In his most recent (12.27) Oscar prediction column, THR’s Scott Feinberg has capitulated to the advancing Macedonian army of Paul Giamatti, star of The Holdovers, and in so doing has merged with the advocacy campaigns of Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone and N.Y. Times columnist Kyle Buchanan.
“I think the Vietnam War drove a stake right through the heart of America. [And] we’ve never really moved [beyond] that…we never recovered.”
I’ve been to Vietnam three times, and would love to return. I’ve even flirted with the idea or moving there permanently. There’s never been the slightest doubt in my mind that Johnson and Nixon administration policy makers brought immense horror and unimaginable slaughter to that beautiful, once-divided country, but during my three visits I’ve never felt anything but the most tranquil vibes. Nobody has ever given me so much as a hint of a dirty look because of my heritage. The natives who fought against the Americans are, of course, in their 70s and 80s or passed on. The 45-and-unders weren’t even born during the hostilities. Nobody wants to carry that war around — we all want to live in the present.
Which is why I didn’t want to watch Ken Burns and Lynn Novick‘s The Vietnam War, a ten-part, $30 million, 17-hour doc about that tragic conflict, when it premiered on PBS almost exactly six years ago (9.17.17).
But last night…I don’t know why exactly, but I felt suddenly drawn to this miniseries. So I watched three episodes — “The River Styx” (January 1964 – December 1965), “This Is What We Do” (July 1967 – December 1967) and “Things Fall Apart” (January 1968 – July 1968). Five hours without a break. This morning I watched episodes #7, #9 and #10.
I was fascinated, fascinated, horrified, saddened, at times close to tears. What a deluge of death, delusion and horror. Immeasurable and irredeemable. The second most divisive war in U.S. history. And I couldn’t turn it off. Had to see it through. Glad I did.
Posted on 8.22.19: I respect the nostalgia that some have shared about the drive-in experience, and I love the Americana aspect of drive-ins…those iconic images of ‘50s and ‘60s films playing to an army of classic Chevy roadsters, Impalas, Buicks, Dodge station wagons, Cadillacs, Ford Fairlanes and T-Birds.
But if you cared even a little bit about Movie Catholic viewing standards (decent sound, tolerable light levels, no headlights hitting the screen every five minutes) you avoided drive-ins like the plague. If you went to drive-in it was mostly for the heavy breathing, and you brought your own beer.
I never actually “did it” at a drive-in. Too uncomfortable. Lots of second-base and third-base action, but what is that in the greater scheme?
Wise guy to HE: “I guess this explains the affection for Elton John ballads. You really are from Connecticut, aren’t you?”
HE to Wise Guy: “What are you saying, that people actually got laid at the drive-in? Some did, I guess. But they sure kept it a secret.”
The last time I saw a film at a drive-in was sometime in the early to mid ’80s. I think it was a Bob Zemeckis film (Used Cars or Romancing The Stone). Somewhere in the northern Burbank area, or in North Hollywood. My first drive-in experience was with my parents, somewhere in the vicinity of Long Beach Island on the Jersey Shore.
Wagner group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead...down in a private plane...decimated, in shards and pieces, flame-roasted.
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Danny Wu's American: An Odyssey to 1947, a documentary that's mostly but not entirely about the experience of genius filmmaker Orson Welles during the mid 1940s, will be released by Gravitas Ventures on 9.12.23.
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Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla (A24, 10.23) is about Priscilla Presley‘s relationship with Elvis Presley, starting with their first meeting in 1959 (when Priscilla was 14), continuing through their 1967 marriage and the 1968 birth of the now-deceased Lisa Marie, and presumably ending (I’ve no clear idea) with Elvis’s death in August 1977.
How, you may ask, will Coppola’s film pass the bullshit test given that (a) it’s based upon Priscilla Presley’s “Elvis and Me (’85),” a suspicious and almost certainly sanitized account of her life with Elvis, (b) the fact that Priscilla is an executive producer on the film, and (c) the possibility that Coppola will adopt the same (or perhaps a similar) mindset that informed her highly fanciful and historically inaccurate Marie Antoinette (’06), another film about a woman who comes to enjoy privilege and splendor by marrying a wealthy and powerful man (i.e., Louis XVI) — a work of impressionism that was obviously not meant to be factual.
And forget about what the #MeToo wokesters will say…pedophilia! depravity! Priscilla was a total victim! Sasha Stone mined this aspect of things a few hours ago.
