This being a travel day (i.e., back to Los Angeles), Hollywood Elsewhere has been maintaining radio silence for the last few hours. The usual packing, cleaning and running around. Plus the Toronto weather today was warm and rainy, like Panama. My American Airlines flight is currently over eastern Colorado. The ETA is just before 10 pm Pacific. Sidenote: I didn’t want to mention this because I don’t like whining, but over the last six days I’ve been grappling with a bad case of Plantar fasciitis, or more specifically a really bad pain in my right heel. I’ve been hobbling around with a cane since last weekend. The plantar fascia is the ligament that supports the arch of your foot. If you strain or inflame it, you’re fucked. It’s not just over-40 types who suffer from PF but younger folks who are on their feet a lot, like athletes or soldiers. Sub-sidenote: People treat you gently when you’re carrying a cane. They get out of your way, let you go first, look at you with a measure of concern. Pretty girls have been eyeballing me more since I bought the cane — I guess they’re figuring I’m less of a threat than a guy with two good feet.
This morning I was typing out my Ghostbusters review on the outside front porch at WeHo’s Le Pain Quotidien, and I couldn’t ignore the fact that several heavy-footed people were walking to and fro. I’m talking about fairly heavy impact sounds (“thump! boom! thump! boom!”) and especially the vibrations — those poor wooden beams shuddering from all that heavy-heel action.
I noticed this morning even 95-pound pixie women were walking this way….boom! boom! Like little grenades going off. The fact is that relatively few people walk in a light-footed way, as I try to do. I at least try to not pound my heels into the floor. I try to walk like Vaslav Nijinsky or Rudolf Nureyev.
I remember pointing this out to my younger sister when I was 11 or 12. I told her she sounded like a sumo wrestler coming down the stairs, and I demonstrated how you can glide down the stairs like Jimmy Cagney or Fred Astaire.
I realize, of course, that over half of those reading this don’t have clue #1 who Nurevev, Nijinksy, Cagney or Astaire were.
From Vashi Nedomansky’s explanation of a short about Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller and John Seale‘s crosshairs cinematography and the editing of Margaret Sixel: “The most popular editing tendency for action scenes and films over the last ten years has been the ‘Chaos Cinema’ approach — a barrage of non-congruent and seemingly random shots that overwhelm the viewer with a false sense of kinetic energy and power. It follows, by contrast, that one of the many reasons Mad Max: Fury Road works as an action film is the almost soothing shooting and editing style. By using ‘eye trace‘ and ‘crosshair framing‘ techniques during the shooting, Sixel could keep the important visual information vital in the center of the frame. Because almost every shot was center-framed, comprehending the action requires no hunting of each new shot for the point of interest. The viewer doesn’t need three or four frames to figure out where to look. It’s like watching an old hand-drawn flip book whiz by. The focus is always in the same spot.”
Mad Max: Center Framed from Vashi Nedomansky on Vimeo.
Visited my ailing, sleepy mom earlier today at her facility (The Watermark at East Hill) in Southbury, Connecticut. No chat, no words, her eyes closed. Just hugs, neck rubs, hand holdings. Then I thought, “I know…Sinatra!” I gently covered her ears with my headphones, turned the volume down a bit and played the Nice ‘n’ Easy album. At first she didn’t seem to respond but then I noticed her left foot tapping to the rhythm — a moment. Hers, I mean. Now I’m in Wilton and visiting with an old friend, cartoonist-musician Chance Browne, and his wife Debbie in their homey red farmhouse on Indian Hill Road. A Bedlington terrier puppy, three cats, a talking parrot and a rabbit. Listening to Vin Scelsa‘s last day on the air. Not a big filing day.
