Everyone presumably knows that Hulu’s The Girl From Plainville is an eight-part series about an infamous texting-suicide case that went to trial in 2017. The real-life Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning), an ice-cold sociopath, goaded her unstable teenage boyfriend, Conrad Roy (Colton Ryan), into committing suicide.
Based on Jesse Baron’s Esquire article of the same name, the series explores how and why the suicide happened and how Carter was eventually busted, prosecuted and convicted of manslaughter. She would up serving 11 months or something like that, but she’sthedevil and presumably knows it. This will be on her back for the rest of her life, and that’s a good thing.
Fanning plays Carter as such a revolting drama queen and contemptible attention whore that you can’t wait to see her get popped and cuffed, but it takes too long. I made it through two episodes before quitting. Okay, I may watch a couple more but this is a three-hour movie expanded into eight hours. It’s very well acted and all (special shout-out to Chloe Sevigny‘s performance as Conrad’s mom) but sometimes a miniseries just feels too stretched out.
I’m more interested in sitting through Erin Lee Carter‘s 143-minute I Love You, Now Die, which is on HBO Max.
Two or three days ago The Take co-host Elizabeth Wagmeister stepped out of her usual rah-rah, chipmunk-voiced enthusiasm mode to express annoyance at the endless corporate stream of IP sequels, prequels, remakes and retreads.
HE readers presumably understand that Wagmeister and The Take co-host Clayton Davis are catty, upbeat, chuckling cheerleaders…everything Hollywood does gives them an ostrich-feather ass tickle at the very least and often jump-for-joy feelings…”oh wow oh wow oh wow!”
Every thinking industry person has been lamenting IP megaplex suffocation for at least a decade, of course. But when Wagmiester complained about it I damn near fell out of my chair. It happened during a discussion of recently seen Cinemacon trailers:
Wagmeister: “What’s interesting is, we’re just talking about all these films. There’s a Part 1, there’s a Part 2, there’s a Part 10. It just feels like this trend in movies in movie theatres is that we’re seeing sequel upon sequel and franchise upon franchise. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. We do want to bring people back to theatres. But (exhales)…you know, it’s just like ‘really?'”
Davis: “It is stretching the dollar out but blah blah blah blah I love geek movies, I love franchises, I love IP superheroes, just keep it coming, I love it, I’m happy, this is what I live for…more more more plus in a couple of weeks I’m going to Europe and the Cannes Film Festival for the first time, and boy oh boy, am I going to plant a huge wet smooch on Elvis‘s ass!” [HE note: This is not an actual transcription of Davis’s response but a summary of what he meant and who he is, etc.]
“Within the last week I read a comment about Chris McQuarrie‘s Jack Reacher (Paramount, 12.21) being “a ’90s urban actioner,” which the commenter intended, I gathered, as some kind of putdown. Well, take out the negative inference and he’s dead right — Reacheris a kind of old-fashioned actioner in a ’90s or ’80s or ’70s vein (can’t decide which) but in a highly refreshing, intelligent, follow-the-clues-and-watch-your-back fashion.
“It has no digital bullshit, no explosions, and none of that top-the-last-idiot-action-movie crap. Jack Reacherbelieves in the basics, and I for one was delighted even though it doesn’t exactly re-invent the wheel.
“Honestly? I was fairly satisfied but not that blown away by the final 25%, but the first 75% plays very tight and true and together, and Tom Cruise, as the titular character, has the confidence and presence and steady-as-she-goes vibe of a hero who doesn’t have to reach or scream or emphasize anything in order to exude that steely-stud authority that we all like.
“Reacher is just a bang-around Pittsburgh dirty-cop movie with a kind of Samurai-styled outsider (Cruise) working with a sharp-eyed, straight-dope attorney (Rosamund Pike) trying to uncover who stinks and what’s wrong and who needs to be beaten or killed or whatever.
“It’s just an unpretentious, elegantly written programmer that’s nowhere near the class or depth of Witness, say, certainly not in the matter of departmental corruption and general venality, but it does move along with an agreeably lean, get-it-right attitude. I love that Cruise’s Reacher doesn’t drive a car or carry an ID or even a modest bag of clothing and toiletries. He washes his one T-shirt and one pair of socks every night in the sink.
I somehow got the idea that the Jack Reacher character, as written by Jack Grant/Lee Child, was some brawny badass who strode around and pulverized the bad guys like he was Paul Bunyan or something, largely because he was a mountain-sized 6′ 5″.
“I’ve never read a Reacher novel but the movie is not some brute kickass machismo thing but a largely cerebral whodunit that believes in dialogue and playing it slow and cool and holding back and pausing between lines and all that less-is-more stuff. It has a bit of a Sherlock Holmes thing going on between the beatings and threats and car chases.
“Jack Reacher basically delivers what urban thrillers used to deliver before John Woo came along in the early ’90s and fucked everything up with flying ballet crap and two-gun, crossed-arm blam-blam. It has a little bit of a nostalgic Walter Hill atmosphere going on, particularly in the fashion of The Driver (’78). It also reminded me of the stripped-down style and natural, unhurried pacing of John Flynn‘s The Outfit (’73), which starred Robert Duvall (who plays a small but key supporting role in Jack Reacher).
