Just after noon I was making my way south down Robertson, heading toward the Culver City Arclight for a 12:30 pm LAFF screening of Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss‘s The View From Tall. Bright sunlight, blue sky, mildly heavy traffic. I was doing my usual weaving and bobbing between lanes, and suddenly there was a guy driving a small black SUV who was angry about my having cut in front of him. Dickhead thought balloon: “Whoa, hey…you don’t cut in front of me! My girlfriend just broke up with me and I’m paying $479 a month plus tax to drive this brand-new SUV, and if anyone’s cutting anyone off it’s me…I cut you off, Steve McQueen!” The next thing I know he’s roaring alongside, determined to go faster and maybe cut me off in the bargain when all of a sudden the traffic stops dead and Mr. Aggression slams on the brakes and just barely avoids crashing into the guy in front of him. I kept going, of course, weaving through the traffic and leaving this pathetic dick fuming behind the wheel. As I was being careful in my driving I didn’t have the chance to flip him the bird. I don’t think that was necessary, given what happened.
Post-Labor Day Refresher
Just reminding that while we sit and sprawl our way through the annual ritual of cinematic soul-draining known as the summer season, 57 films of at least some adult intrigue or constitution are sitting in the bullpen and waiting for the annual award season to open. Not 20, 30, 40 or 50 films — the number is 57, and all slated to open during a 14-week period between mid September and New Year’s Eve, which works out to three per week and closer to four.
What I’m basically doing is re-posting the Oscar Balloon rundown to ask about any disputes or write-downs that may have surfaced over the last several weeks. Please advise about anything I should add or subtract.
Straight from Oscar Balloon (in order of confidence or expectation): 1. Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester-by-the-Sea [locked Best Actor nomination for Casey Affleck]; 2. Martin Scorsese‘s Silence; 3. Steven Gaghan‘s Gold (Matthew McConaughey, Bryce Dallas Howard, Edgar Ramírez); 4. Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; 5. Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals; 6. David Frankel‘s Collateral Beauty (Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Edward Norton); 7. Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper (Kristen Stewart); 8. Clint Eastwood‘s Sully (Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney); 9. Denzel Washington‘s Fences (Washington, Viola Davis, Mykelti Williamson, Russell Hornsby). (9)
Now Thru Thursday
Every Monday I try to remind myself that I have not only a life but a semblance of a pulse, and one of the ways I do that is to review screening lists. Right now I have Nicholas Winding Refn‘s The Neon Demon (Broad Green, 6.24), 7:30 pm tonight. Michael Grandage‘s Genius (Summit, 6.10, costarring Colin Firth, Jude Law) tomorrow night. On Wednesday night is the all-media for James Wan‘s The Conjuring 2 (Warner Bros., 6.10). Thursday night is a screening of Susanna White‘s Our Kind of Traitor (Lionsgate, 7.1).
Personal Shopper From All Sides
This morning I happened to watch this beginning-to-end capturing of the Cannes Film Festival press conference for Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper, and realized for the first time that I was given a little camera time when I asked my question about 6 and 1/2 minutes in. IFC Films hasn’t announced a domestic release date. The ghost thriller won’t open in France until mid-October.
Hide The Ball
Gary Ross‘s Free State of Jones (STX, 6.24) opens in two and a half weeks, and yet STX apparently hasn’t shown it to anyone of note. Well, they had their press junket in early May (5.11 to be precise) but many of the in-the-loop media types who usually get a peek at films three or four weeks from release haven’t seen this puppy. Or so I’ve been told. Which means that STX has determined that (a) a word-of-mouth boost isn’t in the cards and (b) they’ll get a bigger box-office opening if they just rely on trailers, ads (print, online) and social media effusions. If anyone has seen it, I’d love to read a three- or four-paragraph assessment. Repeating: this Civil War-era film is selling more or less the same thing as Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation — the saga of a revolt against the Confederates over slavery, except that Jones, to go by the trailer, delivers more in the way of kick-ass battle scenes than Parker’s film.
