Congrats to the makers of the 15 documentaries that have made the Academy’s shortlist — Amy, Best of Enemies, Cartel Land, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, He Named Me Malala, Heart of a Dog, The Hunting Ground, Listen to Me Marlon, The Look of Silence, Meru, 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, We Come as Friends, What Happened, Miss Simone?, Where to Invade Next and Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom. Due respect but it was seriously shortsighted for the Academy’s doc committee to dismiss Colin Hanks‘ All Things Must Pass, Ondi Timoner‘s Brand: A Second Coming, Doug Tirola‘s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, Kent Jones‘ Hitchcock Truffaut and Amy Berg‘s Janis: Little Girl Blue. The winner of the Best Feature Doc Oscar will be announced during the 2.28.16 Oscarcast.
I haven’t time write a full-on review because of commitments to attend four schmooze parties today (brunches for Carol and Mr. Holmes‘ Ian McKellen at 11 am, a 3pm gathering for Beasts of No Nation and a soiree for the Spotlight gang at 5 pm), but my estimation of Adam McKay‘s The Big Short shot way up last night when I caught it for a second time. I still don’t get a good portion of the flim-flam jargon and I still find the financial milieu rank and appalling, but the second viewing was the charm. I honestly feel like a slightly wiser and better person for having seen it. Seriously…it expanded my horizons. Obviously not in a Bhagavad Gita sense but in a crusty, eye-rolling fashion. It’s not a rumor — we live in a country that is largely ruled by financial criminals and the people they’ve bought off.
The Big Short is a fascinating deep dive into a galaxy I’ve never really visited before, and after doing some research yesterday and skimming through the Michael Lewis book I suddenly awoke to the film, or somehow found that switch that allowed my brain to not only accept but savor what the movie is pushing.
Advice to HE readers: If you want to half-understand and therefore enjoy The Big Short, you need to do one of the following: (a) see it twice like I have — it really makes a difference, (b) acquire some personal experience in investments and/or the high-end financial markets, (c) arrange to be born into a wealthy, connected family that talks about financial crap at the breakfast table, or (d) be smarter than me, Scott Feinberg, Sasha Stone and other blogaroonies who had a little trouble with it the other night. But if you have more brain power, family wealth, some experience in the market and a willingness to see The Big Short a second time, the curtains will part and you’ll find a special arousal, a spark, a little bit of Tom Wolfe‘s “aha!” phenomenon.
You have to wait roughly 23 minutes before Michael Moore starts talking about how the country has changed (“81.5% of the country is either female, people of color or young people between 18 and 35…and the remaining 18.5% — conservative white men over the age of 35, the conservative base — is not the country any more”) and — finally — Where To Invade Next. And David Poland doesn’t do the bee-bee-beedle-bee-bee-bee-bup-duh-bee-bee thing too much either. And the conversation is fun, spirited, good-natured.
Last Friday 124 feature-length documentaries were submitted for Oscar consideration. A short list of 15 will be revealed in early December (less than five weeks hence), and the final quintet will be announced when all the Oscar nominees are announced in mid January. And of course I’ve been slacking on this front so here’s a roster of my personal short-list preferences. There are more than a few I haven’t seen (including Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus‘ Hot Girls Wanted, Geeta and Ravi Patel‘s Meet The Patels, Marc Silver‘s 3 and 1/2 Minutes, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi‘s Meru, Matthew Heineman‘s Cartel Land, Benjamin Statler‘s Soaked in Bleach) but here are 11 docs that — for me, in this order — burned through in some extra, commanding, head-turning way:
1. Alex Gibney‘s Going Clear: Scientology and The Prison of Belief / HE review.
2. Colin Hanks‘ All Things Must Pass / HE review.
3. Ondi Timoner‘s Brand: A Second Coming / HE review/coverage.
4. Doug Tirola‘s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead / HE review.
5. Stevan Riley‘s Listen To Me, Marlon / HE review.
6. Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna‘s Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans / HE review.
7. Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next / HE review.
8. Kent Jones‘ Hitchcock Truffaut / HE review.
9. Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon‘s Best of Enemies / HE review.
10. Amy Berg‘s Janis Little Girl Blue / HE review.
11. Asif Kapadia‘s Amy / HE review.
All I have time for this evening are the two opening-night TIFF screenings — Jean Marc Vallee‘s Demolition at 6:30 pm and Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next at 9:30 pm. These plus some running around activities between now (3:15 pm) and 6 pm or thereabouts. Demolition and Invade are throwing after-parties, of course.
