As a longtime, fully confirmed Zak Snyder hater, I attended a Monday night 3D screening of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice at the Grove with negative expectations. I expected to experience irritation, pain, pique, torment and physical nausea all through it. And most of the film delivered on this stuff, for sure. It’s a tedious, dirge-like thing. The brownish-downish mood from start to finish is really like a virus of some kind. But a few moments struck me favorably, believe it or not, and one in particular — the scene in which Henry Cavill‘s Superman saves the little Mexican girl and is then surrounded and worshipped by a crowd, some wearing Day of the Dead facial makeup — actually melted me down. I was reminded of that scene in Treasure of Sierra Madre when Walter Huston is worshipped for having saved a little boy’s life. There’s another shot of a stranded woman reaching upwards toward a levitating Superman — a shot that reminded me of The Leftovers — that added to a feeling about Superman being a kind of religious figure, which no other Superman flick has even flirted with. .
And I was again won over by Cavill — something about his vibe, even in a role as simplistic as this one, is just easy and embracable. And it’s true — Gal Gadot really does steal her scenes and generally wake the film up. And there’s a passage or two when Hans Zimmer‘s heavy score really turned me around and rocked my ribcage. The Doomsday monster was just another ridiculous Hulk-like Extremo…get the fuck outta here. But Jesse Eisenberg‘s Lex Luthor is quite spirited and a bit of fun (I was relieved that he doesn’t shave his head until the very end), and Jeremy Irons‘ Alfred is a lot cooler than Michael Caine‘s, no offense. And I have to admit that Snyder really knows how to stage a funeral scene…actually a double funeral. But the last shot in the film — bits of dirt briefly levitating on top of a plain wood coffin — is shameless. If you’re going to kill someone off and bring his long arc to an end, stick to it already. Don’t waffle, don’t fiddle-faddle — play your death card straight.
This is a dated topic, but I just got back into things today. Early this morning I wrote the following about Bernie Sanders and the little bird on Facebook: “I honestly believe that the little Bernie bird was ‘a sign from God.’ Do I believe in a moralistic rooting-for-humanity God? No, of course not. So what am I saying? I’m saying that no matter what you believe or don’t believe in, that little bird was some kind of a spirit vessel or symbol of goodness, compassion, serendipity and bonne chance. I think the bird sensed the right kind of vibes. There’s zero chance this would’ve happened at a Trump or Cruz rally. Here’s the Facebook thread.
Criterion’s Odd Man Out Bluray popped last April. “This is one of the saddest and most tragic noirs of all time. I saw it a couple of times on laser disc in the mid ’90s, and I have indelible memories of a sweating, barely conscious James Mason (as IRA combatant Johnny McQueen) and of constantly falling snow in a darkened Belfast. The exquisite photography is by Robert Krasker, who also shot Reed’s The Third Man. The harbor finale with Mason and Kathleen Ryan leaning against the iron fence with the cops slowly approaching in the snow…wow. And Robert Newton‘s performance as the gesticulating alcoholic painter…forget about it.” — from a 5.22.12 HE post.
Odd Man Out was Mason’s breakout film. What isn’t widely known is that he’d been acting since 1933 or thereabouts, when he turned 24. He was 37 — no spring chicken — when Reed’s film was shot in mid ’46.
Almost exactly 20 years ago I hung for two or three hours with novelist-poet Jim Harrison, who at the time was 58 and in the absolute prime of his life, or so it seemed to me. The occasion was the Century City premiere of Bruno Barreto‘s Carried Away, which was based on Harrison’s “Farmer.” I had arranged with a Fine Line publicist to speak with him. 40 minutes before the film began I approached the marquee area and saw Harrison standing outside with some admirer or whomever, and I went up and introduced myself. He sensed my smart-ass attitude fairly quickly and we were fine from then on. Most of the talking happened at the after-party. A great fellow. He had this elegant, heavy-cat way of speaking (he would say “I think not” rather than “I don’t agree”) and had that slightly weird false eye and always with the lit cigarette…I just felt honored to share space with the guy. I so loved those Russell Chatham watercolors that always adorned the covers of the trade paperback editions of his books. Harrison was and still is one of my all-time favorite writers and a major stylistic influence (the others being Milan Kundera, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, William Safire, Russell Baker). His prose can be so clean and clear and monumentally beautiful. I remember a line from “Dalva” about some none-too-bright guy being so in love with a woman that “he sometimes felt as if her ass was aimed at him, like some people from the lower end of the gene pool believe that TV shows are made for them personally.” I filed an L.A. Times Syndicate piece called “Riffing with Jim Harrison: The Brawny Poet-Novelist on Hollywood and <em>Carried Away</em>.” And now Harrison is dead of a heart attack at age 78. I can’t think of anything more to say except that he had a great 40-year run. It would have been nice to chat with him one more time but that Century City encounter was pretty special. Cheers.
