slider

Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs opens on Thursday night. Several critics reviewed it yesterday (95% Rotten Tomatoes rating, 83% Metacritic), but I haven’t been invited to a single screening. Today I asked to be afforded that privilege. “Hi, guys…sorry to bother you, heh-heh, but any chance I could, you know, attend a last-minute screening of a film by a major-league guy whose stylistic signature is known worldwide, and whom I’ve personally known for close to a quarter-century?”

Wes and I have had a couple of spats, but not for several years. He’s always been polite and responsive whenever I’ve reached out. He’s never not wanted me to see Isle of Dogs, or at least he didn’t indicate this today. I don’t think this is on him. Okay, I’m not a great lover of animation, but I was cool with and fully respectful of old-fashioned stop-motion and the way this technique was used for Fantastic Mr. Fox so what’s the big issue? What critic goes invite-less if he’s been mixed or mildly negative about a couple of films by a certain director in the past?

Tuesday evening update: FS finally invited me to a screening — tomorrow night at the West L.A. Landmark.

I’ve known Wes for nearly 25 years. I wrote the first L.A. Times “Calendar” profile piece about Wes and Owen Wilson; it was published on 11.7.93. For over two decades I’ve been a respectful admirer (okay, with reservations) of his films. That respect has been reciprocated for many years. I attended Fox Searchlight’s Fantastic Mr. Fox junket in England in 2010, and their Grand Budapest Hotel junket in Berlin in ’14.

True, I’ve been nursing ambivalent reactions to Andersonville — i.e., that carefully tended, super-exacting realm of his — since The Royal Tenenbaums, which popped at the N.Y. Film Festival 16 and 1/2 years ago. On one hand I love (as always) the Anderson stamp…that feeling of dry but immaculate control of each and every element. And of wry humor. And of atmosphere and attitude. Andersonville is a place as distinct and precisely ordered and unto itself as Tati-land or Kubricktown or Capraburgh. And on the other hand I’ve sometimes felt frustrated by it.

Over the last 22 years my only serious Anderson loves have been Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Grand Budapest Hotel. The rest I’ve been mixed-positive or mixed on. But at least there were those three, and tomorrow’s another day.

Read more

Gary Barber, the narrow-faced, George Washington-resembling chairman/CEO of MGM and MGM Holdings Inc., has been whacked or, put more politely, “asked to leave.” Deadline‘s Anita Busch has reported that MGM Holdings deep-sixed Barber, who had run the company since 2010 and had four years to go on his current contract, “over disagreements on strategy about the future direction of the company,” whatever that means.

Hollywood Elsewhere says that Barber’s dismissal is an emotionally satisfying thing. Barber may have rejuvenated MGM to some extent and he may have been loved by his now-former employees, but he was an arrogant asshole when it came to the faith and creed of film restoration. For at least the last four years Barber stood in the way of the way of Robert Harris‘s attempt to independently fund a restoration of John Wayne‘s The Alamo — a thoughtless and callous act from any responsible perspective.

(l.) Former MGM chairman & CEO Gary Barber; (r.) George Washington sometime during the French and Indian War.

Yes, outside the Alamo situation Barber appeared to be a smart, aggressive, well-organized exec who knew how to get things done. Great. Then why did he show such callous disregard for the condition of a not-great but generally respected film that could have been saved in its original 70mm form, but is now lost for the most part? What kind of South African buccaneer, unwilling or unable to spend MGM’s money to restore the 70mm version of Wayne’s film, refuses to allow a restoration of said film to be independently funded?

12.26.14 quote from a “Save The Alamo Facebook page: “Gary Barber is the worst thing to happen to MGM since Jim ‘The Smiling Cobra’ Aubrey systematically sold off the old company in the early 1970’s. Worse, the film library is at stake this time. MGM seems intent on not only having no interest in restoring and preserving [The Alamo], but in actively seeing it destroyed. Unbelievable that this kind of practice is still going on.”

