Daily

Someone — Variety‘s Will Thorne, to be exact — has finally adopted the Hollywood Elsewhere term for Kong: Skull Island. “With ’70s rock tunes blaring and the dark figure of a life-sized King Kong looming in the background,” Thorne wrote today, “Wednesday night’s L.A. premiere truly felt like Apocalypse Kong.”

But director Jordan Vogt-Roberts flat-out misinforms when he calls his film “Apocalypse Now meets King Kong, this idea of a Vietnam War movie mixed with a creature feature.” 

As I said yesterday, the 120-foot tall ape in Kong: Skull Island is more or less human-friendly (except when it comes to Samuel L. Jackson‘s asshole Army guy or being attacked by military helicopters) and is much closer in temperament to the 15-foot-tall gray ape in Son of Kong, the 1933 sequel.

Filed by N.Y. Times Coral Davenport earlier today: “Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Thursday that carbon dioxide was not a primary contributor to global warming, a statement at odds with the global scientific consensus on climate change.

“Speaking of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas produced by burning fossil fuels, Pruitt told CNBC’s Squawk Box that ‘I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.

Just so we’re clear: Pruitt is a shill for the fossil-fuel industry — a kneepad-wearing fellating whore.

“’But we don’t know that yet,’ he added. ‘We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”

“Pruitt’s statement is not consistent with scientific research on climate change, including decades of research by federal agencies. His remarks may also put him in conflict with laws and regulations his agency is charged with enforcing.”

Focus Features p.r. chief Adriene Bowles has a new gig as president of publicity for Megan Ellison‘s Annapurna Pictures. I sent her a congrats along with a question about Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Untitled Detroit Riots Project, on which she’ll be riding shotgun.

“Good for you, Adriene, but why is Annapurna releasing Untitled Detroit Riots on 8.4.17?

“You can’t say ‘because it’ll be the 50-year anniversary of the start of the ’67 Detroit riots’ because (a) 8.4.17 isn’t the anniversary of anything plus (b) nobody cares about the damn anniversary anyway. The Detroit riots were over and done with on 8.4.67. They ignited on 7.23.67 and ended on 7.27.67 so the half-century anniversary is smoke.

“Three interpretations: (a) Detroit Riots is a good movie-movie and not an award-season thing, and that’s cool — nothing wrong with being a solid people-level thing; (b) Detroit Riots is an award-season thing but Annapurna is looking to throw out or more precisely defy the rulebook by ignoring the traditional Venice-Telluride-Toronto scheme but scoring nominations regardless; or (c) Annapurna would rather go for the late-summer revenue potential than endure the award-season gauntlet, which is another way of saying that (a) is the basic reality.”

“Some of the claims in a controversial dossier linking Donald Trump to the Russian government appear to have been verified by U.S. media outlets,” The Independent‘s Lucy Pasha-Robinson reported on 2.7. On top of which former MI6 guy Christopher Steele (aka author of Trump pee-pee dossier) has come out of hiding and is back at work in central London. “One of the allegations set out in [Steele’s] document claimed a senior Russian diplomat, Mikhail Kalugin, was withdrawn from Washington to avoid exposing his involvement in U.S. presidential election operations,” Pasha-Robinson writes. “McClatchy has reported [that] two sources with knowledge of ‘multi-agency investigations’ into Kremlin influence on the US elections have confirmed that Kalugin was under scrutiny when he departed.”

Read more

For five years I’ve despised this photo of Rooney Mara and Neon Indian‘s Alan Palomo, and for reasons that don’t add up. It was snapped during Austin’s SXSW music festival in March 2012, and more particularly during filming of a scene from Terrence Malick‘s Song to Song (which back then was being called Lawless). Every so often I’d click on it and mutter to myself, “God, that photo”…Rooney’s too-short bangs, Palomo’s chill convivial manner as he whispers something in her ear, the HE perception about Neon Indian being an oodly-doodly band, etc. In defiance of logic and buttressed by my own perversity, it’s been a source of faint distress over the entire span of the second Obama term, all through the 2016 election cycle and two months into Trump. Worse, Pitchfork‘s Amy Phillips reported a couple of days ago that Palomo’s speaking role hasn’t been cut out of Song to Song (Broad Green, 3.17). Footage or scenes containing footage of Arcade Fire, Iron & Wine and Fleet Foxes have been deep-sixed along with whatever Christian Bale did when the camera was humming. Phillips didn’t mention whether appearances by Cate Blanchett, Haley Bennett, Val Kilmer, Benicio del Toro and Holly Hunter have been kept or discarded, but you know Malick.

