Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to John Williams’ marvelous score to The Fury, which followed my listening to his latest score for the new Steven Spielberg film, The Fabelmans. Back in 2002 or 2003, Mr. Spielberg and company was sent a book entitled Benjamin Kritzer, about the title character and his family, The Kritzers. And here, twenty years on, he goes and makes a semi-autobiographical film about his family, The Fabelmans. Of course, we have no way of knowing if the Kritzer saga inspired him or not – my instinct tells me that neither he nor anyone in his company bothered to read the book or its two subsequent volumes. In the first book, the dedication page begins with, “To Eddie, Mitzi, and Joel” – so, should we just find it a wee bit odd that Mr. Spielberg, whose mother’s real name was Leah, names his fictional mother – Mitzi? Is that a wee bit odd? And should we find it a wee bit odd that Mr. Williams’ solo piano theme that opens the soundtrack CD sounds a wee bit in tone and mood to one of the two main themes I wrote for solo piano for Doug Haverty’s play, In My Mind’s Eye. These are the coincidences of life, I think, since I’m not sure either gentleman would have bought the Tonight’s the Night CD which has that score on it and they sure didn’t come to the Group Rep to see it. I’ll see the film, of course, as soon as we get a screener and it will be interesting to see if there are other wee coincidences, which there probably won’t be. But the Mitzi thing really is an odd one, isn’t it? Earlier in the evening, in the when does an actor’s chutzpah reach epic proportions, we have what the kiddies in 2006 called a reboot but would now call “reimagined” new film of The Pink Panther, starring Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau. I find Mr. Martin a rather irritating screen presence and always have. The only film I kind of thought he was interesting in was Pennies from Heaven and whatever that David Mamet con film he did. Well, he is beyond bad in The Pink Panther – he has no idea how to play this character that really belongs to both Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers. And even those esteemed gents couldn’t get it to work in one Panther film after another in the seventies and eighties. Other actors have tried, too, and all have failed, but none quite so spectacularly as Mr. Martin. One could just blame it on bad casting and a director who couldn’t help Mr. Martin figure it out – one could, save for the fact that Mr. Martin is also one of the writers. The film is singularly unfunny, not one gag landing. It’s excruciating to watch. Kevin Kline tries hard, too hard, to make Herbert Lom’s role of Insptector Dreyfuss work, but he can’t. The score by Christophe Beck is horrible – the only thing that works is when he uses Henry Mancini’s classic theme. Visually and directorially the director certainly hasn’t a clew or an iota of the talent of Mr. Edwards. The direction is both hyperactive and flaccid throughout. Now, the studio would have you believe that this horrid film grossed over 160 million worldwide. They say it did a bit over 80 million in the US and frankly I think the overseas grosses are just lies. And I doubt the US gross is accurate either.
Then I watched thirty minutes of the sequel they made – this one they couldn’t lie about, and it lost quite a bit of money. And if such a thing is actually possible, it is ten times worse than the one that came before it. Pathetic doesn’t begin to describe these two lamentable films, and Mr. Martin will hopefully never play Clouseau again. I’m sure the estate of Mr. Edwards made some dough, so that’s good, but I can only imagine Mr. Edwards and Mr. Sellers turning over in their respective graves from these two grave films.
I watched the new Arrow Blu and Ray of Audrey Rose, which Twilight Time released here. The Twilight Time disc used an older transfer from MGM/UA – it was decent and no more. This new thing is touted as being a new 2K “restoration” (of course, it’s not a restoration at all and I wish these idiotic people would stop rendering that word totally useless in terms of its real meaning, film-wise), from the original camera negative. While it’s certainly a nice enough step up from the Twilight Time disc, to my eye it looks like nothing that came from a camera negative. It does look like it came from an internegative of some sort, at least to me it does. The film, which I’ve written about before, doesn’t work much at all, mostly due to a horrible performance by John Beck, and some truly awful writing. You can kind of go along with it for its first half, but then it really goes to hell in its second half, just unbelievably bad. Marsha Mason and Anthony Hopkins do what they can, and the little girl is okay, but it just doesn’t work. The one thing about the film that totally works is the great score by Michael Small, which we issued on CD.
Yesterday was not such a bad day. I got eight hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, had some telephonic conversations, and then went to shave and shower only to find an army of ants on the floor. I instantly got out the Raid and they were all dead in an instant. I sprayed the entire area where they were. It’s not possible to see where they’re coming from, but it has to be from behind where the sink is, which one can’t get to. But I sprayed back there as far as I could, and they haven’t come back since. I shaved and then showered, and then moseyed on over to Marshall Harvey’s, leaving at one-thirty. The freeway at that early hour was absolutely appalling, filled with cars. It makes no sense. I couldn’t even get over in time to get off at the off ramp to his house, so I had to go a half-mile out of my way, turn around, go another two miles out of my way because his off-ramp isn’t there if going west, then double back.
Once there, he showed me his first cut of the first episode of Sami, and I must say I found it charming and funny throughout its nine-minute running time. It’s three minutes shorter than I thought it would be, but then that script is the shortest of the lot. Still, it plays well at that length. Then we went back and made just a few tiny adjustments throughout, swapping out a shot or two, shortening or lengthening a couple of shots, just the usual finessing one does. I know he was concerned about how cutting the songs was going to work, but he did what I suggested, and it worked perfectly. There are still a couple of special effects shots to composite, and there are two shots that I know we did that they have to find, but we pretty much locked the edit itself. He’d already put in the main title over black for now, same with the end title, so it really does run what it runs. There’s one special effect thing that will up the run-time by fifteen seconds. And we still don’t have the boom mic sound, all of which has to be sunk up and that will happen this coming week. The good news is that he cut this in four days – we were thinking two weeks per episode, but it looks like it will go faster than that. Anyway, I’m always petrified to see a cut of the first thing because I always think I probably screwed everything up. But it really cut together very well, and the entire cast comes off wonderfully, I thought.
After that, I stopped at the mail place and picked up a little package, then came right home. I ordered my beloved pasta thing from The Cheesecake Factory for food, it arrived, and I ate it all up – excellent. Then I began my viewing and the rest you know.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages (screeners really should be arriving by this point), I’ll eat, perhaps I’ll even go sit in a restaurant and have a proper meal, and then I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow will be a complete ME day, then next week I’ll attend to the Kritzerland show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, hopefully pick up some packages, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite Pink Panther films and your favorite Steve Martin films. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, always intrigued by wee coincidences.