I’ve seen most of the significant Robin Hood features except one: Ken Annakin‘s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (’52), produced by Walt Disney and starring Richard Todd, Joan Rice, Peter Finch (!), James Robertson Justice, etc.
It was reasonably well reviewed, reasonably profitable and — this is important — shotinthree–stripTechnicolor. It’s therefore odd that Disney has never produced a Bluray version or even an HD streamer.
Disney issued a Laserdisc in ’92, a VHS tape in ’94 (the Walt Disney’s Studio Film Collection) and a limited Disney Movie Club DVD in July ’06. All versions were mastered boxy — either 1.33:1 or 1.37:1.
There’s no question that the all-time best is still Michael Curtiz and Errol Flynn‘s The Adventures of Robin Hood (’38), and the absolute, all-time reprehensible worst is the most recent — Otto Bathurst‘s Robin Hood (’18) with Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, Eve Hewson, Jamie Dornan, et. al.
I’ve got Kevin Costner‘s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (’91) tied with Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood (’10) for second place. Mel Brooks‘ Robin Hood: Men In Tights (’91) ranks third. I’ve never seen Douglas Fairbanks‘ 1922 silent version.
TheWrap: “Directed by Mike Mills (Beginners, 20th Century Women), C’mon C’mon will have its New York premiere at NYFF59.
“Joaquin Phoenix plays a soulful, kindhearted radio journalist deep into a project in which he interviews children across the U.S. about the world’s uncertain future. The film finds him connecting to his 8-year-old nephew (Woody Norman), who’s suffering from mental health issues, and taking him on a cross-country journey. Costarring Gaby Hoffmann and Jaboukie Young-White, pic will be released by A24.
I’m hearing “black-and-white road trip movie…moody, very arty, very euro, tons of voiceover.” Mills allegedly interrupts the narrative from time to time with docu-style interviews, kids talking about life, etc.
The initial Eternals teaser used Skeeter Davis‘s “The End of the World” as a background track, and now, in the new trailer, they’ve got Lia McHugh‘s “Sprite” saying “this is what the end of the world looks like…at least we have front-row seats.”
I’m not adopting the posture of some drooling, wild-eyed fanatic by claiming that The Eternals and the whole mythological Marvel branding machine of the last 13 years is the end of the moviegoing world as many of us have known it, but the Marvel virus has absolutely infected the realm. It is box-office manna but otherwise cancer…chemical sugar highs for pigs at the trough.
HE to all human beings and to God Herself: As payback and cure and an act of salvation it is the solemn responsibility of each and every serious film lover to band together and do what we can to turn The Eternals into another box-office shortfaller…to make it into another The Suicide Squad…to bring about a less impressive performance than Black Widow. Let’s all band together and punch a hole in the balloon…let’s send a message to Kevin Feige (who came from the same leafy New Jersey town that I went to school and suffered in for so many years)…”nothing lasts forever, friendo!”
It was late in the afternoon in the fall of ’78 when I ran into Chris Walken upon the New York-bound platform of the Westport train station.
Tall and slender and good-looking in a curious, off-center sort of way, Walken looked that day like he does in the below interview, which was taped in late ’80. He was 35 but could’ve been 29 or 31. Same hair, same calmness of manner, same “waiting for something to happen” watchfulness.
I’m pretty sure it was a Sunday. I’d been visiting my parents (Jim and Nancy) in Wilton. Walken had been in Westport to visit his manager, Bill Treusch.
Our encounter happened two or three months before TheDeerHunter opened. I hadn’t seen that pretentious, wildlyover–praised MichaelCimino film at the time, and it was probably for the better. I was simultaneously taken aback (“Whoa, this movie is up to something!”) and at the same time irritated. Those ridiculous Russian roulette scenes, that interminable Russian wedding celebration and those absurd mountain peaks in rural Pennsylvania drove me insane. I was surprised and moved by the “God Bless America” finale.
At that precise moment in time I knew Walken from only two roles — that “who’s this guy?” performance in Paul Mazursky‘s NextStop, GreenwichVillage (’76) and his bit part as Diane Keaton‘s weird, soft-spoken brother, Dwayne, in AnnieHall (’78).
