On 1.26.15 I wrote that Rick Famuyiwa‘s Dope (Open Road, 6.30) will “almost certainly be a hit — a just reward for being a snappy (i.e., jizz-whizzy), cartoonish, wild-ass Inglewood ‘hood action farce about friendship, guns, ’90s sounds, romance, sellin’ somebody else’s cocaine, gangstas, hot girls,” etc. And yet for all its keep-it-comin’ energy Dope is “a fleet, Tarantino-like hodgepodge of fantasy bullshit in the vein of a New Line Cinema release from the ’90s (i.e., House Party), and adapted to the general sensibility of 2015. It’s fun as far as it goes but definitely not that great. Everything that happens fits a carefully calculated Hollywood street sensibility and is dead bang on the nose; nothing is soft or subtle or indirect.” Reactions to the just-popped teaser?
Psycho Killer Pilot Syndrome
Marseilles prosecutor Brice Robin told a news conference earlier today that Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately took flight 9525 on a suicide dive into the French Alps two days ago. Re-phrase it: a seemingly reliable, completely certified, “very nice” co-pilot with no apparent terrorist associations suddenly flipped the bonkers switch and became a psychotic mass murderer at the drop of a hat, killing 150 passengers. My first reaction, to be honest, was “at least it wasn’t a mechanical error, systemic or otherwise, so the odds of my next commuter flight ending in a crash are no higher than before the Germanwings tragedy.” But my second reaction was “wait…isn’t this the third time within the last 13 months that planes have gone down due to an apparently psychotic, suicide-minded pilot or pilots?” The Germanwings tragedy, AirAsia flight QZ8501 last December and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing flight which totally vanished on 3.8.14 with 239 people aboard. I hate to say it but this is a movie — the discovery of an inexplicable death virus that turns airline pilots into suicidal loons.
“Is That All There Is?”
“Severance,” the first episode of the final Mad Men season, feels like a return to square one — business as usual at Sterling Cooper & Partners, sex, a death from cancer, sexism, finessing clients, Don Draper drinking and catting around, a firing, office disputes, back to the darkness and so on. Mad Men has been running nearly eight years and we’re only weeks from the finale, and I didn’t get even a slight feeling of forces gathering and final fates approaching. It almost felt as if the series was starting all over again fresh…almost. The most striking performance came from Elizabeth Reaser as a melancholy coffee-ship waitress whom Draper has a curious attraction for (and vice versa to some extent). The event at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was fun, spirited, relaxing, cool. The band at the after-party played mild, old-fashioned MOR — it felt like the pre-fire party scene in Irwin Allen‘s The Towering Inferno. I decided not to raise the sideburns issue…to hell with it.
Mad Men star Jon Hamm, recently out of rehab at Silver Hill, on red carpet outside Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Sideburns Showdown
I’m attending this evening’s black-tie premiere of the second half of the final Mad Men season, which will debut on Sunday, April 5th. The first-anywhere showing of “Severance,” the first of the last seven episodes, will screen at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with an outdoor “Black and Red Ball” to follow. The invitation says that “guests are encouraged to dress in garb inspired by the period show”…meaning what? One way or another I’m going to hunt down Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm during the after-party and ask them to defend their no-sideburns policy for Don Draper, which I’ve been complaining about for a while now.
Take That, Justin Chang!
Excerpts from Get Hard review by Time‘s Richard Corliss: “The early reviews are in, and the verdict is nearly unanimous: [this] is a war crime of a movie. I’d been warned that this pairing of the 6′ 3″ Will Ferrell and the 5′ 4″ Kevin Hart was all about the fear of prison rape…gay sex [made] both explicit and terrifying. So during the first half-hour or so I was primed for a high atrocity factor. Primed and disappointed. One note I scribbled read, ‘Still waiting to hate this.’ An hour in, I realized to my shock that I was having a good time. Justin Chang of Variety would chalk this up to the ‘unexamined homophobia needed to fully enjoy Get Hard.’ But laughter trumps political fairness, and Get Hard made me laugh at, and with, situations I hadn’t thought could tickle me. The movie has a warm heart beating under its seemingly scabrous shell. [It’s] a modern gloss on the Dan Aykroyd–Eddie Murphy Trading Places: a little ruder and not quite as sharp, but in the ballpark of that 1983 comedy landmark. The adult audience for which Get Hard is designed should be able to get through it without gagging. You needn’t approve ethically of everything in a movie you enjoy. And by ‘you,’ I mean this reviewer. His last words, before he was hauled away by the critique police, were, ‘I kind of liked Get Hard.'”