Last night I finally watched episode #1 of Feud: Bette and Joan, and I was suddenly transformed into an old-school gay guy…laughing and chuckling and revelling in the tempest and the claws…the flamboyant bitchiness of two proud but faded Hollywood snapdragons (Bette Davis, Joan Crawford) and their intense loathing (and suppressed mutual pity) for each other during the making of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?…flared nostrils, arched eyebrows, daggers, saber teeth…a series about the fear of oblivion, a fear that begins to haunt everyone at a certain age. Each and every performance is just right and spot on…Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon flick their tongues as Crawford and Davis (who were 58 and 54, respectively, when Baby Jane was shot in mid ’62) and hold back just enough to keep the tone from tipping into camp…Alfred Molina is perfect as Robert Aldrich (whom I met during the ’82 press junket for All The Marbles), portraying a guy who’s genuinely scared about career slippage but nonetheless able to get down and sharpen his game…Stanley Tucci‘s Jack L. Warner is a hoot and a howl (the Baby Jane deal-negotiation scene with Molina is an instant classic)…the under-used Judy Davis is hilarious as Hedda Hopper…the only not-quite-right note is an all-but-unrecognizable Catherine Zeta Jones as Olivia De Havilland.

Read more

“Described by Werner Herzog as ‘a daydream that doesn’t follow the rules of cinema,’ Salt and Fire (XLrator, VOD/iTunes 4.4) may be rule-breaking, but the result is one of the director’s least appealing adventures. Ranging from whimsical to facetious to corny without ever properly engaging its theme of looming ecological disaster, the improbable story about a U.N. scientific delegation (Veronica Ferres, Gael García Bernal) abducted by the visionary executive of a multinational company (Michael Shannon) never convinces for a minute. One wishes the filmmaker had applied his sharp, insightful documentary skills (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Into the Abyss) to the pic’s extraordinary landscape, instead of belaboring this stillborn adaptation of a novel by Tom Bissel.” — from Deborah Young’s Hollywood Reporter review, filed from the Shanghai Film Festival on 6.14.16.

L.A. Times guy Daniel Miller caught a mini-“joke” teaser for The Last Jedi earlier today at a Disney shareholders meeting in Denver. It begins where The Force Awakens ended, on that rocky green island off the coast of Ireland with Rey (Daisy Ridley) handing the burly, bearded Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) his light saber.

Luke: “Who the fuck are you?” Rey: “I’m you, more or less, before you got old and fat and dessicated. The force is within me as it was once with you. Do you want to live again or do you want to take a nap?” Luke: “Leave me alone. I’m too old for this shit. My joints are aching, I have plantar fasciitis. Plus I like living here like a monk…fires in huts, herbs and mushrooms, brown hoodie robes, staring at the sea.” Rey: “But your destiny…” Luke: “Fuck that! Did you see Logan? Hugh Jackman scowling and snarling, ‘leave me alone, get away’? I saw it last weekend, and that’s me…okay?” Rey: “Logan is streaming? It just opened.”

Incidentally: The same trailer, trust me, will be screened for exhibitors at Cinemacon later this month, and perhaps something more. Hollywood Elsewhere will be attending that four-day powwow. I’ll be staying at Bally’s hotel & casino, just around the corner from Ceasar’s.

The other day on Twitter Kim Masters complained about an ear worm attack. “Bug,” I replied. “It’s called an ear bug.” This one struck a half-hour ago. I was sitting in a West Hollywood cafe and wham…now it won’t leave.

Zak, my three-year-old rag doll, has developed three tiny tumor-like growths — on his back, head and rear leg.  A couple of hours ago I took him to Laurel Pet Hospital.  The vet said he’d cut the mini-tumors off next week and do a biopsy, but the bottom line is that Zak may have skin cancer.  A 50% chance, the vet said. Which would mean curtains in a year or less, God forbid. Then again it might be something less malicious.  The biopsy will tell the tale.  A bad break and obviously a lot of heartache if it goes wrong.  Fingers crossed.

If Ryan Reynolds is in it, the odds are that it sucks eggs. Not to mention the closing-night attraction at SXSW factor. Is that fair to say? I agree that I shouldn’t have said this — it just popped out.

You Must Remember This chronicler Karina Longworth has chosen to re-remember Marilyn Monroe on International Women’s Day…a sad way to go but I get it. Here’s the mp3 — it was first posted in 2015.

I distinctly remember my father, who was never emotional about anything except when angry, being noticably saddened when Marilyn Monroe‘s death was announced. His father (who lived in nearby Rahway, New Jersey, when we were residents of Westfield) also wore a long face. The idea of my father and grandfather having been on the same emotional page as Elton John and Bernie Taupin still blows my mind to this day.

In a 2006 American Masters doc called “Marilyn: Still Life,” Gloria Steinem talked about how the doomed Monroe might have been saved by the women’s movement if she’d somehow lasted until the late ’60s or better yet the early ’70s. I wrote something similar a few years ago, about how Monroe might have felt less trapped or certainly more understood if she’d managed to stay afloat until the arrival of ’60s freak culture and everything that followed.

Read more