Variety‘s Peter Debruge, filed from Park City, on Benh Zeitlin‘s Wendy: “Eight long years after Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin brings that same rust-bottomed sense of magical realism to the legend of Peter Pan, reframing J.M. Barrie’s Victorian classic through the eyes of the eldest Darling.
“Wendy, as the indie-minded, not-quite-family-film is aptly titled, re-envisions its title character as a working-class kiddo raised at a whistle-stop diner, who witnesses one of her young friends disappearing on a passing freight train and a few years later decides to follow it to the end of the line, where runaway urchins don’t age and the Lost Boys live like The Lord of the Flies.
“Although the director’s feral energy and rough-and-tumble aesthetic make an inspired match for a movie about an off-the-grid community doing everything it can to resist outside change (that was essentially the gist of Beasts as well), cinema has hardly stood still since Zeitlin’s last feature.
“What felt so revolutionary in 2012 is no less visionary today, but packs a disappointing sense of familiarity this time around, like tearing open your Christmas presents to find … a huge stack of hand-me-down clothing. Or else, like watching a magic trick performed a second time from a different angle.
“While it’s a positive thing to get a more progressive Peter Pan story — with Peter as a Caribbean child and Wendy as a more proactive protagonist — the movie’s a bit too intense, and more than a little too arty, to suit young audiences.
“Sometimes there’s God…so quickly!” — Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams‘ A Streetcar Named Desire.
With Sam Mendes having won the top prize at the 72nd DGA Awards, 1917 is back in the saddle as most likely winner of the Best Picture Oscar. The Academy members who’ve been saying “yes, Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite is a very good film but take it easy” are throwing their hats in the air and popping champagne bottles as we speak.
If Bong had won the DGA trophy I would be hyperventilating and breathing into a paper bag.
Wiki excerpt: Vincente Minnelli and John Houseman‘s The Bad and the Beautiful (’52) “was shot as Tribute to a Bad Man, but the studio (Dore Schary‘s MGM) began to worry it would be mistaken for a western.
“The title was changed to The Bad and the Beautiful at the suggestion of MGM’s head of publicity Howard Dietz, who took it from F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“Houseman called it a ‘dreadful title…a loathsome, cheap, vulgar title.’ But when the film became successful “it seemed like one of the greatest titles anyone had ever thought of,” he admitted. “It’s certainly been imitated enough: anytime anybody’s hard up for a title, they just take two adjectives and string them together with an ‘and’ in between.”
More wiki: “At the time of the film’s release, stories about its basis caused David O. Selznick — whose real life paralleled in some respects that of the ‘father-obsessed independent producer’ Jonathan Shields — to have his lawyer view the film and determine whether it contained any libelous material.
“Shields is thought to be a blend of Selznick, Orson Welles and Val Lewton. Schary said Shields was a combination of “David O. Selznick and as yet unknown David Merrick.”
“Lewton’s CatPeople is clearly the inspiration behind the early Shields-Amiel film DoomoftheCatMen.
“[Lana Turner‘s] Georgia Lorrison character is the daughter of a ‘great profile’ actor like John Barrymore (Diana Barrymore’s career was in fact launched the same year as her father’s death), but it can also be argued that Lorrison includes elements of Minnelli’s ex-wife Judy Garland.
“Gilbert Roland‘s Gaucho may almost be seen as self-parody, as he had recently starred in a series of Cisco Kid pictures. The character’s name, Ribera, would also seem to give a nod also to famed Hollywood seducer Porfirio Rubirosa.
“The director Henry Whitfield (Leo G. Carroll) is a ‘difficult’ director modeled on Alfred Hitchcock, and his assistant Miss March (Kathleen Freeman) is modeled on Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville.
Jon Stewart‘s Irresistable (Focus Features, 5.29) is about a small-town mayoral election that is ramped up and complicated by big-city tactics and pricey consultants.
Right away I was reminded of Daniel Petrie‘s Welcome to Mooseport (’04), a political satire that costarred Ray Romano and (in his last screen role) Gene Hackman.
In Stewart’s film a hotshot campaign strategist (Steve Carell) decides to assist a retired ex-Marine colonel/farmer (Chris Cooper) in a run for mayor. Things turn brutal and scrappy with the emergence of a carniverous Republican rival (Rose Byrne).
Directed and written by Stewart. Costarring Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace, Natasha Lyonne, CJ Wilson, Will Sasso.
Last night Parasite maestro Bong Joon-ho sat for a Santa Barbara Film Festival interview with THR‘s Scott Feinberg. Brad Pitt drew a lot more people the night before last, but whaddaya expect? Plus Feinberg asked the right questions. A splendid time was had by all.
