Clueless, Worthless

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Melania Trump as she was deciding what to wear for this morning’s trip to besieged Houston area: “Obviously visiting flooded areas and offering support and comfort to Harvey victims won’t be a glammy photo-op thing. Even I realize that. Nonetheless I need to dress as if I haven’t the slightest interest in wading through water. Why should I pretend to be anything more than what I am — a pampered trophy wife who doesn’t want to know about life on the lower levels, much less get close to or reflect upon same? Stiletto heels reflect this mindset. I can’t be a hypocrite. My husband can pretend that he’s willing to rough it with his tan hiking boots, but not me…sorry.”

Moi Aussi

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For me, good movies deliver the steady current, the bedrock reality of life. Year in and year out, there is always a cosmic pulse, rhyme and rhythm in the realm of the top 5% of films (i.e., not your sludge- or superhero-level flicks but real-deal serious films). They deliver the fundamental things that apply. Raggedy day-to-day life constantly dilutes and compromises these truths, or certainly makes them less evident. It is therefore better to live “in” movies with occasional detours into real life, rather than vice versa. I owe my sanity to movies, and will always be grateful for the joy and wisdom they’ve provided.

Gilroy’s Roman Israel, Esq. Heading For Toronto

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A friend has been told that Dan Gilroy‘s Roman Israel, Esq. (Columbia, 11.3) is going to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. I’ve also heard from a reliable source, and he didn’t deny it. Apparently TIFF accidentally posted their announcement about Roman Israel, Esq. earlier today, and then quickly deleted it. The addition, if true, will be officially announced…uhm, on Wednesday? For whatever reason they didn’t today, but TIFF moves in mysterious ways.

Roman Israel, Esq. is an awards-baity, Verdict-resembling legal drama with Denzel Washington as an ambulance-chasing attorney going through a crisis of character and professional ethics. It costars Colin Farrell, Carmen Ejogo, Joseph David-Jones and Andrew T. Lee.

If the information is true, it would obviously speak volumes about the confidence that Gilroy, the film’s director-writer, as well as Sony/Columbia execs may have in the film. Gilroy also directed and wrote Nightcrawler, of course.

“If is the middle word in life” was spoken by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. Robert Mitchum also said it in some late ’40s or early ’50s noir.

Wells to source: “If the story is bullshit, could you indicate so by not hanging up the phone as I count to 10? And if it’s not true, don’t say ‘are we straight, man?…got it?…everything clear?’ just before hanging up.  Anything but that.”

But the story probably isn’t bullshit.   I’ve just been told something that makes me comfortable with it.

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Harington Is On The List

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Kit Harington is dead to me. I don’t like his looks, and he’s too short. If you say to me “but he plays Jon Snow, a major cultural figure via Game of Thrones“, I would say “yes, exactly — he has to be punished for going along with Jon Snow’s fake death.”  I hate movies and cable longforms that don’t respect the fact that death happens sooner or later to everyone, and who lack the stones to kill their leading characters with finality.  (I respected James Cameron enormously for killing Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.) Plus I didn’t care for Harington‘s presence in Pompeii or Testament of Youth, and I hated both of these films anyway on their own terms.

Garage Freak

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Give credit to Liam Neeson for his svelte appearance in Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House. He may be the King of Hollywood Paycheck Performers, but he’s taken care of himself. Pic, playing in Toronto and opening on 9.29, was directed and written by Peter Landesman. Based on the true events about FBI agent Mark Felt, who, pissed that he wasn’t given J. Edgar Hoover‘s job, became a major anonymous source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernsteinon Watergate. (And was later portrayed by Hal Holbrook in All The President’s Men.) Costarring Diane Lane, Tony Goldwyn, Richard Molina and Maika Monroe.

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Odds Favoring Mitchell’s Oscar Nomination Just Dropped

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I’ve been presuming all along that Jason Mitchell‘s quietly affecting performance in Dee Rees’ Mudbound (he and Mary J. Blige are the standouts) would result in a Best Supporting Actor nomination. That accomplishment (as well as his hair-trigger performance in Detroit plus his well-liked Eazy E turn in Straight Outta Compton) is undimmed this morning, but yesterday’s airplane-seat altercation has almost certainly hurt his community rep.

The mindblowing aspect is that the Delta flight that Mitchell was booked on was a quickie — Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, which lasts maybe an hour. Okay, he didn’t get the seat he wanted but Mitchell can’t suck it down for an hour? If he was about to leave for Australia or Tokyo I could understand being riled, but Vegas to SLC?

In a statement to TheWrap, a Delta spokesperson airline said, “the passenger was late checking in for his original flight and was placed on standby for a seat on the next flight. He was later confirmed in Delta Comfort+, the only available seat. On that flight, 2252, from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, he got into a verbal altercation with the crew, before ultimately exiting the aircraft and being taken into custody by law enforcement.”

Breath vs. Breathe at TIFF ’17

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Two significant films with oxygen-alluding titles will unspool at TIFF ’17. I’m sensing that Simon Baker‘s Breath, an outdoorsy ’70s-era Australian film about surfing and manning up, may be an easier sit. It costars Baker, Samson Coulter and Ben Spence, and has been produced by HE’s own Mark Johnson. The other is Andy Serkis‘s Breathe, a persevering-through-disease that, I’m sure, will deliver a certain spiritual uplift. It will probably be compared to The Theory of Everything, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and perhaps even My Left Foot. I’m not super-revved about either one, but…you know, I shouldn’t take that attitude. You know what I’m saying. Certain films inspire interest, and others inspire dread. That’s not an allusion to Breath.

Waste of Time & Money

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I missed a recent critics screening of Jim Cameron‘s T2 3D. So I paid $21 and change to see it yesterday at the AMC Century City 15. And I didn’t like what I saw. At all. I left after an hour, or just after Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong drive into the desert to hide out and stock up on weapons.

As with Titanic 3D, Cameron has applied his 3D conversion techniques sparingly. You can tell it’s 3D, of course, but the stereoscopic effect never slaps you across the face, and so after a while you forget that it’s there. Before you know it you’re just sitting in a theatre watching plain old T2, which I’ve seen maybe 25 or 30 times because the kids were really into it when it came out on laser disc.

On top of which the illumination isn’t bright enough. The image I saw through my 3D glasses was way too dark. I don’t know what the foot lambert illumination was, but the movie looked like shit, like mud, like shade. During last October’s press junket for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, director Ang Lee said that 3D projection should be shown with 30 foot lamberts of illumination. Most 3D films are projected in commercial cinemas, he said, at much lower levels.

HE to Cameron: Have you driven down to Century City to see what T2 3D looks like? You’ve put in a lot of work to make this 1991 classic look as good as possible, and then AMC management delivers an absurdly low illumination level and basically pisses all over the film. You won’t be pleased.

I felt so irritated and bummed out by the cruddy look of T2 3D that when I got home I immediately popped in my T2 Bluray, just to flush out the murk. It looked and sounded great on my 65″ inch Sony 4K. Clean and crisp and sharp as needles. To hell with 3D conversions. In fact, to hell with 3D.