Too Late Michael Bay Blues
This Alberto Belli parody spot (i.e., “What if Michael Bay Directed Girls?”) arrived this morning. The sender asked for reactions. “This is beyond dead-horse level. Michael Bay parodies peaked 15 years ago. No need for this. The culture has moved on.”
Dedicated Follower of Fashion
In an EW exclusive, Jesse Eisenberg‘s appearance as Lex Luthor in Zack Snyder‘s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (WB, 3.25.16) has been revealed in a black-and-white portrait. Snyder to EW‘s Keith Staskiewiczs: “He’s not any of the Lexes that you’ve seen, that’s for sure, other than him being a captain of industry and one person to the world and another person to himself. And bald, of course.”
Did Snyder need to even to offer this assurance? The fans know. Thanks Zack, for sticking to the plan, for honoring history, for doing what the ComicCon low-lifes want to see. Lex Luthor has always been bald and we like it that way, Lex Luthor has always been bald and we like it that way, Lex Luthor has always been bald and we like it that way, etc.
Evolution Of Arnold
Maggie (Lionsgate, 5.8) is about a loving dad (Arnold Schwarzenegger) trying to take care of his zombie daughter (Abigail Breslin). I don’t know anything but I’m betting that the most creative thing about this project was the initial pitch by screenwriter John Scott 3, and after that it was all downhill. It’s a little strange but in that brown beard Schwarzenegger has turned into this pale, crinkly-faced guy who’s starting to resemble Chuck Norris. And that’s not cool. For 38 years or since Pumping Iron Arnold has been his own guy with his own formidable vibe, and out of the blue he’s turning into Norris’s brother? I would have the wrinkles sanded off, have a little eye work done and lose the beard.
Fury Road Won’t Open Cannes But…
On 3.7 I echoed Todd McCarthy’s prediction that George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road (Warner Bros., 5.15) would open the 2015 Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, 5.13. (I had heard Max was locked a few days earlier.) Now Deadline‘s Nancy Tartaglione is reporting it won’t be the opener but will screen out-of-competition on Thursday, 5.14.
Okay, fine…no big deal. Mad Max: Fury Road will almost certainly have been semi-liberally screened in New York, L.A. and Paris before that date, and most of the seen-it-alls and know-it-alls will have their reviews filed a few days earlier. (A friend knows an L.A. guy who’s already seen it.) I’ll be in Paris for four days and nights (5.8 thru 5.11) before Cannes, and it’s possible, I suppose, that, like they did with Godzilla and Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat last year, a big Parisian sneak will happen at the Rex or the Pathe Wepler in Place Clichy the weekend before (i.e., 5.8 or 5.9).
Do It Again
Everybody watches it on HBO for seven years, James Cameron‘s Aquaman becomes a thing without actually becoming a thing, the characters develop their own arcs and psychologies and followings, fat Turtle becomes thin Turtle and it all shines on, man. And then it ends. And now, three and half years after the sign-off, we’re being asked to jump back in the pool again only in a different, tighter format, and shell out $14 or $15 bills a ticket and sit with animals in the theatre instead of watching it from the comfort of our couches. You know what this feels like? It feels like Doug Ellin and Mark Wahlberg and some HBO operators and the all-bro cast wanted to generate more cash-flow. Warner Bros. opens Entourage on 6.15.
Fassbender, Fine. Smit-McPhee, Okay. But Ben Mendelsohn As Another Scumbag Villain?
“A dark river of fatalism courses beneath the beautifully photographed vistas of Slow West an intriguingly off-center Western that brings a bevy of European talent to bear on an American frontier story. John Maclean’s impeccably crafted writing-directing debut at times has a distinctly Coen-esque flavor in its mix of sly intelligence, bleak humor and unsettling violence, exuding fierce confidence even when these qualities don’t always cohere in the smoothest or most emotionally impactful fashion.” — from Justin Chang‘s 2.13.15 Variety review.
Character, Constitution
Almost two years after announcing a double mastectomy to prevent cancer from gaining a foothold, Angelina Jolie has announced in a 3.24 N.Y. Times op-ed piece that she’s undergone a second preventive surgery, the removal of her ovaries and fallopian tubes. In a manner of speaking we all have the Sword of Damocles above our heads, but Jolie’s attitude about her situation strikes me as exceptionally brave and open-hearted. “It is not possible to remove all risk, and the fact is I remain prone to cancer,” she writes. “I will look for natural ways to strengthen my immune system. I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for myself and my family. I know my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer.'”