Of all the Abbey Road tracks, “You Never Give Me Your Money” is my far and away favorite. Especially the piano and guitar work, and in particular the “magic feeling” section. I don’t know the exact release date of the Abbey Road 50th Anniversary remastered re-issue but c’mon…how much better can it sound? There ain’t no aural bump gonna blow through your mind. There are extra tracks and whatnot, but give it a rest. The actual 50th anniversary is 9.26.19 in the U.K. and 10.1.19 stateside.
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.”
Speaking as an X-factor white guy from a middle-class New Jersey and Connecticut upbringing, I don’t feel repelled or disgusted by my Anglo-Saxon heritage and family history. I deeply regret the cruelty visited upon immigrants and various cultures of color by whites, but the fact that racist attitudes were common throughout most of the 20th Century and certainly the 19th Century doesn’t mean that white people (more particularly my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, reaching back to the mid 1800s) were inherently evil.
By current standards they seem insufficiently evolved, of course, but they were born into a certain culture and were dealt certain cards, and most carried the weight as best they could. They weren’t born with horns on their heads.
Nor do I feel that elemental decency is absent in the majority of white people today. I feel profoundly repelled by the attitudes of your backwater Trump supporters, of course, but they are not me. I come from a family of “good”, well-educated, imperfect people who believed in hard work, discipline and mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoons, and who exuded decency and compassion for the most part. I am not the devil’s spawn, and neither is my Russian-born wife or my two sons. I’ve witnessed and dealt with ignorant behavior all my life, but I’ve never bought into the idea of Anglo-Saxon culture being inherently evil. Please.
Bottom line: Rosanna Arquette‘s feelings of tribal self-loathing is what many Americans can’t stand about progressive lefties.
Pontius Pilate by way of Gore Vidal: “Where there is great striving, great government or power, even great feeling or compassion, error also is great. We progress and mature by fault.”
It was announced earlier today that the third installment in Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story franchise will be an adaptation of Jeffrey Toobin’s “A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President.”
Pic will focus on Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, and the impeachment trial that most Americans were either bored or appalled by. (“Impeach Clinton for lying about getting a blowjob in the Oval Office?…please!”) Beanie Feldstein as Lewinsky, Sarah Paulson as the duplicitous Linda Tripp and Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones. No word on who will play Bill and Hillary.
Feldstein doesn’t strike me as the right actress to play Lewinsky. ML was 24 or 25 at the time and maybe a tiny bit zaftig, but she wasn’t exactly a Beanie. By which I mean she wasn’t…am I allowed to say chubby without getting jumped on?
Presumably it’s going to be about a selfish, super-powerful, silver-haired dude preying on a semi-innocent victim, but my understanding has always been that Lewinsky flirted ardently with Bill and that he flirted right back. ML wasn’t some baahing little lamb in the woods — she made an ambitious and calculated play for him, and then scored, and then was dumb enough to blab it all to Tripp, whom she had to know was in with the righties.
It would make a fascinating story if Murphy brings in all the contradictions and complexities. But as a straight-from-the-shoulder #MeToo saga? Life isn’t that simple.
Tatyana had never seen Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants, so we watched it the night before last. I was so glad we did. It’s almost eight years old now (having opened on 11.18.11), and quite the comforting, mature, finely-aged bottle of wine. So well written, so family-friendly in a non-puerile way, and so well acted by everyone, top to bottom. George Clooney was slightly better in Michael Clayton, but he was awfully good in this. Not to mention Judy Greer, Robert Forster, Shailene Woodley, Matthew Lillard.
I was so angry that The Artist (a gimmicky trifle that no one cares about now) won the Best Picture Oscar in early ’12, and I’m still flummoxed by that. What were people thinking? The New York Film Critics Circle gave it their Best Film and Best Director trophy…shame on you! Nobody has even thought about this damn film for the last seven and a half years, and you guys thought it was just wonderful. You were on your knees. Philistines!
The winner should have been either The Descendants or Moneyball.
The Descendants, The Artist and Moneyball aside, seven 2011 films were nominated for Best Picture — Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris and War Horse. Only one of these films matters now — i.e., the Woody. I wouldn’t watch War Horse with a knife at my back now. (I had a rough enough time with it initially.) I mostly hated Hugo; ditto Extremely Loud. The Help….meh.
Could either The Descendants or Moneyball be greenlit for theatrical in the present realm? I could be wrong but my suspicion is that The Descendants would probably be a Netflix or Amazon project today. Which wouldn’t be a problem, of course. It just wouldn’t be a primarily theatrical thing, first and foremost.
