There’s a new Arrow Region 2 Bluray of Don Siegel’s The Killers (’64), a tolerable if bland-looking gangster flick that contains Ronald Reagan‘s final big-screen performance. It’s quite inferior to Robert Siodmak’s 1946 black-and-white version which costarred Burt Lancaster, Edmond O’Brien, Ava Gardner, Sam Levene, William Conrad and Charles McGraw. The latter should be Blurayed, not the ’64 version.
John Patterson‘s 2.14 Guardian piece about The Godfather, Part II, which is celebrating its 39th year and two month anniversary (the 40th anniversay of Francis Coppola’s classic will happen on 12.20.14) is nicely done, but predictable. But the sub-headline is hilarious: “Coppola’s classic belongs to an age when the Best Picture Oscar went to a deserving winner, or in this case, one of the finest US movies of the late 20th century.” As opposed to today when Best Picture Oscars go to questionable winners — Argo, The Artist, The King’s Speech and (quite possibly but who knows?) Gravity. These are but two noteworthy scenes in The Godfather, Part II…the film’s full of them.
“Once upon a time antitrust authorities…would probably have been trying to cut Comcast down to size. Letting it expand would have been unthinkable [as] Comcast perfectly fits the old notion of monopolists as robber barons, so-called by analogy with medieval warlords who perched in their castles overlooking the Rhine, extracting tolls from all who passed. The Time Warner deal would in effect let Comcast strengthen its fortifications, which has to be a bad idea.” — from Paul Krugman‘s 2.16 N.Y. Times column about Comcast’s purchase of Time Warner.
“For consumers, cable is not just television anymore, it is where the internet comes from. And should this deal go through, more people who want to cut the cable cord will still have to buy their broadband from a cable company where prices go only one way — up.” — from David Carr‘s 2.16 N.Y. Times column about same.
A Film Society of Lincoln Center screening of David Jones‘ long-absent Betrayal (’83) is happening tonight at the Walter Reade theatre. My flight to Los Angeles leaves around 4:30 pm otherwise I’d be there with bells on. I’ve been writing for years about the fact that this superb adaptation of Harold Pinter‘s celebrated stage play can’t be bought, borrowed or rented. I’ve written FSLC staffers for information. Here’s what I said:
Modest, self-effacing, “who, me?” parents in the audience, humbled. “Put a smile on your face…have fun,” etc. The idea is that Fallon’s new, Manhattan-based Tonight show will take most if not all of the under-45 viewers and that Late Night with David Letterman can have the rest. In that time slot. Possibly. Maybe. We’ll see. Good opening, in any event. Will Smith is over, but Seth Rogen, Robert De Niro, Tina Fey, Seth Rogen, Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, Rudy Giuliani, Lindsay Lohan, Stephen Colbert and…like that. Reactions?
I’ve been posting occasional hosannas about Morgan Neville‘s 20 Feet From Stardom for over a year now (i.e., since I first saw it at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival) so why quite now, right? This featurette was just circulated to people like myself so I’mjust passing it along like a good little kiss-ass. Except you’re not a kiss-ass when you really love and respect a film as I do here. Call me a devotee, an acolyte, a team member, etc.
HE readers are hereby invited to predict the 2013/2014 Oscar winners in all the categories [nominees listed after the jump]. All submissions must be in by…I don’t know, Saturday, March 1st at midnight? The winner will receive either a cash prize of $100 or $125 or will be treated to a nice dinner or lunch by yours truly if he/she happens to live in Los Angeles. While we’re eating I’ll record our conversation and take pictures and make an article out of our encounter. Spell out predicted winners in BOLD CAPS. No revisions once you’ve sent in a list. The winner chooses the restaurant.
I read a good amount of Vanity Fair‘s Hollywood issue during yesterday’s Heathrow-to-JFK flight. Is it me or is this one of the shallowest and most skin-deep Hollywood issues ever? Maybe it is me, but I seem to recall previous VF Hollywood issues that mixed serious industry reporting (trends, capturings), high-end portrait photography and fascinating, well-reported old-Hollywood sagas or “how a classic film was made” stories (usually written by Peter Biskind) with the more glammy, superficial stuff used for tinsel diversion. The emphasis in the current issue is on appearances above all, on show-offy posings and people who are just about perfect, and who are always depicted as being vaguely or obliquely boastful. It feels like…I don’t know, a “woman’s issue” of some kind. Vogue-ish. It seems to skirt rather than dig in. It lacks salt and manliness and consequence. I kept saying to myself as I flipped from article to article, “So fucking what? Who gives a shit about these fucking people?”
I abandoned the cockatoo diet this morning at B & H Dairy (127 Second Ave., New York NY 10003). It wasn’t so much the feta omelette as the steaming home fries. When the air outside is like dry breathable ice you have to order something hot and heaping. Winter food. It’s the steam more than anything else. The look and the warmth of it as you sit and watch and impulsively take out the camera. That’s what counts. The eating…okay, the first couple of bites but after that not so much.
“Congrats to that distinctively BRITISH film, Gravity, for its many BAFTA wins tonight. Pip pip cheerio! Fish & chips!” — my first tweet upon landing at JFK last night and reading about BAFTA champs. (Can’t embed link with iPhone WordPress app.) Cheers for 12 Years A Slave ‘a Best Picture win. I’m sorry to say that Chiwetel Ejiofor‘s Best Actor BAFTA triumph, fine in itself, probably stops Leonardo DiCaprio‘s rumored/suspected Best Actor momentum dead in its tracks. Matthew McConaughey can breathe easy.
Berlin was almost balmy during the Berlinale. Overcoat-and-scarf weather, for sure, but far from oppressive. Prague was the same — chilly temps that required basic bundling but certainly tolerable and manageable. New York City was in another league entirely when I landed last night. It’s Antarctica here. Icy winds, snow piles, ice on the front stoop. The good citizens of Bedford-Stuyvesant are not exactly vigilant at shovelling sidewalks and scraping ice for general safety’s sake. You could die in cold like this. They could find you on a street corner at 5 am, frozen stiff with ice crystals blocking your nostrils and icycles hanging from your ear lobes.
