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Ari Aster’s “Disappointment Blvd.” Going to Cannes?

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According to a 6.1.20 article in the Daily Nexus (the paper of the University of California Santa Barbara), hotshot elevated horror helmer Ari Aster (Midsommar, Hereditary) offered a brief description of his next film. It was in the script stage back then but is now completed, I’ve read, and titled Disappointment Blvd.. A24 will release it later this year.

Aster: “All I know is that it’s gonna be four hours long, and [span] 17 years.” Aster has also also called it a “nightmare comedy” or “horror comedy” or words to that effect.

The presumably deceptive logline describes Disappointment Blvd. as “an intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time.” being played by Joaquin Phoenix.

For most of us, the words “starring Joaquin Phoenix” means a film about some kind of obsessive, extreme psychology or behavior…something intriguingly weird and a bit wackazoid. Phoenix used to have the ability to play normal guys but that’s gone — he’s almost a Nic Cage-like figure in the sense of being consumed by his own persona.

Disappointment Blvd.-wise, the odds strongly favor that Phoenix will play a guy who’s so internal and ultra-sensitive that he’s become paranoid and removed from the Average Joe community…this is who Joaquin is, what he’s become…a guy who plays alien locoweeds.

I’m mentioning Disappointment Blvd. because yesterday World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reported that Aster’s film is (a) “ready” and (b) “now a possibility for Cannes Film Festival competition.” If this happens, great — you know it’ll be an insane film that everyone will have fun with, and that Phoenix (if and when the film appears) will be a prime contender for the festival’s Best Actor award. Let’s just hope that Aster has somehow whittled Disappointment Blvd. down to three hours instead of four. Or better yet, two and a half. hours.

Ruimy adds that A24 might make also bring Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up to Cannes as a competition title. Another potential A24 title, he adds, could be Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter.

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“Thank You For A Very Pleasant Evening”

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Tom Hagen at Jack Woltz‘s dinner table — the 2008 Robert Harris-Gordon Willis version on top, the 2022 4K “restoration” version below. There’s nothing particularly “wrong” with preferring the 2022 version — the oranges, candles, pale amber lampshade and carved wood panelling have good color, but Hagen’s skin tone is a little pinkish…sunburn, sweat. In the 2008 version his skin has a warmer shade. More importantly, it blends in with the general color scheme of the frame. This is why I stand with the 2008 version, which Mr. Willis helped to create anyway so where’s the argument?


Son of “Godfather” Pretenders

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Originally posted on 2.1.22, then immediately paywalled: I’ve said from the beginning that casting of The Offer (4.28), the Paramount + series about the making of The Godfather, would be extra difficult because everyone knows the players so well — faces, voices, mannerisms. Each and every performance would have to deliver a masterful impersonation for the film to really work. The new trailer makes it clear this aspect was a bridge too far.

I’ll tell you right now that Dan Fogler portraying Francis Coppola in The Offer…any Fogler casting in anything is a problem as he always seems to play slovenly, dregs-of-the-gene-pool types, but casting him as Coppola is a jape, an insult. For one thing Coppola has a certain voice that Fogler doesn’t even come close to imitating, plus Coppola was a bit stocky but not a fatass.

I knew that the instant I heard Fogler-as-Coppola speak the famous line “I believe in America”…I knew right away that Fogler was the wrong guy to hire.

My second reaction was “good God, what’s happened to poor Giovanni Ribisi?” He’s turned into a beach ball! This is almost as upsetting as the Bridget Fonda thing. If he wanted to bulk up to play Joe Colombo, he could have gone with a fat suit, no?

As for Miles Teller as Godfather producer Albert Ruddy…well, he doesn’t look anything like early ’70s Ruddy, a 40ish Canadian Jew with graying hair. The 34 year-old Teller, who stepped into the role when Armie Hammer was deep-sixed and soon after caused on-set worries when he refused to be vaccinated, has dark, thick hair and seems closer to his early 30s than early 40s.

Matthew Goode as Robert Evans might be okay.

The one possibly hopeful note is that Michel Tolkin is the screenwriter. The director is Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman).

I still say that Darrell Easton’s I Believe in America is the best “making of The Godfather script” I’ve ever read.

This Again?

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According to L.A. Times film staffer Jen Yamato, the fallout from that Licorice Pizza hiccup in which succeeding Asian wives of a character named Jerry Frick (John Michael Higgins) were made into an Asian punchline…the fallout from this is “bigger than the Oscars.”

It is? Strange as that thing was, it’s over and forgotten now — the ship has sailed. Nobody cares. Oh, and who thinks the 94th Oscars are “big”? Last time I checked the buzzword was “diminished.”

