All you have to do is try and simulate Stallone’s reedy baritone voice, his New York-ish accent, the vaguely sneering tone and his slight speech impediment. He has problems with t’s and especially r’s. And so you say the First Blood line as follows: “They dew fuhst bluhd, nahmee.” And you sat the first line of “The Raven” as, “Wanz uppahn a mitnight duhreerwee.”
One thing I’m extremely thankful for is the apparently probable Presidential campaign of Sarah Palin, and the fact that at least one semi-reasonable guy (i.e., Bob Cesca) believes she could actually be elected by way of a sociopolitical perfect storm. The likelihood of her actually running against Obama is zero, of course, but dreaming about this makes me feel so warm and comfortable. A female Greg Stillson for President! Nobody appreciates the irony as much as David Cronenberg and Stephen King.
I’d read several reviews and some excerpts from Keith Richards and James Fox‘s “Life,” but I didn’t settle into the book until two days ago. I don’t trust book reviewers — I think they tend to gush, like movie critics, over anything that’s half-decent. So I was genuinely surprised and relieved when it turned out that “Life” actually is an exceptionally honest and well-written showbiz tale, and a bit more.
Rock musicians aren’t supposed to be this lean, well-phrased and generally articulate. My suspicion is that Richards didn’t “write” a fucking word of this thing (he probably talked into a digicorder and let Fox do the rest), but it’s still my idea of a stand-out in this realm. Martin Scorsese or someone close to his level needs to make a No Direction Home-like documentary of Richards’ life, using this as a template.
All my life I’ve thought of Richards as a great rock ‘n’ roll musician but an even greater druggie degenerate. A guy who can play like Chuck Berry-plus but who slurs his words and has forgotten half the stuff he’s experienced since the early ’60s. A miracle enough that he’s not dead, I thought when I first heard of this. It would be a bit much, I thought, to expect that he might write (or co-write) a decent book. Keith is 66 and past his prime, and is probably so groggy and stumbling around that he can barely sip tea at tea time…right?
No, dead wrong, re-think it, shut up.
“It’s an eye-opening all-nighter in the studio with a master craftsman disclosing the alchemical secrets of his art,” wroteN.Y. Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani. “And it’s the intimate and moving story of one man’s long strange trip over the decades, told in dead-on, visceral prose without any of the pretense, caution or self-consciousness that usually attend great artists sitting for their self-portraits…Mr. Richards has found a way to channel his own avidity, his own deep soul hunger for music and to make us feel the connections that bind one generation of musicians to another.”
Sample passage (from page 251): “Levitation is is probably the closest analogy to what I feel — whether it’s ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ or ‘Satisfaction’ or ‘All Down The Line’ — when I realize I’ve hit the right tempo and the band’s behind me. It’s like taking off in a Learjet. I have no sense that my feet are touching the ground. I’m elevated to this other place. People say, ‘Why don’t you give it up?’ I can’t retire until I croak. I don’t think they quite understand what I get out of this. I’m not doing it just for the money or for you. I’m doing it for me.”
The “years of waiting and months of preparation” thing plus learning the moves like a pro with the anorexic ballet-dancer bod is what seals the Best Actress deal for Natalie Portman. What she did is analogous to Robert De Niro‘s commitment to playing muscular and fat Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. Once this settles in among the rank-and-file, it’s over.
Time Out‘s Dave Calhoun has sliced and dicedWilliam Monahan‘s London Boulevard, which opens in London this weekend. The London-based crime drama needs a stateside supporter but Collider‘s Steve Weintraub, who has seen and liked it (according to Weintraub’s 11.17 Monahan interview), is strangely silent. A man stands by his friends.
“Monahan draws on this big-name cast and employs superior talent behind the camera such as cinematographer Chris Menges, ” Calhoun says, “but still manages to serve up a tired, lifeless film which fails to realise either the style or sexiness it craves and which lacks any real sense of energy or momentum in its plotting.
“Although the film is contemporary, Monahan aims for a 1960s vibe, with vague nods to Performance in its crim-boho crossover, period songs on the soundtrack, including Bob Dylan and The Yardbirds, and a scene in which Farrell, in shirt and tie, drives an open-top classic car across Waterloo Bridge.
“Yet such stylings feel like add-ons to a by-the-numbers, staccato story.
“Monahan wheels out every Brit-gangster cliche in the book — Ray Winstone as a secretly gay, bookish hard man with a reserve of childhood trauma; Eddie Marsan as a cop stuck in the 1970s; Colin Farrell as a criminal who can’t escape his past; and Ben Chaplin as the hothead who’s got it coming. The film’s weakest element is the romance between Mitchell and Keira Knightley‘s Charlotte, which emerges from nowhere and is one of the dampest screen liasons in a long while.
“It doesn’t help that Farrell is handicapped not only with a character who doesn’t do emotions, but with his obvious discomfort at trying — and failing — to pull off a South London accent. Knightley, in turn, doesn’t have much to do but look harried, cross her arms a lot and, as expected, pout.
“Only the most forgiving fans of London crime movies will find much to enjoy beyond Menges’s nicely moody shots of London and a few amusing side players, and even Knightley’s loyal fans might tire after a few scenes of her faux-slobbish act as a celebrity in hiding. Husband-and-wife actors David Thewlis and Anna Friel are respectively wasted (in both senses) as Charlotte’s sole confidante and Mitchell’s wayward sister, but each must have had a word in the other’s ear as they play their roles for laughs and lighten their scenes by plumping for caricature.
