On a fine Sunday afternoon (i.e., yesterday or 8.13), Jeff and Sasha hopped around from topic to topic like Br’er Rabbit —- hippity-hop, hippity-hop. It’s a little early to call any Oscars, but (a) white male filmmakers will once again face an uphill challenge and (b) how does Greta Gerwignot land a Best Director Oscar EARLY next year? Plus a short riff on Jules, the white-skinned, black-eyed alien who befriends Ben Kingsley while sharing a move from David Cronenberg’s Scanners.
Monteverde: “I try to never look back into any regrets because there’s nothing I can do about it now. Jim came to the set. I’ve never seen somebody so committed and so professional on set. He came in and really bled for the film.”
Siegel’s follow-up question, obviously, should have gone something like this: “So your film won a fair amount of respect for sticking to the basics, for being a lean and mean thriller that was almost entirely free of rightwing talking points, and it’s made a ton of money — $173 million in the U.S. and Canada, which is higher than the domestic tally of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning.
“So given all the this accomplishment and begrudging respect from at least the fair-minded critics and pundits out there, what is your understanding about why Angel Studios and Caviezel arranged a special golf-club screening for Donald Trump, who, you may have heard, is a proven criminal, a salivating sociopath and a deranged, egomaniacal Mussolini who’s under three criminal indictments and is facing a fourth in Georgia?
“Why, in short, did Angel and Caviezel poison the well by doing this? Why invite Hannibal Lecter into the chicken coop?
HE shares in the widespread sorrow and empathy for the God-knows-how-many-victims of the Maui (mostly Lahaina) inferno.
Everyone is asking themselves this question: “If I only had 10 or 15 minutes before my house is fully engulfed in flames, what would I try and save, family members and pets aside?”
I would first see if someone nearby was in trouble and needed my help, including any stray dogs or cats who might be wandering around.
I would not risk my life to save a neighbor’s aquarium or wall paintings or 4K flatscreens, and certainly no furniture unless it’s an heirloom or a valued antique.
This may sound small-minded but it’s not really. I would grab my iPhone and two computers plus chargers, connecting cords, computer bags, podcast hardware, etc. Plus as much of my wardrobe as I could save (finest T-shirts, Kooples shirts, favorite jeans, three or four Italian lace-ups, favorite boots.
The below comment exchange appeared Sunday evening (8.13) in “MexicanObeisanceBefore Power,” otherwise known as the post in which Patton Oswalt settled the Barbie misandry dispute with one fell swoop…settled it with two drillbit words that will resonate throughout the known universe between now and the 2024 Oscar telecast — “manospherepiss–nado.”
“Sometimes there’s God, so quickly!!” — Blanche Dubois in AStreetcarNamedDesire.
I was asked why joyful reactions to certain audience-friendly films seem to rub me the wrong way.
“I’m not sure I want to be rubbed by you at all, young lady” — from Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (Rex Harrison to Elizabeth Taylor).
The look of endearment between the young Mexican couple as they munch on a single kernel of popcorn…that magical sparkle as their unexceptional clothing suddenly turns pink…and when they realize they’re actually sitting next to the great Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and America Ferrara…well! That little wink from Margot is so…what’s the word?…sisterly.
No, not literally the snarly Clint Eastwood detective of 40 or 50 years ago. No .357 Magnum action, no “do ya feel lucky, punk?”. But if you’re telling me you’re not fantasizing about a team of uniformed security guys stepping into this Nordstrom mob theft incident and tackling the bad guys and maybe busting them up a bit…if you’re telling me you’re totally cool with this shit, you’re either a wokester or a liar.
This retail theft mob happened at a Nordstrom in California today. Because of broken state laws, these crimes are considered “non-serious” and “non-violent” and nobody will go to state prison, even if caught and convicted. State laws need to be fixed and YES, many people need to… pic.twitter.com/nESaJSxj4p
And yet the Guardian‘s Vanessa Thorpe has posted an article about it and the film itself. Thorpe’s piece is titled “Cleopatra at 60: new book reveals ‘stunning profligacy’ of infamous Hollywood epic.”
Cleopatra‘s 60th birthday was actually celebrated a couple of months ago but who’s counting? The ill-fated RoubenMamoulian version, shot in England, began filming on 9.28.60. The final version, directed and written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, opened on 6.12.63. The final cost was around $40 million in 1963 dollars, or just shy of $400 million today.
Yes, Cleopatra eventually made its money back, slowly but surely.
Thorpe’s article covers the basics about this 251-minute epic (mainly a talkfest but persuasively acted and very handsomely produced), and lists many of the production-out-of-control anecdotes we’ve all read about for decades.
Perhaps Humphrey has uncovered fresh material or perhaps not, but the whole magillah and more is contained in Kevin Burns and Brent Zacky‘s ‘Cleopatra’: The Film That Changed Hollywood, a two-hour, first-rate doc that came out in ’01. It was a DVD supplement at first, and is now included in the Cleopatra Bluray.
Honestly? The Burns/Zacky doc is better than the film itself. It always has been.
An excellent making-of-Cleopatra book is Jack Brodksy and Nathan Weiss‘s “The Cleopatra Papers“, originally published in January ’63.
Below is the humble, unassuming, easy-to-chuckle Greta Gerwig of yore. The woman I knew and really liked back between the late aughts and mid-to-late teens. This is her Lynn Hirschberg W interview, posted on 3.21.17.
Remember what it was like six and a half years ago? It was the calm before the storm. Mao’s cultural revolution of the ’60s and ’70s hadn’t yet migrated to our shores, and being a somewhat older white industry male wasn’t necessarily a felony. The N.Y. Times (Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey) Harvey Weinstein expose wouldn’t break until 10.5.17. Woody Allen‘s Wonder Wheel opened at the N.Y. Film Festival that same month and nobody said boo. The woke virus was a thing, of course, but still simmering in the frying pan and not yet coursing through the cultural bloodstream.
And if you decided to mutually celebrate this huge cultural event, this amusing rite of self-flagellation for straight guys, this exuberant swan dive into Hollywood-stamped misandry, would you wear peach instead of proper pink?
It’s one thing to gracefully go with the Barbie flow while simultaneously shrugging it off, but I would never pull this shit with my 15 year-old son…never. Unless he was really, like, hot to see it or something.
I based my piece almost entirely upon what what Dave Kehr had written the same day in the N.Y. Times. I had, however, been told separately about the circumstances of the removal of the 15 minutes of footage by Toback; he also passed along the same story to Kehr.
Jim told me it was Medavoy who wanted it shorter. Kehr seemed to say it was either Medavoy or perhaps some sinister alternate force within Tristar.
It just seems vaguely indecent that the superior longer cut isn’t on HD streaming. A 4K disc would be nice but not necessary — just high-def would suffice. I really hate watching it on 480p.
