This will never, ever happen again. Foreign-language flicks no longer have the currency they had in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Plus the oldsters who might pay to see such a film are still too chicken to leave their homes and risk infection…they’ll never come back. The difference between the spiritual act of big-screen movie-watching 50 years ago vs. whatever you want to call movie-watching today…well, it’s just fucking shattering when you think of what’s gone and will never fucking return.
This afternoon the AMPAS Board of Governors announced new campaign promotional rules and regs in order to prevent any further Andrea Riseborough-style guerilla campaigns.
The sore-loser contingent took great exception to the Risebourough insurgency, and so the Academy has announced rules that will make it harder for such a grass-roots campaign to manifest or be effective.
Members “may encourage others to view motion pictures”, and they “may praise motion pictures and achievements.” But they may not “share their voting decisions at any point. And they may not discuss their voting preferences and other members’ voting preferences in a public forum. This includes comparing or ranking motion pictures, performances, or achievements in relation to voting.
This also includes speaking with press anonymously” — a reference to those Honest Academy Ballot articles that Scott Feinberg and Anne Thompson have posted for years.
Note: Academy members have always known they aren’t supposed to talk to journos like Feinberg and Thompson, but they’ve done it anyway, and will almost certainly continue to do so.
Furthermore, Academy members “may not attempt to encourage other members to vote for or not vote for any motion picture or achievement,” and they may not “lobby other members directly or in a manner outside of the scope of these promotional regulations to advance a motion picture, performance, or achievement.”
“Andrea Riseborough + Duelling Concepts of Meritocracy vs. Equity,” posted on 2.15.23:
Marriages between an exceptional film sequence and a great pop song can make for very special combustions.
I’m talking about the use of one or more songs (either acquired or originally composed) that have enhanced and deepened the emotional value of a non-musical film. And a certain film that, after merging with the right song or songs, acquires a certain dimensionality or legendary quality for itself.
A situation, in short, in which both the movie and the music experience a major mutual upgrade.
Example #1: Berlin‘s “Take My Breath Away” was not only written for Top Gun — it was forever welded to the legend of that film and vice versa.
Example #2: That blues number (I don’t even know the title!) performed by the Mighty Joe Young Blues Band in Michael Mann‘s Thief (’81). I’ve never forgotten that song, and Thief was hugely amplified by it. Performed at The Katz & Jammer club on Chicago’s North Side.
Example #3: Phil Collins‘ “In The Air Tonight” was one thing when it popped in January ’81, but it became a whole ‘nother thing when it was used for that sex-on-a-train scene sequence in Risky Business, which opened two and half years later (August ’83).
HE Picks: (1) “Moon River,” Breakfast at Tiffany’s; (2) Blondie‘s “Call Me”, American Gigolo; (3) Bob Dylan‘s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid; (4) “The Power of Love,” Back to the Future; (5) “Up Where We Belong”, An Officer and a Gentleman…the list goes on and on.
Or someone less agenda-driven?
I’m presuming that this recently posted N.Y. Times want ad for a full-time senior film critic slot (i.e., an invitation for qualified persons to apply) is essentially bullshit. They have a pretty good idea who they’re going to hire, I’m guessing, and it won’t be some sensible centrist type with amiable popcorn tastes. They almost certainly want a woke Maoist. The ad is about Times management needing to demonstrate that they’re an equal opportunity employer.
I wonder if this means that Wesley Morris has passed on the job?
Update: I’m told that the ad isn’t entirely bullshit as the Times hasn’t yet hired a replacement.
Two and a half months ago (2.21.23) I posted a piece about who might replace outgoing N.Y. Times film critic A.O. Scott. It was called “Times Needs To Replace Scott With A Brilliant Moderate Who Eschews Woke Maoism.”
Three things about Sian Heder‘s CODA: (a) It’s an audience-charming confection that dealt sincere cards with a little too much heart sauce, (b) it was obviously more likable than Jane Campion‘s doleful Power of the Dog so I understood why Academy members gave it the Best Picture Oscar, and (c) it wasn’t saved by the Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winning Troy Kotsur but by Eugenio Derbez, who played the Latino singing teacher.
