Boilerplate: “Set shortly before the events of A New Hope, Rogue One will center on a group of Rebel spies on a mission to steal the plans for the Galactic Empire’s new weapon, the Death Star.” Cash grab, rescramble, milk it dry. Heavy paychecks all around — Felicity Jones as Another Rey, Jiang Wen (sword stylings for Asian market!), HE’s own Ben Mendehlson as (let me guess) another bad guy. But it has Imperial Walkers — no cynical response to this. Forrest Whitaker, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, et. al. We’re not Avis (hey, hey, we’re the Re-Treads!) so we try harder. Opens on 12.16.16.
As a longtime, fully confirmed Zak Snyder hater, I attended a Monday night 3D screening of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice at the Grove with negative expectations. I expected to experience irritation, pain, pique, torment and physical nausea all through it. And most of the film delivered on this stuff, for sure. It’s a tedious, dirge-like thing. The brownish-downish mood from start to finish is really like a virus of some kind. But a few moments struck me favorably, believe it or not, and one in particular — the scene in which Henry Cavill‘s Superman saves the little Mexican girl and is then surrounded and worshipped by a crowd, some wearing Day of the Dead facial makeup — actually melted me down. I was reminded of that scene in Treasure of Sierra Madre when Walter Huston is worshipped for having saved a little boy’s life. There’s another shot of a stranded woman reaching upwards toward a levitating Superman — a shot that reminded me of The Leftovers — that added to a feeling about Superman being a kind of religious figure, which other Superman flicks have run with but never matching the effect that Snyder delivers here.
And I was again won over by Cavill — something about his vibe, even in a role as simplistic as this one, is just easy and embracable. And it’s true — Gal Gadot really does steal her scenes and generally wake the film up. And there’s a passage or two when Hans Zimmer‘s heavy score really turned me around and rocked my ribcage. The Doomsday monster was just another ridiculous Hulk-like Extremo…get the fuck outta here. But Jesse Eisenberg‘s Lex Luthor is quite spirited and a bit of fun (I was relieved that he doesn’t shave his head until the very end), and Jeremy Irons‘ Alfred is a lot cooler than Michael Caine‘s, no offense. And I have to admit that Snyder really knows how to stage a funeral scene…actually a double funeral. But the last shot in the film — bits of dirt briefly levitating on top of a plain wood coffin — is shameless. If you’re going to kill someone off and bring his long arc to an end, stick to it already. Don’t waffle, don’t fiddle-faddle — play your death card straight.
Most of us know all about this, don’t we? Well, some of us. In greenlighting this 10-episode series the TNT guys calculated, of course, that 97% of the viewing public never heard of the 2010 Australian original feature, much less saw it. Shawn Hatosy has the Ben Mendelsohn role. Two off-the-top differences: (a) Ellen Barkin is a formidable actress and still a serious MILF while Jacki Weaver, who played Barkin’s role in the original, is a respected Australian actress, and (b) the family, now located somewhere in SoCal, is into robberies and not drugs.
Excerpts from my 2010 review of David Michod’s Animal Kingdom: “You never actually see any of the Cody brothers, a Melbourne-based crime family, commit any money-making (or money-stealing) crimes. Court testimony that has everyone on pins and needles for a good portion of the film is never heard. Bang-bang stuff happens, but infrequently and very quickly and is never milked for maximum cinematic impact.
“It’s mostly about paranoia leading to poisoning, but it’s also about the things you’re expecting to see never quite happening as you might expect.
“The Cody gang members are played by Ben Mendelsohn (as Andrew ‘Pope’ Cody), Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford (as Darren Cody), Sullivan Stapleton (as Craig Cody) and the heavy-lidded, not-especially-bright-looking James Frecheville (as the kid of the family, Joshua Cody).
Before last night i had never paid to read a National Review article, but I took the plunge when I heard about Kevin Williamson‘s “The Father Fuhrer“, which posted last weekend and is contained with an issue dated 3.28. The piece caused a bit of a ruckus in conservative circles for saying that the rural under-educated whites who worship Donald Trump are basically trash and that their downmarket communities are “vicious and “selfish” and deserve to die.
