Phoenix‘s musical supplements tell you almost everything about Sofia Coppola‘s On The Rocks (A24/Apple). This is one peppy, finger-poppin’ relationship comedy about a married daughter (Rashida Jones) and her laconic, libertine, hound-dog dad (Bill Murray).
You can tell right away that director-writer Sofia Coppola, who enabled Murray to give one of his best performances 17 years ago in Lost in Translation, has wisely decided to just let Murray be Murray.
Boilerplate: “Laura (Jones) thinks she’s happily hitched, but when her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) starts logging late hours at the office with a new co-worker, Laura begins to fear the worst. She turns to her charming, impulsive father Felix (Murray), who insists they investigate the situation. As the two begin prowling New York at night, careening from uptown parties to downtown hotspots,” etc.
Murray (who turns 70 on 9.21) looks good. He obviously dropped a few pounds before filming began in June 2019.
On The Rocks will open in a few select theatres in early to mid October, followed by streaming debut on Apple TV Plus later that same month.
“Nine or ten years ago I used a few jokes in that vein, jokes that may have connected among some in the POC community but not in the broader liberal-minded entertainment community. I got slapped around for that in late ’18 and early ’19, but I accepted this as a learning or teaching moment. I apologize for having been insensitive towards people in the LGBTQ community, and here we are now. Life is for learning, and I’m ready for the next lesson.”
Actual Hart quote: “What happened to the days of making a mistake, learning from the mistake, not doing that, and educating others on what not to do because of your mistakes?”
Unspoken Matt Grobar response: “As you know, it doesn’t work that way now. If you’ve made a mistake or if you did or said something hurtful or incorrect a few years ago and we get wind of it, you’re dead. Go away, work for Uber or McDonalds, commit suicide, move to Manila. Okay, you might be able to come back in two or three years if you profusely apologize and beg for forgiveness, maybe, but remember how HUAC and Hollywood studio chiefs began purging suspected Communists starting in the late ’40s? We’ve basically brought that shit back, but for righteous reasons. We’re scrubbing the industry clean.”
“If you grew up in northern New Jersey in the ’80s, you were either injured at Action Park or knew someone who had been.” Or so goes the legend.
Speaking as a former Garden State guy who moved to Los Angeles in ’83, I never paid the slightest attention to Action Park. But the kids and I went to Six Flags Hurricane Harbor a few times in the ’90s, and visited Wet & Wild once in Las Vegas. The hairiest ticket was a super-speed water slide inside a spiralling tube thing — you crossed your legs, crossed your arms across your chest and pushed off into the unknown, travelling at a pretty fast clip.
Wiki excerpt: “Action Park was an amusement and water park located in Vernon, New Jersey, on the grounds of the Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski resort. Consisting primarily of water-based attractions, the park opened in 1978 under the ownership of Great American Recreation (GAR).
“Action Park’s popularity went hand-in-hand with a reputation for poorly designed rides, under-trained and under-aged staff, intoxicated guests and staff, and a consequently poor safety record. At least six people are known to have died as a result of mishaps on rides at the park, and it was given nicknames such as ‘Traction Park’, ‘Accident Park’ and ‘Class Action Park’. Little effort was made by state regulators to address these issues, despite the park’s history of repeat violations. In its later years, personal injury lawsuits led to the closure of increasing numbers of rides and eventually the entire park closed in 1996.”
Class Action Park will premiere on HBO Max at midnight (Pacific) on Thursday, 8.27.
“Homes burn, residents flee for lives as lightning-sparked fire rages northwest of Vacaville,” etc. — San Francisco Chronicle, updated 8.19.20 at 9:11 am.
A couple of decades hence young cineastes will ask their older brethren, “Explain again why a well-made but not especially overwhelming social criticism drama from Bong Joon-ho won the Best Picture Oscar instead of this obviously superior Martin Scorsese gangster epic, especially considering the fact that The Irishman didn’t have anything like that Parasite scene in which a family of con artists welcomes the one person in the world who has a motive to rat them all out, and yet they let her in during a rainstorm while they’re all drunk and dishevelled…why did everyone give that scene a pass again?”
