Around 6:20 pm I moseyed over to a nearby picnic-type area with food trucks, shaded by pine trees and decorated with strings of little white lights. Families, couples. I ordered a pasta dish and settled into the dusky mellow. The air was nice and warm. After the pasta I felt like napping. I stretched out on a bench. When I awoke 30 or 40 minutes later it was dark out. I don’t think I’ve ever done this in Los Angeles.
It’s the end of the world! Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have tested positive for COVID-19. Why, I’m asking myself, would this horrible dead-bat Chinese virus pick on the ultimate Mr. Nice Guy? How come Sean Hannity doesn’t have it? Why not Trump? We all need to watch Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion. Or, better yet, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
My 3.9 flight to Austin meant missing the Los Angeles all-media for The Hunt. I’ll post a review of this Craig Zobel-Damon Lindelof collaboration after catching it locally tomorrow night. Here’s a response from veteran movie guy and L.A. Times contributor Lewis Beale:
“I just saw this supposedly controversial movie. The main costars are Betty Gilpin and Hillary Swank. It’s basically a straight-to-video exploitation picture — very bloody — given a thin veneer of relevance with some political content. Featuring a bunch of TV actors and other folk — Sturgill Simpson as a rapper! — who obviously did it for the paycheck (a small one, since most are onscreen for only a short period before they’re knocked off).
“It’s about how a bad joke on the part of some wokester liberals about killing Trumpsters metastasizes into a ‘thing’ with deplorable conspiracy types. This forces the liberals to act on their joke and hunt the rightwingers a la The Most Dangerous Game.
“I found it watchable but nothing more, aided in no small part by a 90-minute running time. It portrays both sides of the political equation as jerks, but any controversial content is basically non-existent. The reviews will most likely be brutal.”
From Peter Debruge’s Variety review:
“A gory, hard-R exploitation movie masquerading as political satire, one that takes unseemly delight in dispatching yahoos on both ends of the spectrum via shotgun, crossbow, hand grenade and all manner of hastily improvised weapons.
“The words ‘trigger warning’ may not have been invented with The Hunt in mind, but they’ve seldom seemed more apt in describing a film that stops just shy of fomenting civil war as it pits Left against Right, Blue (bloods) against Red (necks) in a bloody battle royale that reduces both sides to ridiculous caricatures.
“As the umpteenth variation on Richard Connell’s ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ The Hunt is [nonetheless] one of the most effective executions yet (it surpasses the Cannes-laureled Bacarau, but drags along too much baggage to best last year’s Ready or Not).
“Regardless of one’s personal political affiliations, it’s hard not to root for the victims here, and one quickly distinguishes herself from the pack of Deliverance-style caricatures: Crystal May Creesy (Gilpin), a MacGyver-skilled veteran who served in Afghanistan and whose distrust of any and everyone makes her uniquely suited for a final showdown with Athena.
Dylan Wells lives in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in South Austin. Our nabe is roughly six miles south of the hipster downtown area. As middle-class districts go it’s “pleasant” enough, but you’d have to add “culturally underwhelming.” It’s somewhere between blandly acceptable and “is that all there is?” Or so it seems, at least, to someone accustomed to walking around and sniffing the air in Brooklyn, Paris, WeHo, San Francisco, Prague, London, Venice, Munich and Rome.
South Austin is “fine” as far as it goes, but it lacks a nutritional quality. The suburbs of middle and northern New Jersey are shadier and more soothing-like, and certainly more architecturally distinctive. Ditto historic Key West and Telluride, Connecticut’s Fairfield County, the North shore of Massachusetts, Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley…I could go on and on.
In and of itself Dylan’s place is quite nice — sizable rooms, large and fragrant backyard, a sedate suburban atmosphere, great wifi, excellent TV. And it’s great to see him again, of course. And I love his husky, Rudy. And a half-mile away there’s a nice little tree-shaded area where you can order gourmet dishes from food trucks. And last night we found an above-average Vietnamese “pan Asian” place. I just wish we were parked closer to East Austin or the Mueller or Second Street districts.
I’m told that not that long ago (i.e., back in the ’80s and ’90s) South Austin had a relatively undeveloped rural atmosphere…small forests of oak trees, green fields, creeks and streams and generally pleasing aromas amid the up-and-down typography. Now the natural elements feel challenged if not smothered by an endless, character-free sprawl of bland-ugly shopping malls and gas stations (no sidewalks, nobody walks) and El Crappo discount stores.
Yesterday we drove for miles and miles and it was like “why would anyone want to live here apart from the fact that the neighborhoods are quiet and rents are reasonable?” There’s a basic feeling of blah-ness everywhere. Given my druthers I would rather live in a one-room rathole in an interesting neighborhood than in a flush spacious home in a neighborhood with a nod-out vibe.
If I had to live somewhere in Texas and couldn’t find a decent place in the downtown Austin region I’d like to live in artsy Marfa, which is way too far to drive to from here. (It’s closer to El Paso, but by “closer” I mean a three-hour drive.)
