Electric Shadow

Trailer for Soderbergh's Showtime Series THE KNICK

Looks sharp, brutal, and above all, interesting and worth my time...unlike most of what gets cranked into cinemas these days. A synopsis:

Set in downtown New York in 1900, THE KNICK centers on Knickerbocker Hospital and the groundbreaking surgeons, nurses and staff, who push the bounds of medicine in a time of astonishingly high mortality rates and zero antibiotics. Steven Soderbergh directs Clive Owen in the entire ten-episode season of the Cinemax original series which debuts August 8, 2014 at 10pm. André Holland, Eve Hewson, Juliet Rylance, Jeremy Bobb, Michael Angarano, Chris Sullivan, Cara Seymour, Eric Johnson, David Fierro, Maya Kazan, Leon Addison Brown and Matt Frewer round out the ensemble cast. The creators and writing team of Jack Amiel & Michael Begler also serve as executive producers, along with Gregory Jacobs, Steven Soderbergh, Michael Sugar and Clive Owen. Michael Polaire produces. Steven Katz serves as supervising producer.

Señor Cagamilliones' Fun in a Chinese Laundry

The latest dispatch from Steven Soderbergh's Extension765 mailing list announces him as "Señor Cagamilliones" or, "Mister Shitmillions" in English. This made my day/week/epoch.

His latest "blog" "post" gives an infuriatingly terse and potent bit of appreciation to the genius of Josef von Sternberg. In so doing, Soderbergh reveals how another great filmmaker may have been directly inspired by something we would now consider a mere "DVD" "Special Feature".

The footnotes include favorite quotes from von Sternberg's autobiography for those who can't be bothered to read it (me):

“I have always found it less troublesome to conquer myself than to attempt the conquest of others.”  Josef von Sternberg, Fun in a Chinese Laundry 

“In our work money has often stood in the way of something that might have lasted a little longer than money ever can.”

“And often I recalled Whistler’s words, whenever I was faced with a task which could not have been foreseen by me when first I read them: ‘It takes endless labor to eradicate the traces of labor.’ "

Return to Soderberghopolis

Criterion is not only returning Soderbergh's King of the Hill to print on home video in February 2014, but they're also including his The Underneath in the same package. I knew it was only a matter of time before we got KOTH, but I'm more grateful to see them having convinced Soderbergh to do an interview about his film that he (allegedly) dislikes the most.

Regarding The Underneath as I wrote about it in the third numbered installment of Soderberghopolis:

"I don’t see the complete clusterfuck he apparently does. I’ve had personal artistic catastrophes others have seen as successes, so I get it. I just don’t agree that it sucks. Imperfect work from a great director is better than what hacks can do on their best days with a papal blessing. I’ll concede that it isn't drenched in Soderbergh's cinematic DNA, but it couldn't have been directed by just anyone. The cinematographic flourishes and this first pass at a non-linear narrative are distinctly Soderbergh."

My "Soderberghopolis" series stalled out once I hit the point I needed to re-watch his two TV series from the early/mid-aughts. Booking time to not just scrub through (as I have with some of the movies) ground it to a halt.

It's finally restarting soon, and I may push that forward even sooner with this tremendously happy news.

I hope this means that not only we'll see the Kafka "Midnight Cut" next year, but maybe a Blu-ray of Schizopolis and at long, long last…The Limey.

I wonder if Extension765 will do a "Perennial Security" t-shirt...

KAFKA "Midnight Cut" Update

Tomorrow's issue of Empire is teased to contain a full "exit interview" with Steven Soderbergh. From the portion excerpted on their website today, we get an update on the new version of Kafka he's been working on, now dubbed the "Midnight Cut":

...“I’ve got a 35 page fax from (screenwriter) Lem Dobbs about it that I’ve got to wade into at some point,” Soderbergh tells Empire. “Lem and I have had this back and forth because I’m trying to alter the DNA of the whole movie. I think we want to put out a dual Blu-ray with both versions. I’ve been calling the new version the ‘Midnight Edition’ because it’s perfect for Friday or Saturday night shows.”

Kafka, Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape follow-up, was made under the fierce spotlight that came with being a Palme d'Or-winning wunderkind, and its original issues have continued to nag away at the director. An oblique conspiracy thriller starring Jeremy Irons and Alec Guinness, it will get a German-language dub, “probably” a new score and a substantive reworking of the edit. The cuts will, as Soderbergh emphasises, “be bloody”.

“I was frustrated with Kafka – it had a mixed-to-negative reaction when it came out – and I’m trying to completely rethink it in the hopes of at least turning it into something that’s unified. The tone was all over the place – which is the classic young filmmaker’s mistake. I’d like to make it a little more abstract and more of a hardcore art movie. It’s not a tweak: it’s triage.” So a better-director’s cut of a director’s cut? “I hope so. It’s shorter.”

A new Soderbergh/Lem Dobbs commentary is like discovering a print of a great lost film.

