Stow that shit! And let this be a warning to anyone who’s thinking of sharing a similar reaction.
Jeff Wells
Greatest Ever (i.e., Creepiest) Sci-Fi Score
The spooky closing montage is the crowning crescendo of William Cameron Menzies‘ Invaders From Mars (’53). Without this sequence the film would amount to much less, certainly in terms of present-day esteem. The combination of that eerie choral music (composed by Mort Glickman, orchestrated by Raoul Kraushar) along with those trippy reverse-motion shots still get under your skin.
A huge round of applause to editor Arthur Roberts, and an extra round for Glickman — the choral music delivers the spook and the soul.
The new Ignite Bluray arrived just a couple of days ago, and on one of these video essays Glickman is given credit for the music by Invaders restoration master Scott MacQueen. Joe Dante and John Landis also deliver excellent commentary in the same essay.
Apologies for the crappy video capture — I should have shot it last night.
“Avatar 2” Latecomers
I was sitting in seat E5 during yesterday afternoon’s Avatar 2 screening. The “show” started at 2:15 pm, but as we all know that meant the film itself wouldn’t start until at least 20 minutes of trailers had unspooled. As it happened the film didn’t begin until 2:40 pm. During the 25 minutes of trailers two seats to my left were empty, but I figured the purchasers would show up at the last minute. They didn’t, and after a while I started to say to myself “hey, this is pretty good…maybe I can move over and stretch my legs.”
At 3:07 pm the seat purchasers finally showed up. 27 minutes after the film had begun. The fact that both were overweight had nothing to do with anything, of course. Avatar 2 seats are expensive, and they had to have reserved them a good 10 days in advance. How undisciplined and chaotic does your life have to be to cause this much delay? This wasn’t just another movie –it was an opening-day showing of one of the biggest films of the year. Did they forget? One of them couldn’t get out of the bathroom? I gradually pushed these thoughts out of my head, but it took a while.
Avatar 2 runs 192 minutes — add on 25 minutes of trailer promos and you’re talking 217 minutes. That’s obviously part of the exhaustion factor — it’s grueling to be bombarded with loud, floor-vibrating, super-sized images for three hours and 37 minutes. Lawrence of Arabia runs ten minutes longer (227 minutes) but that film doesn’t rough you up like Avatar 2 — it’s visually vast and eye-filling, but huge portions are dialogue-driven.
“Eventually You’ll Scrape The Bottom of the Barrel”
“And so here we find ourselves staring into the diarrhea splatter toilet bowl of modern entertainment for the last time in 2022.”
Arthur C. Clarke Approves
Nice location scouting on someone’s part. Unless they somehow erased the apes and tapirs from the original 2001 footage and replaced them with dolls and little girls. Either way, excellent work on Greta Gerwig‘s part.
Now Playing With “Avatar 2”
“You’re a dilletante, a womanizer, unstable, theatrical, neurotic…”
I’m presuming this post won’t last long (attorneys will be swooping down) but given that millions of Avatar 2 viewers are watching this Oppenheimer teaser today, I don’t see what’s so ignoble about posting it here. The cat is out of the bag….let it run free.
Of all the Oppenheimer stars and costars, the only one I object to is Benny Safdie. Hollywood Elsewhere believes that performances by Benny Safdie need to be stopped, almost as much as EEAAO‘s path to Oscar glory needs to be stopped.
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Emily Blunt as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves (aka Paul Newman‘sd role in Fat Man and Little Boy), Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Rami Malek as Mystery Man #1, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush. Not to mention Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, Josh Peck Gary Oldman (as Harry S. Truman), Alex Wolff, Tony Goldwyn and Casey Affleck.
“Better Than Lincoln and Washington”
Attention all loyal MAGA morons…if you’re dumb enough to pay $99 for this, I’ll take your money with a smile.
Hollywood Needs to Pass Vito Russo Quota Test
Herewith is a 12.15.22 press release sent out on behalf of GLAAD, and it’s basically a complaint about how too many in the industry are failing to pass GLAAD’s Vito Russo Test on LGBTQ representation. Here it is verbatim:
GLAAD 10TH ANNUAL STUDIO RESPONSIBILITY INDEX: PERCENTAGE OF LGBTQ-INCLUSIVE FILMS DROPS, AS DOES RACIAL DIVERSITY AND SCREEN TIME
This report found a transgender character in major studio film for the first time in five years, though there was a decrease in percentage of LGBTQ characters of color, LGBTQ women, and zero LGBTQ characters living with disabilities or HIV
All seven studios receive “Insufficient,” “Poor,” or “Failing” grades as GLAAD includes new evaluation of public advocacy on LGBTQ issues, employee resources, and political giving from studios and parent companies.
Only nine films released in 2021 by major studios passed GLAAD’s Vito Russo Test on LGBTQ representation.
Los Angeles, CA – Thursday, December 15, 2022 — GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today released its tenth annual Studio Responsibility Index, a study that maps the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ characters in films released by the seven film studio distributors that had the highest theatrical grosses from films released in the 2021 calendar year (January 1, 2021 – December 31, 2021) as reported by the box office database Box Office Mojo. These studios are Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, United Artists Releasing, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros.
For the full report, visit www.glaad.org/sri.
Why Would I Want This?
The same John Sturges western, 62 years old now and presumably somewhat darker because it’s been remastered for 4K. That’s all that 4K does since the naked eye can’t usually detect strong differences between 4K (3840 × 2160 pixel resolution) and 1080p. It brings in deeper shadows and whatnot. So all you’re left with is a darker image. I own a “good enough”, presumably less dark Bluray version, and that’s more than satisfactory.
Pugh Grappling with Car-Accident Guilt
Directed, written and produced by Zach Braff, A Good Person (UA Releasing, 3.24) seems to be about feelings, grief recovery, virtue-signalling…all that good stuff.
It’s the saga of a mousey young woman named Allison (Florence Pugh) struggling to recover from fatal-car-accident trauma and the heavy guilt that goes with that. Allison survived but a young POC male, apparently the son of Morgan Freeman, bought the farm. Allison is apparently part of a large extended family that is partly BIPOC, partly white-ass.
The copy line on the poster, however, is fatal: “Sometimes we find hope where we least expect it.”
Worst Fist Fight in Movie History
Every time I watch Barry Lyndon‘s fist fight scene, my respect for the film and especially director Stanley Kubrick plummets slightly. The combatants, of course, are the quick and agile Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal) and the brawny, red-bearded Corporal Toole (the late Pat Roach), but Kubrick’s instincts as a fight choreographer were atrocious.
Where did Kubrick-the-perfectionist get the idea that the fight would be even half-interesting if O’Neal ducked every wild air-punch thrown by Roach? Roach seems to have been told to fight like a drunken buffoon — to fight like the stupidest, most uncoordinated bare-knuckled boxer in English history and thereby miss O’Neal by several inches each and every time. If Roach had only managed to land a single jaw-blow…if only he’d managed to slug O’Neal once or twice in the chest or the rib cage. But no.