Last night I caught an 8:10 pm 3D show of Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur. Almost everything about it stinks of mediocrity — the tedious writing, the grayish color scheme, the C-grade cast delivering soap-opera performances, the low-budget vibe despite a reported $100 million having been spent. It’s like a 1987 Golan-Globus version of Ben-Hur starring Michael Dudikoff as Judah and Chuck Norris as Messala…it’s third-tier shit, shit, shit on almost every level.

Okay, the chariot-race sequence isn’t half-bad, I’ll admit. But I hate the way it was shot and cut and the sandy, desaturated color scheme. It doesn’t feel bracingly real-world and super-intense like the legendary 1959 version did — too many close-ups, too much CG, too many flying bodies and flying horses and a truly silly bit when Jack Huston‘s Judah Ben-Hur falls out of his chariot and is dragged by his horses for a good 45 seconds or so. But it delivers in a crazy, cranked-up way.

And I was impressed by an underwater sequence in which Huston is struggling to free himself from a chain looped through a leg iron around his ankle — not bad.

But otherwise, this is one of the lowest, cheesiest, scurviest, lemme-outta-here films made or distributed by a major U.S. studio, ever.

When I read about this thing being made two-plus years ago I knew right away it would be crap, and I was right. Ben-Hur is a rank embarassment, a miserable wipe-out that’s expected to reap a pathetic $12 million by Sunday night.

There were maybe 15 people in the theatre, if that. I took two four-minute breaks, once for the bathroom and a second time to buy a hot dog. I didn’t care what I might miss. I knew when the chariot race would be arriving.

Stodgy and slow-moving as it was, William Wyler’s 1959 version was a big-budgety, A-team effort with first-rate, charismatic actors working with a stiffly phrased but well-honed screenplay. It didn’t feel like a genuine visit to ancient Judea and Rome but you didn’t care because it was a pricey, gleaming, well-spoken enterprise from every angle. The newbie has none of that sturdiness, that atmosphere, that panache, that “we know what you want and what we’re doing because we’re rich, classy guys” attitude. It’s from hunger, from Goodwill.

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I regard Billy Wilder‘s Witness for the Prosecution as a comfort movie. I’ll watch the Bluray ever now and then, mainly to savor Charles Laughton‘s performance as Sir Wilfrid Robarts. (“I am surprised, my Lord, that the testament did not leap from her hands when she swore on it!”) Now Ben Affleck wants to direct and star in a new version…please. Everybody knows the twist so what’s the point? I’ll summarize for those who don’t know this 1957 film: a brilliant defense attorney gets faked out by his client. If you ask me Gregory Hoblit‘s Primal Fear (’96) did this just as well if not better than Witness for the Prosecution. It’s 20 years old and getting dustier by the minute — why not remake that? Or come up with some new variation on this rather old and familiar theme.

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It’s pretty easy to mold a humiliating likeness of a naked Presidential candidate. I’m hardly a Donald Trump supporter and yes, the guy could obviously stand to lose 20 or 30 pounds. (No more Kentucky Fried Chicken or taco bowls.) But what 70 year-old looks good naked? Yes, he deserves to be slapped down and voted down, but this is below the belt. What if somebody were to erect a nude statue of Hillary Clinton in Union Square? You know what the reaction would be.

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The heavy militarization of domestic police forces defines their attitude toward the citizenry. Being armed to the teeth and ready to engage with overwhelming power seems unnecessarily paranoid as well as an expression of institutional racism. Then again this is something people were beginning to talk about two years ago (i.e., during the Ferguson “unrest”), and so this doc (Vanish, 9.30), well shot and well researched as it appears to be, seems to be chasing the conversation rather than defining it.

“By all that is right, fair and profound, a film that wins the Best Picture Oscar should pass the ‘wow!’ test. Agreed, many past winners haven’t lived up to this standard. Time and again Academy voters have rewarded films that comfort or affirm basic truths or remind us, movingly, how things are. Or how we’d like them to be. But Best Picture winners should do more. They should turn heads, open doors, make history, raise a few eyebrows and rock the rafters on some level or another. They should make you say ‘Wow, I just saw something!’ And they should at least make you want to watch them a second time, if not a third or fourth.” — from one of my 2014 Birdman essays.

I’ve experienced four serious head-turners so far this year — Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester by the Sea, Cristian Mungiu‘s Graduation, Asghar Farhadi‘s The Salesman and Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper. I’ve been delighted by or have otherwise greatly admired David Mackenzie‘s Hell or High Water, Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash, Robert Eggers‘ The Witch and Gavin Hood‘s Eye in the Sky. But there’s a difference between high and peak voltage levels.

What unseen fall or holiday films seem to be generating that special anticipatory aroma? Answer: Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight and Denzel Washington‘s Fences. Maybe. And that’s it.

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Yesterday I was sent a 2006 draft of Jay Cocks‘ screenplay of Silence, which is based upon the novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo. The script is 111 pages, which indicates something close to a two-hour film. Director Martin Scorsese has been editing his movie of Silence, which is due for release sometime later this year via Paramount. And yet I heard the other day that a recent cut ran about three hours, and that Scorsese is trying to whittle it down. (Variety‘s Kris Tapley has tweeted it runs 195 minutes.)

