Don’t Even THINK About It

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When a baseball game is delayed due to weather, the implication is that ticket holders should hang around as the wait will be relatively brief. But if a game is postponed, it means collect your stuff and head for the parking lot. Delay and postpone are technically synonymous, but the former means a presumably brief stall while a postponement sounds like someone has either thrown in the towel or is seriously thinking about it. Hence the title of this post.

HE to Academy: In this, the spring of our solitude and COVID discontent, the coming Oscar season is something we really need to celebrate and put our hearts into, now more than any other time in the Academy’s 93-year history. Especially with things starting to open up a bit and with the recent ruling that streaming-only films are Oscar-eligible.

We all need to adapt and stand up and gather round and support each other as best we can under the circumstances. It is our absolute responsibility to the industry and to ourselves to celebrate and champion and promote the hell out of the best movies being released by whatever means, now and forever, under any circumstances but especially in this, our time of industry need.

I am saying this because of a completely unacceptable Variety story by Marc Malkin that claims that “the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is considering postponing the big night, according to multiple sources.”

Postponed until when? Delaying for a couple months, maybe, but otherwise no, no, no, no…NO! That is totally out of the question.

Malkin: “The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, say definitive plans are far from being concrete at this juncture. The telecast is currently set for Feb. 28, 2021, on ABC.

“’It’s likely they’ll be postponed,’ one of the sources familiar with the matter told Variety.”

Malkin: “However, that person cautioned that the details, including potential new dates, have not been fully discussed or formally proposed yet. Another source says the date is currently unchanged at ABC.

“When new temporary rule changes for Oscar eligibility were announced in April because of COVID-19, Academy president David Rubin told Variety it was too soon to know how the 2021 Oscar telecast could change in the wake of the pandemic.

“’It’s impossible to know what the landscape will be,’ he said. ‘We know we want to celebrate film but we do not know exactly what form it will take.'”

HE to Academy: If and when COVID seriously inferferes until, say, mid-fall, one option would be to extend the 2020 Academy year until 1.31.21 or even 2.28.21. And then hold the Oscars in April, like they used to do in the early ’60s. Just this one year.

Malkin: “It’s unclear if postponing the Oscars will also mean that the Academy will allow films released after the year-end deadline to qualify for the 2021 Oscars.”

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Scott Had His Own Eye

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A little more than 16 years ago (i.e., sometime in early April 2004) I interviewed Man on Fire director Tony Scott inside a Four Seasons hotel room. I’d been knocked flat by Man on Fire, and could’ve easily besieged Scott with questions for a couple of hours, but I only had the usual 15 minutes.

As we discussed this or that I was suddenly struck by how cool his hiking boots looked. Smooth brownish tan deerskin with red laces…excellent! I had to ask where he’d got them. I don’t remember his exact reply but it was some familiar outlet — a Bloomingdale’s or an A16. “I’m struck because I’m a hiking boot nut and they don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen,” I remarked. “I found them in the women’s section,” Scott replied. His feet were small enough and he obviously didn’t care.

“Wow”, I said to myself, “this is how serious directors think. Scott doesn’t care if an article in question was made for women or men…he just cares if it looks right.”

I was also charmed because, I realized, Scott shared my attitude about apparel. Or vice versa, I should say. Totally X-factor, indifferent to the norm.

A good part of the HE readership would bristle at the idea of wearing a shoe or T-shirt or scarf or windbreaker made for women. But I never have. I was savaged by commenters a decade or so ago when I bought a pair of canary-yellow laceless sneakers. “Wear a man’s shoe!” the commenters grumbled. “I’m wearing what I like,” I replied. This is the difference between guys who are enslaved to the code of muscularity and machismo vs. those who are free-thinkers.

Partly because of our shared shoe sensibility, I was extra-devastated when Scott committed suicide in August 2012.

Remember Landing at LaGuardia?

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Back in the old days of commercial aviation (i.e. three months ago and earlier), civilians used to fly whenever and wherever. I used to fly to New York City, London, Paris, Nice, Prague, Key West, Honolulu, Hanoi…you name it. Big Apple-wise I always flew into JFK or Newark, but this final approach to LaGuardia is quite beautiful. East across Queens and over uptown Manhattan, following the Hudson River south, curving about the Battery (you can see the WTC pools next to Freedom Tower) and forth to Midtown and east across Queens (observe the remnants of the ’64 World’s Fair as well as good old Shea Stadium) to LGA…magnificent. I really miss flying. (The below video was shot three-plus years ago, but who cares?)

