In the annals of longform cable scriptwriting there’s nothing so loathsome as killing a character off and then saying “Well, maybe he’ll return somehow.” If you decide not to kill a character, fine, but once you’ve done it, stick to it. Fudging around because the fans don’t like it is pathetic — an admission that you have no integrity, no backbone. If the fans want the character restored to life, you need to post on the show’s website or Facebook page, “I get it, I’m sorry, I know how you feel. But the ship has sailed and he’s fucking dead. On top of which he was too short to begin with.”
Here’s my method for watching season #2 of True Detective, which has worked pretty well so far. (1) Watch latest episode on Sunday evening — absorb some of it while multi-tasking, get distracted, play with cats, write emails, surf Twitter on iPhone 6 Plus, keep watching sporadically, try to discern some of the dialogue. (2) Re-watch latest episode via HBO Go, but this time with headphones — it’s during this key second viewing that I watch and listen really carefully, and yet each week I still miss two or three of the plot points. (3) Go to Wikipedia’s True Detective season #2 plot summary page, and read summary of latest episode twice, take mental notes, do searches for this or that character (who’s Vera again? Vince Vaughn will be okay if he can get his hands on a certain hard drive?), re-read it a third time. (4) Go back to HBO Go and watch latest episode a third time. (5) Read five or six negative web reviews (which naturally include plot summaries — they sometimes reveal a stray thread or two that Wikipedia has missed). The more negative, the better. Like this one, for example, by Business Insider‘s Joshua Rivera. I’m staying with the show until the end, of course, particularly given the much-written-about, Eyes Wide Shut-style orgy scene that may happen next weekend. I’ll tell you this much — if it weren’t for the option to endlessly re-watch episodes and study the plot summaries and whatnot, I would be totally lost at sea. I have a fairly comprehensive idea of what’s been going on so far, but I don’t care all that much. Nobody does. Nobody likes this show but they’re watching it anyway.
In my 7.14 Telluride spitball piece, I naively wished for an appearance of Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant. And then last Friday’s debut of the first Revenant teaser got everyone excited. But the down-to-earth reality is that The Revenant (20th Century Fox, 12.25) will not be in Venice, Telluride or Toronto. I’m actually told it won’t be finished until December, but I doubt that. It’s certainly not a good idea if Inarritu and 20th Century Fox want The Revenant to be a serious Best Picture finalist.
The Sasha Stone rule is that Best Picture contenders must be seen by October…at least. Every Best Picture winner over the last decade has either been festival-screened or theatrically released before 11.1. Birdman (first screened at Venice/Telluride), 12 Years A Slave (Telluride), Argo (Telluride), The Artist (Cannes, Telluride), The King’s Speech (Telluride), The Hurt Locker (a 6.26.09 release that premiered at Venice/Toronto in ’08), Slumdog Millionaire (Telluride, commercially opened in November ’08), No Country for Old Men (Cannes in May ’07), The Departed (opened on 10.6.06), Crash (opened in May 2005). Million Dollar Baby (opened on 12.15.04, began to be screened shortly before that) was the last Best Picture winner that popped in December.
Colin Farrell‘s True Detective character, Vinci detective Ray Velcoro, has delivered another shocker. At the end of episode #2 he was shotgunned twice and presumed dead…nope. Now, in episode #4, he’s suddenly shaved off his Russian revolution-meets-Emiliano Zapata moustache, shortened his hair, slicked it back some and has seemingly dropped five or ten pounds. He began the series looking like a total wreck, like a self-destructive, alcoholic assassin for Josef Stalin, the bad seed brother of Leon Trotsky with a dad bod — now he looks semi-civilized, clear of mind, almost redeemed. Like a West Hollywood guy who visits 24 Hour Fitness two or three times weekly. Why the sudden makeover? Did last week’s shootout shake Velcoro to the core, make him reconsider everything?
(l.) old, louche, fucked-up-looking Ray Velcoro; (r.) new, almost-GQ-redeemed Velcoro.
Now that Ant-Man has opened and been enjoyed nationwide, does the HE readership understand that I was totally on the money when I said what a surprisingly tight and well-done kick it is, and that it’s dryly self deprecating as well as sharp and fast and disciplined as a Marine, and yet it regards its own story elements and emotional undercurrents seriously? Does everyone now understand how tiresome and flat-out blind some of the naysayers were, and that these guys are only interested in specific geek fantasies that wank them off in just the right way (i.e., according to their particular emotional needs), and that they live in their own pathetic little wanker worlds?
But the Liberty Valance Wiki page credits the score to both Mockridge and Alfred Newman, and Mockridge’s Wiki page describes him as “a staff composer for 20th Century-Fox for years, frequently working with Alfred Newman and Alfred’s brother Lionel.” I’m assuming that Mockridge asked Alfred if he could rip off his Bravados main-title theme as a favor, and the esteemed composer said sure, what the hell.
