Watch this 20 year-old clip of Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel reviewing Full Metal Jacket. Listen to Ebert call it “disappointing…too little and too late…doesn’t compare favorably to Platoon,” and then to Siskel saying he “liked the whole film…it’s full of great scenes.”

Every now and then someone writes a looking-back-on-Raging Bull piece (like this one from the Guardian‘s Ryan Gilbey, a nod to the film’s re-release in England on 8.17). And they all report that Martin Scorsese‘s classic wasn’t tremendously popular critically or commercially when it first opened in November of 1980. But what’ s never mentioned is that moviegoers couldn’t hear many of the quieter dialogue scenes with any real clarity, even in the better big-city theatres. And that this almost surely had an effect upon the general reception.

I distinctly remember watching a public screening of Raging Bull in the Sutton Theatre on 57th Street just before Thanksgiving, and leaning forward and cupping my ears and getting angry as I asked myself, “Dammit, why don’t they turn the damn sound up?” I had this reaction every time Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci or Cathy Moriarty were murmuring or muttering their thoughts in their middle-class Bronx apartments, or when “Tommy” the mafia guy was laying things out in his two quiet scenes.

Raging Bull‘s sound was apparently rendered with an intentionally murky-crude quality so it would seem unaffected and working-classy — the idea being that naturalism was equivalent to a kind of aural muck. This almost certainly resulted in tens of thousands of ear-cuppings across the nation given that the sound systems in all but a few big-city theatres back then were atrocious, for the most part. By today’s standards, it was truly the aural Dark Ages.

This sound issue is briefly addressed in the commentary track on the special edition DVD came out in ’05.

I would guess that the murky sound issues probably turned a few people off when it came to recommending Raging Bull to their friends, and that it probably affected the opinions of some critics, if only on a subliminal level. If you can clearly hear what’s being said in a film or a play, you’ll mainly respond to what’s being said — to the content. But if it’s a chore to hear this, then a percentage of critics are going to inwardly say to themselves “fuck this.” And I don’t blame them. So the responsi- bility for Raging Bull‘s underwhelming reception 27 years ago must fall squarely on the shoulders of director Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

I never really heard Raging Bull properly until it came out on laser disc in the early ’90s, and it didn’t sound really great until the special edition DVD hit stores two years ago.

“In the last few decades the emergence of a geek elite has helped legitimize [an] outsider culture and helped bring legions of 97-pound weaklings into the sightlines of the industrial entertainment complex,” writes N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis in a late-to-the-table but remarkably perceptive Comic-Con piece that went up on 8.3.

“In some respects America is now a country of freaks and geeks, self- professed outsiders who imagine themselves somehow different from the herd, perhaps because they are Americans — radical individuals who are united if only by their increasingly narrow interests and obsessions.
“This kind of atomization of the culture has its problems, as we know deep in our bones. Yet for all my worries that we are turning into a nation of iPod people, that√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s only part of the big, postmodern, late-capitalism picture. Despite all the plastic and dissembling, events like Comic-Con represent something genuine and true and, yes, powerful about how people live in the modern world.
“Every day we wake up to navigate through a faceless, inhuman, Made-in-China existence. Some of us escape through literature, some of us burrow deep into movies. And some of us find sweet relief in what, to the outside world, looks entirely disposable, useless and — here√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s that word again — childish.”

My box-office guy is telling me The Bourne Ultimatum earned $25,437,000 on Saturday. That’s a 3% increase over Friday, which is especially impressive considering that Friday’s total included a number of Thursday midnight shows. Tonight’s final count, I’m told, will be in the vicinity of $70,181,000, or about a million less than Steve Mason‘s prediction of $71,250,000.

Of all the flying-mud comments posted about my response piece to Scott Foundas‘s L.A. Weekly Brett Ratner profile, the best was from “aspringcrackaddict”, to wit: “The only other thing I can say about [Ratner’s] movies is that they look like movies, they move like movies and they sound like movies, but I’ll be damned if you can find a real movie in there.”

