My agonizing sound-synch issues have been solved…I think. The miracle worker was a guy named John Tillett (jtillett@inctech.net) from a San Fernando Valley outfit called INC Technologies. Tillett’s genius move was to disconnect the cable connecting the Digital Audio Output (located at the rear of any high-def TV) to the Sony sound bar, and instead use an HDMI cable to employ the ARC (Audio return Channel) option. 20 minutes after he arrived the sound from all devices (Oppo Bluray, Roku 4, Direct TV, Sherwood Region 2 Bluray) was perfectly synched. Coping with this issue has been a terrible throbbing headache for me, and now it seems to finally be over. And if it’s not I can always call Tillett and ask him to drop by. I’ve talked to several people about this problem over a period of three or four weeks, and not one of them even mentioned the ARC option. This is the home-tech world we live in now. Not that many people understand the whole equation.
Chris Kelly‘s Other People, the first narrative drama screened at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, struck me as deftly written and persuasively well-acted but fraught with self-pity and a little too glum. Wading through and meditating upon cancer death will have that affect. But it’s delicate and restrained and absorbing as far as it goes. And occasionally amusing. But…I don’t know what else to say. I felt a certain respect more than affection.
Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon in Chris Kelly’s Other People.
Some in the Eccles audience were reportedly choking up; not this horse. After the show I spoke to two or three guys (i.e., writers) who were partly critical; one was outright dismissive. I later saw on Twitter that others (but not all) were putting it down.
Relatively few will pay to see this in theatres but it’s really not half bad, especially in terms of the acting. I never pulled back or disconnected; I always felt engaged. There’s already a consensus that Molly Shannon, who plays a spirited suburban mom dying of leiomyosarcoma, will be Best Actress-nominated for a Spirit or a Gotham Award. And that the low-key, somewhat pudgy, ginger-haired Jesse Plemons scores also as her son, a gay showbiz writer grappling with more than just the immediate tragedy at hand.
Kelly’s loosely autobiographical film is about Plemons, a 29 year-old showbiz writer who returns home to drab Sacramento to hang with his cancer-stricken mom (Shannon) as she withers away under the care of Plemons’ under-written homophobic dad (Bradley Whitford) while his two younger sisters (Maude Apatow, Madisen Beaty) watch and fret.
I realized a few minutes ago that I’m either losing or have altogether lost the ability to process life on its own terms, or at the least that a tendency to absorb things from my compulsive columnist perspective is gaining the upper hand. From my bedroom window I was checking out a view of Cannes’ Old Town (i.e., “Le Suquet“) and the radiant blue sky and the rooftops with their century-old clay tiles, bathed in the bright afternoon light. As good as it gets. And then I tapped the windowsill with my left thumb. Yes, I’d just tried to zoom in on the view by tapping my Apple trackpad. Had to laugh.
Two Days, One Night‘s Marion Cotillard won the New York Online Film Critics award today for Best Actress — her third triumph in the wake of the Boston Film Critics Society and the New York Film Critics Circle having decided the same thing within the last few hours/days. The three trophies also acknowledged her work in The Immigrant, but what are the odds that the Weinstein Co., distributor of that James Gray film, will launch a campaign for Cotillard at this late stage? Slim to none.
Established award-season analysts are going to pooh-pooh the Cotillard surge but the fact is that all along the chummy, entrenched know-it-alls (myself included) have been saying “Julianne Moore is due, Julianne Moore is due, Julianne Moore is due” and she definitely is, but now we have three major critics groups saying “Marion Cotillard, Marion Cotillard, Marion Cotillard” and a fourth, the Los Angeles Films critics Association, saying “Patricia Arquette” with Moore as runnner-up.
At the very least we’re seeing a significant disconnect between industry sentiments and the passions of Los Angeles, New York and Boston-based critics. Reality is knocking on your door, awards analysts and conventions-wisdom spouters. What say ye?
“Gentlemen of the court, there are times when I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race and this is one such occasion.” — Kirk Douglas‘s Colonel Dax character in Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory.
