What Simon says is so spare, eloquent and well-honed that it made me want to watch Stanley Kubrick‘s 1957 classic yet again, and I’ve seen it at least 15 or 20 times.
Simon: “[It’s been said] that every time you set out to make an anti-war film, it ends up being a war film. There are very few films that stay in the pocket of souring you on war. The suffering is so heroic, the characters are so vibrant, and everything matters…it’s so dramatic. All the Marines I knew from doing GenerationKill, they all loved to do the dialogue from Full Metal Jacket. There’s something about the camaraderie of war that undercuts every anti-war message.
“But not Paths of Glory. Maybe because it’s not strictly an anti-war film…it’s an anti-authority film.”
The more HE readers try to to goad me into watching all 60 episodes of The Wire, the more determined I am to resist. I’m even more determined right now. I’ve seen four or five episodes; I’ll see the other 55 at a time of my own choosing.
Here’s the whole four-year schedule. Three-night bookings for the most part. During one two-night engagement in May ’69 they actually had the Allman Brothers open for the Velvet Underground.
The first BTP venue was at 53 Berkeley St, Boston, MA 02116. In July ’69 they moved to 15 Landsdowne Street, near Kenmore Square.
HE to seasoned rock journalist: “Big-arena concerts allegedly didn’t become a major thing until ‘71 or ‘72 or thereabouts. Small venues like the two Fillmores and the Boston Tea Party flourished during a certain window that began in ‘67 and ended around ‘71, which is when major groups began declining these venues because there was so much more dough in big arenas.
During Led Zeppelin’s January ’69 engagement
“Do I have this right? You were right in the thick of it back then.
“The golden era for the Tea Party was ‘69 and ‘70. My God, look at the acts they had! The BTP was the size of a typical high-school gymnasium. Maybe a tad smaller. I caught three or four shows at the Fillmore East but nothing compared with the sheer physical closeness of the Tea Party…you could get close enough to smell their sweat. It was glorious, tangible, alive.
Seasoned rock journalist to HE: “You’re pretty accurate with this. The big arena shows started around ’69 too, with the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin usually being the ones who pushed the envelope into stadiums later, around ’73.
“Tea Party was famously one of the hot places where the audience and band could [groove as one]. The Fillmores, of course. The Grande Ballroom in Detroit was also one of those small, hot places where the British bands would often play…bands like Jeff Beck Group and they’d blow the roof off. Santa Monica Civic on the West Coast was in between, a little bigger, but amazing for crowd/music/intimacy, like David Bowie’s first show there.
“Also one of the small rooms that bands loved was the Warehouse in New Orleans, home of many explosive small-room nights. The Allman Brothers Band would tear it up at a place like that. Basically, even through the mid-70’s, you might catch a big band playing one of those smaller places just to blow off steam and have a no-pressure gig or record something live with a smaller, great crowd.”
“The BTP closed it in early 1971 as the face of rock & roll was changing to larger venues. The Tea Party’s demise followed that of Philadelphia’s Electric Factory and shortly preceded the same for the two Fillmore’s.”
1.5.21, 7:15am: Tanya Roberts has sadly passed for good this time. No mistakes or take-backs. Sorry.
1.4.21: Although View To A Kill costar and Sheena: Queen of the Jungle star Tonya Roberts is reportedly in dire condition, she is nonetheless alive. Late last night Variety‘s Naman Ramachandranreported that Roberts had died after being stricken with something or other on Christmas Eve. But this afternoon Variety‘s Pat Sapersteinreported that Roberts is still with us. Hollywood Elsewhere is pleased to hear this, and hopes that Roberts, 65, will survive whatever it is that’s threatening her life.
Everyone knows how Scott Feinberg‘s award-season forecasts break down. The ten films included in his Frontrunners tally are well-situated to the extent that most (i.e., Scott always includes a couple of stragglers) are likely to be Best Picture-nominated.
It’s axiomatic in this highly political year, especially in the wake of last summer’s George Floyd protests, that any well-reviewed, professionally assembled film featuring a primarily POC cast will be Best Picture nominated, and so Feinberg, being no fool, has included Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Amazon’s One Night in Miami and Pixar’s Soul in his Frontrunners roster.
None of these three films even approaches the quality of Steve McQueen‘s Mangrove, Lovers Rock and Red White & Blue, but McQueen’s “Small Axe” quintet is Emmy material and so we’re left with what we’re left with. No disrespect intended, but two of these features are basically filmed plays, and Soul is emotionally indecisive and all over the map and fairly infuriating for that.
