Not long after Elvis Presley died of a drug overdose in August 1977, the blunt-spoken John Lennon told a reporter that Presley “died in 1958, when he went into the Army.” There were, in fact, two Elvis Presleys, but the better of the two was elbowed and suffocated early on — career pressures, tumbling tides, you-tell-me-what-else.
The one that mattered was Elvis #1 — a rip-roaring cultural force of the mid ’50s, a slender and sideburned Memphis native who exuded a pulsing sexual energy and totally ruled the rock ‘n’ roll roost from early ’56 to March of ’58 (when he began his two-year military hitch) and who made five half-decent films — Love Me Tender, Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, King Creole and Flaming Star.
Elvis #2 was an in-and-outer and mostly a sell-out, the star of a series of appalling, ridiculous Hollywood films, a yokel who didn’t like the counterculture and the antiwar left, and thereafter became a flamboyant conservative who paid President Nixon an obsequious visit in December ’70, and then a flashy, entourage-flanked Las Vegas headliner, and finally a bloated, grotesque, drug-taking, peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich-consuming, on-the-verge-of-death wreck of his former self.
The apparent aim of this three-hour, two-part HBO movie, directed by Thom Zimny and debuting on 4.14, is to portray Presley as a serious, aspirational, hard-working artist during his slow-decline period (’58 to ’77). Maybe there’s more to this era than is commonly known, but…okay, I’ll watch it and see what goes.
Very few remember and even fewer have seen Separate Tables, the 1958 parlor drama with Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, David Niven, Deborah Kerr and Wendy Hiller. And yet this constipated, dialogue-driven film, directed by Delbert Mann (Marty) and based on a pair of one-act plays by Terence Rattigan, was nominated for seven Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actress (Kerr), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Black and White), and Best Dramatic or Comedy Score) and won two (Niven for Best Actor, Hiller for Best Supporting Actress).
Separate Tables is exactly the kind of solemn, stiff-necked talkfest that was often regarded as Oscar bait in the mid-to-late ’50s. Decorum and public appearances undermined by dark secrets and notions of perverse sexuality, etc. Shudder! Erections and dampenings that dare not speak their name, or words to that effect.
Talk about “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” etc. Two years before Separate Tables appeared a creepy, low-budget sci-fi thriller called Invasion of the Body Snatchers opened and was promptly ignored by the highbrows. Four years earlier (in ’54) The Creature From The Black Lagoon was greeted with similar indifference if not disdain. Today a pair of direct descendants, Get Out and The Shape of Water, are Best Picture nominees, and there’s a better-than-even (though admittedly dwindling) chance that Shape will take the Big Prize.
Yesterday I received a hilarious, spot-on essay by the great David Thomson — about Separate Tables initially, but also about how the appeal and some of the “Academy inflation” of this 60-year-old film are echoed in I, Tonya and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Consider this excerpt especially: “About fifteen minutes into I Tonya, on being bowled over by the vicious hangdog look of Allison Janney’s mother, the toxic lines slipping like smoke from the fag on her lips, I was ready to give her the supporting actress Oscar on the spot. Twenty minutes later I was bored with her because she was still doing the same bitter schtick. She’s an act, a show-stopper, the sort of hag who would get a round of applause as she appears on-stage, severing any prospect of dramatic truth.
“It’s not that Janney is less than skilled, or hasn’t paid her dues for decades. She’s a clever old pro so give her the Oscar. But let’s abandon the myth that she is presenting a real ‘deplorable’ instead of saying, ‘Aren’t deplorables a riot?'”
Here’s the whole brilliant piece (the first 17 paragraphs about Separate Tables, and the rest about Janney and Margot Robbie in I, Tonya and McDormand in Three Billboards):
“I found myself watching Separate Tables on Turner Classic Movies. There it was, offered with the seemingly unassailable claim that it had been nominated for Best Picture in 1958 along with six other nominations. It even had two wins, and I remembered that one of them was for David Niven playing a bogus Major. I had seen the film in 1958 and flinched at it even then (the bogus business was all fusspot), in a year that included Vertigo, Touch of Evil, Bonjour Tristesse, Man of the West, The Tarnished Angels and many others that still seem of value.
