Ignore All “King Richard” Pissheads

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King Richard has an 89% Rotten Tomatoes score but a 71 Metacritic score?? Any critic who dismisses or puts this film down, trust me, is basically saying “I’m a pisshead with my head up my ass.”

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy: “In September, I spitballed the Best Picture race that was starting to take shape post-Venice and Telluride. My conclusion was that Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast was the current de facto frontrunner. Five weeks later, I’m starting to doubt that assessment.

“Having seen Marcus Reinaldo Green’s King Richard, I can safely say it is the better and more effective crowd pleaser. It has the goods to go all the way. Rags-to-riches tale? Check. True story? Check. Inclusivity? Check. High-entertainment? Check.

“The film itself could get up to 4 acting nods, it’ll also be triumphant at SAG. Maybe the directors branch will be a little tougher on it since this isn’t really an auteur film, but it’s my current Best Picture winner. The film has already won five audience awards at film festivals. Astounding.”

“West Side Story” Runs 156 Minutes

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A month ago a trade reporter allegedly tweeted that “a major Oscar late-release” will run three hours. (I wrote the reporter in question to confirm yay or nay, but he didn’t reply.) I subtracted Licorice Pizza (133 minutes), Don’t Look Up (145 minutes) and Nightmare Alley (139 minutes). If the trade reporter was correct, that left Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story as the only possible elephant in the room.

But it’s not. The Wikipedia page links to New Zealand’s United Cinemas chain, and a West Side Story page says it runs 156 minutes.

I noted a while back Robert Wise’s Oscar-winning West Side Story (’61) ran 152 minutes. I said that “if Spielberg’s version runs shorter than Wise’s, I’ll be fucking flabbergasted.” Well, there we go.

A couple of hours ago I tweeted Malcolm Hollis about Laurent Bouzereau‘s “West Side Story: The Making of the Steven Spielberg Film” (due on 11.16) and asked if it mentions the running time. “I’m hearing it’s 180 minutes,” I wrote.

A half-hour later West Side Story star Rachel Zegler (occupying Natalie Wood‘s Maria role) replied “our movie is not 3 hours long.” Thanks, Rachel!

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Less Than Beautiful Couples

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Tatiana has just told me she doesn’t want to attend this evening’s Licorice Pizza screening because the romantic couple in question, played by 29 year-old Alana Haim and 18 year-old Cooper Hoffman, isn’t attractive enough. They don’t have that swoony sexy-romantic charisma thing going on, she said.

“At least one of them should be attractive,” she emphasized, “but both of them unattractive? Oh no…”

Los Angeles Friendo: “This is like the reverse of Frankie and Johnny, that 1991 relationship drama with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. Everyone said it was totally unbelievable that drop-dead beautiful Pfeiffer would be cast as a plain-Jane waitress…it didn’t wash.”

Back-east Friendo said a similar thing earlier today. Licorice Pizza, he said, “sounds like Paul Thomas Anderson‘s version of Moonrise Kingdom.” HE to Back-east Friendo: “Yeah. With two zero-charisma leads. One pushing 30, the other in his late teens.”

Back-east Friendo: “That’s the Moonrise formula! Two young lead characters that no one in his right mind could give less of a fuck about.”

Does anyone remember a 1945 film called The Enchanted Cottage? Robert Young played a disfigured war veteran and Dorothy Maguire was a very plain and (it is suggested) homely woman. They fall in love with each other, and gradually they become more and more attractive because we’re seeing their features through their eyes.

Another unlikely pair came along in Robert Altman‘s A Perfect Couple (’79). Paul Dooley and Marta Heflin as a vaguely dorky-looking couple, age-separated by 20 years.

Can anyone recall other funny-looking twosomes in noteworthy films?

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Clayton Davis to “Eternals” Rescue

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It’s not just that Chloe Zhao‘s Eternals has shitty aggregate ratings (49% Rotten Tomatoes, 53% Metacritic) as well as the lowest-ever score for a Marvel film; it’s also being trashed because presumably toxic males don’t like it when a woman directs an action film. I haven’t hate-watched it yet — does Davis have a point?

“Speer” Syndrome

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After serving a 20-year term in Spandau Prison for exploiting slave labor during World War II, the urbane and well-spoken Albert Speer — Nazi armaments minister from ’42 through’45, grand architect and Adolf Hitler confidante — published two well-written, self-serving books about his Nazi experience.

“Inside the Third Reich” (’69) was the most widely read and influential as far as Speer’s reputation was concerned. He presented himself as a basically decent and civilized family man who made a deal with the devil and was therefore “inescapably contaminated morally” for his complicity with the Nazi regime…forever stained and doomed to carry a searing sense of guilt for the rest of his life. “”

“Spandau: The Secret Diaries” (’75) was Speer’s follow-up.

