Miscellaneous Movie Musings: Part XXXIV

As the title suggests, so forth.

2001: A very bad year

Well, I finally saw Evolution last weekend. Just because it was on. And because I was eating dinner. It was a sorta ambient film-watching experience. Watch 45 minutes. Tape the rest. Watch that during lunch the next day. Wonder then why I bothered watching any of it. Muse on not knowing about Head & Shoulders’ efficacy against aliens. Cheer on some truly minor TV actors in small roles. Wonder why on earth David Duchovny took the lead. Muse on whether its failure stopped him from parlaying his X-Files fame into a leading man career on the big screen. And then remember that, even though it was from the director of Ghostbusters, I’d skipped the film on purpose in 2001 from a complete lack of interest. A lack of interest not limited to Evolution. There were multiple reasons why I saw only eleven films in the cinema in 2001, an alarming number of them rep showings. But one of them is that the year 2001 was not a very good year for cinema. In fact it was by way of being a very bad year. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Tigerland, which were 2001 highlights for me arrived here then but were actually 2000 films. And the hangover went the other way with Ocean’s 11 and Monsters Inc being 2002 experiences here. Shrek, Planet of the Apes, AI, Moulin Rouge!, The Others, The Fellowship of the Ring. These were the films of 2001 I saw on the biggest screens in the Savoy and Ormonde during 2001, and if not for the Antipodeans Luhrmann and Jackson unleashing immortal classics in the final four months of the year what a washout it would have been. I don’t know if anything can really be said to cause a slump the likes of which Hollywood experienced in 2001 but it was a slump for sure.

John Cusack: Former Film Star

John Cusack turned 54 yesterday which led me to the question: What in the hell happened to John Cusack? In what should have been the decade of his career in which he played a defining role, like Kirk Douglas in Spartacus or John Wayne in The Searchers, or Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko or Keanu Reeves as John Wick, the best that Cusack rose to as a fortysomething was his lead role in the minor Stephen King horror story 1408 and his hero repeatedly escaping just ahead of the shockwave(s) in Roland Emmerich’s over-egged disaster pudding 2012. What went wrong? How did he end up making so many films that were not released, barely released, or sunk without trace here? 1408 and Cell, his two Stephen King horrors with Samuel L Jackson, got cinema releases in late summer 2007 and 2016 – they almost neatly cordon off the decade of disaster under scrutiny, and the decline in Cusack’s celebrity, as the latter went to VoD before a very limited cinema release. Before 1408 came Grace is Gone and The Contract. Ring a bell? Nope… 2012 and Hot Tub Time Machine while not great films got wide releases and made money. The Raven and The Frozen Ground are better films but got less wide releases and made considerably less money. They also flag a recurring problem – there are way too many films here that merge together when you read the loglines; impressive casts assembled for some glossy crime thriller, involving a serial killer or assassination or heist: The Factory, The Numbers Station, The Bag Man, Drive Hard, The Prince, Reclaim. There’s even a Phone Booth–like appearance in Grand Piano. And what’s stranger is that in the midst of these formulaic films Cusack made We Are Not Animals in Argentina, about a Hollywood star fleeing formulaic films, and then went back to Hollywood to make more formulaic films. There have not been enough meaty roles like his older Brian Wilson in the split-focus biopic Love & Mercy. Instead he’s made cameos in The Paperboy, The Butler, Adult World, taken more substantial roles in glossy films that sank without trace (Dragon Blade, Shanghai), indie films that failed to connect (Maps to the Stars, Chi-Raq), and somehow bungled a spiritual sequel to his towering 90s achievement Grosse Pointe Blank in the shape of War, Inc. Cusack has not stopped working, and perhaps that’s the problem. Like Matthew McConaughey, he needs to say no to a looooot of scripts for a while if he wants to get back on track. Otherwise Cusack will continue to work steadily, but solely on trashy nonsense (constantly declining in quality), that is made for midnight drunken Netflix buffoonery, and clicked on increasingly only by people who remember that his was once a face that appeared on posters inside cinemas.

