Noah Hawley‘s Lucy in the Sky (Fox Searchlight/Disney, 10.4) is about an emotional breakdown suffered by astronaut Lucy Cola (Natalie Portman) after she returns from a long space voyage and begins a hothouse affair with a fellow astronaut, Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm).

Boilerplate: “Lucy heads into a downward spiral as she loses her connection to her family, and particularly when Goodwin begins another affair with an astronaut trainee. The film is loosely based on astronaut Lisa Nowak‘s criminal activities around her romantic involvement with fellow astronaut William Oefelein.”

The noteworthy thing is the decision by Hawley and dp Polly Morgan to use shifting aspect ratios — widescreen (2.39:1) for footage shot during Lucy’s time in earth orbit, and a more confining a.r (1.37:1) for scenes on earth.

A new Monmouth University poll has Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and “Drooling” Joe Biden in a statistical tie — 20% for Warren and Sanders, and Biden at 19%. Thank God! In other words 40% of the those polled favor progressive candidates.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/us/politics/monmouth-democratic-polls-2020.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

From HE correspondent Mark Smith: “The second season of Mindhunter is about utilizing the new FBI science: can the psychological profiles of the incarcerated serial killers that Holden and Bill have so far gathered be used to catch a killer who’s still active? Is all this interviewing and traveling and sharing pizza with Ed Kemper worth a shit? This question is not only relevant to the Atlanta Child Murders, but to Bill Tench‘s creepy future-killer adopted son.

“One of the common traits of a serial killer (confirmed by Ed Kemper) is that he’s compelled to return to the scene of the crime, especially if there’s a chance to see the killer’s nefarious deeds being inspected by police and/or civilians. It gives his ego a jolt, fuels the narcissism.

“In episode 6, about 31 minutes in, we see the Atlanta police chief and Holden on the side of the road where a massive search is taking place for new bodies. A group of reporters/photographers chases down the chief. When he gets into his car, the reporters turn and see Holden walking away, the giant yellow letters FBI leaping off his windbreaker. The throng chases him down. He calmly gets into his car and shuts the door.

“And then something weird happens…

At the very end of the shot Holden’s car is surrounded by reporters and photographers, and one of them suddenly spins toward the camera, right in the foreground. He’s got a camera around his neck. He looks around and runs out of frame, as if trying to find another bit of the action to focus on, scanning the area for a Pulitzer-prize winning snapshot. It happens fast and is made to feel random, like another part of the chaos.

“But anyone who’s watched Mindhunter knows that it’s extremely deliberate: the shot selection, the editing, the camera movements, the acting. No one is Method Acting here, no one is holding court: you say your lines with clarity and honesty, and please shit-can the histrionics. Camera movements are usually slow and deliberate, if they occur at all. And the action is staged with almost robotic precision.

“So when a guy in the foreground spins toward the camera and rips the viewer’s attention away, you can bet it’s deliberate.

“I’m not saying I jumped from my chair and screamed, “That was the killer…that was Wayne Williams!” but the moment stuck with me.

“It felt odd, out of place, a red flag, a mental coupon to be tucked away and cashed in later.

“And then when they showed Wayne Williams after they pulled him over on the bridge (50 minutes into episode 8), that’s when I jumped out of my seat in triumph.”

Last weekend I made the mistake of taking Tatyana to dinner at Moonshadows Mailbu. I hadn’t been there in decades, but it’s a famous Malibu mainstay as well as the place Mel Gibson got drunk in before being arrested for DUI in July ’06. It will always appeal to gawking tourists and Lookie Lous because of the surfside location.

I took an instant dislike to the place, and when I got home I made a list of the reasons why. There were five of them. (1) Too many loud people congregated in a tight setting and generating so much conversational racket that I had a headache almost immediately; (2) Too many unattractive people who were either over-dressed or lacked that certain je ne sais quoi X-factor coolness that everyone needs to project when they’re out on the town; (3) Seriously ugly decor (baby blue seating booths with small and kitschy amber-toned lamps); (4) Decent but far from phenomenal food; and (5) A bizarre table-seating policy that may or may not have involved some kind of unsavory arrangement.

