The closing-credit sequence of Steven Soderbergh‘s High Flying Bird features the famous Woodstock recording of the late Richie Havens singing “Handsome Johnny.” It was a thrill to hear it again, especially on such a sharply tuned, well-amped sound system.
From Richie Havens Wikipage: “On 4.22.13 he died of a heart attack at his Jersey City home, at the age of 72. The BBC referred to him as a ‘Woodstock icon’ while Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young said Havens ‘could never be replicated.’ The Daily Telegraph stated Havens ‘made an indelible mark on contemporary music’ while Douglas Martin of The New York Times reported that Havens had ‘riveted Woodstock.’
“Pursuant to Havens’ request, his cremated ashes were scattered from the air over the original site of the Woodstock Festival, in a ceremony held on 8.8.13, the 44th anniversary of the festival’s last day.
“Havens was survived by his wife Nancy, three children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren”
From “Will There Be Two Versions of The Irishman?,” posted from Cannes on 6.9.18: “I was jerked alert when Martin Scorsese mentioned that his forthcoming The Irishman, a $180 million gangster flick funded mostly by Netflix, contains about “300 scenes.”
“Right away I leaned forward and wondered if I’d just heard that. Because 300 scenes could translate into a helluva running time, perhaps as long as 450 minutes or 7 hours and 30 minutes.
“In other words (and I’m just spitballing here) The Irishman could wind up as an expanded Netlix miniseries in addition to being shown as a shorter theatrical feature. Who knows? I know that a film with 300 scenes will definitely be a bear, length-wise. Obviously too much of one for theatres, in fact, if Scorsese intends to use all or most of that footage.
I was recently thinking about the lives of cows, bulls, pigs and goats, and about how no one ever mentions that each and every cow, bull, pig and goat born on this planet will be murdered, skinned, chopped up and eaten. None will die peacefully in some meadow — they’ll all be led to slaughter. That’s a fairly ugly thought if you let it sink in, but that’s the reality on farms big and small. It’s therefore a little hard to share in the warm emotions that people feel when little piglets are born…”awwwhhh! Welcome to the world, babies…we love how cute you are, and by the way your throats are going to be slit one day! By us!”
From Peter Debruge’s 9.1.18 Variety review: “Directly benefiting from John Chester’s cinematography background, the otherwise casual, scrapbook-style documentary — in which old home videos and hand-drawn animation fit nicely with Jeff Beal’s folksy string score — boasts intervals of stunning, unexpectedly gorgeous wildlife footage: Drone-mounted cameras convey York’s incredible design, night vision exposes the sneaky critters who disrupt things after dark, high-frame-rate macrophotography captures each flap of a hummingbird’s wings while turning raindrops into a kind of Luftwaffe air raid for shell-shocked bugs, and so on.
Nobody knows why Stephen Paddock slaughtered 58 and wounded hundreds of others in Las Vegas on 10.1.17, least of all the authors of a just-released FBI report. But they included a chilling observation from the killer’s younger brother. Eric Paddock has reportedly described Stephen Paddock as the “king of microaggression” — narcissistic, detail-oriented and maybe bored enough with life to plan an attack that would make him famous.
CNBC Question: If you were running and it appeared in the polls that you candidacy would help to elect Donald Trump, would you drop out beforehand?”
Howard Schultz: “I can’t answer that question today. but I’m certainly not going to do anything to put Donald Trump back into the Oval office.”
That sounds to me as if Schultz is planning to campaign as a practical centrist (against Medicare for all and AOC’s idea for a 70% income tax on the super-wealthy) and then probably drop out sometime between the spring and summer of ’20. Because if he does run in the general campaign as an egotistical indie, Trump will definitely be re-elected by way of a split liberal-moderate vote. In this regard Schultz would in fact be “a gift from God” for Trump, as Jeffrey Toobin has remarked.
The key to this Velvet Buzzsaw cast interview clip is to focus on Renee Russo more than Jake Gyllenhaal. You need to verbally listen to what director-writer Dan Gilroy is saying, of course, but Renee’s reactions are more theatrical, more demonstrative than Jake’s. Once you hear “muhLONchully,” you’ll be infected for life. You won’t be able to say “melancholy” in the normal way ever again.
Like Scott Burns‘ The Report, which was acquired by Amazon after debuting in Park City two or three days ago, Gavin Hood‘s Official Secrets (Entertainment One) is a fact-based whistleblower drama about exposing shifty, lying behavior on the part of the Bush-Cheney administration in the selling and prosecution of the Iraq War.
The Report is about Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) investigating, authoring and releasing a massive report on CIA torture; Official Secrets is about real-life translator and British intelligence employee Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) revealing a U.S. plan to bug United Nations “swing”countries in order to pressure them into voting in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which of course was founded upon a fiction that Saddam Hussein‘s Iraqi government was in possession of WMDs and represented a terrorist threat.
