My recollections of Paul Schrader‘s Blue Collar (’78) are on the vague side. It was reasonably well regarded back in the day, or so I recall. But I couldn’t remember much about the plot. I could only recall three angry, financially struggling auto workers (Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto) pulling off a half-assed heist, and things becoming worse as a result. So I read Vincent Canby‘s N.Y. Times review (which ran on 2.10.78) and I still couldn’t recall anything. That’s usually a bad sign.

During filming of Blue Collar, sometime in ’77: (l. to r.) Paul Schrader, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Pryor.

So rather than buy the forthcoming Indicator Bluray (which pops on 1.22.18), I think I’ll just rewatch it via Amazon streaming.

Blue Collar‘s production history was unstable and conflicted. A recent Cinephilia & Beyond piece reports that “filming was tumultuous.” At one point Pryor pulled a gun on Schrader and refused to do any more than three takes. “Pryor was the unhappiest person I ever met,” Schrader said on a voiceover commentary. “After about three weeks in, I was in the middle of the set and all of a sudden I started crying and…couldn’t stop.”

Schrader later admitted that “Pryor’s best performance would be found in those second or third takes and that he would become bored and begin to improvise from thereon, to the annoyance of Keitel.”

“A day did not go by without some form of provocation,” Schrader recalls. “Either physical or verbal or walking off [the set]. It was just trench warfare.”

Blue Collar was widely praised by critics. (I think.) Roger Ebert liked it. I’ve already rented the streaming, but I have an idea that a making-of doc might be more interesting.

To go by an 11.26 Guardian interview, Susan Sarandon is still loathed by the left. Deeply. Not so much for trashing Hillary Clinton (many lefties voted for Clinton while holding their nose) as her support for Bernie Sanders and particularly Jill Stein, whose presence on the Presidential ballot may have helped Donald Trump win the White House. Stein, for example, got 51,463 votes in Michigan, but Trump won that state by 10,704. Similar tallies prevailed in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

But Sarandon tells the Guardian‘s Emma Brockes that voting for Jill Stein in New York State was a harmless protest vote. “I knew that New York was going to go [for Hillary]…it was probably the easiest place to vote for Stein.”

Brockes asks Sarandon if she really said that Hillary is “more dangerous” than Trump. “Not exactly, but I don’t mind that quote,” Sarandon replies. “I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president]. It wouldn’t be much smoother. Look what happened under Obama that we didn’t notice.” Sarandon’s view isn’t that extreme. Peter Kuznick, co-author with Oliver Stone of “The Untold History of the United States,” said roughly the same thing three years ago. “Hillary’s foreign policy is very dangerous,” he said. “[She’s] Margaret Thatcher…such a smart woman, but such a simplistic narrative.”

In an 11.26 Forbes piece about the box-office performance of Justice League, you can sense that Scott Mendelson is not coming from a neutral place. He sounds like a Warner Bros. marketing guy trying to cheer up exhibitors about the viability of the DC brand. ($481 million and climbing! Yay, team!) Then again Mendelson does allude to the fact that the Justice League budget is “so big that a $600 million-plus worldwide total is cause for alarm.”

That references an 11.20 report by Forbes‘ Rob Cain that forecasts a possible $50 to $100 million loss, due to Justice League costing $300 million to make and $150M to market, which requires worldwide earnings of $750 million just to break even. ‘

Mendelson adds that “if Justice League continues to play somewhere between Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the film may just flirt with $250 million domestic, or about what Tim Burton’s Batman earned back in 1989.” Yeah, 28 years ago. But these days, the 1989 dollar is worth $1.97. Which means that by today’s yardstick, Batman‘s domestic earnings, which were actually $251,188,924, come to $494,842,180.

“Justice League is still alive, but it’s not yet well,” Mendelson concludes. “It held up just well enough to give a little hope for the next two weeks, but not well enough for anyone to pop the champagne.”

Who outside of certain cast members and Warner Bros. employees…who would want to celebrate the box-office success of Justice League? That would be like celebrating the triumph of the dark side over the rebellion.