Huffpost‘s Cole Delbyck is asserting that a deleted Batman v Superman scene (titled “Communion”) that appeared on YouTube today “might help clear up some confusion.” Does it? I still haven’t seen this Godforsaken thing so I wouldn’t know, but now that I’m back in Los Angeles I intend to man up and submit early this evening. God help me. This is like dreading a visit to the dentist x 1000. Incidentally: Batman v Superman rated a B from CinemaScore, which is more or less a failing grade. So that assertion by Variety‘s Brent Lang that BvS‘s opening $166 million domestic haul ($420 million worldwide) is some kind of stinging rebuke to critics is bunk. “When people want to pay to see a reputed piece of shit, you can’t stop ’em.” — Samuel Goldwyn. Besides, as noted in Forbes, Batman v Superman “set a new record [last weekend] for the worst Friday-to-Sunday drop for a superhero movie release in modern North American box office history.” Plus the public has agreed that it’s not very good or they wouldn’t have given it a Cinemascore B.
I got three hours’ sleep on yesterday’s Seoul-to-Los Angeles flight. I felt more or less okay when I got home around 5 pm, but my Hanoi body clock thought the time might be 7 am the next day. I was up until 1 am last night and then awoke at 3 am (5 pm Hanoi time) and then crashed again until just before 12 noon. Then I discovered that the sound-synch issues that have bedeviled me for weeks still haven’t gone away, even with the new Sony 65″ 4K which arrived two days before I left (on 3.14). An actor says “cat” or “culpable” or “have a glass of wine,” and his/her lips are just a little bit behind of the voice. (Or ahead of it.) It’s just half a beat but once you notice this problem you can’t do anything else but study lips. Infuriating. Digital sound synch wasn’t a problem for decades — it’s only manifested within the last five or six years.
These are two reasons why I haven’t filed anything. In Vietnam I wasn’t thinking about this crap at all. Now I’m in back in it. This is my life.
As much as I love Hanoi (wonderful food, throbbing street life, fascinating architectural stamp, magnificent traffic swarms, gentleness and kindness from everyone you run into) the air is nearly as bad as Beijing’s. You look up and it’s all kinds of gray and smoggy, like some kind of simulation of nuclear fallout. Here‘s a recent record of the “very unhealthy” pollution levels. It doesn’t matter if you’re visiting for a few days but your lungs would obviously suffer if you lived there permanently. And yet it’s a great place to be. I’m a fan of certain aspects of Los Angeles culture but visually and atmospherically it doesn’t begin to compare to the wonder of Hanoi. But when I stepped onto the LAX sidewalk today around 4:30 (3:05 landing, 20 minutes on tarmac, 40 minutes to get through customs, another 10 or 15 minutes pick up the bags) it sure was nice to look up and see sunshine and blue sky.
Snapped in West Hollywood — Sunday, 3.27, 5:20 pm.