Obviously Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a huge hit. Sometime tonight domestic earnings are expected to hit $220,047,000 plus $230 million foreign for a worldwide haul of $450,047,000, and that’s after three days in theatres.
Obviously everyone wanted to see it this weekend, but what about those shitty “user” (i.e., ticket-buyer) ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (56% with 97,121 respondents) and Metacritic (4.9% out of 10)?
Metacritic user score for The Last Jedi as of Sunday noon.
Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro has asked around and is reporting that while “user scores typically aren’t that far from their critical ratings,” the reason for the huge gap between critical upvotes for Jedi and negative responses from ticket buyers is due to malicious “trolling.” Additionally, he says, “there’s no way to filter on these sites whether or not the users have actually seen Last Jedi or not.”
This is why D’Alessandro trusts CinemaScore and PostTrak much more, as they “literally poll moviegoers in real time, as they’re exiting the theater.”
And yet no other films on the current Rotten Tomatoes roster are showing this kind of discrepancy — a 93% critical rating for Jedi vs. 56% user ratings from 96,829 respondents.
Ferdinand has a 73% rating and a 75% user rating. Justice League, generally regarded as a box-office underperformer, is at $40% (critics) and 79% (some very friendly users). Wonder is at 85% (critics) and 91% (users). The Disaster Artist is at 99% and 90%. Coco is at 97% and 96%.
In short, the only film beside Jedi with a serious critic-user discrepancy is Justice League, but in that case the film was much better liked by users than critics. In all other cases user and critic ratings are fairly close.
Yesterday HE reader Dean Treadway asked me to reevaluate an 8.18.17 comparison piece, posted by Award Watch‘s Erik Anderson, between Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water and Marc S. Nollkaemper‘s The Space Between Us, a 13-minute, English-language short that appeared on 6.29.15.
The basic scheme of both films (erotic sparks fly when a clean-up woman at a research center encounters an aquaman who’s being kept inside a large tank) are obviously similar. The Shape of Water was shot between August and November 2016.
I never suspected for a nano-second that Guillermo would crib from another filmmaker, but I nonetheless asked him about this last night, and we spoke a little while ago today. He was in a rush so I took some hasty notes.
Guillermo said that he and Daniel Kraus (co-author of a forthcoming 2018 book version of The Shape of Water) began work on a The Shape of Water treatment after meeting on 12.17.11. GDT began to develop a script the following year; he also “memorialized” his partnership with Kraus in ’12.
He said that a Fox Searchlight rep would be able to forward docs that would validate this timeline.
Guillermo added that he watched The Space Between Us for the first time this morning.
GDT’s final remark: “What is funny is that I have two movies, Hellboy (’04) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (’08), with an aquatic creature inside a super-secret tank in a large laboratory….so that [general concept] is not exactly in the province of exclusivity.”
In an Indiewire piece posted earlier today, producer, industry consultant and former Fine Line production executive Liz Manne outed herself as a major anonymous source for a controversial, once-heavily-criticized 1998 Premiere story that described a culture of sexual harassment at New Line Cinema, which at the time was run by Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne.
The article, written by John Connolly and fact-checked by Premiere staffers (including then-editor Jim Meigs and senior film editor Glenn Kenny), was called “Flirting With Disaster.”
The article asserted that all kinds of nasty shenanigans (drinking, drugs, sexual harassment) were happening at New Line, and that Shaye and Lynne ran the place “like a college dorm,” according to a producer who spoke anonymously to Connolly. The piece began with a story about a boozy New Line party that happened the year before (1992) at a lodge in Snowmass, Colorado, and about how Lynne made an aggressive sexual pass at an unnamed female executive.
That executive, according to Manne’s Indiewire piece, was Manne herself. As noted, she flat-out admits to having been one of Connolly’s anonymous sources.