The question for Oscar-race handicappers is “why does Feinberg have it in for Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods“? I don’t mean to imply that Feinberg has a hardnosed problem with Lee’s film but there must be some reason why he’s included it in the much-dreaded “Major Threats” category.
If Feinberg has categorized your awards-hopeful film as a “major threat,” you’re…well, I’d better be careful here. I was going to say “you’re as good as dead” but what I really mean is that “major threat” means “uh-oh.” Over the last several weeks Da 5 Bloods has been on just about every Best Picture top-ten contender list. Right now it’s occupying the #9 slot on the Gold Derby expert list.
Feinberg is just one guy, of course, and voters will vote how they want to vote, etc. Especially the crowd that voted last year for Parasite…people that live on their own planet.
Here are the films included in Feinberg’s top four categories. Hollywood Elsewhere has boldfaced those titles that really and truly have the Best Picture juice …films that deserve to be Best Picture nominated in the eyes of the Movie Godz. Before starting I’m going to say for seventh or eight time over the last three or four weeks that while Steve McQueen’s Mangrove and Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse won’t be under consideration for reasons that have nothing to do with quality, they would DEFINITELY be Best Picture hotties in a fair and just universe.
Frontrunners
Nomadland (Searchlight) The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix) Minari (A24 — Spirit Awards) Promising Young Woman (Focus) Sound of Metal (Amazon) The Father (Sony Classics) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix) One Night in Miami (Amazon) Soul (Pixar) Mank (Netflix)
A film director coming off a big success doesn’t know what to do or where to go for a follow-up, and is all confused and tangled up about this. At the same time he’s grappling with self-doubt and asking himself basic philosophical questions. He’s also caught up in complex relationships with certain women.
This is the basic rundown in Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, which Tatiana and I watched last night. (She’d never seen it and I hadn’t since a laser disc viewing in the late ’90s.) It’s still perfectly made, still immaculate (all hail dp Gianni Di Venanzo), still ravishing…still a classic wandering dreamscape. An entirely centered and self-created world, “illogical” and story-free but adhering to a certain rhyme and reason and spiritual balance…wry self-portraiture that feels simultaneously intimate and mysterious and yet…what am I trying to say here?
I don’t know exactly but I have to stand up and say it straight. There’s something overly hermetic and self-involved about 8 1/2, and while it’s the original Big Daddy when it comes to films about an artist feeling stuck and at loose ends, a film that sired Paul Mazursky‘s Alex in Wonderland, Woody Allen‘s Stardust Memories, Bob Fosse‘s All That Jazz and you tell me how many others…you have to ask yourself “why did Fellini call it 8 1/2?”
Marcello Mastroianni during filming of “8 1/2”
I’ll tell you why — because he’d made eight films before it (two being omnibus shorts) and there was apparently something about 8 1/2 that in his mind felt incomplete or rabbit-holey on some level, and so he referred to it as half a film, which is to say a film in search of itself. Seriously — why didn’t Fellini call it Nine?
As lame or naive as this may sound to some, there are portions of Stardust Memories (which was also partly inspired by early Ingmar Bergman, I realize) that feel just as brave and exploratory and self-revealing as 8 1/2, on top of which it’s actually funny at times (like the train-car sequence at the very beginning). I was never much of a fan of Alex in Wonderland, but now I’m thinking I’ll give it another shot.
Tatiana found 8 1/2 a bit confining on some level; even a bit draining. Sublime and confident within its own imaginative, free-associating realm, but not, she felt, as engrossing as she’d hoped it would be (or had heard it would be).
We decided to watch 8 1/2 after seeing Selma Dell’Olio‘s Fellini of the Spirits, a cerebral doc about the influences upon Fellini’s work over the years.
I’d somehow forgotten that gothic horror queen Barbara Steele has a costarring role in 8 1/2, and that she’s fascinating.
Will tomorrow night be the most morose New Year’s Eve in U.S. history? The NYE celebrations that followed the 1929 stock market crash were probably more fun because at least people were allowed to mingle and party without fear of endangering themselves. Be honest — Andy Cohen‘s smile is fundamentally dishonest. It says “yeah, noisemakers and champagne!…Trump will soon be gone and three Covid vaccines are making the rounds…everything’s gonna be fine!” World to Cohen: We have our doubts.
Poor Dawn Wells, aka “Maryann Summers” in Gilligan’s Island, has died from Covid at age 82. I’m very sorry — condolences for friends, family, fans and colleagues.
