“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is still there, but at the end of the day Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) winds up killing Wacko Jacko (Jack Nicholson) with a big knife, gut-stabbing him.
And in a huge switch, ScatmanCrowthers’ DickHalloran, the Overlook Hotel’s chef, isn’t a kindly good guy trying to save Wendy and Danny from the malicious Jack. Instead he becomes some kind of demonic figure who’s in league with the ghost of Delbert Grady. Wendy kills Halloran also.
An HE “friendo” has seen Robert Eggers’ TheNorthman (Focus, 4.22) and is sharing mixed-favorable impressions as far as they go.
“Never discount a truefilmmaker, even with studio interference,” he remarks. “It runs 140 minutes and I was never bored, and that means something these days. It feels, obviously, very familiar, as it’s based on the legend of Amleth, which inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but it’s incrediblywell–directed.
“What TheNorthman lacks is the artful ambiguity of Eggers’ first two films, TheWitch and TheLighthouse. The influence of studio notes is apparent throughout.
“But it’s not that much of a slog, and despite a little too much CG with a climax happening at the mouth of an active volcano…two naked men fighting, not the best ending…Hollywooddoesn’treallymakeepicsofthiskindanymore.
“You can tell Eggers wanted a more elevated, visually-driven movie but the reshoots made it more ‘entertaining.’ Hopefully a director’s cut shows up someday, more of a pure Eggers version.
“The off-the-top influences are Hamlet, Gladiator and GamesofThrones.
“Alexander Skarsgard’s lead performance is stellar. Ethan Hawke, as Skarsgaard’s murdered king-father, is in the film for maybe 10 minutes. Nicole Kidman, Hawke’s wife-queen, has a few scenes (her screen time comes to roughly 20 minutes) that she just nails. Anya Taylor Joy cuts a vivid figure.”
How many heads are split open with axes? “I’d say about a dozen,” he responds. “The killings are extremely brutal. A fair amount of intestine spilling.”
There’s some kind of nod to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he reports, and the skull of Yorick makes an appearance.
Top to bottom: (a) Myself and Jett at my parents’ home in Southbury, Connecticut, 20 or 21 years ago; (b) My first film column, written weekly for the short-lived Fairfield County Morning News; (c) a passable-for-a-kid-but-don’t-give-up-your-day-job sketch of Peter O’Toole in Becket, and (d) snapped in Boston during the good old druggie days.
The first time I ever stood next to a dead guy was around 12:30 or 1 am on Westport Road, on my way back from a night of revelry at the Player’s Tavern. A kid of 18 or 19 had crashed his motorcycle and apparently broken his neck. I got there before the cops did. My first thought was to feel his pulse, but I wimped out at the last second. Plus I couldn’t call 911 as there were no cell phones. So I just stared. He might have been breathing his last but he sure didn’t look it with his eyes open and all. He looked like a deer that had been hit by a car.
In the decades since I haven’t come upon any young dead guys anywhere. Not in the cities, not in the desert…nowhere. My understanding is that apart from drunk-driving fatalities most young people who buy it outdoors do so in combat. So it feels a little arbitrary and arty to look at all these dead kids in Aaron Salazar‘s Still Life, an eight-minute short.
How come they’re all in their 20s? Where are the overweight middle-aged corpses? How about a dead grandma in a toppled-over wheelchair, killed by a latter-day Richard Widmark? And what killed all these kids? I’m presuming that Salazar is saying “death is always still and final and absolute.” Which it is, of course, but in the matter of teens and twentysomethings it’s fairly unusual unless you’re a Yakuza soldier or a hopeless alcoholic or druggie or involved in the Mexican drug trade or fighting the Russians in Ukraine.
Feinberg suggestion #6: “The board of governors should henceforth be tasked with bestowing a special achievement Oscar each year — to be presented on the Oscars telecast — to a commercially successful film that also displays artistic merit and is a credit to the industry. This would be different from, and therefore would not ‘devalue,’ the competitive Oscar, and would certainly not preclude its recipient from competing for competitive awards. While this special Oscar would most logically go to the film’s director and its principal producer, the film’s stars should be encouraged to accept alongside him or her (which would certainly not hurt TV ratings, either).
