“FIFOG (Festival Internationale du Film Oriental de Geneve) runs from 4.29 through 5.5, but who uses the ‘o’ word these days? The last time was when Paul Schrader used it in a late March Facebook post (“I’ve written or directed films with a black lead, an oriental lead, a female lead,” etc.) Before that was during a viewing of What’s Up, Tiger Lily?.” — posted on 4.11.19.
Cannes Confirmations
Even though Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood wasn’t announced as a Cannes Film Festival selection this morning, Hollywood Elsewhere is confident it’ll be included. (A well-positioned little bird has told me not to sweat it.) What I’d like to know is, what the hell happened to Pablo Larrain‘s Ema, which also wasn’t announced? Was it deep-sixed, as rumored, because of an alleged Netflix acquisition?
As expected, Pedro Almodovar,’s Pain and Glory and Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life were also announced, in addition to Dexter Fletcher‘s out-of-competition Rocketman and Jim Jarmusch‘s previously confirmed The Dead Don’t Die (competition), which will open the festival on Tuesday, 5.15.
HE is all hopped up about Marco Bellocchio‘s The Traitor, allegedly some kind of Godfather-ish crime and betrayal flick.
I’m also regarding Nicolas Winding Refn‘s non-competitive Too Old to Die Young — North of Hollywood, West of Hell warily, but with a muted excitement. It’s not a feature but a segment or two from an Amazon crime drama series, starring Miles Teller and Billy Baldwin, that’s slated to pop on 6.14.19.
HE regrets to confirm that Xavier Dolan‘s Matthias & Maxime is now an official competition selection, as Dolan has almost always infuriated me, the exception being Mommy, which I was half-okay with despite hating the lead performance.
Ditto Bong Joon Ho‘s Parasite (competition), as HE had enormous problems with the grotesque, family-friendly Okja (“A well-directed megaplex movie for kids, and cliche-ridden like a sonuvabtich”). I respected but didn’t exactly surge with pleasure over Snowpiercer and The Host, but…well, BJH just rubs me the wrong way. Always has, always will.
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne‘s The Young Ahmed will also play in competition….the respectably relentless Dardennes! Not to mention Ken Loach‘s Sorry We Missed You…Loach! And Ira Sachs‘ Frankie.
I’m not down on my knees but what happened to Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies, the Jean Seberg movie with Kristen Stewart?
A Stain Upon The Honor Of Film
A bit short of 20 years ago I attended an all-media screening of The Phantom Menace at the now-vanished National in Westwood. I emerged a bit stunned, struggling for words. Eventually my head clarified and my thoughts took shape. I looked up at the night sky and vowed to expel Jake Lloyd from my movie-watching realm for the rest of my days.
At the very least The Phantom Menace launched the beginnings of an industry-wide realization — a process that took many, many years to reach fruition and maturity — that George Lucas was creatively over and had in fact become a kind of malevolent force. Whatever genuine inspiration he had inside him during the making of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back had escaped, leaving him more or less hollow and adrift and adept only at marketing and manufacturing and screwing up Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Who saw Topher Grace’s 85-Minute Prequel Re-Edit? I never did.
The New “Superbad”
Hollywood Elsewhere finally gets to see Olivia Wilde‘s Booksmart (Annapurna, 5.24) next week. I’m frankly more excited about this than any other spring-early summer release. The expectation for this Rotten Tomatoes grand-slammer is that it’ll put some color back into Annapurna’s financial cheeks.
With the sharply ascendant Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, plus Jessica Williams, Billie Lourd, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis.
From Eric Kohn’s 3.11 SXSW review: “The teen party movie has been done and redone so many times it may as well be an algorithm, so every new movie that rises to the challenge faces heavier expectations. Booksmart, yet another buddy movie about one wild night at the end of high school, confronts these odds with a savage wit that never slows down.”
Booksmart director Olivia Wilde outside Castro Theatre last night, prior to San Francisco Film Festival screening.
William Barr’s “A Tale of Two Cities”
Two big reveals will happen tomorrow morning — the initial roster of 2019 Cannes Film Festival selections (probably without the Tarantino) plus the (heavily?) redacted Barr version of the Mueller Report. There will actually be two versions of the redacted special counsel report, with one being released to the public and one that will eventually go to a limited number of members of Congress with fewer redactions. Cannes first, and then Mueller.