A couple of months ago I shared some ambivalent, somewhat negative feelings I have about Oliver Stone‘s The Doors, which is why I haven’t purchased the recently released 4K Bluray. But a few days ago Stone posted some pics of a screening of this 1991 film in Bologna’s grand piazza. God, to have been there! Huge crowd, dark blue sky, high-tech projection, centuries-old architecture…peace and tranquility.
I prefer to sidestep the biological reality of Ryan O’Neal being 78, and to think of him as the guy he was in the early to mid ’70s, when things were as good as they would ever get for him.
I had two minor run-ins with O’Neal in the ’80s. The first was after an evening screening of the re-issued Rear Window** at West L.A.’s Picwood theatre (corner of Pico and Westwood) in late ’83. As the crowd spilled onto Pico O’Neal and his date (probably Farrah Fawcett) were walking right behind me, and I heard O’Neal say “that was sooo good!” Being a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, this sparked a feeling of kinship.
Four years later I was a Cannon publicity guy and charged with writing the press kit for Norman Mailer‘s Tough Guys Don’t Dance, which didn’t turn out so well. I for one liked Mailer’s perverse sense of humor.
I did an hour-long phoner with O’Neal, and my opening remark was that he was becoming a really interesting actor now that he was in his mid 40s with creased features. He was too good looking when younger, I meant, and so his being 46 added character and gravitas. O’Neal was skeptical of my assessment but went along — what the hell.
In fact O’Neal’s career had been declining for a good five or six years at that point. He knew it, I knew it — we were doing a press-kit-interview dance because there was nothing else to say or do.
O’Neal’s last hit film had been Howard Zeiff and Gail Parent‘s The Main Event (’79), which critics panned but was popular with audiences. He had starred in four mezzo-mezzos before that — Peter Bogdanovich‘s Nickelodeon (’76), Richard Attenbrough‘s A Bridge Too Far (’77), Walter Hill‘s The Driver (’78) and John Korty‘s Oliver’s Story.
Consider this HE anecdote about some 41-year-old graffiti on an Oliver’s Story poster.
O’Neal’s career peak lasted for five years (’70 to ’75) and was fortified by a mere four films — Arthur Hiller‘s Love Story (’70), Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? (’72) and Paper Moon (’73), and Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon (’75). (The Wild Rovers and The Thief Who Came to Dinner, which O’Neal also made in the early ’70s, were regarded as mostly negligible and therefore didn’t count.)
O’Neal has said for decades that his career never really recovered from Barry Lyndon — Kubrick had changed the film entirely in editing, and had made him look like a clueless and opportunistic Shallow Hal of the 18th Century. Plus the film had lost money.
Last night I watched a 4K UHD version of Chinatown on Vudu. I could tell right away it’s not a fresh re-harvesting from the best celluloid elements. Jack Nicholson’s hair looks too inky at times. And the bandage on his nose looks too white, too bleachy.
But it’s quite beautiful for the most part. It certainly looks better than the most recent Chinatown Bluray. The sharpness, the textures, the stronger colors. But then I’m a plebe about this stuff.
HE to restoration guy: “I’m presuming you’re not impressed. Because it’s probably just a tweaking of the last harvest. But maybe I’m wrong. Know anything about it?” I then sent him the below attached photos for samples.
Restoration guy to HE: “This is pretty bad. It’s all about data throughout. And this doesn’t seem to have it. I watched a 4K DCP Chinatown last Tuesday. It’s gorgeous. The studio did a terrific job, especially with color, which is warm. And it looked nothing like these images.”
HE to restoration guy: “Wait…you watched a 4K Chinatown DCP? It was shown to ticket buyers? Why did they create this? They must be intending to issue a 4K Bluray in 2024, to celebrate the 50th anniversary. Just like Sony’s intention to wait until 2022 to issue a 4K Lawrence of Arabia Bluray, even though Grover Crisp’s 8K scan was harvested…what, back in ‘15 or thereabouts?”
HE to restoration guy: “I’m nonetheless telling you that as much as you may disapprove of Vudu’s 4K version of Chinatown, it really does feel like an improvement over the 1080p Bluray. It delivers a bump effect…’wow, this looks better in some respects.’ True, the images look waxy and Jack’s dark hair looks inky. It looks superficially enhanced, yes, but it’s a nice cheap high.”
From Snap Galleries copy about Don Hunstein’s Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan photos of Dylan and (then squeeze) Suze Rotolo on West Fourth Street: “This beautiful, evocative portrait was taken on a freezing cold afternoon in February 1963. Bob and Suze curving towards each other trying to keep warm, Bob dead center, the vanishing point disappearing off into the distance behind him, with the lines of the rooftops, the cars, and the VW van pulling your eyes towards the centre and heightening the sense of perspective. Look at the buildings with their copper-blue tone and the way they blend into the sky, seemingly scorched by the sun.”
