After nearly ten years of putting persons like myself through acute movie-watching hell, the dynamite writing-and-producing team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are splitting up as far as big-screen projects are concerned. A little more than a year ago I wrote the following in a piece called “Gain World, Lose Soul”: “One of the reasons for the ongoing demise of narrative movies, I believe, is that way, way too many big-studio scripts have been written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who are probably the most successful super-hacks around or are certainly among the most successful in this realm.

“But successfully churning out one highly efficient, mind-numbing screenplay after another (which is not easy…seriously, not everyone can do it), this malignant duo has probably ushered more despair into the hearts of not only rival screenwriters but untold millions of moviegoers…more than you or I could possibly calculate. It’s not that Kurtzman and Orci are bad guys in and of themselves, but they serve soul-less corporate mainstream packagers who pander solely and entirely to Joe Popcorn and Joe Download, and are therefore incurring mountains of ill will and bad karma.

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It was President Ronald Reagan‘s decision to begin deregulating everything in the early ’80s that started the U.S. on the path to higher and higher debt levels, gradually transforming it into a South American dictatorship of, by and for the rich. The transition came to full fruition during the Dubya years, and things have not changed much under President Obama. And all the rightwing fellators of corporate chieftains (including the rural morons who support conservative causes for cultural reasons) love this state of affairs. Hence this N.Y. Times report about how the American middle-class is significantly worse off today than it was when Reagan came in:

“In 1980, the American rich and middle class and most of the poor had higher incomes than their counterparts almost anywhere in the world. But incomes for the middle class and poor in the United States have since been growing more slowly than elsewhere.

“Why? Among the reasons [is that] this country has lost its once-wide lead in educational attainment. Other countries have increased their workers’ skill levels more quickly, helping create well-paying jobs. The United States also tolerates more inequality: The minimum wage is lower here. Executives make more money. The government redistributes less of it. By 2010, the poor in several other countries had pulled ahead. And Canada’s median income had reached a virtual tie with that of the United States. Since 2010, other data suggest Canada has moved ahead.”

The boomers did it. The boomers and Wall Street and the radical right and Fox News and their idiotic hinterland following.

I’ve watched about 30 minutes’ worth of Heaven’s Gate: The Butcher’s Cut, a 108-minute re-cut by Mary Bernard (an apparent nom de plume of Steven Soderbergh) and I have to say it does feel more absorbing than Michael Cimino‘s original 219-minute cut. It really does. The hook goes in and it stays there. Soderbergh statement: “As a dedicated cinema fan, I was obsessed with Heaven’s Gate from the moment it was announced in early 1979, and unfortunately history has shown that on occasion a fan can become so obsessed they turn violent toward the object of their obsession, which is what happened to me during the holiday break of 2006.” Wait…Soderbergh has been sitting on this re-edited version of Gate for eight years?

Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher, a dark-toned melodrama about a real-life murder that happened in Pennsylvania in the mid ’90s, was booked for a big premiere screening at AFIFest 2013 last November 8th, which would have launched it into Oscar-season contention. But that went south in late September when Miller and the film’s distributor, Sony Pictures Classics, cancelled the AFI booking and bumped the film into 2014. Now it’s been announced that Foxcatcher, which will compete at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, will open on November 14th. And how about a booking as the opening-night kickoff attraction of AFIFest 2014?

With the Cannes showing approaching I think it’s time for a new trailer, no?

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I’m presuming there were two reasons for the British distributor of William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer wanting to sell it as Wages of Fear, to wit: (a) Sorcerer was always a bad title…a suicide title, really, as it obviously implied something scary and supernatural, especially coming from the director of The Exorcist, and (b) Sorcerer tanked in the U.S. soon after opening in June 1977 so the British distributor undoubtedly said, “What the hell, let’s try to sell it with the original Henri-George Clouzot title…maybe it’ll make a bit more money that way.” Friedkin’s Wages opened in England in February 1978.

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When they think at all of John Milius‘s The Wind and the Lion (’75), people think of it as Sean Connery‘s film. A dashing, colorful Connery playing a real-life Moroccan warrior and strong man in a turban — Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli. Connery is always delightful, of course, but in my mind Wind is dominated by Brian Keith‘s performance as President Theodore Roosevelt. And now Milius’s film (his best by virtue of being the most directly expressive of his personal philosophy) is about to pop on Bluray via Warner Archive.

