HE is reminding that the next big Bedford Marquee event is a special 4K screening of William Cameron Menzies‘ recently restored Invaders From Mars (’53). A special master class instruction from restorationist Scott MacQueen will also occur. It’ll happen three weeks hence on Sunday, 1.15.23 at 11 am.
How keen will local film buffs be about catching a sci-fi classic on a lazy Sunday morning? Understand this: This will be the only first-rate screening in a AAA first-rate theatre (which the BP definitely is) of an absolutely mint-condition restoration of perhaps the most influential Eisenhower-era space invader film ever made. This will almost certainly never happen again…trust me. Hot chocolate served in the indoor cafe. The more, the merrier!
Jeff Sneider is a whipsmart, fair-minded guy with that strange intestinal fortitude quality known to very few journos in this racket. Co-panelist Scott Mantz is also part of this fraternity, having showed his own form of courage a few months ago in that Hollywood Critics Association dust-up.
In the minds of woke hive-mind fanatics I am a “divisive” columnist, as Jeff notes, but I care deeply about films and the remnants of the film culture that used to prevail in this industry (i.e., more cinematic, less of an emphasis on political instruction), and at least I’m not some breezy, constantly smiling opportunist (those Noovies promos!) and zeitgeist cruiser like Perri Nemiroff, whose face freezes and whose eyes narrow into a skeptical squint when Sneider mentions me.
“Emotional” sometimes gets conflated with “divisive”. What I am, boiled down, is a devotional, storied (40 years and counting), richly seasoned, aspect ratio-attuned, well-travelled and still strongly relationshipped Film Catholic who’s (a) filing as passionately as always and loving the grind, (b) had a pretty great peak ride for nearly 30 years (early ‘90s to late teens) but (c) has also endured some fairly intense cash-flow trauma over the last three years due to woke fanaticism, hence Sneider’s use of the term “divisive.”
Excepting the sea-change event of embracing sobriety in March of ’12, I haven’t changed that much over the last 20 or 25 years. My film devotion has been steady and reverent since I got into this racket in the late ‘70s, and I still regard myself as a sensible center-left type, but there are some Robespierre loonies (especially those from the absolutist DEI brigade and the older-white-guy-hating #MeToo fringe vengeance squad) who began going over the waterfall in ‘18 and ‘19.
That mad fervor is starting to calm down as we speak. Will woke lunacy last as long as the rightwing Red Scare paranoia did in the ‘50s? Maybe but who knows? It’s very easy to just go along with the mob. Very few have spine or sand. Even I am doing whatever I can to groove along with the loonies — no point in getting into small slap fights that I can’t hope to win.
In sum I appreciate and admire Mr. Sneider’s fairness and his respect for my integrity. Yes, I sincerely meant it when I put Empire of Light at the top of my 2022 list. Ditto my other selections, 30 in all.
The piece has two titles — “The Final Campaign” online and, on the current New York cover, “Party of One.”
It’s a darkly amusing dig-down piece…fascinating content start to finish…one smirking, devastating paragraph after next. D-List MAGA types (including “Brick Man”) at the Mar a Lago announcement of Trump’s ’24 presidential campaign. Anonymous Trump adviser: “It’s not there. In this business, you can have it and have it so hot [but] it can go overnighty and it’s gone and you can’t get it back. I think we’re just seeing that it’s gone,. The magic is gone.”
The image of Trump basically being fat Elvis Presley during the tacky decline period of ’76 and ’77…this analogy will stick.
The Elvis observation is from 41-year-old Sam Nunberg, a Manhattan-based operator who was an on-and-off political advisor to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and “was subpoenaed by a grand jury for testimony and documents relating to the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation.”
The spooky closing montage is the crowning crescendo of William Cameron Menzies‘ Invaders From Mars (’53). Without this sequence the film would amount to much less, certainly in terms of present-day esteem. The combination of that eerie choral music (composed by Mort Glickman, orchestrated by Raoul Kraushar) along with those trippy reverse-motion shots still get under your skin.
A huge round of applause to editor Arthur Roberts, and an extra round for Glickman — the choral music delivers the spook and the soul.
The new Ignite Bluray arrived just a couple of days ago, and on one of these video essays Glickman is given credit for the music by Invaders restoration master Scott MacQueen. Joe Dante and John Landis also deliver excellent commentary in the same essay.
Apologies for the crappy video capture — I should have shot it last night.
My God, Avatar2: TheWayofWater rerally romps and stomps like nothing I’ve seen in a long while, and the astonishing CG realism (which I couldn’t settle into at first — it took me 10 minutes to find my way into it) is quite the thing, and there’s no beating that last 50- or 60-minute aquatic pitched-battle, breaching-whale, pulse-rifle-burst, arrow-piercing “woo-woo!” destructathon.
A family that fiercely fights together loves all the more…ThePoseidon Adventure meets a return-to-Titanic sinkathon + TheAbyss drowning trauma + weeping death scene + the wildest, craziest, most vigorously sustained battle lollapalooza ever…worth the price and then some…pays off like a motherfucker.
James Cameron is a drop-dead brilliant action director…let no one ever challenge that statement.