“Recent films which could have been honored in this way include 2017’s Wonder Woman (director Patty Jenkins and producer Zack Snyder could have been accompanied by stars Gal Gadot and Chris Pine), the first modern female-led superhero film; 2019’s Avengers: Endgame (directors Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo and producer Kevin Feige could have been accompanied by the actors who played the Avengers), the culmination of a remarkable 11 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; and 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home (director Jon Watts and producer Feige could have been accompanied by the three actors who have played the title character), a milestone in a 20-year-old franchise which helped to sustain the film industry through the aftermath of 9/11 and COVID.
“Revive Popcorn Oscar Concept,” posted on 4.26.21: “There’s really no choice any more. The Best Achievement in Popular Film Oscar idea, killed in its infancy by the snooties, doesn’t need to be revived — it needs to be implemented. Really. Another Steven Soderbergh-styled Oscar telecast in ’22 and it’s over. Hell, the brand is on life-support now.
Once again: “On 9.10.18 Bloomberg’s Virginia Postrel posted a solution to the Best Picture Oscar problem. Her idea was simply that there are two film industries — one for ticket buyers who tend to prefer mass appeal or FX-driven popcorn flicks, and another for Academy members who prefer to honor movies that are actually good in some kind of profound, refined or zeitgeist-reflecting way.
“It’s been understood for years that the vast majority of moviegoers are agnostic regarding the faith of cinema. What faith, you ask? Good point. Postrel’s article isn’t even three years old, and the pandemic has made it seem like an idea from another era. But embracing the Popcorn Oscars (maybe even encompassing the top five categories) would at least represent an attempt to face reality.
Seriousquestion: If you were a senior Apple TV+ exec, would you advocate pushing full speed ahead for the late ‘22 release of Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith’s Emancipation, an historical chase thriller about a real-life slave named Gordon who had been whipped severely before fleeing a Louisiana plantation?
Or would you step back and furrow your brow and go “hmmm”? Or would you sell it off?
If it was my call, I would say “fuck it…release that sucker and let the chips fall. Smith is flawed, sure, but who isn’t? The press will jump all over him, but how many times can he say ‘I’m deeply ashamed that I did a brutish, asinine thing”? Walk on, stand tall, turn the page and keep saying ‘this is about Gordon, not Will Smith.'”
In the minds of 97% of film lovers, Nehemiah Persoff is remembered for one and only one role — the bald-headed “Little Bonaparte” in Some Like It Hot.
Yes, he played the cab driver who drove Rod Steiger to his doom in On The Waterfront, but that didn’t count because Persoff didn’t say anything — he just glared.
Persoff was also in a ton of other films and TV shows, but at the end of the day there is only Little Bonaparte and more particularly his answer to Pat O’Brien‘s “what happened here?” at the end of the banquet scene.
Bonaparte: “There was somethin’ in that cake that didn’t agree with them.”
Persoff died today at age 102. Respect and condolences.
I’m trying to unload my whole TV, streaming and Bluray set-up — a 65″ 4K UHD Sony TV with internal side speakers (SONY XBR-65X930C — 6 years old but in excellent shape) + Sony 4K Bluray player (18 months old) + Oppo Bluray set for Region 2 Blurays + Marantz AVR (audio-visual receiver) + Sony wireless earphones + external bass woofer speaker + wooden stand-console that holds all these devices as a single unit…the whole kit & kaboodle for only $1200.
And nobody wants it. Because nobody wants a 2016 TV, and nobody cares about Region 1 and 2 Bluray players, much less a Marantz AVR. The wireless headphone set-up might be of faint interest, but I’m insisting on selling everything as a big bundle. I would probably have trouble selling the TV if it was three or four years old. Everyone wants something brand-spanking new, of course.
It’s a first-rate living room set-up, but I guess it stays here.
A director friend passed this along last night. A plea for work from Roman Perfilyev, a married Ukrainian film director and motion designer from Kyiv and a refugee from the current horror. As I know and trust the director, I’m presuming the contents of the letter are legit.
“I’m currently in the U.S. fleeing from the war with my wife and three-year-old old son. I’m looking for the opportunity to work in the US film industry so I’ve attached my resume and links to this email which represents my experience.
My IMDB page: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9539414/
The Inglorious Serfs — Full-length movie; 2021 (director, scriptwriter) Trailer — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULObtOYKxI&t=2s Full movie – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u63-7BxZYSs (English subtitles are available)
