Nobody gives a damn about the secondary characters in Ant-Man (okay, maybe Michael Douglas‘s guy) so putting them all on the one-sheet is a waste and a stopper. And why is Paul Rudd‘s head significantly larger than everyone else’s? To remind everyone that he’s a hot-shot movie star? And why is he wearing a hoodie? Honestly, this is one of the most ineptly designed, non-catchy one-sheets I’ve seen in a long time. It looks like a Cannon poster from the mid ’80s. The Disney/Marvel release opens on 7.17.
Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight (Weinstein Co., sometime in the fall) might turn out to be “the meanest, grittiest and deadliest movie of the year” but as I’ve noted two or three times now, a draft of the script that was performed in downtown L.A. on 4.19.14 was basically just a buncha guys sittin’ around talkin’. Posted on 4.20.14: “It’s a fairly minor and almost dismissable thing — a colorful but basically mediocre Tarantino gabfest that mostly happens on a single interior set (i.e., Minnie’s Haberdashery, located somewhere near the Wyoming town of Red Rock during a fierce blizzard), and which unfolds in the vein of The Petrified Forest.”
I’ve been waiting for a high-def version of Hal Ashby and Warren Beatty‘s Shampoo to come along for years, and I just noticed yesterday that one is streaming on Amazon right now. Posted six years ago: “The brittleness and acidity in Carrie Fisher‘s personality feels just right in this scene from Shampoo. And the look of slight confusion mixed with resignation on Warren Beatty‘s face when she pops the question is perfect. I wish there were more movies like this today. Whip-smart social comedies with more on their minds than just wanting to make people laugh, I mean.”
With distributors doubtful about commercial potential and unwilling to cough up, the team behind the assembly and restoration of Orson Welles‘ unfinished The Other Side of the Wind has decided to go the Indiegogo route. They’re looking to raise $2 million by June. Hollywood Elsewhere has contributed $110, and I’m urging everyone who cares the least bit about Welles’ legacy to give whatever they can, but where’s “Beardo” Spielberg when you really need him? What’s the point of being worth $3.5 billion if you can’t shrug your shoulders and drop $500K when the final effort of one of the 20th Century’s greatest and most legendary filmmakers needs a little help? Best part of Brooks Barnes’ N.Y. Times story about the fundraising effort: “[Frank] Marshall, whose producing credits range from Raiders of the Lost Ark to the coming Jurassic World and [Peter] Bogdanovich said they had never even heard of Indiegogo when the service approached [producer Filip Jan] Rymsza in November.”
My Grateful Dead romance, such as it was, peaked with the symphonic, at times jazzily exquisite Live Dead, which I still listen to on occasion. And I liked American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead as far as they went. But the Dead were a vibe first and a good band second. “Although not always described in the film in the most flattering of terms, Deadheads will find plenty to savor in Mike Fleiss’ The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir, a revelatory documentary about Bob Weir, the Grateful Dead’s legendary rhythm guitarist.” Pic contains “fascinating archival footage, copious musical performances and extensive interviews with Weir, his contemporaries and many of the famous musicians he’s influenced.” — from Frank Scheck‘s 4.24 Hollywood Reporter review. The doc pops on Netflix on 5.22.
Early last February I wrote that the August 7th release date of Ricki and the Flash seemed to indicate caution on the part of TriStar, the distributor. A drama directed by the widely respected Jonathan Demme, written by Diablo Cody and starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline? I don’t know a thing but Ricki looks — emphasis on that word — like “the first high-pedigree, seemingly interesting 2015 film to be…I don’t want to say dumped but that release date has certainly lowered expectations all around.”
I somehow can’t imagine Alfred Hitchcock behind a wheel and making his way through Los Angeles traffic and getting frustrated by rush-hour annoyances. I just can’t see it. In my mind he was this sedate, settled old-school guy who rode in the backs of limousines. Or sat in a director’s chair or at the dinner table or in his den. I can’t even imagine him walking any kind of distance. Even when he was young. One of those guys who seemed born in a suit. A guy I know ran into Hitchcock once at a hotel and said that he looked shortish — the current consensus seems to be that he was 5′ 7″. I just remembered I was supposed to call Kent Jones in Paris to discuss his Hitchcock/Truffaut doc. Maybe we can chat in Paris on Friday or this weekend. Update: Seeing Jones’ film (and presumably Jones himself) on Monday morning in Paris.
A new 4K restoration of Sir Carol Reed‘s The Third Man (’49) will screen at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival as part of a celebration of Orson Welles’ 100th birthday (which is today). Pic is being theatrically re-released in British cinemas on 6.26; one presumes that a subsequent Bluray will be issued down the road. Remember that horribly grainstormed Criterion Bluray of The Third Man that popped in February 2009? Glenn Kenny and the loyal order of grain monks accused me of having plebian tastes when I panned it, but if I never see that awful disc again it’ll be too soon. I was told at the time by a restoration specialist that The Third Man could never look as immaculate as Casablanca or Citizen Kane because it was shot on location in Vienna under less-than-optimum conditions. I’ll check out the 4K showing in Cannes, but I’m not expecting very much.
Whatever progress he may or may not have made with creating custom-made furniture, Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) is back to stripping. At least to the extent of participating in a big male stripper’s convention in South Carolina. So he can…what, earn seed money for his business? Magic Mike XXL (Warner Bros., 71) costars Matt Bomer (destined to inhabit the soul of Montgomery Clift in an HBO biopic), Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash, et. al. Along with Andie Macdowell, Amber Heard, Jada Pinkett Smith and Elizabeth Banks. Directed by Gregory Jacobs but (this is significant) shot and edited by Steven Soderbergh.
A little more than 33 years ago (i.e., March or April of ’82) I attended a small press screening of George Miller‘s The Road Warrior. Ten or twelve journos, if that. At the old Warner Bros. screening room on 51st near 6th, a block from Rockefeller Center. My reaction was basically “holy shit.” Not just rousing and crafty, I told myself, but phenomenal, epochal. The first classy, clever, nonexploitational post-apocalyptic action flick I’d ever seen (the original Mad Max wouldn’t open until later), and certainly the first with a pitch-black, fuck-all sense of humor about itself, “the wasteland”, the gas crises of the ’70s…everything. And certainly the first to feature a gang of gay, leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding marauders. Something new, amazing…”Apocalypse Pow!,” as Richard Corliss wrote. And what a shot of adrenaline for Mel Gibson — a rising light in the spring of ’82 (costar of Peter Weir‘s Gallipoli, star of Weir’s then-upcoming The Year of Living Dangerously) but now, suddenly, a major action star.
I’ve been thinking about that ’82 screening because earlier today I saw Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, this time at the current Warner Bros. screening room on West 53rd near 7th Avenue. In glorious 2D. I can’t say anything until next Tuesday afternoon (specifically noontime Pacific) but I can at least say that I plan on seeing it again in Cannes. I hope that legendary dp Vittorio Storaro intends to see it soon also, as I haven’t seen a major film with such beautiful, oddly glowing desert hues since Storaro’s The Sheltering Sky (’90).
I’ve now watched “Lost Horizon,” the latest Mad Men episode, twice, and I can’t get this iconic image of Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss) out of my head. This plus the drunken roller-skating moment with Roger Sterling (John Slattery), I mean. Even if nothing else happens in Peggy’s life between now and the last episode, it’ll be okay. A dangling lit cigarette hasn’t seemed this sexy or cool since the noir heyday of Robert Mitchum.