Before we get into the particulars, consider the fact that the actual Elvis and Priscilla were separated by eight inches of height — Elvis was 6’0″ and Priscilla was (and presumably still is) 5’4″. But in the film, the former Priscilla Beaulieu (later Presley) is played by the 4’11” Cailee Spaeny and Elvis is played by the 6’5″ Jacob Elordi.
Elordi, in short, is 18 inches taller than Spaeny — nearly a foot beyond the eight inches that existed in real life. This in itself pretty much destroys the boundaries of realism. At what point do giant-vs.-midget marriages become visually ludicrous? What if Elordi was 6’7″ and Spaeny was 4’10”, or separated by 21 inches? Spaney is too shrimpy to begin with. She’s the size of a nine-year-old.
I haven’t read Priscilla’s book, but it reportedly presents a well-scrubbed portrait of her sexual life with Elvis. Some biographers believe that Presley was almost immediately intimate with Priscilla, who was 14 when they met in Germany, when Presley was serving in the Army. Presley manager Colonel Tom Parker claimed that their relationship was chaste and proper until Priscilla came of age…HE says bullshit.
According to Alanna Nash‘s “Baby, Let’s Play House“, a seemingly credible, well-written 2009 book, reports that the sexually insecure Presley was totally into “cherries,” as he called them — girls who were barely pubescent.
The same view is held by Presley biographers Susan Finstad, author of “Child Bride,” and Joel Williamson, author of “A Southern Life”.
Presley was apparently more into erotic fiddling around than becoming an actual conquistador. But carnal knowledge is carnal knowledge.
A 14 year-old named Frances Forbes and two girlfriends (Gloria Mowel, Heidi Heissen) participated in “pajama parties” with Presley, Nash’s book says. “Elvis didn’t pay any attention to me [when I was 13], but when I was 14, he noticed me,’ Forbes says. “14 was a magical age with Elvis. It really was.”
In 1960 Presley reportedly fiddled around with Sandy Ferra, the 14-year-old daughter of the owner of the Cross Bow nightclub in L.A.’s Panorama City. In 1974, when Presley was 39, he took up with 14-year-old Reeca Smith.
“Jailbait Confidential,” posted on 10.30.22: If you’re talking inappropriate violations of way-too-young girls in the 1950s, is there really a substantial difference between 23-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis marrying a 13-year-old cousin (obviously not cool but then Lewis and Myra Gale Brown stayed together for 12 years) and 24 year-old Elvis Presley doing the nasty with Priscilla Beaulieu in 1959, when she was 14?
The difference is that Presley and manager Tom Parker kept the particulars under wraps while Lewis stupidly admitted everything.
From “Jerry Lee Lewis’s Life of Rock and Roll and Disrepute,” a 10.29.22 New Yorker piece by Tom Zito:
For decades I’ve been convinced that there are only two Sean Connery 007 films worth re-watching — Dr. No (’62) and From Russia With Love (’63), both directed by Terence Young. Because they’re the only two Connerys that aren’t undermined by high-tech gadgetry, silly stunts, Daffy Duck-level plotting and an attitude of smug financial arrogance on the part of the producers.
Guy Hamilton‘s Goldfinger (’64) was the film that demonstrated how the burgeoning Bond franchise had become drunk on its own fumes and begun to degenerate into foolery. The first two Bonds at least flirted with realism from time to time, but with Goldfinger the realism was more or less out the window.
For a reason I can’t quite fathom I popped in my Goldfinger Bluray last night and endured the damn thing. Okay, I watched it because it boasts a wonderfully clean and richly colored 1080p transfer. There’s no faulting the tech.
Goldfinger runs 110 minutes but feels a bit longer, mainly because it starts to descend into silliness starting with the Auric metal conversion plant sequence in Switzerland (which arrives around the 35-or 40-minute mark), and then it turns a truly ridiculous corner when the setting moves to Goldfinger’s horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky.
The instant wham-bam conversion of Honor Blackman‘s Pussy Galore from a flinty lesbian into a heterosexual James Bond ally is my favorite bit of absurdity, but compacting that black Lincoln Continental with a dead gangster in the back seat and a sizable load of gold bars in the trunk…none of it makes a lick of sense. Not to mention those Fort Knox Army troops pretending to succumb to knockout gas with absolute uniformity…arguably the dopiest display of substandard action choreography in the history of motion pictures.
What a surreal satire Goldfinger is…an unwitting lampoon of the old-school macho sexism that prevailed in late ’63 and early ’64. And yet the same basic foibles were tolerable in Dr. No and From Russia With Love.
