Daily

“Dark Angels, Black Barranca, Noir All Over,” posted on 4.19.16: “Like a chump or a drunken sailor, I recently bought Criterion’s Bluray of Only Angels Have Wings despite ample warning that it was too dark.

“A DVD Beaver review said it was “darker than the DVD,”and it definitely is that. Like it was shot in a mine shaft. Yes, the blacks are deep and wonderful and portions of this 1939 film look smoother and cleaner than any version I’ve seen before, but my God, man! This Angels is more shadowed than ten Jacques Tourneur and Robert Siodmak films put together. And there’s no reason for it.

“Is this an aviation film directed by Howard Hawks or what? Yes, much of it takes place after dark but this is also a film with a certain merriment and esprit de service and drinks and songs on the piano. Why so inky?

“I lost patience after a while and turned the brightness all the way up, and it was still too dark. I much prefer the high-def Vudu version that I own; ditto the TCM Bluray that I bought a year or two ago.

“Mark this down as a case of Criterion vandalism — it’s just not the film I’ve been watching all these years.”

Read more

Screenwriter Vladimir (“Vladi”) Cvetko, the son of HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko, is a writer for the cable TV series Power and Kingdom. Over the last two or three weeks he’s been bopping around Europe. The natural thing would be to cruise chicks and catch rays in a couple of sexy beach towns, and for all I know Vladi got around to this. But he also recently visited a Syrian refugee camp in Idomeni, a village in northern Greece that’s just south of the Macedonian border, and all of a sudden he was no longer some Hollywood dude on the prowl but a photo-journalist in a conflict zone.

Mustafa Alhamoud, face coated in toothpaste to protect against tear gas, had pleaded with the Macedonians to open the border on April 10. (photo by Vladimir Cvetko)

What Vladi saw and heard was newsworthy. Young people in a tough spot, angry, pushing back against closed borders and a growing sense of despair while coping with tear gas. So he took photos and tapped out a 2000-word piece and sent it to the N.Y. Times (no response), the Wall Street Journal (declined) and the Los Angeles Times, among others. An L.A. Times editor liked the article but cut it down (as editors often do) to 900 words. It ran today as an op-ed under the title “Border Skirmishes.”

Excerpt: “I asked the young men who had faced down the troops if they understood what came after Macedonia — more troops, more political resistance and between three and five more border crossings on the way to their preferred destination: Germany. They shrugged. They were focused on the border at Idomeni. No matter how insignificant a step it might be in their journey, crossing would be cause for renewed hope.”

Read more

From a September 2009 HE piece: “I wouldn’t call myself a critic in the Eric Kohn/David Edelstein/Matt Zoller Seitz/Justin Chang/Stephen J. Whitty sense of the term. Which can be otherwise defined as seeing every last film that comes along and sitting down like a rank-and-file machinist in Detroit and reviewing every last one (including and especially the awful-awfuls) and always with a five-or-six-paragraph plot synopsis. Which can otherwise be defined as being a good soldier who does the hard and once-necessary task of grappling with all of it, good or bad, rain or shine, sick or healthy. Critics do the job like those pilots in Howard Hawks‘ Only Angels Have Wings flew mail over the Andes.

“But critics aren’t truly and finally critics unless they’re stone Catholics about movies, and I have always been that. I’ve been swimming in these waters for 30 years now and I don’t just skim across the surface of the pond when I see and write about a film. True Catholics put on the wetsuit and dive in each and every time. They swim to the bottom and search around and can identify and quantify the various fish and algae down there, not to mention the geological assessments of silt and sand and bedrock.

“I do all that and then some. All my life I have felt and communed and wrestled with films as seriously and arduously as Martin Luther did with Catholicism before striking out with the Protestant Reformation. Okay, not every last flick made and distributed on the planet earth but most of the ones worth seeing. Yes, I’ve deliberately chosen not to suffer through each and every film that opens because 60% to 70% of them are soul-sucking torture to sit through. Some of the worst suffering I’ve endured in my life (which has included getting punched and spat upon, being in car and motorcycle accidents, getting arrested and put behind bars, being fired just before Christmas a few times, getting divorced and seeing friends and family members die) has been due to bad films.