2.4 Million Watch CANDELABRA on HBO

THR reports that Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra is the most-watched "HBO Film" in nine years.

Contrary to the Twitter hivemind, there is no mathematical formula that will tell you, in millions of dollars, exactly how stupid every studio in town is for not putting it in theaters nationwide. In the same breath, I'll add that Magic Mike was a major gamble on paper to Warner Bros., even though it went on to be one of the biggest successes of 2012. We could play "what if?" until the end of time.

What's certain is that we still live in an age where mainstream industries are scared to death of male sexuality in any form, and not just the gay one. Male Gaze theory and voyeurizing woman? That's what keeps America (and the world) strong!

Wouldn't it be great if you could be an HBO subscriber without having a creaky old cable subscription? I bet they could do more of these and have those one-time-nine-years-ago ratings more regularly.

Ye Olde Soderbergh Shirt Shoppe

Thankfully, Soderbergh did not call his True Cineaste Emporium the above (nor The True Cineaste Emporium).

Instead, he chose Extension 765, a reference to Coppola's The Conversation. Slate did a great job creating a cheat sheet for hipsters who want to pretend they're like, so totally into Friedkin's 70's ouvre. In true hipster fashion, the only one I didn't know was the one for The Best of Everything. My favorites are for Marnie, Saboteur, and under-appreciated shot-in-Austin Soderbergh picture The Underneath.

The next time I have a big pile of money to throw at a new t-shirt wardrobe, this is where it goes. If you order four shirts or more, they send you a "bonus shirt" that they can't describe for whatever reason. Someone go buy me four shirts. I wear a large. Thanks in advance.

Also worth looking at, the Extension 765 stationary that Soderbergh had made. Did I mention that The Underneath is really good?

Not pictured: baseball jersey-style "American Newsreel Inc." shirt

Soderbergh and "Spielberg's Job"

I transcribed the following from the podcast of yesterday's Fresh Air, which featured a Terry Gross interview with Steven Soderbergh. The primary topic of conversation is Behind the Candelabra, but they also discuss his Twitter novel, the fact that he's not "retiring" from movies so much as taking time to think, and perhaps most interestingly, the beginning of his fascination with directing:

TERRY GROSS: When did you first become aware there was such a thing as a "director" and the director had a lot to do with why you liked a movie when you were watching it?

STEVEN SODERBERGH: When I was twelve.

TERRY GROSS: Through watching what?

STEVEN SODERBERGH: Jaws.

TERRY GROSS: Really?

CROSSTALK
GROSS: Cause of the suspense? Cause of the-- // SODERBERGH: That was the first--

STEVEN SODERBERGH: No, it was just...I-I came out of that film in St. Petersburg, Florida in the summer of 1975, and my relationship to movies had completely changed.

I had always seen a lot of films, 'cause my father loves movies, but they-they...in that two hours and four minutes...they went from something that I used to view as entertainment, and they became something else. I had two questions when I came out of the theater: one, what does "directed by" mean, exactly, and two, who is Steven Spielberg?

And luckily, there was a book that had been published around the time that the movie came out called The Jaws Log, which was written by Carl Gottlieb, one of the co-screenwriters, and it turned out to be one of the best making-of books that anybody has ever produced, and I bought a copy of that and read it over and over again, and highlighted any mention of Steven Spielberg and what that job entailed, and from that pint on, I realized "oh, this is a job. I can have this as a job."

"Behind the Candelabra" Trailer

The last one was more teaser-y fluff. This one has all the bells, rhinestones, and sequins on, ready for the ball. I anticipate having Soderberghopolis complete through Haywire by the time this one is on HBO on 26 May.

The thrust of this (accept the double entendre) focusing on the gravity of Liberace's all-consuming vanity makes it compelling and interesting. That studios all thought it "too gay" meant that they were worried they'd get in trouble with "the gays". I wonder if quite the opposite would have occurred, to great box office reward. Oh well, next time, Homophobe-wood!

Before you watch the trailer, share in my amazement at how completely unilke herself Debbie Reynolds looks below:

Daily Grab 108: Coates

From Side by Side, a documentary/infomovie about film versus digital in cinema, which crosses a variety of strata worth of conflict. i've rewatched/listened to/soaked it in while working multiple times since its Blu-ray release in February. Soderbergh puts some stank on his opinions, as it were.

The same editor who cut Lawrence of Arabia did Erin Brockovich. I feel like I, of all people, should pretend that I knew this before now.

Daily Grab 69: Trafficking

The next installment of Soderberghopolis should be up in the morning. The director's three-movie run from 2000-2001 represents the period of greatest mainstream and financial success that he's had in his allegedly-soon-to-end career.

Traffic is a great example of Soderbergh's pseudonymous photography of his own movies as camera sage Peter Andrews, who generally receives "Photographed by" credits.

It'd be less than completist if I didn't do some sort of Appendix article about his cinematographic style, right?