And I’m now determined to practice my Navi cat howl-Māori battle cry.
But so much of Avatar2 is padded all to hell & is too fucking long, man…it could’ve easily, EASILY been 45 minutes shorter. The narrative pretty much stops in the middle section and becomes a bloated, ultra-costly real-estate video + a tricks-of-under-the-sea survival instructional + Club Med acqua-blue travelogue for glorious Pandora Shores.
The tech is marvelous and bracinglyreal & every last dollar seems to be on the screen. But there’s something oddly oppressive and even un-entertaining at times about being vigorously assaulted & smothered by so much CG dough…truckloads & truckloads of cash spent by the ultimate wizardly maestro of wildly expensive holy shit superfuck blockbusters. The film is a titanic grand-slam CG toy factory spendathon…whew!
I like the “family is a fortress” theme but my God, I was exhausted when it ended. I’m not altogether sure I want to see it a second time. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman was right when he called it thin. Pic seems to take as much as it gives.
Right after the first media screening of Avatar 2 I said for the 157th time that you can’t trust fanboys. The only reactions you can trust are those from “grumpy” critics, which is to say discerning types who don’t immediately drop to their knees when confronted with next-level CG.
I wouldn’t call Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman a grump or a grinch, but he’s no easy lay**. His assessment of Avatar 2, therefore, has value.
Key Gleiberman passage: “At its height, it feels exhilarating. But not all the way through. Cameron, in The Way of Water, remains a fleet and exacting classical popcorn storyteller, but oh, the story he’s telling! The script he has co-written is a string of serviceable clichés that give the film the domestic adventure-thriller spine it needs, but not anything more than that.
“The story, in fact, could hardly be more basic. The Sky People, led again by the treacherous Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), have now become Avatars themselves, with Quaritch recast as a scowling Na’vi redneck in combat boots and a black crewcut. They’ve arrived in this guise to hunt Jake down. But Jake escapes with his family and hides out with the Metkayina. Quaritch and his goon squad commandeer a hunting ship and eventually track them down. There is a massive confrontation. The end.
“This tale, with its bare-bones dialogue, could easily have served an ambitious Netflix thriller, and could have been told in two hours rather than three. But that’s the point, isn’t it? The Way of Water is braided with sequences that exist almost solely for their sculptured imagistic magic. It’s truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. Another way to put it is that it’s a live-action film that casts the spell of an animated fantasy. But though the faces of the Na’vi and the MetKayina are expressive, and the actors make their presence felt, there is almost zero dimensionality to the characters. The dimensionality is all in the images.”
In a forthcoming issue of Total FilmOppenheimer‘s Christopher Nolan is claiming that he and his crackerjack physical effects team “recreated the first nuclear weapon detonation without using CGI.” I’m not 100% certain but I think Stanley Kubrick went the same way for Dr. Strangelove‘s grand musical finale.
Brittney Griner is 6’9″, wears a size 17 shoe and has a deep manly voice that’s a little deeper than Will Smith‘s. We all understand her sexual orientation, but is she looking to man up in every physically noticable way? Because her dreads have been shorn and she’s wearing tight man-hair with whitewalls. (Did the Russki prison system insist on this?) I thought the dreds worked.
HE not yet having seen The Whale is entirely on A24 and their reps, who are totally playing “hide the ball” from certain viewers. The idea of seeing it in the city this weekend is an option, of course, but a conversation I had this morning with three friends gave me pause:
Friendo #1: “The Whale is very bad.” Friendo #2: “It’s a tough sit, but I was sobbing at the very end.” Friendo #1: “The Whale begins with Brendan Fraser jerking off to gay porn.” HE: “Is that how the play version began?” Friendo #1: “I didn’t see the play.” HE: “Jerking off? Please tell me [Darren] Aronofsky‘s camera shows restraint.” Friendo #1: “And then somebody walks in on him.” Friendo #3: “I missed the first minute at my Toronto screening. I got in when he was naked in the shower. I didn’t notice any jerking off. Maybe I missed it.” Friendo #1: “I don’t remember a shower scene, but the first scene definitely shows him jerking off, bro,” Friendo #4: “Yes! That’s how it starts!” HE: “Aaaggghh.”
I have always been an ardent fan of Mr. Aronofsky’s, but saying that I am genuinely fearful of seeing The Whale is putting it mildly.
Is it Hillary Clinton or Amber Ruffin who’s murdering “I Will Survive“? One of them can’t hit notes to save their life, and is therefore helping to Hannibal Lecter this song (i.e., eating its liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti).
It’s probably not Ruffin, a professional comedian-actress, so we know who the guilty party is. Hillary doesn’t know the lyrics either.
An inability to sing isn’t a felony, but sharing your melodic dysfunction with the world is.
This clip is from Carpool Karaoke: The Series — Chelsea Clinton at the wheel, Vanessa L. Williams riding shotgun, Hillary and Amber in the back seat.
Gloria Gaynor wishes she was in hell with her back broken.
The Hillary Challenge: Can you make it all the way through this video without jumping out a window? pic.twitter.com/JYjQ7RAAwg
