Daily
Le Morte d’Arthur
What killed King Arthur: Legend of the Sword? The widely-shared opinion that it stinks? Medieval genre fatigue? Guy Ritchie‘s attempt to make a tale that has been told again and again into a hodgepodge of flash-bang editing, modern colloquial dialogue, the sounds of Led Zeppelin and a general sense of the absurd? The fact that Charlie Hunnam is no one’s idea of a box-office draw? Or did the trailers turn people off for some other reason?
Did anyone see it? I sure as hell didn’t and wouldn’t.
Reported by Variety‘s Brent Lang: “It looks like summer 2017 has its first official flop. Ritchie’s attempt to make the Knights of the Round Table hip again, is collapsing at the box office. Based on its Thursday pre-shows and Friday afternoon mid-day grosses, the $175 million epic is looking at a disastrous $18 million debut.
“Those projections come from rival studios. Insiders at Warner Bros. think the film could still exceed $20 million, but even if it does, that’s still a very weak start for such an expensive picture. Barring a mid-weekend surge in enthusiasm for tales of gallantry, there will be red ink.”
You and Your Hot Blood
This trailer for Home Again (Open Road, 9.8) looks to me like a suburban sexual fantasy film. More specifically about 40ish Reese Witherspoon, her character recently separated from Michael Sheen, hooking up with some young stuff. The director-writer is Hallie Meyers-Shyer, the daughter of Nancy Meyers (who produced with Erika Olde) and Charles Shyer. The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. Costarring Candice Bergen, Michael Sheen, Lake Bell, Nat Wolff, Reid Scott and Pico Alexander.
Total Animal, Chaos Ensues
I’ve just arrived in in a country that recently elected a sensible pragmatist instead of a racist fearmonger to run the show. It feels very good to be here for that fact alone. Would that American bumblefucks had the common sense to realize what they were doing when they voted last November for Orange Orangutan. Yeah, I know — a lot of them didn’t vote for Trump as much as vote against Hillary Clinton, but still.
Donald Trump’s ill-informed, authoritarian, shoot-from-the-hip bluster and bullshit-spewing is a rolling embarassment. The tweets he posted this morning verged on the surreal. Threatening that he may have secretly recorded conversations with recently-dismissed FBI director James Comey, and that “[he’d] better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press“?
Followed by a hypothetical about cancelling live press briefings in favor of issuing written reports? And then doubling down on this notion with Jeanine Pirro in a forthcoming interview on Justice With Judge Jeanine? And admitting in a recent interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that the previous explanations for the Comey firing were evasive, to put it mildly?
It’s exhausting, infuriating. But it also feels good — satisfying — to watch him unravel. I’ve nothing brilliant to offer about any of this, and even if I did I wouldn’t be able to phrase it…I can’t even finish this sentence.. Too jet-lagged. I quit. But it sure feels good to be in a country that primarily values sanity and level-headedness. Leave it at that.
Always Something
Every time I arrive in Paris there’s always something that goes a little bit wrong, usually because I haven’t gathered all the necessary information or forgotten something. Or because I’m too tired to figure something out. That’s what happened today. I missed some instructions about picking up the apartment keys that had been sent several weeks ago by my Airbnb host, Romain. They were sent early last March but not re-sent today or yesterday, which would have been the considerate thing. But a couple of other things also went wrong on their own.
My flight from JFK arrived around 12:40 pm. I took the usual Roissy bus (40 minutes, slogging through traffic), and arrived at the depot behind Place d’Opera around 2:40 pm. I hopped on a Creteil-bound metro, got off at the Filles du Calvaire stop, and dragged the luggage over to 40 rue de Saintonge.
I had texted Romain yesterday and explained I’d be there around 3:30 pm. But when I texted him today as I stood by the street entrance, he told me the keys were sitting inside a code-entry lock box inside Bistrot de la Gaite (7 rue Papin), which is ten blocks to the west. I scrolled back through my Airbnb inbox and found a message, sent on 3.9, explaining this procedure, so my bad. I should’ve double-checked.
So I hailed a cab and went over to this place, bags and all. But then the code Romain gave me in the original message didn’t work. Punched it out four times — no dice. So I texted Romain, blah-dee-blah, “not working, brah.” He eventually gave me another code that worked. Keys and bags in hand, I taxied back to the pad.
From A Director Who Knows From Val Lewton
Yes, it looks like a retread, a Stand By Me ensemble threatened by a demonic Clarabelle. But something tells me that It (9.8.17, Warner Bros., New Line) may be up to something good. I’m basing this suspicion partly on the last two-thirds of the new trailer, and partly on the fact that it was directed by Andres Muschietti, who delivered the superb Mama four years ago.
From Todd McCarthy’s 1.15.13 Hollywood Reporter review of Mama:
“Being sold primarily on the name of its godfather, Guillermo del Toro, this Canadian-Spanish co-production from Universal is refreshingly mindful of the less-is-more horror guidelines employed by 1940s master Val Lewton, not to mention Japanese ghost stories, but the PG-13 rating might prove too restrictive for the gory tastes of male core genre fans.
