie-exhibition world as it existed three or four weeks ago in the States, Prague is clearly the place to be. I’m written Expats.cz film critic Jason Pirodsky and Prague Post critic Andre Crous to ask if they’ll share info about critics’ screenings and email addresses of the publicists who arrange them. Prometheus, at least, opens on June 7th — one day before it opens in the States (but eight days after it opens in Paris).

The Occupy demonstrations were happening when David Cronenberg and crew shot Cosmopolis, which includes a couple of scenes of Occupy-like mayhem. It therefore seemed to him, he told the grinning French interviewer who always talks to talent before the Cannes press conferences, as if Cosmopolis had taken on the echo of a documentary.

In its use of conspicuous rear-projection CG to show what’s happening beyond the confines of Robert Pattinson‘s white stretch limo, Cosmopolis is obviously conveying the cut-off, insulated, vacuum-like atmosphere inside Eric Packer‘s head. The idea is clearly to not present reality as commonly digested. Tell me how that squares with Cronenberg’s comment. It was Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel that predicted the Occupy demonstrations. All Cronenberg did in this particular respect was follow DeLillo’s lead.

“One part The Night of the Hunter and two parts Huckleberry Finn, Mud may be born of the same rustic sensibility that fueled everyone from Andrew Wyeth to Terrence Malick, but director Jeff Nichols expresses this outlook in a decidedly personal way.

“Apart from tapping his two teen leads fresh from The Tree of Life — the creative equivalent of eating the heart of another to absorb his spirit — few of Nichols’ artistic decisions seem recycled from other sources, and even that kindred casting choice is fully justified by the plausibly naturalistic way both young thesps embody their characters.” — from Peter Debruge‘s 5.25 Variety review.

Here’s an mp3 of yesterday morning’s press conference. And stand-out quotes from same.

That market guy who told me a few days ago that Jeff Nichols‘ Mud was “pretty good but no great shakes” or words to that effect was — is — wrong, according to many critics who are tweeting after this morning’s 8:30 am screening.

on Berlin’s Kantstrasse — Saturday, 5.26, 11:05 am

ditto, 11:09 am

Two Cannes-appraising podcasts have popped up — Deadline‘s Pete Hammond talking to some interviewer in the States (strictly audio) and TheWrap‘s Steve Pond (very faintly heard) talking to Sharon Waxman about Holy Motors (the likeliest Palme d’Or winner), embedded below.

Sasha Stone, Phil Contrino and I will be recording our sum-up tomorrow morning L.A. time, or around 5 pm or 6 pm Prague time. Unless Contrino begs off due to some family event and Sasha and I have to go it alone.

Not to nitpick but if you’re going to kill someone softly, you’re going to put something in their tea or coffee that will make them nod off first. Or you’ll inject something in their veins as they’re sleeping. Surprising them with bullets isn’t “soft” — it’s just (a) unanticipated on their part so they haven’t time to beg for their life, but (b) brutal as hell. So I’m sorry but the title of Andrew Dominik‘s new film isn’t quite right.