Read more

I’ve recalled this before, but during the summer of 1980 I was part of a press contingent that was invited to watch the after-dark filming of John Carpenter‘s Escape From New York on Liberty Island. The gang was out in force — bearded and scruffy Kurt Russell in his Snake Plissken garb, costars Season Hubley and Adrienne Barbeau (who was married to Carpenter at the time), producer Debra Hill. Things began with a well-catered yacht party. By the time it ended everyone had at least half a buzz-on. As some of us prepared to leave to watch Carpenter and Russell shoot a scene under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, Russell got up and addressed the throng: “We’ve had a great time, we’ve loved having you here…now go home!” And everyone laughed their guts out. It was that kind of mood, that kind of party.

Sean Hubley, John Carpenter, Kurt Russell during the shooting of Escape From New York. Carpenter looked like a spry 32 year-old at the time — today he looks like he’s pushing 85.

I wrote my piece for The Aquarian, an alternative New Jersey weekly that’s still going. Here’s a little anecdote that will give you an idea what it was like to collaborate with my stuffy editor, whose name was Karen something-or-other. During the yacht party I overheard Barbeau say to Carpenter, “I have some whites for you, honey, if you need some,” and so I put it in the article. Karen scolded me over the phone for including such a potentially litigious anecdote. “Thank God I caught that and took it out!”, she said. “What were you thinking?” I was thinking, Ms. Tight-Ass, that whites (i.e., Benzedrine or some derivation of) are relatively harmless prescription drugs and that adding this line gave the piece a little inside flavor, directing being a tough job that keeps you up into the wee hours, etc.

Read more

Even with Bernie Sanders‘ recent surge in New York and nationally, Hillary Clinton will almost certainly win tonight’s New York State primary because of three and possibly four reasons: (1) Independent voters can’t vote — only registered Democrats and Republicans; (2) Same-day registration voting (which is entirely within reach today) is unavailable in New York State, and other blocking tactics are expected; (3) younger voters may not show up in sufficient numbers to make a difference in Bernie’s tally and (4) Low-information African-American voters are certain to vote for Hillary, as they have elsewhere. So that’s it — it’s basically a rigged election, the New York State Democratic machine is largely behind Hillary, the fix is in and so on.

via GIPHY

Read more

The main hotties to be shown during the 2016 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight will be Paul Schrader‘s Dog Eat Dog (closing night headliner with Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe), Pablo Larrain’s Neruda, Laura Poitras‘ Risk (about Julian Assange), Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s Endless Poetry, Marco Bellocchio‘s Sweet Dreams, Joachim Lafosse‘s L’Economie Du Couple and Kim Nguyen‘s Two Lovers And A Bear. How many of these will Hollywood Elsewhere make a serious effort to catch? Definitely the Larrain, the Schrader and the Poitras. We’ll see about the rest. My current plan is to stage a one-man-standing-against-the-wind protest against Steven Spielberg‘s Big Fucking Giant by not attending, and it may be that while doing this I can squeeze in an extra DF screening in the bargain.

It’s definitely called Allied, and being a Robert Zemeckis film you know it’ll be a little on the schmaltzy…okay, the emotionally accessible side. The World War II-era film began shooting last month in England. Paramount will definitely open it commercially on 11.23.16, which is only about seven months from now. El Bradamente plays Max Vatan, an assassin who falls in love with and then marries Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) as they prepare to zotz a German official. And they obviously have a kid. Steven Knight‘s screenplay is apparently based on a true story. The fact that it’s being called a “romantic thriller” indicates that neither Pitt nor Cotillard will die. (Whereas if it was being called a romantic drama or melodrama we could expect one or both of them to get shot by a German firing squad.) The main costars are Lizzy Caplan (as Pitt’s/Vatan’s sister) and Jared Harris.

Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard during last month’s London filming of Robert Zemeckis’ Allied.

Jason Bateman‘s The Family Fang (Starz, 4.29) is a fine, straight-dealing dramedy — mature, plain, unforced. It’s about a 40ish brother and sister (Bateman, Nicole Kidman) coping in different ways with a certain degree of emotional damage caused by their eccentric parents (Christopher Walken, Maryann Plunkett). The movie basically says to all kids who’ve had bruising parents, “Tough break but this is now, and you have to decide if you’re going to stand up and call your own shots…or not.” It doesn’t make a stupid joke out of the situation. And I admired Bateman’s decision to keep the the tone measured and low-key and not inject comic schtick, which nine out of ten directors would have resorted to.

The Family Fang compelled me to make a list of the worst cinematic parents of all time, and right away I thought of my top five: John Huston‘s Noah Cross from Chinatown, Daniel Day Lewis‘s Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood, Walken’s Brad Whitewood from At Close Range, Faye Dunaway‘s Joan Crawford in Mommmie Dearest and Marion Lorne‘s Mrs. Antony (mother of Robert Walker‘s Bruno) in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Strangers on a Train.

