TAR‘s muddy, under-lighted, haunted-house interior visuals were shot on an Arri 765 (film) and an Arri Alex (digital).

HE to Santa Barbara friendo: “My final verdict is that I kinda hate TAR visually, and that the various shadings and ghostings and mysteries are just too tricky by half. It’s too referenced, too smartypants. It drives you nuts.”

Excerpt from 12.9.22 TAR piece by Slate‘s Dan Kois:

HE to Santa Barbara friendo: “Field is deliberately snobbing the audience. Shipobo-Conibo is the straw that broke this camel’s (my) back. On one hand Lydia has been savagely cancel-cultured by robots, and at the same time she’s totally responsible for her fate? Field is all over the map. Truly great art speaks to the none-too-bright, under-educated person as well as the brilliant viewer with an elegant education.”

Santa Barbara friendo to HE: “I’ve had the reverse reaction. On the surface TAR is engaging and it can be enjoyed by everyone. After repeated viewings (like you’ve done) you start to uncover deeper layers.”

HE to Santa Barbara friendo: “Field is only interested in attracting your well-dressed, elegant education, hybrid-driving crowd. I’ve seen the damn thing four times, and it still frustrates me.

“Kois’s analysis piece states the following: “In the middle of the night, Lyda gets up to comfort daughtet, Petra. And if you look closely, you’ll see, motionless in the dark corner of Lydia’s bedroom, nearly unnoticable at the back of the frame, a red-haired woman — Krista.

“First, you can’t notice Krista standing in a dark corner of Lydia’s bedroom because Florian Hoffmeister‘s cinematography is so covered in mud and shadow that you can’t see much. That’s intentional. And two, you’re telling me I have to watch this film a fifth time?”

TCM’s death reel errs grievously by calling the late Leon Vitali an “actor”. As Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker makes clear, Vitali only began as an actor. He became a legendary figure by devotionally serving the ultimate sorcerer, Stanley Kubrick, on a 24/7 basis.

From “At Long Last Leon,” posted on 5.12.18:

“Vitali said to himself early on that he’d like to work for Kubrick. What he didn’t expect was that once that work began Kubrick would want Vitali at all hours, all the time…focus and submission without end. If the early sentiment was “I’d give my right arm to work for Stanley Kubrick.” Kubrick’s reply would be “why are you lowballing me? I want both arms, both legs, your trunk, your lungs, your spleen, your ass and of course your head, which includes your brain.”

“Yes, Virginia — Stanley Kubrick was no day at the beach. Then again what highly driven, genius-level artist is?

“But he was also a sweetheart at times, to hear it from Leon. It was just that Kubrick believed in trust and had no time for flakes, fractions or half-measures of any kind. His motto was that if you’re “in”, you should be in all the way. And Vitali was, obviously, and yet during those 21 years he worked on only three Kubrick films — The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. But that was Kubrick, a brilliant control freak who wound up eating himself in a certain sense.”

Read more

We’re basically talking about a p.r. move. The Elon Musk proxy would essentially be a facilitator, a smoother-over. He/she wouldn’t change the fact that Musk, Twitter’s enfant terrible CEO, wants to bring about the subjugation and, if possible, the ruination of the fanatical wokester left — a cause that in itself exudes a certain honor as wokesters aren’t just culturally suppressive Stalinists but Trotskyites. Alas, Musk has counter-balanced that horror by being impolitic and a blunderer.

Chappelle invites Musk on stage, Musk gets booed for 10 minutes and stands there not knowing what to say, then Chappelle insults the people booing by saying they are in the cheap seats. Comedy punches down, and the crowd says “F*ck You.” Good.
pic.twitter.com/05PFzW2npi

— Christian Christensen (@ChrChristensen) December 12, 2022

I watched Tar again a couple of nights ago. This time for the subtitles — every line clear and fine, no breathy muttering or whispers getting in the way. But this time I was bothered by Florian Hoffmeister’s occasionally under-lighted cinematography. I’d expected Todd Field’s film to look a tiny bit sharper or more vivid on the Sony OLED, and it wasn’t. Every shot seemed a shade too dim and subdued, at times even murky. That was it — my patience was at an end. No more reassessments .

Read more

Ask any half-knowledgable film fan about a 15 year-old western called The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, and he/she will say “aces, a classic…an art western that put Andrew Dominik on the map.” But critics were divided back in ‘07, and one critic in particular, the grumpy Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, gave it a lousy one-and-a-half stars. I replied that within the critical community, trashing James was a form of blasphemy.

It took a few years for the smart set to recognize that 2007 was one of the greatest movie years of all time — right up there with 1939, 1962, 1971 and 1999.

Did anyone recognize Kate Winslet in Avatar 2? I certainly didn’t. She plays Ronal, a female leader of the water-soaked Metkayina Navi and wife of big kawabunga chief Tonowari, but c’mon…the character could have been played by anyone. Winslet wore mo-cap gear and performed the part vocally, but who can honestly say they went “yeah, I can see Kate’s face blended with the Navi features” or “yeah, that’s Kate’s voice”? Cliff Curtis played Tonowari — another no-recognize.

