Daily

While chatting earlier today on the Armchair Expert podcast, Quentin Tarantino announced that he’s bought the beloved Vista Theatre — an historic 98-year-old venue between the Los Feliz and Silverlake regions of Los Angeles. The single-screen, 400-seat Vista is easily the most attractively designed and aesthetically pleasing commercial theatre in Los Angeles. It’s a work of art.

I’ve just realized I haven’t been to the Vista since catching a special midnight screening of Jennifer Kent‘s The Babadook on 12.7.14, which included a special introduction by William Friedkin.

With the Vista still shuttered by the pandemic, Tarantino said “we’ll probably open it up around Christmas time.”

HE to QT: Why six months from now? Why not Labor Day, which is eight weeks hence? Theatrical is bouncing back — why wait for six months? Failing that, why not October 1st? What do you need to do to the place improvement-wise? It’s been in reasonably good shape for several years now, no?

Tarantino stressed that like The New Beverly, the Vista will show “only film…it won’t be a revival house…we’ll show new movies that come out where they give us a film print. It’s not going to be like the New Beverly [Cinema]. The New Beverly has its own vibe. The Vista is like a crown jewel kind of thing. We’ll show older films, but it will be like you can hold a four-night engagement.”

What he seems to be saying is that The Vista will present films that will combine the aesthetic of (a) the current Westside Pavillion Landmark, but only if the distributor supplies a 35mm print, and (b) the Nuart, which sometimes will show older films along with European or Xtreme indie fare. Yes, 35mm prints of new films are still being made (or so I hear) but Tarantino knows that distributors are more or less out of the 35mm celluloid business, and that it’s

HE to QT: The New Beverly’s film-only policy is cool on one level, but a dying sentimental fetish on another. It’s fine to insist on a pure-celluloid experience, and being able to show (and savor) a mint-condition print can be wonderful thing. But it can just as easily be a drag. Digital is the way of things now, and there’s something needlessly stubborn about insisting that film is the only way to go.

Every time I contemplate going to the New Beverly, I think back to a seven-year-old showing of the ’62 Mutiny on the Bounty. I wrote about this in a 7.16.14 post titled “New Beverly Pits“:

“I imagined that Marlon Brando’s Bounty might look better than I expected, and so, like a moron, I went there tonight and took a seat in the second row. It looked like dogshit. Dupey, brownish tones, substandard projection lighting (I’d say around 8 foot lamberts, or 6 lower than the ASCAP standard) and nowhere near wide enough. The New Beverly doesn’t even present a true Scope aspect ratio (i.e., 2.35:1). It looked to me like 2.25:1.

Read more

Just exited a Zola screening (8:50 pm start) at the Landmark. Stripper saga + road + relationship movie + oddball humor here and there and finessed with absolute assurance…FIRST RATE..all hail director Janicza Bravo.

Pic is an immediate top-tenner. So much more gripping and fascinating than I expected. The focus was constantly “on” and I was fully in the grip — knew it was aces almost immediately. Taylour Paige and Riley Kehoe own this fucking movie. And that tall skinny 20something guy (Nicholas Braun) plus the 50ish pimp (Colman Domingo) + costars Ari’el Stachel, Jason Mitchell, Nasir Rahim, Sophie Hal…all great.

Taut and well honed and short even…86 minutes! No moralizing, no crude impact slams, almost none of the usual cliches, never touches (much less explores) the wallowing realm. An almost perfect film for what is, what it aims at. I’m delighted that it turned out this well. (posted from iPhone)

Friendo: “It sounds like a very 2021 movie…one that no one would ever dare criticize. But yet it does. It has some dissenters on RT:m. Not many, but some.”

“Someone asked me once where I thought my resilience came from. I hesitated, then said, ‘For women, too often, I think what we mistake as resilience is actually just endurance.’ I don’t know if my endurance has served me well. It takes a special kind of endurance to look at the train barreling down the tracks and say, ‘But what if it doesn’t hit me this time?'”

