The legendary Joe Cocker has passed from lung cancer at age 70. Here was a monumental British blues singer with a great growly voice and a world-famous jerky-palsy performing style who lasted pretty long for a ’60s-era musician…hats off. Three peak moments — Cocker’s performance of “A Little Help From My friends” at the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair, singing along with John Belushi on that classic mid ’70s Saturday Night Live performance, and singing “Up Where We Belong” (long associated with An Officer and a Gentleman) with Jennifer Warnes on the 1983 Oscar telecast.
Daily
Instant Rejection
I would have avoided Get Hard (Warner Bros, 3.27) anyway but the trailer locks it down. Will Ferrell is fairly tall (roughly 6’3″) but until five minutes ago I didn’t realize Kevin Hart is only 5’4″. Alan Ladd, at 5’6″ one of the shortest stars in Hollywood history, would tower over Hart. Then again Hart edges Mickey Rooney.
Percussive Birdman Score Dismissed
Deadline‘s Pete Hammond is reporting that Birdman‘s bracing percussion score, composed and performed by Antonio Sanchez, has been disqualified for Oscar contention by the Academy’s music branch. What was rejected, actually, was an appeal by Sanchez and Birdman director Alejandro G. Inarritu after the film was omitted from the initial contender list, which was announced on 12.12. Inarritu told me last week that the eligibility of Sanchez’s score might be an issue, and that he and his producers would regard it as a profound injustice if it went the wrong way. Which it is, of course. The Birdman score is beautiful. I think the real reason it was dismissed is simply because a non-melodic, non-orchestral score rubbed the music branch the wrong way. They like their notes, melody, arrangements, etc.
The reason for the disqualification, Hammond writes, wasn’t the drumming per se but the use of a few bars of pre-existing classical music, which actually works beautifully when deployed in Act Three. An Academy rule states that “scores diluted by use of tracked themes or other pre-existing music, diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs, or assembled from the music of more than one composer shall not be eligible.”
Grubbing It Out
These days a Manhattan Airb&b rental for less than $130 or $140 per night means a compromised, not-that-great experience. If you want any kind of breathing room you need to go north of $150 or $175 per night and even then you might feel taken. The Avenue B tenement share in which I’m staying this week is, no offense, the smallest nook I’ve ever paid to inhabit in my life outside of that awful little Chinatown flophouse in which I stayed last summer. The bathroom is so narrow and tiny you can barely breathe. You have to figure that the original building architect was driven at least partly by sadism with perhaps a little racism on the side. (“The people who will live in this building will be mostly immigrants,” etc.) But I love paying several hundred bills to flop for a few days in a place that I can barely tolerate. That’s 2014 New York for you…take it or leave it. Which is one reason why I prefer West Hollywood.
20 Films That Might Cut It in 2015…Maybe
Every December I take a look at the coming film-release year and get a little bummed. Which is more or less how I feel right now. This Wiki forecast of 2015 represents only about 50% or 60% of the likely stand-outs if that, but I’m feeling deflated all the same. Too many programmers, I’m thinking — i.e., somewhat predictable, concept-driven, ho-hummy, not a lot to quicken the pulse. A healthy percentage of the stuff that will really turn the key, of course, will be on cable. This is the world, the way it is…and that’s fine. House of Cards, the Mad Men finale, etc.
Right off the top the only theatrical film that looks like it might be a major X-factor knockdown is Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant, a revenge-survival drama which 20th Century Fox will open 11 or 12 months from now.
I realize, of course, that many, many unforeseen comers will pop out of Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and the September-October festivals (Telluride, Venice, Toronto, New York), but right now I’m looking to add titles to the list that may turn out to be cultivated, dynamic, extra-dimensional, “original”, arty-farty, awards-baity…anything along those lines.
Right now the only 2015 films that seem remotely boat-floaty are the following, and a significant portion of these seem at first glance more like plot-driven attractions or diversions than what most of us would call fresh approach social undercurrent perk-up flicks…but what do I know? My interest levels are roughly reflected by the order in which they appear. The first seven or eight for sure, but after that….
The Revenant (20th Century Fox) — Alejandro González Inarritu (director/screenplay); Mark E Smith (screenplay); Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson.
Everest (Universal) — Baltasar Kormákur (director); Justin Isbell, William Nicholson (screenplay); Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, Jason Clarke, John Hawkes, Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley, Robin Wright.
Black Mass (Warner Bros.) — Scott Cooper (director/screenplay); Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sienna Miller, Dakota Johnson.
Is Acting “For The Common Good” Even Conceivable?
