When this Laurel & Hardy scene was shot sometime in the early ’30s, laughing a little too loudly in a restaurant was regarded as a social faux pas. Nowadays it’s completely normal and even de rigueur for people to laugh like Stan Laurel and then some — shrieking like hyenas, throwing their heads back — in cafes, restaurants and bars. Especially among women who’ve had a couple of glasses of wine. In the same sense that George C. Scott‘s General Patton claimed that he fought in a famous battle between the Romans and the Cathaginians, I am that moustache-wearing guy sitting behind L&H who twice turns around to give Stan the stink-eye. I am also that woman seething at the table.
I hate, hate, hate the idea of paying to see Doctor Strange sometime this afternoon. I loved Antman and the first two Captain Americas, but I despise the cultural scourge and stylistic CG oppression of Marvel/D.C. product. And yet I have to see the damn thing because of the massive numbers ($84,989,000 domestic, $240,400,000 foreign = $325,389,000 worldwide) and because L.A. Daily News critic Bob Strauss called it “lysergic.” (Glengarry Glen Ross‘s Ricky Roma says: “Lysergic? Fuck you!”) I’m presuming that HE readers have seen it — please weigh in.
Denzel Washington‘s Fences (Paramount, 12.25), which everyone saw last night, is going to kick major Oscar nomination ass — guaranteed noms for Best Picture, Best Director (Denzel), Best Actor (ditto) and Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis, 100% locked to win)…bare minimum. Mykelti Williamson may snag a Best Supporting Actor nom as Denzel’s mentally damaged brother.
I can’t “review” it until the embargo lifts, but c’mon…we were all there last night. It screened, it happened. Fences is stagey but clean (i.e., unfettered), eloquent, emotionally affecting, smooth and damn near close to perfect. It’s a heartfelt, beautifully refined thing, and every semi-intelligent moviegoer over 30 will rush to see it. The unwashed, un-cultured morons will say it’s not cinematic or Dr. Strange-y enough and stay away, but what else is new?
Last night’s blowout screening happened at the Westwood Village; the after-party at Napa Valley Grille. The post-screening q & a included Denzel, Viola and costars Stephen Henderson (who’s also in Manchester By The Sea), Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson, Jovan Adepo and newcomer Saniyya Sidney, who’s also in Hidden Figures and is absolutely destined for stardom.
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Denzel Washington, costar Stephen Henderson during Fences after-party at Napa Valley Grille.
(l. to r.) Fences costars Russell Hornsby, Jovan Adepo, Saniyya Sidney, Denzel Washginton, Stephen Henderson, Mykelti Washington at Napa Valley Grille.
(l.) Fences dp Charlotte Bruus Christensen (Life, The Girl on the Train, about to start shooting Molly’s Game), HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko (Inside Job, Inequality for All, Red Army).
Mr. Robot‘s Rami Malek has been hired to play Queen’s Freddie Mercury in that same biopic/band saga that has been stuck in neutral, fraught with creative differences, since 2010 or thereabouts. Sacha Baron Cohen, who would’ve been a perfect Freddy, bailed earlier this year after working on the project for six years, mainly because of conflicts with Queen member Brian May, who allegedly wanted a somewhat sanitized, upbeat portrait of the late singer. Bryan Singer has signed to direct the Queen film, which will be called Bohemian Rhapsody. It will be produced by GK Film’s Graham King, and based on a screenplay by Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything). Malek doesn’t feel right — he certainly doesn’t look like Mercury — but he might be okay. I have a bad feeling about this. One way or another May and the other gatekeepers will, I suspect, compromise the story or sand off the edges or whatever.
You can call Town and Country (New Line, 4.27.01) an unsatisfying film. A lot of people did actually. But I’ve always thought it’s a better-than-half-decent comedy, and that some scenes are hilarious. It’s certainly a lot better than was indicated by that 13% Rotten Tomatoes rating. True, it’s still one of the biggest bombs of the 21st Century. Having cost $90 million to make, it earned $6,719,973 domestically and $10.4 million worldwide. But the scene below (Warren Beatty being asked about possible infidelity by Diane Keaton, et. al.) really works. Funny, well-written, a nice pivot, etc. You know what also works? Those two scenes between Beatty, Andie McDowell and Charlton Heston (“Rowwwrrr”).
Originally posted on 8.3.12: I had a reservation to stay tonight at Monument Valley’s Firetree Inn, a b & b located in a wifi dead zone about a half-hour’s drive from Goulding’s. The novelty is that visitors sleep in a Navajo Hogan, a kind of dirt igloo that Navajos have been crashing, praying and meditating in over the generations. It’s a sacred thing so the owner-managers want people who “get” the Hogan experience to stay there — they don’t want trashy, fast-food-eating families with loud kids looking to watch American Idol on flatscreens.
I get that. I wanted to do this. I figured I could do without wifi for an eight-hour period. But I’d never seen a real Hogan up close (to me the word “Hogan” means Hogan’s Heroes) and was curious about the Firetree, so early yesterday afternoon a friend and I drove out to pay a visit.
The owner-managers, a couple in their early 40s or late 30s, were — I don’t want to exaggerate — stunned by our visit. Stunned. They pretty much went into apoplectic shock. Their basic response was “whoa, wait a minute…what are you, a person who’s not scheduled to be here until late tomorrow afternoon, doing here now?” They couldn’t wrap their heads around someone just checking the place out, all friendly and no biggie.
