Fascinated by the suburban faces wandering through The Mall at Short Hills. Many if not most — a good 65% to 75%— look like characters from The Sopranos. Members of Tony’s golf club, friends of Carmela’s, diners at Artie Bucco’s, prosecutors, attorneys, customers at Bada-Bing and Satriale’s, etc.
…but also having avoided writing my review, I’ll just say that a director (or directors in this instance) can list several classic films as influences, and that’s fine. But given the Russo Brothers list, it’s fair to note the seeming presence or absence of traces of these films in The Gray Man itself. All I can say is “wow.” Okay, I’ll say more than this. Influence–wise, The Gray Man contains not so much as a hint of a trace of a whisper of Francois Truffaut’s Shoot The Piano Player (‘62). Ditto Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (‘64). There is one and only one noticable influence upon this film, and that is the Bourne franchise…finito, mike drop, over and out.
One of the factors behind Beanie Feldstein’s decision to leave Funny Girl early (her last performance will be on 7.31) was her history of having missed performances due to this, that and whatever. And now…tonsilitis!
I’ve always loved Janet Maslin‘s writing, and especially her film reviews. She became a film critic for The New York Times in 1977, and then the paper-of-record’s top-dog critic on 12.1.94 when the long-serving Vincent Canby (1969-1994) moved on to theatre reviews.
Maslin covered the celluloid waterfront for five years, and to this day I vividly recall reading her Titanic review on the morning of 12.19.97, and a statement at the end of paragraph #2 that James Cameron‘s epic was “the first spectacle in decades that honestly invites comparison to Gone With the Wind.”
But Maslin’s run came to a halt after the Times published her enthusiastic review of Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut on 7.16.99.
Yesterday Maslin tweeted that the Eyes Wide Shut review “tore it between me and the NYT…I’m not sorry.” I’ve never heard the detailed blow-by-blow about that episode, but I’d sure like it if Maslin (who’s been a Times book reviewer for the last 22-plus years) would tell it some day.
What other film critics have had a falling-out with their editors over their opinions, or even a single film review?
I seem to recall reading that Andrew Sarris‘s 8.11.60 review of Psycho, his very first for the Village Voice, got him into trouble, but not to the point of getting whacked. “I got so many angry letters about it,” Sarris recalled decades later. “It was my first Cahiers du Cinéma review, you might say. The idea that I promulgated [was] that Hitchcock was a major avant-garde artist. Everybody knew what Hitchcock did. Most people liked him, but didn’t take him seriously. So that was the beginning [of the auteur theory].”
In June 1976 Todd McCarthy was cut loose from the Hollywood Reporter over a negative review of Ode to Billy Joe. “I filed a dismissive review,” McCarthy wrote on 4.15.20. “[It] was published, but the next day got a call from my editor, B.J. Franklin, who conveyed the news that Jethro, otherwise known as Max Baer Jr., the director of the film, was not a bit pleased with my notice. Would I perhaps consider taking another look at it with an eye to revising my opinion upward?
“When I refused this opportunity, B.J. proposed that I interview Max about the film. I politely declined. The next day I was informed that my services would no longer be required at the Reporter, and also learned that Max and B.J. were Bel-Air-circuit social friends.”
In 1991 Washingtonian editor Jack Limpert vehemently disagreed with Pat Dowell‘s positive review of Oliver Stone‘s JFK. On 2.11.17 Washington Post columnist John Kelly wrote that “it’s not clear if Limpert showed Dowell the door or if she found it on her own.” Limpert later said that JFK was “the dumbest movie about Washington ever made.”
Bob Woodward to MSNBC: “As we’ve discussed before there is a Battle Royale going on inside the Justice Department about whether to charge Trump, and I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that. A clear and present danger to American democracy and Garland is STILL hemming and hawing about prosecuting this motherfucker? Woodward: “The evidence [against Trump] is absolutely overwhelming.”
Ari Melber: “Some experts are saying that there is evidence that Merrick Garland is just slow-walking this thing.”
HE is sorry about the sudden death of Ivana Trump. The 73-year-old mother of Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump was found unconscious and unresponsive yesterday in her home. Due respect and condolences.
— Old Donald Trump posts (@oldTrumpTweetz) July 14, 2022
Jordan Peele‘s Nope opens seven days hence (7.22), and there’s no buzz at all. Donut. The first critics screenings begin next week. This doesn’t necessarily “mean” anything as distribs often screen horror films at the last minute.
Peele has made three features (Get Out, Us, Nope), has had two massive hits and become a brand, and many (including the absolutely relentless Bob Strauss) still swear by Get Out.
“It’s not Rosemary’s Baby but what is?,” a friend says. “But it’s infinitely better than The Stepford Wives.”
Peele, I replied, is a commercial filmmaker working in the thriller-horror-spooker field. He is what he is, but he’s not a 21st Century Rod Serling or Roald Dahl or Ira Levin.
Friendo: “The jury’s out, I think, on where he’s going.”
