Daily

Yesterday afternoon I was standing in line at a Best Buy checkout line, and I suddenly felt the too-close presence of the guy behind me. I turned slightly to check him out. He was Latino and heavy-set with a foggy-eyed expression, like a slightly overweight Michael Pena on too much Percodan. And wearing low-rider threads — crummy-looking T-shirt, baggy pants, 99-cent store lace-ups. What struck me was that he wasn’t standing steadily but seemed a tiny bit woozy and unsure of his balance. Was he bombed? Possibly, but that seemed like a bizarre thing in the mid-afternoon inside a big, bright, antiseptic environment like Best Buy. All I knew was that he was violating my 18 inches of space. He would be 24 or 30 inches away and then lean forward and shift his balance and suddenly his head would be less than 12 inches away. Once or twice I felt his breath on the back of my neck or arms. Fuck’s your problem? I turned around and glanced again. This guy’s obviously a psycho, I told myself. Don’t say anything, don’t eyeball him….just chill down and pay for your stuff and let it go. But what kind of asshole can’t stand up straight and observe the 18-inch rule, which is recognized the world over?

It was reported two or three days ago that Denzel Washington is in talks with MGM to star in an Antoine Fuqua-directed remake of John Sturges‘ The Magnificent Seven (’60), itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa‘s Seven Samurai (’54). Denzel would presumably play Yul Brynner‘s gunslinger character, a.k.a. “Chris.” Great idea but then it got better when Terry McCarty tweeted yesterday that he’d love to see Tom Cruise portray Steve McQueen‘s role, Vin. Excellent idea! Can you imagine Cruise and Washington trying to outbox and out-maneuever each other? Not to mention the old-fashioned allure of a couple of stars twirling six guns and leaping over adobe walls, etc.

It’ll never happen, of course.

Cruise would never play second-banana to Washington — to do so would be seen as a tacit admission that his big-star days are over. On top of which Cruise’s pride has presumably been hurt by Edge of Tomorrow coming in third this weekend (it made less than $30 million compared to $48 million earned by The Fault In Our Stars). His back is against the wall and now he’s got something to prove, which is that he’s still got the big-star box-office clout that he’s enjoyed for 30-odd years. In this scenario Cruise lacks the confidence to do something outside the box like play McQueen’s role, etc. But it would be great if it came together.

Read more

I enjoyed reading Scott Feinberg‘s 6.6 Hollywood Reporter interview with Jerry Lewis, which was basically about publicizing Paramount Home Video’s Nutty Professor Bluray box set, which streeted on June 3rd. Feinberg is always well-prepared and in the zone when he interviews old-time Hollywood legends, and he holds his own with the sometimes cantankerous Lewis. Lewis will eat you alive if you haven’t done your homework. You need have your shit wired tight and then some. I know, having interviewed the guy back in ’95.

The best take-away is Lewis mentioning that he changes his socks four times day because it makes him feel renewed. Obviously an extravagant habit. To do that you’d have to own…what, at least 30 pairs of socks that you like? (Most of us have a few pairs of cool socks and several more pairs of what-the-hell, nothing-to-shout-about socks.) If you only owned 30 pairs you’d have to wash and dry them two or three times per week. If you owned 50 pairs you wouldn’t be such a slave to the wash cycle. I immediately decided to try a variation. Henceforth I’m a two-pairs-per-day man. Managable. Change in the late afternoon or early evening. Thanks to Lewis and Feinberg for the idea…seriously.

Read more

…but you speak the truth.

From the American Film Institute’s 42nd Life Achievement Award ceremony for Jane Fonda: “Meryl Streep recalled a day on the set of Julia that someone came up to her, saying how she was glad that Jane was feeling better because she has been ‘crying all night.’ ‘Why?’ Streep asked. She was told, ‘Well, they looked at dailies from last week and [Jane] just thinks she looks so old.’

“’She was 38 years old and so beautiful,’ Streep recalled. ‘We’re all afflicted with these insecurities, but Jane has a special radar…what she does, she deflects her own anxiety and made me — a day player, a nobody — feel fantastic. After we wrapped that movie, I found out she’d gone back to California and told everyone who would listen about this girl with a weird last name, and [that] opened more doors than I even probably know about today.”

