Suburbicon (Paramount, 10,.27) feels Fargo-ish. Middle-class milquetoast (Matt Damon, William H. Macy) up to no good, dodging the authorities when they drop by the office, a clever investigator (Frances McDormand, Oscar Isaac) on his tail, etc. Just as portions of Stanley Kubrick‘s never-filmed Napoleon turned out to be a warm-up for portions of Barry Lyndon, it seems as if elements in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Suburbicon script, written in ’86 but never filmed until George Clooney and Grant Heslov took the reins, were used in Fargo ten years later.
Modified Spitball
Two changes: Woody Allen‘s recently upgraded Wonder Wheel added to the roster, and a mistake fixed regarding Joe Wright‘s Darkest Hour.
Semper Fidelis
It took me months to finally buy the Twilight Time Bluray of Karel Reiz‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain? (’78), but I’m so glad I did. The up-rez turned out better than expected. I’ve seen this Vietnam War-era drug-dealing action drama at least 14 or 15 times. I have most of the dialogue memorized. (“You know what I think, ‘on some level’? I think you’re the kind of wise-ass, twinkle-toes cocksucker who writes a tear-jerk play against the Marines and then turns around and smuggles a shitload of heroin into this country.”) But I’ve never seen Richard Klein‘s images look so clean and sharp and organically right. On that awful 2001 MGM “Contemporary Classics” DVD the opening ten minutes looked muddy and bleary — no longer!
I Wanted More
11:22 am update, after peak eclipse moment in Casper, Wyoming: I was expecting to see total darkness like it was suddenly 11:30 pm, but it only got dusky. Yes, it was dark enough for the house, store and street lights of Casper to be turned on — cool — but the sky never became night, or at least not according to the video feed. I wanted to suddenly see stars. I wanted the same kind of moment that Bing Crosby experienced in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but that didn’t happen. As with Jupiter, Hollywood Elsewhere feels let down, disappointed.
Earlier: It’s not the shadow of the moon overtaking the intense glow of the sun. It’s the astonishing gradations of light around us, increasingly diminished but unlike any dusky magic hour ever captured on film. That‘s what everyone will absorb and remember for the rest of their lives.
Jerry Lewis vs. Shawn Levy
Last February Shawn Levy, author of “King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis,” recalled two face-to-face meetings with the late comic legend in San Diego, and then, some months after Levy’s book was published, receiving a spiteful handwritten letter. Just watch and listen. Lewis was no day at the beach.
Kyra Bumped Into ’18?
I was no fan of Andrew Dosunmu‘s Where Is Kyra? after catching it during Sundance ’17. I called it “more or less a bust…a funereal quicksand piece about an unemployed middle-aged woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) in a terrible financial jam, and about a relationship she has with a fellow down-and-outer (Keifer Sutherland). It’s a carefully calibrated, well-acted, oppressive gloomhead flick that feels like it’s happening inside a coffin or crypt. This is Dosunmu’s deliberate strategy, of course, but the end-of-the-road, my-life-is-over vibe is primarily manifested by the inky, mineshaft palette of dp Bradford Young — HE’s least favorite cinematographer by a country mile.”
Michelle Pfeiffer, Keifer Sutherland in Where Is Kyra?.
I don’t know anything but this morning a reader confided the following: “A producer [has] told me that Where Is Kyra? will be a 2018 release, most likely sometime first quarter although that’s not set in stone yet. But it will definitely be 2018 sometime, with no 2017 awards qualifying date for Pfeiffer. I know you didn’t like it overall, but it got great reviews from Variety, TimeOut New York, IndieWire and others, and Pfeiffer got rave reviews. It has 78% on RT so far, so it’s weird they’d just dump it in January or February. I think it at least deserves a December release for Pfeiffer. I doubt she would have gotten further than an Indie Spirit nom, but this sounds like a great showcase for her. Too bad.”
Obstinate, Judgmental
Timid drivers are the worst. I’m mainly thinking of people who’d rather sit and block traffic rather than risk being clipped as they try to pull around a driver who’s looking to make a left turn. But judgmental drivers are nearly as bad. Last week I was edging my way across the lanes of West Third Street, and a woman looking to pull out from the other side began frowning and repeatedly shaking her head. Performing her disapproval! I hate drivers like this (I never frown and shake my head at anyone), but they’re totally commonplace so what can you do?
A couple of days later I ran into a lethal combination — a timid and judgmental driver in one.