Noah director Darren Aronofsky and I kicked it around for 20 minutes today. The idea was to inject Noah (which has made Paramount happy by earning $360 million worldwide) into the award-season conversation, and that shouldn’t be too hard as far as…oh, Jennifer Connelly‘s supporting performance, Matty Libatique‘s cinematography, Mark Friedberg‘s production design, and Patti Smith‘s song (“Mercy”) are concerned. It’s a measure of my high regard for Aronofsky that I don’t have a problem with his tennis-ball haircut. He’s been through that “feeling of emptiness” that Kirk Douglas spoke about in The Bad and the Beautiful and is now onto the next thing, which of course he won’t talk about. Me: “Are you going to downshift into…what, some little black-and-white film?” Aronofsky: “I’ve already done that.”
Noah director Darren Aronofsky — Saturday, 10.11, 12:05 pm at Le Petit Ermitage.
Our loose-shoe discussion happened on the roof of Le Petit Ermitage, a smallish boutique hotel on Cynthia Street in West Hollywood. Fresh fruit, blueberry muffins, good coffee…oh, and bikini-clad women by the pool. And a general aura of Roman splendor. Again, the mp3.
MCN’s David Poland presented several contentious, spoiler-ish observations in a two-day-old Hot Blog review of Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah. I’m not going to do a point-for-point ten minutes before a Ceasar’s Palace screening of Million Dollar Arm, but I can say without hesitation that Poland’s complaint about Noah not constituting a vigorous “challenge” is highly questionable. At every step and juncture this movie feels like a fever dream — like it was put on raw, virgin canvas with fresh paint. It never, for me, felt tired or humdrum. Yes, Aronofsky throws in action elements with conventional-seeming evil expressed by the mad-dog villagers and particularly Ray Winstone‘s Tubal-cain, but I understood the why of it (the movie has to reach the idiots to some extent) and this tactic didn’t get in the way. McWeeny’s thumbs-up Hitfix review is…well, read it.
Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity (Warner Bros., 10.4), which screened twice last night at the Telluride Film Festival, is the most visually sophisticated, super-immersive weightless thrill-ride flick I’ve ever seen. If Stanley Kubrick had been there last night he would freely admit that 2001: A Space Odyssey is no longer the ultimate, adult-angled, real-tech depiction of what it looks and feels like to orbit the earth. Nifty and super-cool from a pure-eyeball perspective, Gravity is certainly the most essential theatrical experience since Avatar. You can’t watch a top-dollar 3D super-flick of this type on anything other than a monster-sized IMAX screen.
I don’t trust any journalist who describes Daniel Craig as “the man with the golden hair” so I’m naturally suspicious of a just-posted review of Skyfall by the Mirror‘s David Edwards. He sounds too giddy. So his declaration that Skyfall “might be the best James Bond film ever” comes with a grain of salt.
“Enthralling, explosive and often very funny, Skyfall doesn’t just exceed expectations but shatters them like a bullet to the head,” Edwards writes. “Unfortunately, the very best thing about the 23rd 007 film has to remain top secret, in case it spoils the experience. Let’s just say that what starts as an action movie becomes a weepie in its final ten minutes.”
“After a cracking opening scene in Istanbul in which Bond is shot and left for dead, we travel to London where MI6 boss M (Judi Dench) is in hot water after a hard-drive containing her field operatives identities goes missing.
“It’s only with the reappearance of 007 that she learns the thief is a former agent, played by Javier Bardem, who plans to use the knowledge to bring down his former boss.
“While Skyfall looks and feels like a Bond film — the exotic locales, the memorable villain and an appearance from that iconic silver Aston Martin — director Sam Mendes hasn’t been afraid to play with the formula.
“The themes of cyber terrorism, including a bomb attack on a rush-hour London Tube train, bring the franchise bang up to date.
“And, believe it or not, there’s even some playful flirting between him and Bardem’s openly-gay villain.
“The gadget-loving Q also returns after a 10-year absence, this time played by Ben Whishaw, and gets the biggest laugh of the film when, after supplying Bond with a revolver, remarks, ‘Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don’t really go for that anymore.’
“Craig is as reliable as ever, portraying a spy as icy as his cobalt-blue eyes while Bardem’s character rivals the likes of Blofeld and Jaws as 007’s most transfixing bad guy.
“Prepare to be shaken, stirred… and amazed.”
