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I could’ve seen Kelly Reichardt‘s First Cow (A24, 3.6) during last September’s Telluride Film Festival. But I didn’t. It just didn’t seem important enough. You have to make choices at festival, and First Cow wound up with the short end of the stick.
It currently has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but you can’t trust critics when it comes to Kelly Reichardt films. She’s a deeply respected indie auteur and they’ve all drunk the kool-aid, and they’re just not going to level with you. I will but they won’t.
First Cow costars John Magaro, Orion Lee, the late René Auberjonois, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd.
“While not a lot happens in First Cow by the standards of most two-hour narrative films, and some may wish for a less open-ended conclusion, the drama’s rough-edged lyricism kept me rapt the entire time.” — The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney.
Variety‘s Joe Otterson is reporting that the 2020 Oscar telecast (airing on 2.9.20) will be host-less. Again. Second year in a row. Which probably means we’ll NEVER see an Oscar host again. Because of Twitter.
Exactly one year ago Variety‘s Matt Donnellyreported that the Academy honchos had given up trying to find an Oscar host, largely due to (a) the mustard gas after-affect of the Kevin Hart debacle plus the fact that (b) nobody they’ve reached out to had accepted the thankless gig because (c) they all know that the Khmer Rouge twitter brigade will find something dicey that they’ve done, said or tweeted and rapetheirreputationtoshreds.
And so it was decided that the 2019 Oscars would be hostless. “The Oscars are poised to embark on one of the most radical reinventions in the awards show’s long history,” Donnelly reported. “For the first time in nearly three decades, the biggest night in movies plans to go without a host.”
Now the same decision has been made. Except this time the reaction is “whew, okay, fine, no host…who’d want the gig anyway? At least we have Twitter off our backs.”
This morning “handsome solo” posted a hard–nosed comment about Quentin Tarantino‘s “beautiful angel” depiction of Sharon Tate in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. He was promptly derided as a “misogynistic troll” for, as one commenter claimed, saying that in the actual world Tate “had it coming because she was no saint.”
Solo (who has since deleted his post) didn’t say or mean that. Allow me to elaborate.
Solo’s basic assessment is correct. Tarantino created a Sharon Tate lacking in any recognizably adult specifics, certainly in any kind of closely observed, semi-complex fashion. She’s more of an alpha vibe than a person. All she does in the film, really, is flash that radiant smile and listen to Paul Revere and the Raiders and bop around and have a good time.
There’s not even an attempt at some kind of interesting definition or shading in QT’s Tate dialogue. No texture, no hints, no unspoken conveyances…nothing. Remove the tragic fate aspect (which we all supply on our own, of course, except for those Millennial and GenZ dingbats I heard about who reportedly didn’t get the ending) and she’s basically presented as a glowing cypher in go-go boots.
Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski sometime in late ’68 or early ’69.
Once Upon A Time in Hollywood was never intended to be any kind of portrait of Tate and Polanski — it’s a portrait of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. But you know what? That N.Y. Times stringer who challenged Tarantino at the Cannes Film Festival press conference wasn’t just whistling dixie.
Are you telling me that if, say, Eric Roth, Robert Towne, Diablo Cody, Paul Schrader, William Goldman, Susannah Grant, Jay Presson Allen, Tom Stoppard, Paddy Chayefsky, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Leigh Brackett, Greta Gerwig, James L. Brooks or the Lawrence Kasdan of the ’80s and ’90s had written their own versions of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (i.e., sticking to the basic bones but adding embroidery here and there) that they would have written Tate as a rich hippie-chick Barbie doll?
Sharon Tate was in fact a driven woman with a presumably complex inner life. She was certainly more than just a blissed-out ditzoid. She was a limited (you could say mediocre) actress in a somewhat turbulent marriage. She and Roman Polanski had their infidelities. Hair stylist Jay Sebring was in love with Tate. He knew Polanski was to some extent an aloof and selfish husband, more tethered to his work than to Sharon, and so Sebring was just waiting for an opportunity to move in.