“If you know The Outfit, you know what I’m talking about.”
Earlier today I came across an old DVD of Brian Koppelman and David Levien‘s Solitary Man (’10), a Michael Douglas drama about an immature, self-absorbed sexaholic who betrays and disappoints women he ostensibly cares for.
For nearly 25 years Douglas specialized in playing men who, in David Thomson‘s words, were “weak, culpable, morally indolent, compromised, and greedy for illicit sensation without losing that basic probity or potential for ethical character that we require of a hero.”
Douglas’s last role of this kind was Liberace in Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra (’13).
What threw me this afternoon was the fact that I couldn’t (and still can’t) recall a single damn thing about Solitary Man…nothing. Not a scene, not a line.
I’m fairly certain I caught it at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival in Toronto, and if not there then certainly at a Manhattan all-media screening a few months later. I can almost always recall something. I can’t figure it.
Please name any film released within the last 15 or 20 years that you’re dead certain you saw and yet your mind is a blank.
Last night in front of a huge Cinemacon crowd inside the Caesar’s Place Colisseum, Don’t Worry Darling director Olivia Wilde was legally served with custody papers. The papers were from Jason Suidekis, her ex-partner and father of their two kids. The actual process server, probably a local, was presumably hired by Suidekis’s law firm.
The 4K Bluray release has been sourced “from a new 4K restoration completed by Warner Bros. with the cooperation of The Film Foundation.
“It was completed sourcing both the original camera negatives and protection RGB separation master positives for the best possible image, and color corrected in high dynamic range for the latest picture display technology. The audio was sourced primarily from a 1995 protection copy of the Original Magnetic Mono soundtrack. The picture and audio restoration was completed by Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services: Motion Picture Imaging and Post Production Sound.”
I’m naturally looking forward to the new disc, but keep in mind what blue-chip restoration guru Robert Harris said about the original Giant elements on 10.27.13 on Home Theatre Forum:
In his New Yorker review of The Northman, Anthony Lane notes that “the period detail is unstinting,” adding that “scholars of Old Norse who were unconvinced by Tony Curtis’s miniskirt, banded with chevrons, in The Vikings (1958), will be reassured by Eggers’s dedication.”
But for the rest of us, The Northman is not reassuring in terms of emotional involvement. You just don’t give a damn about anyone except for Anya Taylor Joy‘s “Olga”, except she’s kept on a short leash.
Hence this view of Eggers from a producer who’s seen The Northman: “In another era, Eggers would be a landscape painter, but never a portrait painter — unwilling or unable to capture the soul of his subject, and only the technical details of their environment. He might paint one of those massive battlefield canvases where hundreds of warriors gouge each other’s vital organs out, but end up as stick figures of glory against a barren emotional terrain.”
Though clunky and unsubtle, Richard Fleischer‘s The Vikings does not present a barren emotional terrain. Obviously inauthentic by today’s standards, it gives you emotional material to chew on.
[Posted two or three times]: “One thing that still works in The Vikings‘ favor is the film’s refusal to dramatically amplify the fact that Kirk Douglas‘s Einar and Tony Curtis‘s Eric, mortal enemies throughout the film, are in fact brothers, having both been sired by Ernest Borgnine‘s Ragnar.
“Ten minutes from the conclusion Janet Leigh‘s Princess Morgana begs Douglas to consider this fraternity, and he angrily brushes her off. But when his sword is raised above a defenseless Curtis at the very end, Douglas hesitates. And then Curtis stabs Douglas in the stomach with a shard of a broken sword, and Douglas is finished.
“The way he leans back, screams ‘Odin!’ and then rolls over dead is pretty hammy, but that earlier moment of hesitation is spellbinding — one of the most touching pieces of acting Douglas ever delivered.
“I’m not trying to build The Vikings up beyond what it was — a primitive sex-and-swordfight film for Eisenhower-era Eloi. But it did invest in that submerged through-line of ‘brothers not realizing they’re brothers while despising each other’, and the subtlety does pay off.” — originally posted on 3.27.06, on the occasion of Richard Fleischer‘s passing.
So who voiced the complaint against Bill Murray that resulted in the suspension of Aziz Ansari‘s Being Mortal? Nobody’s saying and nobody knows (myself included), but four days ago 28 year-old Being Mortal costar Keke Palmer (aka “Millennial Diva“) posted an Instagram riff about professional behavior, and how “it can lower your rate when people don’t like the experience of working with you.”
One could obviously interpret this post (initially flagged by Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman) as a commentary on the Murray brouhaha, whether Palmer was directly involved or not. You tell me….who knows?
Palmer: “It’s not always about how good you are at the actual job. It’s about how you show up to the job. Are you on time? Do you have a good attitude? Are you efficient? Are you flexible? Are you calm under fire? Do you represent yourself and the employer well? Are you a good communicator?