Anyway I stepped up to the platform, ticket in hand, and there he stood, reading a newspaper. I felt a certain natural kinship with Walken as I resembled him somewhat, and I wasn’t shy back then anyway so I introduced myself. Walken was cool and casual (“I’m Chris”), and we wound up talking all the way into Grand Central Station.
I visited Walken’s Upper West Side apartment twice in ’79, although he wasn’t there. I had an excellent thing going with a lady named Sandra, you see, who was working for Walken and his wife as a kind of au pair girl or house-sitter. I remember the oriental rug on the living room floor, you bet, and the wood-burning fireplace in front of it. I don’t know why Sandra and I didn’t last for more than four or five weeks but it wasn’t for lack of interest on my part. She was quirky and moody, but that was part of the allure.
I spoke to Walken one or two years later (’80 or ’81) when I went backstage at the Public Theatre after a performance of The Seagull. (He played Trigorin, and rather well at that.). He had no recollection of our train-ride discussion. Zip. I could have mentioned Sandra as an ice-breaker but I thought better of it.
The chicken-and-pears video was shot, I’m presuming, at Walken’s home in Wilton, Connecticut, which is where I lived for a few years and where I did my last two high school years. Paul Dano went to high school there also. And Keith Richards has a big home there.
I love, love, love, love the way Chris Walken pronounces “chicken” and “pears.” Certain people says certain words perfectly, and I mean better than anyone else in the world. Walken saying “pears” (“peahrs“) is like Peter O’Toole pronouncing “ecclesiastical.”
Cooper’s character’s story is modeled on that of producer Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks’ producing partner. Bradley Cooper plays a producer modeled on Jon Peters, the former hairdresser who became Barbra Streisand‘s lover and producer, and who was one of the inspirations for Warren Beatty‘s “George Roundy” character in Shampoo. (Along with Jay Sebring.)
Goetzman was a child actor in the ’70s, costarring in Yours Mine & Ours (Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball) and Divorce American Style (Dick van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds, Jason Robards).”
On 9.27.18 Barbra Streisand said she was a fan of Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga‘s A Star Is Born. “It’s very good,” Streisand told Billboard. “Every time that film is made it’s a success. I loved Judy Garland‘s version, I like this one a lot, and I liked mine.”
But couple of days ago she told an interviewer with Australia’s The Sunday Project that she’s changed her mind. Or that she wasn’t being honest in the first place.
“At first, when I heard it was going to be done again, it was supposed to be Will Smith and Beyoncé, and I thought, that’s interesting. Really make it different again, different kind of music, integrated actors. I thought that was a great idea,” Streisand said.
“So I was surprised when I saw how alike [the Bradley-Gaga version] was to the version that I did in 1976. I thought it was the wrong idea. I can’t argue with success but I don’t care so much about success as I do originality.”
Two interpretations: (a) Streisand wasn’t being honest three years ago or (b) she saw it again and thought about it and decided she had been too generous in her initial assessment. This happens. Showbiz people are always reluctant to diss a new film — it’s easer to just say “it’s good” and get out of the way. And people sometimes re-think things and change their minds.
More interesting to me: At the 4:34 mark in the Sunday Project interview, Streisand pronounces the word “singers” as “sing-GURS.” That’s a Brooklyn thing, a Long Island thing. You know…the way some people pronounce Long Island as “Long-GYLAND“?
This Al Jazeera video of Taliban cadres inside the now-abandoned Kabul presidential quarters reminds me of the 1.6 insurrectionists roaming around inside the U.S. Capitol building (or lounging around inside Nancy Pelosi‘s office) on 1.6.21. They sure do love their beards and turbans and automatic weapons, don’t they? Keep those fingers on the triggers, guys!
Bennett Miller‘s Capote cost $7 million to make, and earned just shy of $50 million worldwide. I’d forgotten that. It made $28,750,530 domestic, $21,173,549 overseas for an exact total of $49,924,079.
I was visiting Miller’s lower Manhattan loft apartment around the same time, maybe a few weeks hence…I forget exactly when. But I distinctly recall Bennett showing me some original Richard Avdeon contact sheet photos of Truman Capote, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, and for whatever reason Bennett happened to call Phillip Seymour Hoffman about something, and as he was saying goodbye he called him “Philly.”