Wells was very fortunate, of course, in being cast in Sherwood Schwarz‘s oppressively stupid, inexplicably popular sitcom, which except for two or three episodes I’ve avoided all my life. Okay, I may have watched five or six.
Everyone loved Maryann — the perfect tropical island fox. (Will I get re-cancelled for using that insidious term? Would it help if it was meant ironically or historically, as a verbal comment on a remnant of a bygone age when “fox” was an acceptable term of flattery?)
Born and raised in Nevada, Wells was 25 or 26 when that Sherwood Schwartz series began in ’64 (the first season was shot in black-and-white), and 29 when the show breathed its last. 98 episodes in all.
The difference in the quality between the insipid Gilligan’s Island and Bob Denver‘s previous series, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, was night and day. Credit is due, I suppose, to Schwartz for inventing and selling the idiotic concept, but the writing on the Gillis series (’59 to ’63) was 20 times better than the plotting and patter on Gilligan. Cavalier wit, cooler personality.
Why didn’t Maryann and Russell Johnson‘s professor become a couple? They could’ve had kids. How did the Gilligan characters happen to bring along such huge wardrobes (or even a suitcase) when they were only enjoying a three-hour cruise off the coast of Oahu? Why didn’t the professor build a surfboard for Maryann?
Speaking of beaches, why weren’t there more scenes in which Maryann and Tina Louise‘s “Ginger Grant” would lounge around in brightly-colored floral print bikinis and soak up rays? (Now I’m really gonna be re-cancelled.) Why didn’t Gilligan learn to surf? Or the skipper for that matter? Did everyone have their own outhouse or did they share? How did they arrange for running water again? The show wasn’t even interested in any kind of hand-made Swiss Family Robinson ingenuity.
What was the basic metaphor of Gilligan’s Island? TV sitcoms become hits because they touch a chord of some kind. Gilligan‘s chord had something to do with capturing the insular mindset and complacency among the American middle-class in the mid ’60s. Nothing about living on a remote island (and one without toilets or hot running water, remember) altered how they thought and lived. The castaways might have just as well been residing in a condo community alongside a golfing fairway in Scottsdale.
Wells certainly had her moment in the sun. I was sorry to read that things were difficult for her a couple of years ago — her Wiki page says that a GoFundMe page was set up to help Wells cope with financial challenges.
A few days ago I ordered a poor man’s Red River belt buckle. It arrived this afternoon. It’s made of a solid, heavy metal. Decent craftsmanship as far as a knockoff goes. I just need to figure some way of griming it up, making it look more beat-up and weathered. Plus it has my initials (and John Wayne’s) on the lower left corner. 7:40pm: It’s too cheap looking, too gold-dipped…I should’ve ordered the pewter.
Last night HE’s own Bob StraussdescribedPromising Young Woman as “soooo good! The kind of thing that wriggles out in all kinds of unexpected directions, upending both genre expectations and the woke doctrine so many on this site are afraid of, yet never betraying its fundamental righteousness in the process. Complex, crazy, often funny as hell and as startling as it gets.”
I’m an admirer also, but “funny”?
Posted this morning: “Promising Young Woman has a striking edgy quality and is loaded with a certain kind of acrid, on-target attitude, but Mr. Strauss has unfortunately joined the p.c. throng that insists on calling it ‘funny.’
“Different folks & strokes, but as God is my witness and may He, She or It strike me dead with Vito Corleone’s bolt of lightning, there is NOTHING that even flirts with ‘funny’ in this film. Funny can be laugh-inducing or titter-worthy or it can be an internal reaction (i.e., LQTM), but Promising Young Woman radiates an absolute and unequivocal absence of the mental, spiritual and emotional ingredients that constitute ‘funny’ or ‘dryly amusing’ or ‘guffaw-worthy’ or however you want to define it.
“Because PYW is, at heart, driven or informed by a brusque, occasionally quite chilly, unmistakably damning, hanging-judge quality.
“’Funny’ can be a line or a mood or an attitude that feels like the first hour of a mescaline trip. It delivers a certain something-or-other potion that flips a certain switch and makes you go ‘hah-hah’ or ‘tee-hee.’ If you’ve ever known any professional comedy writers you know they rarely laugh, but at the same time they’ll sometimes say ‘that’s funny’ or ‘that’s smart, clever stuff but it isn’t funny.’ PYW, trust me, is no comedy writer’s idea of “funny.” Because it has no interest in the afore-mentioned switch, much less in flipping it.”
Has anyone read Variety’s recently tacked-on apology for Dennis Harvey’s disparaging remarks about Carey Mulligan in a Promising Young Woman review that was written 11 months ago?
