“I’ll never forget my first and only viewing of Irwin Allen‘s The Swarm at the Quad Cinema on 13th Street. It was maybe a week or two after the 7.14.78 opening. By then it had tanked and word has gotten around it was mythically awful, so a few feisty types were seated in the smallish Quad theatre. The heckling started between the one-third and halfway mark, and then it got better and better.
“But the film was so impossibly square and tedious and ogygen-sucking that you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the mostly middle-aged or long-of-tooth cast — Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, Jose Ferrer, Patty Duke, Bradford Dillman, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda. They were being humiliated, plain and simple.
“As it ended with a shot of Caine and Ross watching the killer bees burn to death at sea, I remember the guys sitting in the front going ‘aaauuughhhhh!,’ like they been gored by a bull.” — from a 4.6.14 post called “Shoulda Been There.”
I worked with the late Robert Osborne — not closely but editing-wise — during my time at the Hollywood Reporter in 1983 and ’84, back in the clackety-clack era of typewriters and white-out and red-ink pens. This was when the Reporter headquarters were on Sunset at the corner of Las Palmas…Tichi Wilkerson, Bruce Binkow, Lynn Segal, Jefferson Graham, Hedy Kleyweg, Jeff Ressner, Duane Byrge, Ruth Robinson, et. al.
Osborne wrote a daily column back then. He had a desk in the outer area, but now and then he’d saunter into the main news room and shoot the shit.
He got angry with us once when we mistakenly corrected what we thought was a misspelling of Michelle Pfeiffer‘s name, only to find out Bob was referring to some guy whose name was similarly spelled, Michael Pfeffer or something like that. He really let us have it, but then again we couldn’t reach him when we were debating what to do so it was at least partly on him.
The great Osborne passed last night at age 84, and I’m sorry. He was a good, sharp, amiable fellow who really knew his stuff. I loved his TCM summaries as much as the next guy, but he was best when he was off-camera and really spilling the beans among friends.
In an L.A. Times story Osborne’s partner of 20 years, David Staller, said two things — one, that Osborne died of natural causes in his sleep at home in New York City, and two, that “he made the choice to call it a day, and he wants everyone to know that he’ll see them at the after party.” Hold on…you can pass from (i.e., get taken out by) natural causes or you can choose to call it a day, but you can’t do both.
Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper finally opens theatrically this Friday, almost ten months after jolting and dividing the Cannes Film Festival last May. It’s being shown tonight at LACMA with Assayas and Kristen Stewart sitting for a post-screening q & a. The excitement that I felt just after the Salle Debussy screening — a sensation I’ll never forget — will be semi-rekindled one last time, and then the movie will die like a mouse trying to cross the Santa Monica Freeway at rush hour.
Yes, this brilliant fear-and-anxiety flick is going to perish faster than you can snap your fingers, which is all the more reason to see it immediately. Unless, of course, you couldn’t care less about theatrical submissions and would rather wait for streaming, in which case I say “go with God” or “go fuck yourself” — take your pick.
Either way Personal Shopper is irrefutably one of the most original and unsettling ghost flicks ever made and certainly the nerviest this century. This has been proven, in a sense, by the pooh-poohers and naysayers. There’s never been an important, game-changing piece of art that hasn’t been trashed in the early stages by milquetoasts and conservatives.
Personal Shopper‘s brilliance is partly about the fact that it’s not so much a “ghost story” as an antsy mood piece about…well, a whole jumble of ingredients but all of them drawn from the here and now. It’s more of an uptown cultural smorgasbord that’s seasoned with a ghostly current that you can take or leave, but it certainly doesn’t hinge on standard shock moments — cracked mirrors, moving furniture and all that.
Remember that Assayas won the Best Director prize last May, and that honors of this sort are never given out lightly.
If you like typical bullshit fast-food ghost movies…if you’re a Conjuring fan…if you like your goose bumps served with pickles, onions and extra cheese in a to-go wrapper then I sincerely hope you have a miserable time with Personal Shopper. The more I think about paying customers who are too stupid or rigid-minded to get it, the better I feel. But if you liked The Innocents and The Haunting, there’s hope for you.
An Australian critic wrote last summer that “I didn’t know that all I wanted in a movie was Kristen Stewart scootering around Paris buying expensive designer fashions for rich people while texting a ghost who may or may not be her dead twin brother.” See? He didn’t know what was coming but he got it all the same. I’ve scootered all over Paris for years on end, and watching this film for the first time…I’m not exaggerating…was simply one of the greatest summaries of that transcendent Paris scooterbuzz thing…it was heaven.
