My first thought when I saw the new Philomena poster was “where have I seen this before?” I’m sure there are dozens of other posters that put out a similar look and attitude. It says “this is a very safe and tidy film about safe and tidy people…trust us, it will not threaten or challenge you in the least.” It’s also gives Judy Dench a nice little nip and tuck — she looks about 40 or 45 here.
Documentarian Bob Smeaton has done well by himself and his subject, the late Jimi Hendrix, in Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A’Comin’ (PBS, 11.5). He’s delivered a stirring, well-crafted valentine — a two-hour portrait of a much-worshipped, gentle-mannered, extremely modest genius who loved the ladies and was obsessively devoted to playing guitar. Which is all true as far as it goes. But this is a project controlled by the Hendrix family (i.e., Experience Hendrix, LLC), and if you know anything about this notoriously conservative-minded bunch you know what that means. Almost all the details about Jimi Hendrix’s short life that allude to any kind of subterranean undertow or inclination (such as the ingestion of psychedelic drugs) have been pretty much scrubbed out.
Universal’s decision to remove Focus Features CEO James Schamus and install FilmDistrict exec Peter Schlessel in his place means that Focus will no longer be involved with refined, upscale movies for people who eat granola and olives and feta cheese with pita bread. The new idea is to make movies for people who slurp 24-ounce containers of Coca Cola while inhaling tubs of buttered popcorn and extra-large packets of red Twizzlers. Schlessel, who helped make Screen Gems into a valued low-rent moneymaker for Sony, was exec producer on Oldboy, Insidious: Chapter 2, Olympus Has Fallen, Evil Dead, Looper, The Possession and Drive. Say goodbye to the Focus of yore (i.e., Burn After Reading, Brokeback Mountain, Atonement, Moonrise Kingdom, Lost in Translation) — those days are finito. This is now, the world we live in.
Radius, the Weinstein Co. and Landmark Theatres have announced that all federal and military employees will be given free tickets to see Jacob Kornbluth and Robert Reich‘s Inequality For All (i.e, the Inconvenient Truth of American economics) but only today. They should be a little more liberal about it and allow the eligible to see it gratis for two days — today (Thursday, 10.3) and tomorrow (Friday, 10.4). And then go back to paid admissions starting Saturday. Participating Landmark Theatres include The Landmark (Los Angeles, CA), California 3 (Berkeley, CA), Harvard Exit 2 (Seattle, WA), E Street Cinema (Washington, DC), Century Centre 7 (Chicago, IL), Aquarius 2 (Palo Alto, CA), Ritz 5 (Philadelphia, PA), Bethesda Row (Bethesda, MD), Kendall Square 9 (Cambridge, MA), Hillcrest 5 (San Diego, CA), Renaissance Place 5 (Highland Park, IL), La Jolla Village 4 (La Jolla, CA) and Keystone Art (Indianapolis, IN).
Last night I blew off an invite to the LA Live premiere of Robert Rodriguez‘s Machete Kills in order to catch a Beverly Hills screening of the PBS doc Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin’…sorry. Who am I kidding, “sorry”? I can’t stand Rodriguez. Then I read Alfonso Duralde’s Wrap review and knew I’d made the right call. “Machete Kills opens with a fake trailer for a not-yet-produced third installment, then spends the next 100-plus minutes making a case for plunging a knife into the franchise’s heart,” his review begins.
I was about to do another shutdown riff via this new Jon Stewart clip, but it’s more important to mention something about TheWrap that’s been irking me for some time. The relentless pop-ups and automatic page refreshings are becoming more and more infuriating. Now with IOS 7 it seems even worse. Yesterday when I tried to read a Wrap story on my iPhone the page auto-refreshed itself a couple of times and then froze on some ad or whatever, hiding the content of the page under a dark gray shadow. The fuck? I tried eliminating the ad thing and failed. They need to jigger things so you can surf the site without all this ad crap. I haven’t time for this shite.