Criterion’s The Irishman Bluray (out 11.24.00) contains a new 4K digital master, approved by director Martin Scorsese, with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack.
From Michael Herr‘s ridiculously overpriced book, “Kubrick“: “‘A paranoid schizophrenic is a guy who just found out what is going on’ is a famous William S. Burroughs-ism. I once told it to Stanley Kubrick, and he took it to his heart. ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute…I’ve gotta write that down.’ He put it into wide release, telling it to everyone he knew, and I think it was mostly because he was so pleased to find himself of one mind with someone he admired as much as Burroughs.”
HE comment: I always thought the definitive Burroughs remark about paranoia was a four-word definition: “Knowing all the facts.”
Alternate Burroughs version: “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on. A psychotic is a guy who’s just found out what’s going on.”
I’ve spoken respectfully before about Clint Eastwood‘s Breezy (’73), a May-December romantic drama costarring William Holden and Kay Lenz. It’s modest and character-driven and entirely effective for what it is. I hate Holden’s ’70s wardrobe (orange sweaters, checked pants, elephant collars) and his real-estate hustler scowls a lot (Lenz’s hippie-chick character calls him “dark cloud”) but it’s an honestly felt, medium-range thing, and a better-than-decent effort on Eastwood’s part.
The pacing is natural and unhurried, and the dialogue is nicely sculpted for the most part. It was also the first film Clint directed in which he didn’t star.
Here’s a Michael Atkinsonriff about Holden and the brusque anxiety and rattled melancholia that always simmered in the characters he played — there, obviously, because they defined Holden himself.
“Truth be told, Holden’s character-role capacities ranged only from narcissistic American jerk to self-loathing American lug, but his best movies are implicit inquisitions into that personality — like Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Blvd. and Sabrina and Mark Robson‘s The Bridges at Toko-Ri.
“By the time of David Lean‘s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a big-budget production looking for a disillusioned American Everyman sickened by his own lack of heroism, David Lean needed only go to Holden.
“There was that wonderfully rough voice, often poised on the edge of cynical disillusionment. There was that physique — athletic but on the verge of dissipation. And there was that face — smooth and innocent in youth, a little weathered and circumspect in adulthood, lined with worry, regret and beleaguered wisdom as he withered.
DeJoy caved amid growing freakouts in every corner of the culture (Twitter, activists, state attorneys general, civil rights groups) about the distinct possibility that DeJoy’s changes could interfere with ballots by mail, which older folks are expected to use to avoid potential pandemic infection.
DeJoy: “There are some longstanding operational initiatives — efforts that predate my arrival at the Postal Service — that have been raised as areas of concern as the nation prepares to hold an election in the midst of a devastating pandemic. To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded.” Retail USPS hours will not change, no mail processing facilities will be closed, USPS overtime will continue, etc.
DeJoy will face tough questioning before a virtual Senate hearing on Friday and a House oversight committee hearing on Monday.
Former President Bill Clintonwill speak tonight as part of the Democrat’s virtual nominating convention. But the lustre has faded because Clinton is regarded as damaged goods by the hard-left wokesters, mainly because of his reputation as a hound and particularly his reported association with the late Jeffrey Epstein. An 8.18 N.Y. Times story says that Clinton is little more than a bystander these days, and that the party has passed him by. But he’s such a great speaker, his preacher-like phrasings are beautiful and I’ll always love the operatic arias that he delivers every so often. His 2012 Democratic Convention speech was such a high.
For the second time in 18 months, the somewhat tawdry maneuverings of actress Charlotte Kirk have become front-page news. For Kirk’s ambitious sexual shenanigans and quid pro quo demands have now brought about the resignations of two Hollywood studio chiefs — Warner Bros. Kevin Tsujihara in March ’19, and now NBC vice-chairman Ron Meyer.
Meyer, 75, has tendered his resignation as vice chairman of NBCUniversal after disclosing he’d been “blackmailed over hush money payments” related to an affair with Kirk, who is now 28.
