Christian Bale has been exceptional or certainly admired in several roles over the last 30 years. His finest performances, HE feels, are, in this order, the following: Dicky Eklund in The Fighter (’10), Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (’00), Dick Cheney in Vice (’18), and Bruce Wayne in his three Batman films (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises).
But the Bale “performance” that made the strongest and most lasting impression, hands down, is “Bale Out: RevoLucian’s Christian Bale Remix!“, which popped in early ’09. A satirical dance remix of Bale’s Terminator Salvation rant (which happened for real in July 2008), it’s absolutely real, brilliant and unforgettable in a relentless sort of way. Every angry word is 110% genuine.
Okay, there's a vague resemblance between Casper Phillipson, who plays JFK in Pablo Larrain's Jackie and Andrew Dominik's Blonde, and the Real McCoy. The nose, the jawline and the eyes, to some extent, but at the same time Phillipson's eyes lack something important. In his off moments JFK's eyes had a haunted, hangdog quality -- a slightly gloomy and exhausted look that was captured by Time magazine illustrator Pietro Annigoni. There was a vibe about Kennedy in these moments that seemed to say "I'm probably not going to last into old age, and you know it as well as I." No offense to Phillipson but this grave undertone vibe is missing in his features. Gotta have that flickering awareness of death hovering.
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As you begin to watch Park Chan-wook‘s Decision to Leave (MUBI, 10.14), there’s no denying that you’re being carried along by a masterful visual composer. Every shot is exquisite, a painting, an eye bath…and so perfectly balanced.
And during the first 30 to 40 minutes you can’t help saying to yourself “wow, this guy is really good” while at the same time hoping that it’ll amount to more than just a delicious film noir by way of a haunting mood trip.
And of course it doesn’t. As the first hour comes to an end it begins to hit you. This film is all visual swoon and superficial noir strokes, you realize — it’s not going to build or pivot or dovetail into anything. But it’ll look great every step of the way.
And then you look at your watch and go “oh Jesus Mary mother of God, there’s another 70 or 80 minutes to go!” And you realize that you’re stuck, and you descend into a feeling of being locked in an animal cage filled with straw. And you realize, of course, that the minutes are just going to drag on and on. You’d like to leave but you can’t because you’re watching a film by the great Park Chan-wook, and only a rank philistine would do such a thing.
I’m just saying that Decision to Leave is opening on a week from Friday, and that…oh, hell, do what you want. Some critics are nuts for this guy. But this film should ideally be called Decision to Avoid.
Posted from Cannes on 5.23: With all due respect for Park Chan-wook’s smoothly masterful filmmaking chops (no one has ever disputed this) and the unbridled passion that his cultish film critic fans have expressed time and again…
And with respect, also, for the time-worn film noir convention of the smart but doomed male protagonist (a big city homicide detective in this instance) falling head over heels for a Jane Greer-like femme fatale and a psychopathic wrong one from the get-go…
The labrynthian (read: convoluted) plotting of Park’s Decision To Leave, though initially intriguing, gradually swirls around the average-guy viewer (read: me) and instills a feeling of soporific resignation and “will Park just wrap this thing up and end it already?”
Jesus God in heaven, but what doth it profit an audience to endure this slow-drip, Gordian knot-like love story-slash-investigative puzzler (emphasis on the p word) if all that’s left at the end is “gee, what an expert directing display by an acknowledged grade-A filmmaker!”
I saw Till yesterday afternoon, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Whoopi looks seriously overweight. But not because of a fat suit. Whoopi’s shape is authentically her own.
“I have to say something because there was a young lady who writes for one of the magazines, and she was distracted by my fat suit in her review,” Goldberg said on Monday’s View. “Now, and I’m just going to say this. I don’t really care how you felt about the movie, but you should know that was not a fat suit.”
If a white male film critic had complained about Whoopi’s fictitious fat suit rather than Cunningham, he would be out of a job as we speak. If a white female critic had been the culprit, she would be in trouble but possibly still employed. Cunningham is safe due to being Black and a total wokester — political protection at its most thorough and fortified.
Goldberg to Cunningham: “I assume you don’t watch the show or you would have known that that was not a fat suit, but I just want to let you know that it’s okay not to be a fan of a movie, but you want to leave people’s looks out. So just comment on the acting, and if you have a question, ask somebody because I’m sure you didn’t mean to be demeaning.”
