Ultimate “Matchstick” Supercut

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From David Ehrlich‘s 9.21 Matchstick Men piece, in which he praised Ridley Scott‘s 2003 film as “The Movie that Made Cage Impossible to Forget“:

“Cage’s fidgety central turn as Roy Waller, which channels the most elegant of the actor’s natural talents — and the most egregious of his meme-ified tendencies — into a singularly humane portrayal that’s too holistic to be sliced into supercuts, but also too feral to have been performed by anyone else. Matchstick Men came out right in the sweet spot of Cage’s career, flitting into theaters through the open window between his last Oscar nomination and his first direct-to-VOD schlockfest. It was after he’d become a punchline, but before he’d become the joke.

“Cage is not as unhinged as he was in Vampire’s Kiss, or as cartoonish as he was in Face/Off or as virtuosic as he was in Adaptation. His performance here isn’t subdued by the middle-class malaise of It Could Happen to You, or possessed by the white man’s kabuki of his police work in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Roy calls to mind a little something from all of those roles, but he doesn’t belong to any one of them.

“And yet, if you took Cage’s entire filmography and crammed it into a blender, Roy Waller is the puree you’d be left with inside.”

A few years ago I took the time to record two Matchstick Men supercuts, both from a discussion between Waller and Bruce Altman‘s Dr. Harris Klein — clip #1 and clip #2. Then, years later, I discovered this clip:

This Is Not 1991, So “Don’t Mess”

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Excerpt for the defensive mansplainers living in the right-wing legislative membrane, we all have Christine Blasey Ford‘s back. The bad guys are naturally going to Anita Hill her as best they can, but if they overplay their hand the blowback will be profound.

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If You Say The Wrong Thing…

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Or imply the wrong thing. Or say something even a little bit complimentary about the wrong kind of person. Or hint at the wrong kind of attitude. Or argue for the wrong position or perhaps even imply that you’re thinking the wrong kind of thoughts…you’ll be disciplined like a bitch. The politically correct Robespierres will arch their backs and point at you and shriek on Twitter about how you need to be shunned, admonished, fired from your job, whipped, corrected, spanked with a wooden paddle, sent into the desert to cleanse yourself of your grotesque mansplaining and male-gazing, etc.

This is in no way a plea for leniency for the odious fraternity of Les Moonves, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey and Charlie Rose. The world is obviously a better, more humane place without the abusive sexual buccaneering that these guys have come to represent. We are, on the other hand, living through a kind of Twitter-ized French terror. Nobody’s perfect and we’ve all probably over-stepped at one time or another, but the mere presence of a dusted-off guillotine is…well, unpleasant. Society is being course-corrected, of course, but whew, the anxiety vibes.

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Carol Reed’s “The Third Woman”

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So Michael Avenatti’s as-yet unnamed client, a woman who was “both” a witness and a victim of Kavanaugh’s who “had a number of security clearances issued by the federal government over a number of years,” will come forward…what, later today? Certainly by tomorrow. A friend predicted yesterday that when the “third woman” comes forward, Kavanaugh might turn tail and withdraw himself from the process. That would be Trump’s smart play — cut Brett loose, nominate another anti-choice hardliner. I suspect, however, that Congressional Republicans are so angry and obstinate about what they see as a fiendish liberal conspiracy to destroy a good man (i.e., an entitled conservative cut from their own cloth) that they’re telling each other “damn the torpedoes….we’re pushing Brett through no matter what.”

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Nine Astonishing Years

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“Buster Keaton was tragic, shattered, a survivor in name only and a genius — he was company for Bresson, Ophuls.

“And it was in the 1920s that Keaton hit his great purple passage: The Three Ages; Our Hospitality; Sherlock Jr; The Navigator; Seven Chances; Battling Butler; The General; College; Steamboat Bill Jr; The Cameraman. In those years, Chaplin made The Gold Rush and The Circus, two fabulous hits. [But] Keaton worked at a more rapid pace, and he made one thing — masterpieces.

“These are the films that any newcomer needs to see. And in that process he or she should realize that the experience is not only comic — it has to do with space, light, movement, duration, time. It is great theatre, but it is music and form, too. These are among the most beautiful films ever made in the silent era.” — from David Thomson‘s 1.29.06 Independent essay, titled “Buster Was Stoked By Genius, But He Hit The Buffers Hard.”