In short I’ve respected Heder’s work as far as it goes, but I never thought of her as being all that hip or edgy. Until last night, that is, when I caught her cameo in episode 4 of Barry (“it takes a psycho“). Now I really respect her. Because the scene she’s in satirizes the syndrome of indie-level directors taking paycheck gigs on superhero movies. (Chloé Zhao directing the much-maligned Eternals, Ryan Coogler helming Black Panther, etc.)
Playing herself, Heder appears in a Hollywood sound-stage scene, directing a Wonder Woman-ish fantasy flick called Mega Girl. Sarah Goldberg‘s “Sally Reed” is helping Ellyn Jameson‘s “Kristen” prepare for a big monologue scene, and she spots Heder almost immediately.
Sally: Hi…hi, you’re Sian Heder.
Heder: Hi.
Reed: I’m Kristen’s acting coach.
Heder: Great.
Reed: CODA is a masterpiece.
Heder: Thanks.
Sally: It’s incredible. I mean I could cry just thinking about it.
Heder: I’m clearly switching gears on this one. On CODA I worked with committed actors to tell a deeply personal story, and now I’m working with models in Halloween costumes fighting over a blue glowy thing.
Sally: Well, that’s exciting.
Heder: Yeah, it’s gonna be a good movie…I think. I think when people see Mega Girl, they’re gonna think ‘whoever made that, made CODA.”
But when I saw this imaginary Reddit image of an 82 year old Marilyn Monroe, I almost said to myself “gee, there’s something to be said for dying at age 36.”
I don’t really mean that. If she’d only hung on and lasted into the Bonnie and Clyde era and beyond, Monroe could have had a great second act and perhaps even a great third or fourth. Her spirit would’ve been ignited by the mid to late ‘60s. She would have loved the Beatles and the Stones…all of that. She would’ve been levitated by Rubber Soul and Revolver. She might’ve attended that ‘65 acid trip party with John Lennon, and when Peter Fonda sauntered over and said “I know what it’s like to be dead,” she might’ve said “Peter, stop it…just open your heart and be happy.” She might even have fit right in with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. She would’ve adorned the cover of Ms. magazine in the early ‘70s.
Jeff and Sasha’s latest Substack chat was recorded in two sections — the first while I sat in a noisy Wilton laundromat, and the second as I lay comfortably on my queen-sized bed at home. I liked chatting from a lying-down position — it made me feel good and reassured. Here’s da link.
Last night I watched the first installment of David Kelley‘s Love and Death, an HBO Max three-parter about the 1980 Candy Montgomery Texas murder saga. I had recently watched Candy, the Hulu five-parter starring Jessica Biel, that premiered in early May of ’22.
At this stage I’m totally Candy Montgomery’ed out.
I tried to roll with the Love and Death teleplay, but as I mentioned last month after watching the trailer, the Jessie Plemons casting got in the way. When Elizabeth Olsen‘s Candy asks Plemons character, Allan Gore, if he’s interested in having an affair, something inside me recoiled and went “no effing way…no!”
Posted last month: “It would be one thing if the actress playing Candy was shlumpy or overweight or less than dynamically attractive. But Olsen, 34, is a double-A hottie and has been so for many years, so why in the real world would she want to have sex with a C-minus guy (at best) who looks like Jesse Plemons? Fleshy and ginger-haired, pale and puffy-faced, tiny pig eyes.”
When Olsen and Plemons, after much hemming and hawing, finally do the deed in a motel room, I couldn’t stand it. Guys like Plemons never score with double-dishies. It just goes against human nature.
That said, I want to offer serious respect to Plemons for recently dropping all that weight…seriously.
For decades I’ve been convinced that there are only two Sean Connery 007 films worth re-watching — Dr. No (’62) and From Russia With Love (’63), both directed by Terence Young. Because they’re the only two Connerys that aren’t undermined by high-tech gadgetry, silly stunts, Daffy Duck-level plotting and an attitude of smug financial arrogance on the part of the producers.
Guy Hamilton‘s Goldfinger (’64) was the film that demonstrated how the burgeoning Bond franchise had become drunk on its own fumes and begun to degenerate into foolery. The first two Bonds at least flirted with realism from time to time, but with Goldfinger the realism was more or less out the window.
For a reason I can’t quite fathom I popped in my Goldfinger Bluray last night and endured the damn thing. Okay, I watched it because it boasts a wonderfully clean and richly colored 1080p transfer. There’s no faulting the tech.