“In essence, Mama represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out. With fine special effects and a good sense of creating a mood and pacing the jolts, [Andres] Muschietti shows a reassuringly confident hand for a first-time director, pulling off some fine visual coups through smart camera placement and cutting, and not taking the whole thing so seriously that it becomes overwrought.”
Going Pink
The new poster for Sofia Coppola‘s The Beguiled (Focus Features, 6.23) seems to convey a certain agenda. As you might expect, Don Siegel‘s 1971 version of the same Civil War-era tale regarded Clint Eastwood‘s Union soldier character (i.e., Corporal John McBurney) with a faint measure of allegiance, and depicted his fate at the hands of the Southern women (Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris) as an unwarranted mutilation, however much Eastwood’s character may have tempted fate by being a scamp. Coppola’s version, which I won’t see until it plays at the Cannes Film Festival, is presumably more condemning of McBurney, played this time by Colin Farrell. The pink lettering pretty much says it all. The Beguiled is a movie for girls, and particularly those with no tolerance for caddish guys who fuck around at will.
Fate, Luck, Serendipity
The other day Patti Lupone dismissed Madonna‘s performance as Evita Peron in Alan Parker’s 1996 film adaptation (which I’ve always enjoyed and admired). “Madonna is a movie killer,” Lupone said. “She’s dead behind the eyes. She couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. She should not be on film or on stage. She’s a wonderful, you know, performer for what she does, but she is not an actress.” (Lupone’s performance as Evita in the original 1979 Broadway production is commonly regarded as the best.)
No one would argue Lupone’s point, but Madonna was never better than she was in Parker’s film. She wasn’t brilliant or staggering, but she gave it everything she had and this, coupled with the fact that Evita itself was an above-average musical, makes her performance an honorable, good-enough thing. Madonna wasn’t the best choice, agreed, but she was reasonably decent in the role, at least to the extent that she didn’t get in the way.
The lesson is that with God’s grace, even moderately talented, less-than-genius-level actors can briefly rise to the heights. Simply by being lucky enough to find the right role in the right film at the right time. Justin Timberlake in The Social Network. Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love. Sly Stallone in Rocky. What others?
Sidenote: I don’t agree about Hayden Christensen‘s performance in Shattered Glass being a high-water mark. I found his manner in that film oppressively phony and cloying, making it impossible to believe that Stephen Glass‘s coworkers at the New Republic would buy into his bullshit.
Seeking Russia-Trump Junkiedom
I’ve been waiting and waiting for the Russia-Trump election interference story to become the New Watergate. I was elated by the Comey firing because it seemed as if this, finally, would launch this story into orbit. It was Nixon firing Cox all over again…great! But I was also brought down yesterday by a Nate Silver/538 story about how the Russia thing has failed to ignite so far.
Silver: “It’s also possible that Comey’s firing is just the latest in a series of short, exciting bursts of activity that don’t ultimately produce any lasting momentum or do all that much to undermine Trump. This has mostly been the pattern of these Trump-Russia stories so far.” Three spikes — the British pee-pee tape dossier last January, the MNichael Flynn reisgnation in February and now the Comey firing.
Silver’s bottom line: “These [news] spikes have been relatively short-lived, and there has been no long-term increase in public attention to the story.”
Foregone Conclusion
Having missed Monday night’s Manhattan all-media of Snatched, the Amy Schumer-Goldie Hawn comedy, I’m thinking of catching a 7 pm show at the Regal Battery Park Stadium. I can only see 90 minutes’ worth as I have to leave for JFK at 8:30 pm (the Paris flight leaves at 11:30 pm) but it’s a flunk — 36% Rotten Tomatoes, 47% Metacritic. The word’s been out on this puppy for months.
From David Poland’s 5.10 review: “The biggest problem is that Schumer is playing dumb…perhaps stupid. And she takes it to a level that doesn’t serve her well. It’s kind of like, ‘If you loved Amy in Trainwreck as a smart but insecure early 30s woman with a fear of commitment who finally gets it together, you’ll REALLY LOVE Amy as a self-indulgent woman/child with a clinging, enabling mother who really learns nothing through the course of the movie and keeps us from seeing her mother fully blossom because she is taking up all the screen time.”
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
It would be quite a thing if Dwayne Johnson was to somehow land the Republican Presidential nomination in 2024, and find himself running against Democratic Presidential candidate Cory Booker. It would be the first time in U.S. history that opposing Presidential candidates would so closely resemble each other. Who would be more likely to win? It pains me to admit that Johnson would probably do better with low-information types. I’m thinking about Booker because the other day a friend mentioned that he’s probably the hottest contender right now for the 2020 Democratic nomination. He also mentioned that he’s mostly persuaded, based on what he’s heard, that the rumors are true. I hate admitting this also as I couldn’t be less interested in such matters, but the Democratic powers-that-be are probably concerned along these lines.