The right choices — the smartest move, the wisest path, the most considerate or responsible or least self-destructive course of action — never flash across my brainpan flatscreen as written messages — words running right to left saying “you really need to pay your utility bills today” or “you really need to send some ten chili dogs over to the North Bergen fire department.” The right thing to do always comes as a very light tap on the shoulder — so light and subtle sometimes that coarse or undeveloped people don’t even know they’re being “spoken to,” as it were. It’s like a barely audible elevator tone in the mind….ping. The words don’t have to be repeated or written down or verbalized — you just know the right course. When I was younger I used to get these signals and go “yeah, maybe…worth considering.” Now I don’t mess around. When the voice tells me what to do, I do it. The voice knows.
Five days ago firstshowing.net‘s Alex Billington posted a new Howl photo — Aaron Tveit and James Franco posing to imitate a semi-famous shot of lifetime companions Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg. Two days ago Awards Daily re-posted the shot alongside the original still (provided by Joao Mattos) of Orlovsky and Ginsberg in the mid ’50s. Then I came along and decided to emphasize the symmetry by recropping, etc.
(l. to.r.) Tveit, Franco in Howl; Corso, Ginsberg.
Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Howl is basically about the obscenity charges that Ginsberg had to face in ’57 following the publication of his seminal poem (i.e., “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night“). Howl has no distributor and wil probably, I’m guessing, turn up at the Toronto Film Festival. Gus Van Sant is the exec producer. Whoever acquires Howl probably won’t open it until early 2010.
Only a fraction of the critics have written reviews of Tony Scott‘s The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, but it’s disturbing nonetheless that so far it’s only got a 43% positive from Rotten Tomatoes. (Metacritic only has three reviews.) Due respect to New York‘s David Edelstein but his review feels like a crab-head thing for no persuasive reason.
For what it is the movie works. It’s superior to the 1974 Joseph Sargent original. The lead characters played by Denzel Washington and John Travolta have more going on inside than their ’74 counterparts (played by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw) and their performances — especially Travolta’s — have more facets and jazz notes.
If I was in L.A. I’d be catching Monday evening’s showing of William Wyler‘s The Little Foxes (’41) at Hollywood’s American Cinematheque. Mainly because I’ve never seen it but also because Gregg Toland‘s cinematography uses some of the same type of deep-focus compositions that he created for Citizen Kane. The film is being co-presented with the Pasadena Playhouse’s theatrical presentation of Lillian Hellman‘s play (5.22 to 6.28) with Kelly McGillis (Witness, Top Gun) in the Bette Davis role.
I’ve had a certain Little Foxes anecdote in my head for years — the only one anyone’s ever heard about the film, I’ll wager. Director Billy Wilder was lunching with producer Samuel Goldwyn, the story goes, and learned of his intention to make a film version of the Hellman play. Wilder told Goldwyn he might want to think twice due to the play being extremely caustic and Goldwyn replying, “I don’t care how much it costs.” You’ve heard it, right?
Mordecai Richler‘s review of A. Scott Berg‘s Goldwyn biography claims it was a “studio editor” and not Wilder who prompted the Goldwyn comment.
The slightly odd thing is that this purple candy guy, a part of a special Transformers-brand M&M ad campaign, looks like Bay. Right down to the beard follicles. Well, not so odd, I suppose. Why haven’t the M&M marketers devised a software that takes anyone’s photo and turns it into a little M&M peanut image? Americans need more ways to waste their time and money.
Vanity Fair‘s Julian Sancton has carefully compared Todd Phillips‘ Old School and The Hangover. and concluded that The Hangover is “pretty much an Old School sequel. The names and faces have been changed, but the structure is almost identical.”
Here’s Nikki Finke‘s reporting about the real-life origins of the Hangover script/project.
About ten days ago I ran a short comparison piece about The Hangover‘s Zach Galifianakis vs. Humpday‘s Joshua Leonard — similar faces, physiques (okay, Galifianakis is bulkier), attitudes and personalities, and the exact same beard (except for Zach’s being darker than Leonard’s, which is light brownish). Except last week I saw The Hangover and I re-saw Humpday last night, and there’s really no comparison — Leonard is by far the funnier and more charming of the two, and a much more fluid and readable and charismatic actor.
Humpday‘s Josh Leonard, The Hangover‘s Zach Galifianakis.
Galifianakis doesn’t have that much of a role in The Hangover. He’s playing the overweight man-child fingerpaint jerkoff, shuffling around in his underwear with his big pot belly making one-note cracks and acting like he’s 14 or 15, no older. Plus he has a higher-pitched voice that doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor or feeling. Leonard is developmentally arrested as well (stuck in his early to mid 20s) but he has this smooth buttery seductiveness and a lot of mirth and b.s. and oozy charm. He also seems compulsively, naturally honest. His character is that way, I mean, but Leonard himself seems to have a kind of unpretentious natural-dude thing going on. He’s a little like Owen Wilson, only warmer.