In hindsight, the Connolly piece can be appreciated as a tough expose that described a predatory climate that sounds all too familiar by today’s understandings. But because it depended on anonymous sources (when she left the company Manne signed an exit agreement that forbade her from talking to anyone about anything in any context) the article was strongly attacked as an example of reckless or irresponsible journalism.
Two of the attackers were Movie City News’ David Poland and Variety‘s Peter Bart. Coincidentally, there was also a “Reverse Angle” article on page 51 in that same issue of Premiere, written by Harvey Weinstein of all people, that complained about “the reckless use of unnamed sources.”
From Poland’s 6.17.98 MCN article: “Can you say ‘hatchet job?’ I know for sure that Premiere magazine can. It had to be the phrase of the day when it decided to print its story, ‘Flirting With Disaster’” on alleged sexual and drug-related misconduct at New Line Cinema. I am often disgusted with the state of entertainment journalism, but usually it’s because we throw softballs in exchange for access to the talent that sells magazines, newspapers and TV shows. (And yes, some Web sites.) This time, it’s the opposite.
“What was Premiere thinking when it ran the results of John Connolly‘s eight-month ‘investigation’ which added up to little more than a handful of gossipy accusations by unnamed sources that any reporter working this beat on a regular basis could have come up with over a three-day weekend?”
The actual CE3K 40th anni is on 11.16.17, but what’s a few weeks? I presume they’ll be re-releasing the original cut (135 minutes) but what do I know? They could also re- release the Directors Cut (137 minutes) and/or the Special Edition (132 minutes).
Ten years ago I ran a piece about the fact that while Spielberg’s Jaws (’75) has aged fairly well, Close Encounters has not. I called the article “Close Encounters Deflation“:
“I’ll always love the opening seconds of Steven Spielberg‘s once-legendary film, which I saw on opening day at Manhattan’s Zeigfeld theatre on 11.16.77. (I wasn’t a journalist or even a New Yorker at that stage — I took the train in from Connecticut that morning.) I still get chills thinking about that black-screen silence as the main credits fade in and out — plainly but ominously. And then John Williams‘ organish space-music sounding faintly, and then a bit more…slowly building, louder and louder. And then that huge orchestral CRASH! at the exact split second that the screen turns the color of warm desert sand, and we’re in the Sonoran desert looking for those WW II planes without the pilots.
“That was probably Spielberg’s finest creative wow-stroke. He never delivered a more thrilling moment after that, and sometimes I think it may have been all downhill from then on, even during the unfolding of Close Encounters itself.
“I saw CE3K three times during the initial run, but when I saw it again on laser disc in the early ’90s I began to realize how consistently irritating it is from beginning to end. There are so many moments that are either stylistically affected or irritating or impossible to swallow, I’m starting to conclude that there isn’t a single scene in that film that doesn’t offend in some way.
“I could write 100 pages on all the things that irk me about Close Encounters. I can’t watch it now without gritting my teeth. Everything about that film that seemed delightful or stunning or even breathtaking in ’77 (excepting those first few seconds and the mothership arrival at the end) now makes me want to jump out the window.
“That stupid mechanical monkey with the cymbals. The way those little screws on the floor heating vent unscrew themselves. The way those Indian guys all point heavenward at the the exact same moment when they’re asked where the sounds came from. MelindaDillon going ‘Bahahahhahhree!’ That idiotic invisible poison gas scare around Devil’s Tower. That awful actor playing that senior Army officer who denies it’s a charade. The way the electricity comes back on in Muncie, Indiana, at the same moment that those three small UFOs drones disappear in the heavens. The mule-like resistance of Teri Garr‘s character to believe even a little bit in Richard Dreyfuss‘s sightings.
“The worst element of all is the way Spielberg has those guys who are supposed to board the mother ship wearing the same red jumpsuits and sunglasses and acting like total robots. Why? No reason. Spielberg just liked the idea of them looking and acting that way. This is a prime example of why his considerable gifts don’t overcome the fact that Spielberg is a gifted hack. He knows how to get you but there’s never anything under the ‘get.'”
