Last night Bright Wall/Dark Room (@BWDR) tweeted the following: “You can pick ONE actor and put them into any movie ever made. Who do you pick & what do you put them in?”
The mid ’60s version of Steve McQueen as (a) Neil Macauley in Heat, (b) John McLane in Die Hard, (c) Vincent in Collateral and (d) Casey Affleck‘s character in Manchester By The Sea.
Humphrey Bogart as Bat MacPherson (aka “Kilgallen”) in Only Angels Have Wings.
Last night the Motion Picture Sound Editors blew off one of the most striking and audacious sound mixes in motion picture history when they decided against giving any kind of trophy to Sound of Metal during the 68th Golden Reel Awards.
They handed out awards to Greyhound (FX/Foley), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (dialogue/ADR), Tenet (musical underscore), Soul (animated feature) and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of the Fire Saga (music).
The aural design in Sound of Metal (the Oscar nominees are Jaime Baksht, Nicolas Becker, Philip Bladh, Carlos Cortés and Michelle Couttolenc) isn’t just great — it’s historic. The ’21 BAFTAs, at least, recently recognized this.
Greyhound, Soul, Mank, News of the World and Sound of Metal are nominated for the Best Sound Oscar — a new compressed category combining sound editing and sound mixing. If the Academy blows off Sound of Metal there’ll be trouble. I’m not threatening, just saying.
These five are also nominated for Cinema Audio Society Awards for sound mixing, which will be handed out tonight.
I’ve noted several times that David Jones and Harold Pinter‘s Betrayal (’83) has been absent from streaming, Bluray and even DVD for decades. Herewith an English language capture, no subtitles — 91 minutes, posted on 2.11.20.
Ben Kingsley at 54:06: “I’ve always liked Jerry. To be honest I’ve always liked him rather more than I liked you. Maybe I should’ve had an affair with him myself.”
Academy honchos to rank-and-file: “Voting closes in just three days, on Tuesday, April 20, and we hope you’ll find time this weekend to cast your ballot. It only takes a few minutes.”
Final HE recommendations: Best Picture: The Trial of the Chicago 7 or Sound of Metal. Best Director: Chloe Zhao, Nomadland. Best Actor: Anthony Hopkins, The Father. Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman (plus all of Mulligan’s noteworthy, insufficiently heralded performances going back to 2009’s An Education). Best Supporting Actress: Youn Yuh-jung, Minari. Best Supporting Actor: Either Paul Raci in Sound of Metal or Lakeith Stanfield in Judas and the Black Messiah.
This morning the Washington Post‘s Peter Marks published an apology from B’way and Hollywood producer Scott Rudin for the latter’s volcanic behavior with office staffers over the years.
The core of the statement was that Rudin will “step back” from his Broadway ventures, adding that that he was “taking steps that I should have taken years ago to address this behavior.”
Rudin’s announcement is basically a strategic bone tossed to his many social-media critics. For good or ill (mostly the latter, his critics would say) Rudin was able to swagger around for decades…throughout the ’90s, aughts and most of the 20teens he was the savvy, blistering, highly demanding office tyrant who made top-tier films and produced between two and five high-prestige B’way plays per year. On both coasts Rudin made money and won awards for many people. But the cultural ground shifted in late ’17 and now he needs to adapt or die.
Rudin’s mea culpa comes in the wake of (a) Tatiana Siegel’s 4.7 Hollywood Reporter expose (basically an evergreen refresh) about Rudin’s occasionally brutal behavior, (b) Richard Rushfield‘s 4.9 Ankler follow-up (“Mr. Potatohead“) and (c) “Moulin Rouge!” B’way star Karen Olivo declaring on Instagram that she won’t be returning to work after the pandemic shutdown because “the silence about Rudin” was “unacceptable.”
A 4.17 Siegel article reports that Rudin was more or less forced to back away from the forthcoming The Music Man revival after star Hugh Jackman said he was “very concerned” and that “something needed to be done.” Jackman’s costar Sutton Foster reportedly “said she would leave the highly anticipated musical if Rudin didn’t take a seat, says [a] knowledgable source.”
Once upon a time the shouting, volatile, highly-demanding producer or swaggering “boss from hell” was a lamentable part of showbiz lore…Burt Lancaster‘s J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, Alan King‘s Max Herschel in Sidney Lumet‘s Just Tell Me What You Want, the real-life Joel Silver and Harvey Weinstein, Saul Rubinek‘s Lee Donowitz in True Romance (based on Silver for the most part), Kevin Spacey‘s Buddy Ackerman in Swimming With Sharks, Tom Cruise‘s Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, etc.