All I know is that the hostess declined to seat us next to an oceanview window, and when Tatyana asked why the hostess explained that a certain table in question was being held for a party of four that hadn’t yet arrived. In the politest terms I could muster I asked, “Well, are they royalty? What’s the special dispensation? We’re here in good faith and money in our pocket, and we’d like to sit at that open table so why can’t we exactly?” The hostess said that the party in question has paid a thousand bucks to Moonshadows so they’d always get a windowside table when they ate there.

Me (slightly agog): “Really?” Hostess: “Yeah. A thousand sounds like a lot, I agree, but…”

For the rest of the dinner I couldn’t think of anything else except this alleged thousand-dollar payoff. I was wondering how it worked exactly. Was it a thousand a year or twice annually or…? We asked our friendly waiter but he didn’t know of any such arrangement. I called the next day and spoke to a manager, a guy who said he’s worked at Moonshadows for many years, and he also said he was unaware of any such system.

All I can tell you is that the hostess said what she said, and that I didn’t imagine it.

I will never, ever go to Moonshadows again. I would rather eat a hot dog while sitting on the beach. I would rather go to Jack in the Box. On top of which Pacific Coast Highway is such an aggressive, high-speed thoroughfare. They say that the ocean is calming and restorative but not out there. I’ve been to beachside communities all over the globe, and Malibu is easily the worst of them. It has no sense of peace or tranquility.

https://www.infoelba.com/island-of-elba/beaches/marina-di-campo-beach/

Hot Sundance films are fizzy highs in the Wasatch mountains, but they often seem to become something flatter and less transporting when they arrive in urban, sea-level plexes. This is one of the oldest truisms around. I’ve been writing articles about this syndrome for a good 20 years.

Variety‘s Rebecca Rubin has checklisted the latest manifestations of this cultural disparity, but she can’t quite bring herself to blurt out the phrase “no-star wokester indie flicks don’t usually fly with Joe and Jane Popcorn.”

I’m not allowed to infer that “movies about brilliant chubby girls struggling with personal or professional issues” constitute a problematic sub-category, but one could at least argue as much.

It’s too early to say if Paul Downs Colaizzo‘s Brittany Runs a Marathon (Amazon, 8.23) will swim or sink. (An 84% Rotten Tomatoes audience score is a positive indicator.) But Geremy Jasper‘s Patti Cake$, Nisha Ginatra‘s Late Night and Olivia Wilde‘s Booksmart all qualify, and they all underperformed.

I was mostly taken by Gurinder Chadha‘s Blinded By The Light, but it didn’t connect all that broadly after opening on 8.16. No stars, British Pakistani culture, father-son conflict, etc. Warner Bros. acquired the Springtseen-themed musical in Park City for $15 million, but since opening in 2207 theatres it’s only made $8,103,492.

The one big narrative breakout hit is A24’s The Farewell (because it’s an excellent, well-acted film that delivers the emotional goods), and the only documentary hit so far is Apollo 11 with $9,039,891 thus far.

After five weeks in theatres HE’s own David Crosby: Remember My Name has only accumulated $459,880. Easily one of the best docs of the year and an emotional truth drug movie second to none. Why the lethargy?.

Rubin excerpt #1: “Netflix bought Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, a drama from the perspective of Ted Bundy’s girlfriend, for a reported $8 million, but it’s not clear yet whether it will mount an awards push.” HE clarification: An awards push is unlikely.

Rubin excerpt #2: “Amazon’s The Report likely won’t be breaking any box-office records, since it will land on Prime Video two weeks after it it opens in theaters.” HE clarification: Not happening.

I saw Oliver Stone‘s Natural Born Killers three or four times in the late summer of ’94, but that was because it had been originally written by Quentin Tarantino (here’s a draft of it) and I was chasing the Tarantino glamorama. Reservoir Dogs (which I’d seen at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival) and True Romance were part of the recent backlog. Pulp Fiction had premiered in Cannes in May of ’94 but wouldn’t open until October, and I was getting to know producers Don Murphy and Jane Hamsher at the time. It was all kind of swirling together.

Stone‘s lightning-hot streak of the mid to late ’80s — Platoon, Salvador, Wall Street, Talk Radio and Born on the Fourth of July — had given way to a respectable if slightly less incandescent run of ’90s films — The Doors, JFK, Heaven and Earth, Killers, Nixon, U-Turn, Any Given Sunday — but his Bill Clinton-era output certainly demanded everyone’s attention. If you ask me Sunday is the one of the greatest football films ever made.