As I was re-watching that beautiful Criterion DVD of Federico Fellini‘s La Strada a couple of weeks ago (for Jett’s benefit, as I felt he was now, at age 19, old enough to get it), I suddenly detected a striking parallel between my soured relationship with MCN’s David Poland and the one between the irreverent, philosophical-minded tightrope walker who is inaccurately called “Il Matto” (Richard Basehart) and the humorless and brutish Zampano (Anthony Quinn). Basehart confesses to Guilietta Massina at one point that he can’t help provoking or making fun of Zampano, even though he knows he may be putting himself in harm’s way by doing so. This exact same observation is made by Martin Scorsese in the video doc that accompanies the film. It’s odd how films, even ones you think you know backwards and forwards, sometimes pass along these little moments of clarity.

In an alleged “exclusive interview,” News of the World‘s William Spence reported today that Oliver Stone “won’t be making [his] Afghanistan/Bin Laden film” — commonly known as Jawbreaker — “anytime soon.” Stone is quoted as saying that “the story is changing too fast to properly put to film yet. Perhaps some day. Bush is a fascinating portrait in psychopathy and I think it would make a great film, and Blair would have to play a supporting role.”
So with Stone out of the picture the tally of movies about U.S. soldiers or agents grappling with Middle Eastern terrorists or insurgents is now down to eleven — two Afghanis (Lions for Lambs, Charlie Wilson’s War), seven Iraqs (In The Valley of Elah, Redacted, Stop Loss, The Hurt Locker, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Grace is Gone and Nick Broomfield‘s Battle for Haditha), plus the Riyahd shoot-em-up thriller that is Peter Berg‘s The Kingdom plus Gavin Hood‘s Rendition (New Line, 10.12.07), which is about U.S. counter-terrorism efforts.
My understanding is that Marc Foster‘s The Kite Runner is more or less on its own nativist Afghani plane and therefore not really part of the club.

Earlier today Fantasy Moguls columnist Steve Mason said that The Bourne Ultimatum is headed for a $72 million opening, basing this estimate on a $25.5 million Friday. We’ll see where things are tomorrow, but it’s nice to have company on the Bourne numbers. A little man in my chest is saying it maybe-might drop down to $67 to $68 million because people have been heard to complain about shaky-cam nausea and some (including admiring fans) not being able to keep up with the hubba-hubba.

“There’s a lot of things I like about America,” Two Days in Paris director Julie Delpy tells N.Y. Times writer Kristen Hohenadel. “[But] that puritanism, I don’t like.” Delpy is referring to a situation in this country eight or nine years in which certain acts of oral sex became an issue of great Constitutional concern, which Delpy says would never happen in France.

Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg in 2 Days in Paris

The real issue in ’98 and ’99, of course, wasn’t oral sex, but whether or not an American President should be impeached for lying about his having received same, or having otherwise fudged certain particulars under oath. Bill Clinton was not only entitled to lie about this matter; by any standard of dignity he was absolutely honor-bound to do so, given the absolute inappropriateness of such a matter being investigated by lawmakers and given the gutter-grovelling character of many of Clinton’s opportunistic pursuers.
Someone should make a doc about the upstanding, God-fearing lawmakers who pressed this ridiculous issue to the point of embroiling the country in an impeach- ment proceedings — a Lewsinky-gate Hunting of the President.

N.Y. Times writer Michael Cieply sits down at Swingers with Superbad co-writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and he doesn’t even ask why those two cop characters (played by Rogen, Bill Hader) are so anarchic and off-the-reservation absurd (particularly during the second half) compared to the hilariously ground-level genuine-ness you get from the characters played by Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen

I wasn’t expecting Cieply to try and nail Rogen and Goldberg for this, of course, but he doesn’t even friggin’ bring it up. C’mon, man…inquiring minds want to know.
This video clip of Rogen and Superbad producer Judd Apatow talking things over is much more engaging. They discuss a presumably forthcoming N.Y. Times magazine piece that’s been written about them, and whether it makes any sense for a reporter to spend months and months falling them around in order to write it.
I also love the part when Rogen asks what the N.Y. Times magazine is, and then how he follows this with “none of my friends read it” and “I don’t know what it is…I mean, what is it, part of the newspaper on different paper or something?” Apatow gently breaks the news that it’s inside the Sunday paper and that it’s printed on shinier paper, and Rogen goes, “Oh…okay.”

