On paper, VINYL seemed surefire. 1970s rock and the record business examined through an East Coast lens. Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger as co-producers. A cast including Bobby Cannavale, Ray Romano, Juno Temple, Olivia Wilde and Max Casella (channeling Joe Pesci).
And the Scorsese-directed pilot was generally good--though, at two hours, a bit less effective than the 90-minute opening episode of BOARDWALK EMPIRE.
Then, the second episode.
All the flaws (awkward time-shifting, overflowing cast, off-kilter/unintentionally amusing imitations of Famous People, anachronistically backdating punk rock to 1973, an unfortunate re-use of the BOARDWALK pilot's kill-a-character-and-hide-the-body motif and general difficulty empathizing with most of the fuck-snort-and-betray male characters) of the pilot were magnified x100.
I'll probably struggle through the third installment, but VINYL has already become a white elephant on the scale of LUCK, which had the David Milch/Michael Mann pedigree--but similar problems with sprawling story plus not-interesting-enough characters.
And, as with LUCK, HBO has given VINYL two seasons as a declaration of faith in its A-list Talent.
Since VINYL, unlike LUCK, doesn't use horses in the show (with animal deaths causing premature cancellation), it's safe to expect the network to honor its commitment to a 21-22 episode run even if just a few hundred thousand people tune in or watch online.
Showing posts with label Martin Scorsese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin Scorsese. Show all posts
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Friday, January 3, 2014
Some of my generation follow media groupthink on WOLF OF WALL STREET.
This morning, I awoke to KTLA Morning News reporting about the number of times the f-word is used in Martin Scorsese's THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.
And this kind of media chatter found its way to Texas, where a woman I went to high school with posted the following to Facebook:
"So "Wolf Of Wall Street" has broken the record for the number of times the 'F-bomb' is said in a movie. 506 times in 180 minutes. Really? I just don't get it. Guess I won't be watching this one either."
One could say this is an example of someone who grew more socially conservative in middle-age.
I was tempted to respond to her Facebook post with:
Yes, there is a lot of profanity, drug use and sexual activity--plus one scene where a child is endangered by her father's behavior. But it's a film about amoral/immoral people who made millions stealing money from hard-working people like yourself, and, like it or not, the behavior needs to be shown without censorship.
If I had done that, it's quite likely her reply would be:
"I don't want to hear that language!"
followed by blocking me from her Facebook feed forever.
And she would go on with the remaining hours of her day shielded from more unpleasantness and opposing ideas.
And this kind of media chatter found its way to Texas, where a woman I went to high school with posted the following to Facebook:
"So "Wolf Of Wall Street" has broken the record for the number of times the 'F-bomb' is said in a movie. 506 times in 180 minutes. Really? I just don't get it. Guess I won't be watching this one either."
One could say this is an example of someone who grew more socially conservative in middle-age.
I was tempted to respond to her Facebook post with:
Yes, there is a lot of profanity, drug use and sexual activity--plus one scene where a child is endangered by her father's behavior. But it's a film about amoral/immoral people who made millions stealing money from hard-working people like yourself, and, like it or not, the behavior needs to be shown without censorship.
If I had done that, it's quite likely her reply would be:
"I don't want to hear that language!"
followed by blocking me from her Facebook feed forever.
And she would go on with the remaining hours of her day shielded from more unpleasantness and opposing ideas.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Film critic Glenn Kenny on THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.
Glenn Kenny, former film critic for PREMIERE and MSN.com, offers a comprehensive analysis of the latest Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio collaboration in these two blog columns:
somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/12/the-wolf-of-wall-street.html …
somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/12/more-wolf-of-wall-street.html …
A couple of excerpts from the above links:
I suppose that in certain quarters, the only thing interesting about a movie, or the launching pad for anything interesting about a conversation or consideration about a movie, is how the moviemakers feel about their characters. Golly, the Coen brothers sure hate their characters don't they? But that David O. Russell [director/co-writer of the current AMERICAN HUSTLE], he LOVES his characters —characters who, like those in Wolf of Wall Street, are criminals—but they're NICE criminals, they're passionate they're in love, they're cuddly, and Jennifer Lawrence is AWESOME. Gosh, when did the critical class become so a) filled with flowery feeling and b), for lack of a better world, thick? Buñuel wouldn't do well with this crowd at all. "Hey—he's...he's...he's making FUN of us!"
