Just another trumpet-player in Grand Central Station, right? No — it’s Eganam. For what it’s worth I played trumpet in my early teens, and I believe I have a certain ear for anyone gifted and playing extra-smooth. A few others were paying as much attention as I was, and there was a fair-sized pile of cash in the guy’s tip bucket. From the site: “Born in Ghana, West Africa, Eganam migrated to the United States in February 1999, at the age of ten. Seven months later he began playing the trumpet. On 9.27.15 he performed at Carnegie Hall with the International Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. Now a member of the United Nations Symphony Orchestra and a student of New York Philharmonic’s Ethan Bensdorf, Eganam is working toward becoming a world-renowned trumpeter and music educator.”
On 10.4 I posted a Best Supporting Actor riff titled “Mahershala Ali Again. Really.,” which advanced the notion of a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the Green Book co-star. On 10.26 I posted another called “Mahershala Ali Kick-Ass Syndrome,” which noted that 15 out of 25 Gold Derby “experts” had put Ali at the top of their Best Supporting Actor spitball lists…a seeming lock to win.
Today Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil took a stab at explaining the Mahershala surge.
Gold Derby-wise, Ali has not only jumped in front of Beautiful Boy‘s Timothee Chalamet in the Best Supporting Actor race, but “seems to have established a firm lead,” O’Neil notes.
This is at least one category, it seems, in which “less” may be judged to be of greater value than “more”. Chalamet’s drug-addict performance is anguished and intense in a kind of Lee Strasberg acting-class way — a guns-blazing thing — while Ali’s Don Shirley, a brilliant pianist, is quiet and subtle. So why is Ali suddenly out-pointing Chalamet by such a significant margin?
Because the viewer senses a guarded sadness in Shirley, and a guy who’s a bit too rigid and controlled. Understandably, you come to realize, but he’s breathing only through his music. Ali acquaints you with Shirley bit by bit, layer by layer. Before long you’re hoping to see him kick back and breathe a little.
“Timing is part of the reason,” O’Neil writes. “Green Book is now screening widely to industry audiences across Hollywood, and enjoying fresh, happy buzz as word spreads that it might be the next Best Picture winner and also that — watch out, pay attention — Viggo Mortensen could win Best Actor too. Really! And Peter Farrelly for Best Director.”
Yesterday I peddled three or four miles to a Lenscrafters to fix my distance glasses. It’s right near a typically calming but soul-less megamall called the Oglethorpe. I locked the bike to a lamppost (i.e., adjacent to the main outdoor parking lot), and then visited a Barnes and Noble to do some filing. I wound up staying there about five or six hours.
When I came back out for the bike I couldn’t open the number-code lock. I have a phone-photo of the code, of course, and I’ve used it successfully ten or twelve times since last weekend. But yesterday it wouldn’t do.
I called the bicycle rental shop before closing time but they didn’t answer. I called again for good measure. I sent two “EMERGENCY!” emails with an explanation + photos of the pole-locked bike. I finally had no choice but to leave it there — what was I going to do, pitch a tent and sleep there to discourage thieves?
I’m still trying to reach the bicycle rental people. I have to leave for the airport in 45 minutes and they won’t pick up. Who runs a bicycle rental business without posting an emergency cell-phone number? Or routinely checking emails for possible emergencies?
I know they’re going to try and charge me for some kind of stress-and-recovery fee, which really wouldn’t be fair. I did nothing wrong.
11:30 am update: The rental shop FINALLY called back, said they’d pick up the bike, not to worry, etc.
A follow-up to last night’s “Will Joe Popcorn Save Rhapsody?” post: I’ve said two or three times that Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody (20th Century Fox, opening tonight) is a generally pleasing in-and-outer — humdrum or “bizarrely anodyne” during stretches, but also one that occasionally catches the heat and delivers serious highs. Then it’s back to anodyne.
The Bohemian Rhapsody problem is that the Queen guys (Brian May in particular) wouldn’t grant rights to a biopic that didn’t deliver a basically positive spin — i.e., “Freddie had his excessive episodes but the fans loved him and the band plus he cared about his mum and dad and wife as far as it went, and of course the songs still rock.” So that’s the yoke — why the film doesn’t feel whole, much less transcendent.
It’s nonetheless a sporadically pleasing thing to sit through, and it really is unfortunate, I feel, that critics and editors (the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic fraternity that has rendered verdicts of 57% and 49% respectively) aren’t a little more comme ci comme ca about equivocating in an honest way when a film is a solid half-and-halfer.
The phrases “reasonably passable,” “not half bad and sometimes better than that,” “could be a lot worse,” “basically decent” and “imperfect but not a burn” are used by this columnist when the shoe fits, but you’ll hardly ever read them in a typical review. Because critics are trained early on to either pan or approve — to basically lean one way or the other. Don’t confuse the reader by sounding wimpy or uncertain.
Except the flighty, spazzy nature of Bohemian Rhapsody doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) allow a critic or viewer to lean one way or the other. It’s a once-in-a-blue-mooner that sidesteps suckage but at the same time doesn’t quite get there. In mountain-climbing terms it’s about two thirds of the way between base camp and the peak. Okay, halfway.
Double clarification: The “bizarrely anodyne” comment is from a 10.31 New Yorker piece, “A Truly Perfect Thirty Seconds of Queen“, by Amanda Petrusich.
A fair number of film critics are about to change their tune about Bohemian Rhapsody (20th Century Fox, 11.2), or at least tone down their pissy attitudes. Sometimes Average Joes know better, and this might be one of those rare occasions. I’ve never been a “power to the unwashed popcorn inhalers” type of guy, but this time I feel differently.