Take The Money and Run

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After filming in early ’18, Sony, Aaron Schneider and Tom Hanks‘ Greyhound, a CG-propelled WWII action thriller, was looking like a possible problem. Schneider fiddled and faddled in post for well over a year, and then came the COVID concerns. Sony’s initial plan was to release it on 3.22.20, then 5.8.20, and finally 6.12.20. Today TheWrap‘s Brian Welk reported that rather than sweat a streaming release, Sony has decided to sell the film to Apple TV for $70 million.

Sony honcho: “Let’s at least be frank with each other in the privacy of the conference room — our confidence in Greyhound isn’t what it could be.”
Sony marketing team: “Arguably it has problems, but we need to give it the old college try. The glass is half full, not half empty.”
Apple TV management (on speaker phone): “We’ll give you $70 million for it.”
Sony honcho: “Sold!”

From “CG Action in the North Atlantic,” posted on 3.5.20: “Remember the mostly organic realism of Saving Private Ryan (’98)? Well, you can forget that aesthetic as far as Aaron Schneider‘s Greyhound (Sony, 6.12) is concerned. Yeah, it’s another Tom Hanks ‘dad’ movie (stolid guy, old-fashioned values, facing adversity and tough odds, grace under pressure) but if you ignore the interior shots, the Greyhound trailer looks like a damn CG cartoon.

“The phrase that’s coming to mind is ‘Call of the Wild on the North Atlantic’ — another digitally created, steroid-injected World War II film a la Roland Emmerich‘s Midway.

“Remember Mark Robson‘s The Bridges at Toko-Ri (’54)? Or Humphrey Bogart‘s Action on the North Atlantic? Or Cary Grant‘s Destination Tokyo? They were all mostly or partially shot on sound stages and ‘faked’ to a significant degree, but they nonetheless conveyed a certain tactile reality — a feeling that is plainly lacking in Aaron Schneider’s video-game fantasy, at least as presented in this trailer.

“Remember The Enemy Below? Or Otto Preminger‘s In Harm’s Way? Or Sink The Bismarck? Or Alfred Hitchcock‘s Lifeboat, which was shot entirely in a studio tank? These and other films presented at least a semblance of reality on the high seas during World War II. Real ships, real submarines, real salt water, real waves — not a Sony Playstation recreation.

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“Die Hard” In A Puerto Rican Hurricane

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A tough, sassy hombre with ties to law enforcement (Mel Gibson by way of Bruce Willis) tries to thwart a team of thieves in a high-rise while a hurricane rages outside. The thieves are led by a flamboyant sociopath (David Zaya, inspired by Alan Rickman‘s “Hans Gruber”). A lawman (Emile Hirsch by way of Reginald VelJohnson) helps the renegade within the bounds of the law while a near-and-dear family member (Kate Bosworth, continuing a tradition begun by Bonnie Bedelia) frets big-time. And the pressure mounts.

Puerto Rican activists are pissed, of course, because the idea of thievery by high-end native criminals is a racist trope, and only foam-at-the-mouth gringos like Gibson and director Michael Polish (remember the Polish brothers?) would cook up such a fantasy.

It’s not clear if these same voices were the ones complaining about Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story, and particularly the song “America” in which some Puerto Rican immigrants say they prefer Manhattan to their native land…a “lie” that only racist dogs like Stephen Sondheim would perpetrate.

Boilerplate: Gibson and Bosworth portray a father and daughter, the former refusing hurricane evacuation orders and the latter an MD who wants him to leave. Hirsch plays a local cop named Cardillo (goddamn it…Hirsch is of “German, Jewish, English and Scots-Irish ancestry“!), who steps in to help Bosworth persuade Gibson to skedaddle. Gibson, a retired cop, becomes involved in Cardillo’s mission to prevent Zaya’s gang from heisting a hidden $55 million.

Force of Nature (Lionsgate) opens direct-to-video on 6.30.

Case Closed…Again

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Rick Worley‘s “Woody Is Innocent” essay (posted four days ago — 5.14.20) lasts two hours and 34 minutes. Very exacting and specific — all fibre, no fat. If you don’t have that much time to invest, the first 12 minutes more or less covers it. In my opinion Allen’s innocence is irrefutable. The Mia Farrow allies and Woody haters (including the #MeToo-ers who continue to intimidate and terrify U.S. distributors) will never listen, of course. Here, again, is Moses Farrow’s Woody-exonerating essay.

