“Semi”-novel because Rian Johnson sorta kinda got there first. In Looper, it was Young Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) vs. Old Joe (Bruce Willis), but their face-time meetings happened through time travel. In Ang Lee and Jerry Bruckheimer‘s Gemini Man (Paramount, 10.11), Will Smith‘s Henry Brogen, a salt-and-pepper assassin, confronts “Junior” (also played by Smith), a genetic copy with a younger cell structure.
One of the Gemini Man differences is that the older and younger versions seem to actually deal with the heavy-ness of their situation (not to mention the gobsmacking irony and wisdom-perspective stuff), while Looper pretty much kept things tactical.
From “Looper Dooper,” posted on 9.6.12: “The biggest disappointment, for me, is that the great haunting concept of an older guy (Bruce Willis) being able to give counsel to his younger, stupider, less wise self (Joseph Gordon Levitt) has been almost completely ignored, and that’s really a shame.
“On top of which Levitt’s made-up, CG-fortified Willis face is weirdly unformed and gets in the way of any potential investment. We all know what Willis looked like when he was costarring in Moonlighting and their faces, his and Levitt’s, just don’t match or seem even vaguely from the same family or country, even. The effect doesn’t work. Johnson should have cast Willis in both roles and CG’ed and de-aged him for his younger-self scenes.”
Keep in mind that Gemini Man was stuck in development hell for 14 or 15 years before Looper came along. Wiki excerpt: “Originally conceived in 1997, the film went through development hell for nearly 20 years. Several directors, including Tony Scott, Curtis Hanson and Joe Carnahan, were all attached at some point and numerous actors, including Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery, were set to star.”
No thumbs-up hosannahs or celebrations until Hollywood Elsewhere sits through Avengers Endgame later today. You’ve read about fans sniffling here and there? Sincere pledge: If and when a scene even slightly nudges in the direction of lump-in-the-throat, I will say so without skipping a beat. My heart tingles at the thought of watching all these suited-up, handsomely compensated, impossibly smug actors ACTING with their patented dry-ironic deliveries. And oh, the Thanos pushback.
Down on my knees, begging. Just kill Robert Downey Jr.-slash-Tony Stark and shut him up for good. Forever. Until the end of time. Is that so much to ask?
Only Hollywood Elsewhere delivers the straight ramrod truth about the MCU. Ant Man forever, the first two Captain America installments (especially Joe Johnston‘s original), the first Iron Man and that’s pretty much all she wrote. Remember all the girly Black Panther whooping and cheering? But after it premiered and press-screened the clamor all settled down. Good spiritual Marvel film as far as it went (at least during the final hour), but everyone gradually calmed down. Same deal every time.
My initial reaction (posted on 2.28.24) was that “nobody and I mean nobody can ‘play’ Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and 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.”
I’m nonetheless intrigued by the ambition behind the Mendes-Beatles project, particularly the idea of releasing all four films in tandem in 2027. You can’t accuse Mendes and Sony chief Tom Rothman of undue caution or timidity.
I was actually too generous in calling it “a marginally effective, vaguely muffled chick-flick account of Lennon’s teenage years in Liverpool, circa 1956 to ’60.
“I’m not calling it dull, exactly, but Nowhere Boy‘s somewhat feminized, all-he-needs-is-love story just didn’t turn me on.
“Matt Greenhalgh‘s script is based on a memoir called ‘Imagine This‘ by Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird.
“I understand that this love and rejection were key issues in Lennon’s youth, but the film didn’t sell me on this. It seemed to be frittering away its time by focusing on it. Lennon’s anguish was primal enough (‘Mother, you had me but I never had you’) but my reaction all through it was, ‘Okay, but can we get to the musical stuff, please?’
“Nowhere Boy boasts a relatively decent lead performance by Aaron Johnson. He doesn’t overdo the mimicry and keeps his Liverpudlian accent in check. And yet it’s a somewhat overly sensitive, touchy-feely rendering of a rock ‘n’ roll legend who was known, after all, for his nervy, impudent and sometimes caustic manner, at least in his early incarnations.
“I didn’t believe the hurting look in Johnson’s eyes. All those looking-for-love feelings he shows are too much about ‘acting,’ and hurt-puppy-dog expressions don’t blend with the legend of the young Lennon (as passed along by biographies, articles, A Hard Day’s Night etc.) Emotionally troubled young guys tend to get crusty and defensive when there’s hurt inside, and this was certainly Lennon’s deal early on.