Besides being a brilliant director, Bong is a total film monk with an encyclopedic mind — he knows as much about Budd Boetticher, Samuel Fuller and Ida Lupino as any effete film nerd you could name (Glenn Kenny and David Ehrlich included). And so your heart goes out to him. His English is rudimentary (he mostly spoke in Korean with a translator by his side), but he’s sharp and articulate and often amusing. Feinberg didn’t ask Bong if he gets high (or if he uses a bong when he does), but he’d be a good guy to get ripped with.
Bong Joon-ho is a serious Hitchcock-DePalma devotee who knows sophisticated film language and choreography like the back of his hand, but let’s be honest — his instincts as a storyteller and scenarist are broad and populist-popcorny. Whammo visual impact elements (look at how gifted and clever I am!) always come first. He’s not Christian Mungiu.
This was HE’s final SBIFF dog-and-pony show. I’ll be pushing on at 11 am and heading back to West Hollywood. Thanks for much to Roger Durling, Sunshine Sachs p.r. and the first-rate SBIFF staffers who make this festival run so smoothly and efficiently.
Producer pally to HE: “We all know that Sundance has changed. The exciting, culture-defining current and buoyancy are long gone. I used to enjoy Sundance despite its rigors. But that was another time.
“Attacking Sundance in your column for the umpteenth time not only isn’t going to make any big difference, and at some point what it will do is finally exhaust your readers so much that they will turn away, stop reading, and leave.
“You’ve made your point. Now stop. Just cover what you think is relevant and stop attacking the festival. Remember that no matter what the festival may represent today” — i.e., the spirit of HUAC of the late ’40s and early ’50s, except persecuting white guys instead of commies — “there are filmmakers there who have worked for years and given up much to fulfill their dream of getting their film made and seen there, and they should at least should be appreciated.”
“Conversations with buyers and sellers point to a lack of obvious star power in the slate of pictures available for acquisition. It could well be a quiet market, meaning that the sums could be modest with dealmaking for most films lingering beyond the festival.”
Translation: Who wants to pay serious money for feminist slash POC slash LGBTQ wokester films that will stream and quicken no pulses and then vaporize?
Distribution chief quoted by Fleming: “All of us used to come to Sundance making bids that were based on estimates of what a movie might gross, and how much money it would cost to market it, and wins and losses were determined by subtracting purchase price. Now, it’s impossible to grade these films that are acquired by the streamers, because box-office is about the least important metric. It has become very difficult to compete when one of them really wants a film.”
Blaine, she says, is a little too taciturn and reserved, and that “a lot of modern audiences, particularly younger people, don’t even get what happened. Younger people don’t get it because he has such a tough outer shell.”
[Partial paraphrasing]: “Jimmy Stewart would have let us see the hurt. We need to feel [Blaine’s] inner struggle…he doesn’t articulate that, the dilemma he has, the weight of the world’s fate on his shoulders…we don’t see what’s going on behind the mask…we have to read between the lines quite a bit. Bogart won’t let us feel his pain.”
Earth to Chamberlain: It’s precisely because Blaine’s true feelings are buried under a crusty and cynical shell that the character is so memorable. The whole film would collapse if Blaine were to weep and quake with pain a la George Bailey on the snow-covered bridge in It’s A Wonderful Life.
Does Chamberlain believe that the finale of Only Angels Have Wings would have been more satisfying if Cary Grant‘s character had unloaded emotionally like Tom Cruise does at the end of Jerry Maguire? I wonder.
Brad Pitt coronation night at the Santa Barbara Film Festival…a real movie star comes to town, and the waters part. Oh, to touch the hem of the robe! To be close, to witness, to savor the aroma! The Gilbert & Sullivan ring of it all…the Major Miraculous Magnificent Maltin Modern Master Award! Every last Arlington seat filled. The longest lines, the loudest cheers and squeals.
Brad was loose, casual, obliging…a modest and self-effacing Lancelot. Interviewer Leonard Maltin didn’t elicit a single opinion from the 56 year-old actor, producer and Oscar nominee. The questions were mostly trite, fawning and obsequious (“How was working with so-and-so? How did you find your character? Did you attend the Oscar ceremony that year? How did you get to be such a wonderful movie star?”). And Pitt played along at every turn.
Pitt said he “made a few enemies” during the making of Moneyball — Steven Soderbergh and who else? He really admires Robert Redford‘s subtle acting, and recalled that during the making of A River Runs Through It Redford told him to “never exhale” when the cameras are rolling “because you’re letting all the energy out…you’re letting it escape.”