2016 FILMS EXPECTED TO REGISTER AS NOTEWORTHY, REVIEW-DRIVEN, POSSIBLE AWARDS FODDER:
Highest Expectations (in order of confidence or expectation): 1. Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester-by-the-Sea [locked Best Actor nomination for Casey Affleck]; 2. Martin Scorsese‘s Silence; 3. Steven Gaghan's Gold (Matthew McConaughey, Bryce Dallas Howard, Edgar Ramírez); 4. Ang Lee's Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; 5. Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals; 6. David Frankel's Collateral Beauty (Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Edward Norton); 7. Clint Eastwood's Sully (Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney) (7)
War-Related Brad Pitt Flicks -- One Romantic, One Darkly Comedic: Robert Zemeckis' World War II-era romantic spy drama w/ Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard; David Michod's War Machine (Netflix) w/ Pitt as Gen. Stanley McChrystal + Ben Kingsley, Emory Cohen, Topher Grace, John Magaro, Scoot McNairy, Will Poulter. (2)
Probably Solid/Decent/Interesting/Approvable, etc.: 1. Morten Tyldum and John Spaihts' Passengers; 2. Damien Chazelle's La La Land; 3. John Cameron Mitchell's How To Talk To Girls at Parties, 4. Ron Howard's Inferno; 5. Peter Berg's Patriot's Day (Mark Wahlberg, J.K. Simmons); 6. Niki Caro's The Zookeeper's Wife; 7. Justin Kurzel's Assassin's Creed; 8. Ben Wheatley's Free Fire; 9. Tate Taylor's The Girl On The Train; 10. Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon. (10)
Very Interesting, Slight Hedging of Bets (random order): 1. Charlie McDowell's The Discovery w/ Rooney Mara, Nicholas Hoult (a love story set one year after the existence of the afterlife is scientifically verified or a more thoughtful version of The Leftovers); 2. Wim Wenders' Submergence (Alicia Vikander, James McAvoy); 3. Woody Allen's 1930s period dramedy (Steve Carell, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively); 5. David Michod's War Machine; 6. Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special; 7. James Ponsoldt's The Circle (Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, John Boyega), 8. Pablo Larrain's Jackie (Natalie Portman, Greta Gerwig, Peter Sarsgaard); 9. Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman (Sahahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti); 10. Pedro Almodovar's Julieta (the life of the titular woman, told between two time periods, 2015 and 1985). (10)
Dumped Into Early August Release: John Hancock's The Founder (biopic of McDonald's kingpin Ray Kroc, opening on 8.5.16).
Highly Refined Horror: Juan Antonio Bayona's A Monster Calls. (1)
Overpraised at Sundance: Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation.
Duelling Interracial-Marriage Period Dramas: Jeff Nichols' Loving (Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Michael Shannon, Marton Csokas); Amma Asante's A United Kingdom (David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike).]
Feels Fringe-y: Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (based on Tarell McCraney's play "In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue" -- a Plan B/A24 project about black queer youth amid the temptations of the Miami drug trade).
You tell me: Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some.
Worrisome: Jodie Foster's Money Monster (political situation thriller);
This Year's Animated Pixar Wonder-Package for the Whole Family: Andrew Stanton's Finding Dory. (1)
Spare Me: 1. Zack Snyder's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice; 2. Terrence Malick's Weightless; 3. Derek Cianfrance's The Light Between Oceans; 4. Gary Ross's Free State of Jones; 5. Benedict Andrews' Una (Rooney Mara, Ben Mendelsohn). (5)
Genres Have Their Rules: 1. Paul Greengrass's Jason Bourne w/ Matt Damon (political action thriller); 2. Shane Black's The Nice Guys (darkly humorous thriller); 3. Peter Berg's Deepwater Horizon (real-life disaster action-thriller); 4. Antoine Fuqua's The Magnificent Seven (western remake); 5. Gavin O'Connor's The Accountant (action thriller); 6. Ed Zwick's Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (thriller); 7. Matthew Vaughn's I Am Pilgrim (murder thriller); 8. Michael Grandage's Genius (biopic about esteemed book editor Maxwell Perkins); 9. Todd Phillips' Arms and the Dudes. (9)
A Little Worried But Maybe: 1. Oliver Stone's Snowden; 2. Warren Beatty's still-untitled Howard Hughes film; 3. Ariel Vroman's Criminal; 4. James Gray's The Lost City of Z; 5. The Secret Scripture w/ Jessica Chastain, Vanessa Redgrave, Eric Bana; 6. Greg McLean's The Belko Experiment; 7. Werner Herzog's Salt And Fire (Michael Shannon, Gael García Bernal, Werner Herzog, Veronica Ferres); 8. Ewan MacGregor's American Pastoral (MacGregor, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, David Strathairn). (8)
Who Knows?: Alex Garland's Annhiliation. (1)
Seen, Praised, Genre Classic: Robert Eggers' The Witch.
