Jeffrey Wells “We’re getting out of the early adopter phase and into the mass-market phase. It’s been two and half years since we first introduced a Blu-ray player. 2009 is the year we expect to continue significant growth of the format. This will be our big growth year.” — Blu-ray Disc Association president Andy Parsons.
In other words, cheaper players and…cheaper Bluray discs? Well?
I read somewhere last April that Gerald McMorrow‘s Franklyn was a possible Cannes ’08 entry, but nope. Then I was thought it might turn up at last September’s Toronto Film Festival…sorry. Then I thought it might appear at Sundance ’09….no-go. And now it’s opening in the UK next month with no U.S. release date in sight. Face it — there must be something wrong with it.
Which reminds me — where’s Beeban Kidron‘s Hippie Hippie Shake?
My parents made the mistake of moving into an assisted living facility called East Hill Woods a few years ago. My father was fond of calling this compound, located in dull-as-dishwater Southbury, Connecticut, “death row.” It’s a clean, quiet and very friendly concentration camp for the aged — tidy and comfortable and absolutely horrible for the human spirit. (Mine, anyway.) I would rather collapse and die on a New York street in the dead of winter than live in one of those hell-holes.
Things took a turn for the worse two or three years ago when EHW was acquired by a corporation and was re-named the Watermark at East Hill Woods. I knew that was trouble the minute I heard it. Sociopaths, I presumed, would now be determining how my parents lived out their last years.
Jim and Nancy Wells owned a roomy and beautiful Cape Cod-styled home in Wilton, Connecticut, for 30 years. For reasons of fear and uncertainty they decided to sell the home in ’94 (it would now be worth around $900 grand) and buy a nice condo in Heritage Village, which was very pleasant and spacious with low maintenance costs. Then my mother got scared all over again and convinced my dad to sell the Heritage Village condo and buy a unit in East Hill Woods — a $100 grand buy-in plus a monthly maintenance payment of close to $4 grand that went into a kind of “kitty” fund that would eventually help to cover their old-age medical costs.
That was the bottom-line comfort factor for my mother — that the East Hill Woods pricks would at least take care of her when she got really old and sickly.
Except my mother’s income went down sharply after my father’s death last June, and to reduce costs the Nurse Ratched administrators at the Watermark moved her into a one-room unit — the size of a very small laundry room plus a decent- sized bathroom. Now these same people want to move her into an even smaller room — a broom closet. The only thing more humiliating would be to put her into a large military-hospital room with several beds on either side, like the ones that tend to soldiers in movies like Patton and A Farewell to Arms, and zero privacy. What contemptible pricks.
Assisted living centers are about one thing principally — emptying out the saving accounts of old people and getting every last dime. East Hill Woods pocketed every last cent my parents had. Now that there’s almost nothing left and profits are down they’re taking away what’s left of my mother’s dignity in the name of trimming expenses. It’s times like these when I really wish I was in with guys like Tony Soprano and Silvio and Paulie Walnuts .
Last night my son Jett and two of his roommates were discussing wall-poster decorations in their just-moved-into flophouse — a seedy second-floor apartment with five bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom that’s only a couple of blocks from the Syracuse University campus. Jett wanted to put up a poster featuring James Dean and Bob Dylan, and one of the roommates — a very bright 20 year-old who’s (a) gay, (b) African-American and (c) a Republican — said no way. The point is that the guy had never heard of Dean or Dylan. I’m putting it as plainly as I can. The guy had never heard of either one. That’s dedication.
Earlier today The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil posted a list of who will present what award at tonight’s Golden Globes ceremony. I know one thing — the presentation of the Cecil B. DeMille Award to Steven Spielberg is bathroom-break, make-a-meatloaf-sandwich, throw-the-wet-clothes-into-the-dryer time for me. All hail the director of Tintin!
What exactly has Spielberg done lately to deserve another brass kowtow besides having agreed to show up tonight? If Spielberg wasn’t a billionaire big-shot who’s hired a great number of people in this town and whose films have made gazillions over the past 33 years, would he be receiving this award tonight? I mean, it’s not like he made Schindler’s List last year or anything.
If a troubled heterosexual relationship drama had come out this year with scenes as good as this, it would absolutely be among the five Best Picture nominees with a damn good shot to win. The older Carnal Knowledge gets, the better it gets.
The Golden Globes will air at 8 pm tonight on both coasts. For the first time in a long time I won’t be schnorring around the after-parties. Even if I was there in L.A. I don’t know that I’d be feeling all that amped about it. It’s just the Globes. Need to try a little push-back against the cynicism.
“If you’re looking for an item on a slow night, I thought you’d enjoy realizing that Roger Ebert and Lou Lumenick are consistently the two main critics quoted in the ads for Slumdog Millionaire. Both gave it four stars and raved it as being one of the best films of 2008.
“So what?
“Well, you’ll recall that their viewing of the movie was interrupted at TIFF when Lumenick whacked Ebert with his binder because Ebert objected to Lumenick blocking his view at a press screening. But obviously the dust-up didn’t interfere with the appreciation of the movie. All’s well that ends well.” — from Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell.
“Upon leaving a stuffy Beverly Hills party thrown by a socialite, Groucho Marx said to her, ‘I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” — from “A Better Sort of Insult,” a 1.9.09 N.Y. Times piece by Dick Cavett.
“I’d love to hear your take on Silent Light, the new Carlos Reygadas film. Or his other work, for that matter. I just saw it at the Film Forum, and am still trying to decide what I thought of it. A few people in the theatre were falling asleep, and as I left a few were looking at the blown-up Manohla Dargis N.Y. Times review, giving each other bewildered looks while words like ‘terrible’, ‘pretentious’ and whatnot slipped out.
“I don’t agree with them, but I still haven’t quite made up my mind about it. Reygadas is definitely into meditative as an end in itself, and I think people were having trouble with the way he lingers on his shots, and how many of them are more or less stationary images. And the silence of it all. Like Battle in Heaven, there are huge stretches with absolutely no underscoring — a very powerful choice.
“It seemed to be too much for a lot of people, though, to sit and look at a hand for 20 seconds, and then a table for a bit longer, all of it in a more or less silent environment.
“It’s not something I’ll say I’m over the moon about, but I do find it very, very interesting, Now that I’ve seen what the movie and its story are, I definitely intend to have another go-round to take a closer look at the way he put it together.” — HE reader Eric Gilde in a letter received this afternoon.
