I love the term “American biographical criminal comedy.” Todd Phillips‘ film is about the real-life saga of arms dealers Efraim_Diveroli (Jonah Hill) and David Packouz (Miles Teller) who ran afoul of the law five or six years ago for selling crap-level arms to the Afghan army. Based on Guy Lawson‘s “Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History“. (The third dude, Alex Podrizki, has apparently been eliminated for the sake of narrative efficiency.) War Dogs was originally slated to open two weeks ago (3.11.16) but will now open on 8.9.16. I’m relieved that Hill reverted to his Superbad weight to play Diveroli (according to the Wiki page); otherwise his performance might not have been believable.
Daily
Sleep From Which There’s No Waking
Garry Shandling launched in the late ’80s with It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, but he owned the ’90s by way of The Larry Sanders Show, which ran on HBO from ’92 to ’98. I lived through that landmark show. The satirical, self-regarding tone was always stinging and razor sharp and comfortable as fuck. And now Shandling’s gone — abruptly dead from a heart attack at age 66. It’s 4:30 am in Vietnam and I have to try and get at least some shut-eye, having awoken at 1 am and stayed that way for three hours (don’t ask), but this is truly sad news. From the mid-Reagan era to the late Clinton years, Shandling captured and lampooned American culture by marrying it to his own anxieties and neuroses and then tickled it just so. I loved his wit and his somewhat aloof, lonely-guy attitude about things. (Shandling had relationships but never married.) I’m among the few who really loved portions of Town and Country, the commercial disaster in which Shandling played Warren Beatty‘s BFF. (They were offscreen pals back then.) Shandling and Beatty had an appealingly loose bro vibe in that film that made me smile. I’m very sorry Shandling has left so early, but for roughly a 12-year period he held mountains in the palm of his hands.
But Not For Me
I’m sorry but I’m not all that keen on seeing Whit Stillman‘s Love and Friendship. And I’m saying this as a Stillman fan from way back. From the moment I heard it would play Sundance ’16 I was thinking “I’m not sure I even want to stream this, much less catch it theatrically.” I ducked it, needless to add. I want Stillman to make another Barcelona or…you know, another here-and-now piece about louche, moderately well-off 30somethings (or 40somethings) kicking around in some hip urban environment and trying to attain whatever. Jane Austen adaptations…later.
The Sundance Rotten Tomato reaction was uniformly positive, but I heard a couple of meh-level assessments. Maybe I was hearing what I wanted to hear.
From Todd McCarthy’s Sundance review: “No matter who’s around, Kate Bekinsale‘s Lady Susan does most of the talking, issuing incisive views on everything in quasi-Wildean turns of phrase well ahead of their time, interrupting whenever the turn of a discussion doesn’t suit her and prone to making both self-serving remarks as well as blunt assessments of her own reduced status that are surprising in their frankness. She’s an Olympian talker, and one sometimes wishes there was someone else who could dish back at her as well as she gives. There aren’t great depths to the role, but Beckinsale excels with the long speeches and in defining her character as a very self-aware egoist.
Hour of the Wolf
For the last two days torrential rains had been predicted to hit the Hoi An region by Thursday noon, but all that’s happened so far (it’s now 3 am Friday — woke up and can’t sleep) has been strong winds and rough seas. Well, we had warm temps and sunshine late Wednesday, at least. We had a tasty lunch in Hoi An Thursday afternoon, and then scootered back to the hotel for a brief nap before dinner. The brief nap turned into six hours of fully-clothed, lights-on shuteye, and now it’s just me, the winds, the darkness and CNN/BBC World reports on the TV. One more full day here, and then a flight back to Hanoi Saturday morning. Update: Jett informs that heavy rain in fact arrived around 10 pm last night, when I was fast asleep.
Suede travel bag, purchased today in Hoi An for $100 U.S. Nice color, style — would sell for an easy $350 or $400 in Los Angeles.
Something’s Not Computing
A recently posted DVD Beaver review of Criterion’s Only Angels Have Wings Bluray (4.12) says that while the 1080p contrast is “nicely layered, the image is darker than the DVD.” Will someone please explain how a film looks better with darker, deeper shadows that obscure detail? How is that in any way desirable? I own a high-def streaming version of this 1939 Howard Hawks classic as well as a Turner Classic Movies Bluray — both look pretty great. So why should I shell out for a third version that, even with the higher resolution and classy Criterion stamp, reveals less?
DVD Beaver capture of Criterion’s Only Angels Have Wings Bluray.
Harvested from DVD version.