Help me, God…help me to return so I can once again use my wits and agility to dodge all that Paris traffic at night and feel like Jean Paul Belmondo in Breathless.
Personal Shopper is partly about how urban life can feel at times, creepy and cold and yet exciting at the same time, but it’s also about the way it all felt in the fall of ’15 (i.e., when Personal Shopper was filming), and about the vibe when you were roaming around Paris or any big-league burgh and coping with that current and feeling varying shades of fluidity and flotation. It’s a darting, here-and-there thing, a fleeting experience about the flutterings and rattles of spirits around the corner. Or deep within. Or out in the ether.
This is what the hinterland Bumblefucks have given us, done to us — an ongoing padded-cell psychodrama for the next three and seven-eighth years. A President completely divorced from receptivity to reason, facts, decency and emotional stability. The Trump Presidency is a crazy pulpit — a fount of scattershot alt-right brain farts. We don’t get to debate or solve problems between now and 2021 — we have to debate what kind of measures or medication (and in what doses) would be the best way to moderate this maniac. Oh, to live in a world in which the public discussion is not about alt-right lunacy but primarily about beliefs, quality of life, practical applications of common sense, inspiration, justice, potential solutions and degrees of compassion. Instead we’re living in an asylum.
Last night I finally saw James Mangold‘s Logan, having missed the all-media two weeks ago. A T2-like road movie that finally concludes the Wolverine saga, it’s Mangold’s most assured ilm since Walk The Line. It’s intelligently composed, engaging and even incisive from time to time. There’s never any question about Logan being a cut above — smart, well-produced and grade-A as far as the genre allows.
And no element lit me up more than little Dafne Keen, whose instantly riveting performance as a junior-sized mutant is one for the ages. She has great eyes and a haunting stillwater vibe. In less than five minutes I knew for sure that Keen is the new Natalie Portman. (Born in ’05, she was 11 when Logan was shot last year — Portman, born in ’81, was 12 or 13 when she made her screen debut in Leon the Professional.)
Breakout Logan star and future Oscar-winner Dafne Keen, who’s now 12.
I fell in love with Keen, wanted her protected and safe, and was seriously pissed at Hugh Jackman for taking so long to wake up to the bond between them. A natural talent, Keen will probably win an Oscar for something or other within 10 or 15 years, mark my words.
But Logan wore me down with its relentless brutality. I was engaged as far as it went for, oh, 90 or 100 minutes but then I quit. I was the angriest guy in theatre #12, not to mention the oldest. I was muttering “Goddammit, Mangold…what the fuck.”
I loved Patrick Stewart‘s final Charles Xavier performance (he has two great scenes), and I felt seriously touched by Stephen Merchant‘s carefully modulated performance as the albino Caliban. And I loved the bit about an X-Men comic book foretelling what’s happening in real time (or what has always happened or will happen in a continuous real-time stream) — I wish the script had made more of this.
I don’t know what there is to say or feel about Jackman at this stage. I began tiring of his gruff, scowling “fuck off, leave me alone!” routine a couple of Wolverine movies ago, and there’s no question that Logan’s refusal to engage or accept what’s obviously happening (plot-wise, Laura-wise) goes on for too long.
But I disengaged when Jackman’s younger twin (X24) showed up and the Godforsaken poundings, gougings and kickings just wouldn’t stop. I actually said out loud “oh, come on, man…Jesus.”
Standee in lobby of Rancho Mirage Regal plex, snapped just prior to last night’s 9 pm showing of Logan. 22 minutes of numbing, assaultive trailers before Logan finally began, by which point I was half bent over.
The first half of this Deadpool 2 teaser, directed by David Leitch, isn’t half bad. Which isn’t to suggest that the feature, which will open in March ’18, will be anything close to tolerable. Leitch is an ex-stunt man, for Chrissake — a Marvel-centric Hal Needham.
A portion of my review — “What If The Antichrist Wasn’t A Person But A Movie?” — posted on 2.17.16: “I lasted a little more than 40 minutes with Deadpool — not bad considering. I decided I’d be leaving early on, or right after the opening kick-ass sequence on the highway overpass when this quip-happy, totally indestructible Daffy Duck wastes…what, 25 or 30 guys? If a superhero flick is smart and clever and well-measured enough (Ant-Man, both Captain America flicks, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) I’m more or less there along with everyone else, but this…this is smug, empty, super-annoying, surface-skimming cartoon-level dogshit. Yeah, asshole — I know that’s the point but the point is submental.”