“I read the Variety review because I’m a weak person,” Mulligan told Buchanan. “And I took issue with it. It felt like it was basically saying that I wasn’t hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse.”
Harvey excerpt: “Mulligan, a fine actress, seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale. Margot Robbie is a producer [of Promising Young Woman], and one can (perhaps too easily) imagine the role might once have been intended for her. Whereas with this star, Cassie wears her pickup-bait gear like bad drag; even her long blonde hair seems a put-on.”
I don’t agree at all with Harvey’s opinion of Mulligan. I’ve always found her fetching, for one thing. And young male party animals looking to take advantage of a seemingly drunk woman is not a syndrome triggered by exceptional Margot Robbie-level attractiveness. It’s basically a heartless predatory thing, whether the woman is a 9.5 or a 7 or whatever.
On top of which Harvey’s remark slipped right through Variety‘s editors 11 months ago and nobody said boo.
And it was reasonable to suppose that Harvey’s remark, however insensitive, might find a certain resonance in the general culture when PYW opens. He was basically saying that as far as the popcorn crowd was concerned, Carey’s casting as a femme fatale might not have been the most arresting choice from a commercial perspective.
I strongly disagree — Mulligan is one of our greatest actresses not just because of her Streep-level chops (did anyone else see her in Skylight on Broadway?), but she has a sadness about her, a weight-of-the-world aura. She carries the ache of the world in her eyes, in the slightly downturned corners of her mouth, and most certainly upon her shoulders.
Read the wording of Variety’s apology — they’ve completely washed their hands of Harvey in this instance and have more or less thrown him under the bus.
If I were a senior Variety editor I’d offer Harvey a chance to explain his remark in greater depth, or to amend his gut reaction or expand upon it or whatever. I’d say that “while Variety editors and senior staff don’t share Harvey’s opinion and feel he missed what the film was saying and/or expressed himself somewhat insensitively, we’ve respected his skills and perceptions as a film critic for years, and we will continue to do so.”
In Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman (Focus, 12.25), Carey Mulligan plays Cassie Thomas, a dryly calculating and determined woman on a mission of appropriate vengeance against insensitive male assholes.
Is this “the performance of her career,” as N.Y Times profiler KyleBuchanan (aka “”The Projectionist”) insists? It’s certainly an attention-getting one, and Mulligan is almost sure to be Oscar-nominated for a Best Actress trophy, and who knows? Maybe she’ll win it.
I happen to feel that the richest and most rewarding screen performance of Mulligan’s career came when she played Maud, a married woman who becomes drawn into the women’s suffrage movement in 1912 London, in Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette (Focus Features, 10.23.15).
“Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette (Focus Features, 10.23) is the shit — a near-certain Best Picture contender and a cast-iron guarantee that Carey Mulligan will be Best Actress-nominated for her subdued but deeply emotional, fully riveting performance as Maud Watts, a married factory worker and mother of a young son who becomes a women’s suffrage movement convert in early 1900s London, just as the militant phase (led by the Women’s Social and Political Union, or WSPU) begins to kick in.
“This is one top-tier, richly textured, throughly propulsive saga, and a good four or five times better than I expected it to be.
“The Suffragette trailers were promising enough but the people at Focus Features had done a brilliant job of tamping down any expectations on a word-of-mouth basis. I’d come to suspect, based on a lack of any palpable advance excitement, that it might turn out to be a decent, good-enough film that could possibly provide a springboard for Mulligan…maybe. Well, it’s much more than that, such that I felt compelled explain to Gavron at the after-party that I was fairly gobsmacked.
“Mulligan, looking appropriately hangdog for the most part, handles every line and scene like a master violinist. She’s always been my idea of a great beauty, but when she chooses to go there she has one of the saddest faces in movies right now. The strain, stress and suppressed rage of Maud’s life are legible in every look, line and gesture. Mulligan is fairly young (she just turned 30 last May) but she’s a natural old-soul type who conveys not just what Maud (a fictitious everywoman) is dealing with but the trials of 100,000 women before her, and without anything that looks like overt ‘acting.’ All actors “sell it,” of course, but the gifted ones make the wheel-turns and gear-shifts seem all but invisible.
“I was saying last night that her Suffragette perf is on the same footing with Mulligan’s career-making turn in An Education, but now, at 8:15 in the morning after less than six hours of shut-eye (and with my heart breaking over the realization that I’ve blown my shot at catching the 9 am screening of Spotlight), I’m thinking Maud is her signature role.”
