Visually speaking I’m expecting/hoping to have a new Hollywood Elsewhere up and running by the end of April. The re-design won’t be too radical, but the idea (which I began to think about last year at this time) will be to make HE look more like a 2013 environment with certain bells and whistles and less like a static 2004 website. (HE was launched in late August of 2004, or 8 and 1/2 years ago.) I’m thinking of some kind of ever-changing “what’s up and what’s down” box + a Movie City News-like Twitter box (but I’d have to tweet a lot more to justify this) and maybe a TV column written by I-don’t-know-who.
I don’t want to go crazy with the re-design. I want it to look like the same column except cooler, nervier, zippier. Ideas?
The truth is that I’m afraid of adding a TV columnist because if they don’t post as often as I do and if they don’t have the voice and the authority on TV matters as I do on movies then what’s the point? Either someone as nutty and distinctive and energetic as myself writes it or it’s not worth doing. I’ve been through it with others and it just turns into a pain to supervise and/or keep tabs on. I’m talking myself out of this as I speak. I’ve been told that it’ll be worth doing in order to land TV ads so I’m theoretically on board with the idea, but it’s easier said than done.
After a couple of misses I’ll finally be catching Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect (LD, 4.12) on Tuesday night. A cautionary cyber-ensemble drama that a friend says is good, disciplined, well-ordered. Jason Bateman ( a friend of HE), Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Andrea Riseborough, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Alexander Skarsgard.
2013 will be 25% over as of midnight tonight. One quarter down, another three to go. The first three months are always underwhelming or worse for anyone with a low tolerance for mediocrity, but there are always a few theatrical and cable/streaming standouts. I’ve got 10 goodies listed plus the year’s worst:
Best of 2013 (in this order): 1. House of Cards (Netflix series that began streaming on 2.1.13, d: David Fincher (first 2 episodes), p: Fincher, Kevin Spacey, Beau Willimon); 2. No (d: Pablo Larrain); 3. Mama (d: Andres Muchietti, p: Guillermo del Toro); 4. Room 237 (d: Rodney Ascher); 5. Side Effects (d: Steven Soderbergh); 6. The Gatekeepers (d: Dror Moreh); 7. The Sapphires (d: Wayne Blair); 8. Phil Spector (HBO, d: David Mamet); 9. Like Someone In Love (d: Abbas Kiorastami); 10. Starbuck (d: Ken Scott).
Upstate New York Depression: The Place Beyond the Pines.
Decent, Respectable: Ceasar Must Die.
Unseen: Blancanieves, Broken City, John Dies at the End, Beautiful Creatures, 56 Up, Parker, KOCH.
Narcotized CG Mediocrity: Oz The Great and Powerful.
Worst of 2013 (in no particular order): Movie 43, Olympus Has Fallen; InAPPropriate Comedy; Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Identity Thief, A Glimpse Inside The Mind of Charles Swan III, Stoker, A Good Day To Die Hard, Gangster Squad, Stand-Up Guys, The Last Stand.
If Hillary Clinton is going to run for the Presidency in 2016, she’s going to have to look as good as Ronald Reagan did when he ran in 1980 — it’s that simple. Nobody worried about Reagan pushing 70 when he ran against Jimmy Carter (RR turned 69 in early ’80, having been born on 2.6.11) because he looked 55. But Hillary, who will turn 68 when the ’16 campaign begins in late ’15 (she was born on 10.26.47) and 69 just before 2016 election day, looks her age. You can argue that her looks won’t and shouldn’t matter, and you would be wrong. They always do.
In order to look as good as Reagan Clinton will need to lose a good 15 or 20 pounds (she clearly gained weight over the last couple of years during her tenture as Secretary of State) and if she’s smart she’ll have a little eye-bag and neck-wattle work done this year or next. Nothing drastic — just a little surgical touch-up. It’s the same thing as going to the hairdresser these days. Nobody cares, but if you look flabby and weathered they do care and might not vote for you.
Another reason Hillary needs to look younger is that she’ll be a boomer trying to succeed a young boomer-older GenX President, and younger voters may be reticent about handing the reins to a member of the generation that has basically hoarded all the wealth and poisoned the well and ruined the economic future of GenY. So she’ll need to project a youthful attitude in order to at least symbolically bond with people in the work force and not just retirement-age people, and it’s hard to do that when you look saggy and jowly.
You know another boomer who really looks “bad”, which is to say tired and creased and just about ready for euthanasia? Chuck Hagel with those awful bags under his eyes…Jesus! It’s so easy to take care of that stuff these days, and without it looking like you “did” anything.
Danny Boyle‘s Trance (Fox Searchlight, 4.5) is a tricky mind-fuck thriller set in London, but more precisely inside London apartments, office buildings, warehouses and parking garages and sometimes (but not that frequently) on London streets. Every frame of it is carefully chosen and thoughtful and given its proper emphasis, which is what you get when a major-league director like Boyle goes slumming with a genre piece about hypnosis and memory suppression and art thievery and compulsive gambling and obsessive madness…I could go on and on.