Out of these two books Speer became known not as “the good Nazi,” as many have called him, but the “not quite as bad as the other Nazi fanatics” guy with at least some sense of moral self-awareness and regret…a man who hadn’t denied his guilt and had served his prison sentence, and was looking to somehow atone in the years he had left. Speer died at age 76 in 1981.

Speer Goes to Hollywood director Vanessa Lapa, producer Tomar Eliav — Thursday, 11.4, 1:40 pm.

Vanessa Lapa‘s Speer Goes to Hollywood (opening today) is a 97-minute argument that Speer wasn’t the urbane smoothie he portrayed himself as, and that he was aware of the extermination of the Jews, and that he was just as much of a Nazi shit as Himmler or Geobbels or Bormann or any of the others.

It is HE’s belief that Speer was definitely an ambitious, anti-Semitic, cold-hearted prick who engaged in a Faustian bargain for his own professional benefit. But it is also HE’s view that his saga is not anomalous, and that many seemingly or ostensibly civilized people have supported evil policies and homicidal regimes throughout history.

The Brazilian senate recently endorsed a report that accused president Jair Bolsonaro of the Covid-related murder of tens of thousands of Brazilians due to neglect, incompetence and anti-scientific denialism. How many tens of thousands of Americans needlessly died as a direct result of Donald Trump‘s similar response to Covid-19, and who would argue that Dr. Deborah Birx wasn’t at least partly complicit in these deaths? Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger knew that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, but they kept it going for three or four years after the Nixon administration took power in January ’69 and in so doing caused the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Vietnamese. 1.7 million people were murdered in the Cambodian killing fields — were the Khmer Rouge cadres who saw to these deaths born killers, or were they just loyalists who did what was expected? How many hundreds of thousands died in China’s Great Cultural Revolution? 17,000 were killed during the French terror of the 1790s. How many hundreds or thousands of present-day careers have been destroyed by woke terrorists?

Throughout history ambitious cutthroat types have done almost anything to get ahead or serve their superiors, and they’ve never given a damn how many innocent lives were sacrificed in the bargain.

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Unavoidable Beymer-Wood Vibe

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How much different can Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story (20th Century Studios, 12.10) be from Robert Wise‘s Oscar-showered 1961 version?

Spielberg’s will presumably be woke-ier, for sure. (More critical of Riff and the Jets, more embracing of Bernardo and the Sharks as well as the general Puerto Rican perspective.) In the Wise version tenement back alleys and fire escapes were freshly painted in one or two scenes; Spielberg almost certainly won’t go there. Janusz Kamiński‘s partially desaturated cinematography will distinguish itself from Daniel Fapp‘s somewhat prettified capturings, and will doubtless seem snazzier and more sophisticated in terms of framing and cutting. And perhaps the performances in the new version (principally from Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez and Mike Faist) will feel stronger and more affecting that those from those from the old gang (Richard Beymer, Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Russ Tamblyn).

But these aspects aside, Spielberg’s film can’t help but resemble its cinematic forebear in countless ways. The story is the story, the musical is the musical.

Long Time Coming

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The info’s a little vague, but after endless delays the commercial release of Oliver Stone‘s JFK Revisited, which premiered in Cannes last July, is finally happening. And, oddly enough**, only a few days from now — on Friday, 11.12 via the Showtime app, and on the Showtime network beginning on Monday, 11.22, the 58th anniversary of the JFK murder.

The longer version, JFK: Destiny Betrayed, will be commercially streamed (sale or rental) next February.

** Who waits to announce the availability of a new film only seven days in advance?

What Is The Point…?

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…of hate-watching Eternals? I can feel it, sense it, smell it, detect it…I know what it is without seeing it. How do I know this? Because it’s two…make that three doses of poison is a single glass — dreamy Zhao wokester mythology + Angelina Jolie + same old Marvel horseshit. I cringe at the idea of submitting to it.

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Never Pose With Alcohol

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It makes you look weak or woozy or somehow dependent upon the warm bath of booze in the blood. If someone picks up a camera, always put the glass down. That said, Newman and clan look awfully good here. Those moist Connecticut lawns and especially the fragrance following a rainfall. Judging by the gray in his hair, I’d say it was taken around the time of Fort Apache, The Bronx (’81) or The Verdict (‘82).

“Critters” Immortality

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I did a lot of good publicity work for New Line Cinema and Cannon Films (mostly press kits) during the mid to late ’80s. New Line-wise I’m especially proud of my nimble-witted promotions of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and Critters. During the Critters shoot I bonded with M. Emmet Walsh and Billy Greenbush (whose folksy manner reminded me of my Kentucky-born grandfather). For all my efforts I only managed a single mention during closing credits (i.e., Critters). Back then I had a problem with “Jeffrey” — I thought it sounded too frilly or delicate.