A 4K Criterion Bluray of Tony Richardson‘s Tom Jones (’63) will pop on 2.27.18. A rompy, infectious, occasionally bawdy 18th Century comedy-adventure, it was one of the first critically respected films to break the fourth wall. Or was it the first? To audiences in JFK’s America it was really quite the amusing stunner when Albert Finney interrupted a conversation with some 18th Century character to glance at Richardson’s lens and offer a side quip or two.

Full of rude energy and goaded by the spirit of the British New Wave, Tom Jones also used jumpy handheld photography, freeze frames, whimsical narration and, as I recall, at least one instance of speeded-up photography. It felt like a prank, a lark, a mad bomb, and it completely jettisoned the steady-as-she-goes, well-regulated tone of mainstream cinema that was par for the course back then. On 4.13.64 it won the 1963 Best Picture Oscar along with Oscars or Best Director (Richardson), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.

A 2014 Backstage piece listed 14 films that broke the fourth wall (Annie Hall, Funny Games, Fight Club, Amelie, High Fidelity, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, etc.) but didn’t mention Richardson’s film…weird.

True story: A director who’s been in the trenches for many years recently heard from a woman who worked as his assistant back in ’87. They hadn’t crossed paths in eons but suddenly an email arrived, and it was tersely worded: “I have something I need to talk to you about.” Right away he felt the fear. The director has always been a kindly gentleman sort, but things were different 30 years ago. He began to scratch his memory and ask himself, “Was there ever a moment in which I might have crossed some kind of line with this woman?” Please, God…tell me nothing even slightly improper occurred as I love my life and I don’t want to die. A current of anxiety began to creep into his bloodstream. Anyway, he reached out and the former assistant rang or something, and it turned out that she’d written a script that she wanted him to read. Whew.

Adam McKay‘s Dick Cheney biopic with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell. Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, a space drama about NASA’s Duke of Dullness, Neil Armstrong. Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria. Saoirse Ronan in Mary, Queen of Scots. Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? Glenn Close‘s Best Actress campaign for The Wife. Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased starring Lucas Hedges. Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here. Alex Garland‘s delayed Annihilation.

Not to mention Clint Eastwood‘s The 15:17 to Paris. Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On The Basis of Sex. Garth Davis‘s Mary Magdelene. Gus Van Sant‘s Don’t Worry, he Won’t Get Far on Foot. Robert Zemeckis‘s The Women of Marwen. Felix von Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy with Steve Carell and Timothy Chalamet. Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favorite. And John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick.

All of them 2018 releases, and numbering 19. Not bad for a starting roster.

What follows is a copy of an 11.20.16 piece about likely award-season contenders of 2017, but with the links changed to 2018 forecasts:

It’s time to spitball what the Best Picture hotties will be twelve months hence, or just after the 2018 Thanksgiving holiday.

Every January I begin to compile a list of likely or at least promising-sounding goodies. I thought I’d start a little earlier so that by New Year’s Day I’ll have a half-decent 2018 roster to build from. It’s always hard to cut through the smoke and try to figure out what might poke through. Right now I can’t see much out there. If you check the usual sites and sources (Wikipedia, Box-Office Mojo release schedule) it’s all the same old nauseating crap — the usual mind-melting, idiot-brand, animal-friendly superhero franchise CG Asian-market slop.

Theatrical films are slowly dying, certainly if you go by the product being cranked out by the five families these days, but never say die. Netflix, Amazon, Megan Ellison, A24, Scott Rudin, Sony Pictures Classics…anyone and anything that turns the key. Ambitious theatrical fare…what is that these days? Most believe the form can only go downhill, but the discipline of having to put it all together and cram it into 95 or 110 or 125 or 140 minutes (as opposed to the relative ease of sprawling Westworld-like longforms)…there’s something so vivid and extra-feeling when movies somehow manage to do that thing and deliver like it matters. I wouldn’t want to live in a realm in which people aren’t trying like hell to keep doing this, each and every year.

Posted on 1.24.17: As Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name is largely spoken in English and particularly given what a flat-out masterpiece it is, I don’t see why this sensual Italian-shot drama shouldn’t be a Best Picture contender a year from now.” And look what happened!

This is a landmark film that deserves its day in the Oscar sun. For Call Me By Your Name is not so much about a one-on-one relationship (although that is certainly a central thread) as much as the hearts and minds of a small, mostly English-speaking community in northern Italy (the film was primarily shot in Guadagnino’s home town of Crema), and how they all observe, absorb, nourish and comment upon in little affecting ways the central, slow-build love story between Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer.