Tarantino isn’t ignorant of Tate’s personality and history and ups and downs, but he certainly chose to ignore them. All you get from the film is that QT wanted to be as kind and cherishing and chivalrous as possible to poor Sharon, considering what actually happened to her.
That said, saving her life (and that of Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent) at the very end is quite welcome and in fact constitutes one of the happiest endings ever delivered by a mainstream, big-budget film in this century. This is the spark of my initial affection for Once after catching it in Cannes, and partly why I’m still a fan.
A film restoration guy swears that a print of Psycho with Saul Bass‘s main title section in color (“emerald green lines, much like North by Northwest“) was screened in England and reviewed by a major London newspaper (possibly the London Times). The same version was apparently viewed by former Los Angeles County Museum curator Ron Haver, having received a 35mm Psycho print from Alfred Hitchcock for a LACMA retrospective back in the ’70s.
I know what I’m about to say is heresy, but I wouldn’t mind watching a colorized Psycho as…well, as an exercise in perversity. If someone could make it look like real 1960s color, I mean, as opposed to what these colorized clips offer. The tones look weak and pastel-ish, like tinted lobby cards from the ’50s. The bathroom closeups of Janet Leigh‘s eye and skin tone look completely wrong. Anthony Perkins in the blanket looks okay, but it still doesn’t look like actual color cinematography.
Greta Gerwig during a Waldorf Astoria round-table interview for Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg, snapped sometime in mid January 2010). My first question to her was “speaking as a veteran, how would you define mumblecore?” I can’t find the mp3 but her answer was clear and concise.
Not attending the Khmer Rouge Wokester Festival means I won’t have my usual taste of snow, which I’ll be very sorry to miss. It doesn’t snow in Park City each and every January but when it does it’s wonderful….instant soul-soothe.
HE is very sorry that the admirable Elizabeth Wurtzel has passed at age 52. Condolences to friends, fans, family, etc.
From N.Y. Times review of “Prozac Nation” (’94), which was published when Wurtzel was 27: “Wrenching and comical, self-indulgent and self-aware, ‘Prozac Nation’ possesses the raw candor of Joan Didion‘s essays, the irritating emotional exhibitionism of Sylvia Plath‘s ‘The Bell Jar’, and the wry, dark humor of a Bob Dylan song.”
The movie version of Prozac Nation, directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg and starring Christina Ricci, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9.8.01.
Every year Hollywood Elsewhere subjects the leading Best Picture contenders to the Howard Hawks measuring stick. The legendary director is famed for having said that a good movie (or a formidable Oscar seeker) always has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”
Hawks also defined a good director as “someone who doesn’t annoy you.” Well, that lets Taika Waititi out!
How do the ten PGA-nominated films rate on the Hawks chart? Here’s my take:
Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman: This 209-minute film has at least 10 great scenes, but the last 30 to 40 minutes (suspenseful build-up to Hoffa shooting, Hoffa shooting, getting older, “Peggy hates me”, white hair, assisted living, buying the coffin, “leave the door open a bit”) amount to one of the most shattering finales in American cinema. With The Irishman it’s not a matter of choosing great scenes, but asking “which scenes aren’t great or good?” The answer is “none.” Plus: “It’s summer.”
Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story. Three great scenes: (a) Adam Driver singing “Being Alive” (although one could argue this is not really an integrated Marriage Story moment as much as a Stephen Sondheim time-out); (b) Laura Dern‘s rant about how the culture has unfairly regarded women over the decades; (c) the screaming fight between Driver and Scarjo in his apartment (although this is closer to a strong scene than a great one).
Sam Mendes‘s 1917. Three great scenes: (a) The smoking German biplane crash crashes into the wooden shack, the British soldiers pull the pilot out, etc.; (b) The scene with the brother (Richard Madden‘s Lieutenant Blake) at the very end; (c) the stand-down scene with Benedict Cumberbatch at the very end. I think the feeding-milk-to-the-baby scene is memorable but perhaps a little too calculated. There are many stirring, oh-my-God scenes in 1917, but they all kind of bleed together because it’s all a stream-of-movie-consciousness thing.
Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Four great scenes: (a) The howling finale at Rick Dalton‘s Cielo Drive home, followed by the invite to visit and schmooze with Sharon and her friends. (b) Cliff Booth visits the Spahn Ranch. (c) Cliff dukes it out with Bruce Lee. (d) “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans” in the Musso and Frank parking lot.
James Mangold‘s Ford v. Ferrari. One great scene: when some Italian guy (or was it Jon Bernthal‘s Lee Iacocca?) tells Tracy Letts‘ Henry Ford II that Enzo Ferrari had called him fat and that Ford, an assembly-line manufacturer, is unworthy of the racing-car realm. The film has many good or very good scenes, but this is the only great one. I’m sorry but that’s how I see it. Plus it has one bad scene — the scene in the diner between Christian Bale and Matt Damon when they’re laughing about the absurdity of creating a competitive Ford race car in the span of several weeks, etc.
Todd Phillips‘ Joker. Three great scenes: Dancing down the Bronx staircase. Arthur Fleck’s big talk-show finale when he plugs Murray Franklin on-camera. Arthur escaping the destroyed police car and comes upon a riot of clown faces on the street. This film has no bad scenes. Everything works and is all of a piece.
Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite. Many pretty good scenes and always a sense of mise en scene aliveness and invention, but no great scenes. One fatally bad scene: The former maid Gook Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun) shows up at the big swanky home in a rainstorm, rings the bell, asks to be let it. The four new employees, a family which managed to get Gook fired, is lying around drunk and bleary-eyed. Good has every reason in the world to expose their scam and ruin a perfectly good thing, so what does her replacement Kim Chong-Sook (Chang Hyae-jin) do? She does what no sane person would ever do. She lets Gook into the house. It’s called bad plotting.
Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women. No great scenes but two very good ones — the fantasy finale when Saoirse Ronan‘s Jo, encouraged by family and friends, chases after Bhaer (Louis Garrel) and stops him from going to California, and the scene when she negotiates copyright and royalties with Tracy Letts‘ Mr. Dashwood. Bad scenes: Florence Pugh’s snarly Amy burns Jo’s manuscript. Laurie has a change of heart and proposes to Amy minutes after telling Jo that she’s his everything. Returning from having given their food to a local poor woman, the March sisters return to find their dinner table loaded down with a banquet (provided by Chris Cooper) that would be enough to feed a Union regiment on a furlough. Bob (Better Call Saul) Odenkirk suddenly shows up with whiskery sideburns…the fuck?
The vigorous campaign by high-ranking female producers and journalists to badger and guilt-trip industry males into nominating Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women for this or that award has once again come up short. Or at least has stalled in front of the locked gates of the Director’s Guild of America.
The five nominees for the top DGA prize are Martin Scorsese for The Irishman, Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Bong Joon-ho for Parasite, Sam Mendes for 1917 and Taika Waititi for Jojo Rabbit.
The general consensus is that Waititi took what would (or should) have been Gerwig’s slot. So does Gerwig defy the odds and somehow luck out with an Academy Best Director nomination for Little Women? Or is this all she wrote? You tell me. I suspect it’s probably a wash for Gerwig from this point on.
The DGA guys have, however, paid tribute to three female filmmakers — Mati Diop for Atlantics, Alma Ha’rel for Honey Boy and Melina Matsoukas for Queen & Slim — in the first-time feature film award category.
In my somewhat hazy, impressionistic mind the 10 nominees for the 2020 Producers Guild of America’s Daryl F. Zanuck award (i.e., their Best Picture trophy) have blended into the Best Picture BAFTA nominees. Not actually but vaguely. And the proud contenders are 1917,Fordv. Ferrari, TheIrishman, JoJoRabbit, Joker, KnivesOut, Little Women, MarriageStory, OnceUponATimeinHollywood, Parasite. Some of these weren’t BAFTA-nominated but you get the drift.
