Sight & Sound Highbrows Lean Wokey

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The 2022 Sight & Sound poll popped earlier this afternoon, and we all knew what the results would reflect, right? Not so much with films directed by older white guys (especially OWG directors with a somewhat dicey or shady reputation), and up with films directed by women and POCS. And so Chantal Akerman‘s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxel, a 201-minute film about duty, survival, sex working, regimentation and repetition, and which ends with a “john” getting stabbed in the throat with a pair of scissors, was named #1.

In other words, (a) down with the insensitive asshole patriarchy, (b) up with chopped onions carefully mashed into ground beef, and (c) hooray for Delphine Seyrig finally having an orgasm.

In 2012 Jeanne Dielman ranked #36 on the BFI list…fine. But how did it manage to suddenly vault up to the #1 position? Admired films tend to move up gradually, no? It feels to some of us like Dielman won because of an organized campaign among feminist-minded critics. If Dielman had landed in the 10th or 12th spot in the 2012 poll, today’s win would have seemed more of a natural thing. But to go from 36th place a decade ago to #1 in ’22? It seems to me like the fix was in.

You can’t argue or complain with the BFI critics, who are primarily a bunch of highbrow snoots trying to out-snoot each other.

If you ask me the BFI Directors Greatest Films of All Time list is a lot more grounded and sensible.

So 60th-ranked Moonlight has edged out Casablanca (#61), Goodfellas (#62) and The Third Man (#63). I’ve seen all four, and I’m telling you straight from the shoulder that there’s no way Moonlight deserves, deliberately or haphazardly, to be ranked above the other three…NO WAY ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH.

Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo is now ranked second, and I honestly thought it would take a bigger hit than that. I figured the legend of Hitch having allegedly made Tippi Hedren‘s life hell during the making of The Birds and especially Marnie…okay, let’s drop it, but I’m slightly surprised.

Three indisputably great 20th Century films about conflicted white males dealing with disillusionment and corruption — David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (’62), Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (’74) and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (’69) — were booted off the critics’ list of the top 100. Polanski had to pay for his sexual indiscretions of the ’70s and ’80s, I suppose, and Peckinpah had to be banned for his notorious misogyny. But why did the saga of T.E. Lawrence get the shaft? What exactly did Lean or Lawrence do to earn the heave-ho? Was it the old arrogant British imperialism thing, or the fact that women are barely seen and certainly not heard seen in that classic desert epic?

1. “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxel” (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
2. “Vertigo” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
3. “Citizen Kane” (Orson Welles, 1941)
4. “Tokyo Story” (Ozu Yasujiro, 1953)
5. “In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai, 2001)
6. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
7. “Beau travail” (Claire Denis, 1998)
8. “Mulholland Dr.” (David Lynch, 2001)
9. “Man with a Movie Camera” (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
10. “Singin’ in the Rain” (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1951)

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Loathsome Farce For Low-Rent Goons

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A large Tyrannosaurus Rex might be be able to smash a cheaply-made bedroom door by shattering the door frame, but a big bear wouldn’t be able to do that…sorry. So right away the credibility is out the window. Plus the CG stinks. If only Werner Herzog had written and directed this…seriously.

Cocaine Bear (Universal, 2.23) stands ready to fling damp fecal matter upon our cinematic temple and lower the levels of cultural discourse. It’s the new Snakes on a Plane, and that piece of cheap exploitation blew chunks to begin with.

The tone, obviously, is one of absurdist action humor of the lowest possible order.

There’s clearly no opportunity to buy into the fantasy — every shot in this trailer says “don’t believe this crap!…are you a moron because only stoned morons would derive the slightest enjoyment from a film this idiotic and ludicrous. I mean, it’s not even good enough to be called perverse.”

Universal Pictures, director Elizabeth Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden aren’t the core problem here. They’re just looking to make a buck and pay the bills. The skeevy, scurvy, bottom-of-the-barrel chumps out there in megaplexland who find this live action-meets-Wile E. Coyote-type humor funny or even slightly amusing…they’re the problem.

An actual Georgia-residing bear (a guiltless creature of basic instinct and no ulterior motives) died of self-ingested cocaine poisoning in 1985, and 37 years later a movie company has made a dark comedy out of this…A COMEDY!! If this isn’t a searing indictment of a thoroughly rancid and morally corrupted lower-middle-class culture, I don’t know what could be.

You know who’s going to like this film and tweet about it endlessly? Trumpies!