Dublin Theatre Festival: 12 Plays

Boston Marriage 29th Sept – 3rd Oct Gate

It’s from 1999 and is an all female cast so I wouldn’t have thought this was vintage David Mamet but he did write and direct his satirical film State & Main the year before and apparently this is a rather good scathing Victorian era drawing room black comedy about lesbian couples in fin de siecle Boston.

Phaedra  30th Sept – 10th Oct Project

Rough Magic use music interpolated from an operatic adaptation of Racine’s version of the Euripides tragedy, and indeed perform it live to supplement a new polish on the script that apparently adds some contemporary resonances to the implosion of the type of dysfunctional family only found in Greek plays.

T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. 1st Oct – 4th Oct Belvedere

The first of three Polish plays sees a stranger seduce everyone in a rich household in a wordless version of a Pasolini film that also has similarities to Something for Everyone or About Adam depending on your generosity.

The Silver Tassie 5th Oct – 10th Oct Gaiety

Druid doing Sean O’Casey in the Gaiety should be an obvious flagship show but my bad experience of Long Day’s Journey into Night in 2007 gives me pause. O’Casey’s move into experimental theatre saw him break with the Abbey as he used symbolism, dance, and music to depict the explosion of WWI into the lives of a Dublin football team who enlist so this should be very good. But…

Celebration 5th Oct – 10th Oct Gate

A very late and allegedly not very good one act play by Harold Pinter about a vicious and crude dinner party in a London restaurant. An odd choice for the festival but perhaps the Gate can extract some black comedy from its brevity.

John Gabriel Borkman 6th Oct – 16th Oct Abbey

Another odd choice, as this is by far the least known of Ibsen’s major works. But it does star ALAN RICKMAN, (a fact inexplicably buried deep within the press release), Fiona Shaw and Lindsay Duncan. This is in a new version by Frank McGuinness (a fact which will be returned to in a future blog piece) which brings out the black comedy of Ibsen’s drama.

Factory 2 9th Oct – 10th Oct Belvedere

The traditional play which you go to not so much for its merits but so you can boast that you managed to endure its marathon running time is this re-imagining of life at Warhol’s chaotic NYC art Factory in the 1960s as, interspersed with Warhol’s own endless films, it’s a whopping 7 1/2 hours long.

Watt 7th Oct – 17th Oct Gate

This is on at some very odd late hours but that probably only adds to the effect. It’s pricey for a one-hour one-man show but Barry McGovern is a noted Beckett exponent who will bring out the black comedy of Beckett’s novel and its tour de force of linguistic tricks.

Una Santa Oscura 8th Oct – 10th Oct Smock Alley

A hit at the fringe last year this mixture of video installation about a girl living in a city at night and specially written live music is performed by skilled violinist Ioana Petcu-Colan. Blink and you’ll miss its short run.

ENRON 12th Oct – 16th Oct Gaiety

A West End musical about the fall of Enron that has an Olivier Award for best director but flopped on Broadway after the NY Times disliked it. It’s definitely high-energy and smart in explaining things over its two and a half hours and it certainly does appear to be dazzling – with light-saber fights in the dark and an accountant with a team of pet velociraptors among the highlights.

Endgame 13th Oct – 17th Oct Gate

Owen Roe apparently made the fabled role of Faith Healer Frank Hardy his own at the Gate earlier this year so he should make an excellent Hamm with support from old double-act Des Keogh and Rosaleen Linehan in the dustbins. Beckett’s apocalyptic black comedy will probably return with Michael Gambon soon but this is a good chance to see it with Irish stage actors of long standing.

The Danton Case 13th Oct – 16th Oct Belvedere

The final Polish play is the pick of the bunch. Bawdy anachronistic fun, as a fourth wall breaching version of the French revolution and subsequent terror, performed to pounding punk music, plays out that is really about the fall of Communism and the rise of crony capitalism. Take that Sofia Coppola.