My Heart Is Down
My spirits are sinking but I’m a realist. I know Bernie isn’t going to make it tomorrow. I know he’ll probably wind up three to four points behind Hillary at the end of the day. I am nonetheless a registered Democrat who is eligible to vote (as it says right here) in the 6.7.16 Presidential Primary Election at West Hollywood Park (647 No. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069). I’m voting for Bernie regardless of likely outcome because you don’t win a prize if your candidate wins. You wouldn’t believe how many tens of thousands of idiots don’t vote because they’ve calculated that their candidate will lose so why bother?
What Exactly Will A Clinton “Reach-Out” Amount To?
Yesterday President Bill Clinton told jeering Bernie Sanders supporters at a campaign rally in Boyle Heights that they would be “toast” on Tuesday. “I don’t want to pick a fight but if I were them I’d be screaming, too, ’cause if you figured this out, they’re toast for Election Day,” Clinton said. “So have a good time.”
“The reason they are screaming is ’cause,…here’s the point, she got 73% of the vote in South Carolina with the white working class, as well as with African-Americans because they know what she did there,” Clinton explained.
“You know the only thing that bothers me about it is? They say that everybody that disagrees with them is part of some nefarious establishment. It’s a pretty big establishment. It includes the United Farm Workers, because she voted for immigration reform when he didn’t.
“They can shout all they want, those are the facts, and she has bent over backwards to be positive in this campaign.”
Seal of Approval
It took me three and a half years to watch it, but Olive Films’ Bluray of Sidney Lumet‘s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (’62) is 85% to 90% satisfying from a purely visual standpoint. I only saw about 40 minutes’ worth but it’s clean and crisp enough. It could look a little sharper and more refined here and there, but it’s certainly not a “problem.” I’m looking forward to watching the whole thing next weekend. I was cupping my ears to hear certain portions of the dialogue when I caught the still-running Broadway version in early May. It’s a pleasure to not have to do that in my living room.
If Only Fox Would Circulate This Poster All Over
“There is a major problem when the men and women at 20th Century Fox think that a super-villain holding a bunch of flowers is the way to market a film. There is no context in the ad, just a bunch of flowers. The fact that no one flagged this is offensive and frankly, stupid. The geniuses behind this, and I use that term lightly, need to to take a long hard look at the mirror and see how they are contributing to society. Imagine if it were a basket of fruit or a pineapple or a handful of green grapes being held by a hetero? The outcry would be enormous. So let’s right this wrong. 20th Century Fox, since you can’t manage to show sufficient respect for the floral industry, how about you at least replace your ad?” — Rose McGowan.
Stand-Up Guys
Ari Issler and Ben Snyder‘s 11:55, which debuts tonight at the L.A. Film Festival, is a straight, steady, well-performed, modern-day “reimagining”** of Fred Zinneman‘s High Noon with an entirely decent script, and as such it’s not half bad. And it has an ending that differs from the 1952 film in a good way — a finale that says something about escaping the cycles of violence that I found compelling, well-grounded and true to itself.
The downside (and I wouldn’t call it a huge one) is that a solemn, well-crafted homage to a classic film can only register in the final analysis as a solemn, well-crafted homage to a classic film.
The ending of 11.55, as noted, adheres to its own ethos and milieu, but the rest of it (okay, 80% of it) is an almost scene-for-scene revisiting of a film that arose out of the terror and cowardice of Hollywood’s red-scare era. 11:55 draws from its own social undercurrents, but it basically feels like an exercise. This isn’t to say I had a problem with it. I didn’t. I was moderately pleased by it, and never angered or even irritated. You just can’t go overly nuts about a film of this sort.
Wanna See, Don’t Wanna See
I’ve said before that Chris Nolan has to go back to making smart, subversive, smallish movies but I guess that won’t happen. He has an empire to maintain and so he has to shoot big, bigger, BIGGER-ER movies from now until the end of the string. That said, I felt an instant surge of excitement when I saw this photo of a helicopter-mounted IMAX camera being used for a shot in Nolan’s Dunkirk, which Warner Bros. will open on 7.21.17. At the same time the below video of a recently performed Fast 8 stunt in Cleveland fills me with revulsion. There’s no doubt in my mind that this movie will (a) blow chunks on the HE scale, (b) be adored by Trump voters and (c) make hundreds of millions worldwide.
