I have a colleague who describes his job as “covering the national dream beat,” because if you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear in their deepest secrets.
.. The real subjects of “Wayne’s World” are innocence and friendship. That’s what you get for your seven dollars.
.. The main thing wrong with a movie that is ten years old is that it isn’t 30 years old. After the hair styles and the costumes stop being dated and start being history, we can tell if the movie itself is timeless.
.. I would say that many of my favorite movies are about Good People.
.. The best movies aren’t about what happens to the characters. They’re about the example that they set.
.. When Gene Kelly splashes through “Singin’ in the Rain,” when Judy Garlandfollows the yellow brick road, when Fred Astaire dances on the ceiling, whenJohn Wayne puts the reins in his teeth and gallops across the mountain meadow, there is a purity and joy that cannot be resisted.
.. Alfred Hitchcock said that if a bunch of guys were playing cards and there was a bomb under the table and it exploded, that was terror, but he’d rather do a scene where there was a bomb under the table and we kept waiting for it to explode but it didn’t. That was suspense. It’s the kind of suspense I enjoy.
.. Love? Romance? I’m not so sure. I don’t much care for movies that get all serious about their love affairs, because I think the actors tend to take it too seriously, and end up silly. I like it better when love simply makes the characters very, very happy
.. It is easy enough to make an audience feel basic emotions (“Play them like a piano,” Hitchcock advised), but hard to make them share a state of mind. Scorsese can do it.
.. Color is too realistic. It is too distracting. It projects superfluous emotional cues. It reduces actors to inhabitants of the mere world. Black-and-white (or, more accurately, silver-and-white) creates a mysterious dream state, a simpler world of form and gesture. Most people do not agree with me. They like color and think a black-and-white film is missing something. Try this. If you have wedding photographs of your parents and grandparents, chances are your parents are in color and your grandparents are in black and white. Put the two photographs side by side and consider them honestly. Your grandparents look timeless. Your parents look goofy.
.. it sometimes seems as if the movies are more mediocre than ever, more craven and cowardly, more skillfully manufactured to pander to the lowest tastes, instead of educating them.
Trump Talks, but Can He Tango?
Perry says he’s dancing on TV as a way to draw attention to veterans’ issues. Right now it’s sort of stylish to pin everything on the poor vets. Remember when Trump dodged a primary debate by announcing he needed the time to raise money for needy ex-servicemen and women?
.. A great many contestants on “Dancing With the Stars” seem to be washed-up child actors in search of a comeback.
.. Still, he looked extremely cheerful. A cynic might say he was the most charming ex-governor ever to have vetoed a bill that would have ended the death penalty for the mentally retarded.
Five or Six Things I Didn’t Know About Brad Pitt, by Marlon James
Musings from the Man Booker-winning author after his first
meeting with one of the biggest — and nicest — stars on the planet.“I’ve gone into areas of third-world countries where people have suffered the most, but those people always seem to have the biggest laugh,” he says. As a Jamaican native who has witnessed quite a few third-world missions, I tell him that sometimes our biggest laugh is directed at foreign do-gooders who really have no idea how to fix our problems. “I’ve been one of those at times,” he admits. “But you’ve got to start somewhere. You start with your best intentions, understanding the world as you do. And then you get in and you see that it’s much more complicated than you could possibly imagine. Our failings in foreign policy have always been to think that we can place our ideas on another culture, while not really understanding the other culture.”
.. Someone once famously said that he is a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body
.. We have this great line in ‘The Big Short,’ ” he says, referring to the Oscar-winning film about the global financial crisis of 2008, which he produced. “When things are going wrong and we can’t find the reason for it, we just start creating enemies.” I mention that when creating those enemies, we often look no further than what’s right in front of us. Gays, for example. “Or illegal immigrants,” he says.
.. “You gotta understand,” he says, “that it’s also in our DNA. Most Americans don’t have time to watch CNN and Fox and Al Jazeera. They’re trying to make the rent, get the kids fed, they’re tired when they get home and they want to forget about everything. And so suddenly when this voice comes in — and it doesn’t have to be a voice of substance — saying he’s fed up with all of this, that’s the part that hooks into the DNA.”
.. “What does he even mean, take our country back? Would someone please explain that to me?”
.. Gibson movies typically do one thing really well: violence. “Oh, extremely well,” Pitt says. “ ‘Apocalypto’ is a great film.”
.. The bad thing about playing an interview slow and loose is that you’re never sure how to end it.
Comedy Central Cancels Larry Wilmore’s Late-Night Show
Though the late-show genre remains heavy on easygoing laughter, any one episode of “The Nightly Show” could occasionally go for prolonged stretches without a single joke, something that intrigued some critics but failed to attract a broader audience.
.. “The Daily Show” had an average of 2.1 million viewers a night in Mr. Stewart’s final year as host, while Mr. Noah’s audience has averaged 1.3 million, according to data from Nielsen... “The Colbert Report,” he had an average audience of 1.7 million viewers, but in Mr. Wilmore’s first year, that viewership fell to an average of 922,000 viewers, according to Nielsen. This year, the total has fallen to 776,000 viewers a night... Mr. Alterman said that he had hoped that there would be a ratings surge — particularly around the political conventions — and that the decision to cancel “The Nightly Show” was a recent one... Calling the perception that Mr. Noah is struggling “a myth,” Mr. Alterman pointed to the show’s strong performance on Hulu — though he is not allowed to disclose figures, he said... Mr. Noah’s show is the No. 2 late-night show among young adults ages 18 to 34,