I attended last night’s reading of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight at the Ace Hotel theatre in downtown Los Angeles. I’ve been trying to post a reaction piece for a while now but interruptions keep happening. I’ll get it up sometime this afternoon. I’ll also have a considered reaction to last Wednesday’s 20th Century Fox screening of footage from Matt Reeves‘ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (7.11.14). Just get off my back, don’t rush me, etc.

I’ve always liked Hugo Friedhofer‘s lush but sturdy score for Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks (’60). You could argue that it sounds a little too comforting — too romantic and swoony, too conventionally orchestrated — for a film about betrayal, revenge and the fundamental duplicity and untrustworthiness of humans. But I think it works because of this lack of thematic coordination. The movie is frank and blunt and unforgiving for the most part, but Freidhofer’s music is the refuge. Listen to the main-title track — it’s a skillful piece of schmaltzy persuasion and really quite sublime if you accept it on its own terms. The gig happened because Brando liked Friedhofer’s score for The Young Lions (’58) and, I would presume, The Best Years of Our Lives (’46), which is probably his best-known work. The man had soul. It always came through.

I should try to open my heart and pay to see Randall Wallace‘s Heaven is For Real, which has pulled down $28.5 million since opening last Wednesday. But I’m very reluctant and I probably won’t. In part because the 53% Rotten Tomatoes rating obviously indicates a degree of mediocrity. I also find the Christian belief that you can get into Heaven only by accepting Jesus as your one true savior (sorry, Muslims, Taoists, Buddhists and Satan-worshippers!) to be completely despicable and ridiculous, and donating $15 to the cause would give me indigestion, I think. Compassionate liberal Christians are cool but conservative hinterland Christians are, I believe, clueless phonies and sanctimonious prigs whose core values and loyalties are aligned with whitebread Republicanism, and that makes them pretty close to vile in my book.

Not to mention the above still of Kelly Reilly beaming gentle love into the eyes of her young son Colton (played by Connor Corum)…I’m sorry but I can’t stand the idea of watching a film that pushes this kind of treacly family sentimentality. But I suppose it’s possible there are spiritual values in this film that might be worth pondering, and that I’m not giving the damn thing a chance because of my profound loathing of rightwing Christians, whose beliefs and lifestyles would make Yeshua retch if he ever re-appeared and saw what had been created in His name.

I would be honestly surprised if any HE regulars paid to see Heaven Is For Real but if they have and would like to share, please do.

I decided against buying the new Twilight Time Broadway Danny Rose Bluray because it’s just not worth $30 bucks. $20, okay. I love Gordon Willis‘s black-and-white cinematography, which I’m sure would look extra-luscious in high-def. But you have to put limits upon yourself. It’s 30 years old now, this film…whoa.

An industry friend who’s spoken to a couple of attorneys about Michael Egan‘s sex-abuse lawsuit against X-Men: Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer has been told that the case is weak or, to put it more bluntly, “shit.” The 15-year delay in filing. Egan’s 2000 lawsuit that didn’t mention Singer. Singer’s contention that he was absorbed in pre-production in Toronto in the early fall of 1999, which is when the alleged abuse happened in Oahu at the Mitchell resort. Not to mention the ability of Singer and his attorney Marty Singer to spend their opponents to death with delays and motions and whatnot. Not to mention attorney Singer’s announced intention to countersue.

My friend suspects that the reason Egan’s attorney Jeff Herman staged a press conference two days ago (i.e., Thursday) was that he was looking to “shake the tree” in hopes of getting “more plaintiffs” — i.e., twinks who may or may not have “been” with Singer under similar circumstances — to come forward. Egan joined by a fresh twink means a stronger case against Singer; Egan plus two or three twinks means an even stronger case, and so on. Herman said Thursday that Egan’s lawsuit is the first of several that will be released next week in hopes of ending “pedophile rings” he said exist in Hollywood. “Hollywood’s got a problem,” he said at the press conference. “Since filing this lawsuit yesterday, I’ve heard from many people who allege that as children in Hollywood, they’ve been abused.”

It is an understatement to say that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes, directors of Two Days and One Night, enjoy emeritus kiss-ass status at the Cannes Film Festival. After they finish a new movie, it (a) always plays in competition and (b) is almost always praised by kowtowing Cannes critics as being a quiet little masterpiece. The only negative thing you’re allowed to say about a Dardennes film is that it’s “minor,” as I said three years ago about The Kid With The Bike. I would go so far as to say the Dardennes are almost feared in a certain way. I’m not calling them the Sonny and Michael Corleone of Belgian directors, but if you mention their names a kind of hush falls over the room.

