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In honor of yesterday’s Netflix debut of Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7, here’s my original 9.25.20 review plus excerpts:

This is a truly exceptional smarthouse drama — a character-driven procedural that will hook adults of whatever age.

Despite the tumultuous late ’60s milieu Sorkin’s film is not about the usual noise, rage and chaotic energy, but about thought and procedure and agendas laid face-up on the table. It’s about clarity and drillbits and impressive brain-cell counts.

The endless Chicago 7 trial (September ’69 to February ’70) was about a Nixon administration attempt to nail eight anti-establishment activists for activities tied to violent conflicts during the August ’68 Chicago Democratic convention.

Four of the defendants were Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin and activist David Dellinger, respectively played by Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong and John Carroll Lynch. The idea was to convict them for violating the Rap Brown law by crossing state lines in order to incite a riot.

In so doing Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell was ignoring a previous assessment by LBJ’s attorney general Ramsey Clark (Michael Keaton), which was that the conflict was primarily provoked by the Chicago police.

The number of defendants was reduced to seven when the attempted prosecution of Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen) was declared a mistrial.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 works because it’s all on the page — because of Sorkin’s shaping and honing — emphasizing and de-emphasizing to achieve a certain focus and tone. And then he assembled a top-tier cast and hired Phedon Papamichael to shoot it without any muss or fuss. Sorkin could’ve made a half-dozen other films about the Chicago 7 trial with all kinds of attitudes and approaches, but he decided to make this one.

The film’s central conflict is not a good guys vs. bad guys thing, but between Hayden and Hoffman — between their differing approaches to stoking or harnessing the social unrest.

Hayden’s approach was cerebral and sensible — classic political organizing, focused pragmatism, position papers, non-violence. Hoffman was about trusting in theatrical instinct — hippie-yippie tribalism, generational anger and a vaguely understood practice of cultural revolution for the hell of it (i.e., irreverence, impulsiveness, cranked-up emotion).

The Hayden approach dominates, certainly as far as the defense strategy is concerned, but Hoffman’s (and Rubin’s) wise-ass theatricality and flamboyance punches through.

It’s actually a kind of four-way debate by way of defense attorney William Kuntsler (played by the always-good Mark Rylance) and co-attorney Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman).

But the payoff (and it’s a rouser) comes when Kuntsler decides to put Hoffman on the stand, which sets the stage for one of those robust Sorkin-crescendo moments.

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“Positively Bank Street“, posted on 6.17.18: “The last time I posted this true story, about an event that happened in ’81, I was accused by some of having lacked scruples. That wasn’t the thing. I’m going to try it again with extra wording — maybe this time it’ll be understood. The original title was “My Own Llewyn Davis Moment“:

For a good portion of ’81 I was living in a sublet on Bank Street west of Hudson, almost exactly opposite HB Studios. The rent was around $350 per month. (Or so I recall.) The sublessor was a 40something guy who lived in Boca Raton, Florida. The landlord, who knew nothing of this arrangement, was one of those tough old New York buzzards in his ’70s.

Anyway the landlord got wind and told me to vacate as I was illegally subletting. He naturally wanted a new fully-approved tenant who would pay a bigger rent, but he wouldn’t consider my own application as I was a shiftless scumbag in his eyes. I hemmed and hawed and basically refused to leave until I could find something else.

And then one day I came home to find my stuff (clothes, IBM Selectric typewriter, small color TV, throw rug, framed American Friend poster) lying in a big pile in the hallway with the locks on my apartment door changed. The buzzard was playing rough.

When you’re looking at sleeping on the sidewalk, you man up and do what you have to do to avoid that by any reasonable means necessary. Which is what I did.

There was no point in paying any rent at that point as I was a marked man who would have to leave the place fairly soon. The sublessor’s actual rent was $185 or something like that so he’d been making a monthly $165 profit from me. I figured once the buzzard started playing rough by (a) refusing to consider my application for a legit lease and (b) changing the locks and moving my stuff into the hallway that all bets were off and it was a game of habitat survival at all costs until an alternative presented itself.

My place was on the top floor of the building (i.e., the third or fourth floor). I went up to the roof and looked down the air shaft, which was smack dab in the middle of the building and about eight or ten feet square. I noticed a piece of lumber — not a four-by-four beam but an old pinewood board of some kind — bridging the air shaft with one end lying on a metal ladder or mini-platform of some kind and the other end on a brick ledge outside my bathroom window. I lowered myself down the ladder and slowly crawled along the air shaft board and opened my bathroom window and let myself in. (I said a prayer as I did this and God decided to cut me a break.)

I immediately moved my stuff back inside and then called a locksmith and changed the doorknob and bolt locks. The buzzard or one of his flunkies came by two or three days later and tried to open the door and couldn’t — hah!

