It was obvious from the Toronto get-go that Marc Abraham‘s I Saw The Light, the latest biopic about a self-destructive musical genius, wouldn’t be cutting the award-season mustard. I called it a “mostly downish, spotty and not very enjoyable Hanks Williams biopic,” and a majority of the critical community — 69% if you apply a reverse Rotten Tomatoes subtraction — agreed that it was less than essential viewing. So it’s no surprise that Sony Pictures Classics has decided to bump I Saw The Light from a previously slated (and costly) 11.28 opening to 3.25.16 — the elephant’s graveyard. SPC Co-President Tom Bernard has toldDeadline‘s Pete Hammond they were “happy” with the reception the film received at TIFF and that this “wasn’t a factor” in shifting the date. If you want to believe that, go right ahead.
HE comment #1: Dunaway’s career hit a kind of pothole when Mommie Dearest came out, agreed, but I just re-watched it a couple of weeks ago and certain portions are still a hoot. For my money the film is a hugely pleasurable serving of classic Hollywood Kabuki theatre.
I saw it with several gay guys at the old Columbus Circle Paramount screening room in late August of ’81, and on the down elevator they were all shrieking with laughter, and I don’t mean the derisive kind. They were in heaven…delighted.
Alas, Mommie Dearest has been called an “unintentional comedy” by none-too-brights for so long that it looks like up to me, and I’m sorry but that judgment is just as wrong today as it ever was.
The Mommie Dearest “comedy” is not unintentional. The film basically serves a form of hyper-realism with a campy edge. It’s extreme soap opera, at times overbaked but winkingly so with everyone in on the joke.
If director Frank Perry had modulated Dunaway’s performance, some of the great lines — ‘No wire hangers EVER!,’ ‘Don’t fuck with me, fellas!’ — wouldn’t have worked so well. Those lines are the stuff of Hollywood legend, right up there with Bette Davis saying “what a dump!” and Vivien Leigh saying “I’ll never be hungry again.”
HE comment #2: Dunaway has been a first-rate actress since the early ’60s, and at age 83 is still at it, of course. But her peak years were close to 15 — Bonnie and Clyde (’67) to Mommie Dearest (’81). Her other highlights include The Thomas Crown Affair (fellatio simulation with a chess piece), The Arrangement, Little Big Man, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, The Three Musketeers, Chinatown, The Towering Inferno (the second best ’70s disaster flick, right after Juggernaut), The Four Musketeers, Three Days of the Condor and Network (Best Actress Oscar…the absolute peak).
Please understand that while some superstars have enjoyed 20-year peaks (Cary Grant, James Stewart, George Clooney), 15 is far more common so there’s certainly nothing tragic or mortifying about Dunaway’s career cooling down in the early Reagan era. Remember also that she rebounded with her Barfly performance in ’87, and that she landed three Golden Globes in the ’80s and an Emmy in ’94.
Clark Gable’s hottest years numbered 13 — between ItHappenedOneNight (‘34) and The Hucksters (‘47). Humphrey Bogart happened between TheMalteseFalcon (‘41) and TheHarderTheyFall (‘56) — a 15-year run. Robert Redford peaked between Butch Cassidy (‘69) and Brubaker and OrdinaryPeople (‘80) — 11 to 12 years. Tony Curtis‘s hot streak was relatively brief — 1957 (Sweet Smell of Success) to 1968 (The Boston Strangler). Kirk Douglas also had about 15 years — Champion (’49) to Seven Days in May (’64).
Elizabeth Taylor had 15 years — 1950 (Father of the Bride) to 1966 (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Jean Arthur — mid ’30s to early ’50s (Shane) — call it 15 years. Katharine Hepburn — early ’30s to early ’80s (On Golden Pond). Meryl Streep — 1979 (The Seduction of Joe Tynan) to today…over 40 years and counting.
It’s a basic creative and biological law that only about 10% to 15% of your films are going to be regarded as serious cremedelacreme…if that. Most big stars (the smart ones) are given a window of a solid dozenyearsorso in which they have the power, agency and wherewithal to bring their game and show what they’re worth creatively. Dunaway certainly managed that and then some.