I was about to pull out of an east-facing Sony Studios parking lot (Madison gate) around 9:30 or 10 pm. But improperly because I’d nudged my way into the street. About half of my Mini Cooper was sticking out, but I was totally stationary as I waited for the light to change. And there was absolutely zero traffic on Madison, which is a four-lane street. Along comes a woman driver on my left side, driving in the lane closest to the sidewalk, and she comes to a full stop. “What’s she doing?” I said aloud to my two passengers. “Just pull back in,” one of them said. So I backed up four or five feet and the woman moved on.
In performing a freeze-stop the woman was (a) showing excessive concern that I might suddenly lunge in front of her, despite the light being in her favor and (b) acting out a form of judgment. She was saying “Oh, you’re so anxious to leave the parking lot that you can’t restrain yourself, that you’re halfway into the street? Well, that’s impolite and arrogant, and so I’m expressing my disapproval by stopping dead in the street. I could turn slightly to the left and just drive around you, but it’s more satisfying to come to a dead stop and just stare at you.”
I’m not saying I wasn’t incorrect by having nudged into the street, but this ridiculous episode would never have happened in Rome or Paris. Drivers there aren’t hung up on judgment and throwing little dramatic fits. They just drive around and go on their way.
They Can Smell It
From Owen Gleiberman‘s latest Variety essay, “Healthy Tomatoes? The Danger of Film Critics Speaking as One,” posted this morning: “Remember when film critics were obsolete? When we’d lost our swagger, our sway, our influence? When it seemed like the entire world had gone critic-proof, because we just didn’t matter anymore?
“It’s hard to pinpoint when, exactly, film critics attained Peak Irrelevance, but it’s starting to seem like an eon ago, because this summer a chorus of people — moviegoers, film-industry executives, critics themselves — have been singing a very different tune. It’s called: We’re back! Critics, in case you hadn’t heard, have emerged from the dark cave of our obsolescence and are once again bringing the news, keeping the studios in check, making the world safe for bad movies to die the grisly box-office death they deserve. Look out, Emoji Movie! We’re coming at you with a pitchfork.
“As someone with a vested interest in thinking that critics matter, I’d argue that our influence never totally went away. There was certainly a perception that it did, a feeling that went hand in hand with the notion that we were elitist art-head snobs who stood on the other side of a divide from the mainstream audience. Film critics have been called out for elitism ever since there were movies, but in an age when mega-budget franchise filmmaking had become a literal universe, one that dwarfs everything around it (including critics), that hostility reached a new pitch of jaded dismissal.”
HE response to Gleiberman: “I’m glad critics are back also, but there’s still an elite cadre of ivory-tower snobs who have done and are continuing to do their level best to convince Average Joe ticket-buyers to be highly suspicious of critical opinion. One result is that while every critic on RT loved Logan Lucky, for the most part Joe & Jane Popcorn stayed away in droves. A famous Samuel Goldwyn‘s statement has been quoted a million times and has never stopped being true. “If people don’t want to see something, you can’t stop ’em.”
Circulated When Donald Trump Was Three Years Old
From Snopes.com: “While we haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact origins of the colorized version of the poster, we were able to confirm that this is a genuine piece of comic book art that was originally released in 1949. According to a 2008 Hakes auction, the below-displayed comic was released as a school book cover in 1949 and was distributed by the The Institute For American Democracy, Inc.”
What Happened to Poor Patty Cake$?
Everyone who saw Patti Cake$ at last January’s Sundance Film Festival went nuts for it. The after-buzz was huge, and this led to a bidding war between Fox Searchlight, Focus Features, Neon, Annapurna and The Orchard. Fox Searchlight won distrib rights for $9.5 million — the second-highest movie buy at that high-altitude festival. (Amazon’s $12 million purchase of The Big Sick was the topper.) But Joe and Jane Popcorn apparently don’t care (or never bothered to read about) what the Sundance crowd thought. Boxofficemojo reports that Patti Cake$ has only made a lousy $66 grand on 14 screens this weekend. That averages out to $4711 per screen over three days of showings. What is it about “this movie is really, really likable” that Joe and Jane failed to understand? How could they fail to consider the fact that when someone like myself likes Patti Cake$, that it really means something? Why are Joe and Jane always so slow to wake up to fresh lights on the horizon and fresh scents in the air? Patti Cake$ will open on 300-400 screens over the Labor Day weekend, or two weeks hence.