This is why I paid to read it — I wanted to wade into the words of a presumed conservative who despises submental rurals as much as I do.
Here’s the passage that everyone was talking about yesterday: “It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about ‘globalists’ and — odious, stupid term — ‘the Establishment,’ but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.
“If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization.
Roughly a year ago Film Fatale posted the following: “In the opening scene of Psycho, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is wearing a white bra because director Alfred Hitchcock wanted to show her as being ‘angelic’. After she has taken the money, the following scene has her in a black bra because now she has done something wrong and evil. Similarly, before she steals the money Marion has a white purse; after she’s stolen the money her purse is black.”
This isn’t anyone’s idea of a primal, earth-shaking observation, but the white-black thing never specifically penetrated before today, and all these years I thought I had Psycho sussed out six ways from Sunday. Incidentally: The $40,000 that Leigh steals in this 1960 film comes to $323,391.00 and change in today’s currency. (Martin Balsam‘s Arbogast: “Someone always sees a girl with $323,000 dollars.”) Also: That old vulgar codger who comes on to Leigh in that early workplace scene was exactly right — money really and truly does buy off unhappiness. Because the lack of a decent income always opens the floodgates to sorrows and miseries.
Kids and puppies will always steal the show, and last night’s Virtuosos presentation at Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre was no exception to the rule. Room‘s relentlessly quippy, chipmunk-voiced Jacob Tremblay, aided and abetted by smooth moderator Dave Karger, slayed the competition. Well, not “competition” exactly but Tremblay’s co-recipients — Elizabeth Banks, Paul Dano, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Géza Röhrig, Jacob Tremblay and Alicia Vikander — were certainly looking for a fair share of the attention. They got some of that, yes, but on the way out everyone was saying “the kid was so cute, the kid was so cute, the kid was so cute,” etc. For some curious reason I was actually allowed into the after-party last night, but I was so consumed with waiting for news of the the winner of the DGA award (Inarritu was announced around 11:10 pm) that I didn’t socialize much. Sorry.
(l. to r.) Moderator Dave Karger, Jacob Tremblay (Room), Paul Dano (Love & Mercy), Geza Rohrig (Son of Saul), Elizabeth Banks (Love & Mercy), O’Shea Jackson, Jr. (Straight Outta Compton), Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl, Ex Machina).
8:02 pm: Will The Revenant steal the Best Picture — Drama from Spotlight? Yes, that’s just happened. Shocker — really, really unexpected. What a mindblower, what an unexpected triumph…whoa. Who predicted a three-award sweep for one of the roughest sits of the year? The Revenant is the show’s wowser winner. The Spotlight guys must be in shock…sorry but again not sorry.
7:55 pm: The Revenant‘s Leonardo DiCaprio wins Best Actor – Drama. Huge cheers and screams inside the Fox tent. Fully deserved, obviously paving the way to Best Actor Oscar. Leo concludes his “thank you” speech with a little Marlon Brando flourish, paying tribute to Native Americans.
7:53 pm: Room‘s Brie Larson wins for Best Female Performance — Drama. Heavily predicted. I would have preferred Brooklyn’ s Saoirse Ronan. I’ll bet the vote was close.
7:41 pm: Jim Carrey wickedly mocking the “two-time Golden Globe winner” intro. And the Best Motion Picture Comedy award goes to The Martian, hands down the biggest laugh riot of the year. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the realm of the Golden Globes. HE to readership: What are your favorite laugh-riot moments in this wonderfully satisfying film? Seriously, The Martian is a very well-made entertainment. Cheers for any win it manages to get from the HFPA, no matter how loony the classification might be.
7:32 pm: Another surprise win — Jennifer Lawerence takes Best Actress Comedy award for Joy. Did anyone see this one coming? Thank God they didn’t give it to The Lady In The Van‘s Maggie Smith. I would have preferred a win by Trainwreck‘s Amy Schumer but this is fine.