Jill Clayburgh lived, I’m told, a good full life, but in terms of cultural synchronicity and being an iconic, self-defining actress who ignited her own perfect moment, she had four peak years — 1976 to ’79. Arthur Hiller‘s Silver Streak in ’76, Michael Ritchie ‘s Semi-Tough in ’77, Paul Mazursky‘s An Unmarried Woman in ’78, Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Luna (a misfire) in ’79, and Alan Pakula‘s Starting Over later that same year.
Clayburgh’s feminist-icon phase had peaked with An Unmarried Woman, but it seemed to pretty much fizzle out five years later with the failure of Costa Gavras‘ Hanna K. (’83). For all intents and purposes, that was the last “Jill Clayburgh film.” She appeared and acted and certainly had a “life” after Hanna K., but not as a name actress with any exceptional expectations.
Claudia Weill‘s It’s My Turn (’80) was a minor love story (woman-in-relationship falls for Michael Douglas‘s retired baseball player, winds up jilting b.f. Charles Grodin). She played a conservative Supreme Court Justice who tangles with liberal Justice Walter Matthau in Ronald Neame‘s First Monday in October (’81), a tame little film. This was followed by I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can (’82), a valium-dependency, life-crisis drama directed by Jack Hofsis and written by David Rabe.
And then came the Hanna K. death blow. A muddled but interesting pro-Palestinian drama, it was critically panned and abruptly withdrawn from distribution by Universal, apparently due to political pressure from pro-Israeli factions. Clayburgh played an American-Jewish attorney assigned to defend a Palestinian accused of terrorism. But the plot was overshadowed by her character’s conflicting romantic entanglements, one of them with a character played by Gabriel Byrne.
It was three years before Clayburgh’s next film, a injustice melodrama titlled Where Are The Children? Her next, Andrei Konchalovsky‘s Shy People (’87), was a success d’estime costarring Barbara Hershey and Martha Plimpton. It was regarded as a worthy but minor effort, and it had the unfortunate stamp of being a Cannon release.
Clayburgh played a distinctive eccentric in the commercial flop Running With Scissors (’06), and has a too-small role as Jake Gyllenhaal‘s mom (and George Segal‘s wife) in the about-to-open Love and Other Drugs.
Besides being a great singer, Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky seems pretty inside and out — a woman of buoyant spirit with sparkly eyes and an intoxicating smile. And in Monica Corcoran‘s 7.22 N.Y. Times profile of Blonsky, it is said that “this native of Great Neck, N.Y., has yet to develop starlet tendencies. She doesn’t twirl her hair or carry a lap dog.” And “when plates of ribs and roast chicken arrived” during a recent sit-down with Blonsky at a recent Queen Latifah concert at the Hollywood Bowl, “she dug in with gusto.”
Hairspray costars Elijah Kelley and Nikki Blonsky
Some people feel that life without gusto simply isn’t living. The more gusto, the better. Gusto would make a pretty catchy brand name for foods, come to think. Gusto whipped cream, Gusto chocolate syrup, Gusto cheese doodles. There’s just something rich and life-affirming about that word. I don’t think it necessarily means “ordering plates with huge helpings.” I just think it means living life to the fullest.
Wait…does Corcorcan mean something by using the word “gusto”? Let’s see….she also writes that “to see Ms. Blonsky caper through Hairspray, the musical adaptation of the John Waters camp classic, is to watch a Botero come to life as she wiggles her broad backside and flaps her ample arms.” “Flaps”?
A certain eyebrow-raising clip allegedly taken from the forthcoming Return of the Jedi DVD has already shown up online, but I wasn’t sure if it was bogus or not. But DVD Newsletter editor Doug Pratt has told me it’s definitely true: George Lucas has replaced that ghostly image of Sebastian Shaw (the British actor who played Darth Vader/Annakin Skywalker) in the 1983 theatrical version of Jedi‘s finale…you know, that sentimental farewell moment in which he’s shown standing next to Yoda and Alec Guiness’s Obi-wan Kenobi?…with a ghostly image of Hayden Christensen, who of course played Annakin in Attack of the Clones. But why stop there, George? As long as you’re taking this tack, why not eliminate Shaw altogether from Jedi and re-shoot Annakin’s death scene with Christensen and digitally paste it in? And then (what’s stopping you?) destroy the original ’83 Jedi negative and create an all-new Christensen version.
