Standee in lobby of Rancho Mirage Regal plex, snapped just prior to last night’s 9 pm showing of Logan. 22 minutes of numbing, assaultive trailers before Logan finally began, by which point I was half bent over.
Yesterday Mike Streeter, a New York-based HE follower, tweeted about “Silence walkouts…ahoy!” It happened, he said, during the first show of the day (11:40 am) at the Regal Union Square 14 — “At least 7 that I counted that didn’t come back.” The mini-exodus began sometime after the halfway mark, he reported.
This morning I noticed a comment about a Silence screening from James Mandell in a Rod Lurie Facebook thread, to wit: “Unbearable. Morose, cruel, relentless, sodden. Had to take a break about two thirds in, stepped outside and found a half-dozen other audience members calculating how much more of the film there was. Was at a SAG/critic screening. By the end, a third of the theater (the crowd was at capacity when it began) was empty.”
I’ve seen and reviewedSilence, of course. It’s a bear to sit through, for sure, but I felt curiously touched at the end, as if a tiny candle inside my chest has been lighted by a thought. Here’s how I explained it on 12.10:
Denzel Washington‘s Fences (Paramount, 12.25), which everyone saw last night, is going to kick major Oscar nomination ass — guaranteed noms for Best Picture, Best Director (Denzel), Best Actor (ditto) and Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis, 100% locked to win)…bare minimum. Mykelti Williamson may snag a Best Supporting Actor nom as Denzel’s mentally damaged brother.
I can’t “review” it until the embargo lifts, but c’mon…we were all there last night. It screened, it happened. Fences is stagey but clean (i.e., unfettered), eloquent, emotionally affecting, smooth and damn near close to perfect. It’s a heartfelt, beautifully refined thing, and every semi-intelligent moviegoer over 30 will rush to see it. The unwashed, un-cultured morons will say it’s not cinematic or Dr. Strange-y enough and stay away, but what else is new?
Last night’s blowout screening happened at the Westwood Village; the after-party at Napa Valley Grille. The post-screening q & a included Denzel, Viola and costars Stephen Henderson (who’s also in Manchester By The Sea), Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson, Jovan Adepo and newcomer Saniyya Sidney, who’s also in Hidden Figures and is absolutely destined for stardom.
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Denzel Washington, costar Stephen Henderson during Fences after-party at Napa Valley Grille.
(l. to r.) Fences costars Russell Hornsby, Jovan Adepo, Saniyya Sidney, Denzel Washginton, Stephen Henderson, Mykelti Washington at Napa Valley Grille.
(l.) Fences dp Charlotte Bruus Christensen (Life, The Girl on the Train, about to start shooting Molly’s Game), HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko (Inside Job, Inequality for All, Red Army).
Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg‘s Marathon: The Patriots Day Bombing (HBO, 11.21) screened at the just-concluded Savannah Film Festival, so it’s fair game. I was interested because I was looking to experience a doc that wouldn’t do the “Boston fuck yeah!” thing, which is what everyone expects from Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg‘s Patriot’s Day (CBS Films, 12.21). I wanted to sink into a film that would tell the real, ground-level story of the April 2013 Boylston Street bombing — the prelude, the motivational particulars, the aftermath and whatnot. The whole detailed blow-by-blow.
I was therefore surprised to discover that it’s essentially a documentary about the victims’ medical and emotional recovery from the bomb blasts, and only secondarily a detailed investigation into the whole story — who, what, when, where, why, how, etc. Shot over a three year period, the doc focuses “on a newlywed couple, a mother and daughter and two brothers — all gravely injured by the blast — face the challenges of physical and emotional recovery as they and their families strive to reclaim their lives,” blah blah. Coping with terror, shock, pain, missing limbs, prosthetics, health costs, feeling morose.
So instead of a “Boston fuck yeah!” film, Marathon: The Patriots Day Bombing is a “recovery fuck yeah!” thing. A movie that wears a banner across its chest that says “life can be brutal but the spirit of love and family lives on!”
I couldn’t be more pumped to see Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (TriStar, 11.11) this evening at 6pm. Mine eyes will feast on the clearest, sharpest, most eye-poppy 3D film ever projected in the history of mainstream cinema — intense, extra-clear, super-real. And yet, it’s been said, very calming because this is how everything looks to anyone with half-decent eyesight. And it’s all at 120 frames per second, start to finish.
Here‘s a brief chat I had with Lee and Platt after the press conference. Here‘s my recording of the whole event.
