The real Mannix, a Jersey boy who started at MGM as a bodyguard for its New York–based president, Nick Schenck, was tough, connected, hard-drinking, twice-married, and much-bedded. The movie’s unlikely hero is a fictional, idealized version of Eddie Mannix, the top executive troubleshooter at MGM who coddled and disciplined studio talents, negotiated with unions, and, with the help of publicity chief Howard Strickling, controlled celebrity scandals. It’s too bad that her role peaks when she mouths double-entendres to Jonah Hill as the studio’s most reliable go-to guy-or fall guy.
Scarlett Johansson is sensational as Capitol’s earthy, pregnant, currently unmarried swimsuit queen. And the Coen Brothers’ mock Esther Williams musical pales before the Busby Berkeley–choreographed insanity of the real thing. But the choice moments in his tap dance-the high points of the movie-devolve into disposable homoerotic jokes, like framing Gurney’s head above the crotch and between the legs of an upside-down male partner. Too often, though, they simply re-create bits and pieces of outlandish genres and do them just a tad more broadly, hoping exaggeration alone would do the trick.Ĭhanning Tatum has mastered the athletic leaps and lifts he needs to be persuasive as Burt Gurney, Capitol’s version of Gene Kelly. It’s as if the Coens were desperately trying to fill out a thin premise-the kidnapping of Capitol’s biggest star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), while he’s playing a Roman officer in Hail, Caesar!-with every fond notion or parody they hatched watching Golden Age movies on TV. The action flits in and out of Capitol’s alleys and corridors and onto the sets of the singing cowboy Western Lazy Ol’ Moon, the sailors’ shore-leave musical No Dames, the urbane farce Merrily We Dance, an aquatic spectacle echoing Neptune’s Daughter, and the Roman epic Hail, Caesar!
ROGER DEAKINS HAIL CAESAR MOVIE
This movie frequently resembles a mash-up of second-tier Mel Brooks spoofs. As the Coens guide us through a fictional dream factory, “Capitol Pictures” (also featured in their condescending and morose Barton Fink), nostalgic fantasy and frivolous satire create a peculiar glow, then cancel each other out. The Coen Brothers’ surprisingly perfunctory burlesque of Hollywood takes place in the early 1950s, when the movies had already lost regular customers to television and studios were no longer formidable trusts. But as anyone stuck on a freeway during a rainstorm can testify, that on-and-off rhythm can get old quickly during an hour-and-45-minute ride. Whenever hazy ideas and half-fermented humor fog up the screen, a blast of hilarity whisks them away. Roger started this website to provide a forum dedicated to an ongoing discussion of cinematography and filmmaking as well as sharing some of his experience with any who might be interested.Laughs arrive in Hail, Caesar! like the periodic whoosh of intermittent wipers.
ROGER DEAKINS HAIL CAESAR SERIES
On the rare days that he is not in his boat, fishing, while in Devon, he enjoys traveling to various places to augment his growing series of images. This cemented his passion for still photography that continues to this day. Before he entered the National Film School, he spent a year in North Devon, England, using his still camera to document the way of life on the farms and in the villages. His primary hobbies are taking still photographs and fishing. Roger then went on to feature cinematography, starting in England and then later shooting in the United States. He started in documentaries, shooting many in Africa as well as covering the Whitbread Round the World Yacht race that required him to work for more than 9 months as a crew member while filming a documentary.
He attended art college and the National Film School. Roger Deakins was born in Torquay, Devon, England. “The Assassination of Jesse James” – Warner Brothers
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