To me, curved-screen ultra-HD televisions are as essential as high-def 3D, which is to say not at all. The only way it might make a real difference is if you’re sitting 24 to 30 inches away from a 70-inch screen and dead center at that. The only reason Samsung and others are making curved screens is because they’re trying to generate new revenue streams from those TV buyers who fancy themselves as high-end connoisseurs. It’s basically a big con.

Listening to the dialogue in John Huston‘s Key Largo (’48), based on Maxwell Anderson‘s play but re-shaped for the screen by Huston and Richard Brooks, is like savoring a perfect dessert. It’s tethered to character and therefore substantial in the usual ways, but the flavor is rich and marvellous. I don’t know why you can’t find clips on YouTube so I captured a couple myself. Thomas Gomez is fantastic in the “can you blame us for gettin’ rude?” scene. And the bit in which Edward G. Robinson whispers vulgarities to Lauren Bacall is one of the few “suggestive” scenes from the big-studio era that still feels “dirty” by today’s standards because it prods the viewer into imagining what he’s saying.

Read more

A Bluray of Delbert Mann and Paddy Chayefsky‘s Oscar-winning Marty (1955) will be released on 7.29. It gives me no comfort or satisfaction to report that the Bluray’s aspect ratio will be in the dreaded 1.85 with the tops and bottoms of the protected 1.37 image (seen on TV, VHS, laser disc and DVDs for the last five or six decades) severed with a meat cleaver. In early May aspect-ratio historian Bob Furmanek noted in a Home Theatre Forum post that (a) the Marty Bluray will (a) be presented “for the first time since the original theatrical release with Mann’s intended 1.85:1 compositions,” and that (b) “we provided the documentation to insure mastering in the correct ratio.”

Read more

Guardians of the Galaxy (Disney, 8.1) looks fairly awful if not ludicrous, but it’s been directed and co-written by James Gunn, whose Super (’11) I admired after catching it at 2011 South by Southwest, so it’s probably wiser to wait and see. I only know that my first reaction was to feel sorry for Chris Pratt, whose performance as an insecure catcher-turned-first baseman was one of Moneyball‘s finest. He needed a paycheck role and he took this, but where’s the dignity? A pretty good cast — Zoe Saldana, Dave “who?” Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close and Benicio del Toro…they all took their checks and cashed them. The August 1st release date suggests…aaahh, maybe it doesn’t suggest anything. Except that the rule of thumb is that all real-deal, balls-to-the-wall, guns-blazing summer escapist flicks usually come out in May, June or July.

That shouting voice around the nine-second mark (“Chaahhhrrrr!) sounds like some lug brought into the post-production recording studio from Gold’s Gym. The voice doesn’t seem to blend with the action — it sound like a folio dub from a Dino de Laurentiis film from the ’60s. Could this be an omen? All the principals (Bay, Wahlberg, DiBonaventura, Murphy) have gotten (or will get) a nice fat paycheck from Transformers 4: Age of Extinction (Paramount, 6.25). Are the fans starting to think it might be time to put this franchise out of its misery? Nice fantasy, but no such luck unless this latest installment tanks. Which doesn’t seem likely. They’ve all been punishing, and they’ve all made big money.

I caught the 12:10 pm show of The Fault In Our Stars today at the Grove. Mostly groups of young girls in theatre #1, of course, but the place wasn’t packed. I was half-impressed. It tries a little too hard to melt people down, of course, being what it is. The filmmakers trumpet their sensitive feelings about the ineffable sadness of being removed from life’s symphony at a much-too-early age, and at times they tap you on the shoulder to say “just reminding you that we’re coming from a really delicate place.” But Stars is not bad at all with the LMN mode. I never twitched or flinched or groaned. It’s reasonably well done all around, and the acting by Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort takes root early on. They’re both quite alive and well-measured and engaged, and Willem Dafoe adds a little abrasive pepper in a cameo-sized role as a Dutch writer. Stars is expected to earn $50 million by Sunday night, and in so doing beat Edge of Tomorrow. I’ll tap out something tonight or first thing tomorrow. I have an engagement this evening and jetlag is giving me the usual rough going-over. I feel like I’m tripping half the time.

Mark Hamill handled an improv challenge pretty well at a recent Star Wars Weekend q & a at Orlando’s Walt Disney World. Good to see he’s dropped a few necessary pounds in preparation for shooting Episode VII in England.

Read more