To escape the South Austin blahs we’ve decided to drive this weekend to Rockport, a beach suburb of Corpus Christi, and then stay another night in Laredo (and maybe mosey across the border for some good Mexican food).
All the gossipers are reporting that Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, who both recently costarred in Adrien Lyne‘s Deep Water, are frolicking. As previously noted Affleck looks good these days — the “fat bearded boozer” thing has fallen by the wayside. Life is always best when the aroma of possibility is in the air.
Olive drab plus bright orange…the outdoor color combo from hell. For roughly 20 years Stanley Kubrick wore this same awful, warm-weather, bundle-up hoodie, all through Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut.
Apparel-wise Kubrick never seemed to give a damn. He always dressed with a minimum of fuss and a general aversion to fashion or even style (except perhaps “workaholic nerd style”). From the late ’50s to early ’70s he wore the same dark blue suit and white shirt. And then, sometime after A Clockwork Orange, came the olive-drab hoodie.
I’ ve hated the sight of this damn jacket for decades, and I just wanted to finally say it out loud. You could almost say (i.e., not really) that on a certain level I’ve never forgiven Kubrick for this aesthetic offense. If he had worn a dark blue windreaker with wolf fur, I would have been fine with that.
I’m very sorry that Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost, which had been scheduled to debut at South by Southwest on 3.14 with a follow-up on 3.17, has taken a COV-19 torpedo along with the whole SXSW ship. Yes, Rod and I are friendly but this is nonetheless a strong, vital and worthy film, and it would have been suitably launched had things gone off as planned. Life is unfair.
Early last November I caught a not-quite-finished version. A U.S. forces-vs.-the-Taliban war flick based on Jake Tapper’s book, it’s a rousing, highly emotional drill into another tough battle that actually happened, and another example of the kind of combat flick to which we’ve all become accustomed — one in which the U.S. forces get their asses kicked and barely survive.
Tapper’s same-titled book, published in 2013, is about the ordeal of U.S. troops defending Combat Outpost Keating. Located at the bottom of a steep canyon and absurdly vulnerable to shooters in the surrounding hills, the outpost was brutally attacked by Taliban forces on 10.3.09. For a while there it was very touch-and-go. The base was nearly overrun. Eight Americans and four Afghans defenders were killed.
Staff Sergeant Clint Romesha and Specialist Ty Michael Carter (respectively played in Lurie’s film by Scott Eastwood and Caleb Landry Jones) were awarded the Medal of Honor.
The Outpost starts off, naturally enough, with a subdued queasy feeling of “okay, how long before the bad stuff starts?” What happens is that things start to go wrong vaguely, gradually, in small measures. Then it upshifts into unsettling (a name-brand actor buys it) and then bad to worse, and then worse than that. And then the bracing, teeth-rattling 30- to 40-minute finale.
Lone Survivor, Hamburger Hill, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, In The Valley of Elah, Platoon, We Were Soldiers, Pork Chop Hill — American forces go to war for questionable or dubious reasons and the troops engaged get shot and pounded all to hell. Those who barely survive are shattered, exhausted, gutted. War is bad karma.
It just occured to me that one of the things I loved about Zero Dark Thirty, which is not about the military but the intelligence community, is that it ends with a feeling of modest satisfaction — bad guy smoked, mission accomplished, all is well.
I know I was expected to feel a similar kind of satisfaction from Clint Eastwood‘s Heartbreak Ridge, but I didn’t.
Variety‘s Steven Gaydos, posted last November: “Thanks for calling attention to this terrific film that packs a wallop. Really an edge of the seat experience from start to finish and deeply moving as well. Very Charge of the Light Brigade in that ‘military intelligence’ once again proves oxymoronic and brave young souls are left to figure a way to save each other from catastrophe. Heroes.”
It would appear that Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz‘s Antebellum (Lionsgate, 4.24) is a female-branded revisiting of Twelve Years A Slave by way of H.G. Wells. Successful author Veronica Henley (Janelle Monae) suddenly becomes a slave in the cotton fields after time-travelling back to the Antebellum pre-Civil War South. The trailer tells us, however, that it’s Veronica’s fate “to save us from our past.” So she’s going to overturn slavery in the same way that Rod Taylor lead an Eloi rebellion against the Morlocks? Or lead a Spartacus-like revolt a la Birth of a Nation? Or maybe a little Harriet action? Or transport her plantation pallies back to 2020 and find them jobs in online publishing?
The Daily Beast is reporting that “some” employees of the Hachette Book Group “walked out” of the publisher’s U.S. offices today in protest of the company’s decision to publish Apropos of Nothing, a new memoir by Woody Allen. According to the story, this cabal of #MeToo blacklisters has “been furious” with a decision by Hachette imprint Grand Central Publishing to release Allen’s book “despite allegations that Allen molested his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow.”
This is why everyone hates the wokester Khmer Rouge and the whole cancel-culture mentality. Because they’re totalitarian brutes at heart, and because in this instance they (the Hachette squad that walked out, I mean) are illogically opposed to what is indicated by the facts. This is one instance in which “believe the victim” is a highly questionable guideline.
