Fandor has posted a video about Chris Nolan‘s favorite films, or those “which may have helped shape his unique directorial sensibility.” 2001: A Space Odyssey (fine), Koyaanisqatsi (potrzebie), The Thin Red Line (“Malick’s portrayal of mental states and memory”) and….wait, Lewis Gilbert‘s The Spy Who Loved Me? Nolan quote: “At a certain point the Bond films fixed in my head as a great example of scope and scale in large scale images.”
Maybe, but The Spy Who Loved Me was the first Bond film to (a) embrace flagrant fakeness, (b) an ironic air-quote attitude and (c) a kind of japey, self-mocking comedic tone. Goldfinger was the first Bond film to pass along a self-amused, partially self-satirizing approach to rugged secret-agent machismo — The Spy Who Loved Me was the first to look the audience in the eye and say, “You may have gathered or deduced that we were having fun with 007 before. Well, from here on we have absolutely no genuine investment in the classic Ian Fleming James Bond realm — it’s all a fucking joke.”
When has Chris Nolan ever come within 1000 miles of Gilbert’s sensibility in anything he’s ever directed?
I saw the story yesterday about Tom Hanks having presented the White House press corps with yet another espresso maker. (He gifted them with an expresso machine in 2004 and again in ’10 when he learned that the first unit had broken down.) Hanks included a note with the just-delivered gift that read “To the White House Press Corps — Keep up the good fight for truth, justice, and the American way…especially for the truth part.” But I ignored the story because I couldn’t figure out what a cartoon depicting raggedy-ass World War II dogfaces (an image pasted on Hanks’ note) had to do with calling Donald Trump on his bullshit. I still don’t get the connection.
Wells to Hanks: Can you help me out, brah? You’re into the lore of the noble fighting men of World War II — I get that — but what does that have to do with White House journalism? I’m not trying to be an asshole — I really and truly don’t get it.
Nobody loves honestly adrenalized action scenes (fights, shoot-outs, chases, derring-do) more than myself. By “honestly” I mean action scenes you can at least half-believe in. Two default examples are the car chase in Ronin or subway chase sequence in The French Connection. The latest default example of the wrong way is the skydiving car sequence in the forthcoming Furious 7. The real-deal fight scenes in Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire, for another example, were damn near perfect. Gina Carano clearly had the moves and the strength and the attitude. Many of the geekboy genre zombies didn’t approve of Soderbergh’s exercise, and yet a lot of these same guys are giving a pass to the cynically disconnected, utterly rancid Kingsman: The Secret Service (20th Century Fox, 2.13). I get what the scheme is but it’s not funny, man. Not exciting, not intriguing…a waste of my time, a ton of money down the well…why?
A Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic grade in the mid to high 60s obviously signifies substantial resistance, even if the majority of critics are with you. It also means, in strict high-school exam terms, a failing grade. This is what’s happened so far with Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect — a RT 69% rating, a 65 from Metacritic.
It feels odd when a third of the critics disagree with you, but it happens. All I can say is that I have a very clear and hard-won understanding of what a failed film plays like, and Disconnect, trust me, does not deserve that label.
Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern isn’t as much of a fan as myself, but he allows that despite an element of “sheer contrivance” (which is there in a sense but doesn’t get in the way as the multiple-overlapping-plot-strand drama is a genre and as valid as any other reality-reshaping approach or film style) “the film is impressive all the same, a bleak vision of life in the internet age as an asocial network where faceless predators abound, heedless kids live secret lives, everything is phishy until proven otherwise and quests for love or intimacy lead to loneliness or grief.
“Movies about intertwined lives often suffer from the gimmick that’s supposed to sustain them: Two examples of recent years, Crash and Babel, piled on fateful connections to the point of self-parody. Disconnect suffers less in that department because the gimmickry is accompanied by a valid if familiar irony — the technological revolution that brings us together in ways that were unimaginable to previous generations also separates us by replacing face-to-face encounters with texts, tweets, webcams, emails and disembodied chats.”
“Disconnect works because it delivers in the writing, direction and acting. Andrew Stern‘s screenplay feels credible and compelling and is very finely threaded, always pushed along by believable turns and real-seeming characters behaving in what they believe are their best interests. Rubin’s direction is unforced naturalism par excellence, and the result is a story that always seems steady-on-the-tracks — nothing ever feels like a stretch (except perhaps that one moment at the very end when slow-mo kicks in). And the performances are honestly inhabited and true-feeling and just about perfectly rendered.”