Yes, okay — the first three sequences are approvable. Bond blowing up the drug laboratory in Latin America is pretty good, and I love that moment when Connery spots an oncoming assailant in a reflection in a woman’s eye. Screwing up Goldfinger’s crooked card game in Miami Beach while seducing Shirley Eaton‘s Jill Masterson, only to discover her dead, gold-painted body the next morning. And then the golf game with Goldfinger in a British country club, complete with a gold bar wager and some last-minute golf ball switching. But then it’s off to Switzerland and it all starts to fall apart.
I re-watched my 4K UHD Apocalypse Now Bluray last night, and I wasn’t totally happy. I saw this 1979 classic at the Ziegfeld theatre two or three times in August and September of ’79, and the big-screen presentation (we’re thinking back almost 44 years) blows the 4K disc away. Aurally and visually, but especially in terms of sharp, punctuating fullness of sound.
Apocalypse Now was presented at the Ziegfeld within a 2:1 aspect ratio, which Vittorio Storaro insisted upon through thick and thin. The 4K disc uses what looked to me with a standard Scope a.r. of 2.39:1.
And the general sharpness of the image on that big Ziegfeld screen just isn’t replicated by the 4K. It looks “good”, of course, but not as good as it should.
As we begin to listen to The Doors’ “The End” while staring at that tropical tree line, John Densmore’s high hat could be heard loudly and crisply from a Ziegfeld side speaker. Before that moment I had never heard any high-hat sound so clean and precise. But it doesn’t sound nearly as pronounced on the 4K disc, which I listened to, by the way, with a pricey SONOS external speaker.
Remember that “here’s your mission, Captain” scene with G.D. Spradlin, Harrison Ford and that white-haired guy? When that scene abruptly ends, we’re suddenly flooded with electronic synth organ music…it just fills your soul and your chest cavity. Filled, I should say, 44 years ago. But not that much with the disc.
When Martin Sheen and the PBR guys first spot Robert Duvall and the Air Cav engaged in a surfside battle, Sheen twice says “arclight.” In the Ziegfeld the bass woofer began rumbling so hard and bad that the floor and walls began to vibrate like bombs were exploding on 54th Street…the hum in my rib cage was mesmerizing. Not so much when you’re watching the 4K.
As Duvall’s gunship helicopters take off for the attack on a Vietnamese village (“Vin Din Lop…all these gook names sound the same”), an Army bugler begins playing the cavalry charge. It was clear as a bell in the Ziegfeld — less so last night.
I saw Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant last night, and was honestly blown away. As in amazed, startled, taken aback. And at the same time mesmerized and soul-panged. It’s a “do the right thing” rescue film against a ruggedly realistic war setting, and except for the formulaic (if irresistably satisfying) final act, it’s pretty close to perfect. Really.
Is it the best Middle Eastern war film since The Hurt Locker? Yeah, I think so. I liked it better that Lone Survivor.
Ritchie, to me, has always been an insincere fiddle-faddler and a cynical wanker, and all of a sudden he’s made a masterful, pared-to-the-bone Afghanistan war film for the ages? Pruned-down realism, emotional restraint, somber emotional tone…what the hell happened to the Ritchie I’ve known since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (’98), or over the last quarter-century?
All these years he’s been saying “I’m a slick hack without a soul, a slick hack without a soul, a slick hack without a soul” and then he’s suddenly saying “wait, scratch that…I’m now a human being with a soul, and I’ve made a lean-and-mean war film that believes in honor and paying your debts and indisputable realism”?
HE to friendo (Friday, 4.21, 8:50 pm): “The Ritchie film is amazing. How could he make a slick, cynical piece of empty shit like Operation Fortune and then turn around and make The Covenant?”
Friendo to HE: “Indeed…How could he make these slick, empty-fake gangster films for 25 years and then make The Covenant? Really glad you liked it!”
Based on a script co-penned by Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, The Covenant feels like it’s based on a true story. It isn’t, but who cares? Remember that hairy combat sequence in The Hurt Locker in which Ralph Fiennes played a pivotal role? That’s what The Convenant mostly feels like apart from a Santa Clarita interlude and the gung-ho finale.
Jake Gyllenhaal is rooted and riveting as U.S. Army sergeant John Kinley, extra-sharp and focused and always looking for trouble out of the corner of his eyes.
