I’m harboring a deep and fundamental prejudice against Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune. I’ll see it, of course, and I’m naturally hoping it’ll be better than David Lynch‘s 1984 version, but as God is my witness I’m fearing the worst.
A part of me would actually prefer to avoid the Villeneuve altogether, which of course is not a real-world option on the table. Warner Bros. will open Dune on 11.20.20.
Last July screenwriter Brian Herbert said that a recent draft of the screenplay covered “approximately half” of Frank Herbert‘s novel, so it’ll probably wind up being a two-parter. Budapest filming will begin in the spring or early summer.
The following Villeneuve statement fills me with dread: “Most of the main ideas of Star Wars are coming from Dune so it’s going to be a challenge to [tackle] this. The ambition is to do the Star Wars movie I never saw. In a way, it’s Star Wars for adults.”
Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Oscar Isaac, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa…later.
If Dune turns out to be extra-formidable I’ll be able to recognize and proclaim that, but the honest truth is that I can’t wait to bring the hate.
Excerpt from a 10.10.14 assessment of David Ayer’s Fury: “The climactic situation comes when the weary Brad ‘Wardaddy’ Pitt and his four bone-tired men (Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena and a revolting redneck animal played by Jon Bernthal) are stuck next to a country farmhouse with their tank temporarily disabled by a land mine. They soon after discover that 300 well-armed German troops are marching in their direction.
“Pitt has been ordered by his superior, Jason Isaacs, to protect a supply train, but five guys in a broken-down tank vs. 300 German solders is just suicide, plain and simple. They’ve no chance so why does Pitt decide to fight it out? To what end? They aren’t trapped. They could run for the trees and meet up with U.S. forces later and live to fight again. But no. You can call it bravery but I call it nihilism.
“I understand crazy courage and uncommon valor and all that. I choke up every time I think of Sam Jaffe climbing to the top of the temple so he can blow the bugle and warn the British troops of an ambush at the end of Gunga Din. And I understood the situation during the finale of Pork Chop Hill when 30 or 40 trapped U.S. troops have nothing to do but fight back against hordes of Chinese troops. And the ending of Platoon when U.S. troops were being overrun by North Vietnamese but they fight on regardless and even call in an air strike against their own position. And I certainly understand the Wild Bunch finale when William Holden and Ernest Borgnine and the other two decide that they’re getting old and their lives are over so why not go out in a blaze of gunfire?
“But the Fury finale is nothing like any of these scenarios.
Friendo: “That’s not how it went down.’
HE: “What do you mean that’s not how it went down’? That’s exactly how it went down. Pitt said ‘Nope, I’m gonna fight it out….you guys run for the trees if you want.’ Think about that decision for four or five seconds. It was utter suicide and for what?”
Friendo: “If they made a movie about guys who ran for the hills I don’t think it would be quite the same, would it?”
HE: “Not run for the hills but hide in the trees until the company passes by, and then regroup with the nearby American troops and fight on. What’s wrong with that?
“They weren’t fighting the enemy in order to give other Allied troops time to achieve some other objective — this wasn’t the Alamo. They weren’t ordered to protect a bridge at all costs, like the guys in Saving Private Ryan. This was April 1945 — the end of the war. Hitler would be dead in a couple of weeks. It didn’t matter. If Pitt and his homies had abandoned the tank and run like thieves I would have jumped out of my seat and said ‘Yes! Run for it! All right!'”
Friendo: “The Fury finale was analogous to those two cops in the mean streets of Los Angeles in Ayer’s End of Watch.”
HE: “Not the same thing at all. Sorry but you’re throwing out bad analogies. And that finale in End of Watch was ridiculous also. L.A. cop Jake Gyllenhaal is shot by gangbangers, what, 12 or 15 times and he’s attending the funeral of his partner in the next scene?
Friendo: “I will stand to the end of this thread defending my analogies just like Pitt did against the Nazis!”
HE: “During the big court-martial scene in Paths of Glory a French infantryman, Private Maurice Ferol (Timothy Carey), is asked by the prosecution why he retreated after his comrades had all been killed in an attack on the Ant Hill (i.e., a German fortification). The question is satirically re-phrased by Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), the defense counsel. ‘Why didn’t you attack the Ant Hill single-handed?’ Dax asks. ‘Single-handed? Are you kidding, sir?,’ Ferol replies. ‘Yes, I’m kidding,’ Dax says.
“Pitt and his crew going up against 300 German troops isn’t much different from Ferol vs. the Ant Hill, trust me.
“A soldier can’t go into battle saying ‘I don’t want to die…where can I hide?’ He has to go into battle saying ‘we have to man up and accomplish our objective.’ The chances of survival are never good but suicide is suicide. And as a moviegoer I can’t support a battle in which there’s no chance of the protagonists prevailing. There has to be at least a shot at victory.
“If it’s a choice between self-destruction and running for cover in order to live and fight another day, just call me Jeff ‘run for the treeline’ Wells.”
34 degrees in Lone Pine — good morning. The snow-covered Sierra Nevadas loom in the near distance. The air is intoxicating but a bit thin, and obviously nippy. I’m looking around for a nice, well-heated breakfast diner as we speak.
