Until I watched this clip, I’d never seen color-and-sound footage of Marlene Dietrich being interviewed. All my life she was this sparkling, glistening black-and-white figure, acting lines and presenting the classic Dietrich persona. Born in ’01, she was 70 when she sat for this interview. Nice makeup, great hair, the shape of her mouth, etc. Judgment at Nuremberg was her last substantial role. Her Christine Helm in Witness For The Prosecution might have been her most glamorous and charismatic. I never cared for her dark-haired gypsy in Touch of Evil.
I respect and admire the six films Dietrich made with Josef von Sternberg more than I actually like watching them. She was a tiny bit chubby in those films; I prefer the older, sleeker Dietrich of the late 40s and ’50s….the Dietrich who had a hot and heavy affair with Yul Brynner in the ’50s, and who also did the raunchy with Errol Flynn, George Bernard Shaw (really?), John F. Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, Michael Todd, Michael Wilding, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Frank Sinatra.
The iconic and legendary Peter Fonda (or “Peter Fondue,” as Dennis Hopper once called him) passed this morning at age 79. Now Wyatt and Billy are in biker heaven together, cruising on some two-lane blacktop somewhere in New Mexico. No, they’re not actually — death has simply paid them both a visit now, and I’m very sorry. Hugs and condolences to the Fonda family (Jane in particular), Peter’s filmmaking colleagues, friends (in Los Angeles as well as Paradise Valley, Montana) and fans.
Like anyone else Fonda had his up and down periods, his dark or fallow or inactive periods, but during the heyday of the ’60s, man, or more precisely between mid ’65 and the release of Easy Rider on 7.14.69, Peter knew the language…he knew his way around.
By HE calculations Fonda created, participated in or partly authored six culturally important events in his life.
One, when he told John Lennon that “I know what it’s like to be dead” while they were tripping (along with a few others) in a Benedict Canyon hillside home in August ’65. This inspired Lennon to write “She Said She Said.”
Two, when Fonda starred in a pair of influential mid ’60s counter-culture flicks — Roger Corman‘s The Wild Angels (’66) and The Trip (’67).
Three, when Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson re-ordered the motion picture universe with Easy Rider (’69).
Four, when Fonda directed and starred in The Hired Hand (’71), easily his finest directing effort and arguably the second best film he ever starred in.
Five, his near-perfect performance as Terry Valentine in Steven Soderbergh‘s The Limey (’97).
And sixth, his performance in Victor Nunez‘s Ulee’s Gold, which I saw at Sundance in January ’97.
Fonda was always cool if you had something to say. He was with me, at least, on three or four occasions. The first time we spoke was when I interviewed him about his Split Image role (a cult leader) for the N.Y. Post. (One of the sub-topics was Biker Heaven, a proposed sequel to Easy Rider that would have costarred Fonda and Hopper.) Then at a Toronto Film Festival party for The Limey in September ’97. The last time I saw Fonda was toward the end of a party for Silver Linings Playbook at the Chateau Marmont, six or seven years ago. You’d say whatever came to mind and Fonda would return the volley if you were making any sense.
He loved his aloof dad, Henry Fonda, and in fact told me so when we did that ’82 interview in Manhattan. Peter would look right at you and hold the stare when he said stuff like this. He had kind, trusting eyes and what seemed to me like a fairly large heart.
Not to sound like a tech plebe but I’m having trouble imagining what kind of visual enhancement or “bump” will be delivered by the latest digital RED camera, called the Komodo Dragon. The Playlist‘s Rodrigo Perezreports that Steven Soderbergh is using RED’s untested 6K Dragon ** to shoot his ôcurrently-lensing film, Let Them All Talk, which costars Meryl Streep and Gemma Chan.
I own the Criterion Bluray of Soderbergh’s two-part, 258-minute Che (’08), which was shot with a then-experimental RED digital camera. And in my uncultured, dumbfuck, outside-the-loop opinion it still looks heavenly. Last January in Park City I saw Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird, which was shot with an iPhone8 coupled with an anamorphic lens, and to my peon eyes it was pure viewing pleasure — clean, vibrant, razor sharp.
