I’ve been hearing about Benh Zetlin‘s Wendy for quite a while now. I asked about the situation 16 months ago, and the general impression is that it was going through a difficult journey. I heard today that the Fox Searchlight release will be test-screening soon, and that it might (I say “might”) be ready for the fall festivals. It’s been eight and a half years since Zeitlin’s debut film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Here’s hoping.
Apollo 11 is truly great within its own realm — an immersive, suspenseful, larger-than-life, clean-as-a-hound’s-tooth revisiting of a momentous moment in world history. It’s moving and majesterial and as tightly wound as a Swiss watch — i.e., all the boring parts of an eight-day voyage removed for viewing pleasure.
And Ryan Gosling should be advised that while Neil Armstrong was allegedly aloof and not the joshiest of fellows, he was not a chronic gloomhead — shot after shot in Miller’s doc shows him smiling, grinning and otherwise beaming like a prep schooler.
Apollo 11 gets you emotionally in at least a couple of ways. In hindsight it’s almost sad to watch when you consider how good and unified everyone in the U.S. felt when the Eagle landed on the moon on 7.20.69 vs. how tens of millions of center-left types are currently depressed, despairing and mortified over the degradation of American values and standards by the ongoing Trump clown show.
True, things were anything but peaceful in the summer of ’69 — the Vietnam War raging, the “silent majority” discomforted by anti-war demonstrations and a general loathing of President Richard Nixon plus counter-culture upheavals (pot, LSD, hippies, the Weathermen, Black Panthers, “whitey on the moon”, Woodstock, breakup of the Beatles). So life is never peaceful and strife and discomfort are often the orders of the day.
But the sick-brain world of Trump, his Fox enablers and the meatball redhats is a realm beyond. Trump is a beast, a liar, a con man destroyer, a short-fused fool. For all his dark currents and venal determinations Nixon at least understood and respected the system of checks and balances for the most part and, apart from “the plumbers”, generally operated within constitutional restraints. And he did push for environmental laws, a national health care system and the raising of labor wages. Five years ago Noam Chomsky opined that Nixon was “the last liberal president.”
As disturbing and discordant as 1969 was, it was a comparative garden of eden compared to what’s happening now. Richard M. wasn’t anywhere near as appalling as Donald J.
Side observation: Watching all those dozens upon dozens of NASA guys with their identical short-sleeved white dress shirts and ties and almost every of them wearing white-walled crew cuts (a few wore their hair with a bit of length and a part) is to observe a species that truly no longer exists. Not one of these NASA drones wore even a hint of longish sideburns…not one! And sideburns were all over the place in 1969.
And to go by Apollo 11 not one of them was even a little bit overweight, much less fat and forget obese. Because the American diet was different 50 years ago and middle-aged people were generally in better shape.
Late yesterday afternoon Kanye West and some pallies showed up at IMAX headquarters to watch what may have been a “James Turrell Sunday service concert experience” doc inside the largest screening room. (IMAX also has a second smaller screening room for overflows.) Did anyone know that Kanye has produced a Turrell IMAX doc? News to me but this is what a Kanye website guy has tweeted. There are plans, he says, to “premiere it across the country”.
In any event the screening schedules of Kanye and a bunch of film journalists and industry savants collided yesterday at said headquarters in Playa Vista.
Who knows what time Kanye’s screening was booked for, but when I arrived at the IMAX facility for a 7pm screening of Todd Douglas Miller‘s Apollo 11, I was directed to an outdoor patio where 70 or 80 tastemakers were gathered. The Apollo 11 showing was being delayed, I was told, because the Kanye crowd was still watching what I later inferred was the Turrell doc, and who knew when it would end?
No worries as the patio vibe was cool and convivial and the libations were free. We finally wound up going inside around 7:30 pm (I saw Kanye and pallies exiting as we went in), and after a brief introduction by Miller Apollo 11 started around 7:45 pm. The screening ended at 9:18 pm. An after-party with drinks and hors d’oeuvres followed.
The likeliest reason for the delay was that Kanye, known for his occasionally flaky and eccentric behavior, was late to his Turrell doc screening. (What are the odds of the screening being delayed if a friend of Kanye’s had been late?) Many top-tier celebrities, even those not known for their flaky and eccentric behavior, are often late for this or that appointment. They gradually learn that they don’t have to live by a strict clock and others will always adapt to their whims. (In the late ’90s Robert Redford chaired a small Sundance Film Festival press conference at his Sundance resort, and year after year he was always 15 minutes late.)
If I was the person who agreed to rent the main IMAX theatre to Kanye prior to a major industry screening, I would have factored this shit in. If the Turrell IMAX doc had a running time of, say, 90 minutes, I would have told Kanye that the screening would have to begin at 4 pm, knowing that the screening would most likely begin closer to 4:30 pm or perhaps even a bit later. Even if it started 45 minutes late, it would still be over at 6:15 pm with plenty of time for the Kanye crowd to evacuate before the Apollo 11 crowd arrived.