Interviewer-author Leonard Matlin, Brad Pitt at finale of last night’s event.
HE declaration: I’ll aways be in awe of Pitt’s wonderfully layered Billy Bean performance. Relaxed and anxious at the same time, and also mysterious on a certain level. He’ll probably never top it. Second favorite all-time performance: The couch stoner in True Romance.
Pitt said he turned down the Neo role in The Matrix — “I took the red pill.” (Was that before or after Will Smith passed on it?) His verbally indecipherable Irishman in Snatch was deliberate as far as director Guy Ritchie was concerned — audiences not being able to understand most of what he said was part of the deal.
HE questions if I’d been in Maltin’s seat: (a) Do you agree that Hollywood actors have to lead the fight against the wearing of “whitesides” and gold-toe socks, or are you non-committal on that front?; (b) Whom do you like among the Democrats running right now, and why? (c) What are the most interesting attitudinal differences between your generation and that of your kids?; (d) What are the three performances you’re proudest of? (e) Which performance, if any, would you like people to forget about, or at least put into a sealed box?; (f) What’s changed since you embraced sobriety, and what’s your craziest drinking-days story?; (g) Do you still get ripped or have you left that behind also?; (h) You’ve met or worked with just about everyone in the industry — who in your judgment is the most under-appreciated or the least understood?; (i) Have you ever sampled any of Harrison Ford‘s cooking? (j) What is your favorite exotic getaway spot, and why?; (k) What kind of motorcycle do you own, and do you have a problem with the term “rumblehog” when it comes to describing large European-style scooters with leather saddlebags and carrying cases?; (l) What are your favorite comfort-blanket movies?; (m) Two or three of your favorite albums or recording artists?; (n) You’ve said you value the idea of speaking dialogue in a clear and easily understood way — what’s your opinion of actresses who lean on vocal fry, uptalk and sexy baby voices?
If you know anything about Martin Scorsese, you know that guilty Catholicism and anxious conversations with God are always embedded somewhere in the fabric of his films, going all the way back to Mean Streets and up through Silence and The Irishman. You also know that The Irishman is basically a 209-minute church service in a cavernous cathedral, and that it’s basically about Marty considering the mortal coil and looking to come to terms with who he is and where he came from, and particularly his decades of immersion in the gangster realm.
For The Irishman is the great, grand finale in the serial Scorsese crime saga that began 47 or 48 years ago — Mean Streets (young Little Italy hustlers), Goodfellas (Queens mob guys in their 30s and 40s), Casino (middle-aged Vegas guys funded by Kansas City mob), The Departed (Boston bad guys) and The Wolf of Wall Street (flamboyant white-collar sharks).** And now the last testament.
The Irishman is about karma and regret and dubiously going through life with your head down and not letting any airy-fairy or side-door considerations get in the way. It’s also about “the hour is nigh” as well as “good God, what have I done?” Who out there (and I’m talking to you, Academy members) hasn’t considered that question while lying in bed at 3:30 am and staring at the ceiling?
SPECIAL HE ADVERTORIAL:
Can we just blurt it out? The Irishman is Marty’s acknowledgment-of-death film. An acceptance of the inevitable mixed with currents of regret and trepidation. The New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane said it several weeks ago — it’s “Wild Strawberries with handguns.”
Which is why some Millennials and GenZ types don’t feel as reverential toward The Irishman as 40-and-up viewers. Because many of them have this notion that the cloaked visitor is so far away that they might as well be immortal. Why not, right? I remember that attitude.
Scorsese is surely our greatest and most nominated director, yet he’s only won a single Oscar and ironically for a film he made with dexterity and efficiency but which he regarded at the time as a generic exercise — The Departed. The Irishman, by contrast, is Marty through and through…DNA, fingerprints, history, obsessions, personality.
Plus The Irishman contains 11 or 12 master-class performances. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Stephen Graham, Marin Ireland and the nearly wordless Anna Paquin are the stuff of instant relish and extra-level pulverizing. Not to mention Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Kathrine Narducci, Domenick Lombardozzi as “Fat Tony” Salerno, Sebastian Maniscalco as “Crazy Joe” Gallo, etc. Everyone in this film is perfect. The awareness that you’re watching actors giving performances goes right out the window almost immediately. You’re just there and so are they. And then it’s all one thing.
Movie Godz to Academy members: We understand that no one is perfect and that you all have a lot on your minds, and that many of you observe the age-old habit of raising your damp finger to the wind before voting for Best Picture. You’d like to vote for what you sincerely regard as 2019’s Best Film, but at the same time you don’t want to stand alone. We get it. We’ve been there.
