Here’s a portion of Wesley Morris’ review of A Walk Among The Tombstones, a ’70s-style Liam Neeson thriller of a superior caste. Some of the critics called it a “dad movie” (assholes) and the popcorn crowd more or less blew it off this weekend in favor of The Maze Runner, although Tombstones managed a moderately decent $13 million and change.
At first glance Gabe Ibánez‘s Automata (Green Room/Millenium, 11.18) looks like a blend of Blade Runner and Neil Blomkamp‘s District 9 (particularly the dusty atmosphere and bleachy color scheme) with a shaved-head-sporting Antonio Banderas playing a variation on Harrison Ford‘s Dekker. His character, Jacq Vaucan, is an insurance agent for the ROC Robotics Corporation (which sounds like a branch of the Tyrell Corporation) who’s looking into the case of a robot apparently modifying itself (which is vaguely similar to a replicant named Roy trying to take charge of his own destiny by extending his life). Whatever it is, I feel like I’ve been here before.
It’s Monday morning and everyone needs to calm down about The Imitation Game having won the Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice Award. It’s certainly a classy, highly efficient Richard Attenborough film but there is some evidence to suggest that the Toronto win was pushed through by Benedict Cumberbatch’s hopped-up fan base. Mr. Lizard Face (Cumberbatch has said he looks like “something between an otter and something people find vaguely attractive”) is very hot with women in their 20s and 30s right now, in large part due to the BBC/PBS Sherlock series. On 9.10 Vanity Fair‘s Joanna Robinson reported that during a post-Imitation Game discussion a female audience member asked Cumberbatch if she could “feast on [your] yumminess.” Cumberbatch’s response: “I did not go into this q & a about a gay icon who killed himself at 41 thinking I’d have to answer questions from someone who wants to taste my deliciousness.” There’s no proof that this yummy deliciousness is what led a majority of female and gay TIFF fans to put Imitation Game at the top of the list, but you can’t say that alleged Cumberbatch lust didn’t have at least something to do with snagging the Big Vote.
Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil is reporting that while Focus World, the nickel-and-dime, straight-to-VOD division of Focus Features, will not launch an Oscar campaign for David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars or its Cannes-honored star Julianne Moore, the producers “are in the running for Golden Globes, BAFTA, film critics’ trophies, and SAG and other guild awards. In fact, discussions are currently underway with the film’s handlers and all of those awards, which are much easier to win without hefty campaign investment required at the Oscars.
“Many of the guilds like SAG have screening committees that decide nominations and are easy to access for a reasonable investment,” O’Neil explains, “and so voters in the film-critics groups can be targeted efficiently. In fact, many of them are seeing Maps today at the Toronto International Film Festival. By contrast, to launch Maps effectively into the Oscars derby could cost up to $20 million, which is what many frontrunners have spent in recent years. Technically, a film may qualify after unspooling just one week in a L.A theater just like the Globes, but it needs a fullblown campaign to bring it to the attention of lazy Academy members who insist upon private screenings, personal copies of the DVD and more.
Last night’s episode of The Leftovers (“The Garveys At Their Best”) was one of the most intriguing, although in the context of this show that almost means “it’s less irritating than the other episodes.” The whole thing was a flashback showing all the major characters living their normal lives and coping with their issues two or three days before the Big Departure, when 2% of the world’s population vaporized. It was certainly the best episode since “Guest”, which was strongly dominated by Carrie Coon‘s Nora Durst and pretty much put that actress on the map.
But I was also reminded last night what my big stumbling block with this series is, and the reason why I’m always half-frowning and sometimes even scowling when I watch it. I’m talking about Justin Theroux‘s Kevin Garvey, Mapleton’s chief of police and easily the weakest, most unstable asshole I’ve ever come to know over the course of a dramatic series, especially given that he’s the central figure and, in Theroux’s own words, “the symbolic center of the town as far as trying to keep his arms around it and hold it together.”
Hold it together? Garvey is a wreck. He looks scared all the time, and when he’s not scared he looks befuddled. Everything throws him. That stupid two-week beard makes it look like he’s been on a bender. He’s always struggling to find words. He can’t hold his temper and is always swearing…”fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” He’s short. He can’t seem to hang on to his white cop shirts. That lost bagel…what was that about? Always banging into walls and stumbling around. Always going “whoa, I don’t get it…do you know what’s going on?” 90% of the time his mouth is hanging open. Whenever he’s outside you’re always expecting birdshit to land in his hair. He’s that kind of guy.
Yesterday a knowing, insightful and very well-written piece about Robin Williams was HuffPost-ed by screenwriter Jerry Leichtling (Peggy Sue Got Married, Blue Sky) who knew Williams as a friend for many years: “In the last two days people have said repeatedly ‘I feel like I knew him.’ My answer was ‘you did know him.’ Whenever I saw him as an actor, I always felt ‘Oh, that’s Robin.’ Christian Bale, Daniel Day Lewis — Robin wasn’t a transformer like them.” Exactly, and relatively few actors are when you get right down to it. Are you listening, Bob Strauss?