I explained that Martin Scorcese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon looked professionally illuminated when I saw it last May during the Cannes Film Festival, but when I saw it at the Westport Royale 6 a couple of weeks ago the images were “noticably subdued, a bit muddy, murky…like the sun was behind the clouds.”
I stated that the SMPTE requires that foot lamberts levels be between 14 and 16, and asked whether proper SMPTE-recommended illumination was represented upon her theatre’s screens.
Ross responded last night, and here’s the the heart of her letter: “I have talked to my head of projectors who does checks on our projectors every quarter to make sure lighting and sound is up to par. He has said that all lighting levels are set to each movie.
“The other issue might be just that our projectors are so old, but when he does his [assessments and tune-ups] everything is set correctly. I have never had a complaint or issue about our lighting levels since we do have them looked at every quarter.”
I wrote back immediately. After greeting Caroline and thanking her for replying, I got down to it:
“So let me get this straight — your head of projectors checks your ‘old’ projectors every quarter, or every three months? Right away I wondered why the projectors are allowed to collect dust for 90 days between check-ups. A monthly or bi-monthly check-up seems like a more appropriate regimen given that they’re ‘old’ and possibly in need of more upkeep or fine-tuning…no?
Evan Roberts and Jack Guild settle in at the AMC Royale 6 on Westport Avenue in Norwalk, Conn. (Norwalk Hour photo taken six years ago.)
“Your projector guy also told you that ‘all lighting levels are set to each movie.’ But how could he possibly do that if he only checks the projection standards every three months? Movies arrive and depart all the time. Some last a couple of weeks; others for a month or so.
“What you seem to be saying is that your head of projectors drops in four times a year to check things, but that he doesn’t really focus on light levels. Are you saying that he wings it or improvises to some extent? My general impression, according to what you’re telling me, is that SMPTE foot lambert standards are not really a standard that the AMC Westport Royale plex adheres to.
“Trying again and with all due respect — do you guys have any interest in adhering to SMPTE light standards? Do you generally project at levels of 14 or 16 or…what, 10 or 12 or something lower? What are your exact foot lambert standards? Where are you coming from as exhibition professionals?
“You also haven’t told me if you or your head of projectors use the kind of standard light meter that measures foot lambert levels. Do you?
“You’ve said that when your head of projectors ‘does his checks everything is set correctly.’ But what does ‘correctly’ mean in this regard? I’m sorry but you’re not being specific.
“May I please speak to your head of projectors? Would you ask him to please call or write?
“You’ve said that you’ve ‘never had a complaint or issue about our lighting levels since we do have them looked at every quarter.’ Well, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean very much as no ticket buyer ever seems to complain about anything in terms of projection. I’ve been a devoted movie fan and an occasional complainer about light and sound for decades, and I’ve found that people are generally sheep when it comes to issues of this kind.
“Only film-industry professionals and hardcore tough nuts like myself complain about sound and light levels.
“Repeating: I saw the world premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon in Cannes last May, and I am telling you straight and true that the AMC Westport version of Killers doesn’t look anywhere near as good as it did at the Salle Debussy on the Cote d’Azur.
“What would you imagine the response would be from Killers of the Flower Moon director Martin Scorsese, or the film’s director of cinematography, Rodrigo Prieto…what would you imagine they would think or say if they were told that the people showing their film at a Westport/Norwalk plex don’t really address projecting issues in terms of foot lamberts? And that an AMC tech guy only tunes up the projectors once every three months?
“Please ask your head of projectors to get in touch. Thanks for responding.”
Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere
Note to AMC management: Please don’t penalize poor Caroline for sending me an honest reply. She’s a very polite and considerate professional, and is a credit to your theatre chain outside of the technical stuff.
DATE: 11.8.23
FROM: Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere
TO: Caroline Ross, general manager, AMC Royale 6 in Westport, CT.
RE: Screen illumination levels
Caroline,
I’m Jeffrey Wells of www.hollywood-elsewhere.com, and I’m writing to convey concern about the screen light levels (or foot lambert levels) at the AMC Westport Royale plex, which, I’ve been told, you’re the general manager of.
