Jeff Wells

Good Marrakech paragraph, posted on 12.6.10: “If I never return to the Marrakech Film Festival it’ll be too soon, but not everything has been bad. Yes, the wifi problems have been unrelenting but everyone you run into is polite and calm and gentle to a fault. There’s apparently no such thing as an impolite Marrakech resident. (Okay, I did run into a couple of ruffians on a bike on Saturday night who tried to assault me and steal my wallet — I later named them Dick and Perry — but I pushed one of them in the chest and told them both to fuck off and then ran in the opposite direction and they were good enough not to follow, so even the thieves and the roughnecks are polite.) And there’s no indoor smoking ban. And there are no helmet laws so you can scooter down the street with the wind blowing through your hair. And the food is wonderful. And the energy in the main old-town square is so exciting and heavenly. And there are horse carts all over the city, and sometimes as you’re driving down the street you can smell horseshit, and that is a very good thing. The older you get and the more plastic and corporate the world becomes, the better horseshit smells.”

One year before the official beginning of the late ’60s to mid ’70s glory period…an era that some believe was ignited or sign-posted by Bonnie and Clyde in the summer of ’67…1966 happened, and that was no chump change.

To hear it from The Limey‘s Terry Valentine (i.e., Peter Fonda), 1966 was the only year in which “the ’60s” were fully in flower. There were countless manifestations — spiritual, creative — and hints of coming disturbances. April ’66 saw the famous Time magazine cover that asked “Is God dead?”, which was used by Roman Polanski during the filming of Rosemary’s Baby a year later. The following month saw the release of Bob Dylan‘s Blonde On Blonde (and the coughing heat pipes in “Visions of Johanna”) and Brian Wilson‘s Pet Sounds, and three months later Revolver, the Beatles’ “acid album” which turned out to be their nerviest and most leap-forwardy, was released.

All kinds of mildly trippy, tingly, unnerving things were popping all over.

But you’d never guess what was happening to go by the mood, tone and between-the-lines repartee during the 39th Oscar Awards, which honored the best films of 1966 but aired in April ’67, or roughly seven weeks before the release of Sgt. Pepper. Bob Hope‘s opening monologue is punishing, almost physically painful to endure. And look…there’s Ginger Rogers!

Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons won six Oscars that night — Picture, Director (Fred Zinneman), Actor (Paul Scofield), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction — and there’s no question that it still “plays”. Well acted, beautifully written by Robert Bolt. But it also feels a bit smug by today’s standards, a little too starchy and theatrical.

What 1966 films play best by today’s aesthetic standards? Certainly Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blowup, a London-based film that completely absorbed and reflected what was happening there in late ’65 and ’66, and that wasn’t hay — the entire avant garde world was rotating around London’s musical intrigues and atmospheres back then.

The second best, I feel, was The Sand Pebbles, which contained Steve McQueen‘s most open-hearted, career-best performance.

The third finest was Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals, a crafty, ace-level western actioner that plays beautifully by today’s measure and which contains Lee Marvin‘s second-best performance (after “Walker” in ’67’s Point Blank).

And let’s not belittle The Battle of Algiers, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Persona, Au hasard Balthazar, Masculin Féminin and Polanski’s Cul-De-Sac…what is that, six?

Other ’66 hotties: Mike Nichols‘ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Lewis Gilbert‘s Alfie, John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds and Grand Prix, Milos Forman‘s Loves of a Blonde, Billy Wilder‘s The Fortune Cookie, Norman Jewison‘s The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Claude Lelouch‘s A Man and a Woman, Richard Lester‘s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Karel Reisz‘s Morgan!, or a Suitable Case for Derangement. (12)

Three days ago (4.6.23) the Hollywood Reporter ran one of those “taking stock and honing it all down” laundry-list articles that happen every so often. It’s called “Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century.”

Co-authored by the highly esteemed Jon Frosch, David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Lovia Gyarkye, Leslie Felperin and Jordan Mintzer, the piece highlights several brilliant, important, well-chosen films, but for the most part it’s a DEI checklist roster…the same kind of diverse balancing act assessment that N.Y. Times critics A.O. Scott and and Manohla Dargis began to be associated with starting about five years ago….gay, Black, women, Asian + steer clear of any white male influence whenever possible…gay, Black, women, Asian + steer clear of any white male influence whenever possible…wash, rinse, repeat.

The key question must always be, “If you discount the DEI aspect, how good are these films on their own bare-bones merit?”