But honestly? I always quietly hated Natural Born Killers. I didn’t see it as a tongue-in-cheek media satire but as a scurvy, low-rent, multi-media death flick — a blood-and-splatter show. Right now I can’t think of another film I’d rather re-watch less. Let me say clear and straight that I will never, ever sit through this ugly-ass film again .

For some reason Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman wrote about NBK yesterday, but my recollections of the nihilism of this quarter-century-old film — just the recollections! — is enough to make me throw up.

From Gleiberman’s Movie Freak: “The tingly audacity of Natural Born Killers, and the addictive pleasure of watching it, begins with the perception that Mickey and Mallory experience not just their infamy but every moment of their lives as pop culture. Their lives are poured through the images they carry around in their heads. The two of them enact a heightened version of a world in which identity is increasingly becoming a murky, bundled fusion of true life and media fantasy. It works something like this: You are what you watch, which is what you want to be, which is what you think you are, which is what you really can be (yes, you can!), as long as you believe.”

From the Variety article: “What form does this kind of belief take? It’s a word that applies, in equal measure, to the fan-geek hordes at Comic-Con; to the gun geeks who imagine themselves part of a larger ‘militia’; to the gamers and the dark-web conspiracy junkies; to the people who think that Donald Trump was qualified to be president because he pretended to be an imperious executive on TV. It applies to anyone who experiences the news as the world’s greatest reality show, or to the way that social media is called social media because it’s about people treating every facet of their lives as ‘media’ — as a verité performance.

Variety‘s Jessica Kiang and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jordan Mintzer have posted reviews of Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York. As you might expect, the judgments are on the hand-wringing side.

They’re both basically saying that while Allen’s film is watchable and occasionally diverting here and there, it’s a relic of another time. It’s a nimbly plotted, present-tense story set in a well-heeled, tweed-jacket Manhattan but abounding in mindsets, attitudes and references that could have arguably been criticized as out of step with the times even a half-century ago — weirdly old-fashioned in almost a time machine-like way.

Which, of course, is a familiar complaint. And especially regrettable because the problem could probably be arrested or perhaps even remedied if Allen wanted to change his modus operandi.

From my capsule review of Melinda and Melinda, posted 14 and 1/2 years ago: “It’s not one of his very best, and he’ll probably never get back into Manhattan or Crimes and Misdemeanor-land until he hooks up with a co-writer, preferably someone a good 25 years younger. Allen is almost 70 and he just isn’t getting the world as sharply as he used to. He needs a younger guy (or woman) to challenge him and give his scripts some topical zippity-doo-dah, and that’s not a tough pill to swallow. He partnered with Marshall Brickman on Annie Hall and with Douglas McGrath on Bullets over Broadway, so it’s not like this is a new concept.”

Kiang’s expansive, nimbly-phrased review is a slightly better read than Mintzer’s, IMHO.

And at the risk of driving HE readers nuts by hitting the same piano key over and over, Mintzer needs to be reminded that the Moses Farrow essay (“A Son Speaks Out“) is the testimony to consider in assessing Woody’s guilt or innocence in the wake of Dylan Farrow’s repeated accusation of molestation when she was 7 years old, in 1992. Moses, Moses, Moses…what will it take?

Kiang’s review says she saw A Rainy Day in Manhattan on Sunday, 8.25 at “Kinpolis, Poznan, Poland” — a presumed reference to one of two Cinema City Kinepolis entertainment plexes in Poznan, which is Poland’s fifth-largest city. It’s located 240 kilometers (150 miles) east of Berlin.

Is Hollywood Elsewhere still determined to catch Allen’s film in Tijuana on 10.25? Kind of, yeah. Perhaps not so much over the film’s anticipated pleasures as an excuse to re-visit Mexico. I’m actually thinking of taking the Pacific Surfliner down to San Diego and then the San Diego Trolley to the border.

The Wizard of Oz can only look so good on digital media (1080p or 4K Bluray or streaming) because you can’t transform or otherwise reconstitute the core 35mm elements. They are what they are, grain structure and all.