“This is a movie that could win Best Picture,” David Poland recently said about Damien Chazellle‘s Babylon (Paramount, 12.23). “It’s about Hollywood, it has two major stars doing major star work, and while it shocks and horrifies in certain ways, it is, more often than not, entertaining as hell.”

I’m a fan of Chazelle’s uncompromised, bold-as-brass approach to making Babylon — you certainly can’t say he holds back or applies half-measures. He really splashes passion paint upon the canvas in a way that Eric von Stroheim would have approved of.

But Babylon, sadly, is not an Academy-friendly film, and Poland knows this. He’s bending over backwards to be as supportive as possible, and I understand the impulse as I feel that bravura filmmaking of this sort, however brash or grotesque or off-putting as it is from time to time, shouldn’t be trashed. Auteurist energy of this sort should be applauded, as least by the standard of “A for effort..”

Poland knows that Babylon hasn’t a prayer of being Best Picture-nominated, much less winning. He knows this, and yet he claims “it could win Best Picture.”

Poland: “When I first saw the film, a few weeks ago, I was overwhelmed by the relentlessness of it, I admit. It felt like being force-fed a 20 course meal… like young geese being stuffed for foie gras.

“I don’t know if it’s Robbie or Pitt’s best work… but you won’t see any work from them that is better than this. Margot Robbie is the Energizer bunny…she will not stop. It’s like watching, in one film, the best and the worst of desperation and manic depression. Stunning performance. Brad Pitt is pretty much the exact opposite, style-wise. His character is already a virtual deity, so the performance is all in his eyes, careful physicality, and in the performance of the script.

“Don’t fear the elephant shit. Honestly, if the MPA would allow it, I’d be doing TV spots with it.”

I’d forgotten that Gabriel LaBelle‘s Sammy Fabelman (aka young Steven Spielberg) conveys a joy face** while twirling around twice.

I’d also forgotten that John Williams‘ score sounds a little too peppy and jaunty — a tad reminiscent of Franz Waxman‘s Rear Window score at the very end.

Honestly? I’m kinda okay with the center-horizon shot. Or at least I didn’t find it “boring as shit.”

The Fabelmans has my favorite ending of the year, the fact that this is verbatim what John Ford said to Spielberg makes it even better lmao pic.twitter.com/28JTdTsbzu

— anish🇦🇷 (@sithshailaRRR) December 14, 2022

** the satisfaction that any fledgling director would feel after meeting and getting instructed by a showbiz legend.

Read more

Speaking as a decades-long admirer of James Cameron gutslammers, I need to honestly say that I really don’t want to see three more Avatar films…truly, no foolin’. I decided this after seeing Avatar 2: The Way of Water late Friday afternoon. A riveting experience, for sure, but I realized midway through that I might not want to see it a second time. Because it left me with a feeling of aural, visual and spiritual exhaustion that I don’t want to re-experience.

And given Cameron’s stated plan to churn out three more Avatar flicks between now and 2028 (for a grand total of five), I really don’t want to return three more times to that aftermath feeling of being rocked and jolted and pulverized with little to show for it emotionally.

Because Avatar 2 isn’t Titanic. The first Avatar wasn’t either, but it told a great story (four-act structure) and felt like such a major visual event that it seemed extra-historic. Avatar 2 is more of a power-punch workout that an emotional massager or meltdown. I realize that Avatar 3 is more or less completed and there’s no ducking it, but three will be enough, fellas. C’mon, Jim, let it go…move on to something else.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s “Is James Cameron’s Vision for the Avatar Franchise a Dream or a Delusion?” (12.18):

Excerpt #1: “After the original Avatar, when Cameron laid out his master plan to make four sequels to it, my honest thought was, ‘Has he lost his mind?’ Not because I thought the plan was commercially unfeasible, but because I couldn’t wrap my own mind around why the director of Titanic — a timeless and awesome film, because it was one of the most moving experiences in the history of popular cinema — could be saying, with the power to do anything he wanted, ‘I’d like to spend the next 20 years making Avatar films.’

Excerpt #2: “We already have a movie culture that’s drowning in imagistic sensation and action overload. Cameron, in movies like The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was one of the virtuoso architects of that blockbuster aesthetic. He’s now competing against the very cinema-as-sensation mystique that overpowered the rest of movie culture, even as he raises the ante on it. I felt a note of magic during the middle hour of The Way of Water, which plunges us into the ocean with a kind of virtual-reality immersion. But the film’s extended action climax? That felt like something out of Die Hard VIII: Die Harder on a Boat, only rendered in 3D. At a certain point I thought, ‘So what?'”

9:40 pm: I tweeted a reply to Zoe Rose Bryant as follows: “Hey, Zoë, I’m a straight white dude, okay, but Jordan Ruimy’s parents are North African so he doesn’t quite qualify. Oscar death to EEAAO!”

Bryant, whose award-season sentiments are basically or mostly “everything is wonderful…every film, every performance…love it all!”…Bryant has bravely blocked me so my tweet doesn’t exist on Twitter. So here it is.

What Zoe meant, in part, is that despite his ethnic heritage, Jordan sounds like a “white dude.” He has that “white dude” attitude. Meaning that he doesn’t seem to understand movies as fully as she does.