The best I can say about Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver (Weinstein Co., 8.15) is that it’s clean, efficient, well-ordered and tidy. I’m not just referring to the tight assembly but the vibe permeating the totalitarian Disneyworld village that the hero, Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), and his community reside in. I’m not sure if Noyce intended The Giver‘s style to be a reflection of this creepy Orwellian atmosphere and vice versa (in the same way Zodiac‘s obsessive attention to a serial murder case reflected Jake Gyllenhaal‘s tenacious attitude about same). Perhaps Noyce simply can’t tell a story without resorting to restraint, discipline, focus. Maybe he just can’t help himself.
I do know that fans of adaptations of dystopian YA novels (Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner) are used to more of a slambang presentation — more intensity, more VFX, a bigger scale, kick out the jams. Generally an emphasis on louder, heavier and splashier. The Giver is much more restrained. It’s chilly, antiseptic and fairly quiet for the most part. A bit of a neutered quality. That may well be the point, as noted, but one thing The Giver doesn’t do is rock your buzzsaw with howls and shrieks and big bassy woofers. I wasn’t expecting to be gutslammed, mind — I just wanted to get into it — but maybe fans of Lois Lowry‘s 1993 book will be a little more susceptible. I wouldn’t know. I’ll never fucking know. The more distance I can put between myself and the YA literary genre, the better.
I also know that Jonas is 12 years old in the book and is roughly 17 or 18 in the film. (Thwaites is actually 25.) And that there’s a big different between how a 12 year-old might react to being told that a pulsing, colorful and sometimes chaotic and painful world existed before everything changed and life became ultra-regulated and monochrome-y and totalitarian, and how an 18 year-old might react. The basic story is about how the extra-perceptive Jonas is chosen to be the Receiver of past history, and that the bearded, vaguely stoned, half-muttering Jeff Bridges is the Giver of this history, and that the scheme comes undone once Jonas starts to say to himself (and eventually his friends) “wow…life used to be a lot more vivid and rich and symphonic!”
In 1950 the world population was 2,525,778,669, give or take. By 1964 it had risen by nearly a billion to 3,263,738,832. Today’s approximate tally is 7,243,784,121 — close to triple the 1950 figure. By 2075 the globe will be struggling to sustain 10.5 billion souls. The needs of today’s population are obviously bruising and polluting the planet as is. Life is going to be much more of a 1% vs. 99% equation — 1% will live well or semi-decently and everyone else will be doing without and/or struggling to varying degrees. Blade Runner and then some. The downmarket cultural trends of the last couple of decades (lower and lower education levels, shallower and shallower entertainments) will almost certainly worsen. Right now only a small percentage have any kind of developed or semi-enlightened aesthetic appetites and appreciations. I don’t want to think about the cultural climate that will probably exist 50 or 60 years from now. No more “movies” as most of us know them (i.e., no more dramas or story construction…mostly jizz-whizz interactive crap for the masses). A world full of empty distractions and gross Timur Bekmambetov types and Multicultural Party Animals. Good God.
The Young Adult novels that Hollywood has taken a shine to (Twilight, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, The Giver) have a common generational theme. The elders (i.e., boomers) are ghouls who want to oppress or control us. Their scheme is to wedge us into functions or boxes or roles that have nothing to do with who we are. Our charge is to break free of this bondage. Hollywood always kills the golden goose by over-saturating. I honestly believe that Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver (Weinstein Co., 8.15) will be a better, smarter, classier expression (especially with Meryl Streep on-board) but what do I know? Here’s a Maze Runner trailer that popped through last October.
Tom Cruise‘s son should have never lived — it was ridiculous that he would have survived a pitched battle with Martian death machines. Seeing original War of the Worlds costars Gene Barry and Ann Robinson stepping out of that brownstone was like getting stabbed in the chest with a pencil. All because Steven “living incarnation of the spirit of Norman Rockwell” Spielberg had to deliver a heartwarming ending. Because he can’t help himself. Scenes like this are why Spielberg is regarded by perceptive types today (and will certainly be regarded by future film historians) as a hack. He is somewhere between the Cecil B. DeMille and the Mervyn LeRoy of our time. He had a brilliant run from Duel through Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and then it was mostly a bumpy downhill road, the exceptions being Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan and…you tell me. (Inspired by Grolschfilmworks piece called “Rubbish Movie Endings.”)
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.
“The Bag Man‘s original title was Motel,” a New Orleans friend says. “It was shot here a couple of years ago. I was just talking to a friend who worked on it. Has so many behind-the-scenes stories that are hilarious. The director and co-writer, David Grovic, is some Russian actor who never made a film before. The girl in the film, Rebecca Da Costa, is his girlfriend apparently.” (They both worked on Freerunner, a 2011 release.) The IMDB lists the production entity is the Nassau-based TinRes Entertainment.
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