There are press & industry screenings Thursday afternoon at the Scotiabank plex — 45 Years (which I couldn’t get around to at Telluride), Jawar Panahi‘s Taxi, the uncut German bank robbery flick Victoria, etc. And then comes the opening-night double-header at the Princes of Wales — Jean Marc Vallee‘s Demolition and Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next. The only thing happening tonight is a Toronto Star-sponsored journalist soiree at some Mexican joint. The party has a name — “Critical Drinking.” Thanks to Peter Howell for the invite.
Four days after the Gold Derby gang posted their annual gut-instinct, know-nothing award season predictions, the good old Gurus of Gold have weighed in with their spitballs. But this time they’re splitting the chart into three categories — (1) Already Widely Seen/Festival-Premiered, (2) Making The Festival Run and (3) Coming in Mid-October or Later.
The most exciting Guru news is an apparent conviction (shared by all except for The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and Susan Wloszczyna) that Martin Scorsese‘s Silence will be released this year. That’s not what I’m hearing but if it is, great! But who have these gurus been talking to?
Todd Haynes‘ Carol is the most highly-rated in the first category — no surprise — followed by Inside Out (forget it), Mad Max: Fury Road (thumbs up, agree with Kyle Buchanan), Youth and Brooklyn.
Among the Making The Festival Runners the highest ranked are The Danish Girl, Steve Jobs (current HE fave), Spotlight, Black Mass, Trumbo and Suffragette. The follow-ups in this category are Our Brand Is Crisis, I Saw The Light, Where To Invade Next, The Program, Room, The Lady In The Van, Legend and Beasts of No Nation.
I’m thinking twice about attending the 2015 NY Film Festival (9.25 — 10.11). The big NYFF films that won’t have been shown previously — The Walk, Bridge of Spies, Miles Ahead — will most likely be screened concurrently for West Coast press, and missing the rest won’t be immediately fatal. Zero interest, Saw or Ignored in Cannes: Hou Hsiao Hsien‘s The Assassin, Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Lobster, Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s Cemetery of Splendour, Nanni Moretti‘s Mia Madre. Telluride/Toronto So What Do I Need New York For?: Michael Moore‘s Where to Invade Next, Nick Hornsby‘s Brooklyn. Marginal interest: Thomas Bidegain‘s Les Cowboys, Michael Almereyda‘s Experimenter, Laura Israel‘s Don’t Blink: Robert Frank, Philippe Garrel’s In the Shadow of Women, Arnaud Desplechin‘s My Golden Days, et. al.
With the exception of Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next, the films announced the morning as galas and special presentations at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival were expected. (Where did Moore’s doc come from? I hadn’t read squat about it until this morning.) It’s welcome news, of course, that Tom Hooper‘s The Danish Girl, Ridley Scott‘s The Martian, Brian Helgeland‘s Legend (the launch of Tom Hardy‘s Best Actor campaign), Moore’s doc, Jay Roach‘s Trumbo (the launch of Bryan Cranston‘s Best Actor campaign), Stephen Frears‘ The Program, Roland Emmerich‘s Stonewall, Carey Fukanaga‘s Beasts of No Nation (definitely not looking forward to this one!), Rebecca Miller‘s Maggie’s Plan and Peter Sollett‘s Freeheld are getting the red-carpet treatment as either world or North American premieres. Looking forward, champing at the bit.
But what has my attention are the Canadian premieres, which are indications that the films in question will play Telluride first.
I’ve been hearing for a few weeks that Thomas McCarthy‘s Spotlight would play Toronto but not Telluride, and then last week Spotlight costar Mark Ruffalo disclosed to Italian journalists that the film would debut at the Venice Film festival. But this morning TIFF announced that Spotlight, to be screened as a special presentation, is a Canadian premiere. TIFF wouldn’t describe it as such if it wasn’t being premiered somewhere else on the North American continent before TIFF begins on 9.10, so…right? Okay!
John Crowley‘s Brooklyn (Fox Searchlight, 11.6) has also been called a Canadian premiere, but it’s been forecast all along that this tenderly rendered period romance (which debuted at last January’s Sundance Film Festival) would play Telluride so no biggie. The launch of Saoirse Ronan‘s Best Actress campaign, you bet.
The historic, first-time-ever arrival of the Beatles on U.S. soil happened on Friday, 2.7.64 — just shy of 60 years ago. They had left London Airport, which wasn’t renamed Heathrow until September 1966. early that morning, and arrived at the recently rechristened Kennedy Airport, known for decades as Idlewild Airport until l2.24.63, or only six weeks earlier. The Beatles flight, Pan Am # 101, touched down around 1:40 pm.
Ten minutes later they were inside a small press lounge inside the Pan Am terminal and answering a series of taunting, goof-off questions from local journalists (print and broadcast). Most of us have seen the footage (as burned into the mind as newsreel capturings of the JFK assassination chaos, which had happened only ten weeks prior), and heard the group’s wise-ass responses. You can feel the irreverent energy and giddy vibes. Something fresh and shifty was happening. Whatever was left of that gloomy, lingering hangover from the shock of Dealey Plaza…all of that was suddenly gone.