Gordon Willis in Heaven: “Keep Your Mitts Off”

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Through residing in some kind of cosmic cine-realm, the spirit of Gordon Willis has nonetheless gotten wind of the ecstatic reactions to the digitally reordered 50th anniversary Godfather. I would like to think that he’s pleased about the following statement, which Willis wrote several years ago, having been posted this morning on Home Theatre Forum:

“Apparently restoring the Godfather [films] is becoming more difficult than the original task of making them.

“The main thing is to reflect on the word RESTORE, which in the simplest possible terms, means PUT IT BACK THE WAY IT WAS.

“I realize how difficult it is for people not to fall in love with ‘THE PROCESS’… whatever it might be. Digital reconstruction of the Godfather films should be held to remounting the film in its ORIGINAL visual structure.

“That means NO sharpening, NO grain reduction and NO reshaping of of the visual interpretive levels. The period work in Part 2 will be especially affected, or maybe I should say INfected.

“How this picture was shot, regarding the lighting, and the color was well thought out…don’t change it. I realize it’s everybody’s instinct to reduce or expand things to a level they understand, but the job is to PUT IT BACK THE WAY IT WAS. The tools that are available to do that now, are miraculous. They are, however a means to an end… not an end in themselves.

“These films have been made already. People working on them should give them the respect that’s necessary to bring them back to life, which means not changing one damn thing.”

A Bit Surprised, Concerned

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I didn’t stream it — I bought the 50th anniversary 4K Godfather disc late Tuesday afternoon and watched it soon after. I can’t help but approve of the novelty aspect — it may not be anyone’s idea of a classic-looking Godfather but it certainly looks spiffier — smoother, less grainy and more vivid than ever before.

Francis Coppola’s 1972 gangster classic has been tastefully de–grained (or DNR’ed), and it certainly looks wonderful during the sunny Sicily section. Love the red neon lights of the Radio City Music Hall, Jack Dempsey’s restaurant and Louis’s restaurant in the Bronx. Diane Keaton’s red overcoat and those taxicab yellows are great also, but — here’s the downside — overall flesh tones are pale and fair and even brownish at times, thus constituting a definite argument with the 2008 Robert Harris-Gordon Willis restoration, which everyone has always approved of. And closeups of the faces look a bit waxy, which is what happens with DNR-ing.

Yes, it’s an upgrade in the sense that many scenes seem sharper, crisper and more detailed than in the 2008 version, and overall this will seem quite alluring to Average Joes and even industry guys like Larry Karaszewski but it’s NOT the film that Mr. Willis, the film’s cinematographer, shot in ‘72 and approved the restoration of 14 years ago.

I didn’t care for the opening close-up and slow zoom-out of Bonasera the undertaker— his bald head seems too brightly lighted. (It looks better on the ‘08.). And yes, the bleachy, almost pinkish color scheme used for the outdoor wedding scene has been modified, which is not a change that the late Mr.Willis would have approved of.

On the other hand I was delighted with certain details and distinctions. The textures and fabrics of various suits, ties and overcoats, for example. The soothing VistaVision clarity of those 1950s marquee signs on the Las Vegas strip. But overall the ‘22 looks a little too neutralized and pale-faced. It’s fascinating in many ways, but it’s not historically authentic.

Coppola knows the truth of this situation. He knows that the newbie is an odd gleaming bird but NOT representative of the original — not really. It is, as noted, quite the dazzler and head-turner in many respects. I kept noticing little details in the 4K that I’d never noticed before. Reducing the grain really made a difference. But if I had to choose a desert-island Godfather, I’d definitely stick with the ‘08.

If GW was with us today, he’d be vagueiy amused by the determination of the Paramount video team to create fresh Godfather revenues, but he’d also say “they can do whatever the fuck they want but this is not my Godfather…it’s a DNR’ed version that’s been slightly desaturated in some ways but made to look a lot bolder in other ways, certainly in terms of neon reds. And the faces are waxy looking. Don’t get me started. It’s a version that will delight a lot of people who don’t know any better, but it’s not the real thing…sorry.”

Last night I posted a version of this review on Facebook, and in so doing provoked the afore-mentioned Mr. Karaszewski, who called me (or more precisely my views) “insufferable”.

HE reply: Gordon Willis was a tough nut & didn’t suffer fools. Did you ever chat with him? Do you know people who knew him? I spoke with him once for a thing I was writing about an All The President’s Men Bluray. Any way you slice it the man was an ARTIST, and he gave his stamp of approval to the 2008 restoration. And the newbie, while fascinating and upgraded in certain ways, is definitely a different bird. I guess you’d better call Willis “insufferable” while you’re at it.