President Obama “should convene all the players who make billions from the free and unfettered display of content and broker a deal that gives Americans the opportunity to watch The Interview. Put it on Hulu, on iTunes, on Google Play, on Netflix, on NBC and all the broadcast networks, on Showtime and all the cable stations, put it anywhere and everywhere that people can push a button and watch at the same time. Ubiquity and the lack of a discernible target would trump censorship.
“The industry, old and new, digital and analog, should step across a line together, holding hands with consumers and letting the world know that we prize our goofy movies, along with the important ones, and the freedoms that they represent. If disparate competitors managed to set aside self-interest and acted for the common good, it could be the social viewing event of the century. I’d do anything to do my bit for artistic freedom, including watching a buddy-movie comedy that stars Seth Rogen and James Franco.” — from a 12.21 David Carr/”Media Equation” column in the N.Y. Times.
Sunday Gambler Refresh
It’s lazy of me to re-post a review only 40 days after the initial but I’ve done lazier things on a drizzly Sunday while sitting in a cafe. Rupert Wyatt‘s The Gambler is opening four days hence (on Thursday, 12.25) and I can’t think of anything else to post before driving into the city in the light snow and rain…a not-very-friendly December day.
“I know what this sounds like but Rupert Wyatt, William Monahan and Mark Wahlberg‘s The Gambler isn’t as interesting or eloquent as Karel Riesz, James Toback and James Caan‘s The Gambler (’74). It deals faster, flashier cards, but it misses the meditative soulful aspects of the Reisz-Toback version, which is partly to say it takes no pleasure in occasional wins and the power and glory of that.
“The new Gambler is almost entirely about staring into the abyss. Character-wise it delivers a relentless obstinacy and a smug-punk attitude in Mark Wahlberg‘s gambling-addicted character, and story-wise it furnishes a constant cycle of losing and doubling down and then losing a whole lot more, and then borrowing from ugly Peter to pay even-more-terrible Paul and so on. And it blows off those charming tidbits of Fyodor Dostoevsky‘s philosophy that lent a certain spiritual élan to the ’74 version.
Bygone Days When Men Were Men, etc.
If you’re paying any attention to social attitudes and etiquette among 25-and-under GenYs and more particularly to those raised in liberal educated homes, it’s almost considered rude to refer to anyone being of a particular gender. It’s not quite verboten to say “boy” or “girl” or “man” or “woman,” but it almost is. This goes hand in hand with an absolute taboo on any hint of homophobia or a less than fully accepting attitude towards omnisexuality. Everyone’s everything, man…oops, sorry. I was talking about this with old friends on Saturday night and then an hour or so later this photo popped up and it seemed to fit on some level. The striking Shiloh Jolie Pitt, whose features suggest an amazingly even-steven splicing of Brangelina, wearing a male suit and allegedly wanting to be one of the guys and be called “John”, etc. Cool, whatever, go with the times, etc.
Music From Big Rosey Beige
During yesterday’s visit to Saugerties I stopped by the fabled “big pink” house to pay respects and take a couple of snaps. I’m speaking, of course, of the legendary abode where Bob Dylan and The Band recorded the Basement Tapes in ’67 and from which The Band’s “Music From Big Pink” album sprung in ’68.
And I must report the truth, which is that “big pink” is a lie — it’s not pink but a mild rose mixed with beige. Pink is pink — an eyesore color for girly-girls. Shocking pink, punk-hair pink, pink underwear, Angelyne’s pink Corvette, Elvis’s soft pink Cadillac from the late ’50s. And then there is the realm of rose, which is a gentler, somewhat earthier, more natural shade. Mix rose with a bit of fleshy soft biege from the women’s make-up counter at Bloomingdale’s and you’ve got the color of “big pink.” I understand that “big pink” sounds cooler than “big rosey beige” and that’s cool, but someone had to tell the truth and I guess it had to be me.
“Big pink” house at 17 Parnassus Lane in Saugerties, New York — Saturday, 12.20, 12:20 pm.
Go Down Moses
Ridley Scott‘s Exodus: Gods and Kings opened domestically on 12.12 with around $24 million and is projected to hit…I’m not sure. But I know Box Office Mojo has it ranked fifth behind the weekend’s top four attractions — The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Annie and The Hunger games: Mockingjay, Part 1. (Can it be safely assumed that if a movie title has a colon in it, that it probably blows to some extent?) It also appears as if Exodus has done better overseas than domestically with the total foreign county at $45 million or thereabouts. One thing that’s apparently happened in this country is that yahoo Christians, smelling a non-religious approach, haven’t come out in droves. Scott’s instincts told him to stay way from a reverent approach and make some kind of anti-Cecil B. DeMille, non-believing version of Moses’ tale. That was probably a mistake all around. Now that Exodus is officially a domestic under-performer and can probably be called an all-around failure, do we have any final assessments as to what went wrong?