There is a structural similarity to Scorsese's 1990 Goodfellas, but there are crucial differences too. While Goodfellas maintained a nearly breakneck pace throughout, Wolf of Wall Street has a start-stop rhythm. There are breakneck fast-forward voice-over led sequences that give way to long scenes, scenes which a lot of critics have called pointless. For instance, once finance tyro Belfort is making ridiculous money heading up his fake-respectable firm of Stratton Oakmont, the viewer learns that Belfort's father (played brilliantly by Rob Reiner) has a prodigiously bad temper, and was hired to oversee Stratton Oakmont's books. What follows is a conference room scene in which Belfort and his senior staffers are sitting around very earnestly discussing the dwarves that they are looking to hire for some in-house revelry. Because they now inhabit a world in which everything is commodified, their talk is half earnest, half "can't believe we're getting away with this shit" shitty awe, trading observations about how you should never look a dwarf in the eye and how the wee folk gossip among themselves. It's only after several minutes of this that Reiner's character bursts in, fit to pop a blood vessel over a corporate American Express bill just shy of half a million dollars. Can one genuinely not see the point of this scene, or would one just rather not? In any event, from where I sat the banter among these young capitalists was Ionesco out of early Python—and by early Python I mean Swiftian Rage Python. It's important to remember that it's at the very beginning of the movie that a character played by Matthew McConaughey explains that the entire edifice of investment banking is built on a "fugazi," or "fairy dust." Think of all the people who got incredibly angry and genuinely outraged when the current head of the Catholic Church said "How can it not be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?"
somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/12/the-wolf-of-wall-street.html …
somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/12/more-wolf-of-wall-street.html …
A couple of excerpts from the above links:
I suppose that in certain quarters, the only thing interesting about a movie, or the launching pad for anything interesting about a conversation or consideration about a movie, is how the moviemakers feel about their characters. Golly, the Coen brothers sure hate their characters don't they? But that David O. Russell [director/co-writer of the current AMERICAN HUSTLE], he LOVES his characters —characters who, like those in Wolf of Wall Street, are criminals—but they're NICE criminals, they're passionate they're in love, they're cuddly, and Jennifer Lawrence is AWESOME. Gosh, when did the critical class become so a) filled with flowery feeling and b), for lack of a better world, thick? Buñuel wouldn't do well with this crowd at all. "Hey—he's...he's...he's making FUN of us!"
There is a structural similarity to Scorsese's 1990 Goodfellas, but there are crucial differences too. While Goodfellas maintained a nearly breakneck pace throughout, Wolf of Wall Street has a start-stop rhythm. There are breakneck fast-forward voice-over led sequences that give way to long scenes, scenes which a lot of critics have called pointless. For instance, once finance tyro Belfort is making ridiculous money heading up his fake-respectable firm of Stratton Oakmont, the viewer learns that Belfort's father (played brilliantly by Rob Reiner) has a prodigiously bad temper, and was hired to oversee Stratton Oakmont's books. What follows is a conference room scene in which Belfort and his senior staffers are sitting around very earnestly discussing the dwarves that they are looking to hire for some in-house revelry. Because they now inhabit a world in which everything is commodified, their talk is half earnest, half "can't believe we're getting away with this shit" shitty awe, trading observations about how you should never look a dwarf in the eye and how the wee folk gossip among themselves. It's only after several minutes of this that Reiner's character bursts in, fit to pop a blood vessel over a corporate American Express bill just shy of half a million dollars. Can one genuinely not see the point of this scene, or would one just rather not? In any event, from where I sat the banter among these young capitalists was Ionesco out of early Python—and by early Python I mean Swiftian Rage Python. It's important to remember that it's at the very beginning of the movie that a character played by Matthew McConaughey explains that the entire edifice of investment banking is built on a "fugazi," or "fairy dust." Think of all the people who got incredibly angry and genuinely outraged when the current head of the Catholic Church said "How can it not be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?"
Saturday, September 14, 2013
The snarkiest film review you'll read this year.
Turning the floor over to Scott Marks of the SAN DIEGO READER, with his five-star review of Morgan Spurlock and Simon Cowell's ONE DIRECTION: THIS IS US:
At around the 30-minute mark, Martin Scorsese and his young daughter appear backstage after a concert at Madison Square Garden for an audience with the boy band sensation. Marty speaks of how He and Francesca exchange music and then proceeds to offer the group His personal dispensation. With a forced chortle, He’s off. It’s 16 of the most divine seconds ever committed to film. Five stars! A must-see! The greatest concert movie since Shine a Light! Compared to this, The Last Waltz is a masterpiece! Starring Martin Scorsese, Francesca Scorsese, Chris Rock, and The New Monkees. Directed with measured anonymity by Morgan Spurlock. 2013.