There’s no way to not speak highly of Matthew Heineman‘s City of Ghosts, which premiered at Sundance ’17 and which I saw last night at a special screening at CAA. It’s a melancholy doc about a team of brave Syrian dudes who’ve been filing online reports since early ’14 about the atrocity-filled occupation of Raqqa, their home town, by the ideological fiends known as ISIS.
Hands down, all the critics are swearing by Heineman’s doc and bowing down. I’m an admirer also, but I have a few questions.
Co-founded by the 26 year-old Abdalaziz Alhamza, the group has been posting about the medieval brutality of ISIS (killings, beheadings, torture, deprivations) via their website, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently or RSS. Initially based in Raqqa and then Turkey and finally Germany, they’ve passed along reports (which have occasionally included photos and even videos) from brave citizen correspondents. If ISIS could get their hands on any these guys they’d be quickly killed, just as surely as their friends and family have been shot or beheaded without mercy.
Following last night’s CAA screening, a discussion of Matthew Heineman’s doc with RSS co-founder Abdalaziz Alhamza sitting at far left.
Who doesn’t know that ISIS is one of the rankest manifestations of absolute evil in the history of the species, and that the only righteous solution is to herd the entire army and particularly its leaders into a huge, 300-foot-deep hole in the Syrian desert, and then bury them alive under thousands of tons of sand? Everyone understands this, no one disputes, settled issue.
Nonetheless your heart goes out to the RSS guys. You feel almost nothing but admiration and respect. Anyone reading this who wants to help out should send money to RSS. I myself am planning to send a little coin. If nobility and bravery count for anything, City of Ghosts, which has been playing the festival circuit for six months now, will almost certainly be nominated for a Best Feature Doc Oscar.
But here’s the thing, a criticism that none of us are supposed to mention. Too much of City of Ghosts is about lethargy and resignation and guys sitting in front of computer screens with glum expressions. Yes, I know — who can blame them? What’s been happening to their home city is almost too brutal to ponder. But the fact remains that too much of this film is about a kind of semi-passive contemplation of the seemingly unstoppable horror of ISIS. Yes, the RSS guys are fighting them but there’s no hint that the tide may be turning when in fact it is.
The truth is that Heineman’s doc doesn’t leave you much at the end of the day. It fills you with sadness and despair. I for one believe it should do better than this, and it could start by bringing the story up to date.
Opening Wikigraph: “The Algiers Motel incident occurred in Detroit, Michigan on July 25, 1967, during the racially charged 12th Street Riot. At the Algiers Motel, approximately one mile southeast of where the riots began, three black male civilians were killed while nine others, two white females and seven black males, were badly beaten by members of the Detroit Police Department, the Michigan State Police and the Michigan Army National Guard.
“The incident occurred after a report was received that a gunman or group of gunmen had been seen at or near the motel. One death has never been explained. Two deaths have been attributed to “justifiable homicide” or “self-defense.” Charges of felonious assault, conspiracy, murder and conspiracy to commit civil rights abuse were filed against three officers and one private security guard. All were found not guilty.”
Until I saw Miguel Arteta‘s Beatriz At Dinner (Roadside / Film Nation, 6.9), I never realized how short Salma Hayek is. Look at her compared to her female costars in this trailer — she’s like a munchkin. I’m not saying this to be a dick, but to mention that her church-mouse proportions serve as a metaphor when Beatriz, a spiritual healer and massage therapist, has an unfortunate encounter with a group of Orange County synthetics. Poor Beatriz seems beaten from the start.
From 1.17 HE Sundance review: “Beatriz drives down to Newport Beach to give a massage to Cathy (Connie Britton), a rich client. But then Beatriz’s car dies, and so Cathy invites her to stay for the party. She first has to overcome the small-minded objections of her husband (David Warshofsky) because the dinner is basically about business deal with a rich, Donald Trump-like monster (John Lithgow). Also attending are Strutts’ wife (Amy Landecker) and are a smarmy Orange Country couple (Chloe Sevigny, Jay Duplass).