“Some of the best blowjobs I’ve ever gotten were by dudes pretending to be chicks,” Rush Hour 3 director Brett Ratner has told The Advocate‘s Paul Pratt in an interview piece that went up on 8.3.

Advocate writer Paul Pratt, Rush Hour 3 director Brett Ratner

“My first blow job was from a man, but I didn’t know it was a man,” Ratner explains. This incident, he says, is where a Rush Hour 3 scenes comes from when a hot girl who’s getting down with Chris Tucker takes off her wig, which angers Tucker and leads to his accusing her of being a man. “It comes from personal experience,” says Ratner. “It happens to a lot of people.”
I admire this kind of candor. It’s ballsy. I know a lot of guys who would be horrified to admit even to themselves that they were unwittingly blown by a tranny, much less to the world.
If L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas is fast on his feet, he’ll insert a parenthetical in his just-up Ratner profile as follows (wth the suggested parenthetical in boldface): “It matters to Ratner that his films seem expressive of his personality,” and that this is evident “perhaps most of all in the Rush Hour movies…in the preponderance of classic r & b and hip-hop on their soundtracks; in their exuberant celebrations of beautiful women (or men possibly pretending to be same), fast cars and other assorted bling; and in their conscious homages to the movies that made Ratner want to become a director in the first place.”
My favorite comment in the Foundas piece about Ratner’s sexual attitudes and experiences comes from director James Toback, to wit: “There are certain people who can get away with a reputation for flirtation and running around — the paradigm being George Clooney. But very few directors can get away with that, and most of them are cagey enough to conceal what they’re really doing.
“I think that just to enjoy a single life as Brett does is a serious detriment to being taken seriously. It’s as if to be sexually curious and freewheeling implies some form of retardation instead of some form of advanced or enlightened consciousness, which is what it just as often is.”

The only thing wrong with this generally first-rate trailer for Peter Berg‘s The Kingdom (Universal, 9.28) is a single line of narration — spoken by some Don La Fontaine-y sounding guy and also printed on-screen. There’s also a curiously “off” image of Jennifer Garner on the right side of the ad art. Take a close look below and tell me she looks like Garner. Because she looks like…I don’t know, 20% Garner and 80% Mandy Moore?

The Kingdom, which I saw three or four weeks ago, is about a team of crack FBI investigators (Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Garner, etc.) sent to Saudi Arabia to explore the specifics behind an explosion that has killed several Americans inside a Riyadh residential compound. The problem with the narration is that it says that “they have come to catch a killer.” At no point in The Kingdom does anyone hypothesize, much less suspect, that there’s a single guy behind the bombing. Never…not for a second.
The idea of a lone nut killing anyone in that area of the world is ludicrous — every American death, every IED, every sniper shot from the top of a building is a group effort. The Middle East arena isn’t about “find the lone psycho” — it’s about “how do we stop thousands of psycho Islamic jihadists from wanting to shove a spear into the chest of the Great Satan?” But the Universal ad person who wrote the copy said to himself, “Fuck that…it sounds cooler if they’r’e trying to catch a lone killer than a hundred wackos. Screw it…let’s make it sound like it might be The Silence of the Riyadh Lambs.”

What The Kingdom really is, when you break it down and take off the sunglasses, is an episode of CSI: Riyadh with a totally riveting third-act that recalls the trapped-diplomat-ambush scene in Clear and Present Danger…in part. There’s a lot more hide-and-seek, shoot-and-run energy besides this. It’s real fine stuff, but first you have to get through those first two acts, which are…well, fine. By this I mean that they’re acceptable, moderately satisfying, engaging as far as they go, no significant potholes.