None of these characters were pleasant to be around on a 24/7 basis, but, as in real life, they had a dominating brand and tradition that you had to finesse one way or the other.
And then along came the sensitive, safe-space-seeking Millennials and that Buddy Ackerman shit began to get old right quick.
“Much has been written about my history of troubling interactions with colleagues,” Rudin’s statement reads, “and I am profoundly sorry for the pain my behavior caused to individuals, directly and indirectly.”
“The undercurrent of A Bigger Splash is gently mesmerizing, and that was enough for me. I can’t wait to see it again, or more precisely go there again. I felt like I was savoring a brief vacation. I’m not saying the dramatic ingredients are secondary, but they almost are.”
“You feel so nicely brought along by Yorick Le Saux‘s sun-speckled afternoon cinematography and Walter Fasano‘s disciplined cutting, and by the nostalgic Stones vibe (there’s a lip-synch dance sequence that made me fall in love all over again with ‘Emotional Rescue’) and especially by Ralph Fiennes’ giddy-ass, run-at-the-mouth, rock-and-roll madman performance that I was going ‘wow, I almost don’t even care what may or may not happen in this thing.’
“Well, I did as far as the plot unfolded. When the heavy-ass, third-act complications arrived I was…well, not uninterested. They’re definitely intriguing as far as they go, especially when the law steps in and starts asking questions. But I just liked being there.” — from “Much Better Splash Than Expected — Perverse, Noirish, High-Style, Sensual,” posted on 4.11.16.
“In short, Luca Guadagnino has made something rare and disconcerting: a genuinely pagan film. It rejoices not just in nudity, male and female, but in the classical notion of figures in a landscape, and of the earth itself demanding frenzied worship. That is why Harry (Ralph Fiennes), having put on a Rolling Stones LP, begins to dance to ‘Emotional Rescue’ and then, clearly fettered by interior space, bursts out onto the rooftop and continues his display under a scorching haze. Who would have thought that an Englishman, of all people, would prove to be such a natural Dionysian?” — from Anthony Lane’s 5.2.16 New Yorker review.
In a 4.16 Anne Thompson Indiewire piece titled “Deconstructing Promising Young Woman: Emerald Fennell, Jay Duplass, and More Dig In,” the following Fennell quote appears:
“How would we all justify ourselves when the angel of retribution comes to [our] door? What have you done to help the homeless? Where did your phone come from? Are the [people who made it] okay? In a very generał sense, we all know we are not good, to some degree, and we’re frightened of being asked to explain ourselves…”
HE to Fennell: “An angel of retribution might pay a visit someday because 96% of the time I tend to duck into a store or cross the street when I see a homeless person approaching? And you want me to feel guilty because my iPhone was assembled by poorly paid Chinese workers? If Apple didn’t exploit these people by paying them shit wages my phone would cost a good deal more, right? And I’m supposed to feel guilty that I’m only paying a grand for a recent model with 256K memory?
“And do you want to talk about the worst offender of all — the female fashion industry? How guilty do you and your same-aged friends feel when you manage to purchase a great-looking dress or outfit or shoes at a reasonable price?
“I’m sure you’ve come to the conclusion that everyone is tainted to some degree. As Hud Bannon said back in ’63, ‘This world is so full of crap, a man’s gonna get into it sooner or later whether he’s careful or not.'”
The 4.12 announcement that the beloved Arclight theatre chain would close with no apparent scheme for re-opening shocked every local movie fanatic to the core. Culturally and emotionally it was one of the most traumatic events this city and certainly this industry had suffered in many years, and one that arguably rivalled the impact of the tragic Notre Dame fire in Paris on 4.15.19.
But remember what happened right after that tragedy on the Ile de la Cite? Super-rich people pledged funds to rebuild almost immediately. It was obvious within hours that things would be okay. Not so much with the Arclight. Discussions may be underway as we speak between Arclight honchos and, say, the Cinemark or Harkins chains to possibly relaunch. Or reps from Netflix, Amazon or Apple may be poking around and kicking the tires…who knows?
But the expressions of shock and devastation were so great earlier this week that I thought we might’ve heard about a possible solution by now.