“These are the things people sometimes don’t think matters, especially those who work in fields that come natural to them. It can double your rate in any field if you create an enjoyable EXPERIENCE for the client. And it can lower your rate when people don’t like the experience of working with you, no matter the outcome of the actual task.
“I’m talented but I’m not arrogant enough to believe that there aren’t many talented people. However, not every talented person is a professional and people PAY for PROFESSIONALISM.”
Creative HE translation: “Being talented and charismatic is all well and good, but Millennials like myself value safe spaces and cheerful attitudes and being cool and professional on the set, especially in the matter of creative conflicts and whatnot. If you think you can ignore Millennial social behavior rules because you’re popular and world-famous, you’d better think again, pops.”
Radical idea #1: If there was personal conflict on the Being Mortal set (possibly between Murray and Palmer or somebody else…who knows?)…but if there was conflict on the set, why didn’t the producers and a Searchlight rep or two simply step in and ask everyone to be a professional, put a lid on the bad vibes, put on a happy face and finish the damn movie? Why suspend shooting on a film because someone got offended? Couldn’t they have simply have had a cast-and-crew sitdown to settle things?
Radical idea #2: Before the movie began filming, the complainer’s manager or agent takes him or her aside and says, “Beware of Bill Murray…he can be difficult but he doesn’t have to be. He’s moody at times so play it smart, give him a wide berth, try to turn the other cheek, pretend he’s an 800-pound gorilla who might hurt you and don’t start any fights. Whatever happens, just let it go. He’s been this way before and nothing is going to change. Just get through it, and hopefully this’ll turn into a good film.”
Radical idea #3: During pre-production Murray’s agent or manager or best friend takes him aside and says the following (which is half-copied from my 4.17.22 riff on Frank Langella): “You’ve been in this racket for over 40 years and you’re not gonna change, but listen to me, bruh…don’t fuck with Millennial safe-space fanatics. Especially Millennial women. You’re an older white guy, and you have to understand that you’re a deer, and that it’s deer hunting season out there right now. Because a decent percentage of urban progressive women (teens to mid 30s and perhaps beyond) are ready and willing to murder the careers of older white guys who say or do the wrong thing. So don’t be dumb — play it smart and careful. Because there are some Millennial women out there who will do what they can to kill you if you give them half a reason…they will turn your life in a raging social-media sea.”
I’ve been struggling in this town for nearly 40 years, and perfect days are rare. Climate-wise, I mean. Flooded with sunshine, warm but not too warm, deep blue skies, magnificent white clouds, a gentle breeze in the air. Today is a perfect day, and about an hour ago I did something very unusual. I stood on a street corner and stared up at the sky and went “wow,” and then took a couple of snaps.
If Los Angeles were like this half or even one-third of the time, people would feel differently about it. I would honestly say that this kind of day happens maybe two or three times per month in the mid-to-late spring, but no more than that.
I was a tad irked by Johnny Depp‘s testimony today. Not by what he said but that he spoke so slowly, at times haltingly. He certainly wasn’t loquacious. He seemed to struggle to remember stuff or to find the right words, although he eventually pulled it together.
Depp on the arc of his relationship with Amber Heard: “From what I recall, what I remember, she was too good to be true. She was attentive, she was loving, she was smart, she was kind, she was funny, she was understanding. We had many things in common”, and for the first 12 to 18 months Heard was”wonderful…it was amazing. And then things just started to change — or things started to reveal themselves, is a better way to put it. She became another person, almost.”
When you fall in love and move in with someone, you always put on your best face at first. But within the first year or so, the real inner person always comes out. Sometimes it emerges within three or four months; it depends. But sooner or later, the “act” falls away.
This is a nice Cannes Film Festival poster, but Peter Weir‘s The Truman Show (’98) is no masterpiece. I disliked it from the get-go. Jim Carrey‘s “Truman Burbank” is unaware that he’s living inside a corporate-funded, hermetically-sealed reality TV dome. This is what modern life feels like to tens of millions of actual Americans, of course, so we all get the metaphor. But I found the premise impossible. Complete disengagement.
I’ve posted the following two or three times over the last decade, but here goes again: Despite the impossible-to-swallow premise, The Truman Show could have saved itself if it had gone with a darkly ironic ending.
Weir’s film ends with Truman escaping from the dome and finally about to experience the blessings and pitfalls of real life…hallelujah! A far more satisfying ending would have been for Truman to escape into the real world and then, after a few difficult weeks or months, returning to the dome because he can’t hack the difficulty of real life — too much anxiety, trauma and heartbreak.
The final scene would show Truman embracing Ed Harris‘s “Cristof” and Laura Linney‘s “Hannah Gill” and shedding tears of joy at being able to return to the shelter of Fake World — a realm that tens of millions of actual Americans live in today.
I’ve been looking for this hilarious story on YouTube for ages. It’s from George Stevens A Filmmakers’ Journey (’85), and nobody’s ever posted it. It’s funny because it reminds us that no matter how divine the inspiration and how arduous and exacting the effort to make the movie turn out right, the last guy on the delivery food chain can still screw it up. From Shane to Bonnie and Clyde to a projectionist’s booth inside London’s Warner cinema.
