Not so long ago Colin Firth was on top of the world. At the very least he enjoyed a remarkable three-year hot streak between 2009 and 2011. His sad but dignified performance as a suicidal gay professor in Tom Ford‘s A Single Man (’09) resulted in critical huzzahs and award-season accolades. His stuttering King George VI in The King’s Speech (’10) led to several Best Actor prizes, including an Oscar. And his performance as the treacherous Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (released in early ’12 but viewed at major festivals in late 2011) was seen as nearly equal to Gary Oldman‘s George Smiley and at least at par with Benedict Cumberbatch‘s Peter Guillam.

Colin Firth in the duddish, faint-pulse romantic drama Arthur Newman

But right after Firth won his King’s Speech Oscar in February 2011, his luck changed. Or perhaps he was infected with a slumber virus. Or he decided to snag a few paychecks while the getting was good. I only know that his last four films over the past three years — Gambit, Arthur Newman, The Railway Man and Devil’s Knot — have been critically panned as inept or lackluster sleepathons. Suddenly Firth became renowned for going into his “repressed British clod mode,” as Empire Kim Newman put it a couple of years ago, regardless of the role or the film. It now appears that Firth’s next film — a Rowan Joffe-directed thriller called Before I Go To Sleep, costarring Nicole Kidman and Mark Strong — is a B-level distraction, at best.

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In this “Trailers From Hell” tribute to Sudden Impact, Alan Spencer decides to omit that the most legendary Clint Eastwood line of all time — “Go ahead, make my day” — was written by the great John Milius. This is more or less common knowledge, of course, but it can’t hurt to underline. Note: if you’re any good at doing Eastwood imitations, the best way to say this line is to imagine you’ve been forced to say it over and over for hours on end, and that you’re sick of the sound of it. If you have to say it one more time you’ll vomit on the sidewalk. But you say it anyway.

The definitive scene from Ken Russell‘s Savage Messiah (’72) was highlighted by the one-sheet. It was more of a brief sequence than a scene, not lasting more than 10 or 12 seconds…a snippet. Wielding a jackhammer on a London street, sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brezka (Scott Anthony) completes a pavement etching as a crowd of passersby cheer and applaud. I’ve seen Messiah only once (and many moons ago), but this moment never left my head. That’s filmmaking — the art of penetration and lifelong embedding.

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“Y’know a scary thing about ‘um? They dohn need powuh…” Which male, raspy-voiced costar of Matt Reeves‘ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century Fox, 7.11) is saying this line? I’ll tell you this much — the actor (or the character he’s playing) wasn’t reared by upscale, well-educated parents, and he damn sure didn’t attend a Connecticut prep school or an Ivy League university. If Reeves had hired me to play a guy somewhat like myself and I had the same line, here’s how I’d say it (after a rewrite session): “You know what’s threatening about all this? They don’t need electricity or warmth or grande cappucinos or Gap stretch T-shirts or any of the usual comforts. They’re animals. They’re fucking animals.”

When I first heard about Grindhouse Releasing’s Bluray of The Swimmer, I had an inkling that Chris Innis‘s 150-minute “Story of The Swimmer” doc might be the most interesting aspect. Well, I watched it last night and can say without hesitation that it definitely is. (I’m not a huge fan of the film itself.) Innis has assembled a genuinely interesting account of the conflicted shooting and re-shooting of this 1968 effort. It’s the story of an intelligent, obviously ambitious project that was probably doomed to be a commercial failure from the get-go, and which still doesn’t work all that well. But in today’s context, it’s at least a respectable attempt to capture that spiritually corroded aura of the John Cheever realm (alcohol, affluence, New York-area suburbia) of the ’50s and ’60s.

Innis, winner of an Oscar (with Bob Murawski) for her cutting of The Hurt Locker, has not made a masterwork here. In some ways it’s a little bit splotchy and piecemeal but it’s basically a solid, stand-up effort, no stone unturned. Especially considering that all the creative principals (Burt Lancaster, Frank and Eleanor Perry, Sam Spiegel, Janice Rule, Kim Hunter, Barbara Loden, Sydney Pollack, Elia Kazan, Marvin Hamlisch) are dead and gone.

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Until this morning I had seen this scene from Go Tell The Spartans just once. It was during a Manhattan press screening of Ted Post‘s 1978 film, sometime in May of that year or nearly 36 years ago. But I never forgot the fellatio-in-the-gazebo story told by Burt Lancaster‘s Major Barker — a gem. After ducking the Vietnam War for almost 15 years (except for John Wayne‘s 1968 fantasy film called The Green Berets), Hollywood finally began to make films about that misbegotten conflict starting in ’76 (which is when Apocalypse Now began shooting) and release the first wave in ’78 — Spartans, The Boys From Company C, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter. Apocalypse Now opened in August ’79.