Most of these critics understand this is a fair way to winnow and select, but they’re fearful of not doing the DEI dance because doing so could be interpreted as exclusionary, elitist, racist or old-schoolish. In the old days (i.e., before 2017) such lists were sometimes driven by attempts to reckon with the best-of-the-best based on purely cinematic, dramatic, daring or transcendent, soul-drilling terms. Now it’s all about identity politics and Twitter and terror…about being afraid to say what they really think because this might get them into trouble or cause some kind of ruckus. They know this deep down but will never admit it.

Here’s what they chose (HE agreement in boldface)…HE enthusiastically approves of 12 THR picks:

Bottom 25: Weekend (fine), Black Panther (gimme a break!), Time (difficult incarceration story), Bright Star (Jane Campion, John Keats, Fanny Brawne), Pariah (Dee Rees, Brooklyn lesbian saga), Bridesmaids (culturally important but not really good enough to make a serious “creme de la creme” list), Things to Come (Mia Hansen Love, Isabelle Huppert), Grizzly Man (great Herzog), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (weak tea abortion saga), Pan’s Labyrinth (top-tier GDT), Summer of Soul (found-footage POC concert doc…stirring as far as it goes), I Am Not Your Negro (gripping James Baldwin doc), Children of Men (brilliant, classic), Wendy and Lucy (good but basically a sop to the Reichart cult), Lover’s Rock (not the best of the five Small Axe films — the best is Mangrove), The Favourite (good Yorgos Lanthimos costumer but calm down), The Social Network (brilliant), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (blistering lesbian romance, emotional wipe-out), The Return (I’m more enamored of Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan), Manchester by the Sea (grand slam), Marie Antoinette (please!), The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Romanian classic), A Serious Man (magnificent defeatism, peak Coen Bros.), At Berkeley (Wiseman tribute doc), Y Tu Mamá También (classic Cuaron but “unbearably poignant”?). HE approval tally: 6.

Top 25: Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino’s landmark romance), Timbuktu (Islamic nutters), 35 Shots of Rum (calm down), Before Sunset (not the best of Linklater’s relationship trilogy — that would be Before Midnight), Parasite (good but overrated — collapses when drunk con artists let the maid in and thereby ruin their whole con), Far From Heaven (commendable but overpraised Sirk tribute), Drive My Car (too long, too many cigarettes, exhausting, runs out of gas), Shoplifters (under-energized, over-praised), Talk to Her (magnificent Almodovar), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (fine), The Power of the Dog (no way in hell does this punishing slog of a film belong on this list), Wall-E (okay), Burning (corrosive and hard-hitting, but overlong and sluggish), Moonlight (way overpraised due to weak third act + too-muscular Trevante Rhodes, but Barry Jenkins‘ depiction of a world-class handjob on a beach will be long remembered), Boyhood (exceptional stunt film), Get Out (racially stamped Ira Levin zombie spooker…possibly the most overpraised film of the 21st Century), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (brilliant), In the Mood for Love (understated, appropriately respected romance, considerably aided by Chris Doyle‘s cinematography), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee‘s timeless classic about letting love slip away), Spirited Away (fine), Mulholland Drive (take away the spookiness and perversity and what’s left?), Zodiac (drop-dead brilliant investigation of an endlessly fascinating cold case), The Gleaners and I (never saw it), Inside Llewyn Davis (another serving of world-class downerism from the Coens) and Yi Yi (ashamed to admit that I’ve never seen it). HE approval tally: 6.

Read more

The other day James Mangold told Collider‘s Steve “Frosty” Weintraub that his endlessly delayed Bob Dylan biopic will begin shooting five months hence, or sometime in August. Star Timothee Chalamet, primed and pumped, will do his own singing.

Imaginary hypothetical: Imagine that you’re Bob Dylan, and that you have final approval over who directs this film, which has been referred to as Going Electric and A Complete Unknown but ought to be be called Ghost of Electricity. You’ve been told there are five practical choices, given scheduling issues and whatnot — (1) Ridley Scott (this is theoretical), (2) Control‘s Anton Corbijn, (3) Alejandro G. Iñárritu, (4) Robert Eggers and Mangold, whose artistic vistas currently include Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a forthcoming Stars Wars origin film and an all-new Swamp Thing flick.

Dylan pauses, exhales, furrows his brow and says “definitely the Swamp Thing guy.”