“But then Beatriz starts blowing it by ignoring the conservational flow and trying to pass along a moral or spiritual lesson whenever there’s a lull. Then she starts to drink too much wine. Then she throws a cell phone at Strutt over his disdain for society’s lessers. Then she insists on playing a song on her guitar. And then she begins to wonder if she might have a moral duty to stab Strutt in the neck. Then she has some more wine.
50 years later, the fire that time. Memory detour, flashpoint, cuts and close-ups, an inferno rekindled. A jarring, presumably riveting descent into hell. Directed in the usual bracing, deep-dive fashion by Kathryn Bigelow. Written by the intrepid Mark Boal. Shot by the legendary Barry Aykroyd (The Hurt Locker, United 93). Edited by the masterful William Goldenberg (Zero Dark Thirty, The Insider). A possible…call it a presumed award-season headliner that dares to open on August 4th. Go bold, break the mold.
“One of the bleakest chapters in American history — four days that stunned a nation and left scars on a great city that are still seen and felt today.” — from a 7.22.12 Time.com article showcasing the Detroit riot photos of Lee Balterman.
From Wiki page: “The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a violent public disorder that turned into a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan. It began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, just north of the corner of 12th Street (today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount Avenue on the city’s Near West Side.
“Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in the history of the United States, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit’s 1943 race riot.
What terms or descriptions come to mind when you say the name John Ford? The first thing I think of is “revered auteur-level director,” the second is “exquisitely balanced visual compositions,” the third is “cranky personality,” the fourth is “Irish sentimentality” and the fifth is “enjoyed drinking too much.” But I have a new sixth term after seeing Five Came Back — “Sent home from Europe after going on a three-day bender after witnessing the horrors of D-Day.”
In yesterday’s rave review I wrote the following about this incident and also Ford’s post-WWII films: “Ford, who incurred the wrath of his military superiors after descending into a three-day alcoholic bender after witnessing the bloody D-Day slaughter (4000 Allied troops died on 6.6.44), became less of a Grapes of Wrath or Informer-styled social realist and increasingly devoted himself to Western myths and fables, which could be seen as a kind of sentimental retreat.”
Ford biographerJoseph McBride has read Harris’s 2014 book but hasn’t seen the Netflix doc, but he’s taken issue with the above-described summary and has passed along his own account of Ford’s activities and status following the D-Day invasion. I passed along McBride’s recap to Harris so he could respond or clarify.
What follows is (a) McBride’s D-Day account, (b) Harris’s response and (c) McBride’s dispute with my view that after the war Ford’s films invested more and more to Western myth and sentimental notions about the past.
McBride #1: “I cover the post-D-Day period in “Searching for John Ford“, pp. 397-404. Ford did go on a bender for a few days after his supervising of the massive D-Day filming operation for the U.S. Navy. (Ford was serving with the Navy and the OSS.) He was on a boat anchored near Omaha Beach when the invasion began on June 6, 1944, and hit the beach later that day.
“The OSS wrote of Ford, ‘After landing he visited all of his men in their various assignments, and served as a great inspiration by his total disregard of danger in order to get the job done.’ “The film footage shot by his cameramen and by automatic cameras on landing boats was sent to London for assembly into a secret film shown only to Churchill, FDR, and Stalin.
“I write that Ford went on a bender at a house in France serving as headquarters for a combat camera outfit of the Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit, after ‘badly needing to unwind from the supreme tension of the invasion,’ adding that he was ‘physically and emotionally spent.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah, R): “Americans have choices…they’ve gotta make a choice. Rather than getting that new iPhone that they love and they wanna spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own health care.” Translation: “Poor shiftless Americans, many if not most of whom are non-white supporters of Democratic causes, have a long history of living louche, indulgent lifestyles that are fiscally irresponsible. 47 years ago Guy Drake, a great American, pointed this out when he wrote and recorded a popular folk song called ‘Welfare Cadillac‘, the lyrics of which still resonate today. Cadillacs, iPhones…the poor have to learn to show a little discipline and do without the luxuries.”