George Stevens‘ Gunga Din, which no self-respecting Millennial or GenZ-er gives a shit about, shot its outdoor footage in the Alabama Hills region, about 35 or 40 minutes away. Above-the-title talent (Stevens, Victor McLaglen, Cary Grant, Sam Jaffe, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Eduardo Cianelli, Joan Fontaine) stayed in the original Dow Villa, which was built in the early 1920s. But production company grunts and extras slept in a tent camp and used temporary showers and latrines. I don’t know how long the Lone Pine shoot lasted, but the whole film took just shy of four months — 6.24.38 to 10.19.38.
Gunga Din opened on 2.17.39, when the late William Goldman, who wrote so passionately about Jaffe’s “stupid courage” during the Khyber Pass action finale, was but a lad of seven. It grossed $2,807,000 and ranked #10 on the top-grossing films of 1939, but it cost $1,915,000 to complete and therefore, by RKO Radio Pictures bookkeeping standards, recorded a loss of $193K.
Here’s a piece about Eduardo Cianelli‘s “guru” character, posted four years ago (2.22.15) and titled “Among Filmdom’s Wisest and Most Elegant Villains“:
“In the legendary Gunga Din, Eduardo Ciannelli‘s fanatical leader of the Thug rebellion is called a ‘tormenting fiend’ by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and is made to seem demonic in that famously lighted shot by dp Joseph H. August. But he’s easily the most principled, eloquent and courageous man in the film. Not to mention the most highly educated.
“And yet there’s an unlikely scene inside the temple that hinges on Ciannelli’s guru being unable to read English, despite his Oxford don bearing and his vast knowledge of world history.
I’m presuming I’ll be able to pre-screen Triple Frontier via the restricted Netflix press site, etc. But it’s such a handsomely shot film (Roman Vasyanov‘s images are obviously to die for) that it would seem a huge shame not to catch it on a big screen in a technically first-rate, bucks-up facility. Like the Academy theatre on Wilshire.
This morning I reached out to a Netflix Triple Frontier press rep. I’d like to participate in the press junket, speak to J.C. Chandor and Mark Boal, etc. The whole shmear.
Posted on 12.9.18: “You can sense a riveting, well-textured quality in J.C. Chandor‘s Triple Frontier (Netflix, 3.6). And an atmosphere of grit and sweat and heavy tropical air. A ‘rob the drug lords’ plot may suggest the realm of an elevated programmer, but it feels like the first really exciting ride of 2019.
“J.C. Chandor (All Is Lost, A Most Violent Year) is a first-rate director, and the Mark Boal script, which dates back to ’09, is tense and tightly constructed., or so I recall. Chandor has a co-writing credit. Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund. I want to see this in a theatre. It feels formidable.”
Triple Frontier will play in select theatres for a week (starting on 3.6) before it begins streaming on 3.13.
Filing from Dow Villa motel, Lone Pine, California — 7:55 pm, 39 degrees: Left Las Vegas around 1 pm. Stopped in frozen Beatty, Nevada a couple of hours later. Hiked around Death Valley’s Mesquite flat sand dunes (much warmer) around 3:30 or 4 pm. Arrived in Lone Pine around 6:45 pm. The Sierras are snow-covered and shrouded in mist.
The basic visual aesthetic is the same one that Steven Spielberg used for the little red-coat girl in Schindler’s List, minus the horror.
From Jussie Smollet’s Wikipage: “On 2.13.19, Chicago Police raided the home of two ‘persons of interest” in the Jussie Smollet hate-crime case. The men are brothers and of Nigerian descent and have acted as extras on Empire. Police recovered bleach and other items from the home and are inquiring if the men know Smollett. The brothers were held on suspicion of battery but not charged. According to the brothers’ attorney, they know Smollett from working on the show and have also spent time with him at a gym.
“The two men were arrested after arriving on a flight to O’Hare International Airport from Nigeria on 2.13.19. The two Nigerian men were released on 2.15 without being charged with a crime, with Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi stating: “Due to new evidence as a result of today’s interrogations, the individuals questioned by police in the Empire case have now been released without charging and detectives have additional investigative work to complete.”
Chicago police later told ABC News: ‘Police are investigating whether the two individuals committed the attack — or whether the attack happened at all.”‘
“On 2.16.19, two Chicago police sources informed CNN that Chicago police had discovered evidence indicating that Smollett had paid the two Nigerian brothers to stage the attack. Financial records indicate that the brothers purchased the rope found around Smollett’s neck at an ACE Hardware. Chicago police have reached out to Smollett’s attorney regarding additional questioning. Chicago criminal defense attorney Michael Monico is representing Smollett.”
A neurotic journalist (Seth Rogen) reconnects with his former baby-sitter and lust object (Charlize Theron) who’s now the Secretary of State and preparing to run for President. She hires Rogen to punch up her campaign speeches, and they gradually slip into a hunka-chunka thing.