I’ve been attending the Cannes Film Festival for 23 years, and when I saw Killers of the Flower Moon at the Sally Debussy last May the images were fully rendered and totally satisfactory.
When I saw Killers at the Westport Royale 6 a couple of weeks ago the images were noticably subdued, a bit muddy, murky…clearly being presented at lower-than-intended light levels. Like the sun was behind the clouds.
I had the exact same impression when I watched Priscilla there a few days ago. It was as if the story was happening inside a barely illiuminated closet or a shadowy shoebox of some kind. The images made me feel trapped. Depressed even. No one’s life has ever been this dark, not even Priscilla Presley‘s during her perverse marriage to Elvis.
In order to check this you need to own a light meter, and with this device you have to check the light levels without a movie playing — you have to check with just pure light being thrown on to a blank screen.
Do you own a proper light meter? Have you checked the light levels on all your screens? If so, what are the foot lambert readings? Do they meet SMPTE’s recommendations? I’d be greatly surprised if they’re between 14 and 16. As noted, the Westport Royale images are definitely subdued.
I say this knowing that AMC hasn’t employed projectionists for many years — it’s all done through some kind of soul-less computerized system.
Darren Aronofsky’s TheWhale is a strange and shadowed study of self-imposed confinement. Brendan Fraser’s Charlie is a suffering sad sack, all right. I felt for the poor bloated guy, but what a tragedy. What a ghastly, grotesque experiment in plumbing the depths of regret and self-loathing, not to mention the drip-drip process of slow suicide.
Charlie’s choking-on-a-sandwich scene is one for the ages; ditto his eating binge + vomiting scene. Ditto his sweat-soaked, white-light death scene (i.e., my favorite moment in the film). James Whale and Todd Browning would be impressed; so would Montgomery Clift.
Obviously an intelligent filmed play, and mildly pleasurable for that. Fraser’s performance is a whopping, tearful freak show, but I felt the heart of it. And I was moved by that final gasp (partly a cry of release) when he finally goes to God. And yes, I’m proud that I got through it. I‘ve been terrified of watching this film for months, and now I’m past that hurdle. And I’ll never have to watch it again.
I was planning on taking a couple of Connecticut friendos to a showing of Sam Mendes‘ Empire of Light (Seachlight, 12.9) this weekend, except it’s primarily playing in Manhattan so I guess not. Empire won’t open wide until 12.23.
Searchlight is doing a gradual roll-out due to the usual concerns. Empire was critically roughed up during Telluride ‘22, and the current critic aggregate ratings — 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, 53% on Metacritic — have probably lowered audience interest.
Which means, of course, that it’s not very good…right? Wrong. Empire of Light is a bull’s-eye everything movie — delicate, mesmerizing, perfectly timed and balanced and calculated just so.
Set in an English seaside town (Margate) in the early ’80s, it’s a bittersweet, humanistic, somewhat gauzy tale of a short-lived May-October affair as well as a nostalgic recollection of movies and the exhibition business as they existed 40-plus years ago. Exactingly directed and written by Mendes in what I believe is his finest effort yet, pic contains yet another brilliant performance by the great Olivia Colman and an exciting mainstream-cinema debut from the obviously talented (and very good-looking) Michael Ward.
I haven’t yet seen Avatar 2: The Way of Water, but screw it…Empire of Light is HE’s choice for the absolute Best Film of 2022. Seriously, no question.
I also honestly believe that the Empire of Light haters (including IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich, L.A Times‘ Justin Chang, The Telegraph‘s Tim Robey, The Globe and Mail‘s Barry Hertz) have done their readers a huge disservice. They’ve brought a terrible, brutal blight upon a film that they know is a first-class effort — as wise, particular and well-honed as they come.
