“I honestly urge you to seek Gravity which is right up your alley and one of Alfonso’s best films.” — Filmmaker friend who’s seen the whole thing.
You’re Bringing Me Down
“This is not a psychotic episode. This is a cleansing moment of clarity. I’m imbued with some special spirit. It’s not a religious feeling at all. It’s a shocking eruption of great electrical energy. I feel vivid and flashing, as if suddenly I’d been plugged into some great electromagnetic field. I feel connected to all living things. To flowers, birds…all the animals of the world. And even to some great, unseen, living force. What I think the Hindus call prana. But it’s not a breakdown. I’ve never felt more orderly in my life. It is a shattering and beautiful sensation. It is the exalted flow of the space-time continuum, save that it is spaceless and timeless and…of such loveliness.”
Side Effects
Tweeted last night by N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes. I think it’s time to upgrade Barnes to permanent HE homey status.
Beach Haven Wifi Blows
I’m staying at the Island Guest House, a homey b & b on Long Beach Island. Except the wifi really sucks here. Pages are taking forever to load (even email is a pain) and it took me three to four minutes to obtain the embed code for this trailer. I hate it. I’m not going to let this ruin my day but I don’t want to post stuff any more. It’s too depressing. I’m going for a walk and then I’ll rent a bicycle and then hit the beach around 2 or 3 pm. Why would a b & b owner want to provide less than lightning-fast wifi? What’s the point in half-assing it?
Family That Bashes Together
Thing about it — a mafia family mixing it up with (and in some cases go up against) the locals in France is hilarious material. But the implied savagery in this trailer suggests that director-writer Luc Besson and co-screenwriters Tonino Benacquista and Michael Caleo went at it with a reductive, mafia-default, one-track mind. The Family opens on 9.13.13.
Butler Be Mine
It was reported late yesterday that the MPAA has partially overturned its Butler ruling and will no longer prevent the Weinstein Company from using the word “butler” in the title of the forthcoming Lee Daniels film about a long-serving White House servant. The apparent intention is to call it Lee Daniels’ The Butler. I wouldn’t do that. I would want to suppress all awareness of who directed it. To me the auteur who brought you Shadowboxer (which wasn’t very good), Precious (which I found torturous due to Mo’Nique‘s performance) and The Paperboy (howlingly bad) is no drawing card. If I were Harvey I would call it The Bee. Seriously.
Just Like Me
For me, President Obama‘s off-the-cuff, highly personal remarks about the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case were close to spellbinding. I watched his 18-minute talk twice last night, and again this morning. It reminded me of listening to Howard Zinn riff during a Boston University lecture. No more teleprompter jokes for the rest of Obama’s term.
Short Term-ers
Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Short Term 12 (Cinedigm, 8.23) is the kind of little, hand-made film that I, a grumpy, CG-hating, Ryan Reynolds-averse seeker of au natural, character-driven dramas, hope and live for. It’s gotten a lot of hype from others who cherish indie-level films of this sort, and deservedly so. Special HE salutations for Brie Larson‘s lead performance as Grace, a low-key, secretly damaged, straight-talking supervisor at a facility for hostile, anti-social, self-destructive teens who’ve had scrapes with the law. The film plays out patiently and openly and yet efficiently, and without any attempts at forced manipulation. It’s a respectably solid piece and well worth a look-see.
Brie Larson at NeueHouse, 110 East 25th Street — Thursday, 7.18, 1:55 pm.
“Worst Money-Grubbing Place In The World”
What are the great Las Vegas films (i.e., ones shot there and having to do with some aspect of the industry and culture of L.V.)? For me the top four are Mike Figgis‘s Leaving Las Vegas, the 1960 Ocean’s 11 (not a great or even an especially high-calibre caper film but a timepiece that lets you savor what Las Vegas looked and felt like back in the good old Rat Pack days), Barry Levinson‘s Bugsy and Albert Brooks‘ Lost In America. Sidenote: Of all the places in the world to enjoy your last spiritual and sensual hurrah before dying, could there be an uglier setting than this plastic palatial hell-hole?
Great Performances That Acknowledge Their Own Corruption
Even five-year-olds know that RIPD is a pre-ordained dead duck, or at least that it will be beaten handily by The Conjuring, which I saw a couple of nights ago and is “scary” but not that great, let me tell you, and which certainly ends on a phony upbeat note. But in the view of Variety‘s Scott Foundas RIPD can at least boast of a noteworthy fuck-all performance from Jeff Bridges. “Like Johnny Depp’s work in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it’s a performance that seems to say, ‘Look, I’m here for the payday. You know it. I know it. But as long as I’m here, I’m going to make things interesting for myself.’
