I’ll trust reviews of documentaries out of South by Southwest, but not reviews of name-brand, studio-generated comedies and action films. SXSW is, I feel, too genre-friendly, a little too self-regarding (we are the chosen hipsters amassed at Ground Zero!) and far too giddy an atmosphere. Something in me says “cuidado!” when I hear that a film has gone over big in Austin. I love watching a sharp film with a knowledgable, emotionally responsive crowd, but the SXSW crowds are too loving and laugh-ready. On top of which I don’t trust Variety‘s Justin Chang when it comes to comedies. Justin is a brilliant, first-rate critic but Spy-wise (which is to say Paul Feig or Melissa McCarthy-wise) I suspect he’s a little too gentle, kindly and obliging. In this regard Hollywood Reporter critic John DeFore (here’s his review) is also on the not-sure-I-can-trust-him list.
If you want to know if a comedy is truly special and on-target you need to hear from someone with a bit of a cranky attitude. If a comedy makes somebody with a vaguely sullen personality go all goofy, then you know it’s almost certainly a standout. In this light Indiewire‘s Drew Taylor seems somewhat trustworthy, which is to say possessed of a slightly contentious mindset, which is what I understand and relate to. A “show me and then I’ll laugh” “attitude. Not “whee-hee, I want to laugh going in! Just give me a little tickle and I’ll split my sides.”
The Jinx director Andrew Jarecki has visited CBS This Morning to discuss the big hoo-hah and particularly review the timeline of his interviews with real-estate heir and accused murderer Robert Durst. This is generating considerable interest given that Durst was arrested in New Orleans only last Saturday night, or less than 24 hours before the airing of the final Jinx episode, “The Second Interview,” during which an audio recording is heard of Durst muttering that he “killed them all” — a presumed reference to his late wife Kathie Durst, who disappeared in 1982, as well as Durst’s murdered friend Susan Berman, who was shot in December 2000, along with Galveston rooming-house resident Morris Black, who died in ’01 after an altercation with Durst.
Art posted last night by Buzzfeed.
This startling recording and other incriminating information (particularly the two envelopes with the word “Beverley” printed in highly similar block-letter handwriting, delivered in ’99 and ’00) was shared with Los Angeles law enforcement authorities “many months” ago, Jarecki said this morning. Jarecki’s first sit-down interview with Durst happened over a three-day period in 2010, he explained, and then a follow-up happened “a couple of years later” or sometime in 2012.
In a N.Y. Times interview posted today (3.16) Jarecki says his team discovered Durst’s bathroom audio confession on 6.12.14, or roughly 9 months ago. Is that what Jarecki means by “many” when he says he passed this evidence along? And yet L.A. officials decided that this obviously damning evidence wasn’t enough to motivate an arrest until last Saturday night? They weren’t inclined to arrest Durst nine months or six months or three weeks ago? Or next week or six months from now? They waited until a day before this fascinating HBO series reached its revealing, historic conclusion?
If I’d seen Trainwreck in Austin a few hours ago I would have probably jumped into the pool and echoed the general Twitter worship, if for no other reason than to show what a gentle, mild-mannered guy I can be when I let my alpha vibes run free. Okay, so I was hated on big-time by Schumer fans for the better part of 30 days…fine! Cooler, less invested heads will have to be heard from, of course, before Trainwreck is officially proclaimed to be a world-class comedy. But I was fairly close to delighted with Judd Apatow‘s last two directed films, Funny People and This Is 40, so here’s hoping.
Broken Horses is a crime thriller directed, produced and co-written by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a wealthy and successful big-wheel filmmaker who’s based in India. The odd thing about the trailer is that it includes footage of the influential James Cameron praising Broken Horses to the heavens. A similar glowing quote from Cameron as well as one from Alfonso Cuaron are posted atop Chopra’s website. Broken Horses may indeed be an exceptional knockout, but it hasn’t played at any festivals, and it was shot over two years ago at a cost of $11 million, and it’s being more or less self-distributed by “Fox Star Studios,” which seems to be a Chopra-related concern of some kind.
It struck me as odd that these highly respected filmmakers would go to bat for a film no one has heard jack about, even though it costars Anton Yelchin, Chris Marquette, Vincent D’Onofrio, Thomas Jane, AMaría Valverde and Sean Patrick Flanery. I don’t know anything but here are my questions:
(1) The Wiki page says that Broken Horses began shooting on 10.29.12. Chopra presumably finished in late ’12 or early ’13, and the movie was apparently in post-production for two full years. All through ’13 and ’14. It’s a crime film, a thriller. Not a big FX film. Why does it take two years to edit a crime thriller and then wrangle a distributor and figure out the marketing and lock down a release date? A year would be more like it.
Earlier today a journalist colleague asked why I’m not currently at South by Southwest, which he’s having a great time attending and respects as a great festival, etc. My reply: “I was going to attend but I’ve developed an opinion over the last few years that while SXSW is interesting, crackling and cool, it’s not 100% vital. But I was going to attend anyway for the sake of Ondi Timoner‘s Russell Brand doc and Trainwreck and Alex Gibney‘s Steve Jobs film and one or two others, but I got angry about the expense.