What defines a spiritual film? In my dictionary it’s any movie in which the main character is constantly communing with (i.e., pondering, meditating, wondering about) his/her inner life or more particularly that voice that seems to be talking to him/her in such a way that the main character is haunted, bothered, unsettled, off-balance and searching for the right thing to do or the right way to be.

In this sense Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed (A24, 6.22) — an absolute must-see — is a spiritual film in spades. But then so is Taxi Driver, which Schrader wrote some 43 or 44 years ago. And so are a bunch of others.

I don’t want to sound like an easy lay, but I regard Field of Dreams as a spiritual film. I think The Exorcist is a spiritual film, at least as far as Damian Karras‘s character is concerned. Days of Heaven is a spiritual film; ditto The Tree of Life. Obviously Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (the screenplay for which was written by Schrader) and Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, but not — I repeat, not — Scorsese’s Kundun. (Too suffocating.) It would piss me off to hear someone call Batman Begins a spiritual film, but I suppose the argument could be made.

Is Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Little Buddha a spiritual film? I haven’t decided. Is Moby Dick a spiritual film as far as Gregory Peck‘s Captain Ahab is concerned? I’m still mulling that one over.

I got into this after reading a 3.15 Den of Geek interview with Schrader, the director-writer of First Reformed, and star Ethan Hawke. The sit-down happened last week in Austin during South by Southwest, where First Reformed (A24, 6.22) screened once or twice. It was showered with hosannahs last fall when it played the Venice and Telluride festival; it also played Toronto.

Make no mistake — First Reformed is Schrader’s best film in ages.

From my 9.1.17 rave: “I can’t over-emphasize how amazing it feels to watch a fully felt, disciplined, well–ordered film by a brilliant guy who had seemingly lost his way or gone into eclipse, only to be startled when he leaps out from behind the curtain and says ‘Hah…I never left!'”

Read more

How many superheroes elbowing each other in Avengers: Infinity War…22 or 23? Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk, Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther and Paul Bettany as Vision…that’s ten.

Plus Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, Anthony Mackie as Falcon, Sebastian Stan as White Wolf, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Idris Elba as Heimdall, Benedict Wong as Wong, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Dave Bautista as Drax, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Vin Diesel as Groot, Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Chris Pratt as Peter Quill / Star-Lord…that’s thirteen or 23 total.

Plus Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Josh Brolin as bad-guy Thanos and Peter Dinklage as you-tell-me.

All of these hot-shots trying to out-quip each other. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. What’s the running time, 165 minutes? Longer?

Posted four years ago: Nobody remembers Richard Franklin‘s Link (’86), but it was a witty, better-than-decent genre thriller with a nice sense of tongue-in-cheek humor, and shot with a great deal of discipline. Clever, dry, smarthouse. And nobody saw it.

Shot in Scotland in ’85, Link was basically about a watchful, intelligent and increasingly dangerous chimpanzee who develops a sexual obsession for a junior zoologist played by young Elizabeth Shue (who was 22 or 23 during filming).

A Thorn EMI production that was acquired by Cannon, Link costarred Terrence Stamp, was fairly well written by Everett De Roche, and was very carefully composed. Franklin (who died young in ’07) shot it with a kind of Alfred Hitchcockian style and language. I wrote the Cannon press notes and in so doing interviewed Franklin. The then-39-year-old director worked very hard, he told me, to put Link together just so. Franklin made no secret of the fact that he was a lifelong Hitchcock devotee.

Unless you own a Region 2 Bluray/DVD player, you can’t see Link under any circumstances. You can buy a decade-old Region 2 DVD, but no NTSC version. And you can’t stream it on Amazon, Netflix or Vudu.

Boilerplate: “Jane, an American zoology student, takes a summer job at the lonely cliff-top home of a professor who is exploring the link between man and ape. Soon after her arrival he vanishes, leaving her to care for his three chimps: Voodoo, a savage female; the affectionate, child-like Imp; and Link, a circus ape trained as the perfect servant and companion.

