On 8.21.18 Criterion will release a 4K digital restoration Bluray of Ernst Lubitsch‘s Heaven Can Wait (’43), and yet there’s a above-average-looking version on YouTube right now. [After the jump, posted on 6.24.17 by some Russian guy.] I’ve seen this once, and the Warren Beatty-Buck Henry version, which is actually a remake of 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan, at least ten times. I’m sorry but the Beatty version really gets me emotionally while the well-crafted Lubitsch version is mainly deft and amusing.
The Criterion restoration was done by 20th Century Fox and the Academy Film Archive in collaboration with Martin Scorsese‘s Film Foundation.
I’ve never seen Stanley Donen‘s Indiscreet. Based on Norman Krasna‘s 1953 play Kind Sir, I’ve always sensed a surface vibe — a lack of substance or intrigue. But Cary Grant‘s Scottish dancing in this scene is elevating, especially when he does the moonwalk thing at 3:05. Indiscreet opened on 6.26.58 and was shot in mid 1957, or roughly a year before Grant started on the path that would lead to his becoming Captain Trips of Beverly Hills.
Five days ago What The Flick‘s Christy Lemire, Alonso Duralde and Matt Atchityriffed about Chris Nolan‘s unrestored 2001: A Space Odyssey, and they didn’t even mention the differences in color tones between the Nolan version and Warner Home Video’s 2007 Bluray.
It would be one thing to say, “Yes, we know 2001 looks different on the Bluray but we prefer the yellowish, less sharp, teal-tinted-sky version that Nolan has given us….in the French chateau finale Dave Bowman‘s face is slightly gray and lacking in detail behind his space-helmet mask, but we prefer it that way.” But they don’t even mention the Bluray. Nor do they discuss the upcoming 4K version, which will almost certainly resemble the 2007 Bluray only better.
Lemire: “You can interpret [2001] a lot of ways!” HE: Not really. The super-aliens who sent the monolith to earth to awaken the man-apes and turn them into bone-wielding carnivores, give them intelligence and the will to gradually evolve into homo sapiens are the sires of our species — our Gods, our fathers, our evolutionary architects. They planted one of their monoliths under the surface of the moon, knowing that sooner or later humans would fly there and uncover it, which would alert them to our evolutionary progress. At the very end ancient Dave Bowman sees the monolith at the foot of his deathbed and reaches out as a dying Christian would to a crucifix or a dying alcoholic to a fifth of Jack Daniels. And then he’s reborn into a star fetus, etc.
In short, it’s about the origin and the destiny of our species. Precisely and unambiguously. John Simon nailed it early on: 2001 is a “shaggy God story.”
“It’s a sign of where America is now at as a culture that we’ve gone from Han Solo to watching an actor as frictionless and badass-free as Alden Ehrenreich pretending to be Han Solo…and finding that perfectly acceptable! Why not? We’re still at a Star Wars movie! I’ve got my 64-ounce Coke, and the dude is all right. He’ll do! That’s exactly the attitude that could plunge the Democrats into disaster when they choose their next presidential candidate. He’ll do. (Or She’ll do.)
“Where have you gone, Harrison Ford? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
“It’s not every day that I feel sorry for an actor, especially one who’s lucky enough to have landed the lead role in a Star Wars film. But I honestly began to feel a little bad for Ehrenreich in Solo: A Star Wars Story. It was during the scene where, acting opposite Emilia Clarke (who looks like she could eat him alive, and would happily do so as foreplay), he attempts to signify the Awesome Casual Cockiness Of His Inner Being by slouching against a wall, hands on hips, his fingers spread out just so, in a John Wayne-meets-Clark Gable sort of swashbuckling cowboy-stud pose.
“At that moment, Ehrenreich doesn’t seem remotely like a young version of Harrison Ford’s lone-wolf space pilot; he seems like a sculpture of it. You don’t see the acting — you see the coaching. ‘Let it hang out a bit more, Alden…that’s right, spread those fingers…just keep thinking, I’m the man!’)
“I felt bad for Ehrenreich because it’s not his fault that some executive board meeting signed off on the looks-good-on-paper decision to cast him as a junior version of the ballsiest renegade of the blockbuster epoch.
From N.Y. Times editorial, posted Saturday, 5.26: “The owners of the National Football League have concluded, with President Trump, that true patriotism is not about bravely standing up for democratic principle but about standing up, period.
“Rather than show a little backbone themselves and support the right of athletes to protest peacefully, the league capitulated to a president who relishes demonizing black athletes. The owners voted Wednesday to fine teams whose players do not stand for the national anthem while they are on the field.
“Let us hope that in keeping with the league’s pinched view of patriotism, the players choose to honor the letter but not the spirit of this insulting ban. It might be amusing, for example, to see the owners tied in knots by players who choose to abide by the injunction to ‘stand and show respect’ — while holding black-gloved fists in the air. Or who choose to stand — while holding signs protesting police brutality.
“We look forward to many more meetings of fatootsed gazillionaires conducting many more votes on petty rules to ban creative new forms of player protest.”