Earlier today I was looking for some restored news footage — HD, 4K, perhaps even a 60 fps makeover or at least deliciously restored with enhanced sound — that I was sure someone had created. To my gradual surprise I was surprised to discover that except for some cruddy-looking colorized footage nobody has done squat. The same footage that was broadcast later that day on local news channels is all you can find. Strange. You’d think someone along the way would have done something to intensify those iconic sounds and images, but no.
Nine, ten years ago I was fine with the idea of splitting the U.S. of A. into two nations. But that was before woke Stalinism. Now I don’t feel as comfortable with the concept of living in an all-blue nation because a significant portion of the blues have become advocates of a Great Cultural Revolution a la China-in-the-’60s…scolds, fanatics, Robespierres.
“This isn’t the 1860s,” I wrote on 3.15.13. “Our borders are secure, we have nuclear weapons, and nobody’s going to invade. We can be two countries and make out just fine. Yugoslavia broke up into two or three chunks and they’re doing okay. Czechoslovakia became two nations and they’re holding it together. We could create our own Czech Republic — a Blue America — and let the ‘Slovakians’ have their own. I’m perfectly serious here. Get rid of the dumbshits and a lot of the nation’s big problems will become much more managable.”
But now I don’t know.
In a 3.15.13 riff titled “Common Knowledge,” I wrote that “the best thing that could happen all around would be to create a separate nation among the Midwestern and Southern areas of this country — just cut the yokels off and let them raise their own revenues and nurture their retro beliefs, values and prejudices. They’re just a drag on the rest of the country and the sooner Red America is cut loose, the better for the rest of us. Seriously.
In a 7.4.14 piece called “Independence From Ignorance, Stupidity, Downmarket Vibes,” I wrote that “the U.S. of A. is impossibly divided and never the twain shall meet. The right has gone totally around the bend. The urban Blues are the Czech Republic and the rural Reds are Slovakia, and I really think it’s time for the Czechs to sign a new Declaration of Independence and cut those bozos loose.”
“It’s not a rumor — many of the bumblefuck regions are where the least affluent, most downmarket, under-educated and culturally resentful U.S. citizens reside. If you can’t re-educate them the next best thing is to isolate them and let them stew in their own juices.” Alternate rationale: “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
A New York “Intelligencer” piece by Sasha Issenberg (“Maybe It’s Time For America To Split Up?“) has taken a serious look at cutting the red states loose and creating a sensible, solid-blue America that wouldn’t be hindered by racist bumblefuck obstinacy — an old HE fantasy. The difference is that Issenberg is envisioning a three-federation system — Blue, Red and Neutral.
I was planning to share some off-the-cuff remarks before Monday night’s Bedford Playhouse screening of Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon (Paramount, 12.23).
The special-event showing, courtesy of Paramount, kicks off Bedford Marquee, a new program that will occasionally showcase exciting new films two or three weeks before their release, and will include post-screening discussions when feasible.
Babylon began on time and all went well, but I couldn’t attend because of my Covid situation. I’m currently feeling fine with an 98.4 temperature, but it would have been cavalier to mingle. So early Monday afternoon I recorded some of the thoughts I would’ve shared live, transferred the eight minute and 45 second file to Vimeo and sent it to Bedford Playhouse bros Dan Friedman and Robert Harris.
I was told they might not be able to squeeze it in due to the fact that the film is on a specially encrypted DCP that can only be tested and played within a limited time frame. The DCP only arrived yesterday, due to bad weather and other delay factors and accompanied by bouts of anxiety and uncertainty — not unsual if you know anything about the workings of UPS and DHL.
Either way it was extremely cool of Paramount to allow us to present this herculean effort by director-writer Damien Chazelle, which I saw three or four weeks ago in Manhattan.
The next Bedford Marquee attraction will be a two-for-one deal — a mid-January screening of the recently restored Invaders From Mars (’53) along with a master-class from restoration master Scott MacQueen about the film’s exquisite visual transformation as well as a discussion of the film’s impact upon the sci-fi genre and how it reflected American culture and cold-war paranoia.
Inventively directed and impressionistically designed by the great William Cameron Menzies, Invaders From Mars is hands down the spookiest, most unsettling flying saucer film of the 1950s, due in no small measure to that eerie vocal-choir score by the unsung Mort Glickman.
Aside from the mildly distressing fact that I don’t look like I did 15 or 20 years ago, I’m okay with the video. Yes, I would prefer to wear amber-tinted shades a la Jack Nicholson but the red-frame, gray-tint ones are passable.
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