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Hollywood Elsewhere - Movie news and opinions by Jeffrey Wells

“There’s Hollywood Elsewhere and then there’s everything else. It’s your neighborhood dive where you get the ugly truth, a good laugh and a damn good scotch.”
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(Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Super 8)

“Smart, reliable and way ahead of the curve … a must and invaluable read.”
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(Down and Dirty Pictures Easy Riders, Raging Bulls)

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(The Revenant, Birdman, Amores Perros)

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(Salt, Clear and Present Danger, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Dead Calm)

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Washington Post

“Jeffrey Wells isn’t kidding around. Well, he does kid around, but mostly he just loves movies.”
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(Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky)

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(Pan’s Labyrinth, Cronos, Hellboy)

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Director (The Punisher), Writer (Armageddon, The Rock)

“So when I said I’d like to leave my cowboy hat there, I was obviously saying (in my head at least) that I’d be back to stay the following year … simple and quite clear all around.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE, January ’09

“If you’re in a movie that doesn’t work, game over and adios muchachos — no amount of star-charisma can save it.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE

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80 Comments
“It Feels Like She Is Lying, Straight Out”

There was a sobering discussion about Hillary Clinton‘s credibility gap during a Morning Joe segment yesterday morning. Transcripts are copied from Shaun King‘s 5.27 N.Y. Daily News column, titled “Hillary Clinton should quit presidential race as email scandal engulfs her campaign“:

2:43 — Mika Brzezinski to Andrea Mitchell: “The first interview we showed was the one you did with her and she says time and time and time and time and time and time again it was allowed. Was it allowed?” Andrea answers: “It was not allowed to not return those records before she left the State Department. She violated the Official Records Act, according to her own State Department IG (Investigator General) appointed by President Obama.”

Mitchell (cont’d): “What you have shown just now, Mika, completely undercuts the argument she has been making for more than a year, just as she trying to persuade voters that she is not untrustworthy. I think the most surprising, and in some ways shocking thing, is their reaction, claiming that this is the same as what former secretaries did.”

(More…)
May 28, 2016 7:02 amby Jeffrey Wells
31 Comments
Presuming This Is Good

GoGo in-flight wifi (I’m somewhere over the North Atlantic) won’t let me watch video, but Bill Maher + Bernie Sanders has to be fairly decent chatter. I’m crestfallen that Donald Trump has chickened out of the proposed Trump-Sanders debate. Is he a man or a mouse?

May 28, 2016 6:36 amby Jeffrey Wells
16 Comments
Marine Barracks Inspection

After staying in an Airbnb place you’re aways asked to review the apartment as well as the host, and the host in turn gets to review your performance as a renter. Did you leave the place in reasonably decent condition? Were you polite and considerate? Do you have a nice smile?

I never give hosts a bad review as a rule. If I don’t like a place I just won’t say anything. But a couple of renters have given me shitty reviews because I didn’t leave their places white-glove clean. In response to which I’ve always replied as follows: “Are you serious? I was raised by nice middle-class people with good hygiene and manners, and most of that rubbed off. I know I left your place in reasonably good condition. I’m not an animal, but if you want your apartment absolutely dead-bang spotless after a renter leaves, hire a housecleaner.”

I’ll never leave a place looking like a cyclone hit it. I always tidy up a bit — no sopping towels on the floor, no stogies in the ashtray, no broken cups or glasses. But it’s not my responsibility to leave the place looking like an IKEA showroom. It’s my responsibility to show respect by leaving things in reasonable order and by not trashing it, but no more than that.

I might leave a chewing-gum wrapper or an empty Coke bottle lying around but I’m not a private in the Marines, and when I leave a place I expect that the owner will bring in a professional to spruce it up, which is what I always do when I rent my place out. I think it’s definitely beyond the pale to read an Airbnb review that belittles me as some kind of uncouth person or, you know, makes me feel like Gomer Pyle being reamed out by Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann in Full Metal Jacket.

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May 28, 2016 5:18 amby Jeffrey Wells

9 Comments
Zappa Doc, Of Course. But in 1.37? Sold.

Wanna guess how many Sundance reviewers of Eat That Question mentioned the boxy aspect ratio? So far I’ve counted one — a review by Variety‘s Dennis Harvey that mentions “archaic” video formats. I haven’t seen the doc so maybe there are portions shot in standard 16:9 but the trailer is all 1.37:1, and that, for me, is a deciding factor.

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May 28, 2016 1:00 amby Jeffrey Wells
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