Cohen Media Group will release Peter Boghanovich‘s The Great Buster on 10.5

Cuaron’s Cojones

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If there’s one ironclad rule that pretty much every Hollywood-employed director has to follow, especially those working in the fantasy, urban thriller or action-adventure genres, it’s that you have to grab the ADD crowd before their concentration ebbs and they switch the channel.

Which is why almost every film starts with a grabber scene — some jarring activity that seizes the idiots by the lapels and says “wait, hold on, stick around…we know you’re looking for an excuse to watch something else so here’s a little stimulation for your inner 12 year-old.”

Example: Even The Post, an upmarket film about an epic chapter in 20th Century journalism that was aimed at educated GenX-boomers, started with a combat scene in Vietnam (i.e., RAND corporation egghead Daniel Ellsberg embedded with an infantry unit and carrying an M16) with the enemy engaged and tracer bullets flying every which way.

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Gibson to Warner Bros.: “Let’s Go”

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Deadline Mike Fleming reported earlier today that Mel Gibson will co-write and direct a remake of Sam Peckinpah‘s The Wild Bunch for Warner Bros. It hasn’t been stated one way or the other if Gibson’s Bunch will be a straight remake or something else, but one of the paramount Hollywood rules is that you don’t remake a universally admired classic film — you remake a film that wasn’t so good in the first place but which your remake can improve upon.

What could possibly be gained by remaking The Wild Bunch? I know — there are tens of millions of idiots out there who can’t be bothered to stream the original but who would pay to see Gibson’s version, etc. What’s Gibson going to do, make it bloodier? Is he going to find middle-aged actors who can out-point the original performances by William Holden, Robert Ryan, Warren Oates, Ernest Borgnine, etc.?

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The Honorable Gary Kurtz

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Legendary Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back producer Gary Kurtz has passed from cancer at age 78. Condolences to friends, family, fans and colleagues. He was a realist, a great fellow, a true creative and a straight-shooter.

I was lucky enough to have met and interviewed Kurtz once, about 19 or 20 years ago. It was actually a tag-team interview with Film Threat‘s Chris Gore. It happened in a lobby of some Burbank office building. Kurtz had become one of my heroes after I read his disparaging comments about grand poobah George Lucas, whom he parted company with sometime after the release of Empire and before principal photography began on Return of the Jedi. Kurtz repeated these observations and more during our chat.

Wiki excerpt: “Kurtz claimed that after Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, Lucas became convinced that audiences no longer cared about the story and were simply there for thrills and entertainment, and began to deviate from the originally planned plotlines for Return of the Jedi, at which point Kurtz quit the series.

“Kurtz has also claimed that Lucas changed the emphasis from storytelling to prioritizing toy merchandising. In a 2010 interview for the L.A. Times, Kurtz revealed that he had become disillusioned with what he saw as the commercially-driven direction the franchise was taking, as well as the related changes that Lucas made to the plot of the third movie, which was originally much darker, and supposedly included the death of Han Solo.

“‘I could see where things were headed,’ Kurtz said. ‘The toy business began to drive the empire. It’s a shame. They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It’s natural to make decisions that protect the toy business but that’s not the best thing for making quality films.'”

“‘Jedi’ Was A Metaphor for Corruption,” posted on 5.28.13:

“As all true Star Wars fans know, Jedi was a kind of tragedy as it strongly indicated to anyone who was halfway hip that Star Wars creator and Jedi producer George Lucas had sadly evolved into a shameless hack and that the Star Wars series was effectively over and would never again deliver the power, gravitas and coolness of The Empire Strikes Back.

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So Rod Rosenstein Is…?

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When I went into a film just before 2 pm eastern, the news was that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had verbally resigned to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. When the screening ended just after 4 pm the update was that any talk of departure was on hold until Rosenstein and President Trump meet on Thursday.

The prevailing theory is that the Rosenstein thing is basically a diversion — Trump-generated smoke to take everyone’s mind off of Brett Kavanaugh‘s early ’80s shenanigans. God, what an unruly mess.

N.Y. Times excerpt: “It is not known whether Trump might use the new turmoil at the Justice Department to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a onetime political ally who became the No. 1 target of Trump’s fury when Sessions recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.

“Rosenstein’s departure would end what had been an often toxic relationship between Rosenstein and the president that at numerous times left Washington on edge about the potentially drastic consequences for the country if Mr. Trump terminated the deputy attorney general.

“In a Twitter rant in April about what he called the ‘Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation,’ Trump accused Rosenstein of being one of the most conflicted members of the Justice Department, asserting that the deputy attorney general was among those who were seeking evidence of a Trump-led conspiracy.”