If I was the IMAX rep in charge of greeting the Kanye crowd and seeing to their comfort yesterday afternoon, I would have told them when they arrived 30 or 45 minutes late that their screening would have to happen in the smaller IMAX theatre because the larger screening room had to be free at 6:30 pm to accomodate an industry crowd that would be arriving around then.
The copy for Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson’s latest “Screen Talk” podcast (#250) states that Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women (Columbia, 12.25) “seems to be avoiding the festival circuit altogether.” Really? I hadn’t heard that. Word around the campfire is that the second half of Gerwig’s film delivers the goods, and that acting-wise Saoirse Ronan is “great as ever” and “a “lock” for a Best Actress nomination, and that Florence Pugh has “an earth-shattering monologue”.
Jeff Sneider tweet: “After surveying the awards landscape, chatting with sources & listening to the infamous InSneider gut, I’m prepared to go way out on a limb and tell you in July that one year after the Green Book win, the Oscar will go to one of these two movies — Melina Matsoukas‘ Queen & Slim and Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy.” What Sneider means, I gather, is that an anti-Green Book, authentic-black-experience pushback vote will constitute a good part of the support for these two.
The fall hotties are still Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Ed Norton‘s Motherless Brooklyn**, Jay Roach‘s Fair and Balanced, Kasi Lemmons‘ Harriet, Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing He Wanted, Steven Soderbergh‘s The Laundromat, Gavin O’Connor‘s Torrance, Roger Michell‘s Blackbird, Rupert Goold‘s Judy, Tom Harper‘s The Aeronauts. Which others?
I saw Todd Douglas Miller‘s Apollo 11 last February at a press screening inside the AMC Century City IMAX theatre, and it was flat-out wonderful. I was knocked flat by the sheer textural dazzle of the 70mm large format images. The 93-minute doc takes you back 50 years and into the launch of Apollo 11 and of course the moon landing that happened on 7.20.69.
A significant portion of this stunning immersion — narration-free and sans talking heads — is composed of unreleased 70mm footage from the launch (look, it’s Johnny Carson!) and the ocean recovery of Apollo 11. This is blended with uprezzed 35 and 16 mm film, still photography and closed-circuit television footage, all of which was digitally scanned at Final Frame, a post-production firm in New York City.
The sum effect is one of a wowser, you-are-there voyage into the past. Except it feels like the present during those 93. It delivers an unmistakable spiritual current.
This evening I’ll be attending a special Apollo 11 screening inside the huge IMAX Corporation theatre in Playa Vista, to be followed by a chit-chat mixer with Miller. The idea, of course, is to commemorate the half-century anniversary, which is only 8 days from now. And, of course, to remind press people that this Neon release needs to be seen on a big, big screen. And that it needs to be nominated for the Best Feature Doc Oscar.
Universal release Apollo 11 on DVD, Bluray and digital streaming on 5.14.19.
The 50th anniversary of Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick tragedy will happen six days hence, on 7.18.19.
An exciting 60-second drug-smuggling video was released yesterday by the U.S. Coast Guard. Recorded somewhere in the eastern Pacific on 6.18.19, it shows Coast Guard commandos chasing a semi-submersible drug smuggling vessel (SPSS) carrying “more than 17,000 pounds of cocaine, valued at about $232 million,” according to The Washington Post.
“Alto tu bote! Alto tu bote!” the Coast Guard guy yells. The approximate English translation is “stop your motherfucking boat, assholes! You’re fucking busted!”
All hail the can-do, take-charge, super-macho attitude of the Coast Guard, but Hollywood Elsewhere has a question for the drug dealers. You guys allegedly have lots of dough so why are you trying to smuggle cocaine inside a semi-submersible, or a small Nautilus-like, Captain Nemo-styled craft that’s visible to patrol boats? Why don’t you use fully submersible subs, or the kind that Coast Guard guys can’t see because, you know, they’re underwater and therefore visually undetectable?
I know that the HE commentariat disapproves of my watching HBO all the time, but I’ve forgotten if they approve or disapprove of Big Little Lies. I’ve been watching season #2 all along, mostly because of Meryl Streep. I wasn’t all that big on season #1, which was directed by Jean-Marc Vallee; season #2 has been directed by Andrea Arnold, but not in a style that anyone would call Arnold-esque (hand-heldy, here and there, natural light). It just feels smooth and steady for the most part.
Today an Indiewire piece by Chris O’Falt (“Big Little Lies’ Season 2 Turmoil: Inside Andrea Arnold’s Loss of Creative Control“) reports that after Arnold finished shooting season #2 last year, Vallee and Big Little Lies producer David E. Kelley stepped in and ordered extra shooting, and then cut Arnold’s creative balls off during editing.
O’Falt: “According to a number of sources close to the production, there was a dramatic shift in late 2018 as the show was yanked away from Arnold, and creative control was handed over to executive producer and Season 1 director Jean-Marc Vallee. The goal was to unify the visual style of Season 1 and 2. In other words, after all the episodes had been shot, take Arnold’s work and make it look and feel like the familiar style Vallée brought to the hit first season.”