Yesterday older, mostly white middle-class voters, understandably enraged about the generally healthy economy, the lowest unemployment rate in many years, a successful implementation of Obamacare, no terrorist attacks over the last six years and the fact that two people with the Ebola virus flew into this country and infected three health-care workers, installed a Republican majority in the Senate and a big Republican majority in the House. And today a major, must-see Chris Nolan film about the ruination and abandonment of our planet is opening nationwide. It seems to me that there’s a certain ironic linkage in that, and most likely a general disconnect among the natives.
Tens of thousands of Americans will be seeing Interstellar today and over the next five days and beyond, including those who voted for all of those highly principled Republicans who’ll be sworn in next January. The rural, mostly-white yokels who voted against President Barack Obama‘s Stalinist health-care system, his African heritage and his utter failure to stop the scourge of Ebola may be touched by Nolan’s film, and they may nod in recognition as they consider a possible future in which earth has become all but uninhabitable. But it’s probably a safe bet that very few of them will say as they walk out of the theatre in Bumblefuck, Kansas or wherever the fuck they live, “Yeah, the earth is partly destroyed now and our grandchildren and great-grandchilden will be really screwed if we don’t do something…hey, who did we just vote for?”
I had a couple of opportunities to see Julianne Moore‘s performance as a psychologist and college professor coping with “Al Z. Heimer” (a Norman Mailer term) in Still Alice. If I’d gone I could offer an assessment or two, but I decided against seeing it because I have a problem with “surrender to the void” movies in which the main character is totally doomed from the get-go. The young organ donors in Never Let Me Go, Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad, Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A.. It’s great that Moore is now back in the conversation as a potential Best Actress contender, but I’m going to have to overcome my resistance to what sounds to me like a feature-length version of the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which Keir Dullea disconnects HAL’s higher brain functions.
I sat down next to a know-it-all couple before this morning’s press and industry screening of Jason Reitman‘s Men, Women & Children. Late 40s, early 50s. A bit aloof and snooty, but I can roll with that. They either knew everything or were curious about everything…chattering away and vibrating with the spirit of journalistic engagement. When I heard her talk about Birdman I asked if she’d seen it locally, and she said she’d just come back from the Venice Film Festival. “Oh.” Anyway, around the hour mark they abandoned the Reitman film. They bolted, scrammed, ducked out like thieves. I’m presuming it wasn’t because one of them had a doctor’s appointment and the other wanted to offer comfort.
Ansel Elgort, Kaitlyn Dever in Jason Reitman’s Men, Women and Children.
I stayed but I’m afraid I agree. After the collapse of Labor Day Reitman needed at least a critical hit, but Men, Women & Children ain’t it. It probably won’t be much of a commercial hit either. It’s an evils-of-the-internet movie…the absorption, the screens, the banality, the sense of drifting, the absence of vitality…except it reflects the banality too well. Is is what it’s lamenting. It’s a relatively empty flick about several distracted, lazy, delusional people sitting around texting each other and talking selfies and surfing porn sites. New title: “Screens, Texts & Aridity of Existence.”
Your empty, passive life is reflected in your empty, passive texting and contemplation of screens, screens and more screens. Is that all there is, Peggy Lee?
Paramount will pop Jason Reitman‘s Men, Women & Children limited on 10.3 or about…what, three weeks after it plays at the Toronto Film Festival? Wide break on 10.17. The news was broken by In Contention‘s Kris Tapley. Teens, oddball parents, infidelity, online porn, icky impulses, maybe a stray predator or two. Directed, produced by Reitman. Based on a darkish book by the somewhat libidinal-minded Chad Kultgen. Cowritten by Reitman and Erin Cressida Wilson. Adam Sandler, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ansel Elgort, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, J.K. Simmons, Dennis Haysbert. I’ll be watching for comparisons to Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect, which dealt with similar material.
The trailer pops tomorrow but where’s the poster? Where are the stills?
IMDB plant review: “I recently attended a screening for Men, Women & Children and I was impressed at how well put together the film is. The performances were all fantastic, and the music and atmosphere blended in nicely. The movie itself is very ‘true to life’ and I’m sure many folks would relate to the situations that take place. Sandler gave one of his greatest performances. Reitman was in attendance at the screening. Great acting, great story, nicely directed.”
