slider

I wasn’t aware that The Silence of the Lambs (which is now 26 and 3/4 years old, having opened on 1.30.91) needed a 4K restoration. On top of which this trailer makes the colors look a bit bleachy. They’re certainly darker and warmer on the Bluray that I own. Remember that Jack Crawford is based on real-life FBI criminal profiler John Douglas, the author of the book that provided the basis for David Fincher‘s Mindhunter. For whatever reason Jonathan Demme‘s film will re-open in England on 11.3.17. I don’t see the point. Jodie Foster will probably never snag another role with as much built-in emotional resonance as Clarice Starling. (I’d honestly forgotten that Julianne Moore played the same character ten years later in Hannibal.) Foster was 28 when Lambs was filmed — she’ll turn 55 on 11.19. Director Jonathan Demme passed last April, at age 73.

Read more

“I’ll tell you what I want. I want to walk around New York City at a fairly vigorous clip. I want to love and support my wife and my sons every way I can. I want to sail into the mystic. I want to stay in touch with everyone and offer as much offer affection, trust, intellectual engagement and friendship as I reasonably can. I want to live forever. I want good health, and to me that also means good spiritual health. I want to keep most of my hair and never grow breasts or a pot belly. I want Japanese or South Korean-level wifi wherever I go. I want to read and know everything. I want to bask in love, family, friendship and the purring of my three cats until the end of time. I want several pairs of slim ass-hugging jeans. I want to be clean shaven. I want well-made shoes, preferably Italian suede or Bruno Magli or John Varvatos. I want to keep all my Blurays forever. I want fresh gourmet food but in modest portions. I want color, aromas, travel. I want challenging hiking trails in high Swiss places. I know it’s not possible, but I’d prefer to always be in the company of slender people. I want to zoom around on my Majesty and use the Mini Cooper only when it rains or when I need to buy a lot of groceries. I want mobility and adaptability and the smell of great humming, rumbling cities. I want European-style subways, buses, trains, rental cars. I want a long Norman Lloyd-type life, and I insist that my mental faculties stay electric and crackling forever. I’ll always want a couple of folly-loaded Jackery battery chargers for my iPhone 6 Plus. I want occasional bowls of plain yogurt and a constant supply of fruit and vegetables. I want beautiful scenery from time to time. I want to hang with golden retrievers and other high-affection dogs. I want to be up early and go to bed late every day of my life, and take 45-minute naps around 4 pm. And I’ll always want a 65-inch OLED along with an Oppo Bluray player with region-2 capabilities plus Amazon, Vudu, Netflix and everything else on a Roku player. And I always want little packets of strong Italian Starbucks Instant somewhere nearby. And I want to re-visit Venice, Prague, Rome, Paris, Arcos de la Frontera and Hanoi every two or three years. I don’t want to get my head chopped off but I want to visit the Middle East (Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iran) as well as Russia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Ukraine before long, preferably on a motorcycle or at least by train.” — An earlier version of this, a riff on a “Carlos the Jackal” quote, was posted on 11.29.14.

I’m filling out my Sundance press accreditation form this weekend. This led to memories of last January’s festival, and a particularly awful time I had watching Alexander Moors‘ The Yellow Birds, an Iraq War PTSD drama. Jason Hall‘s Thank You For Your Service deals with nearly the exact same subject, but in a way that I found ten times more affecting and effective. Maybe because I didn’t have to deal with Alden Ehrenreich, whose gloomy-Rabbinical-student performance all but sank Yellow Birds.

As far as I can tell Yellow Birds never found a North American distributor. Which, if true, suggests that buyers felt the same way I did. Like me they probably sat in their Eccles seats in a state of numb submission, toughing it out and waiting for something (anything!) interesting to happen.

How can the Sundance guys approve films like The Yellow Birds and yet turn down well-made genre flicks, which they’ve been known to do from time to time? It just reenforces the idea that the term “Sundance film” is not a myth. John Cooper and Trevor Groth are known for preferring a certain kind of solemn, squishy, angsty, social-issue, ahead-of-the-curve, relationshippy black-gay-transgender politically correct film.