Read more

Every night I try to get seven hours of slumber, but it never seems to happen. Arianna Huffington says I should bag at least eight hours, but a little man in my head has always resisted that. At best I manage five and a half to six hours plus 30 to 45 minutes of pre-sleep tweeting plus an hour of lying around and checking tweets the next morning. I’ll sometimes try and grab a nap between 4:30 and 6 pm, but that doesn’t seem to help much. The bottom line is that with sleep constantly tugging at my sleeve it’s easy to slip under at a moment’s notice.

Yesterday afternoon I pulled into a CVS parking garage at the northeast corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica Blvd. In a car, I mean. I eased into a spot and sat there for a bit as I finished listening to a song. I closed my eyes and 20 minutes later I woke up, still in the sitting position, iTunes music still playing, the engine still running. “Holy shit,” I said to myself. The next time I feel a fatigue thing approaching as I’m driving, I’ll just pull over and park and catch 40 winks.

There’s nothing wrong with remaking THX-1138. If I were George Lucas I’d feel honored and flattered. Sterile, robotic society without feeling or physical intimacy. Emotions outlawed, everyone wearing same white tunics. Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart fall in love anyway, eventually have to run for it, etc. Executive produced by Ridley Scott, Equals is screening this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. popping on DirecTV on 5.26, following by select theatrical and VOD on 7.15.

Read more

On 3.2.16 L.A. Times reporter/analyst Glenn Whipp posted a piece about ten possible Best Picture nominees for 2016. I’ve got my own list of suspects but let’s first consider the Whipp roster plus another posted on 3.7 at Awards Watch.

Most of Whipp’s picks sounded interesting — David Michod‘s War Machine, Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals, Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea and Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

Three could be described as generic, right-down-the-middle populist hambone movies — Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation (19th Century slave rebellion), Ben Younger‘s Bleed For This (boxing flick) and Garth Davis‘s Lion (shameless-sounding, Life of Pi-without-the-tiger-or-the-flying-fish lost puppy saga about Indian guy, played by Dev Patel, finding his family after 25 years of separation).

Forget Pedro Almodovar‘s Julieta, as that will feed right into the Best Foreign Language Feature category. And the last of Whipp’s picks — Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight — sound a bit too fringey and druggy and Jean Genet-ish for the Best Picture derby.

Not long after this Awards Watch posted a consensus chart about the same topic. Second verse, almost the same as the first. Their top 15 picks were (in this order) Silence, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, The Birth of a Nation, Jeff Nichols‘ Loving (period interracial marriage drama), Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight, Denzel Washington‘s Fences (adaptation of honored August Wilson play), Lion, Clint Eastwood‘s Sully (inspirational saga of seasoned airplane pilot who landed damaged jet on surface of Hudson River), Damien Chazelle‘s La-La Land, Denis Villeneuve‘s Story of Your Life, War Machine, Deepwater Horizon, Passengers and Robert Zemeckis‘s Allied (WWII dramatic thriller about assassins falling in love w/ Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard — just began filming last month).

Read more

A veteran filmmaker reminded me yesterday that Breakout, a 1975 B-grade action flick that’s basically about a helicopter pilot (Charles Bronson) air-lifting a framed American prisoner (Robert Duvall) out of a Mexican jail, was the first film to open via wide saturation booking, and not Jaws, which usually gets the credit.

After Breakout opened internationally on 3.6.75, Columbia opted for a radical, roll-the-dice decision to open this mezzo-mezzo actioner in 1350 situations on 5.21.75. After two weeks it had grossed a then-head-turning $12.7 million.

Impressed, Universal chairman Lew Wasserman and studio president Sid Sheinberg decided to ape this strategy by opening Jaws, which they knew would be a big hit, on 6.20.75 in a similar fashion.

The initial Jaws plan was to open it in 900 theatres, but Wasserman cut that figure down to 464. Wikipedia claims that Breakout opened on 1300 screens, or nearly three times the opening-day screen count of Jaws.  The veteran who reminded me about Breakout recalled a screen tally more in the 600 range.

I just think it should be recognized or remembered that the Breakout guys were the saturation pioneers and not the Jaws copycats.

Full disclosure: I don’t think I’ve ever seen Breakout. (Or have I?) It was regarded as a harmless, enjoyable diversion at the time, although no one thought it was anything more than a throwaway for drive-ins and sub-runs. Now that it’s been re-activated in my mind I intend to stream it soon.