The difference is that while The Report is plodding, sanctimonious and a chore to sit through, Official Secrets is an ace-level piece about pressure, courage and hard political elbows — a grade-A, non-manipulative procedural that tells Gun’s story in brisk, straightforward fashion, and which recalls the efficient, brass-tack narratives of All The President’s Men or Michael Clayton.
Official Secrets is exactly the sort of fact-based government & politics drama that I adore, just as The Report is precisely the kind of self-righteous, moral-breast-beating drama that I can’t stand.
The performances by Knightley, Matt Smith (as Observer reporter Martin Bright), Matthew Goode (as journalist Peter Beaumont), Rhys Ifans as Ed Vulliamy, Adam Bakri as Yasar Gun, and Ralph Fiennes as British attorney Ben Emmerson are excellent fits — as good as any fan of this kind of thing could possibly hope for.
Hood’s Eye in the Sky was one of the finest and most gripping films of 2015, and here he is again with another winner. Hats off to a good guy.
Following yesterday afternoon’s Slamdance screening of Steven Soderbergh‘s High Flying Bird, I walked outside to find Soderbergh chatting with fans. I strolled over to tell the 56-year-old powerhouse auteur that I was an admirer of his basketball film and that I regard it as much his own story as that of Andre Holland‘s Ray character. (Here’s my review.)
As I walked up Soderbergh, who knows me from way back and apparently reads Hollywood Elsewhere from time to time, started things off with a mock greeting:
Soderbergh: “So, the pariah!” HE: “No, no, things are cool. I’m getting into films. No issues.” Soderbergh: “With Slamdance, you mean.” HE: “No, Sundance. Publicist friends are taking care of me. I’m seeing what I want to see.” Soderbergh: “Okay.”
High Flying Bird director Steven Soderbergh, Slamdance co-founder Peter Baxter prior to Sunday afternoon’s screening.
“Despite allusions to The Twilight Zone and constantly cutting back to a faux tube TV perspective, Andrew Patterson‘s The Vast of Night never quite reaches that level of shock value or philosophical preponderance that made The Twilight Zone what it was.
“The climax is beautiful, to be sure, and the effects work is excellent given the low budget, but it doesn’t have much more meaning than is presented on its face, and the resulting feeling is one of hollowness in the face of the potential for so much more.
“Still, if one is looking for a mood of existential dread and bragging rights for seeing some of the industry’s next great talents’ early work, The Vast of Night certainly delivers on that front.” — from a 1.26.19 review by Leigh Monson on birthmoviesdeath.
Hollywood Elsewhere apologizes for having not yet watched The Vast of Night via streaming link. I plan to do so soon. Certainly by Tuesday or Wednesday.
“Pete Davidson and comedian John Mulaney recently reviewed The Mule on SNL’s’Weekend Update’, which they’d like to make into a reoccurring segment. ‘We just saw Mary Poppins last weekend,” Davidson said. ‘I walked out halfway through.'” — from Ramin Setoodeh‘s 1.28 Variety riff on Pete Davidson’s recent Sundance press op.
I was fairly shocked when Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born lost the SAG ensemble award last night. I also heard a resounding THUD sound. Because this, to me, seemed like the final kiss of death — i.e., SAG being unable to give this popular musical drama a “poor baby, we still love you” award.
An obviously well made, convincingly performed and hugely successful romantic tragedy, ASIB had consistently failed to win anything big — no Best Picture or directing or acting awards — at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards or the Producers Guild Awards. So before last night the thinking was “okay, no Best Picture Oscar and no acting Oscars for Cooper or Lady Gaga, but SAG members surely feel sorry for A Star Is Born, and so they’ll probably give it a Best Ensemble award as a kind of consolation prize.”
Nope!
Obviously no one knows anything for sure about the final Oscar tallies, but the Academy Award ambitions of Cooper’s grand musical opus are almost surely dead, dead, deader than dead.
So what killed the award-season chances of what had seemed — on paper at least — like a film that might do exceptionally well with award-season voters and handicappers — a film that was obviously well crafted, expertly refined, beloved by audiences and extraordinarily successful all over ($206 million domestic, $413 million worldwide).
In a phrase, A Star Is Born was way overhyped in the early stages, and that avalanche of pre-release praise produced feelings of irritation (at least as far as Hollywood Elsewhere was concerned) and a kind of “oh, yeah? show us!” attitude among many others.
That plus the fact that it just seemed wrong, wrong, WRONG to give a Best Picture Oscar to a remake of a remake of a remake of a 1932 original.
Warner Bros. publicity, obviously, was the architect of the overhype. Their hubris bears the responsibility.
The first clue came when Warner Bros. decided not to show ASIB in Telluride — a decision that said “we know this is basically a hoi polloi popcorn movie, so we don’t want any critical slams coming out of an elite rarified setting.”
But if you want to focus on overhyping faces and personalities, A Star Is Born was primarily killed by the Murderer’s Row quartet of Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Variety‘s Kris Tapley and Barbra Streisand.