I’ve changed my mind — Banks and Warden need to answer for this. After Cocaine Bear is released and streaming to great profitability, they’ll need to check themselves into a moral rehab facility.

Between Showings

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Today I caught two year-end films at Dolby 24 (1359 Sixth Avenue, 28th floor) — Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith‘s Emancipation at noon, and then Sam Mendes‘ Empire of Light (Searchlight, 12.9), which I initially saw in Telluride three months ago.

I’m sorry but despite a certain over-calculated tidiness and occasional on-the-nose moments that pop through now and then, Empire of Light remains my favorite film of the year — the most romantic, the most emotionally delicate and soothing and subtle and soft-touchy, and filled with satisfying and at times even sublime performances.

The great Olivia Colman towers above all, but Michael Ward, Colin Firth, Tanya Moodie (as Michael’s mom), Toby Jones and Tom Brooke…everyone is just right.

I’ll share some Emancipation thoughts later this evening.

Christine McVie

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There was something so soulful and sensual (at least in my head) about Christine McVie‘s singing voice. And I always sensed something randy about her nature. She was hot and heavy with Dennis Wilson in ’73 or ’74…something like that. I used to fantasize about her now and then…sorry.

Of all the Fleetwood Mac hits McVie crooned, my all-time favorite is the melancholy “Did I Ever Love You?.” (Or “Did You Ever Love Me?” — one of those.) Co-written by McVie and Bob Weston, it’s about a relationship that’s no longer working, largely due to the guy behaving like an aloof dick for too much of the time.

Released as a single in ’73, the song didn’t track. “Did I Ever Love You?” is Fleetwood Mac’s only flirtation with steel drums, which obviously makes it sound kind of Jamaican.
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McVie passed today at age 79. I’m very sorry.

Friendly “Babylon” Screenings

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I’ve been working on launching a special industry-friendly film series at the renowned Bedford Playhouse, which is run by Dan Friedman. The program is called Bedford Marquee, and a 12.5 screening of Damien Chazelle’s Babylon will kick things off.

I’ll be offering a few observations (including some historical footnotes) a few minutes before the show begins at 7 pm.

Located within the Clive Davis Arts Center, the BP is one of the finest commercial screening facilities I’ve ever settled into — easily the technical equal of any upscale industry screening facility (including the Academy Museum theatre and/or the classic AMPAS theatre in Beverly Hills) in the U.S., Paris, Cannes or anywhere.

Esteemed restoration guru Robert Harris supervised the BP’s upgrade.

We’re also planning a special mid-January screening of the recently restored Invaders From Mars (‘53). The film was painstakingly restored by Scott MacQueen, who will present a master class about the film’s history and cultural influence.

A sprawling three-hour epic of 1920s Hollywood, Babylon opens nationwide on 12.23.

Media Types Rooting for “Avatar’s” Shortfall

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From “Avatar and the Mystery of the Vanishing Blockbuster,” a N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine piece by Jamie Lauren Keiles (11.30.22):

“The history of recorded images might be described as an incremental quest to master the building blocks of consciousness — first sight, then motion, then sound, then color. With Avatar (’09), Cameron revealed that human ingenuity could marshal even more: physics, light, dimensionality; the ineffable sense of an object being real; the life force that makes a thing feel alive.

“This is not to say that Avatar is good. The movie is basically a demo tape, each plot point reverse-engineered to show off some new feat of technology. The awe it inspires was not just about itself but rather the hope of new possibilities. It was easy to imagine someone in 2009 leaving the theater and asking: ‘What if we made more movies like this? What if we made good movies like this?’

“The year 2009 was a relatively optimistic one: Obama had just won on the audacity of ‘hope.’ Climate change still felt far away. The forever wars were going to end. Surely we would fix whatever caused the recession. Avatar pointed toward a widening horizon — better effects, new cinematic worlds, new innovations in 3-D technology. It did not yet seem incongruous to wrap a project based in infinite progress around a story about the perils of infinite growth.

“Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century, 12.16) will emerge into an almost total deferment of that dream. Today, 3-D is niche (at best); digital effects are used to cut costs; home streaming is threatening the theater; and projects of ambitious world-building are overlooked in favor of stories with existing fanbases.”

Balenciaga Furor Scripted by Ruben Ostlund?

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If you’ve seen Ruben Oastlund‘s The Square you’ll recall that the downfall of Claes Bang‘s “Christian,” curator of Stockholm’s X-Royal art museum, is caused by a risque video ad.