Here, for the 19th time, is the HE argument:
(1) There is no evidence to support Dylan’s claim. But there’s a fair amount of evidence and ample indications that Mia Farrow, enraged by Woody’s romance with Soon-Yi Previn, made it all up to “get” Woody during an early ’90s custody battle, and as part of this determination coached Dylan to make the claims that she did. I happen to personally believe this scenario. There’s simply no rational, even-handed way to side with the “I believe Dylan Farrow” camp.
(2) If after reading Moses Farrow’s 5.23.18 essay (“A Son Speaks Out“) as well as Robert Weide’s “Q & A with Dylan Farrow” (12.13.17) and Daphne Merkin’s 9.16.18 Soon-Yi Previn interview…if after reading these personal testimonies along with the Wikipedia summary of the case you’re still an unmitigated Dylan ally…if you haven’t at least concluded there’s a highly significant amount of ambiguity and uncertainty in this whole mishegoss, then I don’t know what to say to you. There’s probably nothing that can be said to you.
(3) Excerpt from Yale–New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic report (issued in 1993): “It is our expert opinion that Dylan was not sexually abused by Mr. Allen. Further, we believe that Dylan’s statements on videotape and her statements to us during our evaluation do not refer to actual events that occurred to her on August 4th, 1992.
(4) “In developing our opinion we considered three hypotheses to explain Dylan’s statements. First, that Dylan’s statements were true and that Mr. Allen had sexually abused her; second, that Dylan’s statements were not true but were made up by an emotionally vulnerable child who was caught up in a disturbed family and who was responding to the stresses in the family; and third, that Dylan was coached or influenced by her mother, Ms. Farrow. While we can conclude that Dylan was not sexually abused, we can not be definite about whether the second formulation by itself or the third formulation by itself is true. We believe that it is more likely that a combination of these two formulations best explains Dylan’s allegations of sexual abuse.”
I’m sorry but I found Guiseppe Capotondi‘s The Burnt Orange Heresy strangely sodden and downish. I didn’t hate it and actually respected it for what it is — a heart of darkness tale about the wealthy and insincere. It’s a “good” film, I suppose **, but I’ll never watch it again. I felt vaguely drained when it ended.
It basically left me uncharmed and un-intrigued and wondering who would be so bone stupid as to try and dispose of a body in three or four feet of water? And in the daytime yet! And who, for that matter, would allow a certain dangerous fingerprint to be seen and inspected and wondered about by untold hundreds or thousands of art-gallery browsers?
Based on the same-titled 1971 book by Charles Willeford (who also wrote Miami Blues), Heresy is a kind of moral depravity drama about the fine fakery of art or the artfulness of fine fakery. Art forgery, pretension, specious assessments that persuade certain wealthy people to part with immense sums for this or that object d’art, empty myth and the general film-flammery of it all…fuck all or fuck off or whatever.
It’s basically a four character thing, and all it does, really, is hover. It never lands (not really) or generates much in the way of intrigue or suspense. It does give you a certain queasy feeling. Which is something.
The main protagonists, Milan-based art critic James Figueras (Claes Bang) and a watchful Minnesota tourist named Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki) are, for lack of a better term, the main protagonists. They meet at the very beginning and quickly fuck, and before you know it are cruising west in Figueras’ Range Rover to visit the super-wealthy Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) at his Lake Como villa.
Figeuras has an ethically questionable past, it seems, and Cassidy has discovered this, which is why he’s invited the Man from Milan to discuss a slightly dicey proposition.
A bearded J.D. Salinger-like painter named Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland) lives on the grounds nearby, and Cassidy wants Figueras to steal one of his fabled paintings, even though Debney hasn’t sold or even shown any paintings in years. (He’s painted a few but has burnt them all, apparently.) And so the keenly ambitious Figueras, still with the stork-like Hollis, is soon chatting with Debney and before you know it…a surprise. A great feeling of disappointment, in fact, that knocks Figueras for a loop.
And before you know it there is great anger, flames, a forgery, a sudden disappearance, a death by stupidity (the victim, I mean, is too stupid to understand that expressing fierce moral outrage at an art crime is not the brightest idea when confronting the perpetrator) and a certain after-feeling of “uh-oh, I wasn’t smart enough to play my cards in such a way that I won’t get caught.”
Jagger gives the most amusing and flavorful performance. That Cheshire cat grin of his. I loved Bang in The Square and this time…well, he’s good enough. I didn’t get the wonderfulness of Debicki when I saw her in Widows, and I still don’t. Sutherland is okay as the reclusive painter but he doesn’t (i.e, isn’t allowed to) radiate much.
There isn’t a huge amount of Lake Como footage, but what little I saw I enjoyed. I’ve never actually been there — the closest I came was when I visited the nearby Locarno Film Festival in ’03. It was in the middle of a brutal heat wave, and the boys and I swam in Lago Maggiore every day.
** It doesn’t stink.
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