“And Johnson is needlessly compromised, I feel, by a curious decision on Taylor-Wood’s part to create her own, reality-defying physical version of Lennon. She ignores the fact that he had light brown, honey-colored hair by allowing Johnson to keep his own dark-brown, nearly-jet-black hair. Nor did she have Johnson wear a prosthetic nose — one of the oldest and easiest tricks in the book — in order to replicate Lennon’s distinctive English honker. Where would the harm have been if they’d tried to make Johnson look more like the real McCoy?”
HE commenter #1: “This portrait of Lennon seems to be far too cuddly to be credible. From what I’ve read, he had a mile-wide cruel streak, was more than a bit of a brawler and, if Albert Goldman is to be believed, almost beat another man to death for making a pass at him.
HE commenter #2: “Actually I think the movie makes Lennon look like the world’s biggest twat. Which he may have been, but when you remove all the context of who he becomes, then it’s just an annoying, unpleasant watch. There’s very few redeeming qualities about this film, and Johnson’s noxious portrayal didn’t help things.”
Now that Sam Taylor-Wood‘s Nowhere Boy (Icon/Weinstein, 10.8) is finally opening, here’s an abridged recap of my original 10.29.09 review. I called it “a marginally effective, vaguely muffled chick-flick account of John Lennon‘s teenage years in Liverpool, circa 1956 to ’60. I’m not calling it dull, exactly, but Nowhere Boy‘s somewhat feminized, all-he-needs-is-love story just didn’t turn me on.
“Matt Greenhalgh‘s script is based on a memoir called ‘Imagine This‘ by Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird. I understand that this was the key issue of Lennon’s youth, but the film didn’t sell me on this, and in fact seemed to be frittering away its time by focusing on it. Lennon’s anguish was primal enough (‘Mother, you had me but I never had you,’ etc.) but my reaction all through it was, ‘Okay, but can we get to the musical stuff, please?’
“Nowhere Boy boasts a relatively decent lead performance by Aaron Johnson. He doesn’t overdo the mimicry and keeps his Liverpudlian accent in check. And yet it’s a somewhat overly sensitive, touchy-feely rendering of a rock ‘n’ roll legend who was known, after all, for his nervy, impudent and sometimes caustic manner, at least in his early incarnations.
“I didn’t believe the hurting look in Johnson’s eyes. All those looking-for-love feelings he shows are too much about ‘acting,’ and hurt-puppy-dog expressions don’t blend with the legend of the young Lennon (as passed along by biographies, articles, A Hard Day’s Night etc.) Emotionally troubled young guys tend to get crusty and defensive when there’s hurt inside, and this was certainly Lennon’s deal early on.
“And Johnson is needlessly compromised, I feel, by a curious decision on Taylor-Wood’s part to create her own, reality-defying physical version of Lennon. She ignores the fact that he had light brown, honey-colored hair by allowing Johnson to keep his own dark-brown, nearly-jet-black hair. Nor did she have Johnson wear a prosthetic nose — one of the oldest and easiest tricks in the book — in order to replicate Lennon’s distinctive English honker. Where would the harm have been if they’d tried to make Johnson look more like the real McCoy?”
Rachel Lears‘ Knock Down The House (Netflix, 5.1) isn’t just an AOC thing; it also focuses on three other upstart progressive candidates — West Virginia’s Paula Jean Swearengin, St. Louis nurse Cori Bush, and Nevada’s Amy Vilela.
But as Variety‘s Amy Nicholsonwrote last January, “You can’t blame [the film] for seizing on its good fortune to have begun following Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign even before the 28-year-old waitress earned her name on the ballot.
“AOC needed slightly more than 1,000 signatures to qualify; she gathered 10,000, under the assumption that the election board — all of whom, she notes, were appointed by Crowley — would toss out as many as possible. Overperformance is her mantra. ‘For every 10 rejections, you get one acceptance, and that’s how you win everything,’ she insists to her niece as they hand out flyers on the sidewalk.
“Lears’ access to Ocasio-Cortez’s six month campaign is incredible. “Knock Down the House is there as she puts on her makeup, lugs ice at her day job (where she appears to fix a mean margarita), frets that her voice goes up an octave when she gets nervous, and sighs that male candidates need only two outfits: a suit or a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. [And] Lears is there in the cramped, sloppy apartment Ocasio-Cortez shares with her supportive boyfriend, and at that first debate with Crowley where he didn’t even bother to show up.
“As Crowley’s proxy fumblingly defends his vote for the Iraq War, Ocasio-Cortez rallies the crowd to her side, and afterward they crush around her with their individual concerns as though no one’s bothered to listen to them for years. Crowley shows up for the second and third debates, where Lears observes a comedy payoff: The veteran representative, realizing this young woman is winning over the room, anxiously rolls up his sleeves.”