A New York journalist confides that a guy he knows claims to have attended a recent Silence research screening. The guy felt disappointed that Liam Neeson, portraying Father Cristovao Ferreira, doesn’t have very much screen time (he probably wanted Neeson to draw a samurai sword and deliver a little whoop-ass), and that the whole thing is pretty much on Andrew Garfield‘s shoulders, and that Garfield, the guy said, is too wimpy and whiny. That’s not my idea of an intelligent observation. Garfield’s character, Father Sebastiao Rodrigues, isn’t supposed to be Dwayne Johnson in Fast 8. He’s supposed to be a wimpy, whiny Jesuit priest facing violent persecution at the hands of militants in 17th Century Japan.

I have no rational explanation why I never got around to installing a system-flushing program like CCleaner (there are many that offer the same basic service), but for whatever idiotic reason I never did. But recently all three units (2 Macbook Pros with solid-state drives, a Macbook Air) began acting all slow and gummy and covered in maple syrup, and I was getting really sick of this. So I complained to Stan’s Tech Garage, and they installed CCleaner on all three, and now things are much faster. I’ll be running the system check every two weeks — easy.

It took some doing but I’ve finally scored a draft of Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan‘s Chappaquiddick (dated 5.11.16, 131 pages), the Ted Kennedy implosion melodrama that will begin filming just after Labor Day. The script is blistering, damning. A nightmarish atmosphere prevails. I was shaking my head as I read it last night, going “Jesus” and “Jesus H. Christ” over and over.

In the somewhat similar manner of Oliver Stone‘s Nixon or W., the script doesn’t strictly adhere to 100% verified fact (certain behaviors may have been exaggerated or invented and surely some of the dialogue has been imagined to varying degrees) but it does seem to follow the generally understood history of this wretched affair.

Chappaquiddick pulls no punches and hits hard. Just about every page exudes the stench of an extremely odious situation being suppressed and re-narrated by professional fixers, some of whom are appalled at Ted’s behavior and character but who do what’s necessary all the same. Protect and maintain the family’s power and mythology at all costs, by any means.

Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne smooch (on-camera) and actually do the deed (off-camera). And I’m not exaggerating when I emphasize that the depiction of Kopechne’s slow, agonizing death from suffocation inside Kennedy’s submerged, upside-down 1967 Oldsmobile is agonizing to read. I don’t want to imagine what it’ll be like to watch.

The reputation of the late Massachusetts Senator (1932-2009) was sullied, to say the least, by this horrific 1969 episode, but he quickly recovered, of course, and the honor and the lustre were gradually restored. For nearly four decades after the tragedy Ted was a fully respected and renowned legislator, an ally of President Barack Obama and vice versa, a health care advocate, a godfather, a diplomat and an operator who knew how to play the game and get things done.

But after Chappaquiddick is seen a year from now (starting, I’m guessing, with the early fall festivals) his name will be sullied again, trust me.

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Robert Redford was born 80 years ago in Santa Monica. Today is his birthday.

He graduated from Van Nuys high school in ’54. Alienated, unsettled. Booted out of the University of Colorado in Boulder after a year and a half. Travelled to Europe in ’56, drinking and painting and kicking around. Down and out and despairing at 20. But a year or two later Redford knew he wanted to act, and by ’59 he was out of the woods and into the groove. And he was getting a lot of TV-series work by ’60. So he’d found himself by age 23 and was a semi-success by age 24.

But he had at least tasted a bit of that lonely-guy, who-am-I?, “where the fuck am I going and how will I pay for it?” angst, and he drew upon that creepy feeling time and again, of course, when he became a big-name actor in the late ’60s.

Hitting 80 is not that big of a deal these days (80 being the new 70), but it still feels a bit strange to think of Redford — the smiling, well-built, good-looking towhead — being paired with that number.

Speaking of which, Redford bailed on the blonde-hair thing when…? The early to mid ’90s? I know that ever since I started going to Sundance in ’93 his hair was mostly copper-colored. Back in the early ’80s I interviewed an old high-school friend of his, some drawling dude, who said that Redford’s Van Nuys nickname was “Red.”

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The Broadcast Film Awards guys have announced their intention to totally ace the influence of the Golden Globe Awards by holding the Critic Choice Awards on Sunday, December 11th. The Golden Globe Awards will be held roughly than a month later, on Sunday, January 8th. The GG date had been regarded (and still is regarded, albeit to a lesser degree now) as a serious Oscar-nomination influencer by award strategists. Oscar nømination balloting kicks off on Thursday, 1.5.17 and closing on Friday, 1.13.17. But the new Critics Choice Awards date all but blows that scheme out of the water.

Initial BFCA balloting (i.e., suggested you-tell-us nominations) will begin on the morning of 11.28.16 and end on 11.29.16, late in the day or early evening. The BFCA noms will be announced on 12.1.16. The final ballots will go out on 12.8.16 with return ballots required by 12.9.16, again late in the day or early evening.

The vast majority of the award-quality heavy hitters will have opened by late November. The new BFCA deal brings a certain pressure factor to the post-production skeds of five presumed award-calibre December releases — Denzel Washington‘s Fences, Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, Peter Berg‘s Patriot’s Day, David Frankel‘s Collateral Beauty and Morten Tyldum‘s Passengers. But nothing they won’t be able to handle, I would imagine. The BFCA guys have totally vetted the schedule with distributors and award strategists, I’m told, and the new plan is good to go. (Full disclosure: I am a voting member of the BFCA.)

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