The last time I sat down and watched a Bluray version of this 1939 classic was roughly a decade ago, and it was my judgment that it almost represented a kind of downgrade because it was so completely smothered in grain. And I mean choking on the stuff.

I’ll wait for the reviews of the upcoming 4K version (streeting on 10.29), but sight unseen and reviews un-read I wouldn’t consider buying it. Because I suspect that the grain content will be just as oppressive. I’m naturally looking forward to being re-educated on this matter.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

A little less than five years ago, or on 7.29.14, Jeffrey Cavanaugh posted an essay that fanned the flames of nascent Elizabeth Warren enthusiasm. Titled “Elizabeth Warren’s 11 Commandments,” the subhead was “Everybody’s eyes are on Hillary Clinton, but Elizabeth Warren might be the one Democrats should be watching if a golden calf is what they hope to avoid.”

In Cavanaugh’s prophetic calculus Clinton was the golden calf — “the abandonment of the true faith and the elevation of materialist safety” — and indeed she proved to be the terrible dead weight that sank the Democratic ticket and took us all straight to hell.

Posted on 6.13.18: “Every day I wake up shattered by the spreading Trump miasma, but I also curse Hillary’s name — every damn day. She did this to us. She and her centrist, Democratic-establishment cronies.”

But Warren did this to us also. In a way. Because in late ’14 and early ’15 she listened to the Democratic elders who told her not to challenge Hillary. If she’d announced anyway Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have run (he plainly stated that he got into the 2016 presidential race to carry the progressive banner because Warren had opted out) and with the excited women’s vote there was at least a decent possibility that Warren might have won the nomination. Maybe.

If Warren had run against Trump…who knows? I’m telling myself that everyone who voted for Hillary would’ve also voted for Warren, except Warren wouldn’t have had Hillary’s negatives — no secret email server issues, no fainting at any 9/11 ceremonies.

I would have been delighted to vote for Warren three years ago, without the slightest misgivings. Passion, smarts, gutsy, wonky.

I realize that African American voters probably would’ve clung to Clinton like they’re clinging right now to Joe Biden, but Warren had the heat in late ’14, ’15 and ’16…she really did. Read Cavanaugh’s piece — it’s fascinating.

Consider this chart showing Democratic candidate support among South Carolina’s African-American voters. Right now Warren is polling a weak fourth, and poor Pete Buttigieg is doing even worse. Face it — because of tepid black support Warren almost certainly won’t make it. Am I wrong?

Thanks, older voters of color, for your resistance to Warren because…what, because she’s white and position-papery and bespectacled and professorial? Thanks also for your ingrained resistance to candidates who aren’t straight. Because you’re saddling us all with a candidate who gaffes and drools. Thanks so very much.

In the eyes of Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson, Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is the frontrunner to win the Best Picture Oscar next February.

Partly because it’s a better than pretty good film in many respects, partly because it raises a glass to the “old” Hollywood of a half-century ago, partly because it delivers one of the kindest and most welcome happy endings in a dog’s age, and partly because in this era of dominating Disney-owned tentpoles it’s a stand-alone, non-franchise flick that has made a very decent pile of change so far ($123 domestic, $239M worldwide).

Maybe, but I’m of the vague suspicion that at the end of the day Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (and I recognize, of course, that it’s the height of recklessness to spitball about a film that I’ve only “seen” in terms of having read an early draft of the script) will out-point the Tarantino.

I have six reasons for thinking so.

One, because, given the skills and vision of a director who’s been at this racket since the late ’60s, it’ll probably be “better” and classier than the Tarantino (i.e., more upmarket, more assured, less Van Nuys drive-in-ish) in terms of your basic award-friendly attributes — texture, focus, story tension, dynamic performances, great scenes, technical prowess, color and pizazz.

Two, because it’s a gangster film that isn’t necessarily out to be a visceral funhouse thing a la Scarface or Goodfellas, and is instead a kind of meditative morality play. And is therefore “serious.”

Three, because the three-hour length automatically qualifies it as epic- or Godfather-scaled — i.e., the standard calling card of an “important”, weighty-ass film. On top of the fact that it took years to assemble and cost a tankload of money to produce.