Today’s Disconnect press conference featured costars Jason Bateman (whose performance as a stressed-out dad is the best of his career), Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgard and Max Theriot. Here’s the mp3. At the very beginning Bateman refers to “Jeffrey’s website” being an educational thing. I’m presuming he was referencing HE as Bateman told me a year or two ago that he’s a reader. If so, thanks. If not, fine.
Disconnect costars Jason Bateman, Alexnder Skarsgard; press conference moderator Dave Karger reflected in glass on left.
The gathering happened at the SLS hotel (465 La Cienega Blvd., south of Burton Way) at 2 pm. Fandango‘s Dave Karger moderated and fielded questions.
The SLS is basically a pricey kid hotel — everybody on the staff and in the lobby was in their 30s and late 20s. I hate kid establishments of all kinds — kid bars, kid sushi restaurants, kid beach clubs. On the other hand I don’t like places that are mostly patronized by white-haired types either. So I don’t like places that are too young and I don’t like places that are too old — I like ’em in between.
The mp3 is fairly short, by the way — only about 9 minutes.
*l. to.) Thieriot, Bateman, Skarsgard, Patton.
During last night’s KCET post-screening q & a: (l.) moderator/host Pete Hammond, (r.) Disconnect producer William Horberg.
I missed Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect (LD, 4.12) in Toronto, but I finally saw it last night and it’s my idea of a 90% wowser. Except for a questionable slow-mo moment at the very end this is a grade-A ensemble drama that ranks right up there with Amores perros, Traffic and Short Cuts. Seriously. I’d read about the standing ovation in Venice but the plot summaries put me off and I was afraid it might be another Crash of some kind, but it’s much, much better than I expected. It’s certainly among 2013’s best so far.
There are 40 or 50 ways this movie could have blown it or gotten it wrong in some way, and time after time it gets it right. I was sitting there in my seat going “okay, that worked…that was good…no problem with that one…yup, that was good…solid delivery”…and it just kept going like that. Don’t listen to Variety‘s Guy Lodge — he was in a pissy mood or something. I realize this is a social-concern drama about everyone being out of touch with themselves and those closest to them due to cyber absorption and yaddah yaddah, and I know that sounds like a bit of a groaner but it’s not, trust me.
Disconnect works because it delivers in the writing, direction and acting. Andrew Stern‘s screenplay feels credible and compelling and is very finely threaded, always pushed along by believable turns and real-seeming characters behaving in what they believe are their best interests. Rubin’s direction is unforced naturalism par excellence, and the result is a story that always feel right and steady-on-the-tracks — nothing ever feels like a stretch (except perhaps that one moment at the very end when slow-mo kicks in). And the performances are honestly inhabited and true-feeling and just about perfectly rendered.
Jason Bateman is so good as a somewhat distracted and over-worked but essentially decent dad that he is hereby forgiven for having costarred in Identity Thief and as far as I’m concerned has earned himself a “get out of jail” pass for the next two or three years. Also planted and persuasive are Andrea Riseborough as a go-getter TV news reporter, Max Thieriot as a kid who performs on a sex website, Frank Grillo as an ex-cop who works as a cyber security expert, Colin Ford as a kid who, along with a heartless pal, deceives and humiliates a fellow student, Paula Patton and Alexander Skarsgard as marrieds coping with the death of a child but more precisely identity and financial theft, fashion tycoon Marc Jacobs as a sex-site exploiter, Hope Davis as his Bateman’s wife and the mother of Ford’s victim and so on.
I have to finish a couple of things and then shower and get down to a Disconnect junket press conference at 1 pm, but I want to make clear the things that moved Arianna Huffington to write this 3.26 praise piece aren’t the same things that got to me. Yes, our social behavior has changed over the last decade with everyone texting and emailing and not really paying attention to the organic with perhaps some of us not nurturing family relationships the way we should, but what matters to me are believable characters and motivations, straight-sounding dialogue and performances that feel right and un-actorly.
I guess what I’m really saying is that I’m probably one of the most cyber-absorbed people in the planet right now and this isn’t going to change. Constant writing and texting and checking Twitter and whatnot is my life and my vitality and my security. And I love it. I’m happier now than I was in the print days, that’s for sure. Give me more of this, and please let me just cruise along like this until I die of a heart attack on a street corner in Montmartre while clutching a Bluray of a 1.37 version of Shane. When I’m 88 years old or something. Or 98.