Somewhat Lowered Expectations, Written Down: A Bigger Splash; Demolition; John Hillcoat's Triple Nine. (3)
Bernie Sanders is claiming momentum in the wake of yesterday’s wins in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington. But they mainly happened because Alaska, Hawaii and Washington don’t have large black populations (i.e., low-information, “we don’t know him,” etc.) I can do the delegate math as well as anyone else. We all know how things’ll shake out in the end. But for the time being I sure feel proud about that Bernie sticker on the Majesty. Will I replace it with a Hillary sticker when the time comes? I’ll vote for her, of course, but I just can’t feel the passion. Never have, probably never will.
Devastating projections are contained in a two-day-old Cannes ’16 spitball piece by Variety‘s Peter Debruge and Elsa Keslassy. Every year I hope and pray that Cannes will be great on its own terms but will also debut some award-season contender along the lines of No Country for Old Men, the Best Picture winner that debuted in Cannes eight years ago, or Carol or something that will quicken pulses a bit next fall.
Nope!
For one thing they claim that Paramount is “reportedly withholding” Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, which almost certainly means, of course, they’re afraid that the Cannes critical response might contaminate the well. It’s been an article of faith for months that Silence would almost surely play Cannes so this, for me, is shattering news.
They’re also reporting that Steven Spielberg‘s The BFG will play out of competition. So now I have to sit through and review a family-friendly Spielberg film? Costarring Mark Rylance, Rebecca Hall and Bill Hader? This is truly grotesque. Really, this feels awful.
On top of which Amazon Studios “is supposedly trying to keep Kenneth Lonergan’s critically acclaimed Manchester by the Sea under wraps until the fall” so there goes that pleasurable scenario.
Worse, it has been “strongly suggested” that Terrence Malick‘s Voyage of Time or Weightless will appear in the official selection…terrific. Unless he wakes up and changes course the man is over, and yet Cannes attendees may have to sit through another film that will probably contain the same meditative whispery dreamscape scheme that constituted Knight of Cups and To The Wonder.
And forget Oliver Stone‘s Snowden, Debruge and Keslassy are reporting. Open Road has apparently decided to keep that film under wraps until sometime closer to its 9.16 release date (i.e., right smack dab in the middle of the Toronto Film Festival). (more…)
Most of us know all about this, don’t we? Well, some of us. In greenlighting this 10-episode series the TNT guys calculated, of course, that 97% of the viewing public never heard of the 2010 Australian original feature, much less saw it. Shawn Hatosy has the Ben Mendelsohn role. Two off-the-top differences: (a) Ellen Barkin is a formidable actress and still a serious MILF while Jacki Weaver, who played Barkin’s role in the original, is a respected Australian actress, and (b) the family, now located somewhere in SoCal, is into robberies and not drugs.
Excerpts from my 2010 review of David Michod’s Animal Kingdom: “You never actually see any of the Cody brothers, a Melbourne-based crime family, commit any money-making (or money-stealing) crimes. Court testimony that has everyone on pins and needles for a good portion of the film is never heard. Bang-bang stuff happens, but infrequently and very quickly and is never milked for maximum cinematic impact.
“It’s mostly about paranoia leading to poisoning, but it’s also about the things you’re expecting to see never quite happening as you might expect.
“The Cody gang members are played by Ben Mendelsohn (as Andrew ‘Pope’ Cody), Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford (as Darren Cody), Sullivan Stapleton (as Craig Cody) and the heavy-lidded, not-especially-bright-looking James Frecheville (as the kid of the family, Joshua Cody). (more…)
It’s currently 8:35 pm in Hanoi and 6:35 am in Los Angeles. We’ll be heading back to Hanoi Airport tomorrow (Sunday) morning, and then catching the same 12:20 pm flight to Seoul. An hour or two later our respective flights will leave for New York (Jett, Cait) and Los Angeles (me). My flight will leave Seoul at 8 pm Sunday night and arrive in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon at 3:10 pm.
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Images from a recently popped French Bluray of Rowland Lee‘s Son of Frankenstein (’39) have revived an old complaint — the fact that there’s not a great deal of similarity between Boris Karloff‘s monster as he appeared in James Whale’s 1931 original, the 1935 sequel Bride of Frankenstein and Lee’s 1939 installment (which was Karloff’s swan song). In the 1931 film Karloff was gaunt-featured with dark bangs and dark, blotchy eye bags, and was fairly thin of frame. In Bride of Frankenstein the bangs were gone (burned off by the windmill fire) along with the blotchy eye bags, and Karloff, having gained 15 or 20 pounds since the success of Frankenstein, was a lot beefier. In 1939 he still had that well-fed look and a semblance of bangs had returned, but the under-eye makeup was gone forever. The bottom line is that the ’39 monster didn’t look like the ones in the ’35 or ’31 film — it was like Karloff was playing a brother or a cousin.