Kirk, whose acting credits include Nicole and O.J., Ocean’s8 and Vice, was 21 when she began a sporadic affair with Tsujihara, who was then 49. She was therefore 20 or thereabouts when she was seeing Meyer. Prior to her Tsujihara involvement Kirk had also reportedly been on intimate terms with Australian billionaire James Packer.
If you want to be opportunistic about it, Kirk’s story could become a movie in and of itself. Bringing about the downfall of two big-time studio chiefs could be sold as kind of “Blonde Ambition gone bad” tale. Hell, Kirk could play herself.
The script of Unhinged (Solstice, 8.21), the Russell Crowe road-rage film that’s been theatrically postponed 16 or 17 times, basically stinks. The story just shovels it on, and all you’re left with is cruelty, ugliness, sadism and just fucking nutso behavior. It’s been decently directed and edited, but compelling internals are completely missing. No wit, no humor, no compelling theme, no humanity, no pivots, no grace, no cleverness…nothing.
Yes, it’s been competently…you could even say smartly directed by Derrick Borte. But to what end?
I want to put this delicately because crude overstatement is always a bad approach for any writer, but Unhinged is shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, double-shit, triple-shit, quadruple-shit, dogshit, cowshit, horseshit, catshit, mouse shit, raccoon shit, elephant shit, giraffe shit, hyena shit, etc. Which is a roundabout way of saying it makes you feel like shit.
Because it takes a fascinating, universally understood premise of the modern age and completely scuttles it as far as Crowe’s character, a bearded beach-ball named Tom Cooper, is concerned. The premise, of course, is that with enough anxiety and pressure we could all become road ragers or hair-trigger types because life is extra-stressful these days and so on.
The Unhinged trailers (which we’ve all been looking at for months) have made it clear that Crowe will be playing a rage-hound, but not, we quickly discover, in some kind of “Michael Douglas buckling under the weight of a cruel world in Falling Down” way.
The key with a film of this sort is to universalize the situation. That way the audience can invest their own experiences and maybe recognize or (heaven forbid!) feel a little something.
The filmmakers could have done the usual-usual by introducing Cooper as some kind of victim whose cork is about to pop — some guy who’s been hurt or fired or fucked over or whatever. And then watch him snap and unravel. Perhaps with a dab of humor or an occasional wink of the eye. A familiar strategy, yes, but one that would have engaged to some extent.
Instead, Carl Ellsworth‘s script announces right from the start that Tom Cooper is basically Karl “Madman” Mundt — a brutal murderer on meds, a froth-mouthed menace to society, a sweaty maniac. Aaarrrgghhh! Look at my glaring eyes! Look at how angry I am and what an out-of-control fatass I’ve become! Remember when I gained weight to play Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider? Well, I’m at least 150 pounds heavier now and I don’t give a shit because all I want to do is vent! As in kill, torture, chase, terrorize, set people on fire, etc.
So when Tom gets into a relatively minor traffic altercation with divorced mom Rachel Hunter (Caren Pistorius) and her antsy, sitting-in-the-back seat son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman), there’s no intrigue or tension or anything because we know where this is going. And then your lids begin to lower and you start checking your Twitter feed.
The incident begins when Rachel honks too loudly and aggressively at Cooper’s pickup truck when he doesn’t quickly react when the light turns green. Then she refuses to apologize when Cooper pulls up alongside, explains that he’s been having a bad day, offers an apology and asks Rachel to reciprocate. Because of this one tragic mistake….ahhh, forget it. It’s obvious from the get-go that Unhinged doesn’t care about understandable motivations and provocations. It’s just a soul-less, crazy-ass exploitation film.
In other words, 40% of the electorate are beasts in their own regard. Primarily, I suspect, because of underlying racism. Because they fervently believe that the country they grew up in during the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and even the ’80s is being overrun by “the other.” It’s awful and horrifying, but these people will almost certainly never see past themselves. They’re just going to have to die off — that’s the only way out of this.
I truly believe that the writing is on the wall as far as the Trump crime family is concerned. I believe that Biden-Harris will be elected on 11.3. But I don’t know that, and I will be on pins and needles until it happens, God help and protect us.