This isn’t The Hobbit, I was told. This is reality, immersive…no fantasy, no special lighting, no makeup on the actors. Your sense of being there will take over and either you’ll go with it or you won’t. But the ultimate state, Lee hopes, is that you’ll “make love to it and then again, over and over and over.” And that the film, in turn, will make love to you. And then, like with any good orgy, you’ll get lost in the back and forth.
All this was explained this morning by Ang Lee, producer Marc Platt and New York Film Festival director Kent Jones at a Billy Lynn press breakfast at the Essex House. The film will screen twice tonight in the highest, sharpest, most needle-precise format ever — 3D, 120 — at the AMC Lincoln Square at 6 and 9 pm.
I’m especially excited about Ang’s intention to project Billy Lynn tonight with light levels that will be way beyond the industry 3D norm — 30 foot lamberts, he says. Most 3D films are shown at 3 foot lamberts, he said. (What he actually meant, I suspect, is that the light levels are diminished to 3 as you’re watching the film through 3D glasses.)
Billy Lynn will also be shown Los Angeles later this month within the super-duper 120 fps/3D format, but most U.S. theatres — i.e., all but two — will show it at slightly lesser or lower levels — 60 fps, 48 fps or 24 fps, and some delivering just plain old 2D. Almost no theatres are equipped to deliver the ultimate experience that viewers will see tonight, but them’s the breaks.
Jones speculated after the press conference that within five years, what we’ll be seeing tonight will be mainstream.
It’s 12:30 pm now. I’ll about to leave for the Elle screening at the Walter Reade in a few minutes, and then the press conferences. And then a two and 1/2 hour break and then
Billy Lynn producer Marc Platt, director Ang Lee, NYFF director Kent Jones inside Essex House dining room at the start of this morning’s press event.
I got into a brief back-and-forth last night with Farran Nehme (a.k.a. Self Styled Siren) about’60s-World War II movies and particularly John Sturges‘ The Great Escape (’63), which I loved as a teenager and 20something but which has been irritating me more and more as I get older.
My basic beef is that the American and British prisoners are so casually enterprising, so smooth and cool and smug, that most of the camp scenes feel more or less like Hogan’s Heroes — i.e., doses of light attitude + mild slapstick comedy mixed with Sgt. Bilko with Germans. Stalag 17 feels much more realistic. The prisoners swagger around like cock of the walks, smirking and dispensing insults and just getting away with every stunt in the book.
The only bad thing that happens during the entire camp portion (or about 65% to 70% of the film) is when one of the three tunnels is discovered by the Germans. That’s it! No other mishaps or mistakes except for the shooting of Angus Lennie‘s Archibald Ives, except in my book that’s a good thing.
Five random irritants: (1) The German camp commanders are far too lenient with the prisoners, who after all have been put into this super-camp because they’re all disobedient bad apples with a high likelihood of trying to escape;
(2) Why oh why don’t the Germans simply post two guards inside each of the barracks so as to spot any possible digging going on?;
(3) I despise Richard Attenborough‘s Roger/”Big X” character, such that I always feel a slight pang of pleasure when he gets machine-gunned to death near the end (not that I’m happy that the other 49 other prisoners are killed but at least Attenborough has been shut up for good);
(4) I hate the Brigadoon-like Scottish accent and cute-little-guy mannerisms used by Lennie, and so I always find it gratifying when Ives gets machine-gunned to death on the camp wire;
(5) That scene when McQueen and Ives explain to their superiors how they intend to dig their way out under the fence like moles is completely absurd and not even vaguely funny, and McQueen’s delivery of his dialogue is straight out of The Honeymoon Machine.
As a prospective Democratic vp candidate Tom Vilsack, the current Secretary of Agriculture and Iowa governor from ’99 through ’07, is an even more depressing prospect that Virginia Senator Tim “basketball-head” Kaine, whom Hillary also likes. Hillary needs a running mate with charisma, eloquence and pizazz — qualities she lacks. There’s something odiously settled and sedate about the guy. He’s in no way an X-factor type. That jowly, heavyish face (he has a semi-inflated-balloon neck wattle) makes him look like a Pavillions manager or a cattle owner or an airline pilot or some guy who lives down the street and mows his lawn every weekend. He looks like a family man who eats meat loaf, mashed potatoes and string beans every other night. Vilsack seems like a decent fellow, but the dullness! I don’t want this platitudinous meathead taking over if Hillary should meet with tragedy. I want my girl ElizabethWarren. This is awful…awful.
