Waiting in line for Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse (Director’s Fortnight) at 7:25 am, outside J.W. Marriott (Richard Porton, Donna Dickman, yours truly, Jordan Ruimy). Photo taken by the forever gracious Jeff Hill. Slept from 3:15 am to 6:15 am. One Red Bull, two strong coffees. Will Batman (i.e., Robert Pattinson) attend the post-screening q&a? Post=screening answer: He did along with director-cowriter Robert Eggers and costar Willem Dafoe.
Gaspar Noe‘s 50-minute Lux Aeterna isn’t bad — a riff about actresses, directors, monetary pressure, wannabes, film sets and how the creative process of actors is sometimes, Noe is saying, not necessarily a kind or compassionate thing.
But I hated the fact that Lux Aeterna didn’t start until 12:50 am (it was supposed to begin 35 minutes earlier), and I really didn’t care for standing in the drizzle for 30 or 35 minutes while the security guys checked each and every bag as if they were El Al officials at Tel Aviv airport.
It’s now 3:20 am, and I have to get up in three hours to attend an 8:45 am of Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse. If I don’t get there early I might not get in.
I humbly apologize for having been a Diao Yinan ignoramus until today. I’m sorry, I mean, for having failed to rent Diao’s Black Coal, Thin Ice, which won the Golden Bear prize at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival. But now, at least, I’ve seen his latest, The Wild Goose Lake, and I’m thinking it’s one of the most visually inventive, brilliantly choreographed noir thrillers I’ve ever seen. One of them surely.
I probably haven’t felt this knocked out, this on-the-floor, this “holy shit”-ified by sheer directorial audacity and musicality since Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men.
I wasn’t even following the convoluted story all that closely and I didn’t care all that much — The Wild Goose Lake is so deliciously composed, such an audacious high-wire act that you can just watch it for the imaginative visual poetry and off-center creative strategies alone.
Ever since Asian crime thrillers became a big deal in the early ’90s, fans have been saying to skeptics “don’t worry about the silly plots and the cliched, half-assed characters…just concentrate on the wonderful action-flick chops and choreography…just surrender to that.”
I always waved off that jive. A movie has to have compelling characters, a believable milieu and a strong emotional undercurrent. But now, for the first time, I understand that fervor, that giddy rationale.
The Wild Goose Lake isn’t all that great with the internals — everyone who’s seen Black Coal, Thin Ice says it’s a better film, and maybe they’re right, but I’m a Diao Yinan novice and I was effing blown away. So cut me a little slack — I’m new to this guy, and as far as I’m concerned The Wild Goose Lake and Les Miserables are the two best films of the festival so far.
There’s simply no question that Diao, 48, is a flat-out cooking genius — a master of atypical framing and selective cutting, ultra-inventive action choreography, imaginative use of shadows and silhouettes and a guy who knows how to end a sex scene with real style. He’s a major arthouse director working with the confines the action genre, and at the same time breaking out of the bonds of that genre and almost setting it free.
All hail costars Hu Ge, Liao Fan, Gewi Lun-mei and Wan Qian.
Quentin Tarantino attended today’s Grand Lumiere screening at 4:30 pm, and sat next to Diao. I was in the structure next door, catching a 5 pm screening in the Salle Bazin.
Yes, I’ve already rented Black Coal, Thin Ice on Amazon — I’ll get to it next weekend.
A recently arrived This Gun For Hire Bluray is sitting in my Los Angeles home — a nice “welcome home” gift when I return.
From recently posted DVD Beaver review: “As we’ve seen from almost all 4K restorations of older films, it doesn’t bring up sharpness as some anticipate, but rather the desirable film-like heaviness. So, compared to the DVDs, This Gun For Hire looks lighter — almost smokier — and it suits the presentation on my system. This looks very strong in-motion — consistent, clean and accurately darker. We don’t lose detail — it is just more subtle in the well-layered contrast. The texture on this film is delicious.”
Fran Lebowitz to Bill Maher last night: “I hate to agree with Bernie Sanders, whom I cannot stand…”
Maher: “Not Bernie or Biden?”
Lebowitz: “And by the way, they’re both way too old to be President, okay?”
When the audience applauds in agreement, Maher turns and shouts “Shut the fuck up! That is such a prejudice!”
Lebowitz: “It’s common sense. Let me tell you something — these guys are too old to drive. All right?”
Maher: “No, they’re not.”
Lebowitz: “If you were their son or their daughter, you’d be plotting to take away their keys.”
Maher: “Maybe you’re plotting to be decrepit in your 70s, but I don’t plan on it.”
Lebowitz: “I think a president should be in [his/her] 50s. You’re physically fine and you know pretty much everything you’re going to know. After that you start to forget everything…it’s partly how you treat yourself, and it’s partly genetic.”
Late yesterday afternoon I caught Pedro Almodovar‘s Pain and Glory, which has strangely risen to the top of the Screen Daily chart. “Strangely” because this film about a getting-older director (Antonio Banderas more or less playing Almodovar himself) is one that simmers upon a low flame.
A meditation riff about decline, disease, looming death, drugs, old lovers, creative blockage and memories of childhood, it left me with feelings of respect and appreciation more than any sense of excitement or bracing discovery. It all unfolds in a settled, confident way but in a distinctly minor key.
I’ve worshipped Almodovar all my adult moviegoing life. With the exception of I’m So Excited, his films have always made me smile and swoon. This one felt a little more recessive than most. Settled, reflective, gray-haired, even a little morose at times. I can’t say I was turned on, but I felt sated and assured as far as it went.
It’s a film about getting older and dealing with physical maladies and to a lesser extent creative blockage. An old boyfriend, copping street heroin, a third=act discussions with his late mom (Penelope Cruz), memories of her washing clothes in the river…all of it swirling around in Banderas’s mind.
I liked Pain and Glory well enough, but I wasn’t enthralled. Pedro is a superb filmmaker. I just wasn’t knocked out.
A little while ago I walked over to the Debussy for a 10:45 pm screening The Shining. I wanted to see Stanley Kubrick‘s eerie-vibe classic on a big screen again, and the 4K digital remastering made it look…uhm, as good as it ever has. I was half-hoping for some kind of slight bump, but after 20 or 25 minutes I was admitting to myself “this looks fantastic, but it doesn’t look any better than my Shining Bluray does on my Sony 4K HDR 65-incher.” So I excused myself and went back to the pad. Sleep is more important.
Update / correction: The 4K Shining isn’t a “restoration” but a remastering. It was created from “a new 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick’s former personal assistant Leon Vitali worked closely with the team at Warner Bros. during the mastering process.”
At some point during Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Rick Dalton, a TV actor having trouble breaking into features, finds work in a couple of Italian-made cheapies — this thing and a spaghetti western (or so I’ve read).
Once again Tarantino is paying tribute or otherwise wink-winking at Italy’s half-century-old exploitation film industry, which has been one of his key passions since he began working at that Manhattan Beach video store (Video Archives) in the ’80s. The poster is basically saying “wow, those cheesy Italian schlock movies of the late ’60s, right? Great primitive cinema!”
The biggest single plot element in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood involves the brutal slaughter of five people (Sharon Tate, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent) in a home just down the street from Dalton’s rental, which he shares with stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). But there hasn’t been the slightest hint of this in the marketing materials this far. Not the slightest little tease.