“Critics have trained themselves to [pretend to] take seriously movies that they don’t take seriously because the danger is not having a job and not being ‘relevant’, being aged out of the discussion.
“The numbers bear out this trend. The median Tomatometer score for movies grossing more than $2 million was 51% during the 2000s and 53% during the 2010s. In 2017, though, the year of crashes such as Baywatch and Pirates of the Caribbean 5, the median was 71%. Either critics are enjoying movies more or movies are better than ever.”
Uhm, movies are not better than ever, or weren’t the last time I cheoked.
Sturgeon’s law doesn’t quite apply to the movie realm. 70% of films tend to be underwhelming, weak, bad, formulaic, dispiriting or numbing. 15% tend to be fair, decent, pretty good, passable. 10% are usually good to very good, and less than 5% are brilliant or epic or genius-level. This is how it usually shakes out, year in and year out. One out of four.
Anyone giving thumbs-up reviews to more than 40% or 50% of releases is being overly generous, and I myself am being generous in using this term.
Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz has tweeted that Disney-Lucasfilm is confirming that Solo: A Star Wars Story is looking at a four-day Memorial Day weekend haul of $105 to $115 million, which translates into a three-day-weekend tally of under $100 million. The studio’s previous four-day estimate was in the range of $130 to $150 million. Solo is playing in 4,380 domestic situations. First-day (i.e., Friday) grosses are around $32 million, including Thursday night’s $14.1 million.
The last Star Wars flick, The Last Jedi, opened five months ago. It brought in a first-weekend haul of $220 million in North America for a grand domestic total of $620 million and $1.3 billion worldwide.
From my 6.19.15 Sicario review: “The tale, such as it is, is told from the perspective of Emily Blunt‘s FBI field agent, who, being a 21st Century woman, is in touch with her emotions. She is therefore constantly stunned and devastated by the unrelenting carnage of the Mexican drug trade, blah blah.
“You know what I’d like to see just once? A female FBI agent who isn’t in touch with her emotions, or at least one who tones it down when it comes to showing them. Too much to ask for, right?
“One of Blunt’s battle-hardened colleagues, a senior veteran with a semi-casual ‘whatever works, bring it on’ attitude, is played by the ever-reliable Josh Brolin. My favorite character by far was Benicio del Toro’s Alejandro, a shadowy Mexican operative with burning eyes and his own kind of existential attitude about things. Benicio the sly serpent…the shaman with the drooping eyelids…the slurring, purring, south-of-the-border vibe guy.”
Paul Bloch, the well-liked Rogers & Cowan publicist with a easygoing manner and an endless repertoire of sweaters and watches, passed this morning at age 78. He was the lanky bald finesse guy whom big-name stars always hired when they got into trouble or needed something smoothed over or the press kept at arm’s length — Tom Cruise, Eddie Murphy, John Travolta, Michael Keaton, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Lisa Marie Presley, Nick Nolte, et. al. Back in the day Bloch also repped Sharon Stone, Kevin Costner, Anthony Hopkins, Farrah Fawcett, Barry Gibb and Diana Ross. Big brand name, nice guy, mellow presence. Born in 1940, Bloch started in the Rogers & Cowan mailroom in 1962. Hugs and condolences to friends, clients and family.
Paul Bloch (r.) with client John Travolta, sometime in the mid to late ’90s.
A friend who saw Haifaa al-Mansour‘s Mary Shelley (IFC Films, opening today in one theatre in Santa Monica) says the standout is 25 year-old Douglas Booth, who plays Percy Bysshe Shelley. I don’t even remember him from Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah (’14) or Lone Scherfig‘s The Riot Club (’14), and sitting through the Wachowski brothers Jupiter Ascending, in which Booth also costarred, made me too miserable to notice anyone or anything. I just wanted to die.
At age 16, the actual Mary Shelley (Elle Fanning) began a physical relationship with the already married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont (Bel Powley, whom Booth is seeing in real life), Mary and Shelley left for France and travelled through Europe. Claire began sleeping with Shelley, and then started sleeping with Lord Byron, who dumped her. Mary became pregnant thrice by Shelley, but two of the babies died. Shelley’s wife committed suicide, after which he and Mary got married.
At age 18 Mary wrote “Frankenstein”, which was allegedly some kind of metaphorical saga about her life. Shelley was Dr. Henry Frankenstein — she was the unloved, spat-upon, misunderstood monster.
Although I’ve been an Alfred Hitchcock fan since childhood, I’ve avoided seeing Under Capricorn (’50), an early 19th Century drama set in Australia, all my life. Despite knowing there are always elements in a Hitchcock film that are worth seeing. Despite the legendary Jack Cardiff (Black Narcissus, The African Queen) having shot it in Technicolor, and despite Hitchcock having reportedly used ten-minute-long takes. Despite the stellar cast — Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Michael Wilding, et. al. The forthcoming Kino Lorber Bluray (out on 6.19) is a 4K restoration, and I still won’t touch it. Because Hitch himself never hesitated to call it one of his worst films. Plus it was a box-office stinker — cost $3 million, made $1.5 million.