A rousing one-two-three awaits — Long Shot tonight (finally!), Avengers Endgame tomorrow afternoon on the Disney lot (maybe not so rousing), and then Booksmart on Wednesday evening.
My attention is divided right now between tapping out stories and trying to figure out which HDMI cables belong in which receptacles, and what the hell seems to be wrong with my big, fat Marantz AVR — by far the heaviest, biggest component. The audio-visual sources are (a) a 4K Roku player, (b) a 4K Apple TV, (c) a 4K Samsung Bluray player, (4) a pipsqueak Sony 4K Bluray player and (5) the cable TV hook-up. The problem is that there are only four (4) HDMI receptacles on the TV. (Maybe if I ditch the Roku player and just use the Apple TV?) I figured this out before — I don’t know what my problem is this time. Half of me hates struggling with this stuff; the other half derives profound satisfaction from getting it right.
Hugs and condolences to friends and colleagues of Anonymous Content founder and producer Steve Golin, who passed yesterday from cancer at age 64. Obviously way too young, but a life well lived.
How else to describe a guy who produced or significantly assisted Spotlight, The Revenant, Babel, Beasts of No Nation, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, Boy Erased, Being John Malkovich, The Game, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, et. al.?
Only in the 21st Century film industry can you say with a straight face that a departed professional was “burdened with good taste,” but that was Golin for you. Inexorably drawn to quality-level projects, constitutionally incapable of producing crap and always with the reddish complexion, no hair to speak of, squinty eyes and grubby salt-and-pepper whiskers, Golin lugged good taste around like a bent-over mail carrier…like Charles Bukowski in the ’50s. But he never backed off, and producing ambitious, first-rate, critically hailed films was also his pride and levitation.
Steve’s big hallelujah moment happened in early ’16 when Spotlight won the Best Picture Oscar.
I last ran into Steve at the 2015 Middleburg Film Festival, when he was repping and taking bows for The Revenant and Spotlight. We talked for 35 or 40 minutes in a shuttle van between Dulles and Middleburg. He was a hustler, of course, like any good producer, but he seemed to really understand and believe in the transformative power of great filmmaking.
The film industry could use a lot more Steve Golins, and now it has one less.
Sorry for bailing after yesterday’s Apocalypse Now: Final Cut post, but a sizable load of stuff from back east (motorcycle, big TV, boxes, glass-framed photos) arrived yesterday afternoon around 3 pm, and there was a lot to unpack. Hours and hours. I was telling myself, “This is your chance to finally arrange the Blurays in alphabetical order. You just have to summon the discipline…just a little extra effort.” Did I do this? Of course not.
Only days before next weekend’s Tribeca Film Festival showing of the 4K Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, the running time has been changed on the TFF website. Before this turnaround the length of this restored version of Francis Coppola‘s 1979 war classic was listed as 147 minutes; now it’s 183 minutes. Yeah!
TFF spokesperson Tammie Rosen informs that “we had the wrong time on the site, but once we received the final forms we updated. No different than any other film. Simple as that.”
The bad guy in this misadventure is Coppola’s archivist James Mockowski, whom I reached out to last month upon the advice of Telluride Film festival founder Tom Luddy. I asked Mockowski twice — once in March, again in early April — if he could please tell me what the Final Cut running time is, or if it’s just a tech upgrade thing. Silencio. Nine years ago I asked Mockowski for help on a technical matter regarding George Hickenlooper‘s Hearts of Darkness — same result. The man is a hider, an obfuscater, a mouse.
A trusted industry friend told me a while back that according to his understanding Final Cut was an in-betweener — a split-the-difference version that lies between the pit of man’s fears…no, that lies between the original 147-minute version and the 202-minute Redux version. 183 minutes means Final Cut is 19 minutes shorter than the 202-minute Redux and 36 minutes longer than the original 70mm Ziegfeld version that ran 147 minutes. So Final Cut will include the French plantation sequence — just not as much. And the rescuing the Playboy bunnies sequence — just not as much. And so on.
Rosen emphasizes that the bad information wasn’t deliberate, and that this kind of thing happens all the time. The apparent bottom line is that Mockowski and Coppola live in their own solar system, and that somebody finally pointed out to them, “Hey, guys…the Tribeca Film Festival website is saying that Final Cut runs 147 minutes, or 36 minutes shorter than the actual length. Don’t you think you should wise them up?”