I loved the idea of a distinguished hotshot actor being called Philly, and so I used it myself a few weeks later. I knew it was inappropriate to project an attitude of informal affection with a guy I didn’t know at all first-hand, but I couldn’t resist. I was immediately bitch-slapped, reprimanded, challenged, castigated, stomach-punched, dumped on, stabbed, karate-chopped, slashed and burned….”How dare you call him that? Who the hell do you think you are, some kind of insider?…soak yourself with gasoline and light yourself on fire!”
HE review, posted three or four weeks before the 9.30.05 opening: “I’m taken with Capote partly because it’s about a writer (Truman Capote) and the sometimes horrendously difficult process that goes into creating a first-rate piece of writing, and especially the various seductions and deceptions that all writers need to administer with skill and finesse to get a source to really cough up.
“And it’s about how this gamesmanship sometimes leads to emotional conflict and self-doubt and yet, when it pays off, a sense of tremendous satisfaction and even tranquility. I’ve been down this road, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
“I’m also convinced that Capote is exceptional on its own terms. It’s one of the two or three best films of the year so far — entertaining and also fascinating, quiet and low-key but never boring and frequently riveting, economical but fully stated, and wonderfully confident and relaxed in its own skin.
“And it delivers, in Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as Capote, one of the most affecting emotional rides I’ve taken in this or any other year…a ride that’s full of undercurrents and feelings that are almost always in conflict (and which reveal conflict within Capote-the-character), and is about hurting this way and also that way and how these different woundings combine in Truman Capote to form a kind of perfect emotional storm.
“It’s finally about a writer initially playing the game but eventually the game turning around and playing him.
“Hoffman is right at the top of my list right now — he’s the guy to beat in the Best Actor category. Anyone who’s seen Capote and says he’s not in this position is averse to calling a spade a spade.
If you’ve heard that a film is underwhelming or mediocre, it will probably play better than expected when you get around to seeing it. If I’ve had this reaction once I’ve had it dozens of times, and this was more or less the shot when I caught Leisl Tommy‘s Respect at the Westside Pavillion last night.
I went in expecting to suffer or at least be bored by what I’d read would be a checklist of musical biopic cliches, delivered in paint-by-numbers fashion. But oddly enough, it didn’t depress me or annoy me or piss me off. I wasn’t knocked out or turned around or brought to tears, but I was more or less okay with it.
Mainly because of Jennifer Hudson‘s lead performance, of course, and her magnificent pipes.
I also knew that Respect is the friendly version of Aretha Franklin‘s story — the one that “the family” likes and supports. The shunned version is National Geographic’s four-part Genius: Aretha, which starred Cynthia Erivo. Experience has taught me to always be wary of a family-approved biopic, and there’s no question that Respect soft-pedals and sidesteps and does its best to make Aretha look as good as possible without totally lying. Respect delivers a few handfuls of “dirt” here and there, but not that much.
The bottom line is that even though I knew I was being sold a semi-sanitized bill of goods, I didn’t mind Respect. I occasionally muttered to myself “hmmm, yeah…not too bad.” I was quite taken by a couple of the musical performance scenes. And I was always seriously impressed by Hudson.
She’ll obviously be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar along with Will Smith as Best Actor. I can just see the two of them holding up their Oscars in front of press-room photographers.
Before she passed in ’18 Aretha said that David Ritz‘s “Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin” (’14) was lies and trash and blah-dee-blah. That meant that at least some of Ritz’s book was accurate, and perhaps a bit more than that.
On the book’s Amazon page there’s a comment by “Occasional Critic,” to wit: “This book goes to remarkable depth in describing who Aretha really was. She was a wonderful person; she was a terrible person. She was incrediblygenerous; she was a cheapskinflint. She was a genius; she was dumber–than–a–stump. She was selfless; she was an egomaniacalnarcissist. She was all that and more.
“But she was also indisputably one of the very best voices in the history of voices, and very, very human. This is a compelling read. Highly recommended if you want the good, bad & the ugly.”
