Incidentally: The brisk military drums heard over the opening credit sequence in The Desert Fox (6:20 mark) almost certainly inspired a similar drum track heard at the beginning of The Longest Day (’62), around the :12 mark.
Life on planet pandemic has been miserable and totally depressing for 12, 13 months now. Vaccines are slowly turning things around but what happened to maintaining miserable safety protocols (masks, distancing, hand cleaners, no indoor dining) for 100 days after Biden’s 1.20.21 swearing-in, or roughly until May 1st? Or better yet June 1st. Life has been at a standstill since early March 2020 — what’s another couple of months? I for one have gotten used to living in a suffocating hell space…let’s keep it going! Related: The pandemic reportedly cost AMC $4.6 billion last year.
Skullbangers: Mandalorian vs. Mauritanian — on her deathbed after being shot by a storm trooper, an ex-girlfriend of bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) tells him he’s the biological father of Mona Mosholu, a risk-junkie smuggler operating a fast cargo ship with a couple of rascally partners in a nearby galaxy. Enter Mohamedou Ould Salahi, a Mauritarian gentleman and book author who spent 15 years in Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Upon release in 2016, Salahi, hungry to breathe free and see the galaxy, accepts a position as a time-travelling…I can’t do this. This is a stupid, shitty idea for a new Disney + miniseries. I was merely struck by the five-syllable, sound-alike names. Not every idea pans out.
HE is humming with excitement over the just-announced nominees for the 35th American Society of Cinematographers Awards: Erik Messerschmidt for Mank, Phedon Papamichael for TheTrialoftheChicago7, Joshua James Richards for Nomadland, Newton Thomas Sigel for Cherry and Dariusz Wolski for NewsoftheWorld. Congrats to these five, and may the nominee with the most political and cultural wind in his sails prevail.
If we’re talking pure quality for its own sake, I would hand the top prize to either Messerscmidt, Papamichael or Richards. If we’re talking about which nominee will be “allowed” to win from a political-cultural perspective…who knows?
The notorious ending of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Suspicion (’41) delivered one of the most indigestible main-character switcheroos in film history.
From the very beginning Cary Grant‘s Johnnie Aysgarth is a selfish, immature, financially irresponsible swindler. Toward the end the audience is led to believe Aysgarth may even be a murderer. But just before the 99-minute film concludes, he abruptly reverses course, confesses his many sins, drapes his left arm around Joan Fontaine‘s shoulder, and all is well.
In other words, the Grant-Aysgarth character arc is “charming but penniless rake, ne’er-do-well, lazy good-for-nothing, embezzler, liar, possible slayer of business partner, possible poisoner of his wife, bad, bad, bad, worse, worse, worse…then everything’s fine!”
Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman will almost certainly land a Best Actress Oscar by way of Carey Mulligan‘s zeitgeisty performance. And yet it must be acknowledged that the character arc of Bo Burnham‘s “Ryan Cooper”, a youngish pediatrician who falls for Mulligan’s Cassie Thomas, is somewhat similar to Grant’s.
The trajectory is “nice guy, sincere guy, considerate guy, emotionally mature guy, gently-in-love guy, introduce-him-to-the-parents guy, even-nicer guy and then…..screech, hit the brakes!…rape-bystander guy who’s friendly with Chris Lowell‘s ‘Al the rapist’ and who lies about Cassie’s whereabouts to the police after she turns up missing.”
The difference is that Burnham’s 180 comes around the 104-minute mark in a 113-minute film while Grant’s turnabout happens during the final 90 seconds.
Mullligan is Oscar-locked. We all know that. I’m just saying. Side issue.
Obviously nothing new or semi-profound here…just happened to see this on datalounge, and it’s true…the absence of Trump noise is a fairly wonderful thing, like some kind of spirit-cleansing rainshower. I just want to state my own sense of relief….thank you, God, for this modest favor, this blessing.
Earlier today Deadline‘s Pete Hammond offered a standout comment about the “crazy” BAFTAs and particularly their Best Film nominees. He reminded that this is a category not juried but voted on by the larger Academy, and “the contenders for the biggest award of the night are solidly white. The Father is about white people dealing with dementia; The Mauritanian is about white lawyers defending a suspected 9/11 terrorist; Nomadland is about white Americans dropping out of society and taking to the road; Promising Young Woman is about white thirtysomethings dealing with issues going back to school days; and The Trial of the Chicago 7 is about white lawyers defending and prosecuting six white (and one Black) males for causing a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention.”
When I first saw James L. Brooks‘ Broadcast News I had this thought about Jack Nicholson‘s performance as Bill Rorash, a network news anchor in the classic tradition. My thought was that Nicholson was fine, but that if Brooks wanted to be nervy and outside-the-box he could’ve gotten Roger Mudd to play the part. Mudd, who was 58 or 59 when the film was made, really was “that guy” — a certain steady and settled vibe, an Eastern establishment, Ivy League bearing. good-looking. Plus an authentic, real-deal reporter. He could have also played an ad agency or baseball team owner.