7:23 pm: Alejandro G. Inarritu wins Best Director award for The Revenant! What a weekend for The Revenant with the unexpectedly huge box-office and now this. Sorry, Scott Feinberg, but no Gold Watch award for Ridley Scott. Fucking wifi just died in Fox Pavillion so I’m on the iPhone now. Okay, it’s back now. What a shocker. Did anyone see this coming? Very happy and gratified.
7:04 pm: Congested, cold-afflicted Tom Hanks introducing Denzel Washington, recipient of this year’s Cecil B DeMille Award.
6:57 pm: Mr. Robot wins for Best TV Series. No comment. Okay, I have a comment: Congrats!
6:53 pm: Ricky Gervais announcing that he’s “in the awkward position of having to introduce” Mel Gibson again after insulting him some years back. Kicker: “I’d rather have a drink with [Mel Gibson] tonight, in his hotel room, than with Bill Cosby.” Another: “What the fuck does ‘Sugartits’ even mean?” Best Golden Globes moment so far?
6:39 pm: Laszlo Nemes wins Best Foreign Language Golden Globe for Son of Saul! This is the first time tonight that things have really gone Hollywood Elsewhere’s way. It’s been a bit of a weird show so far. Hooray for Lady Gaga, whose facial features I’m still trying to assimilate and hang onto. Nobody cares about Best Song.
6:28 pm: Aaron Sorkin wins Screenplay Award for Steve Jobs, a movie that wasn’t especially lovable or satisfying and which tanked when it went wide? Spotlight was supposed to win this handily. This is the second Jobs shocker of the night after Kate Winslet winning for Best Supporting Actress, all but stealing it from Alicia Vikander.
6:19 pm: J.K. Simmons and Patricia Arquette announcing winner of the Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor award, and…Sylvester Stallone takes it. Okay, roll with it — Sly was very,very good in Creed. Kicker: “I’m gonna thank my imaginary friend Rocky Balboa for being the best friend I ever had.” But he doesn’t thank Ryan Coogler.
6:15 pm: Kurt Russell and Kate Hudson announced Golden Glove for Best Animated Feature: Inside Out. No joy in Mudville about this one. Anomalisa should have won. Bored with Pixar dominance.
For decades a certain neorealist classic was known as Vittorio DeSica‘s The Bicycle Thief. But then eight years ago the Criterion guys came along and used the unfortunate original Italian title — Bicycle Thieves (i.e., Ladri di biciclette) — when they released their remastered DVD. They’ll be sticking with this, of course, when the Criterion Bluray pops in late March 2016. When the film opened in the U.S. in late 1949, the U.S. distributor Mayer-Burstyn (co-run by Arthur Mayer and Joseph Burtsyn) went with the more elegant singular title, and that stuck for nearly 70 years until Criterion came along and literalized all to hell.
The Bicycle Thief is the title of a poem. Bicycle Thieves is a phrase in a police report (i.e., rapporto della polizia).
DeSica’s post-war drama is about a poor, struggling husband-father (Lamberto Maggiorani) who becomes desperate when a bicycle he needs for a new job has been stolen. His young son is played by Enzo Staiola. Most of the film is about Maggiorani’s unsuccessful attempt to find the stolen vehicle. It climaxes when, at wit’s end and desperate to hold onto his job, he steals someone else’s bike, and is quickly seized by authorities. Thus (and be warned, what follows is one of the most groan-worthy observations ever made by a reputable film critic in world history) the alternative U.S. title is “misleading”, in the view of The Observer‘s Philip French, because “the desperate hero eventually becomes himself a bicycle thief.”
Good God, man! The singular title is far more intriguing because it allows the viewer to decide if it refers to thief #1 or thief #2. (The presumption during the first 90% is that the title refers to the former; the heartbreaking finale suggests the latter.). By not being precise it suggests that the term “bicycle thief” may refer to anyone who is poor and hungry and driven to criminality out of desperation — it universalizes the singular. And the use of the plural “thieves,” of course, tells the first-time viewer to expect a second felony to punctuate the story sooner or later, thereby diluting the effect when it happens.
In Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock (’71), the fourth and final attempt to steal a huge diamond involves the surreptitious hypnotizing of a safe-deposit box security officer for a Park Avenue bank. The hypnotist, a woman called Miasmo, tells the officer to obey any person who says the words “Afghanistan Bananistan.” Co-conspirator Robert Redford, having rented his own safe-deposit box in the same bank, enters the vault and says the words. His expression as he waits to see if the hypnosis scheme has worked is, in my humble view, priceless. He does it just right.
Two or three weeks ago I tapped out a little riff in praise of Michael Shannon. He’s always the guy to watch no matter what the role is, and sometimes he’ll steal films outright. He made Freeheld his own by portraying the compassionate cop partner of the cancer-afflicted Julianne Moore; ditto 99 Homes by playing a chilly but curiously vulnerable real-estate eviction agent. I said that Shannon is the guy, the master of that thing he always does, and that he doesn’t have to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor this year — he’s fine — but he should be. Because he scored twice.
I sat down with Shannon at the offices of IDPR today and kicked it all around. We talked about 25 minutes. A breeze to shoot the shit with. Mostly because I really respect him, I suppose, and also because I get along with guys with Irish names. Very matter of fact, no hedging or sidestepping. Shannon has this vibe or attitude that seems to say “go ahead, bring it up, I don’t care.” And he asks you questions half the time.
Now this is one fetching Cuban cover. It looks like dessert or afternoon sex. The hot red letters, Rihanna’s intense red hair, the chipped-paint wall of beige-tan with just a touch of mustard, the almost teal-green classic car, the faded green of her outfit…beautiful. I’ll be buying this new issue of Vanity Fair today or tomorrow, and I’ll plop it down on my aged wooden chest in front of my big blue couch, and if recent tradition is any guide I’ll probably never get around to reading it. I always buy it intending to read the whole thing front to back, but somehow I never do.
I’ve been buying Vanity Fair for 30 years now. I can’t precisely pinpoint when I stopped reading it, but sometime within the last couple of years. Mainly because I’m always checking twitter or writing when I sit down at home. I used to read Vanity Fair on coast-to-coast flights but now I spend all my time online, writing or researching column stories.
On top of which the articles have began to seem a little less substantial with more of an emphasis on girly, frothy, fashiony stuff. Or people I can’t stand to look at. I know that I hate the all-fashion issue. I’m not saying VF has become a kind of lah-lah magazine that celebrates (or tries to instill a fascination with) wealth and fashion and loaded people who are spending their money on increasingly peculiar or arcane things. But it feels like it’s kinda going in that direction. More and more jaded crap.
I finally saw Freeheld on Friday night, and I didn’t find it half bad. A TV movie, okay, but heartfelt, reasonably well constructed, straightforward. But mainly I came away convinced that Michael Shannon‘s performance is the best thing about it, and that coupled with his performance as a guarded real-estate guy in 99 Homes he absolutely deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Shannon is 41 (three months older than Leonardo DiCaprio) and has been delivering honest, first-rate work since the ’90s but especially, I feel, since his breakout role as a dysfunctional but ruthless truth-teller in Revolutionary Road. In Freeheld he plays an Ocean County detective who stands by his lesbian professional partner (Julianne Moore) when she’s afflicted with cancer and has to fight local bureaucrats to pass along her pension to her partner (Ellen Page). I like and respect this guy more than his 99 Homes character, who is basically a scared, flinty prick…but with a measure of vulnerability. Shannon definitely steals that film from Andrew Garfield. And he steals Freeheld from Moore and Page. And both films are playing side by side at the Arclight now. Shannon is the guy, the master of that thing that he does. He doesn’t have to be nominated for anything — he’s fine — but he should be.
Michael Shannon as a fearful real-estate shark in 99 Homes.
As Julianne Moore’s Ocean County detective friend/platonic partner in Freeheld.
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