Pelosi Calls Trump “Morbidly Obese”

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Fat-shaming is not only verboten, but descriptive terms that even flirt with the perimeters are also outlawed. In this verbally cautious realm you’re not supposed to call anyone “morbidly obsese,” and yet earlier today Nancy Pelosi referred to Donald Trump with the m.o. term.

Incidentally: I’m not disputing Pelosi’s use of said term, which basically means “heavier than garden-variety obese.” But I wonder what term she would have chosen if she’d been with Tatyana and I at El Matador beach last Sunday. I’m sorry but we saw some women who were truly scary in this regard.

Michel Piccoli

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Michel Piccoli, the renowned French actor who seemed to costar in almost every noteworthy French film in the mid to late 20th Century, has passed at age 94. I’ve been trying to decide which Piccoli performance is my favorite, and I honestly can’t decide. Okay, maybe his weary, blocked painter in Jacques Rivette‘s La Belle Noiseuse (’91).

He was always a reliable, trustworthy presence. An actor who always seemed to calm things down. Always plainspoken, genuine, discreet.

And the late ’60s and ’70s, it seemed to me, was his peak era, although he kept going as a working actor through the next three succeeding decades. One of his last theatrical films, Lines of Wellington, opened in 2012.

Among Piccoli’s best films: Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, Alfred Hitchcock‘s Topaz (’69), Louis Malle‘s Atlantic City, Luis Buñuel‘s Diary of a Chambermaid (’64), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (’72) and The Phantom of Liberty (’74), Claude Chabrol‘s Wedding in Blood (’73), Claude Sautet‘s Vincent, François, Paul and the Others (’74), Marco Ferreri‘s La Grand Bouffe (’73), Leos Carax‘s Holy Motors (’12).

Ultimate “Eternity” Photo Grab

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Yesterday I stumbled across a shot of Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed performing the final scene from Fred Zinneman‘s From Here To Eternity (’53). On a ship departing Honolulu by way of a sound stage. No one is more queer for behind-the-scenes snaps of this 1953 classic than myself, be they color or black-and-white. So I went hunting for all the decent ones I’ve ever seen or previously posted, and here they are. (The sixth from the top was taken by yours truly during the May 2001 Pearl Harbor junket.)






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With Farrow Under Fire, #MeToo Hits Back

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I am 98% certain that Ronan Farrow is full of shit when he maintains that Woody Allen sexually molested his younger adopted sister, Dylan Farrow — an alleged incident that happened in August 1992, when she was 7 and Ronan was 4. His insistence that all the Woody-exonerating evidence (which there’s a ton of) and the Woody-exonerating view of his adopted older brother Moses is not to be trusted is, I feel, inescapably deranged.

I also strongly suspect that he’s the biological son of Frank Sinatra, whom Mia Farrow once speculated may “possibly” be his actual dad, and not Woody, whom Ronan doesn’t begin to even slightly resemble — looks, temperament, nothing.

Otherwise he’s obviously a respected investigative journalist who’s done some excellent work regarding Harvey Weinstein‘s history of sexual assault, and of course with the best-selling book “Catch and Kill“, which also accused NBC News of discrediting or dismissing his investigative work along these same lines.

But now Farrow himself is taking a bit of sniper fire. The bullets were fired yesterday by N.Y. Times reporter Ben Smith (former editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed) in a piece titled “Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?“, and subheaded as follows: “He has delivered revelatory reporting on some of the defining stories of our time. But close examination reveals the weaknesses in what may be called an era of resistance journalism.”

In response to Smith’s article Robespierre purists are twitter-slamming the N.Y. Times for daring to go after a figure they regard as the triumphant crusading knight of wokester #MeToo journalism.

One reliable measure of wokester fervor is Vulture columnist Mark Harris, who tweeted today that access journalism is just as fraught with problems and prejudices as resistance journalism. Writer-comedian-podcaster Akila Hughes tweeted that Smith wrote the Farrow hit piece out of jealousy.

Journo pally: “It’s interesting where I think perhaps you and I differ on the significance here. You see the Robespierre of it all and I see the media monopolies twisting truth into pretzels of it all.

“I just watched a doc from around 2012 called Shadows of Liberty, which is the leftward view of how dangerous ‘fake news’ really is. Now that Trump has co-opted that clarion call, is the news any less fake that all the leftists were saying it was before Trump ever stumbled onto the public stage? ‘Resistance journalism’ is a fancy term for propaganda. Just like Fox imho.

“In any event, this is a major piece.”