Boris Karloff’s monster in 1931’s
Frankenstein.
In 1935’s
The Bride of Frankenstein.
In 1939’s
Son of Frankenstein.
It’s obviously none of my business, but I nonetheless find it aesthetically distressing that David Letterman has not only become Moondog but shaved his head to boot. Rural, obstinate, Howard Hughes in his dotage. I realize this Duck Dynasty thing is basically a statement about being not just retired but over and out and fuck off. Imaginary Letterman: “I’m rich and vacationing in St. Barts and I don’t care if I look like Moondog…in fact, I welcome the comparison if you want to make it but I don’t give a shit either way. No, I don’t care if my wife finds me attractive or if women in the supermarket turn their carts around and head in the other direction.”
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I was never completely smitten with Mark and Jay Duplass‘s Togetherness, but I was intrigued with all but one of the characters (the exception being Melanie Lynskey‘s Michelle Pierson, the downhead wife of Mark Duplass‘s Brett Pierson) and I always found it engagingly written and “real”. Honestly? I never watched it religiously because it was never, in my head, a priority. But I was glad it was happening and I’m sorry that HBO has killed it. The 4.10 Season 2 finale will wrap it up. HBO felt that the Season 2 numbers were too weak to continue (330,000 viewers per episode) but it would have been nice all the same if HBO had approved a third and final season. You could tell from Season 2 episodes that the Duplass brothers were still building and planting seeds and cruising within a middle-movement mentality, and that the real fireworks were being saved for Season 3.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice made $27 million last night (i.e., Thursday), and may be on the way to nailing $180 million by Sunday night. (Warner Bros. is projecting a more modest $110 million.) Shitty reviews never seem to matter on opening weekends, but the second weekend always tells the tale. Presumably some in the HE community caught it last night, or have just returned from a Friday evening show back east. (It’s currently 8:45 pm in Manhattan.) Please opine when you have a moment. Have the critics been too rough or generally on target?
From Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review: Ben Affleck portraying Batman is “a curious choice, especially in the light of Hollywoodland (2006), where he excelled in the role of George Reeves, who starred as Superman on TV in the early 1950s, loathed the experience, and died of a gunshot to the head. It was hardly a movie to brighten one’s faith in comic books.
“Since then, Affleck has become a director of steady and satisfying thrillers, including The Town and Argo, so why risk this backward step into the realm of beefcake? Maybe he relished the gleam of the supporting cast—Holly Hunter, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, and Kevin Costner, with Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jesse Eisenberg as a jittery Lex Luthor, and Jeremy Irons taking over from Michael Caine as Alfred, the venerable butler-cum-weapons designer to Bruce Wayne. (more…)
I never thought I’d feel compassion for Ted Cruz but today (i.e., early Saturday morning in Vietnam) I do. I’m a strong believer in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitudes that prevailed during the JFK administration, which was that personal foibles and failings in the sexual arena were never mentioned by reporters or political enemies. Catting around was simply off the table. Do I suspect that persons aligned with Donald Trump planted or helped to fan the thinly sourced, possibly inaccurate National Enquirer story that everyone’s on about? Almost certainly. Do I suspect Cruz is a hound dog? None of my business. But even if everyone agreed, the sense of tawdry cultural degradation would still be out there. Could the Gods have made things any easier for Hillary Clinton?
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For a good 90 minutes I searched high and low for one decent color…hell, any color snap taken during the filming of Howard Hawks‘ Red River…zip. But these black-and-white candids are half-interesting.
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What with the Vietnam time-outs and distractions, I’ve only just gotten up to speed on the latest Trump-Cruz fight, this time about their wives. “This is the dirtiest, ugliest, weirdest…”
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Who the hell drinks salt water? Who the hell sells salt water in plastic bottles with attractive packaging that suggests it’s lemon-flavored eau du mineral? More to the point, what kind of visitor would be dumb enough to buy a six-pack of this stuff without carefully reading the label?