HE: “Strictly a genre tickler.
Friendo: “I think he’s very gifted. If he’s smart, he’ll make Nope his last horror film for a while.”
HE: “Due respect but I don’t think he knows how to do anything more than try to be the black Rod Serling. Except he never wrote anything like Patterns or Requiem for a Heavyweight.”
Friendo: “You think Get Out is decent but overrated, overly praised because of the woke factor, etc. I think it’s singular and gripping. Us didn’t quite work, but I think Get Out makes its mark.”
HE: “You know that story about Jordan having shot Get Out as a horror film AND as a comedy, and that he wasn’t sure which way to go but he finally figured it out in editing…right? This helps explain why Lil Rel Howery is clearly a character with comic attitude — the guy delivering comic relief.
Friendo: “That’s interesting. That would make it a rival to Ralph Rosenblum’s great story of how Annie Hall found its narrative form, its vibe, and its very identity as a romantic comedy through his editing of it. Of course, the thing about horror and comedy is that they’ve always gone together. The three greatest horror movies of the last 65 years — Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — are all, on some level, horror comedies.”
HE: “That’s a very sophisticated (as in highly perverse) viewpoint, calling Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby comedies. I’ll allow that if you stretch the idea of ‘comedy’ to its breaking point, you could say that these two films are flavored with exceedingly dry comedy here and there. They’re basically low-key, naturalistic horror films flecked with dry humor here and there, but they hardly qualify as comedies.
On 10.15.22 Julia Roberts will receive an Academy Museum Icon Award at a special gala fundraiser. Revenue from the event will benefit AMPAS and the Academy Museum (aka “Woke House“).
This is not an equivalent of Roberts (now in her mid 50s) receiving an AFI Life Achievement award, but it’s in the same ballpark. One of these years she’ll be so honored by the AFI; she might also one day receive a special career Oscar. So let’s ask what her career has really amounted to in terms of serious cred, and which performances are the real keepers.
For me the Roberts performances that really count are not her romcom and grounded-romantic-formula roles, because she’s been doing them since the late ’80s and can perform them in her sleep — Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Runaway Bride, Notting Hill, Everyone Says I Love You, the forthcoming Ticket to Paradise. I’m not saying her romcom performances aren’t enjoyable or effective — I’m saying they don’t seem to represent any great effort on her part. Maybe it’s unfair to say that. I recognize that “comedy is hard.”
I respect her decent-enough thrillers — Sleeping With The Enemy, The Pelican Brief, Duplicity — but we all understand that Roberts’ manner of acting never seems to fit into the thriller mode.
I do, however, worship her real-pain performances in Steven Soderbergh‘s Erin Brockovich, John Wells‘ August: Osage County, Mike Nichols‘ Closer and her recent Martha Mitchell performance in Gaslit. To me these four are bullet-proof.
And I adore the scene in Ocean’s Twelve when she plays a Julia Roberts lookalike (Tess Ocean, the ex-wife of George Clooney‘s Danny Ocean) and then talks to her actual self on the phone…the one scene in her entire career that made me fall on the floor.
I need to upgrade my summer wardrobe…yeah, Club Monaco has the right idea…shorts, sneakers, baseball cap and a generic dork shirt. Why didn’t I think of this combo myself?
Only seven weeks left of summer because that’s when Telluride ‘22 kicks off. The official poster popped today:
Ernest Borgnine passed almost exactly ten years ago. He did a lot of interviews and told a lot of stories later in life, and one that I never forgot involved a verbal confrontation with a group of Italian guys in some quiet New York City neighborhood. (Or possibly in Boston or Rhode Island or Newark, New Jersey…some northeastern city with a significant Italian population.)
It happened a few weeks after the August ’53 opening of From Here to Eternity, in which Borgnine achieved a big career breakthrough for his performance as “Fatso” Judson, a sadistic Army stockade sergeant whose racist brutality leads to the death of Frank Sinatra‘s Pvt. Maggio.
Borgnine had just walked out of a bar or was hailing a cab, and four or five guys walked up and one of them said “you’re him, right?” Borgnine copped to being the guy who played Fatso, and the guy said, “So what’d you kill Frank Sinatra for?”
Borgnine tried a standard rational response — “I didn’t kill him, I played a guy who killed him, I’m an actor and so is Sinatra,” etc. But the under-educated Italian guys weren’t having it — “yeah but why’d you kill him?” They’d apparently decided that Borgnine/Judson, who’d called Sinatra a “wop” two or three times in Eternity, was a symbol for all the racist bullies they’d known all their lives, all the guys who’d picked on Italians or denigrated them with slurs.
Borgnine gradually realized that there was no avoiding fisticuffs, so he offered to take them on one at a time if that’s how it had to be. One of the Italian guys said something to another in Italian, and Borgnine, born in Hamden, Connecticut to Italian-immigrant parents, answered back in the same tongue. The air of hostility immediately ceased.
For several years I’ve tried to find a video clip of Borgnine telling this story, and I’ve never had any luck.