“A disturbing role reversal takes place in the relationship between master and servant and Jane becomes a prisoner in a simian house of horror. In her attempts to escape she’s up against an adversary with several times her physical strength, and the instincts of a bloodthirsty killer.”

I helped out with Link screenings at Cannon headquarters on San Vicente Blvd., and I remember playing The Kinks “Ape Man” (a portion of which is heard in the film) as a kind of overture for invited guests.

Terrence Stamp, who starred in Link, told me during a Limey interview in ’99 that Franklin was very tough on film crews.

Read more

Nobody had much to say about my 3.15 review of Greg Berlanti‘s Love, Simon, but it opened yesterday so what’s the reaction? By any measure an antiseptic, intensely suburban gay teen romance, I described it as (a) “definitely half-decent,” (b) “smartly written” but a little “too tidy, too dream-fantasy, too TV-realm and not laid-back enough.” But at the same time not bad. I mentioned that it’s the first big-screen adaptation of a YA novel (Becky Albertalli‘s “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”) that I’ve half-liked, but it still feels a little too YA-ish.

Two years ago I posted “Strangelove Color Trip,” which consisted of seven color snaps (in the old HE format width of 460 pixels), all taken during filming of Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove in early 1963. This morning I came upon several more; I’ve also re-rendered four or five shots from March ’16 in HE’s current (640 pixel) column width. I let one black-and-white shot slip in (i.e., Kubrick hand-drawing Lolita glasses on a nuclear warhead), but only because I’d never seen it before today.

Read more

Three weeks ago I referenced a Digital Bits report from Bill Hunt about Warner Home Video planning to release a 50th anniversary 4K Bluray of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As Stanley Kubrick‘s classic opened in the U.S. on 4.3.68, it seemed reasonable to assume it would “street” sometime next month.

Well, it’s not — the 4K 2001 will pop on 5.8.18. And the Amazon price is $41.99 — gougers! The perfectly rendered 2007 Bluray version sells for $22 to $28 less, depending on where you buy it. An HD streaming version sells for $12.99.

The alleged jacket art that I posted on 2.22 looked suspicious, I said, because it lacked any mention of “remastered UHD 4K,” and then HE commenter Carl LaFong explained that the jacket art was from a French steelbook Bluray release from 2015. Except the WHV 4K disc is using it anyway — the final jacket art is below.

Read more

Last weekend Selma Blair was quoted by Metro‘s Katie Bailey saying that Cameron Diaz, who hasn’t made a film since Will Gluck‘s Annie (’14) and whose last good film was Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (’13), has more or less bailed on her film career.

“I had lunch with Cameron the other day,” Blair reportedly said. “We were reminiscing about [The Sweetest Thing]. I would have liked to do a sequel but Cameron’s retired from acting. She’s like ‘I’m done.'” Blair was presumedly screamed at that night by Diaz and her reps, and so she tweeted the following day (Monday, 3.12) that Diaz “is NOT retiring from ANYTHING.”

Today, or four days after Bailey’s Metro story, People‘s Mike Miller posted a story about how the 45 year-old Diaz “is loving her life outside the Hollywood spotlight.” Quoting “a source”, Miller writes that Diaz and her 39 year-old, tattoo-covered musician husband Beji Madden are “great” and “both very happy living the quiet life.”

Translation: Diaz’s career is in eclipse but she doesn’t want anyone thinking she’s not ready to return if the right part comes along.

Diaz’s career started to lose steam as she got older and her looks started to fade. You can’t say she didn’t appear in better films during the ’90s and early aughts. We all know that actresses often have a rougher time when they start to show mileage. Or something like that. I didn’t invent the system. I deplore it. But that’s how it goes in some cases.

The same thing happened with Brendan Fraser — career peak between ’92 and ’05, and then he began to age out.

If you ask me Diaz peaked from ’94 to ’05, or from age 22 to 33 — from her breakout debut in Chuck Russell‘s The Mask (’94) to Curtis Hanson‘s In Her Shoes, in which she gave her career-best performance.