Four, because it’ll be processed by every digital Tom, Dick and Harry as some kind of ultimate statement about the criminal ethos or community by the undisputed king of gangster flicks…a world-renowned maestro who’s made four great ones (Mean Streets, Goodfellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street) and will soon deliver what I have reason to suspect could be (and perhaps will be…who knows?) his crowning, crashing, balls-to-the-wall crescendo, albeit in a somewhat sadder or more forlorn emotional key.

Five, because it’ll set new standards for the invisible blending of unvarnished realism and CG wizardry as well as deliver the most visually convincing rendering of the fountain of youth in the history of motion pictures (and tell me that isn’t going to hit every SAG member where they live).

And six…well, this is a bit complicated but I’ll try to explain. The sixth reason is that even the stubborn old Academy farts are starting to realize that there’s no stopping the streaming way of things, and that save for a sprinkling of award-season films released between October and December the theatrical realm has pretty much been overrun by the mongrel hordes, and that other big streamers besides Netflix and Amazon are about to jump into the arena (Apple, Disney) and thereby make things even more exotic and challenging, and that despite whatever perceived threat element Netflix may psychologically present it deserves at this point a Movie Godz gimmee owesie because it’s the only big player (as of right now) that is standing belly to the bar and funding ars gratia artis films for their own merits (like Roma), and because long, ambitious movies Like The Irishman are at a premium right now.

There’s also a seventh factor, and a crucial one at that: Netflix has to cut some kind of deal with major exhibitors (AMC, Cineplex, Arclight, Landmark) in order to book The Irishman into theatres for at least…well, that’s the issue, isn’t it? Potential engagements of 42, 56 or 70 days (or six, eight or ten-week runs)….who knows?

AMC wants something close to a 90-day exclusive theatrical window, even though it was recently asserted by a distribution veteran that “95% of movies stop earning their keep after the 42-day mark.”

The other four Best Picture contenders of note, probably, will be Sam Mendes‘ 1917, Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women. And maybe Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell. But The Irishman will take it. That’s how I see it right now.

Originally posted on 9.25.10: “I recognize that some blogger-columnists feel that sitting on the sidelines during awards season and gauging the industry’s political and emotional sentiments regarding this or that nominee is what they do and should do, and that this is both important and expected of them and so on. I’ve never gone along with this. In fact, my reaction to this philosophy has always been ‘what?

“I believe that the proper role of a good Hollywood columnist is to not just report on the conversation (which passes the time and is occasionally interesting), but to lead it — to stand at the lecturn and be an advocate and to put wood into the fire and keep the passion going for the right films and the right filmmakers. To celebrate art before politics. And to argue against awarding mediocre films, which is what most people are always inclined to do — i.e., be supportive of their friends and colleagues because it’s a friendly, neighborly thing to do.

“The highest calling of a Hollywood columnist during awards season is to be a good shepherd by guiding the sheep to where the good grass is. This doesn’t imply that sheep don’t have a nose for good grass on their own. Of course they do. But there is crabgrass, grass, decent grass, better grass, higher-quality grass and world-class gourmet grass. I would humbly submit that shepherds have an eye and a nose for grass, and that life is short so why eat regular grass when all you have to do is trudge up the hill a bit and sample the really good stuff?

“Put another way, the ‘I’m just taking the pulse of the town and staying out of the argument’ columnists are like Judean shepherds on a hillside near Mount Sinai. Shepherd #1: ‘Look at those sheep over there, eating all that yellow grass and those weeds.’ Shepherd #2: ‘Yeah, I know, and with that really nice looking patch of rich green grass to the left about 100 yards.’ Shepherd #1: ‘Why don’t we get our staffs and scoot them over in that direction?’ Shepherd #2: ‘No, no, that’s not our proper role. We’re here to just chill and observe and keep an eye on whatever the sheep are up to…nothing more.'”

Postscript: Last year was an anomaly in this regard. Stalinist “woke” shepherds tried to steer the sheep away from the Green Book grass, using the ugliest and most damning SJW rhetoric imaginable. This left classic-style shepherds like myself no choice but to urge a pushback against the SJW bullies, and this, in part, is what led to one of the happiest moments in Oscar history — Academy members collectively telling the wokesters to go fuck themselves.

It wasn’t about how great or world-class Green Book was; it was about telling the enemies of this old-fashioned but amiable, harmless, heart-warming film to shove it.