If Respect had been made in the same spirit with which Ritz’s biography was written, if it had embraced a “tell it all, warts and all and let the chips fall” approach instead of trying to please the family and the fans and remind everyone what a glorious trailblazer she was (which is not an exaggeration), it would have been a better, tougher film.
Respect does acknowledge that Franklin was sexually molested and impregnated as child, and that her marriage to the territorial Ted White (Marlon Wayans) was turbulent, and that she developed an alcohol problem in the late ’60s, and that her relations with family and colleagues were often under strain, etc.
But from what I’ve read, a lot of the gnarlier stuff has been glossed over or flat-out ignored.
As played by Forrest Whitaker, her preacher father, Clarence Franklin, was a pious scold. But according to one biographical account he was a promiscuous hound who hosted orgies, and that Ray Charles allegedly described these orgies as a “sex circus.”
Marc Maron is especially good as legendary producer Jerry Wexler, who put Aretha together with the Muscle Shoals guys, which led to the seminal recording of “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” — her first big hit.
Incidentally: A power surge hit the Westside Pavillion about 20 minutes into the film, and the sound totally went out. I rushed out and told management, and learned that each and every theatre had been affected. I went back in and watched the silentversion, which has kind of interesting. Then the image froze and we were staring at a still of a couple of supporting players for six or seven minutes. Then a Landmark guy came in and announced that they were working on the problem. (No shit?) The movie finally resumed, and the show was finally over at the three-hour mark.
On Tuesday, 10.12, a 4K Ultra HD disc of The Guns of Navarone will be available from Sony. All hail the 60th anniversary of a classic that’s pretty great until Gregory Peck and the team reach the top of the cliff, and then the tension dissipates, the commandos start killing too many Germans, and it becomes an in-and-outer.
Three good scenes follow — interrogation with Anthony Quinn faking cowardice + the uncovering of the traitor + waiting for the elevator to make contact with the wires and explode the whole fortress. But they kill too many Germans.
I already own a 4K UHD digital version on Amazon so what’s the physical media version likely to yield? Perhaps a slightly richer resolution, but you can only uprez and refine 35mm materials so much.
Presented in 4K resolution from the original camera negative, with HDR10. A long list of extras, including a “narration-free prologue” and “a message from Carl Foreman.”
156 minutes. 4K UHD Feature Picture: 2160p Ultra High Definition, 2.35:1 4K UHD Feature Audio: English Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Compatible) | English 5.1 DTS-HD MA | English 4.0 DTS-HD MA.
“Nearly all powerful politicians are isolated, in the extreme, from reality. Cuomo had spent so much time in that rarified air, he forgot what regular people do.” — Alec Baldwin on soon-to-be-ex-Gov.Andrew Cuomo.
But after the #MeToo movement blew up in late ’17, it had to be obvious to each and every handsy, massage-y, touchy-feely 50-and-older politician out there that icky, sexually aggressive behavior was totally overanddonewith. The culture was shouting over and over “don’t do this, don’t go there, things have changed” and Cuomo still ignored the signals?
Todd Field‘s masterful In The Bedroom is almost exactly 20 years old — the anniversary is on 11.23.21. Just about every scene is perfect, but there’s one that’s slightly off because of Marisa Tomei‘s over-acting. It’s a court testimony scene in which her character, the bereaved Natalie Strout, recounts the day when her estranged abusive husband (William Mapother‘s Richard Strout) killed her boyfriend (Nick Stahl‘s Frank Fowler) with a pistol.
Delivering this kind of testimony would be painful for anyone, but most people would do what they can to grim up and keep it together in front a filled courtroom. Tomei’s slow testimony plus the constant weeping and sniffling is too actorish. You’re sitting there and going “Jesus, stop selling the emotion and get on with your testimony already…give it a rest.”
But the following scene in which Tomei awkwardly attempts to apologize to Fowler’s mother (Sissy Spacek) and is decisively, violently rebuffed, is perfect.
“There are things of which I may not speak / There are dreams that cannot die / There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak / And bring a pallor into the cheek, and a mist before the eye / And the words of that fatal song / Come over me like a chill / A boy’s will is the wind’s will / And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” — “My Lost Youth,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