A promotion for an art installation called “The Square,” it shows a very young white ragamuffin blonde girl being blown to bits. The video quickly goes viral for obvious reasons, and before anyone knows it media types, religious figures and Average Joes are calling for Christian’s head.

A similar child-related scandal erupted five or six days ago over a pair of Balenciaga ads that seemed to blend images of little girls with suggestions of BDSM, conveying a perverse and icky mentality that many felt had crossed an ethical line. Teddy bear purses, bondage accessories, etc.

Bakenciaga reps have apologized for both ads and removed them from their social media. Nonetheless angry reactions have resulted in a Balenciaga store in Beverly Hills being trashed and graffiti’ed. Celebrities who’ve promoted Belnciagia product, including Kim Kardashian, Isabelle Huppert and Nicole Kidman, have been pressured to cut ties, etc.

Here’s an 11.29 timeline piece by insider.com’s Samantha Grindell.

The Balenciaga uproar is strikingly similar to the one depicted in The Square…just saying.

Beethoven’s Funeral March

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“The ‘Oscar Movie’ Is Dying,” an 11.28 lament by World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy, was linked to yesterday (11.29) by Real Clear Politics — congrats.

Owen Gleiberman’s 11.29 review of the apparently loathsome Violent Night (Universal, 12.2) acknowledges the same dynamic — on top of 2022 award-season films exuding a curious “meh” lethargy, Joe and Jane Popcorn (especially the 40-plus crowd) have mostly shined the notion of seeing these films in theatres:

One key reason is that there’s zero overlap between elite industry sensibilities and the generally coarse, cynical and fed-up attitudes of popcorn inhalers.

The introduction to that brilliant 11.28 video essay on the Oscars’ 94 year history reminds that over the last decade award-season films have become their own separate and myopic genre — and with the pernicious SJW factor the vast majority has simply tuned them out.

The decisive gutshot bullet that killed the award-season brand (I’ve said this over and over) was fired on 4.25.21 by Steven Soderbergh, producer of the 93rd Academy Award telecast.

From “Norma Desmond: It’s The Oscars That Got Small,” posted on 9.30.21:

Ridiculous

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You can’t “update” Easy Rider any more than you can reboot the half-century-old cultural elements (motorcycle-riding counterculture types, Jimi Hendrix & The Band on the soundtrack, cruising across the Southwest only to be murdered by rural bumblefucks). That was then, this is now.

But the idea of Zoomer wokesters clashing with Lauren Boebert gun freaks in some rural setting…that could work. I just don’t know about the choppers and the greenbacks in the gas tank.

Morally Deplorable

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The 2.24.23 release of Cocaine Bear (Universal), a heartless, cruel-minded thriller if there ever was one (or so it would seem), is fast approaching.

Posted on 8.1.22: In November 1985, a dead black bear was discovered in Chattahoochee National Forest. Nearby was a torn-open duffel bag that had apparently contained 75 pounds of Bolivian marching powder, and which had apparently fallen out of a smuggler’s plane. (Flown by Tom Cruise’s Barry Seal?) The clueless bear had eaten a good portion of the coke and overdosed.

The guy who found the bear’s ruined body didn’t alert authorities (one guess why) and it wasn’t until 12.20.85 when authorities discovered the carcass. A medical examiner at the Georgia State Crime Lab said that that the bear’s stomach was “literally packed to the brim with cocaine.”

Elizabeth Banks has directed a “character-driven thriller” about the poor bear’s misfortune as well as, one presumes, certain humans who quickly developed an interest in the free cocaine. It’s called Cocaine Bear (Universal, 2.24.23). The film costars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the late Ray Liotta.

The title alone suggests that Banks and her producers see the story as an opportunity for bear thrills, or at least partly that.

The body of this poor, poisoned animal eventually found its way to a taxidermist, and is now on display inside the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall (720 Bryan Ave., Lexington, Kentucky). There’s a sign around the bear’s neck that refers to him as “Pablo Escobear.”

In short Kentucky bumblefucks regard the idea of a furry beast dying of a cocaine overdose as a hoot.

HE to Banks and Universal marketing: HE believes that the death of an innocent animal who died of cocaine ingestion is not in itself an opportunity to do “funny” or “thrilling”. It sounds to me like a metaphorical tale about our casual greed and cruelty and indifference to the natural order of things — about the fact that forest animals have a certain nobility while we have none.

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