But you know who steals this film? The second-billed, 45-year-old Dar Salim as Ahmed, Kinley’s interpreter who’s just as much in the crosshairs as Kinley, and who rescues the wounded Kinley from brutal Taliban termination during Act Two, and in turn is rescued by Kinley in Act Three. (Ritchie’s film was originally titled The Interpreter.)
You can’t take your eyes off Salim through the film, and the only time he doesn’t quite punch through and almost recedes into the background is during the thrilling, action-packed finale, which I didn’t mind at all because it’s truly wonderful to see the bad guys get ripped to pieces with burning hot lead.
And then a certain gut-punch wells up during the end credits, when we’re reminded that more than 300 Afghan interpreters and their families have been murdered by the Taliban, with God knows how many more currently in hiding, despite U.S. authorities having pledged to give them gold-plated visas for travelling to the U.S.
Seriously shot up and sinking in and out of consciousness, Gyllenhaal is carried up and down mountain trails and shielded from Taliban homicidals by Salim. He’s sent back home while Salim remains in-country, but there’s no peace in his soul…not a chance. Jake / Kinley knows he has to covertly return to Afghanistan and somehow get Salim / Ahmed and his family out of Afghanistan and into U.S. soil. It’s not easy and certainly not inexpensive, but the debt must be honored. Eventually it is.
It was only a few weeks ago, in my review of Operation Fortune, that I was insisting that Ritchie is a highly skilled but superficial-minded hack. The Covenant has proved me wrong. He may revert to hackery and whoredom down the road, but from this moment on I will never again call him a soul-less hustler. He has earned new stripes with this film.
My honest opinion of Jack Lemmon (1925-2001) is that he was always an engaging actor and sometimes an extraordinary one, but his performances began to feel overly neurotic and mannered when he hit his late 30s, or roughly from ’64 onward. His best period began with Mr. Roberts (’55) and ended with The Fortune Cookie (’66) — an eleven-year stretch. His peak years amounted to only four — Operation Mad Ball (’57) to Some Like It Hot (’59) and The Apartment (’60).
Posted on 9.8.19: “Lemmon was the hottest guy in Hollywood after starring in the one-two punch of Some Like It Hot (’59) and The Apartment (’60), both directed and co-written by Billy Wilder. Because the latter mixed ascerbic humor and frankly sexual situations, Lemmon was offered almost nothing but frothy sex comedies for five years following The Apartment.
The only decent film he made during this period was Blake Edwards‘ Days of Wine and Roses (’62).
“The sex comedies were The Wackiest Ship in the Army (’60), The Notorious Landlady (’62), Irma la Douce (’63, minor Wilder), Under the Yum Yum Tree (’63), Good Neighbor Sam (’64) and How To Murder Your Wife (’65). He also costarred that year in The Great Race, a period costume comedy about arch humor, empty artifice and scenic splendor.
“Lemmon finally broke out of that shallow, synthetic cycle with Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie (’66). Not grade-A Wilder but certainly half-decent, and a great boost for Walter Matthau. And then Luv, The Odd Couple, The April Fools, The Out-of-Towners, Kotch, Avanti! and Save the Tiger. And then he hit another wall with Wilder’s The Front Page.
“The Lemmonisms are all over Save The Tiger (’72), but five or six scenes in that film are true and on-target, and that ain’t hay. His performance in The China Syndrome also made me snap to attention. Ditto Ed Horman in Missing.”
I relate to the Lemmon profile in David Thomson‘s “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film” (2002 edition), page 513:
“I have to confess that sometimes one squeeze of Lemmon is enough to set my teeth on edge. There’s no doubt that, as a younger actor, Lemmon could be very funny. He is very skilled, meticulous and yet — it seems to me — an abject, ingratiating parody of himself.
“Long ago worry set in. The detail of his work turned fussy, nagging and anal. His mannerisms are now like a miser’s coins. There have been a few films — like James Foley‘s Glengarry Glen Ross (’92) — that used this demented worryguts as necessary material. And Lemmon is very good in that film. But far too often, he stops his own roles and starts preaching anxiety, leading everything away from life and into the jitters.”
Magic Mike’s Last Dance director Steven Soderbergh to Rolling Stone's Marlow Stern (as transcribed by Jordan Ruimy): “This year’s [Oscar telecast] is going to be very telling. You cannot this year say, ‘Well, they didn’t nominate any popular movies!’ You cannot say that. So, we’ll find out if that’s really the issue or if it’s a deeper philosophical problem, which is the fact that movies don’t occupy the same cultural real estate that they used to. They just don’t.
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