Earlier today a Facebook post announced that Kim’s Video (124 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10009) will be closing soon. I just called a few minutes ago and one of the clerks said (a) the closing date will be 7.15 and (b) management is hunting around for another location. This is nothing short of devastating to me. Kim’s has always charged too much for Blurays but I love roaming the aisles and seeing what’s new. It’s my spiritual home away from home. Kim’s has Blurays or DVDs of every movie you’ve ever heard of and a lot that you haven’t. Their cult collection alone is worth regular visits, not to mention their Region 2 films. This is terrible news. An obvious devaluation of Lower East Side culture.

That classic 1971 American Tourister gorilla luggage commercial taught tens of millions of Americans a basic lesson about luggage at airports, which is that it’s going to get roughly thrown around. (The spot also said, quite obviously, that baggage handlers are unrefined types.) I therefore can’t fathom why anyone was shocked by that video of those two Air Canada guys throwing suitcases off the top of a landing gate…that’s totally normal. The two employees have been canned. Tony Montana: “You got to be kidding…five hundred? Who you think we are, baggage handlers? The going rate on a boat is a thousand a night, mang…you know that.”

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I don’t get the relatively weak ratings (59% Rotten Tomatoes, 56% Metacritic) rating for John Turturro‘s Fading Gigolo (Millenium, opened on 4.18). It’s not great but it’s fine, and there’s just no reason to be brusque or dismissive. Last September I called it “a gentle, Brooklyn-based, light-touch, indie-romantic fable. It’s appealing in a kindly, burnished, old-fashioned way, and it happens in a realm entirely (and in some ways charmingly) of Turturro’s imagining. Eroticism, trust me, barely pokes through. The atmosphere is one of reverence, nostalgia, dignity, romance, class, compassion, tradition. The big standout element is gap-toothed Vanessa Paradis making her English-language debut.”

Then again what I’ve written above is a moot point as Fading Gigolo did pretty well last weekend. Audiences ignored naysaying critics as well as the general Woody Allen hate brigade. Here’s a piece by Deadline‘s Pete Hammond sussing out the numbers and the meaning of it all.

Update: Two Hollywood execs — Garth Ancier and David Newman — and a theme-park design guy, Gary Goddard, were named earlier today as defendants in new sex-abuse lawsuits announced by attorney Jeff Herman on behalf of Michael Egan. No offense but this isn’t the hot-news followup I was envisioning when Herman mentioned last week that more defendants would be named. Ancier, Newman and Goddard aren’t as well-known as Bryan Singer, whom Egan and Herman filed against last week in a civil action. They’re just not that “sexy” in a news sense. I’m just being honest.

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The West Coast premiere of The Other Woman (20th Century Fox, 4.25) happens tonight in Westwood, and Hollywood Elsewhere will totally be there with bells, camera and notepad. An obviously broad sisterhood comedy (the term “sismance” doesn’t work at all) about taking revenge upon insensitive males, it’s been directed by Nick Cassevetes, produced by Julie Yorn and written by Melissa Stack. The Australian critics posting on Rotten Tomatoes are mostly negative (45%) — it might as well be faced. What I’d like to know is how does Cassevetes go from directing She’s So Lovely (’97), John Q (’02), The Notebook (’04) and the semi-respectable Alpha Dog (’06) to …uhm, this?

Last Wednesday evening 25 or 30 journos were shown five or six scenes from Matt Reeves‘ Dawn Of The Planet of the Apes (20th Century Fox, 7.11). It was a chance to sample the quality of the visual effects, which of course are top-notch, as well as the performances from both the ape and human characters, which I was genuinely impressed by. It was also a chance to get an idea of what kind of film this might turn out to be.

The footage suggested that Dawn is going to be solid and sturdy, but I came away from Wednesday’s screening with a suspicion that it might be not be quite as good as 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which was basically the story of how Andy Serkis‘s Ceasar got smarter and stronger and finally broke out of bondage with his fellow apes. It was all about individual story tension — about the sand pouring out of the glass and the audience wondering when things would finally snap and turn away from James Franco and in Ceasar’s direction.

Dawn seems less personal and more group-oriented. More about military and political tactics than individual direction. Speeches, declarations, taunts, lines in the sand. An ape army standing in opposition to an opposing army of humans. Families and alliances and group dynamics.

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