Jordan Ruimy: “Dune: Part Two is actually night and day compared to the 2021 Dune. I loved it. Dune 3, however, is actually going to be very different. Chalamet is going to be a dictator.”
HE: “I don’t want to see that film. Last night’s viewing was an eye-opener….transporting visual material delivered with profound stylistic pizazz. I don’t want to descend into a dictatorship.”
Ruimy: “It’s a very different book. More solemn, less action.”
HE: “I’m not saying the first Dune (’21) was Star Wars — it certainly wasn’t — but Dune: Part Two is analogous to The Empire Strikes Back. It was a similar kind of exciting, darkly-shaded, going-deeper quality.”
Yeah, I know — I should wait until next year (mid July of ’25) to do a “looking back at my beloved decade-old Trainwreck” piece.
Judd Apatow‘s film premiered big-time at South by Southwest on 3.15.15 (just shy of nine years ago) and opened commercially on 7.17.15.
But in my mind Trainwreck is actually ten years old now, as it was in pre-production in the late winter and spring of ’14, and began principal photography on 5.19.14 in New York City. So let’s celebrate the 10-year anniversary today…pull up a chair.
A good comedy is just as story-savvy, character-rich and well-motivated as a good drama. Good comedies and dramas both need strong third-act payoffs. Take away the jokes, the broad business and the giggly schtick, and a successful comedy will still hold water in dramatic terms.
And yet most comedic writers, it seems, start with an amusing premise, then add the laugh material, and then, almost as an afterthought, weave in a semblance of a story along with some motivation and a third-act crescendo that feels a little half-assed.
Remember Amy Schumer‘s eulogy at her dad’s funeral in Trainwreck? That was a great scene, and it was part of an excellent comedy.
Posted on 6.30.15: Trainwreck is dryly hilarious and smoothly brilliant and damn near perfect. It’s the finest, funniest, most confident, emotionally open-hearted and skillful film Apatow has ever made, hands down. I was feeling the chills plus a wonderful sense of comfort and assurance less than five minutes in. Wow, this is good…no, it’s better…God, what a relief…no moaning or leaning forward or covering my face with my hands…pleasure cruise.
I went to the Arclight hoping and praying that Trainwreck would at least be good enough so I could write “hey, Schumer’s not bad and the film is relatively decent.” Well, it’s much better than that, and Schumer’s performance is not only a revelation but an instant, locked-in Best Actress contender. I’m dead serious, and if the other know-it-alls don’t wake up to this they’re going to be strenuously argued with. Don’t even start in with the tiresome refrain of “oh, comedic performances never merit award-season attention.” Shut up. Great performances demand respect, applause and serious salutes…period.
I still think Schumer is a 7.5 or an 8 but it doesn’t matter because (and I know how ludicrous this is going to sound given my history) I fell in love in a sense — I saw past or through all that and the crap that’s still floating around even now. For it became more and more clear as I watched that Schumer’s personality and performance constitute a kind of cultural breakthrough — no actress has ever delivered this kind of attitude and energy before in a well-written, emotionally affecting comedy, and I really don’t see how anyone can argue that Schumer isn’t in the derby at this point. (A columnist friend doesn’t agree but said that Schumer’s Trainwreck screenplay is a surefire contender for Best Original Screenplay.)
World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is conducting a poll of smartypants film journo and industry types, and the specific question is “send me your top five films of the 1950s unranked.”
Only five films from an entire decade? Not even ten…just five?
HE’s Top Five of the ’50s: (1) Fred Zinnemann‘s From Here To Eternity (’53); (2) Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg‘s On The Waterfront (’54); (3) Elia Kazan‘s Viva Zapata (’52); (4) Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (’55); and (5) William Wyler‘s The Big Country (’58).
It strikes me as astonishing that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis and subordinate co-prosecutor Nathan Wade are still being grilled as to when their affair began and whether or not they’ve told the full truth about when and where their sexual activity took place, etc.
I’ve acknowledged time and again that most of us are infuriated that Willis and Wade played their private cards this foolishly, thoughtlessly and arrogantly, and in so doing created absurdly embarassing optics for the prosecution, but why is this idiotic sideshow still the stuff of headlines?
If Willis and Wade wind up being taken off the case and replaced by substitute prosecutors, fine…but what’s happened to the main order of business?
Why are Willis and Wade apparently having fudged some of the apparent facts about their affair (which may have begun earlier than claimed and which ended late last summer)…why is this the big focus and not what any fair-minded observer would call the main order of criminal business?
Who has ever told the whole truth and nothing but the truth about past sexual indiscretions? Who cares who paid for this or that, or whether or not Willis settled shared expenses with cash or if Wade covered most of the costs?
What has happened, in short, to the prosecution of Trump and his stinking, crooked-ass cronies? Trump clearly attempted to influence Georgia election officials — including the governor, the attorney general, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger via that famously recorded phone call — to “find” enough votes to override Joe Biden‘s win in that state and thus overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Willis’s office indicted Trump and 18 others on 41 charges on 8.14.23.