A new Quinnipiac Poll has Donald Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton in Florida and Pennsylvania, which of course is all about the FBI saying she lied to some extent about the email thing. Maureen Dowd‘s latest N.Y. Times column summed up the general lament: “It says a lot about our relationship with Hillary Clinton that she seems well on her way to becoming Madam President because she’s not getting indicted. If she were still at the State Department, she could be getting fired for being, as the F.B.I. director told Congress, ‘extremely careless’ with top-secret information. Instead, she’s on a glide path to a big promotion. And that’s the corkscrew way things go with the Clintons, who are staying true to their reputation as the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of American politics. Their vast carelessness drags down everyone around them, but they persevere, and even thrive.” If on top of this she picks no-pizazz Tim Kaine as her vp, her stock will drop even lower. I personally will be crestfallen. Warren, Warren, Warren…for God’s sake, wake up.
Every time someone I like grows a moustache, something inside me dies a little. Or succumbs to a bad mood. When you grow a moustache, it’s like you’ve switched sides. Sign here on the dotted line…congrats, you look like a putz. Decades ago people believed that a moustache gave you a rakishly sexy vibe. That idea began, I suppose, when Clark Gable grew a pencil-line ‘stache in the mid ’30s. It peaked with Robert Redford‘s bushy squirrel in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It began to wither, I’ve come to believe, with the appearance of William Hurt‘s upper-lip growth in Body Heat. Example: I found Kirk Douglas‘s The Bad and the Beautiful character charismatic until he grew a moustache in Act Three. I could mention other instances. Just don’t grow the damn things.
I’ve recalled this before, but during the summer of 1980 I was part of a press contingent that was invited to watch the after-dark filming of John Carpenter‘s Escape From New York on Liberty Island. The gang was out in force — bearded and scruffy Kurt Russell in his Snake Plissken garb, costars Season Hubley and Adrienne Barbeau (who was married to Carpenter at the time), producer Debra Hill. Things began with a well-catered yacht party. By the time it ended everyone had at least half a buzz-on. As some of us prepared to leave to watch Carpenter and Russell shoot a scene under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, Russell got up and addressed the throng: “We’ve had a great time, we’ve loved having you here…now go home!” And everyone laughed their guts out. It was that kind of mood, that kind of party.
Sean Hubley, John Carpenter, Kurt Russell during the shooting of Escape From New York. Carpenter looked like a spry 32 year-old at the time — today he looks like he’s pushing 85.
I wrote my piece for The Aquarian, an alternative New Jersey weekly that’s still going. Here’s a little anecdote that will give you an idea what it was like to collaborate with my stuffy editor, whose name was Karen something-or-other. During the yacht party I overheard Barbeau say to Carpenter, “I have some whites for you, honey, if you need some,” and so I put it in the article. Karen scolded me over the phone for including such a potentially litigious anecdote. “Thank God I caught that and took it out!”, she said. “What were you thinking?” I was thinking, Ms. Tight-Ass, that whites (i.e., Benzedrine or some derivation of) are relatively harmless prescription drugs and that adding this line gave the piece a little inside flavor, directing being a tough job that keeps you up into the wee hours, etc.
Nothing specific is revealed here but spoiler whiners will bitch anyway…just saying: Until this morning the review-embargo date for Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight was 12.21 — i.e., next Monday. But this morning Weinstein Co. reps called or mass-texted a bunch of trades and gave them the green light. Screen International‘s Tim Grierson ran first with a review, followed by Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn. And then all of them Rotten Tomatoes wordslingers jumped in. In my book that means HE is good to go also, right? Except I’ve been taken by surprise. I got nothin’, ma. Haven’t written a damn thing. 12.21 isn’t for another five and a half days.
So I’ll just say this: The Hateful Eight is, as Kohn says, more or less Reservoir Dogs meets Django Unchained but it’s mainly about archetypal flavor and macho swagger, archetypal flavor and macho swagger and more archetypal flavor and macho swagger. Which is what you always get from Tarantino, and why his films have continued to be popular. Because people like that shit. They revel in QT’s patented, talky, menacing-fellows-doing-a-slow-boil thing.
And with the exception of what struck me as needlessly repetitive sadistic beatings of Jennifer Jason Leigh‘s outlaw character, The Hateful Eight delivers a relatively engaging (and sometimes more than relatively) first two-thirds. If you have a place in your head for this kind of thing, I mean. Which I do to some extent. I was a big fan during Tarantino’s ’90s heyday, I mean, and I can still find ways of succumbing to his material as long as I use a filter, although I started to tune out bigtime with the Kill Bill films and came back in only briefly with Death Proof.