If nothing else the ending is clean and thoughtful, and for me this made it all come together. Trance‘s thematic view is that our lives largely consist of what we’ve chosen to remember and forget. Remember and cherish only the “good” stuff and your life will acquire a certain positivism and buoyancy, but will also feel a little bit sterile and perhaps fearful to some extent. But remember only the “bad” stuff and you’ll get sucked down into fatalism and a pit of existential fuck-all.
This, at least, is what I was left with and was thinking about on my way back to the parking garage. I don’t care if others see it or not. How many urban thrillers have anything to say about anything?
In the hands of 100 lesser directors Trance would feel a bit meh but with Boyle it has a certain burn-through quality. It doesn’t re-order or re-imagine the universe but it’s not a wank. And it has a kind of feisty, snarly propulsion by way of James McAvoy and Vincent Cassel, who play thieves involved in an art heist. And then there’s Rosario Dawson‘s assurance and intelligence as a hypnotist…I’m lying. Well, not “lying” but dodging as the visual element in Trance that got me more than anything else were Dawson’s nude scenes, or more precisely tiny snippets of love scenes between her and McAvoy. Okay, I’ve admitted it. I feel like an animal with hot steam pouring out of my nostrils, but at least an honest one.
In any event I was absorbed all the way through. Not blown away but definitely engaged. Sometimes films of this sort are such an irritating brain-tease you don’t know which end is up after 45 minutes or so, but I didn’t feel scuttled or abandoned by Boyle and his team (screenwriters Joe Ahearne and John Hodge, dp Anthony Dod Mantle, editor Jon Harris). The twists and turns are always just ahead of you like a mechanical rabbit at the dog track, but at least you can see the rabbit and you know you’re at a dog track and not off in some wacko-world where nothing adds up.
The story is basically about McAvoy’s inability to remember where he left a stolen Goya painting called “Witches in the Air.” This is after Cassel and the gang (whom McAvoy, an auction-house employee, is secretly in league with) has stolen it as part of an elaborate inside job. McAvoy has gotten slammed in the head and hit by a car, and some portion of his memory has been jarred loose and fallen between the cracks.
At first Cassel and the other two or three gang members torture McAvoy, and then, when that doesn’t work, they take him to Dawson for some hypno-therapy in hopes that she might put him in touch with his recollection of the painting’s stash. But when Dawson realizes what’s up she tells Cassel she wants an equal share of the haul once the Goya has been found.
How it plays out is between you and the film, should you want to see it. My impression is that Boyle and friends did everything they could to make what is basically a show-and-tell “game” movie feel more substantial, or at least more thoughtful than this kind of film normally would be. And by my standards they’ve succeeded at that.
The only thing that bothered me is that I didn’t really believe that McAvoy’s character (i.e., “Simon”) would experience a total black-out about the painting’s whereabouts. Only a jabbering unhinged loon would be completely unable to remember something like this. The last time I can recall a guy being this thoroughly in the dark was when Gregory Peck couldn’t remember if he committed murder or not in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Spellbound (’45). My God, I just had a vision of Ingrid Bergman doing a full-frontal nude scene like Dawson’s…forget it. Didn’t mean to bring it up
On May 4th the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hold a huge group discussion among its members in three cities — Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco — to discuss the Academy’s future. The idea is that members will spill their gut feelings about what’s wrong with the Oscar race and suggest changes, etc. This’ll definitely be something to cover and kick around, although brutal honesty almost never happens when members of an esteemed organization get together.
Boiled down, good suggestion #1 is “go back to ten Best Picture nominees.” Here’s how Sasha puts it: “Do not have it both ways with having members choose five Best Picture nominees only to have them include the fringe dwellers when a film gets more number one votes. Keep the list to ten — as they did in 2009 and 2010, which resulted in brilliant inclusion of films that never would have gotten in otherwise like District 9 [and] The Kids Are All Right — because a voter is going to include a better variety when given ten slots. Having it both ways wreaks unnecessary havoc because (a) it doesn’t include movies that wouldn’t have been included otherwise, and (b) it doesn’t honor films that the general public likes more.”
Good suggestion #2 is “don’t let the guilds call the shots.” In Sasha’s words: “Why have an Academy at all if all they do is put a period on the end of an already written sentence? Just because the DGA and PGA tells you to vote for something doesn’t mean you always have to vote for it. Will the Academy ever be original again? Will they always fall in line with the guilds? Hard to say but in the years that I’ve been doing this I’ve watched their power and their influence slip dramatically. The Golden Globes are gaining in prominence as the Academy dims in the wake of the precursors that decide the race. Of course, we bloggers and pundits aid in that — we herd them into the pen and say ‘pick that one.’ Can it change? Doubtful.”