That’s criminal behavior, indictable fraud, racketeering, fast and loose stuff, fake electors, slippery bad guy moves. And all anyone wants to talk about is the schtupping between Willis and Wade. Hasn’t this crap gone on long enough?
Let’s imagine that Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo (’58) never existed. Let’s also suppose that by way of some kind of odd exercise or experiment 100 present-tense directors (all ages, genders and persuasions) have been asked to write and shoot a thrilling scene in which a couple of male San Francisco cops (a detective and a uniformed beat cop) are chasing a thief across the rooftops.
Let’s also presume that a fair percentage of the directors would decide to show one of the cops falling to his death while the other slips and is seen hanging from a rain gutter, and with no apparent way of rescuing himself.
I guarantee you that 98% or 99% of these directors would end this scene conclusively by showing us what happens to the hanging-from-the-rain-gutter person.
They would either show the protagonist (a) falling to his death, (b) somehow making a great acrobatic lunge for safety and miraculously succeeding, or (c) being rescued at the last second by a late-arriving cop or a civilian bystander.
None of them, trust me, would end the scene without some kind of clear-cut, life-or-death payoff. They would never consider leaving the rain-gutter guy in some sort of existential limbo as the scene fades to black.
But Hitchcock did this, and that’s what makes Vertigo‘s very first sequence a piece of fascinating, unforgettable, bold-as-brass art.
What other film (crime, action, suspense, anything) has put a major character in serious jeopardy during an early scene, and has never shown us how he/she gets out of danger? Please name one or two.
During last night’s discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision to cut Donald Trump an enormous amount of slack (no decision on Presidential immunity until June, and his conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election trial probably delayed until September or even October) by way of their own cowardice, Rachel Maddow said the following [8:20 mark]:
“When you talk about the unsettling cravenness of the [Supreme Court]…the cravenness of the court is evident with what they’re doing with the pacing here. Putting this off for seven weeks, sitting on it for two weeks for no reason…obviously pushing all of their cases, pushing them to a point where Trump will be standing for election before any of us have heard the verdicts in any of [these cases]…it’s the timing,
“But it’s also the idea that [Trump’s claim of Presidential immunity] is an open question.
“What’s the most famous pardon in American history? Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon once he had resigned from office. Why did Ford pardon Nixon? Quote: ‘As a result of certain acts or omissions that occured before his resignation’ — meaning as a result of stuff he did while President — ‘RIchard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial, whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings pf the appropriate grand jury and the discretion of authorized prosecutors,’ etc.
“The idea that a former President can never be tried for something he did while [serving as President]…this idea if disproven by a plain reading of American history, and the idea that this has to be taken up [by the Supremes] is like them saying that the sky is green.
“Even for the non-lawyers amnog us to say, “You know what? The sky is not green, even on our worst day. This is b.s. [They] are doing this to help [their] political friend, [their] partisan patron…for them to say that [the immunity thing] needs to be decided because it’s unclear in the law….this is flagrant, flagrant bullpucky, And they know it, and they don’t care they we knew it, and that’s disturbing about the future legitimacy of this court.”
“By deciding to take up Mr. Trump’s claim that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for any official action while in office — a legal theory rejected by two lower courts and one that few experts think has any basis in the Constitution — the [Suopreme Court] justices bought the former president at least several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start.
“It is not out of the question that Mr. Trump could still face a jury in the case, in Federal District Court in Washington, before Election Day. At this point, the legal calendar suggests that if the justices issue a ruling by the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June and find that Mr. Trump is not immune from prosecution, the trial could still start by late September or October.
“But with each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one.”
Each film will reportedly adopt the POV of a separate member, but I can’t envision Mendes focusing on the same portion of their story with four separate viewpoints — that would be oppressive.
Let’s assume the four films (which haven’t even been written yet) will cover separate chapters in the band’s grand saga — 7 years, 7 months, and 24 days, 1962 to 1970.
Chapter 1: Screaming Beatlemania — ignition, liftoff, orbit (’63 and ’64). Chapter 2: Musical maturation, experimentation and early psychedelic journeys (’65 and ’66, Rubber Soul and Revolver). Chapter 3: The gush of Sgt. Pepper creation (early to mid ’67), the death of Brian Epstein, the failure of Magical Mystery Tour, succumbing to gradual lethargy and uncertainty (late ’67 and ’68). Chapter 4: The disharmony of the White Album and the plague of Yoko Ono, followed by the low tide of the Get Back sessions and concluding with the high of recording Abbey Road (’69).
But it can’t really work unless the casting is other-worldly, and no casting decisions can be that. Nobody and I mean nobody can “play” John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. No matter who Mendes chooses to hire, it simply won’t work. Their faces and voices are too deeply embedded in every corner of our minds to convincingly replicate or even half-replicate in a narrative format.