“It was [just] as Arnold started to assemble scenes that Kelley and HBO started to see there was a problem,” O’Falt continues. “Before Arnold and her London editing team were able to even complete an official cut of an episode, Vallée started to take over. Post-production shifted from London to Vallée’s home city of Montreal, where his own editorial team started cutting what is now airing on HBO. Soon after, 17 days of additional photography were scheduled.”
So why did Kelley and his HBO bosses agree to hire a headstrong director with a distinctive dart-and-shoot style if what they really they wanted was someone who would more or less ape Vallee’s approach?
The apparent answer is that Kelley and HBO execs weren’t all that familiar with Arnold’s previous films (Red Road, Fish Tank, American Honey) and were therefore taken aback when they saw her season #2 footage. O’Falt reports that Arnold was more or less hired because of Vallee’s recommendation.
O’Falt: “The optics were not lost on many associated with Big Little Lies: A show dominated by some of the most powerful actresses in Hollywood hired a fiercely independent woman director…who was now being forced to watch from the director’s chair as scenes were shot in the style of her male predecessor.”
Unusual Dispensation: As the following is one of my favorite HE Plus essays over the last few months, I’m offering it for free as a special HE promotion. Feel free to click through:
I became an amateur stage actor between ’75 and ’76. I was living in Westport, Connecticut. My big move to Manhattan was about a year and a half off. The usual nocturnal distractions prevailed, of course — carousing, partying, movies. I also wrote program notes for the Westport Country Playhouse Cinema. And I acted in front of paying audiences. First I played the timid “Dr. Spivey” in a Stamford Community Playhouse production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which I mentioned to Ken Kesey when I interviewed him in Park City in ’98 or thereabouts), and then a macho backwoods type named “Marvin Hudgens” in a Westport Playhouse production of “Dark of the Moon.”
Click through to full story on HE-plus]
To this day I’ve never read Jim Bouton‘s “Ball Four.” I meant to a long time ago but I never did. With Bouton having just passed I’m thinking maybe I will. [Update: I just bought a Kindle version for ten bills.] To me Bouton was always Terry Lennox and vice versa. That’s how I saw it, channelled it. In The Long Goodbye, Marlowe shooting his old pal Terry was a striking, decisive ending. It wasn’t really believable — Elliot Gould‘s Marlowe wasn’t the type to plug anyone in cold blood, much less an ex-friend — but it more or less “worked” in movie terms.
Let’s say you’re the new boyfriend of a recently divorced woman (Sarah Jessica Parker), and you’ve both been invited to dinner with her ex- (Thomas Haden Church) and his current live-in girlfriend or wife.
Question: Would you sit on your side of the dinner table with your arm protectively draped over the back of your girlfriend’s chair and perhaps with your hand resting between her shoulder blades? Isn’t that a bit much? Wouldn’t this fall under the heading of “overly protective” or “needlessly defensive body language”?
If I’d invited my ex to my home and her new fella pulled this arm-draping shit, I wouldn’t say anything but inwardly I’d be thinking “dude, what is your issue?”
I’ve had a reasonably engrossing time with Divorce over the past couple of seasons. It’s very well directed, written, acted…it moves right along without any false or cloying steps. It’s been running since 7.1.19 but for some reason I haven’t yet tuned in, but I will this weekend.
Side comment: Thomas Haden Church, whom I still look upon as the randy Jack Cole in Sideways, is suddenly looking really lined and gray. Is this for the part or…? As recently as eight or nine years ago he was dark haired. I don’t like to think of Jack as a getting-older guy. I want him to hang in there and keep it up.
Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim‘s The Great Hack (Netflix, 7.24) “exists as a giant contradiction sure to evoke strong responses from anyone impacted by its drama, which is basically everyone,” wrote Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn last January. “As a Netflix production, it has a puzzling identity in the marketplace: Audiences for this revealing movie are poised to discover it through the very same process of hidden algorithms at the center of its alarming narrative. That’s either a bitter irony or exactly right.”
“For the sake of cinema, Disney needs to be broken up“…yeah! Rousing headline! Sounds like a mission statement or a call to arms. Except that Observer columnist Guy Lodge doesn’t precisely urge this course of action. Well, in a roundabout way by inserting the word “might.”
What he mainly says is that the Disney dominance or “box-office stranglehold” of the last five or six years translates into the fact that Disney has become a kind of engulfing Hollywood colossus — “the principal architect of an ever more uniform and homogeneous popular cinema.”
In other words, the studio that Walt and Roy Disney worked and struggled so hard to build has is no longer about creativity but corporate rubber-stamping and the serving of familiar stories, characters and formulas. Obviously nothing radical or new in this observation,
Lodge’s central thought is that “this kind of Hollywood imperialism is not encouraging news if you fear that reduced competition begets reduced creativity,” which of course it has. “What other acquisitions are on [Disney’s] wishlist?,” Lodge asks. “Are we seeing a return to the rigidly controlled Hollywood studio system of the 1940s and 1950s — only with one studio effectively as the system? If so, a movement not dissimilar to the demands to break up big tech currently rippling towards Silicon Valley might be in order.”