— from Kelly Sundberg‘s “Some People Flip Real Estate — I Flip Men,” posted in the N.Y. Times on 7.2.21.

Copies at Amoeba (I’m told, didn’t get there). Book Soup was closed; sold out at Barnes & Noble at The Grove. The NewBev was my last resort…success!

From Dwight Garner’s 6.28 N.Y. Times review:

Seven or eight days ago I mentioned that World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy was polling critics on the five best films of 2021. My top five, submitted to Ruimy later that day, were Thomas Anders Jensen’s Riders of Justice, Jasmila Zbanić‘s Quo Vadis, Aida?, Simon Stone‘s The Dig, Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, and Jon Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s In The Heights.

I waffled later that night and deleted In The Heights in favor of Michel Franco‘s New Order.

I had a testy conversation with God that night. It was actually more of a threat than a debate. “All I can say is that Ruimy’s critics had better not vote In The Heights into the top slot,” I warned. “That wouldn’t be fair or right. It would be, in fact, hugely depressing, as it would be seen as a sympathetic bro hug from critics who’d approved of Chu and Miranda’s film only to see it dramatically underperform at the box-office and also disappoint as an HBO Max streamer.”

Yesterday Ruimy published the results of his poll, based on the preferences of more than 100 critics, and Quo Vadis, Aida? emerged as the top vote-getter. “Thank God,” I blurted out, although In The Heights polled a close second.

Ruimy: “Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? has been named the best movie of the first six months of 2021. Although it had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last September, the film was only released Stateside on March 5th of this year. Tackling the harrowing journey of a Bosnian UN translator torn between family and work as the Serbian army takes over her town, the film earned rave reviews and even managed to garner a Best International Feature Film Oscar nomination.

“The newly installed Oscar eligibility rules made it possible for many critics to include films such as The Father (#7) and Judas and the Black Messiah (#8) into their lists. However, one future Oscar contender that is very much a 2022 movie finished as the runner-up to this poll — John Chu’s In the Heights.”

Sha’Carri Richardson, 21, is a legendary track and field sprinter who competes in the 100 meters and 200 meters. She was all set to race in the Tokyo Olympics but now has been banned from this (or at least suspended) because she recently admitted to getting ripped once or twice, and this led to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency suspending her — obviously a silly and petty ruling on their part, given the overall.

Even stranger, however, was a reaction bv Seth Rogen, to wit: “The notion that weed is a problematic ‘drug’ is rooted in racism,” he declared. “It’s insane that Team USA would disqualify one of this country’s most talented athletes over thinking that’s rooted in hatred. It’s something they should be ashamed of.”

White House press spokesperson Jen Psaki: “We will certainly leave [the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency] the space and room to make their decisions about anti-doping policies that need to be implemented. I will also note that Sha’Carri Richardson is an inspiring young woman[who’s] gone through a lot personally’ and “happens to be one of the fastest women in the world…that’s an important part of the story as well.”

Married journo pally to HE: “We were listening to sounds in the car when up popped a tune from Tom Waits’ score for One From the Heart. I’ve always loved this bluesy/jazzy collaboration with Crystal Gayle, and have long felt that it, along with Curtis Mayfield‘s ‘Superfly,’ may be the finest song composed exclusively for a film….ever, I mean.

“Maybe your readers could have some fun with this? What’s the best song score composed exclusively for a film? Broadway shows and previously recorded works don’t count.”

HE to Married Journo Pally: Excellent topic and thanks for suggesting it, although I’m frankly mystified that you would find Waits and Gayle’s One From The Heart song and especially their performance of it…I’m dumbfounded that you find it captivating.

I’m primarily talking about Waits, a seriously respected and certainly a distinctive song stylist, but he’s always infuriated me — to me he’s always has always sounded like a slurry, drunken, degenerate bullfrog lying in the gutter. And you can never understand a word he’s singing — Waits would rather die than fall into line on that score.