[Click through to full story on HE-plus]
HE is leaving Savannah late tomorrow morning. It certainly felt like a lively and plugged-in thing all around, morning to midnight, and the weather was perfectly brisk and fall-ish every day. Yesterday I re-watched and re-contemplated Marielle Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me? and came away with the same doubled-down enthusiasm for Melissa McCarthy‘s Best Actressy performance that I discovered during Telluride. More filings later this evening. I’ve never spent a Halloween evening roaming around Savannah and taking in the atmosphere — tonight will be the first.
The L.A. Film Festival has died, but the actual story is that festival honchos decided to commit hari kiri three years ago by (a) turning LAFF into a major “woke” festival and generally placing a strong emphasis on films directed by women and people of color, and (b) concurrently not caring that much about landing hot films that people might actually want to pay to see.
[Click through to full story on HE-plus]
A New Jersey high-school friend and I were hitchhiking south, heading for Miami. We were somewhere near Jacksonville when a guy pulled over, told us he was heading all the way to Key West…great! But I couldn’t let well enough alone. For as soon as we jumped in I decided for some adolescent jerkoff reason to pretend to be a southerner, adopting a fairly broad yokel accent.
It was experimental theatre — I was portraying some shitkicker from Georgia or Alabama or southern Texas (I didn’t know the difference) with a hope of getting away with it. Something about persuading the driver that I was in fact an Okie from Muskogee seemed enticing. I guess it made me feel like Slick Willie, like an operator of some kind.
[Click through to full story on HE-plus]
Yesterday BBC Culture posted a list of the 100 best foreign-language films of all time, based on a poll of 209 snooty, stodgy critics. At once well chosen and at the same time rote and droopy. The majority of the 209 are probably composed of two overlapping groups — (a) dweebs and (b) crusty, know-it-all types who are beholden to standard group-default thinking as well as their own pasts, prejudices and peculiarities and blah, blah. Don’t expect me to drop to my knees when they pass by.
All you can really say is that 209 knowledgable but flawed people chose their personal foreign-language favorites because they don’t want their colleagues to think they don’t respect the classics or that they’re knee-jerk revisionists or in some way unseasoned or scholastically incorrect, so they played it safe.
Asghar Farhadi‘s A Separation is in 21st place, fine, but where the hell is Andrey Zvagintsev‘s Leviathan? Akira Kurosawa‘s Seven Samurai is #1, but I’ve never found it that wonderful. (I’ve always preferred John Sturges 1960 remake, to be honest. And I don’t care what anyone thinks of this preference either, and if they don’t like it they can blow me.) Jules Dassin‘s note-perfect Rififi is only the 91st most popular? Seems to me it deserves to be among the top 25 or 30. Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou made the list? I popped in the Bluray a couple of years ago and couldn’t get through it.
The 209 know what they know and believe what they believe, but they aren’t kings or princes or even poets. I’ll bet a good portion of them are underpaid and vaguely pissed off. I’ll bet they wear glasses and baggy pants, and have neck wattles and don’t work out that much. I’ll bet they always go to the discount section when they visit the local Barnes and Noble.
There’s something true and straight and inarguable about a 96 year-old guy just laying it down and saying “c’mon, Americans…what is this?”
The title of this post refers to Carl Reiner having created and written The Dick Van Dyke Show, which is about a comedy writer (Van Dyke) who worked for “Alan Brady,” the Sid Caesar-like star of The Alan Brady Show. Reiner worked as a writer for Ceasar’s Your Show of Shows (’50 to ’54) and Caesar’s Hour (’54 to ’57).
What is on my mind will be coming out of my mouth as you watch this: pic.twitter.com/fZkyGg8rlU
— carl reiner (@carlreiner) October 30, 2018
I’m sorry but the first thing I thought of when I saw the new Avatar logo was the white TriStar horse with the big wings. Two flying horse-shaped beasts. They not only look alike but they both end in an “ahhr” sound. What was so awful about the Avatar sanskrit logo?
I can’t believe Jim Cameron is intending to deliver four Avatar sequels…four! The effort will consume him for at least the next seven years, not counting promotion. Why? So he can make more billions and…what, sink the dough into more underwater research?? The decent thing would have been to make two more sequels — no more.
Wikiboilerplate: “Two sequels to Avatar were initially confirmed after the success of the first film; this number was subsequently expanded to four. Their respective release dates are currently December 18, 2020, December 17, 2021, December 20, 2024, and December 19, 2025.
“Cameron is directing, producing and co-writing all four; Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Shane Salerno all took a part in the writing process of all of the sequels before being assigned to finish the separate scripts, making the eventual writing credits for each film unclear.”
A live-action CG-hybrid version of Lady and the Tramp was shooting in the Chippewa Square region of Savannah yesterday. The Disney production, which is calling itself Goodbye Stranger for some reason, had de-aged the area with the surrounding streets covered in soil. I noticed a dog-catcher wagon parked near the northern fence. Filming began on 9.10 and is expected to end on 11.7, or a week from today. The voice actors are Tessa Thompson (Lady), Justin Theroux (Tramp), Janelle Monae, Ashley Jensen, Benedict Wong, Sam Elliott, Kiersey Clemons.
HE to a couple of heavyish, middle-aged production guys standing around: “What’s the show? Is it…?”
Employee #1: “It’s not a show — it’s a movie.”
Employee #2: “An animated movie.”
HE: “Well, whenever something is shooting in New York or Los Angeles they call it a ‘show.'”
Employee #2: “It’s called Goodbye Stranger.”
HE: “I heard it was Lady and the Tramp.”
Employee #1: “For now it’s Goodbye Stranger.”
HE: “Okay.”
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