“You start off strolling lazily down London Boulevard, but after 104 minutes you’re on your hands and knees begging for a passing cab to take you anywhere but this.”
Coast of Gualala, California — about three hours north of San Francisco, an hour south of Medicoino. Thanksgiving is happening at a home in Sea Ranch, just south of here.
I regret to say that having finally seen Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, I now understand why it took so long to find a distributor. It’s a high-level outdoor survival drama in a long, gloomy, sloggy vein. It has a rote and rudimentary quality that, for me, places it apart from everything in the Weir canon. The man who made it knew what he was doing, but it was a bad idea or a bum steer or something.
It’s not in the realm of Gallipoli or Picnic at Hanging Rock or Master and Commander or The Mosquito Coast, even. It’s better than Green Card or The Truman Show, but that’s not saying much. I can at least say it’s not painful to sit through. Because it isn’t.
It’s about what people can do when they have no choice but to suck it in and go the extra 4000 miles in order to live. The slogan that wasn’t used is “These raggedy men wanted desperately to survive…and they did!” And it’s very well acted and convincingly brutal and handsomely framed. It’s watchable and absorbing for what it is.
The Way Back is about six or seven guys who escape from a Soviet Siberian gulag in the early 1940s and hike between 4000 to 5000 kilometers to freedom — across Siberia and Mongolia (including a vast desert), then across the Himalayas and into India. The escapees are played by Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Gustaf Skarsgard, Alexandru Potocean and Sebastian Urzendowsky. And along they way they hook up with Saoirse Ronan. (Thank goodness nobody tries anything with her.) And the elements are brutal. No one catches a break.
A title card tells us from the get-go that only three finally made it to India so right away you’re asking yourself, “Okay, which ones are the weak sisters who are going to crap out along the way?”
I knew going in that anyone making a journey of 4000 or 5000 kilometers on foot will face terrible strain and hunger and hardship. I knew that. What, then, did The Way Back tell me? It told me that making a journey of 4000 or 5000 kilometers on foot involves terrible strain and hunger and hardship.
I’m not persuaded that Weir’s story was all that rich or interesting to begin with. It’s essentially a film about endurance and surviving the elements and blah-dee-blah. It’s about cold and hunger and baking heat and swollen feet and snow and wolves and aching joints and beards and dampness and a big lake and a cave.
A critic friend said that film “seems to last almost as long as the actual trek did.” I don’t feel that way. The Way Back is not a boring film. It is, however, a “why did they make this film again?” film. It seems as if Weir was just able to get it done and not much else. He and his team deserve approval for having made the effort, but I don’t know how anyone can see this thing and then do cartwheels in the lobby. It’s just okay, and at times a bit tedious. I didn’t mean that. I meant trying.
In Contention‘s Kris Tapleyfeels differently. Or did, at least, when he saw The Way Back in Telluride.
Work stopped yesterday afternoon. That’s why I left New York City yesterday morning, before the deluge. Anyone flying anywhere today or tonight is asking for it. CNN just showed a motion map of all the flights happening today. Hundreds (thousands?) of flying blue dots. Forget it. And for what? In-laws and room-temperature gravy and yams and sweet potatoes and lots of TV watching, and mostly football. Bah, humbug.
If only Drew McWeeny was around to show me how to find joy in all this.
I’ll be watching mostly Academy screeners and a couple of films from the Elia Kazan box set, particularly Letter to Elia, which I saw initially during the N.Y. Film Festival.
“Letter to Elia, on the other hand, is a delicate and beautiful little poem. It’s a personal tribute to a director who made four films — On The Waterfront, East of Eden, Wild River and America America — that went right into Scorsese’s young bloodstream and swirled around inside for decades after. Scorcese came to regard Kazan as a father figure, he says in the doc. And after watching you understand why.
“Letter to Elia is a deeply touching film because it’s so close to the emotional bone. The sections that take you through the extra-affecting portions of Waterfront and Eden got me and held me like a great sermon. It’s like a church service, this film. It’s pure religion.
“More than a few Kazan-haters (i.e., those who couldn’t forgive the director for confirming names to HUAC in 1952) were scratching their heads when Scorsese decided to present Kazan’s special lifetime achievement Oscar in 1999. Letter to Elia full explains why, and what Scorsese has felt about the legendary Kazan for the last 55, going-on-60 years.”
Sure, pat-downs are invasive and sometimes angering. Obviously. We knew people would probably respond as they have. And that agent should have let that woman keep her nipple rings. But get used to it. Whine all you want — we’re doing this. We have two choices, as we see it. One, the TSA eases up and some Islamic wacko slips through and something happens and the TSA gets roasted by the media and the top guy gets fired. Or two, bureaucratic molestations continue and flyers seethe and maybe the wacko doesn’t slip through. We have the power, you don’t, sorry but this is the world we live in, unbutton your pants.
I’ve now seen Black Swan three times. Once at the Toronto Film Festival; twice via the Fox Searchlight screener. It doesn’t get old. I could watch it another couple of times, easy. I could barely get through one viewing of Never Let Me Go or, for that matter, Bruno. And it’s wonderful, finally, to be able to hear each and every line of dialogue. Because the sound renderings on my 42″ Panasonic plasma have Toronto’s Scotiabank plex beat all to hell.