Again — I’m not putting Waits down. Well, I am but at the same time I’m acknowledging that he’s revered by people who know the music realm better than I. If I was smart I’d keep my yap shut about him, but I can’t help it. He always sounds the same and does the same thing every damn time with every lyric and song — same mood, same feeling, same “whoaaagghhh!!…rejoice and soak in the hoarse and gravelly boozer sounds I’m putting out here….like Charles Bukowski I’m a man of the bottle or at least I sound like one, and I tell the truth every damn time.”

I’ve never been that much of a fan of Mayfield’s “Superfly” either — a decent early ’70s AM-radio track but calm down.

My two favorite songs written directly for the screen were created in the early ’80s, and less than three years apart.

#1 is “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” the Tina Turner song from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (’85) — lyrics by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle.

#2 is “Up Where We Belong” from Taylor Hackford‘s An Officer and a Gentleman (’82) — composed by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, lyrics by Will Jennings.

And no, I don’t care if the music snobs put me down for having shallow or banal taste in movie tunes. I recognize and respect the artistry of Tom Waits but I’ve never really liked anything he’s ever performed. Sue me but “Up Where We Belong” and “We Don’t Need Another Hero” are pleasing, arresting — they have a catchy, hook-y quality, and are well produced, and they seem to enhance the value of the films from whence they sprang.

Neither Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome or An Officer and a Gentleman are grade-A films, but…I suppose what I’m actually saying is that the songs are better than the films. They reach in and turn the tumbler.

Say it loud, repeat often: Fuck the snobs.

Oh, and speaking of banal: Bill Conti‘s main-title melody for Broadcast News [after the jump] is about as drippy and whore-ish and old-farty as it gets, but it’s well-produced and it works. I’m sorry but it does.

Read more

Does anyone remember Dave Karnes? Or more precisely Michael Shannon‘s portrayal of Karnes in Oliver Stone‘s World Trade Center (’06)?

Karnes was the ex-Marine who ducked out of his office job in Wilton, Connecticut, and drove into Manhattan on the afternoon of 9/11/01 and made it through police barriers and onto the WTC site by dinner hour, and who later found Port Authority cops John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) buried under the mashed-up rubble, and brought the rescue teams to their aid.

World Trade Center was an odd Stone film because it had nothing to “say” except (1) “McLoughlin and Jimeo sure went through hell that day”, but (2) “thank God for Karnes and his dogged persistence.” No politics, no Hollywood leftie attitude — just a straight drama about a lot of good people pulling together to save a couple of guys from the jaws of death. A movie about caring, family, duty, perseverance.

If Karnes hadn’t put on his Marine uniform and gotten himself a Marine haircut at a Stamford barbershop and driven down to Manhattan and all, it’s quite possible McLoughlin and Jimeno might not have survived. (Who knows?) Shannon portrays him as a bit of a nut, but a good kind of nut in a situation like 9/11 — a guy who laser-beams right into what needs to be done, and then does it.

Curiously, Stone decided to omit a character detail that I’ve always found really interesting. Karnes drove into Manhattan in a recently purchased Porsche 911 convertible, and at times, according to a 9.02 Slate story by Rebeca Liss, at speeds of 120 mph.

That’s a fascinating trait for a 9/11 savior — tear-assing down the Connecticut Turnpike and the Henry Hudson Parkway in a muscle car with the top down, and stopping at a McDonald’s along the way.

Why didn’t Stone show this? My theory is that he wanted Karnes to appear selfless and monk-like — a slightly loony military saint. And I think he knew this impression wouldn’t fly with audiences if he had Karnes driving a Porsche 911 because a lot of people think that guys who drive Porsches are dickheads.

But I had read about Karnes and his Porsche two or three years ago and was waiting for that shot. I felt that Stone sold Karnes short by trying to simplify him into a ex-Marine who resembled the real-deal Karnes in some ways but not entirely.