Exclu : la bande-annonce de «Deux jours, une… by Telerama_BA

The total tanking of Wally Pfister‘s Transcendence ($4.8 million Friday earnings plus C+ Cinemascore rating = a likely $11.5 million dollar weekend) is the second huge flop in a row for Johnny Depp in the wake of The Lone Ranger. Depp himself didn’t flop, of course — the movie did. For the 17th or 18th time, nobody is hot to see a Johnny Depp film on the strength of his name. He’s obviously been lucky and is financially loaded beyond belief, but on his own terms he’s just another engaging middle-aged actor with offbeat tastes. He’s never been a money machine in and of himself.

Four and a half months after the 7.1.09 opening of Michael Mann‘s Public Enemies, I reminded everyone about how brilliantly it ends. I just found a new YouTube clip today and it still delivers. Excerpt: “Say what you want about Public Enemies, but the finale — the one-on-one between Marion Cotillard‘s Billie Frechette and Stephen Lang‘s Charles Winstead, a brief jailhouse conversation that ended with the words ‘Bye-bye, Blackbird’ — was the most penetrating of 2009. The best, the most memorable, the most oddly affecting.” Lang is the guy — he says every word with precisely the right tone and emphasis. If he’d delivered with just a little bit less or more, the scene wouldn’t have worked half as well.

“Anyone who’s read HE for any length of time knows I genuinely admire comedies that I call no-laugh funny — i.e., consistently clever, amusing and witty but never quite eliciting actual laughter. Nicholas Stoller‘s Neighbors (Universal, 5.9.14) is not that — it’s heh-heh funny. I was never that giddy or tickled but I never felt bored or irritated or disengaged. I got ten or twelve heh-hehs out of it, and the rest is at least fast, punchy and lewd. It’s not exactly a routine culture clash comedy but the basic set-up — a 30ish couple with a baby (Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne) vs. a party-animal college fraternity (Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse) that moves in next door — is familiar. But Neighbors is agreeably tight and vigorous and scattershot, and Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O’Brien‘s script (augmented, I’m sure, by nonstop improv) is a cut or two above. A likely hit.” — filed from Cinemacon in Las Vegas on 3.26.

Media people…okay, magazine editors have decided that Scarlett Johansson is extra-double-happening right now and so she’s on two big covers because…why again? Because of her tough-as-nails but not exactly earth-shattering supporting performance as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Because certain people are convinced she’ll be the absolute shit in Luc Besson‘s Lucy? Because she played a predatory, black-wigged alien picking up Scottish hitchhikers in Under The Skin, which nearly everyone agrees is a fairly rough sit? Because she played an argumentative zoo-keeper in We Bought A Zoo? Let me explain something: Scarlett Johansson has been acting in films for 20 years (her first film was Rob Reiner‘s North) and she’s delivered exactly one classic performance — as Samantha the software program in Spike Jonze‘s Her. And she was very, very good in Lost in Translation and Match Point, and she was better than-half-decent in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I’m just not getting the hey-hey-ho. Which is another way of saying I’m not experiencing the requisite libidinal stirrings.

Recent comments on Queerty, a tabloidy gay gossip website, about the Bryan Singer-Michael Egan scandal are probably somewhat indicative of under-40 gay community sentiment. So rather than listen to me, a lifelong straight guy who finds Egan’s stories about having been repeatedly and forcibly violated a bit questionable, consider the responses to today’s (4.18) Queerty story about Singer and director Roland Emmerich having thrown huge “twink” parties (along with a photo of Singer and a young blond kid). These guys obviously have a degree of insight and perspective that straights can’t have.

And before reading some of the comments (or all of them if you click on the page), consider the odd-sounding headline (odd in the sense that the implied offense and unsympathetic judgment doesn’t seem to fit a gay-friendly publication) and imagine the laughter if a scandal sheet had published a story in the 1960s, ’70s or ’80s about Hugh Hefner‘s wild Playboy mansion orgies and all the pot, booze, ‘ludes and cocaine that were consumed and how Hef’s obsession for young nubile women is no secret.