Fox Home Video’s Bluray of Robert Rossen‘s The Hustler, an absolute essential, streets on May 17th. Monochrome Scope (2.39 to 1) is the format for me so I don’t have a choice in the matter. I won’t have a chance to see it until I return from France at month’s end (hello, James Finn!) but here’s a just-posted DVD Beaver review.
I’m saying right now that I’m not especially looking forward to Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne‘s The Kid With The Bike, which is playing in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. For one thing I don’t like movies about red-haired kids with high-pitched voices who wear red T-shirts. I don’t much care for movies about kids, period. I once had a place in my heart for this kind of thing but no longer. Especially with kids like this in the lead. I’m just being honest.
I have news for all young kids dealing with absent or abusive parents. Life is hard so you may as well grim up and deal with it and stop trying to make me empathize with your plight. I can tell you stories about my own messed-up childhood that’ll tear your heart out.
A few weeks ago I wrote the great Albert Brooks and offered to do what I could to heighten awareness of his new book, “2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America.” I suppose if I’d really wanted to help I would have written the St. Martin’s Press publicist and gone from there, right? Except book publicists are sketchy people these days with the book industry in decline, and it seemed somehow simpler to write Brooks because we’ve spoken a couple of times and he knows the column, etc.
Brooks completely ignored me. I might as well have been an assistant book editor from an obscure Riverside County alternative weekly. But let’s turn the other cheek and offer a portion of a Proust q & a with Brooks in the online Vanity Fair.
VF: What is your idea of perfect happiness? Brooks: Not sure what happiness means. Need to look that up. VF: What is your greatest fear? Brooks: That three days before I die I’ll find out what happiness means. VF: Which historical figure do you most identify with? Brooks: Pete Best. VF: Which living person do you most admire? Brooks: You don’t know him.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the one 70mm film I’ve never seen on DVD or in a theatre. Reason #1: I’ve never cared. Reason #2: Any film starring Dick Van Dyke is verboten on general principle. When and if the original car sells for $2 million, the buyer will be a rich Arab in his 50s or 60s.
On May 1st the New York Post‘s Ann Karni reported that the Freedom Tower (i.e., the main tower at 1 World Trade Center) “has reached 64 stories and is growing by a story a week.” So it’s now at 65 stories, I gather, since today is May 8th. Karni wrote that the Ground Zero skyscraper is now visible “from the New Jersey Turnpike, the West Side Highway, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry.”
On 8.30.10 CBS News reported that a poll showed that a clear majority of respondents felt that Mel Gibson‘s character issues were not a significant factor in determining their interest (or lack of) in seeing a film in which he stars.
If the poll was accurate, the only conclusion as to why The Beaver died this weekend is that audiences had simply taken a look at the trailer and/or read the reviews and decided that Jodie Foster‘s film was a dumper.
But why exactly? The love…okay, the like for this thing was more than palpable after the
South by Southwest screening. I realize that film festival audiences are not Average Joes but still. I saw a mezzo-mezzo response this weekend, not total refutation.
I think we all understand that Bad Santa was at best a minor influence upon the making of Bad Teacher (Sony, 6.24). I think it happened mainly due to innumerable reports of sexual indiscretion on the part of God-knows-how-many-TILFS-and-MILFs in high schools over the past few years. Fate dealt me a bad hand, I feel, by not arranging for one of these women to teach one of my seventh, eighth or ninth-grade classes, and that’s probably the main reason why I want to see this Cameron Diaz comedy.
Not to sound a disrespectful note but on a certain level this trailer for Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip (IFC Films, theatres 6.10, On Demand 6.22) is a greater achievement than the film itself, which is mildly funny and actually rather good in a steady and confident and unforced way. But the trailer is funnier…sorry.
Rob Brydon‘s Woody Allen is perfect save for the fact he doesn’t sound like him. “I want a room with a view…I want to see a tree.”
An HE reader is looking for copies of Memphis (Paul Greengrass‘s draft), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lord of Salem, Triple Frontier, Rock of Ages, Dark Shadows, Aryan Papers, Wartime Lies, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (Scott Burns), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Lincoln (Tony Kushner draft only), The Talking Cure (a.k.a A Dangerous Method), Ant-Man (Edgar Wright) and War Horse. So am I. Anyone?
This guy has copies-to-trade of Cogan’s Trade, Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg), Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson), Silence (Jay Cocks/Scorsese), The Last Photograph, Moneyball (latest draft by Zaillian and Sorkin), Drive, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Irishman (Steven Zaillian/Scorsese), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Peter Morgan), Django Unchained, The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson), Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch), Ace in the Hole (David Mamet draft), Four Queens (David Mamet), Ordinary Daylight (David Mamet), Charlie Chan in Horse and Rider (David Mamet), Autobiography of Malcolm X (David Mamet), Hunger (Steve McQueen), Shame (Steve McQueen), Dino (Nicholas Pileggi/Scorsese), Twilight Zones (David Chase), Getting Out (Sidney Lumet), Godless (Scott Frank), A Walk Among the Tombstones (two drafts by Scott Frank), Knockout (Soderbergh), Peach Trees aka Dredd (Alex Garland), Tree of Life (Terrence Malick), 36 aka Animals (Richard Price), Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese), Curveball (Steven Knight), Cloud Atlas (Wachowski Bros/Tykwer draft), Confederacy of Dunces (Steven Soderbergh), Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Gambit (Coen Bros.), Cuba Libre (Coen Bros.), God of Carnage (Roman Polanski), Hoover (Dustin Lance Black/Clint Eastwood),Lone Ranger (Ted Elliott/Terry Rossio), Rosenthaler Suite (Wes Anderson), 77 (James Ellroy), Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin), We Need To Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay), Young Adult (Diablo Cody) and Wettest County in the World (John Hillcoat).