Forgive the lateness but five months ago (4.6.23) six Hollywood Reporter critics — Jon Frosch, David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Livia Guyarkye, Leslie Felperin and Jordan Mintzer — posted their choices for the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century.
Nobody is an absolute authority and we all have our special passions and allegiances, but boy, do these guys live on Planet Uranus or what? Travelling within their own solar system, residing in ivory tower suites, however you want to put it. Wow.
Friendo: “Absurd, elitist, off in their own realm…shows how out of touch they and so many other critics are these days.”
The THR gang didn’t include 2022 or 2023 films, but their top ten (#1 to #10) are are Yi Yi, Inside Llewyn Davis (HE agrees that it’s among the top 50), The Gleaners and I, Zodiac (stiff HE salute), Mulholland Drive, Spirited Away, Brokeback Mountain (ditto), In The Mood For Love, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (definitely among HE’s top 20) and Get Out (WHAT??).
I’m still in New Jersey and facing a drive back to Wilton and therefore in too much of a rush to include the films of the last four years, but here’s one of HE’s 21st Century rundowns, moving backwards from 2018 — roughly 114 titles:
Best of 2018: Roma, Green Book, First Reformed, Hereditary, Capernaum, Vice, Happy As Lazzaro, Filmworker, First Man, Widows, Sicario — Day of the Soldado. (11).
Best of 2017: Call Me My Your Name, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, The Square, War For The Planet of the Apes, mother!, The Florida Project. (7)
Best of 2016 Manchester By The Sea, A Bigger Splash, The Witch, Eye in the Sky, The Confirmation, The Invitation. (6)
Best of 2015: Spotlight, The Revenant; Mad Max: Fury Road; Beasts of No Nation; Love & Mercy, Son of Saul; Brooklyn; Carol, Everest, Ant-Man; The Big Short. (10)
Best of 2014: Birdman, Citizen Four, Leviathan, Gone Girl, Boyhood, Locke, Wild Tales. (7)
Best of 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, Dallas Buyers Club, Before Midnight, The Past, Frances Ha (8).
Best of 2012: Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Barbara, The Grey, Moonrise Kingdom (7).
Best of 2011 (ditto): A Separation, Moneyball, Drive, Contagion, X-Men: First Class, Attack the Block (6).
Best of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Black Swan, Inside Job, Let Me In, A Prophet, Animal Kingdom, Rabbit Hole, The Tillman Story, Winter’s Bone (10).
Best of the First Decade (’00 to ’09): Zodiac, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, City of God, The Pianist, The Lives of Others, Sexy Beast, Avatar, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Almost Famous (the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, Babel, Ghost World, In the Bedroom, Talk to Her, Bloody Sunday, No Country For Old Men, The Quiet American, Whale Rider, Road to Perdition, Open Range, Touching the Void, Maria Full of Grace, Up In The Air, The Hurt Locker, Million Dollar Baby, The Motorcycle Diaries, An Education, Man on Wire, Revolutionary Road, Che and Volver. (42)
HE’s Best of 2020: 1. Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland; 2. Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (An Officer and a Spy); Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7; Florian Zeller‘s The Father, 8. Chris Nolan‘s Tenet, Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s The King of Staten Island, Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Greece, Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost, Diao Yinan‘s The Wild Goose Lake. 10. Cory Finley and Mike Makowski‘s Bad Education.
HE’s best of 2021: 1. King Richard, 2. Parallel Mothers, 3. West Side Story, 4. Spider-Man: No Way Home, 5. The Worst Person in the World, 6. A Hero (Amazon), 7. Riders of Justice, 8. No Time To Die, 9. The Beatles: Get Back, 10. Zola.
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