Charlton Heston passed on 4.5.08 at age 84. The poor guy had been grappling with Alzheimer’s Disease for the previous six years or so. In such a condition, departure for realms beyond isn’t the worst option. I posted the following when I heard the news:
(1) I saw Heston speak at a black-tie dinner at the Beverly Wilshire maybe nine or ten years ago. He didn’t carry a cane but he could barely walk — just shuffling along. I considered him a kind of enemy at that point because of his support of the NRA but my heart went out when I saw what lousy shape his legs were in. That brawny muscular guy in the loincloth who played oar-rower #41 in Ben-Hur had become a frail old coot in a toupee. What a rotten thing it is to suffer the infirmities of age.
(2) His best screen moment happened in the last act of The Big Country, when his ranch-hand character in The Big Country decides to abandon a short-lived ethical mutiny against his ruthless employer, played by Charles Bickford, and follow him into Blanco Canyon and an almost-certain gun battle to the death. When the rest of the hands who had briefly sided with Heston catch up and join them, Heston looks at Bickford with utter revulsion, in part because he knows he can’t defeat him but also because he knows that he’s emotionally trapped.
(3) The best story Heston ever told was when Ben-Hur director William Wyler spoke to him in his dressing room after the first or second day of shooting and said, “Chuck, I’ve thought about your performance over the last couple of days and you’re going to have to be better.” Sure, Willie, said Heston — just tell me what you want, what to do. “I can’t say exactly because I don’t know,” said Wyler. “I just know you have to be better.” And then Wyler said “see ya” and left the room. Heston said something about pouring himself one or two stiff ones and taking a long walk.
(4) Heston should have shown more humanity about gun laws in the wake of the Colombine shootings. He and the NRA should have thought more carefully about gun users being tested for a license, and about the proliferation of automatic weapons. If there was such a thing as answering for your sins at the gates of paradise, right about now St. Peter would definitely be asking Heston to join him on a nearby park bench and explain the gun thing.
In all my decades of movie-obsessing, only one film has given me pause in the matter of male anatomy. Pause and a slight feeling of discomfort.
I must have been 14 or 15 years old as I watched this scene from Mr. Roberts in our family TV room, and I distinctly remember saying to myself, “Jesus, you can see Jack Lemmon‘s twin gonads right through his Navy khaki pants.” I found it distracting and distasteful.
If I’d been directing (not sure if it was John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy or Joshua Logan shouting “action” and “cut” when this scene was shot), I would have pulled Lemmon aside and told him to duck into wardrobe and put on one of those metal jockstraps that baseball catchers wear. That or stuff his underwear with a big wad of toilet paper, Mick Jagger-style.
HE’s all-time favorite Lemmon performances: Operation Mad Ball, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Days of Wine and Roses, The Fortune Cookie, Save the Tiger, The China Syndrome, Missing, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, JFK, Glengarry Glen Ross, Short Cuts, Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s (13).
I don’t know what to say about the just-announced DGA nominees for Best Direction of a Feature. I know what I can say…congratulations to the nominees! And special golden congrats to Nomadland‘s Chloe Zhao — obviously the designated winner barring a devastating meteor bombardment or a 8.0 earthquake on the day of the DGA ceremony — Saturday, April 10. Congrats also to The Trial of the Chicago 7‘s Aaron Sorkin (deserves the honor, probably won’t prevail), Mank‘s David Fincher (ditto), Minari‘s Lee Isaac Chung (not a chance) and Promising Young Woman‘s Emerald Fennell.
Why wasn’t Fennell nominated for Best First Feature? She would have been a likely winner if she had been, no? As it stands, the BFF nominees are One Night in Miami‘s Regina King, The Father‘s Florian Zeller, The 40-Year Old Version‘s Radha Blank, Sound of Metal‘s Darius Marder and — whut? — I’m No Longer Here‘s Fernando Frías de la Parra.
Hollywood Elsewhere agrees with the DGA’s decision not to nominate Max Barbakow, director of the deeply loathed Palm Springs — not for Best First Feature or Best Best Direction of a Feature. Movies like Palm Springs make he want to jump off tall buildings.
Good Morning Britain‘s Piers Morgan went off yesterday morning on Megan Markle, whom he apparently regards as something of a shifty personality who manipulates and cuts people off at random. (Morgan is one of those she’s cut off, he admitted.) He ranted too strongly as thousands of Twitter complaints were posted in response. Two days ago Harry told Oprah Winfrey that someone in the royal family had voiced a concern about the potential skin shade of their unborn Archie. This struck Morgan as incomplete and incendiary.
This morning Morgan and GMB weatherman Alex Beresford got into a long argument about the merits, and you can just feel the vibe — Beresford believes Morgan is some kind of unconscious toxic racist and Morgan feels this right back, and their argument was as fascinating as the one between Lester Maddox, Jim Brown and Dick Cavett on on 12.18.70.
Beresford: “I understand that you don’t like Meghan Markle. You’ve made it so clear a number of times on this program, and I understand that you had a personal relationship with Meghan Markle and she cut you off,” Beresford said. “Has she said anything about you after she cut you off? She’s entitled to cut you off if she wants to. And yet you continue to trash her.” In response Morgan lost his temper and walked off the set.