Disco Inferno
I’m sorry but in this Nice Guys trailer Russell Crowe is about double the size he was in Gladiator (’00) and Cinderella Man (’05). Look at him. Filming on this Shane Black period actioner began in late October 2014. Last week Crowe told the hosts of an Australian talk show, Fitzy and Wippa, that he weighed 121.6 kilos (268 pounds) “as of the first week of August last year. [Then] I did a movie called The Nice Guys so I wanted to be the physical juxtaposition of Ryan Gosling.” I’m not following — he wanted to look like Hardy to Gosling’s Laurel? Crowe (a good man in my book) is reportedly down to 215 pounds or thereabouts, but he’ll need to drop at least another 30 to bring back Maximus.
Red Plastic Seats
Last night we took the advice of Vietnamese tour-and-web guy Kyle Le and tried a small street-food restaurant in Hoi An called Thao Nguyen. (Here’s his YouTube review.) The place can’t be found online and Kyle’s video doesn’t mention a specific address. But Jett finally found it and we were moderately pleased with the food. We all had Cao Lau. The average dish costs around $1.60 (35,000 dong = $1.57.). Anything is better than going to a tourist restaurant. If I see portly white American couples in shorts and sandals on an outdoor restaurant patio, I avoid that place like the plague.
Not Half Bad
I’m not sure about the strategy of this teaser for Deepwater Horizon (Summit, 9.30), but at least the editors have gone with an unusual approach. You know what this film will be (petroleum-soaked gutslam CG action, blue-collar heroes, bad British Petroleum execs) and that with Peter Berg at the helm…well, you know Berg’s tendencies and so did the Summit guys who decided to hire him in favor of original helmer J.C. Chandor. But let’s be positive. Intercutting between Mark Wahlberg‘s young daughter explaining a school science project (right?) and the pre-disaster activities upon BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig suggests that the film might be less than 100% predictable. If only Wahlberg was playing a typical half-attentive, half-spaced dad instead of smiling and beaming and soaking in every last wonderful word from his daughter’s mouth. (You know, as in “stop selling it, you fucking actor, and just be in the moment”?) You know what would’ve been even nicer? If they’d only shown the can of Coke exploding on the kitchen table and left the bigger eruption to our imagination.
Uncomfortable Likelihood
Donald Trump is an inelegant speaker with a crude vocabulary and a simplistic attitude about nearly everything, but if you hone and de-generalize and re-phrase what he said to ITV’s Good Morning, Britain about Muslim complicity in terrorism, you have to admit that he has half a point. I don’t like admitting this, but not everything Trump says is 100% nutso.
Trump basically told the ITV guys that Muslims in Britain and the U.S. are purposely ignoring suspected terrorists or fugitives. I’m sorry but he’s almost certainly not wrong when it comes to the tiny but not insignificant portion of Muslims who support or sympathize with ISIS goals.
Trump’s broad-brush thinking and sloppy sentence construction implies that many if not most Muslims may be guilty of looking the other way, which is an undoubtedly wrong and unwise conclusion, but there seems to be little doubt that a tiny sliver of persons within any average Muslim expat community support ISIS, and that these persons are almost certainly keeping quiet about what they may have seen or heard about the activities or whereabouts of the “wrong” ones. It follows that friends and family of these persons would probably also keep mum.
To say there are considerable feelings of tribal loyalty among Muslims living in non-Muslim countries is not an unreasonable assumption. Not every expression of concern or caution about the doctrine of Islam is necessarily synonymous with bigotry and Islamophobia.
Came The Dawn
When I stepped out of the bungalow at 6 am this morning and strolled over to the beach (maybe 75 feet), I was expecting to see a solitary hiker or two. Instead I found at least 40 or 50 people, especially on the beach in front of the hotel to the south (i.e., the Zero Seamile Beach Club).
For Disdain’s Sake, I Give Thee A Combined Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic Rating of 42%
My geographical inability to join in the Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice pile-on — 37% Rotten Tomatoes, 46% Metacritic — concerns me not. Everyone seems to be handling the task just fine without me. I’ve been smelling…okay, sensing what was coming for months. Who hasn’t?
From N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott: “A diverting entertainment might have been made about the rivalry between these two muscle-bound paladins — a bromance or a buddy comedy, an album of duets. Batman v Superman is none of those things. It is about as diverting as having a porcelain sink broken over your head.
“In keeping with current business imperatives, what Mr. Snyder has concocted is less a free-standing film than the opening argument in a very long trial…not so much a ‘dawn’ as an entire morning spent watching the clock in anticipation of lunchtime. The studio has, in the usual way, begged and bullied critics not to reveal plot points, and I wouldn’t dream of denying you the thrill of discovering just how overstuffed and preposterous a movie narrative can be.”
Director Zak Snyder has always been and will always be toxic to me. Unless, you know, he’s eventually seized by some life-changing convulsion and turns into someone or something else. I can’t wait to pay money to see this thing next week. Wait…naah, I have to see it.