.@mang0ld tells us his @bobdylan biopic with #TimothéeChalamet starts filming in August and Chalamet will do his own singing in the film. #StarWarsCelebration pic.twitter.com/yVluBMTeJz

— Collider (@Collider) April 7, 2023

Read more

Seven words spoken by Swedish model Gunilla Knutsson during the initial Noxzema “Stripper” ad (:21 to :25) were culture-shaking. That five seconds of film arguably constituted the most erotic moment ever experienced by 20th Century broadcast TV viewers. Many, many moments of titillation had happened before and certainly have since, but even today it’s damn near impossible to watch this ad and not feel…uhm, something or other. It wasn’t just the words, of course, but that breathy Swedish accent.

Knuttson, age 77, is still with us.

Imagine what today’s Maple Street Monsters would say and do if, etc.

I’ve never once posted a Tucker Carlson clip on this site (okay, maybe once before), but I’m posting this one because of what happened to Riley Gaines last night on the San Francisco State University campus. It was horrific and Orwellian. I’m sorry but the views of both Carlson and Gaines on the overall matter of transgender bio-males competing in bio-women’s sports (i.e., Lia Thomas) strike me as sane and sensible.

It also seems hypocritical for the mainstream liberal media to decry Republicans expelling Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson from the Tennessee State Legislature, an act of officious brutality that HE deplores for having been way too punitive and out of proportion, and at the same time ignore what happened to Gaines. Please tell me where was the sense or sanity in transgender foam-at-the-mouthers terrorizing and physically assaulting Gaines, whom I don’t agree with in many respects but who didn’t deserve to be threatened and slapped around.

We strongly condemn the violence perpetrated against @iwf spokeswoman @Riley_Gaines_ on @SFSU campus. Riley was violently accosted, ambushed, and physically assaulted during a speech on sex discrimination women face in their own single-sex sports category. pic.twitter.com/uhND8UY2jX

— Independent Women's Forum (@IWF) April 7, 2023

I’m hearing that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (6.30.23) is “another Top Gun: Maverick in that it’s a love letter to a bygone moviegoing experience.”

Director James Mangold, I’m told, is “very deft in mining the same turf as Rocky Balboa, depicting an aged actor and character taking a valedictory lap. Harrison Ford brings the goods, but it’s Phoebe Waller Bridge who truly ups the game, playing her part like a young Diana Rigg. Audiences will love her character and performance. The film will pack theaters.”

Fine, I said, but I don’t trust Mangold AT ALL. The trailer tells me they’re recycling old jokes and old bits. It looks like a slick franchise tribute and that’s all.

Reply: “Once again, Phoebe Waller Bridge is the key to the film. She gives it heart and soul and wit.

“Contrasting the proverbial disgruntled and grumpy older Ford against hippies in the 60s is what works. He’s an old man yelling at clouds and kids to get off his lawn, but he’s the only one that perceives the dangers of the assimilated enemies working for the American government at NASA.

“Mads Mikkelsen‘s villain is a former Nazi scientist like a Werner von Braun, now working for NASA. Basically a sardonic and philosophical Doctor Strangelove type. Mikkelsen uses a little Peter Lorre-styled menace laced with sinister humor.”

Letter to N.Y. Times from Barbara Barran of Brooklyn: “During President Biden’s State of the Union speech, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert repeatedly interrupted him, with Ms. Greene screaming, ‘Liar!’ Both women are still members of Congress.

“But let two Black representatives in Tennessee — Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin J. Pearson of Memphis — protest the lack of gun control legislation after children were massacred, and they are thrown out of office by the Republicans.

“What a travesty! What a terrible place this country has come to!”

I’ve always loved this “explaining The Searchers” scene from Martin Scorsese‘s Who’s That Knocking At My Door? (’68). Filmed in ’65, the 26-year-old Harvey Keitel is trying to make Zina Bethune, 20, with his knowledge of and passion for John Ford‘s The Searchers (5.16.56).

It’s really Scorsese talking, of course. You’re left with a presumption, in fact, that Scorsese probably attempted any number of seductions along these lines.

Over the decades many people have proclaimed their knowledge of and passion for The Searchers. The first significant “we need to take a fresh look” piece was written in ’79 by New York contributor Stuart Byron. His money phrase was calling it the “Super-Cult Movie of the New Hollywood,” and that certainly stirred the pot for a lot of folks.

On 8.9.11 the late Peter Bogdanovich sought to re-start the engine with an IndieWire piece in which he The Searchers “not only among the very best, but also among the final Western masterworks of the movies’ golden age.”

Largely for the sake of obstinacy I posted a counterpunch piece a couple of days later (“Hard-To-Love Searchers“) and I was mostly hated on for doing so. You’re worthless, stupid…kill yourself! Sure thing.