By my standards the rates for a decently located Airbnb or Craig’s List room or hotel accomodation in Austin seemed stratospheric. I didn’t want to drop $1200 to $1500 for four or five days on a room of some kind plus another $700 or $800 on airfare, food, cabs and whatnot. SXSW is not worth dropping $2000 to $2300. If I could do four days for $1500 or maybe a bit less ($150 per night rentals), okay, but not $600 to $800 higher than that. Plus I really hated the lines when I was there three or four years ago. Lines, lines, lines, lines, lines and more lines. It’s as bad as Berlin in this respect. So I thought it over for two or three days and said “the hell with it.”
I’ve explained over and over that the sight of lean-bod protagonists smashing slow-mo through sugar glass and falling backwards from great heights all but guarantees that the film is the same formulaic cowpie being shovelled for the umpteenth time. And this doesn’t matter at all. Insurgent‘s 27% Rotten Tomatoes rating is redundant, but it obviously wouldn’t have been made if the Lionsgate guys weren’t convinced that the Hunger Games audience wanted two (clap), two (clap), two franchises about Millenials and GenZ types waging armed rebellion against boomers and GenXers. I get the metaphor but even if I was 23 and frustrated and up to my eyeballs in college-loan debt I wouldn’t pay to see any of these films with a gun at my back. Poor Shailene “paycheck” Woodley — solid in The Descendants and decent in The Spectacular Now and The Fault in Our Stars, but reduced to registering shock and anger and frozen-eyed glare stares in the Diver/Insur realm.
It pains me once again to see Jon Voight, a guy I used to admire in the ’70s and even into the ’90s with his performances as Howard Cosell in Ali and FDR in Pearl Harbor, unpacking his rightie loon robe again by claiming President Obama is looking to weaken Israel, that the U.S. “has never been the same” since Obama’s election, and that negotiating with Iran over its nuclear agenda is like Neville Chamberlain negotiating with Adolf Hitler. Voight apparently supports Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu and the 47 Republicans who sent that mutinous letter to Iran’s leadership, and believes that…what, threatening to bomb Iran is the way to play it? “Deal-making is not a solution to what Israel faces,” Voight says, and yet he quotes Yitzhak “Bougie” Herzog, Netanyahu’s opponent in the upcoming Israeli election who, according to a 3.14 anti-Netanyahu piece in The Economist, “wants talks with the Palestinians and to heal ties with Mr. Obama.”
Update: I haven’t seen the sixth and final episode of Andrew Jarecki‘s The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (it won’t air until 8:00 pm Pacific) but a Deadline report states that during the episode Durst “is heard on tape admitting he ‘killed ‘em all, of course'” — an apparent reference to his long-missing wife Kathie Durst, who disappeared in 1982, as well as Durst’s longtime friend and ally Susan Berman who was found shot to death in December 2000, in addition to Morris Black, whom Durst admitting killing in a Galveston murder trial. Variety‘s Brian Lowry reports that Durst “appears to confess while talking to himself, [speaking] into an open microphone while in the bathroom, after having been confronted with damaging evidence. ‘There it is…you’re caught,’ he mutters a bit later. ‘What a disaster.'”
New York real-estate heir Robert Durst, long suspected of the murder of his late wife, Kathie Durst, in 1982 and now being actively prosecuted by Los Angeles authorities for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman, who was found shot in her Benedict Canyon home.
Anonymously sent letter to “Beverley” Hills PD, postmarked 12/23/00 or the day California officials believe that the shooting of Susan Berman occurred.
1999 letter written to Susan Berman by longtime friend Robert Durst.
Art posted by Buzzfeed.
Posted earlier: If you’ve seen the five aired episodes of Andrew Jarecki‘s The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, as I have, wild horses couldn’t keep you from watching tonight’s finale. Partly because the series has been quite riveting but mainly because it became apparent during last Sunday’s episode that Jarecki had obtained conclusive proof that Durst, the wealthy 71 year-old son of the late New York real estate mogul Seymour Durst and long suspected of the 1982 murder of his wife Kathie, is the author of an anonymous cryptic note sent to the Beverly Hills police department on 12.23.00, alerting them to the presence of a “CADAVER” at the Benedict Canyon home of the late Susan Berman, a friend of Durst’s who was probably killed the same day.
The “whoa!” element is not that the word Beverly was mis-spelled “BEVERLEY” on the 12.23.00 envelope, but that the same mis-spelling appears on a letter Durst sent to Berman in 1999.
James D. Cooper‘s Lambert & Stamp was irrefutably one of the top eight films I saw at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Yes, the one that happened fourteen months ago. It played again at the Sundance London Festival a few weeks later, and then it was vaya con dios for about a year. Now it’s finally back and opening commercially on 4.3. The guys behind The Who — a good yarn, punchy…H.G. Wells‘ The Time Machine. And yet it’s partly another tale about a rock-music guy (in this case Kit Lambert) who got lost in a louche lifestyle and succumbed to drugs at a relatively young age (45).