The haters have shat upon on a film that many significant others are convinced is rich and fulfilling…they’ve crapped all over it because Mendes had the chutzpah (or the temerity?) to cast the young, Jamaican-born Ward as Stephen, a 20-something theatre employee who falls into a brief, tender affair with Colman’s emotionally unstable, far-side-of-40 Hillary…because a 2022 white filmmaker is not allowed to present a character of color according to the values of bygone eras….because woke presentism requires that black characters have to be strong, firm and formidable and that no racist hate can be visited upon them …and because it’s simply not cool, the haters seem to feel, for Ward’s character to engage in sexual congress (however brief) with an older, mentally unstable woman.
I know what this film is and how well it works, and I think the Empire of Light haters should be ashamed of themselves.
The thing that sparks or drives deep-down feelings when it comes to yay-nay reviews of films…that thing is often not honestly expressed or admitted to. The fact that nobody (except Barry Hertz) has expressed anger about the racial thing…about what some seem to believe is a manipulative and opportunistic attempt on Mendes’ part to use an affair between Colman and Ward to punch up some kind of contemporary current…the apparent fact is that the haters feel that Mendes’ film is sending out the wrong 2022 message. Don’t show us how bad things were 40 years ago for people of color; show us how much better things are today.
Green Book was attacked by the same crowd for telling its tale according to the social standards and values of 1962. The wokesters wanted it told and interpreted according to 2018 standards, and they went ballistic trying to kill it for that. It’s the same deal here.
It’s one thing for a critic to say that Empire of Light isn’t his or her cup of tea….that’s fine. But many of these critics are looking to kill Mendes’ film. They want it shunned and stomped upon, and that, to me, suggests that something else is going on. Either way the Searchlight people can hear the growling and smell the drops of blood.
Wokesters see themselves as white-knight defenders and protectors of BIPOCs and LGBTQs and all marginalized groups, and as infantile and obstinate as this sounds, I believe they hate this film because they simply don’t want to see Ward’s character becoming intimate with an unbalanced, Lithium-medicating white woman in her late 40s. Nor do they want to watch Stephen dodge the assaults of racist, Thatcher-era skinheads and cranky old codgers who resent his presence as a ticket-taker. Mendes is too good of a filmmaker to play the presentism game.
Before seeing Empire of Light I had trouble believing that such an affair, however discreet or short-lived, was likely between two such characters in 1980 England, especially with the National Front goons running around. I was in London in December 1980 and I felt it. I saw skinheads on the Underground and read the anti-immigrant graffiti and felt the vibe to some extent, but guess what? The movie sells it anyway. I was charmed into accepting the terms.
Because of Colman and Ward and the rest of the cast (especially TanyaMoodie as Stephen’s mom)…because of Mendes’ writing and direction and Roger Deakins‘s cinematography, and the soothing musical score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as well as the general aura of sublime, on-target realism…somehow it works. All of it. I believed every character, every situation.
Okay, every now and then it feels a bit emotionally forced or a touch on-the-nose. But not to any wounding extent. Because I was willing to forgive. It goes like that when you really like a film.
I can’t fully convey…I can’t even half-convey what a pleasure it’s been to watch Lightyear (a) piss off traditional fans (Chris Evans…what happened to Tim Allen?), (b) inspire a Toronto theatre manager to post a warning, (b) trigger homophobes with a harmless lesbian kiss and then (d) open to a lousy $51 million domestic — a good $25 if not $30 million short of what handicappers had projected. And I never even saw the damn thing…that’s the best part!
Sometimes in the science of Oscarology it takes a few years to understand the political reasons (for all Oscar triumphs are political) behind this or that winner snagging a trophy.
Take the Moonlightwin, for example. Thanks to Spike Lee’s refreshingfrankness, we can now safely assume that the deciding factor behind Barry Jenkins’ film beating La La Land was about Academy members being able to tell themselves that #OscarsSoWhite had been squarely faced and responsibly negated.
But in the days following the 2.26.17Oscartelecast, many were saying “of course!…ofcourse Moonlight was obviouslybetter than La La Land!…on top of which it was wrong for a white guy to love jazz.”
I didn’t feel that way, but the mob was on a roll.