If Sundance had been going in ’73 and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero had been submitted, they would’ve turned it down because it’s got too many car chases and is about rednecks smuggling moonshine.

The Yellow Birds is about the investigation of the death of an Iraq War combatant named “Murph” (i.e., Daniel Murphy, played by Tye Sheridan), but more precisely about evasions and suppressions on the part of Murph’s PTSD-aflicted comrade, John Bartie (Ehrenreich), when he returns home.

Murph’s mom Maureen (Jennifer Aniston) naturally wants to know what happened, and Bartie’s mom Amy (Toni Collette) is seriously concerned about her son’s totally withdrawn, zombie-like manner. There’s also a Sergeant Sterling (Jack Huston) with his own buried trauma issues, and a CID investigator (Jason Patric) with a persistent interest in what happened between Murph and John.

The Yellow Birds has moments of visual beauty but is otherwise disappointing — it doesn’t connect or sink in. And the ending is seriously weak tea.

After it ended I ran into a Los Angeles guy who runs a film series, and so I briefly shared my reservations about the film and Ehrenreich in particular. He said he “liked” The Yellow Birds and so did the people he was sitting with, and that Ehrenreich’s ability to reanimate Han Solo wasn’t an issue as far as Yellow Birds is concerned.

Read more

In an Indiewire piece posted earlier today, producer, industry consultant and former Fine Line production executive Liz Manne outed herself as a major anonymous source for a controversial, once-heavily-criticized 1998 Premiere story that described a culture of sexual harassment at New Line Cinema, which at the time was run by Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne.  

The article, written by John Connolly and fact-checked by Premiere staffers (including then-editor Jim Meigs and senior film editor Glenn Kenny), was called “Flirting With Disaster.”

The article asserted that all kinds of nasty shenanigans (drinking, drugs, sexual harassment) were happening at New Line, and that Shaye and Lynne ran the place “like a college dorm,” according to a producer who spoke anonymously to Connolly. The piece began with a story about a boozy New Line party that happened the year before (1992) at a lodge in Snowmass, Colorado, and about how Lynne made an aggressive sexual pass at an unnamed female executive. 

That executive, according to Manne’s Indiewire piece, was Manne herself. As noted, she flat-out admits to having been one of Connolly’s anonymous sources.

In hindsight, the Connolly piece can be appreciated as a tough expose that described a predatory climate that sounds all too familiar by today’s understandings. But because it depended on anonymous sources (when she left the company Manne signed an exit agreement that forbade her from talking to anyone about anything in any context) the article was strongly attacked as an example of reckless or irresponsible journalism.

Two of the attackers were Movie City News’ David Poland and Variety‘s Peter Bart. Coincidentally, there was also a “Reverse Angle” article on page 51 in that same issue of Premiere, written by Harvey Weinstein of all people, that complained about “the reckless use of unnamed sources.”

From Poland’s 6.17.98 MCN article: “Can you say ‘hatchet job?’ I know for sure that Premiere magazine can. It had to be the phrase of the day when it decided to print its story, ‘Flirting With Disaster’” on alleged sexual and drug-related misconduct at New Line Cinema. I am often disgusted with the state of entertainment journalism, but usually it’s because we throw softballs in exchange for access to the talent that sells magazines, newspapers and TV shows. (And yes, some Web sites.) This time, it’s the opposite. 

“What was Premiere thinking when it ran the results of John Connolly‘s eight-month ‘investigation’ which added up to little more than a handful of gossipy accusations by unnamed sources that any reporter working this beat on a regular basis could have come up with over a three-day weekend?”

Read more

Last night I finally saw James Franco‘s The Disaster Artist (A24, 12.1), which has generated pseudo-hip excitement since debuting at last March’s South by Southwest. It’s basically an amusing-but-never-hilarious thing — it never bored me but it never quite lifts off the ground either. But it’s worth catching, I’d say. It falls under the heading of “necessary viewing.”