The only way I would buy it would be if Mendes decided to rotoscope their story….shoot it with actors but alter the animated faces in such a way that audiences could accept that they’re watching a reasonable fascimile of the Real McCoys. Otherwise it can’t work. It just can’t.
The financial success of Super Mario Bros, Oppenheimer and Barbie aside…
Critical Drinker: “Last year was a bit of a turning point for all this stuff in Hollywood. We’re going to see more of it, for sure…[woke-injection bullshit] isn’t going to go away overnight, but it’s definitely reached a point where it’s no longer financially viable. Certainly in the superhero realm. Superhero fatigue, oversaturation of the market, declining quality, spreading themselves too thin, perhaps hiring people to direct and write for reasons other than merit. Plus the political dimension of it has become tiresome.”
Two days ago Disney CEO Bob Igeradmitted to having read the proverbial writing on the wall and more or less bullhorned the following “whoa, Nellie!” message to Disneywokesters, which I’ve conveyed here in HE-styled rhetoric:
“All right, enough, dammit…we have to face facts…the Critical Drinker has been rightallalong and wehave to acknowledge the state of things, or at least I do…the new Disney law is “nomore wokepropaganda inourmovies”
“We’ve clearly alienated Joe and Jane Popcorn in the parenting community and we really have to get back to being goodoldfamily–friendlyDisney, and in case you’re not reading me, we’ll henceforth be re-assessing the advisability of using LGBTQIA and maybe even progressive femme-bot material in our animated features. We’ll be taking it one step at a time.”
Posted on 11.13.16: I don’t celebrate being one year closer to death as a rule, but it was nice to hear from all those software-prompted Facebook friends who wished me all the best (seriously, thanks) and it was extra-nice to be treated to grass-fed beef sliders, cole slaw and chocolate cake by HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko and editor-producer David Scott Smith.
It all happened at Mel’s on Sunset — an honest restaurant serving honest,’70s-era food.
The only problem was that the a.c. made the indoor climate feel like 45 or 50 degrees.
HE to waitress: “Wow, it’s nice and chilly here…good thing you guys are being considerate to your customers because it’s like 95 degrees outside, like Palm Springs in July.”
Waitress: “Oh, thank you. We aim to please!”
HE: “Uhm…I’m kidding? It’s 60 degrees outside, and it feels like a refrigerator in here? Does it have to be this cold?”
Waitress: “Oh, hah-hah…got it! I don’t call the shots, the manager does.”
HE: “Would you mind asking the manager to turn up the thermostat?”
Waitress: “I’ll ask her.”
HE: “And if she refuses, do you have some blankets?”
With HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko, just before blowing out the candle.
And could therefore use those Man in the Iron Mask testicles to project a more candid or even a blunt-spoken persona…the polite but somewhat gnarly, “sorry but this is what I really actually think” type of guy..the guy I really am deep down as opposed to the “nice guy” who wants to get along and be obliging with people.
I’m speaking about a tendency that I and others have…a tendency to defer and congeal and turn the other cheek when we do a podcast. We all cherish civility and politeness but you can’t let the “nice” instinct throw you off your basic game.
For me the real truth of things is more often in the writing, and not as much in the podcasting. Unless I’m attacked or challenged in some mildly aggressive way. Then I bring out the bullets.
I’m also starting to think that it might be better during this weekend’s Misfits podcast to have a group of three rather than four. There’s too much compeitition with four — three is better. Right now I’m trying to reach out to Jeff Sneider but you never know with that guy.
…if a Hell or High Water-type film (the kind of film that could have been directed by, say, David Mackenzie and written by Taylor Sheridan)…if a film of this sort had been on the fall-holiday menu, I would have generally felt better. Alas…
Posted on 8.14.16: So who saw Hell or High Water and what are the reactions? The other day I called it the year’s best — is it? And how did the room feel, what was the after-vibe? Do you concur that it’s a social undercurrent drama disguised as a cops vs. bank-robbers movie? That it’s a meditative moralistic thing that stands up for the yokels? Or does it mainly play like a good, unpretentious Texas desperado flick? Should CBS Films be trying to sell it to red-state audiences or is it destined to connect only with blue-state urbans?
From my 8.12 review: “Any movie that rings the bell of people like me (somewhat educated, accomplished, well-travelled, blue-state values, Kooples T-shirts) as well as guys who live in the cocoon of lazy cynicism and insufficient brain-cell counts while wearing flannel shirts, cowboys boots, saggy Levi 501s and swigging Lone Star beer is definitely up to something.”
In an 8.14 Variety pieceOwen Gleiberman writes that Hell or High Water is “a 2016 version of a 1970s movie…it transcends being a genre film [but also] respects how much audiences today crave genre elements.” He calls it “a crackerjack piece of entertainment” that “connects up to the most downbeat undercurrents of life in America today. That’s what gives the movie its ’70s flavor. It’s about poverty and insecurity, the gnaw of financial desperation, and the feeling that there’s no way out of it.”