“One, whoda thunk it? Even now I find it perplexing that Moonlight won. A finely rendered, movingly captured story of small-scale hurt and healing, it’s just not drillbitty or spellbinding enough. I wasn’t the least bit jarred, much less lifted out of my seat, when I first saw it at Telluride. Moonlight is simply a tale of emotional isolation, bruising and outreach and a world-shattering handjob on the beach…Jesus, calm down.
“As I was shuffling out of the Chuck Jones I kept saying to myself “That‘s a masterpiece?” (Peter Sellars, sitting in front of me, had insisted it was before the screening started.) If there was ever a Best Picture contender that screamed ‘affection and accolades but no Oscar cigar,’ it was Moonlight. And the Oscar pundits knewthat. Everyone did.
“So I don’t know what happened — I really don’t get it.**
“I’ve already made my point about Moonlight in the Ozarks. It’s just a head-scratcher. And two, Galloway’s contention that only pipsqueaks with zero followings were predicting or calling for a Moonlight win is wrong.
“As I noted just after the Oscars, esteemed Toronto Star critic Pete Howell and Rotten Tomatoes‘ Matt Atchity were predicting a Moonlight win on the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby charts. As I also noted, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone hopped aboard the Moonlight train at the very last millisecond, although she stuck to La La Land for her Gurus of Gold ballot. These are facts, and Galloway’s dismissing Howell and Atchity was an unfair oversight.”
** It wasn’t safe to say that Moonlight ‘s win was about Academy members covering their ass untilLeesaidthison6.21.17. After that it was olly-olly-in-come-free.
Thought #1: “We say, ‘Oh that’s blue sky.’ And then suddenly you shoot through it and all of a sudden you’re looking into blackness.” Thought #2: “Everyone needs to have the philosophical understanding of what we’re doing to Earth.”
Anyway, the former Captain Kirk — silver-haired, squinty-eyed, hale and hearty and a bit stiff — tried to share a few reflective, meditative thoughts with Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos. But the asshats behind them were making so much noise screaming and popping champagne corks that Bezos was torn — he wanted to hear Shatner’s thoughts but on the other hand there was the cool spray of Dom Perignon and “whooaa-whoo-whoo!” behind him. Yeah!
The asshats were basically celebrating themselves — “We did this! We rose above the earth because Jeff chose us but also because we were good enough to be chosen!” But Shatner had deeper, humbler things on his mind. Think of the Dave Bowman star child looking down upon our blue planet at the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey…that’s Shatner.
Most of us, I suspect, feel nothing but derision and contempt for the others. Imagine emerging from your first visit to the Sistine Chapel and high-fiving your homies and going “whoo-hooo…we saw the Michalengelo!”
The reason that critics love Michael Sarnoski‘s Pig (Neon, 7.16) is because it’s saying something about the undercurrent of civilized American life in the year 2021. It’s saying two things actually. Thing #1 is “something fundamental and spiritual is missing in our lives.” Thing #2 is “the reason that fundamental thing is missing is because we’ve exiled it…we’ve shown it the door and shouted ‘get out of our house!…you’re not stylish enough!'”
Pig stars the burly, bearded, bruised and overweight Nicolas Cage, and costars Alex Wolff and Adam Arkin. It’s about a former bigtime Portland chef (Cage’s Rob Feld) who’s quit the restaurant business to become a reclusive-hermit truffle forager in the forest. The plot is about Feld’s pet pig being kidnapped and Feld trying to get it back.
It has soul, Pig does. It conveys a reverence for the unseen. (Remember my recent riff about how the most interesting films focus on invisible things? This is one of those films.) Pig is slow and obstinate in some ways, but it believes in the holiness of earth and nature and fine food and wine, and it’s saying that the urban sophisticated realm that most of us live in is…lacking. “Not real” in certain important ways. Lacking in a holy mystical current, lacking in the solemn fundamentals.
But just because Pig is snail-paced and under-written and filmed in shadows and subdued blue-ish light doesn’t mean it’s a great film. I think it’s definitely an interesting and in some ways a valuable film with the eternal things on its mind, etc. But I didn’t “love” it. I was down with it, but the funereal pace bothered me after the 55 or 60-minute mark. I actually decided to take a break at the one-hour mark because I knew it would maintain this same shuffling gait to the end.