On the other hand a lot of cognoscenti who should know better have gone apeshit over The Disaster Artist (what award-season handicapper suggested it might even be worthy of inclusion on a best-of-2017 list?), and I’m telling you right now that it’s time to calm down. It’s fine for what it is, but take it easy.

It’s basically a flat but unaffected true-life saga of the making of a notoriously awful indie-level film called The Room, which, after opening in ’03, gradually acquired a rep of being so bad it’s hilarious and perhaps even brilliant in a twisted-pretzel, ice-cream-cone-slammed-into-the-forehead kind of way.

Based on Greg Sistero‘s same-titled memoir about the making of The Room and his bromance with the film’s vampirish director-writer-star, Tommy Wiseau, The Disaster Artist is basically a curio, a diversion. It generates a kind of chuckly vibe on a scene-by-scene basis, but that’s all.

Why? Because watching a clueless asshole behave like a clueless asshole isn’t all that funny if you’re watching what that’s like on a line-by-line, incident-by-incident, humiliation-by-humiliation basis from a comfy seat in a screening room.

It might seem a bit funnier if you’re watching it ripped or better yet ripped with your friends during a midnight show somewhere. Or if you’re watching it ripped with producer-costar Seth Rogen and producer Evan Goldberg in a private screening room. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been high in a long time, but I bet it would help. All I can tell you is that the Academy fuddy-duds I saw it with last night at the London Hotel screening room were chortling from time to time, but no one was howling with laughter or rolling in the aisles.

The Disaster Artist is basically a one-joke thing that says over and over that having no talent and being a total moron is no hindrance to making an attention-getting film if — a really big “if” here — you’ve got a few million to throw around and you’re willing to spend it freely on production and marketing and so on. It also says that if you’re a profoundly stupid actor and generally beyond redemption in terms of knowing how to produce, direct and write it can be “funny” for people to watch you struggle and fail in your attempt to make a shitty little indie drama that no one will pay to see, etc.

But if your film turns out to be “so awful it’s astounding,” the film says, you might have a shot at a certain kind of notoriety.

Read more

I think it’s fair to say that Miles Teller needs a break. I don’t honestly like the guy, but he’s a gifted actor who could be Robert De Niro in the ’70s. Alas, something’s not working for him. People respect Teller, I think, for being a grade-A talent who chooses well and always pushes himself to the limit or beyond, but in the four years since Whiplash none of Teller’s films have combusted critically or commercially. He was happening in the immediate wake of The Spectacular Now and Whiplash, but not lately.

The reviews of Teller’s latest film, Thank You For Your Service, are mixed so far, but Variety‘s Owen Glieberman is a fan, and so is The Village Voice‘s Alan Scherstuhl.

Teller to HE on Hollywood-Highland escalator: “Don’t be a pervert, man.” That alienating April ’15 Esquire interview. Not getting the La La Land lead role that went to Ryan Gosling, allegedly for being “too demanding.” Hiring “no” publicist Susan Patricola to represent him. (Patricola isn’t exactly a crisis publicist but she seems to be popular with clients who want the press kept away.)

2013’s The Spectacular Now (alcoholic teen) plus Whiplash (great drumming, his best performance yet) started things off well, but then came a trio of paycheck fantasy films that weren’t so hot — Divergent, Divergent: Insurgent, Fantastic Four. Then a trio of respectable, hard-driving performances in films that made the grade in my book but which didn’t connect with reviewers or at the box-office — War Dogs, Bleed For This and Only The Brave. Thank You For Your Service, which I won’t see until Thursday evening, probably isn’t going to make any money either.

Review-wise Teller has done himself proud in the last four, as noted, but that’s still seven tanks in a row if you count TYFYS.

Critic friend: “He was not only in one bomb after another, but seemed like one of those flaky young-fuck narcissists on a star trip who was destined to flame out. But the dude is fucking talented. I don’t have much commercial expectation for Thank You For Your Service, because no one — no one! — wants to see a movie about Iraq War vets. It just sounds like medicine. But I think his very strong and heartfelt performance (the opposite of flaky/narcissistic, etc.) will help bend the curve back his way.”