Huffington’s synopsis is well written: “Disconnect interweaves three stories, each involving characters whose lives have reached a crisis exacerbated by their dependence on technology at the expense of real human connection. There’s a couple that has recently lost a baby. Instead of grieving together, they turn away from each other and lose themselves in online distractions. There are two boys who use the power of social media to take advantage of another boy’s loneliness and isolation — itself partly caused by his father’s obsession with work and email. And there’s a woman reporter who becomes involved with a 18-year-old webcam porn performer who lives in a house run by a porn kingpin, played by Jacobs.”
I’ll have more to say about this as the release date approaches. I can only reiterate this is one of those films you might glance at from a distance and say to yourself “okay, maybe Netflix” but it’s much better than that — definitely an exception to the rule.
Variety‘s Jeff Sneider is reporting that Taylor Swift, of all people, is “circling the role” of Joni Mitchell in a film version of Sheila Weller‘s 2008 book “Girls Like Us,” which will be shot under the aegis of Sony Pictures and Di Bonaventura Pictures. It’s an appalling idea because Mitchell’s manner and speaking style always conveyed the churning soul of a poet and artist, and Swift, a country music aficionado, looks and talks like a none-too-introspective, looking-to-please pop personality. Mitchell is a world-class lady with oceans, rivers and tributaries within; Swift is a pond.
The director will be Katie Jacobs and the script is by John Sayles.
Like the book, the film “would examine the careers of singers Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carole King,” Sneider reports. “Swift does not have an official offer, but has been linked to the Mitchell role for several months as other actresses have auditioned to play Simon and King, including Alison Pill (Midnight in Paris) for the latter singer. Pic has not yet been greenlit, though it is tentatively skedded to start production later this year when the three leads’ schedules allow for filming.”
Swift has never played a lead or carried a film before. Her two movie appearances thus far have been as a fictional character in Valentine’s Day and as herself in Hannah Montana: The Movie.
Look at Swift in the above video and try to imagine her singing “Coyote” or “Amelia” with with any believability or conviction, much less playing the woman who wrote these songs. Get the fuck outta here.
Meryl Streep of 20 or 30 years ago, okay, but it’s impossible to imagine Swift portraying Mitchell as she’s described by reader Kevin Killian in this Amazon review of the book:
“Joni Mitchell isn’t sympathetic per se, but she has the integrated personality of a genius totally in love with herself and obsessed with her own reflection, so she’s great in a special way. Weller pokes amused fun at Mitchell’s vanity and enormous self-esteem, but we get the picture that, in her opinion at any rate, Mitchell actually is pretty fucking amazing.”
I didn’t have an especially great time with Tim Burton‘s Alice in Wonderland. I can see people taking the kids and maybe deciding they have no choice but to catch it because of the 3D factor. But I found Hubble 3D much more interesting and fulfilling even though it’s a somewhat routinely-made documentary. Why? Because it provides a feeling of awe that is 100% real.
All to say it really, really doesn’t add up that Alice in Wonderland is #1 at the box-office for the third week in a row, having yesterday brought in about $9.8 million from 3,739 locations. Okay, it’s a livelier-seeming attraction than The Bounty Hunter, which seems instantly dismissable to all age groups, creeds and cultures, as well as Repo Men, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Green Zone and so on.
But Alice in Wonderland is still a fairly tepid thing to sit through, and I just don’t get why it hasn’t fallen off. I’m coming from knowledge and experience here. I don’t just “think” Alice isn’t that great a movie — I know it isn’t. I sat in a theatre with mostly Hispanic Eloi, side by side, and I could sense their emotional engagement levels, and they were not enthralled — they were sitting there like bean-bag chairs.
The fact that Che and The Hurt Locker have finally landed distribution deals — respectively by IFC Films and Summit Entertainment — is welcome news, of course. But the fact that they took so long to happen tells you what an oddly neutured climate we’re living in right now.
I re-watched the first half of Che last night at the Elgin, and for me it’s just as tight and special and riveting as it seemed when I saw it last May in Cannes. No diminishment, no sag, no glancing at the watch. And yet the majority (or a good portion) of those who saw it with me at the Palais du Festival have been putting out the word ever since that it’s a problem movie. Toronto Star critic Peter Howell has actually called it “Havana’s Gate.” Pete is a friend and a good fellow, but this is a grossly unfair thing to say. Because there are few films I’ve seen in my life that are more unlike Michael Cimino‘s 1981 debacle (including potential financial loss for Vincent Maraval’s Wild Bunch), I think it verges on slander. I absolutely know when a film is a gobbler or a major misfire and Che doesn’t come close. It’s one of the most exactingly reconstructed and truthfully told historical epics ever made — an immersion rather than “drama,” cholesterol-free and believable down to the last rifle and combat boot.