And then on 3.18.13 Scorsese himself posted a conflicted, yes-and-no Searchers love essay in The Hollywood Reporter.

That was ten years ago, and I think that as time moves on it’s going to be less and less dangerous or dicey to assess The Searchers in less-than-glowing or semi-religious terms. Scorsese’s wisest observation in the THR piece was that director John Ford personally related to John Wayne‘s Ethan Edwards, the gruff, scowling, racist-minded loner at the heart of this 1956 film. This is precisely why the present-tense viewers are considerably less enamored (if in fact they ever were enamored) of this rather thorny and at times cruel-hearted film.

Scorsese’s basic thought is that while The Searchers has some unfortunate or irritating aspects, it’s nonetheless a great film and has seemed deeper, more troubling and more layered the older he’s become. Which is well and good but you always have to take Scorsese’s praise with a grain of salt, I think. A lifelong Film Catholic, Scorsese has always been a gentle, generous, big-hearted critic. Show him almost any mediocre film by a semi-respected director and nine times out of ten he’ll look on the bright side and turn the other cheek. Has he ever written anything even the least bit mean or cutting or dismissive?

My basic view of The Searchers, as I wrote in ’07 or thereabouts, is that “for a great film it takes an awful lot of work to get through it. I don’t know how to enjoy The Searchers any more except by wearing aesthetic blinders — by ignoring all the stuff that drives me up the wall in order to savor the beautiful heartbreaking stuff (the opening and closing shot, Wayne’s look of fear when he senses danger for his brother’s family, his picking up Natalie Wood at the finale).

That said I can’t help but worship Winston C. Hoch‘s VistaVision photography for its own virtues. And speaking of the lush lensing, the last and only Searchers Bluray popped 16 and 1/3 years ago (12.8.06). It’s well past time to issue a remastered 4K version.

Read more

“A sloshed Chet Huntley speaking to an equally hammered David Brinkley during New Year’s Eve coverage in 1966: “You know, David…sometimes I wish I was single. I’m fairly wealthy, I’m famous and there are all these women around. I’m telling you it’s a tragedy. And my wife and I…all right, I won’t go there. But God, would I love to sow a few wild oats before it’s too late! I mean, let’s face it, David…we’re both gonna be dead some day.” — from HE’s 1.1.17 coverage of Don Lemon’s inebriated New Year’s Eve coverage in New Orleans.

Variety‘s Brent Lang is reporting that Air has a two-day tally of “just under” $6 million, having earned $2.4 million yesterday (Thursday, 4.6) and $3.2 million on Wednesday, 4.4. To me that sounds more like “just over $5.5 million” than “just under $6 million.” but whatever.

Pic is expected to finish with $16 million as of Sunday night. It opened in 3500 theatres and has, so far, a per-screen average of $939 or something close to that.

Air cost $90 million to produce, but it sure doesn’t look it. It looks like a $45 million movie, if that. It’s 85% to 90% interiors (Nike Beaverton offices, Chris Messina‘s agent office, bar/restaurants, a 7/11 store, Matt Damon‘s home) plus some Beaverton exteriors, some roadways and a simulation of a Wilmington, North Carolina neighborhood plus the Jordan backyard.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro: “For the type of feel-good, inspirational, star-driven dramedy this is, many in town are rooting for this movie to do well. For if Air can leg out, it provides hope to motion picture studios for the types of movies that can work post-pandemic.”

The likely truth is that the Super Mario Bros. morons are sensing or smelling a “dad movie,” and they’re obviously not breaking the doors down to see Air. Plus three out of five Air viewers so far have been male (“59%” male, according to D’Alessandro) which means a fair percentage of women are either being dragged to it or quietly deciding to wait for streaming.

Friendo: “I don’t think anyone will dare report that this is any kind of bomb. There’s too much at stake.” HE to friendo: “It’s not a bomb — it’s just performing modestly. It was never going to be a runaway hit. What matters — this is a huge factor — is that it delivers spiritual uplift.”

As one who’s occasionally accepted and enjoyed freebies from movie studios, it’s hard for me to feel outraged about the recent report that Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas and his rightwing nutbag wife Ginni acccepted lavish favors from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow over a couple of decades.

Is Thomas guilty of a punishable ethics violation? Almost certainly, but everyone “takes” to varying degrees. It’s the way of the world among the ambitious, the well-positioned and the hungry-for-more set.

If I could force Thonas to resign by clapping three times, I would clap three times. But they all do it.