Rosen reminds that all along TFF has emphasized the Final Cut title, but if you read their copy there was never a mention of a longer running time. In fact, TFF’s primary descriptive emphasis was on technical restoration upgrades:
Consider: “Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now will celebrate its 40th Anniversary at the Festival with a screening of a new, never-before-seen restored version of the film, entitled Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, remastered from the original negative in 4K Ultra HD.” HE interpretation: In other words, no one has ever seen this 4K restored version, even though it’s just a remastering of the original negative that produced the original 147-minute 70mm version.
More TFF: “The Beacon Theatre will be outfitted for this exclusive occasion with Meyer Sound VLFC (Very Low Frequency Control), a ground-breaking loudspeaker system engineered to output audio frequencies below the limits of human hearing, giving the audience a truly visceral experience. In addition, the film has been enhanced with Dolby Vision®, delivering spectacular colors and highlights that are up to 40 times brighter and blacks that are 10 times darker, and Dolby Atmos, producing moving audio that flows all around you with breathtaking realism.” HE interpretation: Tech, tech, tech, tech, tech.
I’m almost afraid to watch The Matrix again for fear that it won’t hold up. The double-whammy of Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions was so devastating, and my initial reaction to the original was so positive…just call me superstitious. Perhaps I’d best leave well enough alone, let sleeping dogs lie, etc.
Okay, I’ll risk it: has anyone recently re-watched The Matrix? If it doesn’t play as well, I almost don’t want to know.
“You know, I think I understand what you’re like now. You’re very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you’re beautiful. And you want them to be interested in you because of you. But the problem is that aside from your being beautiful, you’re not very interesting. You’re rude, you’re hostile, you’re sullen, you’re withdrawn. I understand that you want someone to see past all that to the real person underneath. But the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you’re beautiful. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Not Jim Harrison, I’m guessing, because he’s not exactly known for writing sharp zingers or stingers or whatever you want to call this kind of dialogue. (I hung out with Harrison one night in ’96, at the Los Angeles premiere of Carried Away.) And probably not Elaine May, because it doesn’t have that neurotic, New York-y, Elaine May-ish seasoning. It feels like more of a guy-written thing, but maybe not. A little voice is telling me it’s not Wesley Strick either. I don’t know anything.
With its frequent descent into a jet-black palette and all kinds of shadowy gradation, Alan Pakula‘s Klute (’71) is a prime candidate for a 4K re-viewing. Not to suggest that Criterion’s forthcoming 1080p Bluray (7.16) won’t look great or that it isn’t worth the price, but an actual 4K Bluray would be that much better. Alas, Criterion doesn’t do those. The copy promises a “new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by camera operator Michael Chapman, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack.”
Posted on 7.24.14: “I haven’t seen Alan Pakula‘s Klute (’71) since…well, I might have watched it on laser disc in the ’90s or at a repertory cinema in the early ’80s…maybe. But I haven’t seen it on a big screen in eons. Slow burn whodunit + ’70s Manhattan + richly-drawn characters + wide-open emotional exposure + simmering sexuality. Plus a wonderfully inky, occasionally spooky vibe care of dp Gordon Willis (i.e., the Prince of Darkness)
The horrific Columbine high-school massacre happened exactly 20 years ago. It hit like a grenade, of course, and knocked the culture on its heels. And of course we all know the epitaph, which is that (a) mass killings (schools, workplace, bars) have since become commonplace, and (b) rightwing lunatics have refused to allow legislators to do anything about restricting easy access to automatic weapons. Our latest Columbine happened 14 months ago in southern Florida, and the after-shocks are still humming as we speak.
The Denver weather was chilly and rainy almost the entire time. The descriptive term was miserable, but as a twice-weekly, Johnny-on-the-spot columnist for Mr. Showbiz I felt it was very important to absorb and report on the new fervor among the Star Wars faithful. The unseen Phantom Menace was a hyuuge deal at the time; it was universally derided, of course, once it was seen.
On the second or third day I was sick of the fanboys and needed a shot of reality. So I got into my rental car and drove down to Littleton, Colorado and parked near the grounds of Columbine High School.
It was still godawful cold and rainy and muddy everywhere. I basically walked around and took snaps and sniffed the air. I just wanted to feel it, taste it. There were other visitors (even a couple of families) poking around. I recall climbing up a slight hill or incline near the school where little memorials for each slain student had been planted in the ground.
My Mr. Showbiz editor didn’t allow me to write about visits to Columbine or any non-movie-related excursion, or I would’ve done so.