The first thing the bald and bleary-eyed guy said was that “we don’t open for guests until 5 pm.” Nice people skills, pal. And then the woman said they’d recently gotten up — it was around 1 pm — and they were having breakfast. Right away I was thinking, “What’s up with these guys? Who treats customers like tax collectors? Who has breakfast at 1 pm?” When I said we’d just driven over from Goulding’s and just wanted to look around, the woman said, “But that’s so far.” No, I said — it’s about a 25-minute drive. (Which it is.)
Then they went into a kind of silent mode. “How do we deal with these people?,” they seemed to be saying. “How do we cope with this?”
It was nearly three years ago (1.9.14) when I tried to explain one of the most important rules for famous guys attending public events, which is to never wear orthopedic old-man shoes. I was derided for saying this, of course, but you can’t explain this aesthetic to deplorable-shoe types. Either you get the importance of wearing elegant shoes in public or you don’t. Wear your grandpa shoes all you want when you’re at home or shuffling around the mall, but never in front of the paying public.
I’m mentioning this again because a certain famous guy was recently photographed in a pair of black senior-citizen sneakers during a post-screening q & a. People in the audience listened to him discuss this and that, I’m sure, but they also had a good 30 to 40 minutes to just sit there and contemplate those ugly-ass shoes. Those people will never forget this.
My original point was that all self-respecting actors, celebrities and X-factor types need to tough it out and wear cool Italian shoes for lah-lah events, no matter what.
I’ve walked around the streets of Rome, Milan, Venice, Sienna and Florence on warm evenings, and white-haired Italian guys never, ever wear comfort shoes. They would rather be stricken with a heart attack and collapse on the street than wear those clunky things. When you’re hanging with the swells you have to look classy and elegant, even if it hurts. Even if it shortens your life.
You can laugh but a man’s choice of footwear usually says a lot about him, particularly about how he sees himself. Once the public realizes that you’re more into comfort clunkers than looking good, it’s the beginning of the end.
The mighty campaign of Hillary Clinton is going to barely squeak to a victory next Tuesday (Nate Silversays she has a 64% likelihood of winning vs. 36% for Donald Trump). But Florida is currently tipping in Trump’s favor, 52.9% to 47.1%, and so is North Carolina, 52.1% to 47.9% for Trump. N.Y. Times pollster Nate Cohn says the same thing — a close race but with Clinton slightly ahead.
Over the last two or three days journos have received invites to almost every award-season film that hasn’t yet screened — Denzel Washington‘s Fences, Ben Affleck‘s Live by Night, Stephen Gaghan‘s Gold, Robert Zemeckis‘s Allied, Theodore Melfi‘s Hidden Figures, Taylor Hackford‘s The Comedian, Juan Antonio Bayona‘s A Monster Calls. (Invites to the Bayona actually came in a bit earlier.) All of these will be seen before 11.17, which is convenient given that Hollywood Elsewhere leaves that day for the Key West Film Festival. The only logistical hang-up is the closing-night screening of Peter Berg‘s Patriot’s Day — maybe CBS Films will allow some of us see it a little early. Right now the only December hold-outs are Martin Scorsese‘s Silence (which, I’m guessing, will probably screen right before Thanksgiving — 11.21 or 11.22), John Lee Hancock‘s The Founder and Morten Tyldum‘s Passengers.
The Bleecker Street guys will soon host a couple of events (a party, a luncheon) for Matt Ross‘s Captain Fantastic, which everyone spoke highly of when it opened on 7.8.16. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 1.23.16, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and then opened theatrically a few weeks later. I didn’t review it until late July:
“This is one of the most complex and provocative dramas about parenting and passed-along values that I’ve seen in a dog’s age. I didn’t love it, partly because it unfolds in such an exotic and woolly realm (I don’t hold with killing deer or living without deodorant or applications of Aqua Velva) and partly because the last 10 or 12 minutes seem more fanciful than grounded, but I admired it. I certainly found it intriguing. It warrrants a thumbs-up.
Ross’s fascinating scheme is to acquaint us with an unorthodox good guy like Viggo Mortensen‘s Ben Cash — a brilliant, willful, Noam Chomsky-worshipping father of six, an Allie Fox type who’s highly independent, disciplined and obstinate. And then show us that he can also be a selfish prick and even a tyrant. But one who also has the decency to recognize his faults and the humility to pull back when life has told him to do so. But he’s still bull-headed. But he cares. He even shaves his beard off at the end.
With his wife in failing health, Ben and his six kids — three older teens named Bodevan (George MacKay), Kielry (Samantha Isler) and Vespyr (Annalise Basso), the tweener-aged Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton) and Zaja (Shree Crooks) and a little towhead named Nai (Charlie Shotwell) — have been living for ten years like survivalists in a Pacific Northwest forest, hand-to-mouthing it like Swiss Family Robinson, killing game and growing vegetables while immersing themselves in martial-arts training, Esperanto lessons and campfire sing-alongs.
Billy Wilder‘s One, Two, Three (’61), one of my all-time favorite comfort films, has disappeared from Amazon streaming. Fans were never permitted to purchase a streaming copy — only rent one. But now that’s over. Which means, I presume, that a Bluray will hit the market sometime before long. But there’s no news of one. I love watching this 1961 film late at night, starting around 10:30 or 11 pm. Relaxing, soothing, like a glass of warm milk.