.@WhoopiGoldberg speaks on the importance of her film 'Till,' which premiered at New York Film Festival, and she addresses a claim that she wore a fat suit in the film.
The Ankler‘s Tatiana Siegel is reporting that Apple is seriously thinking about “crashing the Oscars” with Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon, if and when it opens in December. World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has repeated the story sans paywall. If Scott brings the same intense historical realism to Napoleon that be brought to The Last Duel and especially The Duellists, his forthcoming Apple-distributed drama will almost certainly be a keeper.
It is fair to presume that Meloni’s’ victory is mostly about ground-level, Average Joe racism — wanting to protect traditional Italian culture from a feared flooding of the country and the culture by Middle Eastern and northern African immigrants.
The electoral ascension of the hard-right Sweden Democrats represents another cultural convulsion caused by this same concern.
N.Y. Times reporter Steven Erlanger: “European Union leaders are now watching [the Meloni] coalition’s comfortable victory in Italy…with caution and some trepidation, despite reassurances from Ms. Meloni, who would be the first far-right nationalist to govern Italy since Mussolini, that she has moderated her views.
With The Association's "Cherish" being used prominently in the The Greatest Beer Run Ever, I'm reminded of how this mid-to-late '60s pop group didn't fit the mold. '60s pop groups had to have reasonably good-looking guys -- that was the standard set by the Beatles, Herman's Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, etc.
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Prior to its Toronto Film Festival debut, Apple’s plan for PeterFarrelly’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple) was to open theatrically on Friday, 9.30 and begin streaming a week later (10.7). But just before it got hammered by Toronto critics, Apple moved everything up a week.
Curious as it may seem, Beer Run is opening today in New York but without an all-media screening preceding this booking. (Which never happens.) And yet Apple has arranged for an all-media Manhattan screening on Thursday, 9.29 — one day before the Apple streaming begins.
Theatrical bookings of BeerRun are also happening today in Los Angeles and Dallas.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never in my life heard of an all-media screening that happens a week after a film has opened theatrically. Or, for that matter, only a day before it begins streaming.
Intrigued, I’m on my way into the city to catch a 5 pm screening of Beer Run at the Union Square Regal. Yes, right now.
We all understand a lot of critics had it in for Peter and this movie before they saw it. They hated Green Book four years ago, and now they’re delivering payback for it having won the Best Picture Oscar. Whatever the actual merits of BeerRun, these folks were locked into hate mode.
The Wikipedia age still saysBeer Run “will be released in select theaters and on Apple TV+ on September 30, 2022.” Time for an update!
On a 2001 Charlie Rose Show about Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Christiane Kubrick was asked to define a certain personality trait or mental attitude that genius-level filmmakers seem to share in common. She said this is unknowable and therein lies the fascination.
HE says “holdupski.” HE defines that mindset as an educated “fuck it” thing…mindful and respectful of artistic history and precedent, but not especially intimidated by same…an attitude that says “okay, these other filmmakers did it this or that way and that’s fine, but I’m here now and this is my film so fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
In a phrase, a genius artist is often possessed of a certain kind of reverent irreverence.
Every major-league director I’ve spoken with in person over the decades (and we’re talking quite a few) shares this trait.
While watching this I was also struck by how radiantly young the 59 year-old Martin Scorsese looked during this taping, certainly compared to now. Guys in their 50s and even their early 60s can look really great if they’ve watched their diets and haven’t done too many drugs in their youth. And it’s believed that Scorsese, remember, was a total cokehead in the mid ’70s so he came out of that dungeon without too many bruises.
Posted on 8.7.19: “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, naturally, but the fact that racist or tribal attitudes were common throughout most of the 20th, 19th and 18th Centuries in this country and for centuries earlier in Europe, the Middle East and even Africa 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 my ancestors may seem insufficiently evolved, agreed, 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 hooves, tails and horns on their heads.
“Nor do I feel that elemental decency is absent among the majority of white people today. Okay, among middle to upper-middle-class coastals.
I feel profoundly repelled by the attitudes of your backwater Trump supporters, of course, but they are not me or my own. I come from a family of “good”, well-educated, imperfect people who had their occasional issues (including alcoholism) but believed in hard work, discipline, spring cleaning, ironing their own shirts and trimming the hedges and mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoons, and who exuded decency and compassion for the most part.”
Updated: I am not the devil’s spawn, and neither are my two sons and certainly not my granddaughter. 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.
Frank Thring’s 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. Perfect freedom has no existence. The grown man knows the world he lives in.”