The problem, of course, is that Rogen isn’t hot enough for Theron (not in a million years) and any would-be President caught fucking a bearded smart-ass journalist whom she used to babysit for…forget it. Journalists would slice and dice her six ways from Sunday.
Produced by Rogen, Theron and Evan Goldberg; written by Dan Sterling (The Interview) and Liz Hannah (The Post). Costarring O’Shea Jackson Jr., June Diane Raphael, Bob Odenkirk, Ravi Patel, Andy Serkis, Randall Park and Alexander Skarsgard. Directed by Jonathan Levine, The Long Shot opens on 5.3.19.
Sometime back in the ’90s or early aughts Las Vegas Review-Journal film and culture writer Carol Cling floated the idea of an old-fashioned Rat Pack casino on the Strip — a time-trip experience that would deliver the ’50s design, atmosphere and attitude of the Sands, which was located at 3355 Las Vegas Blvd (where the Venetian stands today). Old-fashioned coin slot machines, for example — the kind that would take nickels, quarters, 50-cent pieces and silver dollars, and when someone would win the bells and whistles would sound as the coins clattered onto those metal trays…great vibe!
Back in the days of Cinevegas I suggested a space-aliens casino — a kind of Star Wars meets Alien meets Forbidden Planet meets James Arness in The Thing meets Mars Attacks…flying saucers hovering above the main entrance, booze-sipping monsters at the cantina bar, concierge and hotel staff with green-sparkly faces and Ray Walston-styled insect antennae sticking out of their heads…a casino from another planet.
Poor Bruno Ganz has left the planet at age 77. Launched by Wim Wenders as the king of European ennui and weltschmerz in The American Friend, and then re-fortified ten years later as a mortality-envying angel in Wings of Desire. 14 years ago Ganz scored big-time as Adolf Hitler in Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s Downfall, and then acquired everlasting life on YouTube via those hundreds of Hitler parodies.
Those were the four big hits of Ganz’s life. He made tons and tons of crap, but what actor doesn’t? He costarred in Terrence Malick‘s Radegund, which may or may not be released this year — with Malick you never know. For me Ganz was always the kindly, soulful gloom guy. Born in ’41, mostly a stage actor for his first 15 or 20 years in the trade. Born and died in Zurich, which is a great city in more ways than I’d care to mention right now.
We met only once, during a Los Angeles Downfall press encounter. Instant kinship. Ganz seemed to recognize or at least sense my German ancestry on my mother’s side, or so I told myself. A twinkle in his eye, a hint of a smile.
I strongly identified with The American Friend when I first saw it at the 1977 New York Film Festival. “Jesus, that’s me up there,” I thought as I gazed from my 17th row seat at Alice Tully Hall. “That’s my life, my soul…everything churning inside.”
I was half Ganz and half Dennis Hopper, I decided. I loved the metaphor of Ganz’s Jonathan Zimmerman — vulnerable, thoughtful, gentle currents, European craftsmanship — but I identified more with Hopper’s Tom Ripley because (I’m not happy admitting this) of the polaroid-taking scene on top of the pool table, and because Ripley was a hustler and a survivor, and because of that cowboy hat.
Which is why I decided to become Ripley, in a sense, when Mark Frenden re-did that American Friend poster three years ago. But Bruno was right there with me, in a sense. He was my “friend” and spiritual comrade, a guy I understood and cared for as far as it went, etc.
Saturday, 2.16, 8:30 am: Last night Tatyana and I attended Bill Maher‘s 10 pm show at the Mirage. The usual good snappy material — Trump, p.c. snowflakes, etc. He was heckled about halfway through, apparently by a rightwing Christian: “What about kindness?” Maher: “Kindness isn’t funny — I can tell you that.” Somebody yelled out “AOC!”…he either didn’t hear or couldn’t think of anything. 1200 seats, almost filled, $100 to $130 bills per head…total haul of $125K plus. Out of which Maher pockets what? $40 or $50K? I wonder how it all works. Maher is allegedly worth around $100M.
Weatherbug app said it was 48 degrees last night…bullshit. Weatherbug didn’t endure those icy, gale-force winds during our walk from Bally’s to the Mirage.
Good news about human condition: Tatyana dropped her favorite scarf as we were walking through the Mirage casino after Bill’s show. We looked and looked. A half-hour later we went to the security office next to the main cashier, and they had the scarf! “Some guy in a suit” turned it in.
Scott Feinberg‘s 2.15 Hollywood Reporter essay about what went wrong with the awards campaign for A Star Is Born is deftly, in some ways cautiously phrased. He doesn’t even mention the overbearing, way-too-early celebrity endorsements (Sean Penn, Robert DeNiro, et. al.), and he’s somewhat oblique in the matter of Variety‘s Kris Tapley (“Others, just as problematically, reacted to ASIB‘s first screenings with predictions of historic Oscar success — which, shortly thereafter, made its loss of Toronto’s audience award to Green Book feel like a major disappointment”). But Jonathan Allardyce‘s illustration is perfect. I’d pay good money to see Tapley or Penn added.
Hollywood Reporter illustration by Jonathan Allardyce. But he didn’t go far enough!
