Jeffrey Wells

I meant to post this Bill Maher clip last weekend — a major statement that drills right to the heart of everything. Jon Stewart also went there last September (i.e., at the very bottom of the post).

Not a single line or move in this entire four-day-old Beastie Boys “Fight For Your Right” bullshit video is funny. I didn’t crack a glimmer of a grin at any of it…blecch. Nothingness, insincere “quote” humor, silly, strained and totally flat on its feet. The people involved don’t have clue #1 about being funny, and the actors (Rogen, Black, McBride, Ferrell, Tucci, Sarandon, etc.) need to look in the bathroom mirror. A huge embarassment.

The first time I saw this What’s Up, Tiger Lily? clip was 35 or 40 years ago and the last time I posted it was in September 2007, but it’s ten times funnier than anything in the Beastie Boys video, and it’s only mildly amusing in and of itself.

The official lineup of the Cannes Film Festival dropped early this morning in Paris, and my straight-from-the-heart first reaction? Honestly? The selections seem enticing but they’re not quite enough. The festival needed but didn’t deliver one or two of those “who expected that?” selections. Almost everything chosen had been predicted or spitballed by guys like Screen Int’l‘s Mike Goodridge, etc.

Why couldn’t the festival have snagged Steve McQueen‘s Shame? Or Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire? Or Jonathan Levine‘s 50/50 (a.k.a. Live With It and/or I’m With Cancer)? Or Tom Hanks‘ Larry Crowne? Or Tomas Alfedson‘s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? Or something along those lines. Oh, well…maybe something exciting will debut in the market section.

HE’s most anticipated Cannes selection: Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive, described here and there as a “minimalist” crime thriller about a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, costarring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman and Christina Hendricks.

HE’s remaining highly anticipated Cannes selections (in this order): (a) Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin That I Inhabit, (b) Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, (c) Paolo Sorrentino‘s This Must Be The Place, (d) Terrence Malick‘s somewhat devalued The Tree of Life, (e) Takashi Miike‘s Harakiri, (f) Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia, (g) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes‘ The Kid With The Bike, (h) Gus Van Sant‘s Restless (in Un Certain Regard), (i) Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris and (j) Lynn Ramsay‘s We Need To Talk About Kevin.

Eyesores: Kung Fu Panda 2 and especially Rob Marshall‘s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Floating/Come Again?/Need Some Help: Julia Leigh‘s Sleeping Beauty, Radu Mihaileanu‘s La source des femmes, Nanni Moretti’s We Have A Pope, Bertrand Bonello‘s L’Apollonide, Joseph Cedar‘s Footnote, Naomi Kawase‘s Hazenu no Tsuki, Markus Schleinzer‘s Michael, Alan Cavalier‘s Parterre, Maiwenn‘s Polisse.

Other Un Certain Regard Selections: Ariang (dir: Kim Ki-Duk), Bonsai (dir: Christian Jiminez), The Day He Arrives (dir: Hong Sang-soo), Et maintenant, on va ou? (dir: Nadine Labaki), Halt auf freier Strecke (dir: Andreas Dresen), Hors Satan (dir: Bruno Dumont), Skoonheid (dir: Oliver Hermanus), The Hunter (dir: Bakur Bakuradze), L’exercise de l’Etat (dir: Pierre Schoeller), Loverboy (dir: Catalin Mitulescu), Martha Marcy May Marlene (dir: Sean Durkin), Miss Bala (dir: Gerardo Naranjo), Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (dir: Robert Guediguian), Oslo, August 31 (dir: Joachim Trier), Tatsumi (dir: Eric Khoo), Toomelah (dir: Ivan Sen), Travailler fatigue (dir: Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra), Yellow Sea (dir: Na Hong-jin).

Out-of-Competition, Special Screenings: The Artist (dir: Michel Hazanavicius); The Beaver (dir: Jodie Foster); La conquete (dir: Xavier Durringer), Labrador (dir: Frederikke Aspock), Le maitre des forges de l’enfer (dir: Rithy Panh), Un documentarie sur Michel Petrucciani (dir: Michael Radford), Tous au Larzac (dir: Christian Rouaud).