I knew I’d have to leave before long but the air-shaft derring-do bought me an extra three or four weeks rent-free. Soon after I found another sublet (the bottom floor of a duplex on West 76th between Amsterdam and Columbus) and all was well.

How was this a Llewyn Davis moment? This was a tale of dark, lowball, no-direction-home desperation with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel. That’s Inside Llewyn Davis in a nutshell. The only difference is that God is indifferent if not mocking in the Coen brothers universe and yet He allowed me to cross the air shaft on that piece of lumber and not fall to the basement level.

Yesterday morning Gerald Peary launched a Facebook quiz about leading men who’ve worn glasses. But with several restrictions. Only in the case of the main lead character, and only in Hollywood-made features released between 1930 and 1980. And it can’t be a biopic like The Benny Goodman Story or The Glenn Miller Story (which should have been called Moonlight Serenade). And the character has to be under 50, so he’s not wearing glasses due to old age. And it can’t be Harold Lloyd, who always wore them. Or Gene Hackman in The Conversation. Despite all this the post has attracted 346 comments.

Here’s my comment, posted early this morning:

The second-to-last scene in Land of the Pharoahs is about Joan Collins‘ Princess Nellifer receiving a death sentence. She learns that she’s been deceived into allowing herself to be trapped inside the pyramid tomb of Khufu (Jack Hawkins). Trapped in an airless chamber with Khufu’s trusted friend and ally Hamar (Alex Minotis), 20 or 30 bald-headed slaves and a few torches. No escape, no food, no air-conditioning. So how does death come about? Does everyone just sit around and wait for weakness and slow suffocation to settle in? Or would some choose suicide by dagger? Even when I first saw this on TV I wondered if everyone would behave honorably or if the slaves would take advantage of this situation as far as Nellifer was concerned. Obviously a grim scenario no matter how you slice it.

…if I could magically replace Joe with Pete Buttigieg by clapping my hands three times, I would clap my hands three times. No offense or disrespect to Joe, whom I will be voting for. I know I’m repeating myself. I know there are commenters who will say “drop this bizarre Buttigieg obsession,” etc.

And by the way, anyone who thinks there’s any value or intrigue to bringing fresh scrutiny to Hunter Biden‘s personal failings is delusional. If there’s one thing that American families know about, it’s dealing with a bad-seed son, brother, brother-in-law, nephew or next-door neighbor. Alcoholism, drug abuse, self-destructive behavior…everyone’s either been through it or knows someone who has. It’s tragic but it happens. It’s certainly too common to be a thing.

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I’ve never broken up with anyone over their failure to fall in love with a film that I hold in extremely high regard. That would be a form of attempted tyranny. You can’t muscle people into being the kind of person you might want them to be. You have to respect their journey and their choices.

I’ve shown Tatiana several classic films that I love with all my heart, and some she’s either been bored by or dismissed as a turn-off. She loved Twelve Angry Men. She applauded Casablanca. She embraced Heaven Can Wait. She expressed a certain muted respect for Notorious. But there are also some indisputably great films that she won’t even watch.

If I had gotten kicked out for showing my live-in girlfriend a certain film that she hated, I would probably take that as a premonition of things to come. What other liking offenses will I be ejected or otherwise attacked for? Will it just be about films or also books, plays, political candidates, choice of clothing, etc.?

I nonetheless chuckled when I read about The Woman Who Hated Requiem For A Dream Too Much. She felt totally overwhelmed by the fact that her newly-moved-in boyfriend worshipped a impressionistic, jagged-edge nightmare film about drugs and addiction and electro-shock treatment that she found nothing short of revolting. I found Requiem difficult to watch the first time, and I can’t say I’ve been eager to see it again. Then again I adore the ballsiness of mother, The Wrestler and Black Swan.

Alan Ball‘s “somewhat autobiographically inspired Uncle Frank (Amazon, 11.26) hits a…successful balance between ensemble seriocomedy, Big Issues and a somewhat pressure-cooked plot. Set in the early ’70s, it casts the reliably deft Paul Bettany as a gay man forced to confront the Southern family to whom he’s stayed closeted. Even at its most manipulative, Uncle Frank remains polished and engaging. A big plus is Paul Bettany, who makes the title character’s residual Southern courtliness, acquired urbanity and painful psychological scars keenly felt.” — from Dennis Harvey’s 1.25.20 Variety review.

One look at Bettany tells you his character probably isn’t straight — the slender frame, the moustache, the extra-precise cut of his sports jacket, the way he holds his cigarette and touches his sternum during solemn discussions. His extended South Carolina-residing family senses something different about him, but they don’t spot the specifics. Or would rather not.