A few days ago some HE sophistos were putting down some shoes I was wearing. (Although most of their ire was reserved for the socks.) The designer/maker is John Varvatos. I knew the second I put them on that they’re one of the most sturdy, comfortable, well designed shoes I’ve ever worn. And I got them for about 40% of what Varvatos is asking on his website.
Sony doesn’t screen movies like The Evil Dead (4.5) for guys like me…is that it? Because…what, I’m not that big on roaring chainsaws plunging into screaming mouths? Do I need to man up and expand my cinematic vistas? All I know is that if Lou Taylor Pucci is in a film there’s a good chance I won’t like it. It’s not fair, it’s cruel, it’s heartless but years of experience have taught me about the Curse of Pucci. I’d like to have my mind changed about this. I really would.
I’ve also learned to regard any positive or semi-positive review written by Variety‘s Joe Leydon at South by Southwest with a grain of salt. Especially when it comes to horror.
I am, however, impressed by the following: “There’s no CGI in the movie. Everything you will see is real, which was really demanding. This was a very long shoot, 70 days of shooting at night. There’s a reason people use CGI it’s cheaper and faster, I hate that. We researched a lot of magic tricks and illusion tricks. [Like] how you would make someone’s arm disappear.” — director Fede Alvarezspeaking to io9.
“The bloody mayhem is so graphic and frequent throughout “Evil Dead,” one cannot help suspecting that alternate takes had to be shot to ensure an R rating,” Leydon wrote on March 8th. “The emphasis on dismemberment and disfigurement should make this must-see entertainment for gorehounds, but could literally scare off auds accustomed to less explicit, PG-13 fare.
“Ultimately, the new Evil Dead will rely heavily on existing fans of this unlikely franchise to make a killing in theatrical and homevid release. Those who get the inside jokes should be easy to spot: They’ll be the ones laughing when the onscreen carnage erupts most furiously.”
Nicholas Wrathall’s Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia will screen at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival three times — AMC Leows Village 7 on Thursday, 4.18 at 8:30pm and Saturday, 4.20 at 2:30pm, and Friday, 4.26 at 5:30pm at the Chelsea Clearview Cinemas.
This Universal late-summer release (8.2) looks like reasonably efficient escapism. My only concern that the last U.S.-made film by Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur was Contraband, which was my idea of dogshit. Denzel Washington is looking a little slimmer than he did in his last four or five films, which is good. He was looking pretty blimpy in Flight. Note: I posted this hours ago and for whatever reason it vanished.
We’ve never technically met but we did a phoner while you were cutting Casino. It was for an Entertaiment Weekly piece I was working on about a restoration of The Wild Bunch. This is the same email I’ve sent you via the Film Foundation email address. I’m double-posting out of concern that it might not get through with your editing of Wolf of Wall Street demanding all your time and attention.
You may not have heard about the great Shane Bluray brouhaha by now so I’ll just summarize. Warner Home Video has licensed the rights from Paramount for a Shane Bluray that was prepared by George Stevens, Jr. and, I’m told, the folks at Technicolor. As you probably know Shane was shot by George Stevens and dp Loyal Griggs between July and mid-October 1951 with a 1.37:1 aspect ratio. And yet I’ve been told by Stevens, Jr. that the WHV Bluray will present his father’s film at a 1.66:1, which Stevens Jr. was apparently asked to compose by Paramount Home Video execs.
Stevens, Jr. has been very exacting, he told me, in making sure that the 1.66:1 compositions do not compromise his father’s classic film, and that given a choice between presenting a 1.37 Shane with big black bars on either side of the image and a 1.66 Shane with slender borders on either side he believes that the latter will be commercially preferable. He also said he’s confident that his father would be pleased with the 1.66 version.
I’m sorry but Stevens Sr. and Griggs shot Shane in 1.37 and that’s the end of it — there can be no other consideration. Stevens Jr. told me that a 1.37 “Academy ratio” version was also prepared for Bluray. If WHV wants to release the Shane Bluray at an alternative 1.66 aspect ratio for commercial purposes, fine, but out of respect for the vision of Stevens Sr. and Griggs they need to make the 1.37 version available via Warner Archives. If you review the comments about this issue on Home Theatre Forum you’ll see that the overwhelming majority agree that both versions of Shane need to be made available.
Respected archivist Bob Furmanek has written on HTF that Shane “was clearly composed for 1.37:1. I prefer to see it in that ratio. I feel that is how it should be seen.” And restoration guru Robert Harris says on HTF that “while I would love to also see the film in 1.37…hopefully, a dual format release can occur, as the data would have been completed both ways.”
I’m assuming that you agree with the 1.37 crowd, and am also hoping that perhaps you could make your opinion known. Anything you could do, say or write would, one assumes, greatly influence WHV’s decision regarding the 1.37 version being made available down the road. Many thanks and best of luck with Wolf of Wall Street.
Jeffrey Wells, HE
p.s.: Here’s a link with two HE articles about the Shane dust-up.