The Hateful Eight serves a nice warm bowl of Tarantino soup. A sense of place and mood and attitude that feels relatively well developed and whole. You get beautiful-as-far-it-goes Ultra Panavision 70 photography. You get tasty, savory performances from Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell and Walton Goggins in particular. You get about 45 minutes of snowblindy outdoor footage followed by two-plus hours inside a large, shadowy one-room cabin (i.e., Minnie’s haberdashery). You get a “Lincoln letter” that delivers a sense of morality and decency in the world beyond and a suggestion that lingering Civil War-era hate and prejudices are likely to erode. And a lotta boom boom boom.
You’re sitting there watching this Tarantino thing and you’re also saying to yourself “Yup, this is definitely a Tarantino thing.” You know what it’s more or less gonna be (including a fair amount of violence and blood), and it more or less does that.
The 2016 Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning by The Hollywood Foreign Press Association. GG noms stir the conversational pot, help SAG-snubbed contenders get back into the psychological/emotional swing of things, focus attention in the major categories, toss in a couple of surprises, etc. Here are the nominees plus HE mood-pocket commentary:
Best Motion Picture, Drama: Carol, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Room, Spotlight. HE comment: This is Spotlight‘s to lose. These five are almost certainly the biggies right now in terms of the general conversation, even if Love & Mercy, Brooklyn and Beasts of No Nation deserve their place at the table. I don’t need to remind the community that The Movie Godz are particularly behind Love & Mercy, and concurrently distressed that so many people have said it doesn’t rate because it was released last June. C’mon!
Best Motion Picture, Comedy: The Big Short, Joy, The Martian, Spy, Trainwreck. HE comment: Huzzah for The Big Short! The HFPA can nominate The Martian as a comedy and even give it an award and that’s fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that it died yesterday as a Best Picture contender when SAG declined to give it a Best Ensemble nomination. The likeliest winner is…I don’t know.
Best Actress in a motion picture, drama: Cate Blanchett, Carol; Brie Larson, Room; Rooney Mara, Carol; Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn; Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl. HE comment: Larson is the presumptive favorite (am I wrong?) but HE’s rooting interest is for Ronan first and Vikander second. It’s probably safe to say that Blanchett/Mara will cancel each other out.
Best Actress in a motion picture, comedy: Jennifer Lawrence, Joy; Melissa McCarthy, Spy; Amy Schumer, Trainwreck; Maggie Smith, The Lady in the Van; Lily Tomlin, Grandma. HE comment: Schumer is in the running! (Please note that I put her in an earlybird HE Oscar chart last September.) This is mainly between Lawrence and Smith; Lawrence is the likely winner…right?
Best Actor in a motion picture, drama: Bryan Cranston, Trumbo; Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant; Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs; Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl; Will Smith, Concussion. HE comment: Leo totally wins this. No way Smith prevails (not with that “I make movies to please my grandmother” remark) but he should nonetheless send a basket of fruit and a bottle of wine to THR‘s Scott Feinberg for getting him this far. Redmayne is a non-starter.
Best Actor in a motion picture, comedy: Christian Bale, The Big Short; Steve Carell, The Big Short, Matt Damon, The Martian; Al Pacino, Danny Collins; Mark Ruffalo, Infinitely Polar Bear. HE comment: Pacino takes it in a walk. Seriously, no clue. Bale and Carell cancel each other out so…what, Damon takes it as a consolation prize for The Martian getting rejected in yesterday’s SAG nominations?
Best Actress in a supporting role in a motion picture: Jane Fonda, Youth; Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight; Helen Mirren, Trumbo; Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina; Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs. HE comment: Fonda owns! Okay, Fonda or Vikander to win. Mirren, Winslet and especially Leigh are placeholders, thrown in to round out the pack. The chief distinction in Leigh’s performance is that she gets slugged six or seven times by Kurt Russell and winds up…okay, no spoiling.
Best Actor in a supporting role in a motion picture: Paul Dano, Love & Mercy, Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation; Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies; Michael Shannon, 99 Homes; Sylvester Stallone, Creed. HE comment: Strongest nominee roster of them all — it’s probably between Rylance, Dano and Stallone but don’t call Elba or Shannon slouches. I’m a Dano guy but I respect each and every performance in this category.