“My most profound Police moment happened on the evening of December 8, 1980, in a small pub in the Stockwell section of London. Never a hardcore audiophile and even less so due to being poor, I was a little late in getting into their music. I had just bought a cassette tape of Zenyatta Mondatta maybe a month or so earlier but I hadn’t listened to it that much. I was edging my way in. Anyway there I was in London to do an interview with Peter O’Toole (hot at the moment off his career-reviving performance in The Stunt Man) for GQ. I was crashing with a couple of ladies I knew through a journalist friend, and I was sitting at a table and drinking a pint and feeling great about being in England for the first time alone, and then somebody got up and played ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ on the jukebox. And all of a sudden I heard that song for the first time. The juke was putting out super-thrompy bass tones and it just sounded perfect, and from that moment on I was a Police fan. The next morning I awoke around 7 am to news on the radio that John Lennon had been shot and killed only a few hours earlier in New York City.” — posted on 2.27.15.
A Bluray of the restored Triumph of the Will (Synapse Films, 12.15) arrived yesterday. As expected, it’s the cleanest and sharpest rendering of this depraved but masterful propaganda classic ever. Supervised by restoration guru Robert Harris, the effort took two years. It’s derived from a new 2K scan, involved over 100,000 frames that were hand-cleaned and a fair amount of digital de-graining. But something grabs your attention even before watching the disc, and that’s the decision to abandon the traditional blue-trim packaging (routine on just about every Bluray the world over) in favor of funereal black. Harris says he insisted on the black trim, and that the Synapse guys, who had submitted a traditional blue-trim jacket to online sellers like Amazon a few weeks ago, agreed without issue. We all understand the metaphor.
From a 10.29.15 riff: “The usual mixed feelings apply. Even when a film delivers repellent content true cineastes are able to recognize highly effective and even mesmerizing chops when they see them. I once bickered with Manohla Dargis along these general lines a dozen years ago. She was saying Triumph of the Will was and is reprehensible and I was saying, ‘Yeah, of course, no dispute…but you can’t say Riefenstahl didn’t have a great eye and a commanding visual style.’
I find this 1963 footage of JFK rehearsing remarks about the preservation of the oceans fascinating. The healthy complexion with the light brown hair. The nice cut of the bluish-gray suit. The contained, guarded vibe. A brief look of gruff vanity as he yanks his jacket sleeves toward his shirt cuffs. The first attempt followed by “All right, let’s start again” and then a realization that using “source” and “resource” in the same sentence wouldn’t work.
Monday evening’s 6:30 pm premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which has already involved shutting down Hollywood Blvd, from La Brea to Highland Avenue and the construction of a huge, block-long tent for a post-premiere reception, will allegedly take place at the Chinese, the Dolby (home of the Oscar telecast) and the El Capitan simultaneously. The detailed invite with a parking pass arrived in my inbox late yesterday, but it didn’t say which theatre I’ll be seeing the film in. For whatever reason Disney publicists have decided there’s a strategic advantage to keeping that information under wraps until guests begin arriving at 5 pm. I’ve decided to park three or four blocks away (the Highland garage will be a complete zoo) and hump it over. I’m also going to get there at 4:30 pm.
For me Christmas means taking time to visit family and friends and…you know, strolling around Manhattan and Crown Heights in nippy weather and the fun of wearing scarves and gloves and overcoats and sipping hot chocolate in cafes while snow flurries fall. It means not buying a tree or decorating it or any of that jazz, but definitely watching my Bluray of the 1951 Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol and attending a New York Oratorio performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall. And roaming around lower Broadway (West 4th to Canal) and poking around stores and whatnot. And that’s about it. A nice two-week detour (starting with my flight to NYC on 12.17) before it all starts again with the Golden Globes on 1.10.16, and followed by the 2016 Sundance Film Festival (1.21 through 1.31).
I found this portion of John Frankenheimer‘s commentary track for a DVD of Seven Days in May on my iPhone this morning. I know this 1964 thriller fairly well, and can confirm without hesitation that this apartment scene between Kirk Douglas and Ava Gardner is the flattest and least interesting in the whole film. Frankenheimer is nonetheless saying that movies can’t be entirely composed of jolt-cola, narrative-propulsion moments. They need to be quiet and meditative and meander from time to time, and even allow for a little “boredom.” The late director is saying that the research-screening process had, in his experience, led to such moments being cut out in order to keep the story tension at high levels.
“Let’s say you have a jar with 10,000 M&Ms, and only 10 of them are poisoned. Would you eat them?” — An analogy offered by Arleigh Clemens, a 78 year-old Iowa Republican, that N.Y. Times reporter Jason Horowitz included in a 12.11 piece (“Attack Spurs New Chapter in History of Dread in the U.S.”). Like most reasonable people I think Donald Trump‘s ban-all-Muslims notion is racist and xenophobic and plays right into the ISIS scheme. Then again Clemens is addressing what many people are thinking deep down. He’s saying that while the vast, vast majority of U.S.-residing Muslims may be totally cool, there are always a couple of bad apples in every barrel and that’s all it takes — a few wacko nutters to spray hot lead in a crowded place. This is why Donald Trump’s popularity has been spiking.
An above-average Stanley Kubrick moon-landing-hoax video, allegedly recorded three days before Kubrick’s death, popped a couple of days ago. It’s a reasonably decent bit, of course, but apparently some people are believing it’s real in the same way people believed in Orson Welles‘ Martian invasion broadcast of 1938. The actors who plays Kubrick does a fairly good job. He doesn’t quite capture Kubrick’s Bronx accent, but at least he doesn’t overdo it.
I re-watched Ex Machina a few days ago. Not at home but at a cool-kidz screening at West Hollywood’s London. (Just before that I sat down with director-writer Alex Garland, although I’m sorry to report I accidentally erased the recording.) This, in any event, is one of my favorite scenes in the film. It’s not a necessary scene (Ex Machina would be fine without it) but a nice supplemental one. At the very least it gives you a moment of pause when Oscar Isaac‘s Nathan Bateman gets “his” at the end. A genius who can dance doesn’t deserve [redacted due to the wrath of Glenn Kenny and a couple of others.]
In a 12.11 Revenant review, New York‘s David Edelstein has written that I was “justly ridiculed” for writing that Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s film was too “unflinchingly brutal” for women. I didn’t actually write that. Having witnessed a female dp friend go into a fetal-tuck position in her seat and hearing from a journalist friend that his wife “wouldn’t last five minutes with this thing,” I half-assedly tweeted “forget women seeing this.” Three hours later I allowed that if “I had given the matter 15 or 20 seconds worth of thought I would have rephrased and qualified in some way. I’m not stupid, and I know that generalizations always get you into trouble.” What I wrote, in fact, was that The Revenant is “an unflinchingly brutal, you-are-there, cold-wind, raw-element immersion like something you’ve never seen…rapturous, fierce, delirious…submerged in ice, arctic air, brutality…an ordeal of blood, agony, survival, snow, ice water, wounds and steaming horse guts.”
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