I also got tired of looking at Cage’s bloody, beat-up, swollen face. Okay, his performance has a certain ruined integrity. Beaten up by intruders and left with dried sticky blood on his face and forehead throughout 85% of the film. Long gray ratty hair. No hot water, no shower, no change of socks…a sad forest hermit roaming around Portland as he tries to get to the bottom of things.
But Feld is no dummy, and we’re asked to believe that this 50ish truffle whisperer, who spends most of the film speaking to this and that person involved in the Portland restaurant business, wouldn’t clean himself up before making the rounds. He’s clearly not an idiot, and yet Feld is so caught up in the purity thing that he doesn’t clean the fucking dried blood off his face? You know what that is? That’s filmmaker hubris. Sarnoski is saying “Feld is too much of a truffle samurai to even think of cleaning himself up…he’s too angry, too enraged, too possessed to bother about appearances.” That’s movie bullshit.
The basic drill in the two Quiet Place films is that making the slightest sound can lead to terrible death. Because the idiotic, fang-toothed, gaping-cranial-plate crab monsters, constantly on the prowl for humans (not to eat but merely to kill), have highly attuned hearing, and all you have to do is drop a pair of scissors on the floor to put yourself in harm’s way. And so your entire life is about “shishhhhh” — be careful, step lightly, quiet as a mouse.
This is my life, in a sense, every night in West Hollywood.
After 10 pm or thereabouts I go into Quiet Place mode for fear of rousing a certain light sleeper in a nearby bedroom. The slightest jarring sound will result in a hellish response. The crack of a triple-A battery falling off the coffee table and onto the wood floor…the accidental clinking of a glass or the rattle of cutlery in the kitchen or the unwrapping of a loaf of bread…even the creaking of the floorboards in certain areas of the living room will lead to terrible repercussions. The punishment can happen straight off or sometimes the next morning, when your failure to maintain absolute radio silence the night before will be topic #1.
Due to no fault of their own light sleepers are unable to recover once woken up, you see, and their mood the following day, trust me, is inevitably sour and sullen. Light sleepers float on the surface of the pond, and woe betide anyone who rouses them from fragile slumber.
Deep sleepers like myself sink to the bottom of the pond, and are generally oblivious to odd glass-clinking or battery-dropping sounds. I can sleep anywhere, in almost environment. I can lie down on the floor of a carpeted airport lounge and nod off in less than two or three minutes.
This color test footage for Rowland Lee‘s Son of Frankenstein (released on 1.13.39), was probably shot in the early fall of ’38. This clip has been on YouTube since 2011, but I saw it for the first time today. It’s actually the first color image I’d ever seen of Karloff in Frankenstein monster makeup, period.
The makeup genius was Jack Pierce (1889 — 1968). Yes, that’s Pierce getting strangled starting at the 45-second mark.
Karloff’s tongue improv (35-second mark) is good for a chuckle, but what genuinely surprised me was the mint-green skin. Widely circulated color snaps of Peter Boyle‘s Young Frankenstein monster (’74) also showed green skin, but I always thought that was a one-off. One presumes that the mint-green makeup was chosen by director Mel Brooks and Young Frankenstein dp Gerald Hirschfield because it delivers an extra-deathly pallor in monochrome.
Either way I’d never read or been told that Boris Karloff‘s monster had the same skin shade, at least as far as Son of Frankenstein was concerned. No clues if Karloff and Pierce went green for the previous two he starred in, Frankenstein (’31) and Bride of Frankenstein (’35).
I’d actually come to believe, based on a December 2012 visit to Guillermo del Toro’s “Bleak House,” that Karloff’s monster had mostly grayish skin with perhaps (at most) a faint hint of green. (The below photo, taken on 12.22.12, shows life-sized wax models of Pierce working on Karloff for James Whale‘s 1931 original.) Nobody is a more exacting historian or connoisseur of classic monsters than GDT, so I naturally presumed that the skin tone on Karloff’s wax model was accurate. I stand corrected.
One of many shots snapped at Guillermo del Toro’s “Bleak House” — posted on 12.22.12.