Some well-meaning idiot (presumably a Christian) has defaced the Noah poster at the corner of Highland and Franklin. Yeshua of Nazareth taught peace but God the Father? Not so much. If you want to reduce the wonder of infinite creation and destruction into “lessons,” here are some that God the Father routinely passes along: (1) “Sink or swim, pal! Don’t expect any help from me”; (2) “You’re lonely, lost in the woods, aching, looking for love or tenderness or a reason to persevere? I’m not going to offer the slightest solace. Symbolically or metaphorically on some inferred level, perhaps, but you’re basically on your own. Man up or woman up…or don’t. Life is not a bowl of cherries, my friend. Have you ever seen an Ingmar Bergman film called The Silence? Trust me– that guy knew me very well”; (3) “Peace? Yeah, I’m for that. I prefer laughter and song and fresh flowers to ash and bullets and cinders. But I’m not married to anything in particular. As you know I routinely allow or at least don’t interfere with all manner of horror…machete slaughter in Rwanda, child molestation, the Inquisition, the Holocaust against European Jews, mass murder, AIDS, the 9/11 massacre…all of it. I’m not a peace guy, okay? I’m a ‘life is what it is and if you want to make the world a happier place, it’s on you’ kind of guy.”

Update: Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah has earned a C on CinemaScore…not good. Previously: Now that Noah is off and floating and doing fine on the high seas, presumably a portion of the HE community had a looksee last night and can offer opinions about whether it plays satisfactorily or sufficiently or whatever. I’d especially like to hear about the lobby chatter after the show let out.

George Pal‘s The Time Machine (’60) is too old-fogeyish to connect with Millenials or even young GenXers, but you can’t beat the metaphor of the Eloi — undereducated lightweights robotically submitting to the call of their corporate masters. It’s interesting that Eloi behavior didn’t really manifest in appreciable numbers until….when, sometime in the early ’80s with the arrival of MTV and mega-malls and other corporate lures? Initially contained in H.G. Wells‘ 1895 novella but delivered with greater impact by the sight of Yvette Mimieu and her brainless brethren walking blindly into the Morlock caves, “Eloi” became a favored HE term starting about six or seven years ago. Does anyone even remember Simon Wells‘ The Time Machine (’02)? I don’t. A Bluray of the ’60 version will street in mid July.

I was reading a Vulture piece by Silicon Valley creator Mike Judge about early influences from the art/entertainment realm. He mentioned the National Lampoon and its artists, among them Drew Friedman. I suddenly remembered I haven’t seen (and am not presently seeing) enough Friedman illustrations in my life. Yes, naturally, of course — I’ll always feel indebted to Friedman for that Last Action Hero/Arnold Schwarzenegger drawing, which appeared in Spy sometime in the fall of ’93. It’s been hanging, framed, on my living room wall for over two decades.

Drew Friedman cartoon that appeared in fall 1993 issue of Spy.

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I don’t relate to the Cadillac guy (played by Neil McDonough) for two reasons. One, he’s obviously a Republican and probably worships the idea of one-percentism and income inequality and doesn’t give a shit about climate change. And two, he’s got pale, pinkish, all-but-hairless legs. His worldview is almost identical to the one voiced by Stephen Boyd‘s Messala character in that courtyard scene with Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur. But I don’t relate to the Ford-promoting Pasho Murray either. What’s with the super-sized Afro? (And what time is the Free Angela Davis rally?) And collecting zoo manure? Locally-grown food is an excellent way to go but I draw the line at picking up giraffe and lion turds with chopsticks and putting them into plastic baggies.

From Anita Busch‘s Deadline box-office report, updated this morning: “Noah was playing like a mainstream movie when it opened, but that [box-office] bump indicates that it had some cross-over from the faith-based audiences which [are continuing] to keep God’s Not Dead in business. Although based on the Biblical story, Noah doesn’t mention the name God once. How funny that God’s Not Dead [has] made such a surprise second weekend showing, as if to say, ‘Oh yeah?’”

What is this, a revival meeting under a tent in Corpus Christi, Texas?

Perhaps Busch didn’t get the memo so I’ll resend: Cheering for the God team isn’t cool among Los Angeles industry types. With this crowd you’ve gotta go agnostic, atheistic, dispassionate, Bill Maher‘s Religulous…whatever. If you’re a spiritual-leaning type go with Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism but leave “God” out of it. It’s a cultural thing — you don’t want to side with the fundamentalist yokels. Why in any event would you want to believe in “God” as some kind of cosmic moral force who has a rooting interest in the human condition? The idea of reducing an eternally perfect cosmic symphony of science and math and mystery and altogetherness into an entity with a personality who ponders the moralistic fate of the residents of a speck of micro-mulch known as planet Earth….why, it’s insulting!

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