1976 was a great year to be alive in many respects. I’ll just leave it at that. On top of which there are few things hotter than getting lucky with a nurse when you’ve been admitted to a hospital for some ailment. Those white stockings and white hospital shoes. That aside…done this before but can’t hurt to reiterate…Ron Howard and Peter Morgan‘s Rush (Universal, 9.27) is about the rivalry between drivers James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl).

There are at least two versions of Dick Powell‘s response upon being told that Alan Ladd had fallen in love with June Allyson, Powell’s wife, during the filming of The McConnell Story (’55). The story is that Ladd and Allyson fell hard but they never “did it,” which sounds like Allyson’s bullshit story to Powell. It seems inconceivable that Ladd would leave his wife, Sue Carol, over his Allyson entanglement without dipping his wick. Version #1 has Ladd calling Powell and saying “I’m in love with your wife,” and Powell replies “everyone is in love with my wife.” Version #2 (which comes from Allyson’s autobiography) has Carol calling Powell and asking “do you know Alan is in love with your wife, June?,” and Powell replies “isn’t everyone?”

Read more

I spoke to Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn at last night’s The Entrepeneur screening, and we agreed…okay, I said and Kohn went “yeah, I suppose”…that it’s highly likely that J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, which I fell 100% in love with at the Cannes Film Festival, will be one of the U.S. premieres at this year’s Telluride Film Festival (which begins on 8.29). An absolute natural for that gathering. Kohn also believes/suspects (as do I) that Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis and Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color will be shown. But what major fall-holiday films? Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips? My brain won’t function.

Last night at Spin I attended a special, Snagfilms-sponsored screening of Jonathan Bricklin‘s The Entrepeneur, a cerebral procedural doc about his celebrated dad, automotive innovator and wheeler-dealer Malcolm Bricklin, trying to put together a U.S. distribution deal with Chery, the Chinese auto maker. It’s a tribute to the old fire-in-the-belly tenacity that propels all movers and shakers. The elder Bricklin (who was there last night with Jonathan and the latter’s partner-girlfriend Susan Sarandon) is a trip-and-a-half. The film also reminds (as if we needed reminding) that big business realms are sometimes colored by the perverse ethical behavior of some real world-class motherfuckers.

I generally steer clear of Broadway musicals — “fun” and relentlessly “spirited,” of course, but way too expensive and attended by far too many madras-shirt-wearing 60ish tourists. But a couple of weeks ago my significant other nudged me into getting tickets to Harvey Fierstein and Cindy Lauper‘s Kinky Boots, and we caught the matinee show yesterday afternoon at the Al Hirschfeld theatre. It’s a jolt and a hoot and a glittery wow — a 100% delightful adrenalizer and lifter-upper. For two hours-plus I surrendered to the whole emotional Fierstein-Lauper drag-queen fantasia, and I mean the whole swoony magilla of it. I clapped and laughed and cheered and tapped my feet and went out on a high that, some 18 hours later, has only slightly subsided.

Read more

After seeing Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine on July 9th a publicist asked me what I thought. Instead of posting a full-on review (which is difficult sitting at a Starbucks on Eighth Ave. at 6:05 pm with a 7pm screening to catch), I’m just going to post my response and fill things in later: “It’s a very good film that often sinks in, but it’s not a great one,” I began. “The Streetcar Named Desire parallels are obvious and abundant, but it also has its own flavor and motor and undercurrent. Blue Jasmine isn’t a tragedy — it’s an examination of the venality of the 1% by way of the personality and choices of one extremely fucked-up, vodka-slurping woman who’s adrift and panicking.

“Allen’s film is appropriately dispassionate in this regard, but there’s also something a wee bit cold and clinical about it. To a slight fault, I mean.

“Like many of Woody’s films Blue Jasmine feels like something that should have been refined and rewritten before going into production. If it had it could’ve been that much better. I was with it as far as it went. I’m not putting it down by calling it a B-plus level achievement for Woody. It’s fine. It’s just not A or A-plus-level.

Read more

Rolling Stone‘s decision to run an intriguing, semi-attractive, clearly-intended-to-flatter rock-star photo of Jahar Tsarnaev, the Boston marathon bomber, is a gross and heinously cynical act. It basically announces (and not for the first time) that sales and controversy are everything, and that all celebrity is equal and that the reason for this or that person being temporarily famous is immaterial. What say the HE heavy cats? Is it cool or even so-whatty to run a cover photo of a sexy, dreamy-faced enemy of the people?

Read more

A Hollywood salaries Forbes article by Dorothy Pomerantz reports that Liam “Paycheck” Neeson was only the 10th highest compensated superstar actor for the period between June 2012 and June 2013. Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man, Avengers) was in first place with earnings of $75 million, and Channing Tatum was second with earnings of $60 million, due in large part to his producer points on Magic Mike.

Hugh Jackman came in third with $55 million. Fourth-place Mark Wahlberg earned roughly $52 million with his Ted revenues while Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson nabbed $46 million for a fifth-place slot. And then you’ve got Leonardo DiCaprio in sixth place with $39 million (is that all? a mere $39 mill?), Adam Sandler in seventh place with a modest $17 million. The bottom three are/were Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington and the afore-mentioned Neeson.

Wells to Cruise, Washington, Neeson: You’re slipping, guys. Before you know it you’ll be the twelfth-highest paid and then the seventeenth-highest and then the 25th highest, and then you’ll wake up one day you’ll be even further down the totem pole, and eventually you’ll be out of the game and wondering what happened. People will be saying “Tom who?” or “Denzel used-to-be.” Get that price up now while you can. Make that dough! Get yourself a nice CG sci-fi bullshit action-thriller to star in — you can do it! Do you guys realize that Downey is laughing at you behind your backs right now, as we speak? If I know Tatum he’s howling with laughter…he’s rolling on the floor at how much of a bigger deal he is than any of you three. “They used to be the big cheeses,” he’s giggling to himself. “But not so much any more…hah!” Are you going to take that?

Variety and the other news services are quoting Canadian authorities about the cause of death last Saturday of Glee star Cory Monteith, 31. Are you sitting down? He died of “mixed drug toxicity, involving heroin and alcohol.” In other words, he bought it. No sympathy whatsoever.

If you want the really fat paychecks, this is the kind of shit you have to make. Does anyone out there believe that Doug Liman, Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt made this film because they felt they had to or needed to, because it turned them on, because they wanted to feel proud, because they care about their legacy and want future generations to know what they were about, etc.?