All these months I’ve been asking myself “what’s going on here?” A movie of this distinction may not make mountains of money or win over each and every person who sees it, but the fact that it went begging for four or five months strikes me as almost surreal. What’s wrong with this landscape, with our moviegoing culture, with today’s audiences, with “the business”?
Same thing with The Hurt Locker, which began shooting in Jordan right after Brian DePalma‘s Redacted, which was first shown at last year’s Venice and Toronto film festivals. Kathryn Bigelow‘s Iraq-War drama is ten times the movie that Redacted is/was, and yet it was forced to ran for cover when all the otyher Iraq War dramas died late last year.
Which should matter not to anyone truly of the faith. That’s one of the big problems, I suppose. The indie-film business is in a down cycle and there are fewer and fewer “Catholic” distributors as a result. But it’s just wrong for a film as strong as Bigelow’s to have to scrounge around for someone to release it.
The alleged “excitement” about and support for Sarah Palin among the American stooge strata is a disconnect also — a huge one. Eight years of leadership by a neocon Bible worshipper who’s kowtowed to corporate interests at every turn, taken us into massive debt, mired us in a dead-end war that was launched for deep-down personal reasons (which many believe is a prosecutable offense) and ignored any semblance of progressive leadership on energy and the environment, and the Walmart moms and others in the heartland are still for Palin (and oh, yes…McCain) despite the unmistakable signs that would tell anyone over the age of seven that McCain-Palin will keep the Bush routine going full tilt .
Why the slight lead in the polls for for McCain-Palin? Because the heartland moms see her as a feisty, right-thinking, flag-saluting Bible mom whom they relate to culturally. The mind stalls. Something is terribly, terribly wrong out there.
On top of which I’m getting more and more angry at assessments of the election dynamic by MSM reporters and analysts because they won’t allow for anything more than a passing acknowledgment of the racial elephant. Whenever it comes up, which is to say infrequently, it is invariably described as a minor fringe sentiment that is to be pitied and certainly marginalized in terms of frequent or extensive discussion.
And yet every now and then someone will man up and say what “we don’t really know Obama well enough” and “we’re not sure he’s ready to be president” really means. (Bob Herbert, David Gergen…who else?) The elephant — tusks, ears, trunk and all — is standing right smack dab in the middle of every discussion and reading of what’s going on out there and nobody — not the news media and certainly not Barack himself — is permitted to say it’s the absolute front-and-center factor among the less-educated voters out there, which translates as a crucial one since their votes are big factors in the swing states.
There is an acute disconnect between what the Reds are saying about Tuesday’s election and how the Blues and their philosophical cousins in Europe, South America and Mexico have reacted to it (i.e., adversely, with horror). Deal with it, Bubbas — the folks outside our borders and across the seas genuinely feel you’ve unleashed some very dark forces upon the world. Of course, people have always heard what they wanted to hear and have disregarded the rest, etc. But one could truly argue that the Reds — at least in terms of world opinion — are, in a very real sense, living in a walled-off realm. Or, to borrow a phrase from Hannah Arendt√ɬ≠s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1950, in “the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world.”
Last night I watched a little more than half of SamEsmail’s LeaveTheWorldBehind (Netflix, now streaming).
As quietly creepy apocalyptic dramas go, I decided right away this is a lot better than M. NightShyamalan’s KnockattheCabin.
There’s no story tension to speak of, but all the spooky happenings (including the deer, the flamingoes, the smashing cars and the big tanker crashing into a beach) feel spacey and illogical and disconnected from any sort of scheme, rational or otherwise.
It’s more impressionistic (Bunuelian) than plotty, which is fine.
Mahershala Ali: “No one is in control…no one is pulling the strings…there is no going back to normal.”
I’d never seen Julia .Roberts in any sort of horror film…noteworthy.
The critics are mostly positive but Joe and Jane aren’t goin’ for it.
Barack and MichelleObama exec produced, and my understanding is that RumaanAlam’s 2020 source novel was inspired by Trump dystopia so you have to consider the political criticism angle.
12:45 am update: I’ve watched it to the end. Definitely a decent film.