Goldfinger runs 110 minutes but feels a bit longer, mainly because it starts to descend into silliness starting with the Auric metal conversion plant sequence in Switzerland (which arrives around the 35-or 40-minute mark), and then it turns a truly ridiculous corner when the setting moves to Goldfinger’s horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky.
The instant wham-bam conversion of Honor Blackman‘s Pussy Galore from a flinty lesbian into a heterosexual James Bond ally is my favorite bit of absurdity, but compacting that black Lincoln Continental with a dead gangster in the back seat and a sizable load of gold bars in the trunk…none of it makes a lick of sense. Not to mention those Fort Knox Army troops pretending to succumb to knockout gas with absolute uniformity…arguably the dopiest display of substandard action choreography in the history of motion pictures.
What a surreal satire Goldfinger is…an unwitting lampoon of the old-school macho sexism that prevailed in late ’63 and early ’64. And yet the same basic foibles were tolerable in Dr. No and From Russia With Love.
Yes, okay — the first three sequences are approvable. Bond blowing up the drug laboratory in Latin America is pretty good, and I love that moment when Connery spots an oncoming assailant in a reflection in a woman’s eye. Screwing up Goldfinger’s crooked card game in Miami Beach while seducing Shirley Eaton‘s Jill Masterson, only to discover her dead, gold-painted body the next morning. And then the golf game with Goldfinger in a British country club, complete with a gold bar wager and some last-minute golf ball switching. But then it’s off to Switzerland and it all starts to fall apart.
A five-day-old Los Angeles article by Brian Stelter (“James Corden Bows Out,” posted on 4.24) reports that the departure of the Late Late Show host was primarily about sinking ratings and a total absence of profits. The show, in fact, was losing money hand over first.
It’s been “costing $60 million to $65 million a year to produce but was netting less than $45 million,” Stelter writes, and was “simply not sustainable,” according to one executive. “CBS could not afford him anymore.”
…or certainly infuriating, no matter who the jury chairman is or what the general mood may be.
Celebrating films of quality has come to matter less than celebrating films with the right socio-political narratives. That’s certainly been the rule since the woke virus began to infiltrate the Cannes bloodstream six or seven years ago. Or perhaps over the last decade, now that I think about it.
Many felt that the Jane Campion-led, mostly female jury, for example, had taken leave of their senses when they didn’t hand the Palme d’Or to Andrey Zvagintsev‘s drop-dead brilliant Leviathan (’14) and gave it instead to Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Winter Sleep, a respectably solemn but slow-moving 196-minute drama that no one was over the moon about.
Okay, I applauded when Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square won the Palme d’Or in 2017 — a good, smart call.
But two years later Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite won the Palme d’Or, and with that awarding the crazy bird had flown the coop. That movie obviously and completely crippled itself when the con artist family let the fired maid indoors during that rainstorm, but the Alejandro G. Inarritu-led jury (which included Elle Fanning, Yorgos Lanthimos, Paweł Pawlikowski, Kelly Reichardt and Alice Rohrwacher) didn’t want to know from nothing. Rich vs. poor, class-warfare social satire + a bespectacled, food-loving Asian director known for focusing on genre fare — the right kind of director had made the right kind of film, and nobody much cared about script flaws or how well the film’s final third had been assembled.
It was even more wackazoid when Julia Ducournau‘s Titane, admittedly a fierce and metallic act of erotic imagination, won the Palme d’Or in 2021.
Ostlund, the savagely satiric Swedish helmer of Triangle of Sadness, The Square and Force Majeure, is heading this year’s jury. Given the attitude of his films, it’s my presumption that Ostlund will not be in favor of bestowing Cannes jury prizes for reasons of virtue signalling and social justice warrior motives. It would be truly delightful if the ’23 Cannes winners were to be determined by actual artistic merit as opposed to woke points.
That probably won’t happen, of course. The Cannes awards pattern is almost set in stone — films strongly preferred by Cannes journos will almost certainly not win the top prizes (Palme d’Or and Grand Prix). The juries live and breathe on their own planet.
Two nights ago Springsteen-Spielberg-Obama and two significant plus-ones (Michelle, Kate) had a nice late dinner at Amar Barcelona, and then graciously posed for a photo with the restaurant staff.
