Next month Fathom Events will present that special 4K restoration (original negative VistaVision scan) of Alfred Hitchcock ‘s NorthbyNorthwest (‘59) on screens coast to coast (1 pm on Sunday, 5.19 and 7 pm on Tuesday, 5.22). All to promote the 4K UHD Bluray, which will presumably pop in mid-summer.
I guess I’m so accustomed to movies being overlong or needlessly extended that I didn’t even mention the length of Challengers in my4.16review. Would I have preferred a 110-minute cut? Or, as Schrader suggests, 100? I only know I didn’t feel oppressed by the 131.
Every picture has its shadows / And it has some source of light / Blindness, blindness and sight / The perils of benefactors / The blessings of parasites / Blindness, blindness and sight.
Ten days ago I re-posted a generic HE viewpoint…my longstanding praise of Paul Brickman‘s Risky Business (’83)…basically a statement that this was far more than a teenaged horndog comedy but å social satire of the slyest, dryest and most on-target kind.
Risky Business was hugely enjoyable (“Who’s the U-boat commander?” is one of the funniest lines ever spoken by an actor whom no one had heard of back then and who still draws a blank) and yet the butt of the humor was obvious and consistent…the whole thing was aimed squarely at the unfolding early ’80s zeitgiest and louche wealthy-guy opportunism in particular…a congregation of social forces that indicated we were all starting to ease up and hang back and say “what the fuck?” more and more…swirling downwards into greed and effete whateverism.
Critic Emmanuel Levy, who’s been around forever, said precisely the same thing:
But I was astonished to discover last night that David Denby, one of my all-time favorite critics who was with New York magazine for many years before moving over to The New Yorker…I was astonished to read Denby’s 8.22.83 review and realize that he missed Risky Business almost entirely. Denby obviously saw it, but it went right around him or through him or over him. He allowed that Brickman has some talent but basically panned the film, calling it “corrupt” and “a clear failure.”
A clear failure? It’s one of the smartest, funniest, most perfectly realized, on-point social satire-slash-sex comedies ever made…it’s right up there with The Apartment and The Graduate…it simultaneously understands and chortles in a resigned, low-key way at upper-middle-class entitlement, and with the cynical knowingness of a Reagan-era Oscar Wilde.
Another of my favorite cinematic soothsayers back then, N.Y. Times critic Janet Maslin, also missed it…mind-blowing. Christian Science Monitor critic David Sterrittdismissed it also.
Donald Trump has been wealthy beyond measure since at least the ’80s, and yet he can’t afford to fix his serious baldness problem? By simply taking the time to address it with the sevices of the right people?
If this miserable pig had gone to my Prague team 20 or 25 years ago these blowover moments would never happen because there wouldn’t be any scalp to cover up.
Yesterday six conservative members of the nine-member Supreme Court made it quite clear that they are whores for Donald Trump and fools for his plan to lay waste US democracy and bring fresh, ferocious, anti-democratic hell to this country if he wins in November…they will do whatever they can to shilly-shally their way out of the line of fire and submit to his agenda by any pretzel-contortioning that comes to mind.
Olbermann: “You, Samuel Allito, are personally backing America’s Hitler…as these six evil, corrupt, partisan, useless, anti-democracy gangsters on the Supreme Theocratic Court flailed around yesterday, looking for an excuse, any excuse, to bury the evidence against Trump and to fix the upcoming election…this destructive fascist court…you and I now know this.”
“Challe” is not a word in any language, but it reminds me of chattle, which basically means movable goods. The second word could be some kind of shortened slang abbreviation or cryptic allusion to people who come from Niger, the landlocked West African country.
Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to millions.
Do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. pic.twitter.com/CnM6oOrHKd
Over the last two evenings I re-watched Season #1 of Andrew Jarecki‘s The Jinx, which premiered nine years ago. Just to freshen my recollections. Late last night I segued into episode #1 of The Jinx, Part Two.
The episode #1 high point comes with nine-year-old footage of Jarecki showing an advance look at the final episode to the Jinx “family” (relatives of Durst’s three victims, witnesses, detectives, prosecutors). The thunderbolt moment happens when Durst mutters his famous bathroom confession (“Killed ’em all, of course”). The reaction in the room is quite something.
The all-but-universal reaction to Durst — his deep, New York-accented voice, the twitchy eyes, matter-of-fact recitations of his unreliable version of the facts, relaxed manner — is that he doesn’t radiate dangerous psycho vibes. Nothing excitable and physically rather small (5′ 6″). If nothing else The Jinx acquaints us with a fresh understanding of what an intelligent, unconventional psycho can actually sound like.
Durst is gone now, having died of a heart attack in ’22 in a prison hospital. He wasn’t very smart or crafty in hiding the Galveston rooming-house murder, or when he tried to elude authorities when he went on the lam, and he absolutely torpedoed himself, of course, by agreeing to be interviewed by Jarecki. But he behaved in a fairly “normal” and relatable way.
The bottom line is that Durst was very skilled at concealing decades of simmering rage.
Season #2 has six episodes — five more left. Episode 1 (“Why Are You Still Here?”) began streaming on Sunday, 4.21. Episode 2 (“Friendships Die Hard”) pops next Sunday, 4.28. Episode 3 (“Saving My Tears Until It’s Official”) streams on Sunday, May 5. Episode 4 (“The Unluckiest Man In The World”) debuts on Sunday, 5.12. The final two episodes will air on 5.19 and 5.26.
Mild-mannered Piers Morgan attempts a semi-normal conversation with the fearsome “Crackhead Barney“, who taunted Alec Baldwin the other day…watch the first five minutes.