Every now and then a one-sheet for an upcoming film captures the essence just so. A distinctive right profile of Saoirse Ronan instead of the usual straight-on mug shot. The flaming red hair dye. An expression that seems lost in thought, pondering the calculus of existence. Maybe a touch of confusion or even anger thrown into the mix. A signature image, in short, that locks in on the mood of a film by way of a fascinating lead character, and which isn’t afraid of exuding a slightly contrary vibe.

Earlier this afternoon I sat down with Ruben Ostlund, the Swedish director of The Square (Magnolia, 10.27), a brilliant art-world satire that won the Palme d’Or at the finale of last May’s Cannes Film Festival. 

I captured our 27-minute chat on iPhone and uploaded it in three sections.

If you’ve seen The Square the questions I asked Ostlund will make sense, but perhaps not if you haven’t. In my book it’s easily among 2017’s finest foreign-language films. I’m trusting that Academy members will agree and nominate it for Best Foreign Language Feature, but you can never tell with that crew.

Suffice that Ostlund’s film makes fun of the insular, politically correct museum culture that can be found worldwide, although The Square‘s focus is on a cutting-edge Stockholm art museum. 

As I wrote last May,” Ostlund’s precise and meticulous handling of The Square is exactly the kind of tonal delivery that I want from comedies. There isn’t a low moment (i.e., aimed at the animals) in all of it, whereas many if not most American comedies are almost all low moments.”

“The Square is a longish (142 minutes) but exquisitely dry Swedish satire, mostly set among the wealthy, museum-supporting class in Stockholm. It’s basically a serving of deft, just-right comic absurdity (the high points being two scenes in which refined p.c. swells are confronted with unruly social behaviors) that works because of unforced, low-key performances and restrained, well-honed dialogue.

“There are four stand-out moments: a post-coital confrontation moment between Danish actor Claes Bang and Elizabeth Moss, an interview with a visiting artist (Dominic West) interrupted by a guy with Tourette’s syndrome, the already notorious black-tie museum dinner “ape man” scene with simian-channeller Terry Notary, and a hilariously over-provocative YouTube ad showing a little girl and a kitten being blown to bits. The Square is worth the price for these four scenes alone.

Read more

Initial reaction #1: World-class actresses have always had a certain X-factor quality, an unmistakable spark of passion or depth of feeling when the camera gazed upon them. They didn’t have to be classically beautiful (i.e., Bette Davis) or boudoir sexy, but they had to have that combustible quality. I realize that all cultures are constantly evolving and that aesthetic standards change with them, but Vicky Krieps, no offense, doesn’t have that “it” quality. She just doesn’t.

Krieps strikes me as an arresting actress as far as the task of conveying complex emotions is concerned, but she clearly lacks magnetism. She reminds me in some ways of Brief Encounter‘s Celia Johnson — an emotionally relatable but spark-free actress with plain, unremarkable features. In the ’50s, or the period in which Phantom Thread occurs, Krieps might have had trouble being cast as a housemaid or shopkeeper or a barely-noticed office clerk, much less as the costar of a film about an intense, highly-charged relationship.

Key trailer quotes: “When I was a boy I would hide things in the liners of garments…things that only I knew were there….secrets.” “So why are you not married?” “May I warn you of something?” “Perhaps I’m looking for trouble.” “Stop!” “There’s an air of quiet death in this house.” “You’re not cursed, you’re loved.” “What game? What precisely is the nature of my game?” “Are you thinking of ruining my evening? And possibly my entire life?” “Stop it!” “Whatever you do, think carefully.”

Initial reaction #2: I’m not feeling the crazy in this trailer. The theme seems to be “leave this artist alone to create what he needs to create…if you fuck with his system or his behavior or obsessive work patterns, you will bring on nothing but trouble.” It seems to basically boil down to Rex Harrison‘s song of complaint and lament in My Fair Lady, “An Ordinary Man.” Key Lyric: “Let a woman in your life, and your serenity is through.”