What counts is that the mood and drift of this film isn’t really about straight or gay or anything in between. It’s about “being there” in every possible comprehension of that term — about sensual samplings, summer aromas, warm sunshine, fresh water and that swoony, lifty feeling, etc. You’ve read this stuff over and over, but after a ten-month wait CMNBYN (98% Rotten Tomatoes, 95% Metacritic) is finally starting to appear on commercial screens.

On 11.16 Variety mentioned a pull quote from this excerpt from Sarah Silverman‘s “I Love You, America” — “I love Louis, but he did these things.” But I didn’t listen to the whole thing until this morning. Silverman knows. I Love You, America, a talk show, premiered on Hulu on 10.12.17.

There are several keeper scenes in Alexander Payne‘s Sideways, but this is the best, I feel, because it really sinks into classic manboy immaturity and a messy emotional collapse.

At first, right after Thomas Haden Church‘s “Jack” tells Paul Giamatti‘s “Miles” that “they” have to return to the home of the plus-sized waitress (Missy Doty) to retrieve his wallet and more particularly the wedding rings, Giamatti is going “naah” and shaking his head and waving it off. But then Church’s pleading and wailing becomes more desperate and adolescent, and at 2:30 Giamatti’s expression suddenly shifts from one of sadness and resignation to astonished pity and compassion.

This is great, world-class, pool-of-human-experience acting, and the great Giamatti wasn’t even Best Actor-nominated that year. The ’04 nominees in this category were Jamie Foxx in Ray (the winner), Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (c’mon!), Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator and Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby.

I remember agonizing over the Giamatti snub, and deducing soon after that he didn’t get nominated because of that first-act scene in which Miles helps himself to some cash out of his mother’s bureau drawer. I actually shared this suspicion with Giamatti at Olio y Limone during the ’05 Santa Barbara Film Festival. I did so out of compassion and a keen resentment of life’s unfairness. He apparently hadn’t considered the stealing-from-mom angle, as it seemed to hit him for the first time: “Damn! Damn!”

Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Phantom Thread (Focus Features, 12.25) screened this afternoon at Laemmle’s Fine Arts. The show began at 2:03 pm, and was over roughly 95 minutes later. No one’s allowed to say anything until 12.7, but the film was applauded when it ended. The Fine Arts marquee looked spectacular with red-toned Phantom Thread title art on both sides. The post-screening q & a featured Anderson and costars Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville. A large designer drawing of a 1950s-era gown was hanging in a poster window.

Paul Thomas Anderson, Vicky Krieps.

Krieps, Lesley Manville.

I wrote yesterday that while some have called Darkest Hour‘s London Underground scene “ridiculous,” in nonetheless works. I called it the most emotionally satisfying scene in the whole film, and the only one that made me sit up in my seat and go “this is probably bullshit from a historical perspective, but it’s connecting.”

Last night Chris Willman wrote in the comment thread that the Underground scene is “horrible…HORRIBLE. Any good will I had for the movie, and it was wavering, evaporated at that point. I don’t understand how it works or connects for anybody. No science fiction or fantasy movie has ever required such a suspension of disbelief from an audience.”

My response, tapped out this morning: “It’s a kind of fantasy sequence but it works all the same. It’s theatrically hokey and perhaps even simple-minded, but it’s (a) shrewdly timed, arriving just before Churchill’s grand climax inside Parliament, and (b) more importantly delivers what we want to hear after listening to cagey, measured expressions of political calculation for 90 or 100 minutes beforehand. It’s a pure-heart, resolve-of-the-people moment (“Never!”). It feels, yes, like a dream sequence, almost in the manner of a Rodgers & Hammerstein interlude. But emphatic emotion is what Darkest Hour needs at this third-act juncture, and as much as you may dislike the calculation, it pays off.”

Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, The Post and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri continue to enjoy the Gold Derby and Gurus of Gold heat; ditto Darkest Hour to a slightly lesser extent. If you ask me the four hottest Best Picture contenders are Dunkirk, The Post, Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird. Just how things seem at this stage.