We all know that Moe Greene took a bullet in the eye in the final moments of The Godfather, but now he’s really dead. Poor Alex Rocco, the deep-voiced character actor who played urban goombahs for nearly four decades (from ’67’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre until Sidney Lumet‘s Find Me Guilty), died yesterday at age 79. But honestly? The only other Rocco performance that I genuinely enjoyed besides Moe Greene is/was Jimmy Scalise in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73). Even his mafia don performance in Find Me Guilty was a little underwhelming. Let’s just say Rocco peaked with The Godfather and Eddie Coyle and let it go at that. Friend: “You obviously never saw The Famous Teddy Z.” Me: “Who?” Friend: “One of the great unheralded TV sitcoms of all time. It didn’t last a season on CBS yet Rocco’s performance as an agent won him an Emmy.”
For those who may been away or not paying attention in early June, you need to avoid the 25th anniversary Bluray of Goodfellas (which popped on 5.5.15) because it looks darker, thicker and browner than the 2007 Bluray version, which is far superior. Don’t be misled by the fact that Scorsese approved the 25th anni version — sometimes it looks okay but mostly it seems covered with a mixture of lentil soup and butterscotch sauce. To my eyes it’s a constantly irritating thing to sit through. Just remember the name Brownfellas and the fact that Warner Home Video has helped you to remember this by tinting the cover a brownish amber. One more time: Brownfellas is bad, but the 2007 and 2010 Bluray versions are just fine.
On 11.13.13, I shared an alternate ending of Spike Jonze‘s Her with a few friends (including some critics and columnists). A much better ending, I should say. Here it is: “As we all know, Her ends with Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) more or less dropping Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) — something about her having evolved so far and taken in so much and gone to so many wondrous and mystical places in her head with Alan Watts and possibly others that she’s no longer able to just simulate a girlfriend experience and so she’s expanding her wings and moving on. Or something along those lines. (If I’m not mistaken the same thing has happened with Amy Adams’ OS1 relationship.) The OS1 software has evolved itself out of being an emotional relationship surrogate for lonely humans and has gone up and into the universe….right?
“This is where and why the movie is going to lose Joe Popcorn. The film ends with Amy dropping her head on Joaquin’s shoulder as they sit and stare out at the vast LA cityscape, but it’s not quite enough. The movie ends, but the way it ends isn’t an ‘ending.’ It just kind of slows to a stop. It’s an ending that says, ‘We haven’t figured out an ending but at least we’re ending on a sad kind of note.’
“Here’s how it should end. We know that Theodore’s intimate letters book has been published and gained, let’s presume, a certain attention, a certain fame. We include a brief scene near the end in which the creators of OS1 get in touch with Theodore and tell him how much they loved his book and particularly his voice (both inwardly and stylistically), and that they have a proposition for him to think about. Theodore has presumed that they were getting in touch with him to express regrets about his relationship with Samantha going south, but this is surprising. A proposition…?
I don’t care how many Francis Coppola interviews you’ve seen or listened to over the years. This series of clips of a 6.9 92nd Street Y discussion between Coppola and Columbia film professor Annette Insdorf (the people in charge of posting these interviews always seem to drag ass) is wonderfully entertaining and illuminating. In late ’81 I cold-called Coppola when he was staying at the Sherry Netherland, and for whatever reason (possibly because I was fearlessly loquacious due to having dropped a quaalude) he stayed on the phone with me for well over an hour. I published the interview in a two-part q & a format in The Film Journal, which I was managing editor of from late 1980 to the early summer of ’83.
Two and half years ago I was bitten by the Judy Greer bug, particularly by her smallish but poignant performance in Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants — a supporting turn that definitely warranted an Oscar nomination. Since then she’s worked a lot, written a book, scored nicely as Lily Tomlin‘s girlfriend in Grandma, played inconsequential roles in a pair of 2015 blockbusters — Jurassic World and Ant-Man — and landed a rich ongoing role in FX’s Married. The Week‘s Scott Meslow has joined the team by saying, quite appropriately, that this isn’t enough. Greer needs to snag a super-role or two…something legendary, zeitgeisty. He concludes with a Greer pitch: “Judy plays Judy, a ferociously skilled actress who keeps getting cast in bland, forgettable bit parts: a nagging mother, a gossipy sister, a long-suffering wife. Fed up with an industry that refuses to give her a decent role, she breaks out on her own and starts a Hollywood studio. Or a detective agency. Or maybe a vampire bites her. Whatever. Just grab the best script you have lying around right now — as long as it features a real role for a talented actress. She’s good for it.”