An older, graying, work-obsessed couturier named Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis) falls for a significantly younger but plain-featured woman named Alma (Vicky Krieps), and at first everything is delightful. But as the initial passion begins to recede it becomes clear that Alma has certain feelings and convictions that clash with Reynolds’ realm. Reynolds’ sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) quietly warns Alma not to interfere with his creative process as Alma begins to reveal a dark, possibly even perverse side to her nature. What began as a love affair begins to transform into a battle of wills and passions.

Initial reaction #3: Where are the hints of Phantom Thread being a classy, upmarket Fifty Shades of Grey, as rumors have had it?

Initial reaction #4: Perhaps Paul Thomas Anderson‘s point in casting the unremarkable looking Krieps was to convey something about the sometimes curious nature of love and passion. You may not see or sense the thing that lights Reynolds Woodcock’s fire, but R.W. certainly does, and that’s all that matters as far as the watching of this film is concerned.

Read more

Early this morning Joe Scarborough and the conservative guy on the right side of the screen assessed their appearance before heading off to work. They both said to themselves as they stood before the bathroom mirror, “Yeah, I look pretty good.” And yet only one of them did in terms of their ties. Obviously Scarborough’s tie is natty and cool, and the fat red tie worn by the conservative guy is pretty close to ridiculous. It’s almost a scarf or a shawl. Anyone who wears a big fat red blanket around their neck is (a) almost certainly a right-winger and (b) probably has some kind of screw loose. And it’s not just guys. Conservative women love red also (overcoats, dresses). I’ve never worn a red tie (fat, medium or skinny) in my entire life.

During a 10.19 podcast in Austin with “Dudley and Bob with Matt,” the fearless and legendary Sean Young passed along two noteworthy sexual harassment anecdotes from the early to mid ’90s, one involving Harvey Weinstein and the other concerning Barbra Streisand.

The Harvey thing is funny but almost a so-whatter. If you ask me the Streisand story is the eye-opener.

Young claimed that Harvey whipped out his gross animal member sometime before, during or after the making of Miramax’s Love Crimes, and that her response was ‘You know, Harvey, I really don’t think you should be pulling that thing out…it’s not very pretty.'”

During a pre-production interview with Streisand about a role in The Mirror Has Two Faces (’96), Young claims that Streisand harshly criticized her for talking to the press about having been sexually harassed by Warren Beatty during the making of Dick Tracy. (Beatty has denied the incident.) “I think it’s disgusting that you talked to the press!” Streisand allegedly hissed. In the podcast Young says, “And what I had said to the press was that I was harassed. That I was sexually harassed by Warren Beatty. And she told me she thought that was disgusting.” Young adds that Streisand mentioned at the time that she herself had “been” with Beatty.

The Weinstein anecdote is mentioned around the five-minute mark; the Streisand story happens about a minute later.

When an obviously crappy film comes along, my heart goes out to the cast members. They were paid reasonable fees, of course, and I realize that “a job is just a job,” but the Geostorm downside is that their faces and personas are being internationally splattered with exploitation mud. Gerard Butler can’t sink much lower, having lately made nothing but cheeseball action-disaster flicks. But poor Jim Sturgess! Ten years ago he was the hot new guy — Across the Universe, The Other Boleyn Girl, 21. Not to mention Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Richard Schiff, Ed Harris and Andy García. I feel their discomfort.

From Peter Debruge‘s Variety review: “If you’ve ever wanted to see a tidal wave sweep over the horizon of a waterless desert or eggs frying on a superheated city street, Geostorm is the movie for you! And if you’re one of the millions of human beings on this planet who was recently impacted by hurricanes and tropical storms, well, Dean Devlin’s ill-timed destruct-a-thon (already delayed more than a year from its intended March 2016 release) succeeds in being even more callously insensitive/offensive than our president’s response to your plight. Then again, the only thing more reliable than bad weather is bad movies, and in that respect, Geostorm is right on forecast.”

Read more