So what exactly can be achieved by the RED Komodo Dragon already? 6K, okay, but how much better can it look? (Or, as Jake Gittes said to Noah Cross, “Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat?”) It will all end up, viewing-wise, on 1080p flatscreens in people’s living rooms so…
Let Them All Talk is currently shooting in NYC “before whisking away to a remote location outside the U.S. where no one will be available to do service work on the camera at all,” Perez writes. That’s an allusion to a cruise ship (possibly the Queen Mary 2) crossing the Atlantic or whatever. A scale model of same was posted on 7.26 by “Bitchuation,” who may or may not be Soderbergh.
One likely distributor of Let Them All Talk is Netflix, which streamed High Flying Bird earlier this year and is also distributing Soderbergh’s upcoming, allegedly satiric The Laundromat in the fall.
** “Komodo seems to be RED’s new ‘affordable’ camera. From the teasers we already know it will shoot 6K video, use a Canon RF mount, CFast media, and it will have a headphone jack and a microphone input jack. The body will weigh less than 2 pounds and all the dimensions will be under 4″, which is very compact. There will be no HDMI port. The camera is supposed to work closely with HYDROGEN One phones and it will cost over $5,000 (less for HYDROGEN users).” — excerpt from cinema5d article, posted on 8.9.19.
Pete Buttigieg, the only candidate I feel truly excited about, is fourth or fifth-ranked in the polls. Typewriter Joe, way ahead in terms of likely Democratic voters, is a decent, reasonable guy but a stumbling, doddering gaffe machine who’ll be nearly 80 if and when he’s inaugurated in January 2021. The two most progressive-minded candidates, “stubborn old goat” Bernie and Elizabeth “I have a plan for that” Warren, humanist and compassionate as they are and as much as I admire them personally, probably can’t beat Trump if nominated. And the reedy-voiced Kamala Harris, all five foot two inches of her, may not have the horses either.
This is a really awful situation. I see disaster on the horizon, and it’s largely due to laziness, stubbornness and/or closet homophobia. Who the hell cares about sexual behavior? Was the fact that JFK was a hound…did that mean anything in terms of his effectiveness as a U.S. President? The worst monster in the history of the Presidency actually has a shot at re-election. Good God — it’s a slow-motion nightmare.
It bears little relation to Frank Perry‘s Diary of a Mad Housewife except for the “mad” part, and even then it’s a different kind — very Seattle-ish and 21st Century, extremely fickle and antsy and yet, for me, diverting and almost fun in a contact-high kind of way.
Bernadette was originally slated to open on 5.11.18, and then was bumped four times (11.19.18, 3.22.19, 8.9.19, 8.16.19). That’s always a sign that something’s wrong, but guess what? Linklater’s film is spotty and imperfect, but it half-works. Make that two-thirds.
This is largely because of Cate Blanchett’s nervous, neurotic, irritated performance as Bernadette Fox, a frustrated ex-architect who’s floundering and miserable because she’s given up her drafting table. As her friend Paul Jellinek (Larry Fishburne) says, “People like you must create…if not, you become a menace to society.”
And because she’s become an agoraphobe. Because she despises conventional living and the Seattle mothers sorority whom she’s expected to pal around with. She loves her daughter Bee (Emma Nelson), who’s extremely loyal and bright, and is on mildly ambivalent terms with her software-genius millionaire husband, Elgie (Billy Crudup).
Bernadette is a prickly pear (along with Frank Lloyd Wright, Howard Roark, Frank Gehry and every other architect worth his or her salt) but I understood her — I recognized a kindred spirit. And I honestly liked and related to her more when she was agitated and dismissive and hoarding medication than when she was smiling and creatively fulfilled and hugging Elgin and Bee during the South Pole finale.
Because in a way Bernadette is a cousin of Randall P. McMurphy — she’s been wounded over an architectural debacle that happened in Los Angeles, and she really hates conventional mindsets and people who cluck-cluck and go along, and there’s just no peace in her heart when it comes to most manifestations of middle-class normality.