Here’s a rundown of all the movies, DVDs or Blurays, TV shows (i.e., Man From Uncle episodes), books and screenplays consumed and paintings painted by Steven Soderbergh from 2.1.10 through 3.23.11, day by day. The coding is as follows:

Update: Apologies for missing the original posting. The list initially came from an encounter that Kurt Andersen had with Soderbergh at Pratt Institute.

With Sony distribution joining forces with MGM, the James Bond franchise (presumably in the form of Bond 23 with Daniel Craig starring and Sam Mendes directing) is alive again. On 10.5.12 the 007 franchise will be a half-century old. It won’t die. I thought the brand was over when George Lazenby came along, but the dry comedic tone of The Spy Who Loved Me re-energized it. Then I thought it was over 20 years ago and along came the Pierce Brosnan phase. And then Casino Royale revived things again. So what do I know?

It was announced late today that Sally Field will play Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of the nation’s 16th President, in Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln, which begins filming next fall for release in late ’12. The Oscar-winning Field obviously resembles the former First Lady and will, I’m sure, play her with snap and spunk to spare. But if I’d been casting, I’d have given the role to Marcia Gay Harden.

No offense but I think Field is too old to play the role and that Harden would be exactly the right age for it, and that her appearance wouldn’t stir audiences to talk and whisper the way Field will, I fear.

I realize, of course, that photos of Mary Todd Lincoln have always shown an anxious and clenched and worn-down appearance, and that one result was that she looked older than her years. But Lincoln, I’ve learned, will focus on the years 1863 to ’65, when Mary was 45 and 46 years old. Field is 64 and will be nudging 65 when filming begins six months hence.

In actuality Mary Todd Lincoln, born in 1818, was nine years younger than her husband Abraham, who was born in 1809. Daniel Day Lewis, who will play President Lincoln, is 53 now and will be 54 when filming begins — ten years younger than Field. (Lincoln was 56 when he was assassinated in April 1865.) So in Spielberg’s version Mrs. Lincoln will not only be played by a woman 20 years older than the real Mary Todd, but nearly ten years older than the real-life Lincoln.

Harden, an indisputably brilliant actress, is 50 — a little more than two years younger than Lewis. She would be 51 when filming begins. She would be about five or six years older than Mrs. Lincoln was at the time, but no biggie — makeup and lighting would fix any problems. But age gaps of 10 or 20 years are another matter. I’m not saying Field’s age will be a significant issue, but her appearance will, I suspect, have to be worked around to some extent.

So Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist might possibly be seen at what upcoming special venue or festival…? And the name or email address of the publicist handing out press screeners is…? Here‘s an article about it from the L.A. Times Dean Kuipers.

In a recent interview to promote The Conspirator (American, 4.15), director Robert Redford said that “the country is made up of three categories.” And yet his description of same differs from HE’s preferred Planet of the Apes breakdown — gorillas (i.e., skilled labor, working-class, K-Mart employees, Tea Party), chimps (educated professional class) and orangutans (governmental-financial ruling elite).

The three categories, says Redford, are “traditionalists, cultural creative people and the moderns. The moderns are the hi-tech Silicon Valley people. The traditionalists on the lower end of it are the people who don’t want change. They’re afraid of change therefore they have anger. The fear card is a very big powerful card and when you have people afraid of change. They’ll do anything to prevent it. They’re doing it because they’re limited, frightened of people who are not as limited. I think Sarah Palin…part of her strength is how limited she is.”

The “cultural creative class” (of which Redford is a part) is another term for genuine creatives, X-factor urbans and property-owning elite living in photogenic, selectively developed backwaters.

From Huffington Post contributor Steven Weber: “The Right’s relentless and confounding opposition to President Obama can be explained by paraphrasing Arthur Conan Doyle‘s famous detective: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

What explains “the Right’s almost carnal embrace of apocalyptic rhetoric and unprecedented displays of nonsensical and stunningly counter intuitive/hypocritical/contradictory behavior since his inauguration?