Love Is Strange
I feel a little funny about posting a Tucker Carlson excerpt (4.16), but no one else has spoken frankly about how the MSM has all but abandoned Beto O’Rourke over the last three weeks and moved over to Pete Buttigieg, the new squeeze.
Carlson: “How it must feel to be Beto right now? You’re running really hard for President, giving speech after speech every day, riding your skateboard for the camera. And then one day you wake up and discover that your one true love, the American news media, has called it off…they’ve left you for a younger, hotter candidate…went out for a pack of cigarettes and just never came home.”
HE take: Carlson isn’t wrong, but after everyone gets used to BUDDHA-judge and O’Rourke learns to refine his hand movements and sharpens his stump speech and especially after the debates begin in the fall, things will settle down and even out.
2007 Is The New 1999
Four years ago I made a case for 1971 being one of the best movie years of all time. In June ’07 I presented a similar argument for 1962, which is easily at par with 1939. One could make an equally strong case for 2007. All to say that 1999 films, great and nourishing as they always will be, have been a tad overhyped over the last decade or so.
Brian Raftery‘s “Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen” (which went on sale two days ago) is the latest example of this.
My 1999 roster — Election, The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, The Limey, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, The Straight Story, The Cradle Will Rock, Run Lola Run, Any Given Sunday, The Hurricane, Three Kings, The Insider, Being John Malkovich, The Thin Red Line, Eyes Wide Shut, The Blair Witch Project, October Sky, Abrej Los Ojos and The Lovers on the Bridge — comes to 21, which is obviously stellar and significant.
But there are 25 films on my 2007 list — American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Once, Superbad, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Things We Lost in the Fire, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, I’m Not There, Sicko, Eastern Promises, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control, The Orphanage, 28 Weeks Later, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Darjeeling Limited, Knocked Up and Sweeney Todd. Just as strong as ’99, and perhaps a touch better.
“Well, You Don’t Look Hip”
The pauses in this scene — the moments when De Niro just stares at Keitel with an expression that’s somewhere between morally appalled and oddly perplexed — are what make it interesting. Sometimes vague detections of what’s inside of a character are more gripping than watching that character let it all out. This plus the spiky flattop, checked shirt, white T-shirt, jeans and spit-shined brown leather boots.
When Homophobic Missiles Are Launched…
If and when the 2020 Presidential race is between Donald Trump and Pete Buttigieg, homophobic jibes and smears will be liberally used. We know this — we know who and what Trump is. Two days ago on TMZ, Mayor Pete said he’s accustomed to being picked on, and that he’ll deal with it head-on before deftly changing the subject.
HE suggestion: BUDDHA-judge needs to grow his hair out a little bit — 1/2 inch, say. Right now it’s a little too crew-cutty, a little too Alfred El Neuman-y.
Four Polish Gents
Last night I re-watched my Bluray of Jerzy Skolimowski‘s Moonlighting (’82) — a finely chiselled, dead brilliant drama about four Polish guys (led by Jeremy Irons‘ “Nowak”) renovating their boss’s London flat during the time of the Solidarity crackdown in Poland. Very matter of fact, very specific and situational but at the same time a political allegory that sticks the landing. As perfectly made as this kind of thing can be.
In a four-year-old riff I repeated the old saw about the world being divided into two camps — those who hear Moonlighting and think of Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd, and those who think of Skolimowski and Irons and Jenny Seagrove and that ending with those shopping carts crashing and sliding downhill.
There were 31 comments from the HE community; 27 were about how cool the TV show was. I rest my case.
“Fair and Balanced” Needs To Play Cannes
Now I get it. In Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, Russell Crowe‘s performance as Fox News creator Roger Ailes is going to kill. It’s going to suck all the Ailes oxygen out of the room. Which is why the producers of Fair and Balanced (Lionsgate, 12.20) need to put their version of this sordid big-media tale in front of critics in Cannes and splash things up a bit. Otherwise they might feel like yesterday’s news or some kind of :what about us?” afterthought when F&B pops in theatres eight months from now. Lionsgate’s Ailes is played by John Lithgow.