My heart surged when I noticed that the title of this 12 Years A Slave teaser is “Fight Back.” I presumed that meant it would show that slammin’ scene in which Chiwetel Ejiofor, as kidnapped free-man-turned-slave Solomon Northrup, stands up to Paul Dano‘s sadistic John Tibeats character and then pounds the shit out of him. This scene isn’t just cathartic — it’s ten times more satisfying than all of the bullshit payback scenes in Django Unchained rolled into one. But the teaser doesn’t show it. It’s just a standard montage teaser with a two-second clip of the beatdown scene (from 24 to 26-second mark). Why call it “Fight Back” then? 12 Years A Slave opens on 10.18.
In a just published issue of Vanity Fair, Mia Farrow “discusses her relationship with Frank Sinatra, telling Maureen Orth. that Sinatra was the great love of her life, adding that ‘we never really split up.’ When asked point-blank if her [alleged] biological son with Woody Allen, Ronan Farrow, may actually be the son of Frank Sinatra, Farrow answers, ‘Possibly.’ No DNA tests have been done. When Orth asks Nancy Sinatra Jr. about Ronan’s being treated as if he were a member of her family, Sinatra answers in an e-mail, ‘He is a big part of us, and we are blessed to have him in our lives.'”
One of my all-time favorite political thrillers is Phillip Noyce‘s Clear and Present Danger (’94), and for that I’ll always respect and admire the late Tom Clancy for his having written the 1990 novel that gave birth to the film. It always seemed ironic that Clear and Present Danger‘s basic plot seemed inspired by Iran-Contra, and yet Clancy was a classic Reagan-admiring NRA conservative who held Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in high esteem, or so I read. The guy was only 66.
I didn’t have much of a problem with Stephen Frears‘ Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight (HBO, 10.5) when I saw it last May in Cannes. I wasn’t moved to write about it (and that in itself says something) but it’s a nicely ordered, well acted (particularly by Christopher Plummer and Frank Langella as Justice John Harlan and Chief Justice Warren Berger), moderately mid-tempo account of how the Supreme Court dealt with Muhammud Ali’s 1971 appeal of his conviction for refusing induction after his local draft board rejected his application for conscientious objector classification based on his Muslim convictions. It was touch and go at first, but the Supremes reversed the conviction, finding that the government had failed to properly specify why Ali’s application had been denied.
Shawn Slovo‘s script tells us that the behind-the-scenes hero of this deliberation was Harlan’s assistant Kevin Connolly (Benjamin Walker). Harland at first didn’t see a lot of merit in Ali’s argument, and Berger, a staunch ally of President Richard Nixon, was foursquare against it. But fairness won out. This is an intellectually driven film, dealing with personal conflicts and corruptions from time to time but mostly focusing on the pro and con arguments. But because it’s basically a procedural about a hot-button issue (mixed in with a vague sense of the political tumult of the early ’70s), it feels oddly impassioned but constricted. Muhammud Ali never appears except in news footage. But it’s not half bad. Certainly by the standards of an intelligent, honorably crafted HBO film. Give it a pass.
I hate being late with whatever I’m trying to do. I hate procrastinating, but I seem to succumb…well, not every day but too damn often. There are always five or six general topics that everyone is riffing on, and I really hate that others have jumped into material that I’m just getting into. But on some days I can’t seem to make myself get up and do it. Damn.
My phone interview with producer and former studio chief David Picker came off without a hitch. The subject was “Musts, Maybes and Nevers“, his just-published book which was celebrated last night at a party in Beverly Hills. We kicked it around, of course, but it was mainly an excuse to hope from topic to topic. There was so much to get into. My admiration of Richard Lester‘s Juggernaut (’74), which Picker produced. My evolved opinion of Lenny and particularly Dustin Hofffman‘s performance. George Stevens‘ The Greatest Story Ever Told and the hardening of the creative arteries that happens to almost every filmmaker. The possibility that Paramount might boot Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street into 2014. Picker’s writing habits. Robert Altman, Stanley Kramer, et. al. Again, the mp3.