Summary: Joe Biden sounded sane, measured, calm, sensible, mature. Like always, Donald Trump deflected, denied, fantasized, etc. Barack Obama once allegedly described him as “a bullshitter” — check. What he’s always been, and incorrigible to boot.

Trump: “I do know they’re against pedophilia…they fight it very hard.” I think that might be a pull quote. Trump’s paranoid smoke about fake voting (“thousands of ballots dumped into a garbage can”) is completely unsupported by any serious reporting or known facts. Trump: “I [didn’t] want to panic this country…everybody’s going to die!” And he can’t remember when his last test was before his Covid announcement. (“I may have…”) Oh, and 85% of those who wear masks get the virus anyway. Have Trump’s views on mask-wearing changed since he himself got Covid? What about your tax debt? What about…forget it. This is a fact-free act, the usual smoke and pretense. Plus: “I’ve done a great job.” And it’s over.

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Every time an allegedly exceptional, critically admired animated feature comes along, Oscar handicappers always say the same thing — “This film is so successful, so vital, so out-of-the-park engrossing and such an exception-to the rule that it deserves consideration as a Best Picture contender! It’s too good to to be confined to the Best Animated Feature category — it needs to leapfrog off that lily pad and stake its claim to Best Picture greatness!”

And every time this happens, Hollywood Elsewhere says “sorry but no…banal and simplistic as this may sound, animated features are not live action features and vice versa, and never the twain shall meet. And besides, what’s so terrible or diminishing about winning an Oscar in this category?”

This won’t stop the Soul cheering squad, but there’s really nothing further to discuss.

I’m not being derelict as far as seeing Kornél Mundruczó‘s Pieces of a Woman is concerned. Okay, I was derelict a while back as I failed to watch a limited-opportunity streaming version that I received during the Venice Film Festival. But I’ve asked Netflix to send me a link, etc.

“For 128 minutes, Vanessa Kirby has you hooked into her every move in Pieces of a Woman (Netflix, TBD). As Martha, a high-powered executive who loses her child during a harrowing home birth, Kirby mesmerizes by showcasing the human frailty and devastation that happens when tragedy comes knocking.

“Her acting tour-de-force reminded me of Gena Rowlands’ masterful work in John Cassavetes’ classic Woman Under the Influence (’74).” — from Jordan Ruimy’s 9.24 World of Reel review.

“The opening scene, shot in one 23-minute continuous take, took two days and six takes to shoot. Harrowing to watch, it sets up the stakes for the rest of the film, which flows magnificently well thanks to Mundruczo firm grasp of his narrative — his work here is a directorial high-wire act of the highest order. Kirby is an absolute Best Actress contender. Ellen Burstyn is excellent in the supporting role as well.”

The opening title appears after this scene ends, or roughly a half-hour into the film.

“Letter To You“, the first studio album by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band since High Hopes (which I frankly didn’t pay a great deal of attention to), pops on 10.23. I have the album, and have listened to…uhm, five tracks. The only one that got me excited is “Ghosts“, which was released on 9.24. A friend notes that “If I Was A Priest” and “Song For the Orphans” sound like Bob Dylan and The Band — agreed. I’ve listened twice to an anti-Trump called “Rainmaker” — good, not great.

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Herewith an elegant trailer for Francis Lee‘s Ammonite. Delicate, well-judged, nicely balanced. Lionsgate had planned to give Ammonite a limited theatrical debut on Friday, 11.13. This could happen.

Posted on 8.25.20: Observation #1: A close relation of Celine Sciamma‘s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, once again set near a beachy coastline in the distant past (Dorset in the 1840s), and once again about a lesbian love affair between tightly-corseted, socially restricted women who wear their hair in buns.

Observation #2: A bit of a May-December romance with 43 year-old Winslet (now 44) as the real-life fossil-searcher and paleontologist Mary Anning, who was born in 1799 and died in 1847. 26 year-old Saoirse Ronan (25 during filming) plays geologist Charlotte Murchison, whose husband, Roderick Impey Murchison, paid Anning to take care of her for a brief period.

Except the 1840s romance that allegedly occured wasn’t a May-December thing. Murchison was actually 11 years older than Anning, having been born on April 18, 1788. She was therefore in her early 50s and not, as the film has it, in her mid 20s. Furthermore Roderick Murchison wasn’t, as the film indicates, some kind of patronizing sexist twit who regarded his wife as a fragile emotional invalid who needed looking after. The Murchisons were actually partners in their geological studies; they travelled all over Europe together.

Charlotte Murchison lived to age 80; poor Mary Anning passed from breast cancer at age 47 or 48.