I’ll play a game of ping-pong with anyone at a moment’s notice. Except I don’t like to hold the paddle vertically like the Chinese do. Someone told me I should do that a long time ago, and right away I smiled and said “naaah.” I hold my ping-pong paddle more or less like a tennis racket, which is more or less horizontally. I like to lean in and swat or “bunt” at a sidewards angle, and I dearly love my serves and slam shots. Which reminds me: A couple I know have a ping-pong table sitting in their garage, but they haven’t brought it out or invited me over to play in ages. One more joyful opportunity removed from the realm of likelihood.

Anecdote: I was playing once with a soon-to-be ex-girlfriend (or one I’d recently broken up with), and she got annoyed with me about my playing. She said I was channeling unresolved feelings about our relationship and manifesting them in overly aggressive swatting. She really beat me up about that, come to think. She may or may not have had a point, but since then I’ve been careful to temper my slam shots when playing with any woman because I don’t want to see one of those “looks.”

Read more

You have to get out and about, and you can’t give in to paranoia. You have to trust in the basic decency of the vast majority of people walking around. I do, at least. If there’s something twitchy in some guy walking down the aisles at Thrifty or CVS you can always sense this on some level so you just have to play it by ear and hope for the best. But deep down there’s a general feeling out there that a significant percentage of wacko types (which society has always had) are ready to go postal at any moment, and the recent shooting in Virginia is the latest of many, many reminders. It’s a very small percentage, thank fate and fortune, and an even smaller micro-percentage in liberal enclaves like West Los Angeles, but there’s nonetheless a tiny sliver of the populace today that is ready to murder strangers or co-workers or children in an elementary school when they reach their breaking point. I really, really don’t remember this malignancy being as noticable or persistent in…I don’t know when it began to seem more ominous. It’s been creeping and spreading outward for decades, but it seems to have gotten worse over the last 10 or 15 years. Post-9/11, post-Obama’s election…something. Obviously I realize that “seems” is not a statistical reality. I agree, in any case, with everything Cenk Uygur says here:

The first two minutes and 46 seconds of David O. Russell‘s The Fighter told me — gave me a signed, notarized guarantee — that it would be really good. The brotherly stuff, the swagger, the neighborhood, the music…you just knew. What other films have grabbed you from the opening with some kind of special-ass design and energy and saying “Are ya feelin’ it? We’re doin’ this right off the bat.” Robert Altman‘s The Player, of course. Mike Nichols‘ The Graduate — Simon + Garfunkle plus the robot on the walkway. Martin Scorsese‘s Mean Streets (guilt, church, cop sirens, “Be My Baby”), Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street. Others? And what great or really good films have really slow, sleep-inducing beginnings?

I can smell shit from a mile away with a bad cold, but WildLike (9.25) might be okay. Frank Hall Green‘s direction feels measured and moderate. I can’t put my finger on it but British actress Ella Purnell seems a couple of cuts above. From The Hollywood Reporter‘s Justin Lowe: “By turns both tough and vulnerable, Purnell conveys Mackenzie’s inner turmoil and frequent desperation with both empathy and economy, skirting the ever-present pitfalls of over-emoting. Green’s realistic, efficient script avoids capitulating to the melodramatic treatment that so often plagues this type of material. And Bruce Greenwood’s quiet, assured performance conveys volumes of unspoken emotion with well-tuned facial expressions and body language that replace any number of unnecessary speeches or confrontations.”

About six hours ago I dropped by this morning’s Four Seasons press conference for Baltasar Kormakur‘s Everest (Universal, 9.25), which will open the Venice Film Festival next Wednesday (9.2). I can’t say anything until then but it was a good thing to attend. I can say this without tipping my hand: The major studios have been out of the business of making gripping thrillers that actually adhere to the laws of physics and other natural-world constraints. You know…gravity, adverse weather, getting tired, etc. Superhero, fantasy, comic-book, James Bond, Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible movies have made a point of ignoring that stuff to death. It theoretically follows that it would seem like a huge shock to run into a film that actually respects the rules of nature and plausibility and takes your breath away all the same. Right? That would be a helluva thing if a movie did that. Theoretically, I mean.