Monday, February 27, 2012
THE NEW YORKER's Richard Brody on last night's Oscar duel between HUGO and THE ARTIST.
From Brody's article (link below):
The element of nostalgia in “The Artist” isn’t for a style of filmmaking but for a style of deportment. It’s essentially a movie about formalized clothing and formalized behavior, about personal style as subjected to discipline and deference to public norms of graciousness, and he adapts a very narrow range of the styles of movies from those days to suggest the amiable, sociable, witty, and graceful yet ingratiating decency that seems to him to be exemplary and admirable.
“Hugo,” for all its historical archeology, is entirely different; Scorsese’s past is one in which geniuses can be ruined and forgotten, in which families are precarious and orphans are relentlessly pursued, in which the aesthetic graces conceal indifference and violence along with lost modes of artistic genius. For Scorsese, the technical side of the movies doesn’t just provide opportunities and delights but also quasi-metaphysical mysteries and profoundly intimate modes of self-discovery.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/02/the-oscars-dull-nostalgic-but-not-without-a-glow.html#ixzz1nZPKJaGc
The element of nostalgia in “The Artist” isn’t for a style of filmmaking but for a style of deportment. It’s essentially a movie about formalized clothing and formalized behavior, about personal style as subjected to discipline and deference to public norms of graciousness, and he adapts a very narrow range of the styles of movies from those days to suggest the amiable, sociable, witty, and graceful yet ingratiating decency that seems to him to be exemplary and admirable.
“Hugo,” for all its historical archeology, is entirely different; Scorsese’s past is one in which geniuses can be ruined and forgotten, in which families are precarious and orphans are relentlessly pursued, in which the aesthetic graces conceal indifference and violence along with lost modes of artistic genius. For Scorsese, the technical side of the movies doesn’t just provide opportunities and delights but also quasi-metaphysical mysteries and profoundly intimate modes of self-discovery.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/02/the-oscars-dull-nostalgic-but-not-without-a-glow.html#ixzz1nZPKJaGc
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Pro--and extreme con--views of Martin Scorsese's George Harrison documentary.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Martin Scorsese on THE KING OF COMEDY.
Although Richard Schickel can be a rather hectoring old scold, his new book CONVERSATIONS WITH SCORSESE is a must-buy.
Of course, Martin Scorsese has participated in more than one interview book in his lifetime. But he responds to Schickel's queries with a not-always-seen-in-the-past candor.
Take this selection of Scorsese quotes from the chapter on THE KING OF COMEDY (the 1983 classic about kidnapping your way onto the show business A-list) for example:
"I just thought we were making my movie, and everybody would wait on me--a complete megalomaniac." [referring to the quite-long shoot]
"There is a part of it that's grotesque, you're right about that. But I was trying to capture something. As I was making the film, I realized that a part of me was in that story, and I was forced to confront it. I look back now and I realize why I couldn't make KING OF COMEDY back in 1975 when De Niro first gave it to me. I was too close to it. I didn't understand it. And I haven't seen it since I first made it. It's too embarrasssing.....Not embarrassing. It's--....very unsettling."
[Schickel mentions a scene where the receptionist to Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) isn't letting aspiring comic/talk-show host Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) "past the gates"]
Scorsese: "It was so sad. The poor guy wants to get in there. He can't get past her. He tries to make himself likable and yet there's all this extraordinary violence and hostility in him. I can articulate all that now. I couldn't articulate it then."
Schickel: "I can imagine why it was very difficult for you to do."
Scorsese: "Oh, it was awful for me, as I said."
Of course, Martin Scorsese has participated in more than one interview book in his lifetime. But he responds to Schickel's queries with a not-always-seen-in-the-past candor.
Take this selection of Scorsese quotes from the chapter on THE KING OF COMEDY (the 1983 classic about kidnapping your way onto the show business A-list) for example:
"I just thought we were making my movie, and everybody would wait on me--a complete megalomaniac." [referring to the quite-long shoot]
"There is a part of it that's grotesque, you're right about that. But I was trying to capture something. As I was making the film, I realized that a part of me was in that story, and I was forced to confront it. I look back now and I realize why I couldn't make KING OF COMEDY back in 1975 when De Niro first gave it to me. I was too close to it. I didn't understand it. And I haven't seen it since I first made it. It's too embarrasssing.....Not embarrassing. It's--....very unsettling."