That aside I didn’t believe that Bernadette and family would live in a 19th century, vine-covered Edgar Allen Poe mansion. Nobody would allow that much flora to cover and in fact smother their home. No architect would allow that much rot and ruination to affect his/her living space.
And it made no sense at all for a landscape architect to advise that vines and bushes be removed from a hilly area in the middle of Seattle’s rainy season.
From “Fox Feels the Pressure From Disney as Film Flops Mount,” by Variety‘s Matt Donnelly and Brent Lang: Taika Watiti‘s Jojo Rabbit, allegedly a doo-wacky, doo-wacky wah-wah satire of Nazism, “might prove a little too edgy for Disney brass accustomed to producing movies suitable for parents and kids. Searchlight has started to screen the film for its new parent company. Halfway through one recent viewing one [Disney] executive grew audibly uncomfortable, worrying aloud that the material would alienate Disney fans. His unease may have been over the film’s cutting-edge satire, but it was also an expression of the culture clash taking place as the two studios embark on their new union.”
Producer friend: “Recently went over to Fox to hear David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield , the co-presidents of Fox Searchlight, speak about the future of the company. They ran a short film montage before of the studio’s 25 years of making award-winning films. An impressive presentation. They both stressed that Searchlight made iconic movies for a price and won awards in the process, which promotes healthy box office. They said we’re looking for the original idea, not the obvious formula, and cited The Shape of Water as the film about the mute girl who has sex with the fish man. They got a standing ovation.”
From 8.11 N.Y. Times report by By Katie Benner, Danielle Ivory and Richard A. Oppel Jr.: “Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who apparently hanged himself in a federal jail in Manhattan, was supposed to have been checked by guards every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not being followed the night before he was found, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said.
“In addition, the jail had transferred his cellmate and allowed Mr. Epstein to be housed alone in a cell just two weeks after he had been taken off suicide watch, a decision that also violated the jail’s normal procedure, two officials said.”
Sunday afternoon N.Y. Post update: “There’s no surveillance video of the incident during which Jeffrey Epstein apparently hanged himself in a federal lockup in Lower Manhattan, law-enforcement officials told The Post on Sunday.
“Although there are cameras in the 9 South wing where the convicted pedophile was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, they are trained on the areas outside the cells and not inside, according to sources familiar with the setup there.”
…the conspiracy crowd always rushes in and sets up house. Earlier today a retweet by President Trump indicated that he, too, thinks something probably stinks in Denmark. Is it possible that the decision to take Jeffrey Epstein off suicide watch was a matter of simple stupidity and/or incompetence? Yes, I suppose. But highly unlikely.
No one in the left or right conspiracy camp will ever believe that Epstein wasn’t “allowed” in some bumbling bureaucratic way to take his life. Many super-wealthy types (including the Clintons) are breathing easy today, but the first order of business should be the prison cell video. If Epstein offed himself without assistance (as most believe), this was almost certainly captured on security cam. If it turns out the cell camera wasn’t working or had been turned off…c’mon!
N.Y. Times reporter Ali Watkins writes that after attempting suicide on 7.23, Epstein “was placed on suicide watch and received daily psychiatric evaluations, a person familiar with his detention said. But just six days later, on July 29, Mr. Epstein, 66, was taken off the watch for reasons that remained unclear on Saturday, the person said.”
Updated Thursday evening: It’s hardly sticking my neck out to say that Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman will definitely be Best Picture nominated, and that it’s looking like the odds-on favorite to win. Because apart from the story being about Robert De Niro‘s Frank Sheeran taking a long, hard look at his life, it’s also a Scorsese sum-upper — a kind of “who am I and what have I accomplished?” movie, the fifth and final Scorsese gangster flick that will assess the previous four (Goodfellas, The Departed, Mean Streets, Casino) along with itself, and issue a late-in-life assessment of the moral, ethical and aesthetic meat of the matter. Half street saga, half melancholy elegy. A cinematic equivalent. if you will, of Frank Sinatra‘s “It Was A Very Good Year.”