With Alex Gibney‘s two-part, four-hour Frank Sinatra doc airing on HBO 20 days hence, I found myself googling a bunch of Sinatra material. And somewhere along the way I came upon his will, which was finalized in 1991. A friend with some first-hand experience with wills tells me that Sinatra’s is the best she’s ever read. So here it is. If you’ve nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon (apart from getting some exercise, reading a great book, riding a bicycle on the beach or savoring some Indian food), have at it.
“I, FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA, also known as FRANK SINATRA, declare this to be my Will and revoke all former Wills and Codicils. I am a resident of Riverside County, California.
CLAUSE FIRST: Marital Status And Family.
I am married to BARBARA SINATRA, who in this Will is referred to as “my Wife.” I was formerly married to NANCY BARBATO SINATRA, to AVA GARDNER SINATRA, and to MIA FARROW SINATRA, and each of said marriages were subsequently dissolved. I have three children, all of whom are the issue of my marriage to NANCY BARBATO SINATRA: NANCY SINATRA LAMBERT, FRANCIS WAYNE SINATRA, and CHRISTINA SINATRA. All of the above-named children are adults. I have never had any other children.
The first-anywhere screening of Luke Meyer‘s Breaking a Monster just concluded at South by Southwest. It’s a decently assembled success-story doc about Unlocking The Truth, an African-American classic metal trio who were 12 and 13 when the footage was shot a year or so ago. It’s about how they built upon the novelty of “black kids playing metal” along with some serious YouTube popularity by joining forces with veteran music manager Alan Sacks. It takes the band forever to crank out a catchy, listenable song but they finally do, and eventually they land a $1.8 million record deal with Sony Music.
My initial reaction: “Basically meh, yeah, not bad, so-so but not enough information. The whole thing about Unlocking The Truth is the novelty (black teens doing metal) and the Times Square YouTube trending and people around them (especially Sacks) getting ahead of themselves in thinking ‘wow, these guys are unusual…and really young!…and sellable!” I’ve never been a metal fan. Ever. And I kept asking myself ‘okay, but where’s the beef when you get past the novelty? Where’s the song or songs that people are looking for?’ Isn’t that what makes a band successful? The songs they write and sing and the way they’re recorded/performed? Or am I missing something?
I can’t overstate how jolting and invigorating and even ground-shifting Ondi Timoner‘s Brand: A Second Coming plays, especially during the second viewing and especially when it hits the 40-minute mark, which is whenthestoryof Brand’s social-political awakening kicks in. It’s a brilliant, go-for-it thing that not only portrays and engages with a brilliant artist-provocateur but matches his temperament and picks up the flag. Superb photography by Timoner (especially loved the occasional punctuation of grainy 8mm) and HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko. The doc constantly pops, riffs and punches over its nearly two-hour running time. Magnificent graphics and editing, and a perfect ending.
What’s significant is that the lives of Che Guevara, Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi and MalcolmX, whom Brand identifies with and admires, had a similar dramatic arc in that they finally “became” after floundering around — Che as a son of Argentine privelege, Jesus as a stay-at-home carpenter until he was 30, Malcolm X as a pimp and an incarcerated con until he was awakened by Elijah Muhammed, etc. Similarly Brand became truly interesting and transcendent when he stopped projecting like a hyper, swaggering, shag-crazy narcissist and became a “champagne socialist” revolutionary and began saying “look at what’s wrong here”…that‘s when he became a lightning bolt.
From Variety‘s Dennis Harvey: “Brand might look like a dissolute rock star, but take away the expletives and jokes and it’s clear that what he says is eagerly dismissed in some quarters precisely because he’s smart and provocative, and reaches a large audience with a message that is off-the-charts liberal by current standards. The reasons he gives for being fed up with the status quo are very persuasive — and delivered in such a way that they reach people who’d be bored stiff by any standard political sermonizing.”
From The Guardian‘s Alex Needham: “It’s Brand’s journey from comic to activist which is the meat of Timoner’s story: what happens when drugs, sex, fame and wealth all fail to thrill and a charismatic man decides to make the almost unprecedented transition from comic to guru. Even if you’re cynical about Brand’s motives or just think that he’s a bit of berk, the film convinces you of the almost alarming sincerity of his political mission — not least because his mother reveals that as a child Brand claimed that he was indeed the second coming.”
Harvey again: “Such self-comparisons might seem odious on the surface, and indeed they are quite odious to those who’d prefer to dismiss Brand’s concerns because they hail from an English comedian, ex-drug addict and former Mr. Katy Perry. But Brand’s motormouth eloquence and sharp if often gleefully rude intelligence certainly qualify him as much to talk about corporate greed, economic equality, climate change and other pressing issues as many professional pundits whose often dubious legitimacy is seldom questioned.”