[Schickel mentions a scene where the receptionist to Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) isn't letting aspiring comic/talk-show host Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) "past the gates"]
Scorsese: "It was so sad. The poor guy wants to get in there. He can't get past her. He tries to make himself likable and yet there's all this extraordinary violence and hostility in him. I can articulate all that now. I couldn't articulate it then."
Schickel: "I can imagine why it was very difficult for you to do."
Scorsese: "Oh, it was awful for me, as I said."
Sunday, February 21, 2010
For a change, some bite-sized film reviews.
Saw one of the stupidest films ever on DVD Friday night--LAW ABIDING CITIZEN. Starts out as a DEATH WISH ripoff and turns into a war-on-terror polemic that makes 24 (at its most extreme) look rather progressive by comparison. Not much logic, certain actors either ham it up (that's you, Gerard Butler) or walk through their performances (stand up and wave, Jamie Foxx and Colm Meaney) and Kurt Wimmer's script is anything-for-an-immediate-effect. Surprised that it became a moderate hit last year.
SHUTTER ISLAND may be getting some obtuse treatment by current mass-market critics/reviewers (A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips looked down their noses and uttered "Skip It"
on AT THE MOVIES), but it will stand the test of time; better than the two previous Scorsese/Di Caprio collaborations--the good-not-great THE DEPARTED and THE AVIATOR.
GETTING THE KNACK (available for DVD rent or TV/PC streaming on Netflix) is a worth-watching 80-minute summary of the rise and fall of the L.A. power pop group.
Prior to GET THE KNACK,
The Knack was a hot ticket on the L.A. club scene and musicians as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Stephen Stills were eager to jam with them onstage. By 1981, ego trips, drug abuse and faltering post-GET THE KNACK record sales caused the band's first demise. The Knack later regrouped; ironically, 1979's "My Sharona" became a hit all over again in the 1990s when used in Ben Stiller's REALITY BITES (surprisingly, this isn't covered in GETTING....). Engrossing and sometimes sad to watch in the wake of frontman Doug Fieger's death from cancer a week ago at the age of 57.
SHUTTER ISLAND may be getting some obtuse treatment by current mass-market critics/reviewers (A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips looked down their noses and uttered "Skip It"
on AT THE MOVIES), but it will stand the test of time; better than the two previous Scorsese/Di Caprio collaborations--the good-not-great THE DEPARTED and THE AVIATOR.
GETTING THE KNACK (available for DVD rent or TV/PC streaming on Netflix) is a worth-watching 80-minute summary of the rise and fall of the L.A. power pop group.
Prior to GET THE KNACK,
The Knack was a hot ticket on the L.A. club scene and musicians as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Stephen Stills were eager to jam with them onstage. By 1981, ego trips, drug abuse and faltering post-GET THE KNACK record sales caused the band's first demise. The Knack later regrouped; ironically, 1979's "My Sharona" became a hit all over again in the 1990s when used in Ben Stiller's REALITY BITES (surprisingly, this isn't covered in GETTING....). Engrossing and sometimes sad to watch in the wake of frontman Doug Fieger's death from cancer a week ago at the age of 57.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
LA TIMES on Michael Jackson bailout/career resurrection.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/05/deep-pockets-behind-michael-jackson.html
A friend of mine was wondering if Jackson can make it through the London O2 residency concerts. Hopefully, he can.
But I see the current tour as reminiscent of the latter career of Jackson's former deceased father-in-law Elvis Presley, with the O2 standing in for the Las Vegas Hilton and the subsequent dates as akin to the shows documented in ELVIS ON TOUR (which Martin Scorsese, who directed MJ's "Bad" video, worked on as an editor).
A friend of mine was wondering if Jackson can make it through the London O2 residency concerts. Hopefully, he can.
But I see the current tour as reminiscent of the latter career of Jackson's former deceased father-in-law Elvis Presley, with the O2 standing in for the Las Vegas Hilton and the subsequent dates as akin to the shows documented in ELVIS ON TOUR (which Martin Scorsese, who directed MJ's "Bad" video, worked on as an editor).
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