When I think of Bela Tarr, I mostly think of Robert Koehler insisting over and over (in print and in conversations) what a magnificently austere, ground-breaking filmaker he was.
Honestly? I’ve only seen one of Tarr’s films — The Turin Horse (2011), which is composed of 30 long takes. No one can ever accuse that film of looking or feeling fake. It has to do with grimness, banality and animal cruelty. It was shot between 2008 and 2010.
I met Tarr once in Hollywood, around 14 or 15 years ago during an AFIFest. He was hanging with a film-critic friend or two, and smiling quite heartily.
Tarr always looked 15 years older than his calendar years. When he was in his mid to late 50s, he looked 70. When he turned 70, he looked 85.
“What is the basis of Denmark’s territorial claim? Obviously Greenland should be part of the United States. Military action? Greenland has a population of 30,00 people, Jake.”” — Stephen Miller to Jake Tapper earlier today.
HE to Miller: Greenland’s actual population is around 56.5 thousand, give or take.
Wiki: “Most residents of Greenland are Inuit, and it’s the least densely populated country in the world. The population is concentrated mainly on the southwest coast. Greenland is socially progressive, like metropolitan Denmark; education and healthcare are free, and LGBTQ rights in Greenland are some of the most extensive in the world”…not if Trump takes over!
My first viewing was without subtitles, and I couldn’t understand a fecking word. I have a general aversion to dark medieval dramas in which main characters don’t take baths or even given themselves whore baths. Sorry, but I have my standards.
Timothee Chalamet to Marty Supreme director Josh Safdie: “Josh, you made a story about a flawed man with a relatable dream, and you didn’t preach to the audience about what’s right and wrong. And I think we should all be telling stories like that.”
But of course, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Anotherdid preach to the audience “about what’s right and wrong”, and look where that got him! Gloriously brave POC girlbosses vs. racist, constipated, starched-fatigue, Christmas Adventurer asshats like Sean Penn‘s Colonel Lockjaw. No ambiguity about the identity of the good guys and bad guys there…no sir!
Last night I finally watched Morgan Neville’s Breakdown: 1975 (12.19.25), a 92-minute Netflix doc that hurriedly recaps and, in a sense, celebrates the fertile and provocative moviescape of the mid ’70s. Glorious times!
Except Neville doesn’t strictly focus on 1975 films. The doc covers ’74, ’75 and ’76, during which, Neville asserts, the real meat and marrow of New Hollywood came to fruition. But every so often the early ’70s pop through and then, at the end, the ’77 finale (Rocky, StarWars) is heard from.
Plus anyone who had hit puberty by the late ’60s or who’s read Mark Harris‘s “Pictures at a Revolution” or Peter Biskind‘s “Easy Riders, Raging bulls” knows that New Hollywood was launched in ’67 with The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde.
So let’s cut the crap — Breakdown: 1975 is really about the whole span of the mythical New Hollywood era. Neville should’ve called it Rough-and-Tumble ’70s Free-For-All! or Hollywood Neverland: When The Inmates Ran The Asylum or something in that vein.
The problem is that Breakdown: 1975 is generally too fast and loose and simple-minded — it just skims along and barely gets into any nitty-gritty specifics. It’s primarily aimed at your none-too-bright kids who are too lazy or ADD-afflicted to have paid the slightest attention to what Harris and Biskind were on about.
Is it a good thing that Neville has made a dumbed-down primer for younger folks (Millennials, Zoomers, Gen Alpha) who haven’t a clue about films that were made before the 1980s? Okay, yeah, I suppose.
As I watched Neville’s doc I recalled that the same basic saga was concisely passed along in Spotlight on New Hollywood (‘24), a 15-minute Criterion Channel essay that was offered last summer as a supplement to Criterion’s streaming of The Graduate.
Why can’t “Spotlight on New Hollywood” be offered as a stand-alone video essay on YouTube? That’s what I’m basically asking here. It would be terrific if readers of this piece could savor it.
The truth is that in 15 minutes Spotlight on New Hollywood delivers a much better, tighter, more sophisticated history of this fabled era than Neville, whom I know, respect and admire, manages in 92 minutes.
Such a shame that Harris’s 15-minute essay has been sent to the Criterion dustbin. Unless I’m missing something.
Message from VRBO guy repping the rental of the rue Etats Unis pad that was confirmed yesterday: “Oops!…sorry! That rental you locked in ($2300 for eleven days) is dated and therefore invalid because the owner’s greed has soared over the last several months. You can still rent it, but it’ll cost you an extra grand…hah!”
..by walking away from the Avatar franchise here and now…as the Ayatollah Rock ‘n’ Rollah said in The Road Warrior, “Just walk away.” Just say no to all that easy Avatar money you could earn, Jim, and make something new and fresh and real. Let someone else direct the subsequent Avatar chapters. Move on with your life, bruh. Just do it.
Trump Mussolini likes N.Y. Mayor Zohran Mamdani (chemistry, paternal admiration for a young go-getter) but he has a gut dislike for Venezuela’s Maria Machado, the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner who won (by proxy) à landslide victory against Nicholas Maduro in 2024.
…to split the top two awards between Best Picture and Best Director.
Going with One Battle After Another for Best Picture meant they could / should have gone with Marty Supreme‘s Josh Safdie for Best Director. Or vice versa — Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Director and MartySupreme–ola for Best Picture. At least that.
No one would dispute that both films, cultural period pieces with stylistic fervor and punchy technique, are prime examples of big-swing auteurist audacity.
I’veneverarguedthat OBAA, craft-wise, doesn’thaveexcellentchops — it’sthetribal rigidityofitssocialscheme (French75girlbossesbrave and radiant, Sean Penn‘sLockjawready to murder his own daughter over racial derangement) thatbringsitdown. Supreme, tomeandmanyothers, isobviouslymoreof a sweepingvisionthing…acommanding, heebie–jeebieknockout.
Instead these obsequious little Critics Choice go-alongers have totally kowtowed to OBAA…Best Picture plus Best Director. Lefty circus elephants…no balls, no vision, no backbone.
At least Supreme‘s Timothee Chalamet won for Best Actor….deserved! Ditto Jessie Buckley‘s Best Actress trophy for Hamnet.
MethinkstheBest Picture votemighthavebeenclose. If One Battle After Another had been an overwhelming favorite Benicio del Toro or Sean Penn would have won for Best Supporting Actor, no? But they didn’t. Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi snatched it away.
Handing their Best Original Screenplay award to Ryan Coogler for Sinners, a bloody, pulpy, under-lighted AIP exploitation flick (musical vampires, the primal joy of cunnilingus, machine-gunning the KKK) instead of giving it to Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier for their obviouslyexquisite Sentimental Value script was truly embarassing….totally driven by identity politics**. Where is the virtue signalling in saluting a pair of white Norwegians?
** If Clem Yeehaw had written the Sinners screenplay, there’s no way it would’ve been nominated.