What explains “the suddenly awakened consciences of the conspicuously caucasian Tea Baggers who, rather than easily grasp that the causes they trumpet are actually empirically proven to be detrimental to their own interests, opt instead to bleat banal credos which sound superficially like rousing cries for ‘smaller government’ and ‘accountability’ but what are in truth thinly veiled, virulent, recidivistic expressions of deep-seated racism?

What explains “the constant howl of birthers, death panelers, gun fetishists, Islamophobes and other vendors of dystopic delusions, all of which happen to have a boogie man at the core of their night terrors?”

You need to ask?

3:29 pm Update: James Rocchi‘s 2011 Guilty Summer Pleasures piece has finally been posted by MSN Movies! Cue cheering, loud exhales, sound of soggy tomatoes hitting the wall, etc.

Earlier today: The night before last (i.e., the evening of 4.11) MSN’s James Rocchi asked his online pallies to submit guilty pleasure pics opening between now and August. I asked when the piece would appear so I could post a link + excerpt. Rocchi figured it would go up sometime yesterday…but it didn’t. And it hasn’t gone up today either.

I’m sorry but in this era of instant worldwide expression the idea of writing something and having it gestate and cool its heels off-screen for 48 or more hours seems ridiculous to me. Online articles are like fresh fruit — once they’ve been picked off the tree they need to be eaten. An un-posted story gets a little bit weaker with each passing hour. Savoring the robust flavor is all.

So the hell with it. Rocchi’s MSN editors have taken too long. Consider this an advance taste of Rocchi’s forthcoming article to come (i.e., the real thing), when and if the MSN team gets around to posting it. Here’s what I sent along:

“My #1 guiltiest anticipated pleasure of the April-to-August period is JJ Abrams‘ Super 8 (6.10) because I’d like to re-experience the pleasure of those old feelings I had 30 years ago when Steven Spielberg held mountains in his hands and I was a loyal devotee who really admired him….unlike today.

“My other biggie is Bad Teacher (6.24) because I’ve been nursing fantasies about secretly slutty, ill-mannered teachers (not to mention secretly slutty nurses and pre-vow nuns) since I was ten years old, and this looks somewhat fulfilling in that regard. Why oh why didn’t a teacher try to take advantage of me when I was 14 or 15? Why do today’s teenagers have all the fun?”

HE theories about Rocchi’s editors: (a) They’re holding on to institutional editing patterns that are left over from the ’90s; (b) The editors have suddenly decided to fly to Hawaii together for a corporate get-together and outdoor picnic; and (c) a cat belonging to a top copy editor has disappeared, and he’s been spending a lot of time walking around his neighborhood going “here, kitty-kitty!” and putting up flyers and telling his neighbors that she’s missing.

Being a huge fan of Robert Weide‘s Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl docs, I’m delighted that he’s assembled a three-hour “American Masters” Woody Allen doc that will air this fall on PBS.

Cynthia Littleton‘s 4.13 Variety story says that Woody Allen: A Documentary will cover the whole magilla (childhood, early career as a TV writer and standup comic, What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Louise Lasser, What’s New, Pussycat?, the stage play of Play It Again Sam) through his most recent pic, Midnight in Paris, which will open the Cannes fest next month.

“The prolific nature of Woody’s output has provided me with an embarrassment of riches,” Weide told Littleton. “Even with three hours at my disposal I feel the heartbreak of all the things I have to leave out. In fact, Woody will have made three features just in the time it’s taken me to make this one documentary.”

Things he’s going to leave out? Like what? He’s got three hours to fiddle with.

Allen, meanwhile, has locked down a cast for the Rome-based feature that he’ll shoot this summer — Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Penelope Cruz and Alec Baldwin. (The Eisenberg casting is hilarious — on his own steam JE is the GenY embodiment of Allen’s attitude, personality and philosophy.) I’m just hoping that the untitled film will at least try to use backdrops like the Foro Romano, the Colliseum, Campo di Fiori, Vatican City, Trastevere, etc. in an atypical way.

What are you supposed to do with horrible parental guilt that you can’t deny or ignore? Dramatically, I mean? All you can hope to do is…what, do or create something that will somehow counter-balance the bad thing? That’s as far as my thinking takes me.