But of course, you won’t be standing alone if you vote for The Irishman. You’ll be with us, the fathers of the realm. Along with the ghost of Howard Hawks, who knew a thing or two about what made good mustard and what didn’t.
What a difference five years can make! From “Sundance Chest Fever,” posted on 1.19.15:
“Each and every year Sundance is almost nothing but a blast — a pulsing spiritual high in terms of the films, conversations, events, parties, press conferences and the generally up-with-everyone-and-everything Park City vibe. This is my 20th anniversary of attending …no, wait, the 21st. But I’d be a lying Polyanna if I said that various irritations don’t pop through all the same. Goes with the territory.
“Young guys who run around in shorts and sneakers without socks, for example. Or those absolutely awful people who work at 350 Main, the most unfriendly restaurant in town. Gangs of party people who trudge up and down Main Street. (I generally despise groups of people in any situation…’are you afraid to walk alone or with a friend? Do you need the feeling or power and protection that comes from being part of a small mob?’) The coldest, draftiest hotel lobby in the world inside the Yarrow. Townies. People who laugh too long and loudly in screenings (‘All right, it’s funny, I agree…but take it easy’). The 20-something party gah-gahs who hang out in packs in front of Tatou and Harry O’s each and every night. Groups of 20-something women who shriek and squeal in bars and cafes.
“And most of all, those amazingly vacant facial expressions on ski enthusiasts — the ultimate nowhere people of the Wasatch. Whenever I see skiiers clump onto a shuttle bus I mutter to myself, ‘The coolest festival in the country is happening right now and you guys are here to ski?'”
The title of this post is a shard of dialogue from what 1966 film?
I didn’t listen to Bill Maher’s 1.17 visit to the Joe Rogan Experience (#1413) until last night. Watch or listen away, but it doesn’t get really good until 52:56 when Rogan says we’re all living “in such a strange time.” Here’s an mp3 that I captured, and here’s a partial transcript.
Maher: “I feel at times, and I’m sure you do too, like a man without a country. There’s a group of us — Sam Harris, people you’ve had on, Jordan Peterson, Bari Weiss. We’re all progressives, but sensible progressives. Real progressives — not blindly ideological. And we don’t chase these virtue signallers who are always…as a friend of mine said, they wake up offended.
“And I am always reading a story — like daily — I read something, and what goes through my mind is that this country is now completely binary. Two camps, totally trible. You’re either red or blue. Liberal or conservative. And you have to own anything that anyone says from your side. People go “oh, you’re the party of…” So whenever there’s something on the left that’s cuckoo krazy, we all own it.
“And that’s one reason why Trump won. Because when you go through the polling, people [in the right-leaning middle and the right] are not oblivious to his myriad flaws. What they love about him…what they all say they love is that he isn’t politically correct. It’s hard to measure how much people have been choking on political correctness. They do not want to walk on eggshells. They don’t want to think that one little misstep and they’ll get fired, get castigated.
“These are not just famous people but regular people. And I think when someone reads stories [about this syndrome], and it’s an eye-roll. An eye-roll at the left. That’s when you lose people.
“Two weeks ago the N.Y. Giants, my football team, cut Janoris Jenkins because he used the “r” word. Do we have to say the “r” word? [“Retard”] He was cut from the team. First he said ‘I though it was a ‘hood thing.’ Maybe Jinoris Jenkins didn’t get the memo. Because he’s not on Twitter 24/7 and living with the wokesters, that you don’t do this anymore. There’s no room any more for someone just to say ‘oh, I didn’t realize…sorry, my bad’ and then move on with our lives. No — you’re cancelled, you’re cut, you’re irredeemable. And it’s ridiculous.
“And every day there’s some story like that, and it just all goes into the left wing bin, and that’s when people go, ‘You know what? Trump’s an asshole and I don’t like him but I don’t want to live in that [woke punitive] world. Because these [woke] people are even fucking crazier.’ And that is the great danger [that may lead] to reelecting [Trump]. And he very well may do it.”
“As the country embarks on only the third impeachment trial of a president in its history, there are many unique features about this moment, but one stands out for me: Never before have we had to confront a president who lies as he breathes and is backed by a political party and an entire cable TV-led ecosystem able and enthusiastic to create an alternative cognitive universe that propagates those lies on an unlimited scale.
“It is disheartening, disorienting and debilitating.
“How can the truth — that Donald Trump used taxpayer funds to try to force the president of Ukraine to sully the reputation of Joe Biden, a political rival — possibly break through this unique trifecta of a president without shame, backed by a party without spine, reinforced by a network without integrity?”