If I don’t fall for Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street when I see it this Friday I’ll be flabbergasted, so let’s just assume it’ll have some prominent position among HE’s revised Best Films of 2013 (features and docs, merit alone, in this order, forget award season for now), and probably among the top five: 1. Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave; 2. Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis; 3. Spike Jonze‘s Her; 4. Jean Marc Vallee‘s Dallas Buyer’s Club; 5. J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost; 6. Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color; 7. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity; 8. Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past; 9. Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight; 10. Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha; 11. Morgan Neville‘s 20 Feet From Stardom; 12. Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station; 13. Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra; 14. Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips; 15. Jeff Nichols‘ Mud; 16. Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska; 17. Nicole Holfocener‘s Enough Said; 18. Ziad Doueiri‘s The Attack; 19. Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Short Term 12; 20. Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color; 21. Gabriela Cowperthwaite‘s Blackfish; 22. John Lee Hancock‘s Saving Mr. Banks; 23. Ron Howard‘s Rush; 24. Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect; 25. Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier‘s Muscle Shoals; 26. Dror Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers.
HE’s Best Films of 2013 (features and docs, merit alone, in this order, forget award season for now): 1. Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave; 2. Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis; 3. J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost; 4. Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color, 5. Spike Jonze‘s Her; 6. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity; 7. Jean Marc Vallee‘s Dallas Buyer’s Club; 8. Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past; 9. Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight; 10. Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha; 11. Morgan Neville‘s 20 Feet From Stardom; 12. Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station; 13. Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra; 14. Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips; 15. Jeff Nichols‘ Mud; 16. Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska; 17. Nicole Holfocener‘s Enough Said; 18. Ziad Doueiri‘s The Attack; 19. Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Short Term 12; 20. Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color; 21. Gabriela Cowperthwaite‘s Blackfish; 22. John Lee Hancock‘s Saving Mr. Banks; 23. Ron Howard‘s Rush; 24. Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect; 25. Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier‘s Muscle Shoals; 26. Dror Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers; 27. Penny Lane‘s Our Nixon.
Three days ago A.V. Club’s Drew Fortune posted a q & a with The Canyons screenwriter Brett Easton Ellis. And there’s something that Sasha Stone said during our Oscar Poker chat a few hours ago that feeds into a similar comment that Ellis made. Stone said that J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost has to be seen in a theatrical environment because it really needs to be be front and center — it needs to dominate or command a viewer’s attention, and that viewers needed to give it their all and not watch it home with all the distractions. Here’s the Ellis quote:
“I have to admit that I might have been faking it for the last two or three years in terms of not accepting the fact that American film, as an art form, is nowhere near the place it once was, and that people have drifted over toward television and content on the internet. Basically, film and serious, auteur-driven movies…no one’s interested. I experienced the disconnect really powerfully for the first time this year. I do go to movies, and I still have that habit from when I was young: I want to drive to the theater, and I want the movie to control me. I don’t want to sit in my bedroom able to control the movie, and turn it off whenever I want. I like the fact that the movie demands things of you, and that’s what was always exciting about the moviegoing experience. I think for younger people, that just doesn’t hold an appeal. I’ve seen a lot of movies this year, and nothing’s good. I was really kind of depressed by it, but this idea that movies were no longer at the center of the culture definitely was announcing itself to me within the last three years. Sometimes an art form can lose popularity, and it’s not speaking to the masses in the way that it once was. This has been going on for a long time in American film, and yeah, it’s mildly depressing.”
I’m not feeling the energy to write a full-on review of Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim (Warner Bros., 7.12) because I felt…well, a form of admiration mixed with a growing fatigue and disconnect when I saw it a couple of weeks ago, and I just can’t get it up today, man. No more than I could write an Architectural Digest review of a huge 75-story office building in midtown Manhattan. I admire the obvious fact that this Jaeger vs. Kaiju (i.e., super robots vs. supersized amphibious monsters) flick was made with heart and steel balls and technical mastery second to none. A lifelong believer in monster realms, GDT presided over every last detail of this gargantuan enterprise, delegating nothing and working his ass off 18/7 and delivering, in the end, a visitation that feels relatively fresh, imaginative and (as far as it goes) non-derivative. And it’s very briskly edited.
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