The apparent belief among certain Minneapolis citizens who’ve been rioting over the killing of Daunte Wright is that now-resigned police officer Kimberly Potter lied about accidentally shooting Wright with her pistol instead of her holstered Taser…right? She flat-out lied instead of admitting that she intended to plug the kid with her Glock 22 when he started acting up…right? Because how could she possibly mistake her sidearm, which weighs a little more than two pounds, with a Taser that only weighs eight ounces…right?
Potter’s mystifying behavior aside, the apparent view of woke lefty culture and the African-American community is that cops should stop trying to strong-arm suspects of color when they pull them over for whatever, and if the situation comes down to an either-or to basically err on the side of “let ’em skate.” Because if they pull them over and suspects-of-color resist or refuse to comply or run for the hills (which often happens), another tragedy will ensue and more crowds will attack more police stations and loot more stores.
The general solution, therefore, would be to adopt a hands-off, not-worth-it policy in the matter of routine pull-overs. If a suspect of whatever ethnicity is pulled over or questioned regarding an alleged felony, law officers obviously need to do their duty. But if a person-of-color has an air-freshener hanging from a rearview mirror or if his/her car has an expired registration tag, let it go. If cops are about to cuff a suspect and he wriggles away and jumps into his car, watch the suspect peel out and don’t pursue. It’s not worth it. The cops can always sneak up and cuff him/her later.
I honestly feel that this 88 year-old fight sequence, shot and choreographed by Willis O’Brien and assistant animator Buzz Gibson over a period of seven weeks, is more gripping in a visceral boxing-match sense that any of the similar scraps in Adam Wingard‘s Godzilla vs. Kong. I didn’t believe anything in that ridiculous film…not a line, not a shot, nothing. What’s still great about the oldie but goodie is that amplified Kong roar and the whites of his eyes.
“If Gunda never subjects us to gruesome images of slaughter a la Georges Franju’s Blood of the Beasts, it nevertheless closes with a prolonged single-shot sequence that’s more heartbreaking than any depiction of the goings-on in an abattoir ever captured on film.
“In this sequence, a truck pulls up to the barn where the pigs live and drives off with the piglets, leaving the mama pig in a state of grief-stricken perplexity. For minutes on end, we watch her pacing around, clearly distressed and unable to fathom why her piglets have been taken from her. It’s the kind of viscerally upsetting moment that, as Orson Welles said of Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, would make a stone cry.” — Posted by slantmagazine‘s Keith Watson on 9.19.20.
“Like everyone else who is projecting their human feelings onto Gunda, I was sad for her at the film’s fateful end. But there was also a sense of relief. Farm life isn’t easy for anybody, and Gunda has more than earned a rest.” — Bob Strauss, 4.14 review in San Francisco Chronicle.
Ditto Zoomers and younger GenXers…eternal condemnation from Sophocles, Euripides, O’Neill, Chekhov, Wilde, Pinter, Stoppard, etc.
From “New Rules, New Realm,” posted on 6.14.18: “Meanwhile the art of delivering a powerful, well-honed one-off — strong characters, a thought-out story, a resonant theme and a satisfying resolution within 90 to 150 minutes — seems to be falling away, certainly in terms of theatrical and to an increasing extent in the cable-streaming arena. Things have changed a helluva lot since The Sopranos popped in ’99.
“But what about the one-off? It was the only game in town in theatres for over 2500 years, going back to the days of ancient Greek classics. It was the only game in town in cinemas during the 20th Century. It was mostly the only game in town for the first eight to ten years of the 21st Century. But within the last decade it’s been losing ground, and now — only since 2008 or 2010 or thereabouts — it’s actually starting to be spoken of as a form that’s losing its grip on the culture and may one day be relegated to second-tier status. Less essential, losing ground, pushed aside…maybe.
HE to Younger, Present-Day Viewers: How does it feel to be the first generation, and I mean after 2500 years of serious dramatic endeavor (Sophocles, Billy Wilder, Euripides, Harold Pinter, Shakespeare, Jane Campion, Eugene O’Neill, Oscar Wilde, Diablo Cody, Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner, Paul Schrader, Tom Stoppard, Elaine May, Quentin Tarantino, David Hare, Christophe Marlowe, Aristophanes, August Strindberg, Woody Allen, Paddy Chayefsky, Greta Gerwig)…how does it feel to be the first generation to say “ehhh, maybe not so much” to the concept of the stand-alone drama or comedy?