How have I visited the Palm Springs area…what, ten or twelve times this century and not, until this afternoon, visited Indian Canyons, which is bursting right now with the most luscious greens and rocky sandy browns mine eyes hath seen the glory of since…I was going to say Morocco or southern Spain but this is better.
As it was unseasonably warm in Los Angeles yesterday, I presumed the desert would follow suit. So without investing a great deal of thought and feeling the jazz in my veins (i.e., that smooth hepcat samurai vibe), the SRO and I drove out to Palm Springs last night and discovered temps in the high 40s. Fantastic! A two and a half hour drive for nothing.
The idea was to hunker down in one of my favorite ’50s-style hotels, but the place I reserved (the Skylark, which I thought I knew) turned me off when I pulled up, and all the other joints I like (i.e., have stayed at before) were booked. And in bone-chilling jacket weather to boot.
The Ace Hotel (for under-40 hipsters) turned out to be an offense against God and man, charging $270 for a shitty shoebox that smelled like stale booze and cigarettes. The Motel 6 next door was even worse — the leftover aroma of farting, sandal-wearing, cigarette-smoking asshats who’ve stayed there for years on end.
We finally settled on the Caliente Tropics, which tried to charge me $210 before I pointed out that their iPhone price was $149 — dicks. And then the shower didn’t work. Plus I love staying right on Palm Canyon Drive, which is like staying next to the Santa Monica Freeway in terms of howling-demon traffic noise and the banshee screech of truck brakes.
I’m very, very sorry we did this. I feel like such a doofus. I guess I’ll catch Logan somewhere and then do some hiking. The Palm Springs area blows without the heat.
One, whoda thunk it? Even now I find it perplexing that Moonlight won. A finely rendered, movingly captured story of small-scale hurt and healing, it’s just not drillbitty or spellbinding enough. I wasn’t the least bit jarred, much less lifted out of my seat, when I first saw it at Telluride. It’s simply a tale of emotional isolation, bruising and outreach and a world-shattering handjob on the beach…Jesus, calm down.
As I was shuffling out of the Chuck Jones I kept saying to myself “That‘s a masterpiece?” (Peter Sellars, sitting in front of me, had insisted it was before the screening started.) If there was ever a Best Picture contender that screamed “affection and accolades but no cigar,” it was Moonlight. And the Oscar pundits knew that. Everyone did. So I don’t know what happened — I really don’t get it. I’ve already made my point about Moonlight in the Ozarks. It’s just a head-scratcher.
And two, Galloway’s contention that only pipsqueaks with zero followings were predicting or calling for a Moonlight win is wrong. As I noted just after the Oscars, esteemed Toronto Star critic Pete Howell and Rotten Tomatoes‘ Matt Atchity were predicting a Moonlight win on the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby charts. As I also noted, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone hopped aboard the Moonlight train at the very last millisecond, although she stuck to La La Land for her Gurus of Gold ballot. These are facts, and Galloway’s dismissing Howell and Atchity was an unfair oversight.
During the 2015 Spirit Awards ceremony I asked director Ira Sachs, whose Love Is Strange (’14) had been nominated for Best Feature and Best Screenplay, about his plans for a Montgomery Clift HBO biopic that he had begun to write with Mauricio Zacharias. He said it was a bit too early to discuss but I saw something in his eyes as we chatted — Clift’s saga was somehow too big for him.
(l.) Matt Bomer; (r.) the late Montgomery Clift.
Sachs has alway struck me as a somber internalist, a low-key indie guy, a dweeby explorer of quiet intimate material. He could never be mistaken for a director who feeds off the glare of the marquee, and Clift was and is “big” — a tragic brooding hunk (at least before the car accident), a famously closeted icon after his death and easily the charismatic equal of Marlon Brando and James Dean in the ’50s. Call me crazy but I heard a voice that said “Clift might be beyond Sachs’ grasp…they just don’t seem like a match.”
Well, here it is two years later and I haven’t heard zip about the Clift project, which was going to be a big score for Normal Heart costar and Clift look-alike Matt Bomer, and not a word about Sachs and Zacharias’ screenplay. But maybe I’m out of the loop so I’m openly asking the producers — Anonymous Content’s Tony Lipp and Alix Madigan, Pier 3 Pictures’ Michael Din and Larry Moss — what’s up. It just seems a shame that they might — I say “might” — have dropped the ball on this.