Read more

Yesterday Variety‘s Peter Debruge and Elsa Keslassy spitballed about possible 2018 Cannes Film Festival selections — Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Jennifer Kent‘s The Nightingale, Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria, Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows (in Spanish) and Olivier Assayas‘ E-Book.

Not to mention Jacques Audiard‘s The Sisters Brothers, Paolo Sorrentino‘s Loro, Laszlo Nemes‘ Sunset, Terrence Malick’s Radegund (in German), Matteo Garrone‘s Dogman, Terry Gilliam‘s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.

It’s worth noting that Debruge and Keslassy, mindful of antsy industry currents, didn’t mention an especially enticing possibility — Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York, which will probably be dumped by Amazon (those antsy currents!) but which would be a major score for this world-class Cote d’Azur festival.

Timothee Chalamet, Selena Gomez in Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York.

Woody’s films have played Cannes three or four times in the recent past, and a booking of his most recent effort, which partly deals with an inappropriate-age-gap relationship between Jude Law and Elle Fanning, would be a way for festival topper Thierry Fremaux to not only honor a relationship with a still-important filmmaker but declare that Cannes is about cinematic art first and nervous-nelly politics second.

Because you just know that a certain sector of American journalists will freak out if and when the Woody is chosen. Does Fremaux have the balls? Will Allen have the sand to face the Cannes press corps?

Debruge and Keslassy also suggest in their piece that Cannes should adhere to a gender quota system. “From the international success of Wonder Woman to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, the world is a much different place than it was in May 2017,” they remind. “Will Cannes delegate general Thierry Fremaux get with the program and include more female directors?”

I would imagine that Fremaux would indeed want to increase the presence of female directors this year, but HE’s Jordan Ruimy has a response to Debruge and Keslassy that I agree with 110%:

“Cannes is not a quota festival. It recognizes excellence in cinema. If a smaller number of female directors fail to produce excellent movies in a given year, that fault is on those directors, not Cannes. Lowering the bar to meet some dumb quota hurts women, not helps them. Festivals are supposed to be merit-based, and Cannes most of all in this regard.”

Read more

It’s understood that middle-class, middle-budget reality dramas have been consigned to cable and the indie realm. (Speaking of which you can’t do much better on that score than Collateral, the recently popped Netflix series with Carey Mulligan as a police inspector). This means, I presume, that sturdy, well-written dramas about women, even in this revolutionary era, are still having a tough time being funded above the Spirit Award level (i.e., $20 million tops).

I’m not saying it’s impossible to score backing for a mildly expensive, character-driven drama about a woman character played by a mid-range star, but the usual resistance doesn’t seem to have changed, at least in the realm of theatrical make-or-break.

Erin Brockovich, which was made 19 years ago for $52 million (or roughly $75 million in 2018 dollars), probably wouldn’t be made today as a theatrical film — it would be produced by Netflix or Amazon. The Steven Soderbergh-directed film, which opened in March 2000, earned $125.5M domestic and $256.2M worldwide.

And Alan Parker‘s well-respected Shoot The Moon, which cost $12 million to make in ’81 or nearly $31 million by the 2018 economy, would probably have to go Netflix or Amazon also, and even then who knows? Theatrically the Diane Keaton-Albert Finney marital drama was a bust — it only made $9.2 million domestic.

On the other hand a version of Paul Mazursky‘s An Unmarried Woman, which cost $2,515,000 (roughly $10 million in 2018 dollars) to shoot in 1977 and went on to earn $24 million in ’78 or just under $100 million by the ’18 economy, would probably be funded today.

Ditto a version of Alan Pakula‘s Klute, which was made in 1970 for $2.5 million or $16 million by the measure of 2018, would probably be funded today. Maybe. The urban thriller wound up earning $12,512,637, which translates into $80 million today. (The 1970 to 2018 multiple is 6.42.)