Everest costar Emily Watson, director Baltasar Kormakur at this morning’s Four Seasons press conference. One addresses Kormakur as “Balt.”

John Hawkes, Jake Gyllkenhaal.

Josh Brolin, Michael Kelly.

The gang minus Kelly.

Watson, Kormakur, Jason Clarke.

Sam Newfield‘s The Lost Continent (’51) is a disposable low-budget dinosaur movie with some of the most inept miniature effects shots you’ve ever seen in your life. It costars Cesar Romero, Hillary Brooke, Chick Chandler, Sid Melton, Hugh Beaumont (Leave It To Beaver‘s mellow, laid-back dad) and John Hoyt. But it has one stunning shot — just one! — that I’ve never forgotten since seeing this stupid thing on…what was it, “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” 20 or 25 years ago? It’s a shot of poor Whit Bissell falling backwards off a rocky cliff and his body disappearing through a cloud bank. The shot comes at precisely the 49- or 50-second mark in the trailer. It says something for the super-prolific Newfield (who directed over 250 features from the ’20s through the late ’50s) that he at least delivered one penetrating moment in an otherwise mediocre film.

Craig Zobel‘s Z for Zachariah (Roadside, 8.28) is a parable about racial harmony (or a lack of) in a hidden-away, radiation-free valley in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. Or about survival skills in this realm. Try again minus the blah-blah. It’s a racially-attuned romantic triangle film focusing on the last three people to survive a nuclear war — a conservative, simple-minded, God-fearing farm girl (Margot Robbie), a resourceful, atheistic scientist who knows to how make and fix things (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and a local conservative guy (Chris Pine) who’s a perfect match for Robbie. Except Chewy hooked up with her first and is wary of being elbowed aside or whatever. Still not really it! Why can’t I just spit it out?

Z for Zachariah is a 21st Century The World, The Flesh and the Devil — a story about two whiteys and a fellow of a different ethnic origin, and about who gets to bond and have kids with the pretty girl. And, of course, who the pretty girl likes better and for what reason. Or if she even wants to have kids with either of these guys in the first place. I finally said it!

You can slip on your shiny Fred Astaire pumps and clickety-clack all around the dance floor, but that’s what Z for Zachariah is about.

Read more

I smiled when I watched this video of Amy Schumer and Jennifer Lawrence dancing to “Uptown Girl” during last night’s Billy Joel concert in Chicago. Two days ago Schumer and JLaw revealed that they’re working on a screenplay together — cool. But until the proof is in the pudding, I’m going to process this as a bonding exercise and let it go at that. Getting a screenplay to really sing is a murderously difficult thing. Sidenote: I’m not saying that people who shoot phone videos vertically (i.e., declining to respect the universal reference factor of 16:9 horizontal framing) deserve to spend eternity in the ninth circle of hell, but they certainly deserve two dozen lashes. “Not sure if I’m from the lower end of the gene pool or not? Well…here’s proof!”

Read more

Is this the one in which Bill Murray plays an over-the-hill music industry manager who somehow gets himself stranded in Afghanistan, and then he runs into some Islamic extremists and they decide to kidnap him for a ransom except nobody will pay anything because he’s a has-been so the baddies decide to behead him in a public square? No? That’s another one? Actually this version seems a little funnier. Open Road will open Barry Levinson‘s Rock the Kasbah on 10.23.

Three weeks ago a Gravitas Features spokesperson indicated to me that Colin Hanks‘ All Things Must Pass would not open in September, as Variety‘s Dave McNary had reported last March. But she wouldn’t say when exactly. Since that day the world has been waiting with bated breath to know when we could all put on our trunks and dive into a Tower Records nostalgia pool. Today — Thursday, 8.27 — Gravitas finally stepped up to the plate and announced a 10.16 opening in select theatres “with a VOD release to follow.” Well, yeah, naturally…but when? This is the question, dude. This is our concern.

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.

Read more