Off-duty film viewing only. Anything I'm working on, might be working on, or connected to anything I'm working on, won't be mentioned here.
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Hollywood Without Make-Up 1963
According to his intro, Ken Murray used to shoot Hollywood home videos as a means of staying in touch with his grandparents. It was easier than writing letters and allowed them to see all his famous pals. This doc – which gets labelled as a film but has all the hallmarks of a television special – compiles thirty years’ worth, giving us off-duty glimpses of everyone from Clara Bow to Donna Reed, a jaunt around William Randolph Hearst’s private zoo,…
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Strange Way of Life 2023
This feels like an overly complicated way for Saint Laurent to get Pedro Pascal to model their green jacket. A level of artifice is to be expected from what is, essentially, a luxury clothes horse as much as it is a short film. But the flat, obviously digital photography (when the look of an Almodóvar western should land somewhere between Johnny Guitar and Duel in the Sun) and Ethan Hawke’s lack of range further the sense of insincerity. Richard Linklater…
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Last Night in Soho 2021
You know how the Doctor Who Christmas specials have a bit more extra money to spend, so there's flashier effects and maybe a guest star or two who used to do films, but the whole thing still feels very televisual in its execution and in its acting, and the dialogue doesn't always land because it's trying to simultaneously appease different audience demographics? That's exactly how this feels – and way before Matt Smith shows up.
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Moonage Daydream 2022
Some immediate idle thoughts:
From a conceptual standpoint, I’m not sure if hooking the film primarily to audio from chat-show interviews is going to elicit the deepest of insights, given the format. Bowie was always good value on them, but I doubt he would deem them worthy of extracting any kind of biography, however loose/associative that may be. It also creates a huge gap toward the end as Bowie had moved out of the public eye.
The film relies a…