Consider something else that has bothered me for decades. The weather was “freezing cold” with the couple “curving towards each other trying to keep warm”, and yet Dylan and Rotolo seem to be in different weather realms. Rotolo is bundled in a heavy winter coat while Dylan is wearing only a blue workshirt and a slender-looking suede or deerskin jacket — an outfit more suited to a mild fall day in October.
Why has Dylan dressed with blatant disregard for the sub-arctic conditions with slushy snow everywhere? I’ll tell you why. Because he looks cooler in a casual deerskin jacket than, say, in some bulky-ass tweed overcoat or Navy pea coat.
This is who and what Dylan was back then — simultaneously the real thing as well as an actor “playing the part” of the scruffy poet, and in fact a guy who was very invested into projecting a certain commercial persona. Hustein: “Dylan was by then already quite image conscious and self-assured, and he knew how to play to the camera.”
I somehow missed the recent intel about Steven Soderbergh‘s The Laundromat being a comedy. Okay, but hold a sec. Soderbergh might have made a quietly hilarious satire in his usual underplayed or deadpan sense (I’ve been told that the “s” word definitely applies), but he doesn’t do hah-hah comedy. Or at least, not the bottom-feeder kind. He never has. This doesn’t mean his comic material or attitude isn’t funny — it’s just not aimed at your Melissa McCarthy megaplex crowd.
Example: Out of Sight was often funny as shit, but it never put on a red Clarabelle the Clown nose and squirted seltzer water. Remember when Dennis Farina chided Michael Keaton‘s Ray Nicolette for wearing an FBI T-shirt — “Hey, Ray, do you have a T-shirt that says ‘undercover‘?” I laughed at that line for days but it probably went over a lot of heads. Remember when that fat guy slipped on the stairs and accidentally shot himself in the head? A shocking moment, but kind of “funny” in a dry Soderberghian way.
Wiki boilerplate: “Plot follows Ellen Martin (Meryl Streep), whose dream vacation takes a wrong turn and leads her down a rabbit hole of shady dealings that can all be traced to one Panama City law firm, run by seductive partners Jürgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas).
“She soon learns that her minor predicament is only a drop in the bucket, one of millions of files linking an off-shore tax scheme to the world’s richest and most powerful political leaders.”
The titular term refers to Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider. The umbrella term for the scandal was and is the Panama papers.
Did director Martin Scorsese and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker cut this Irishman trailer? Let’s assume they did. The rhythmic, hard-punch, slam-bam cutting is obviously expert and tense as a mofo, and I love how they withhold a good look at the de-aged Robert DeNiro (as legendary hitman Frank Sheeran) until the very end. I’m not seeing any “uncanny valley” or dead shark eyes here — I’m seeing DeNiro after a visit to the best Prague plastic surgeon who ever lived. The tone of steely menace is unmistakable. Scorsese is back in his comfort zone…goombah gangster shit. Sidenote: Hollywood Elsewhere apologizes for posting this reaction 75 minutes after the Irishman trailer surfaced at 5 am Pacific, or an hour late. No excuse.
The 57th New York Film Festival will premiere Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, 9.27 — i.e., opening night. Hollywood Elsewhere will be there for the NYFF press screening, and also at the Friday night public screening if I can swing it.
The Irishman will be released in select theaters “later this year”, according to a release, followed by Netflix streaming.
It’s a $200 million, decades-spanning saga of the life and times of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a labor union leader and alleged hitman for the Bufalino crime family.
Earlier this month I read a very early draft of Steven Zaillian‘s Irishman screenplay. On 7.9 I wrote that it conveyed a tone of finality, and that it reminded me of the ending of Goodfellas as well as the last few minutes of The Godfather, Part II.
Excerpt: “It really does seem to be a melancholy summing-up of the whole Scorsese criminal culture exploration that began 46 years ago with Mean Streets. A fascinating assessment of what this kind of life amounts to, and what it costs in the end.”
Joe Pesci stars as Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Bufalino, with Al Pacino portraying Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. The film will utilize extensive de-aging technology to tell its time-spanning story. Scorsese’s intention from the get-go, of course, was that these and other actors would de-age without the “uncanny valley” effect.
Statement from NYFF festival director Kent Jones: “The Irishman is so many things: rich, funny, troubling, entertaining and, like all great movies, absolutely singular. It’s the work of masters, made with a command of the art of cinema that I’ve seen very rarely in my lifetime, and it plays out at a level of subtlety and human intimacy that truly stunned me. All I can say is that the minute it was over my immediate reaction was that I wanted to watch it all over again.”