Overton Window, Enshittification, Shadow Docket, Looksmaxxing, etc.

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Consider a hypothetical and answer honestly: If, God forbid, some kind of violent death was to befall President Donald J. Trump, how would you respond? Outside of deploring any act of murder that takes out any elected official or prominent person, what would be your gut reaction after the dust settles? Deep down, I mean.

We all understand, I think, that a sizable percentage of adults would not be emotionally devastated by Trump being iced. The general reaction would certainly not be like the nationwide response to JFK’s murder.

Official Wiki definition: “The Overton Window is the range of policies or ideas acceptable to the mainstream public at a given time, determining what politicians can support without risking their electoral chances. It shifts over time through social movements and media, moving from unthinkable to mainstream, impacting policy by dictating the boundaries of political feasibility.”

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“Prada 2” Extras, Snaps, Side Dishes

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I liked The Devil Wears Prada 2 well enough. I wasn’t blown away but felt moderately pleased…intrigued, placated. The last third brings it home. Great final shot.

Meryl Streep was 56 when she played Miranda Priestly the first time (2006), and while she looks quite good in the newbie…well, she looks fine. Her eyes are certainly more heavily mascara’ed than they were in ’06, and I think her perfectly styled white hair should have been worn a bit longer. I hate how aging people always seem to wear their hair shorter.

B.J. Novak‘s Vengeance (’22), which he wrote, directed and starred in, is one of the best films released this decade. And I loved his Harry J. Sonneborn character in John Lee Hancock‘s The Founder (’16). His Prada 2 character is Jay Ravitz, the smart-enough son of Runway publisher Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), but I’d rather see him direct and write something ambitious again.

43 year-old Emily Blunt once again plays Emily Charlton, the sniffly, suffering Miranda assistant in the 2006 original, now a big Dior hotshot. Charlton was a somewhat marginal figure 20 years ago — in Prada 2 she’s still a supporting sidelight with a few zingers, but humming with unpleasant anxiety, tension and suspicion.

What’s happened to poor Justin Theroux, who plays Emily’s boyfriend, Benji Barnes? At age 55 his once-slender face has become heavier and his jet-black hair and beard have turned reddish brown, and his eyes seem decidedly smaller than they were 10 or 15 years ago. (Remember his hippy earthman character in 2011’s Wanderlust?)

I didn’t care for Patrick Brammall‘s Peter, a condo builder whom Anne Hathaway’s Andy likes (i.e., wants to be with). He’s just not hot enough for her, and if I was a woman or gay guy I wouldn’t even flirt with the idea of doing him. Brammall might have gotten away with it if he had lean, chiselled features, but his face is doughy and unshaven…nope. Seems like a nice-enough guy deep down, but that’s not enough.

Kenneth Branagh plays Stuart, Miranda’s agreeable husband…meh.

Lady Gaga‘s cameo performance is high voltage…a keeper. The second most noteworthy cameo is owned by Kara Swisher, who has a couple of chit-chat lines. Poor Tina Brown is barely glimpsed before the camera cuts away.

Came To Scoff, But “Prada 2” Is Half Decent

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Last night I finally saw David Frankel and Aline Brosh McKenna‘s The Devil Wears Prada 2 (7:25 pm show), and I’ll tell you right now it’s a sizable hit — 85% of the seats were sold, and that’s highly unusual for a non-weekend night at the AMC Westport.

Lo and behold, Prada 2 isn’t half bad. It’s mildly approvable. Mainly because it sinks in emotionally during the second half or the Milan section, which begins around the 70- or 75-minute mark. The first hour or so (the Manhattan section) feels thin and caustic and stuck in formulaic cynicism (i.e., everyone’s snappy, brittle, dismissive, highly competitive).

But it picks up, finds a groove. There were two mouthy ayeholes to my left who were loudly yapping during the first hour (read: flirting with boredom, less than fully engaged), but they finally stopped when the Runway gang flies to Milan.

We know going in, of course, that Meryl Streep‘s Miranda Priestly, queen of the now-weakened and downswirling Runway, will be dispensing her haughty, imperious dialogue…chilly, bitchy, withering put-downs.

Right away I was muttering to myself “I don’t want to sit through two hours of this…Miranda needs to dig into something else.”

We’re naturally drawn to the less guarded, more openly human characters — principally Anne Hathaway’s 40ish Andy Sachs, a respected journalist who returns to Runway after being shitcanned for no good reason. Equally humane is Stanley Tucci’s Nigel Kipling, but Tooch isn’t allowed to do much except provide the usual pithy commentary.

The plot is mostly about the shaky terms of survival for big-time journalism in the 2020s.

What is Prada 2 really about? The soul-nurturing high of having a great big-city job and the supreme satisfaction of doing it well. The last shot of the film, an outdoor drone shot that gazes through Runway’s office windows at night before pulling back to take in the entirety of midtown Manhattan, says it all.

I can’t finish this in time. I have at least seven or eight paragraphs in my head…later.

Redford’s Subtle, Genius-Level Technique

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In Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock, the great Robert Redford plays John Dortmunder with only a very slight hint of comedic tilt. Half-deadpan and half buried angst.

Dortmunder, a hard-luck career criminal with a dryly sardonic attitude, was introduced in Donald Westlake’s same-titled 1970 pulp novel. (It began as a hard-boiled Parker book under his Richard Stark pseudonym, but it kept leaning into humor.)

William Goldman’s first serving of substantial dialogue slips right into the Dortmunder aesthetic, but with an understated allusion to soul and emotionality.

When Graham Jarvis‘s prison warden gently chides Dortmunder by asking “you couldn’t really go straight?”, Dortmunder answers with absolute honesty, retreating into pained solemnity as he half-mutters a confession: “My heart wouldn’t be in it, Frank.” He addresses the warden by his first name! Which implies a hint of affection, a bond of mutual respect.

And he means it about the heart component. Dortmunder, re-imagined by Goldman as a kind of counterculture guy, an urban Sundance Kid without the moustache, is into larceny for the bolt and the buzz…the juice is what sends his heart soaring.

Plus I adore Dortmunder’s look of nihilist self-recognition or resignation…a look that says “what do you want me to do….change?…this is who I am.”

The Hot Rock mixes this fatalistic mindset with low-key humor, but the story is all about a team of thieves never quite succeeding…repeated frustrations, failures, misfortunes, trying again and again…a story, at root, about noiresque doldrums.

But the ending is perhaps the happiest…indeed, the most ecstatically joyful finale in the history of heist flicks.

A 2026 remake couldn’t accommodate a handsome white-guy protagonist with a German last name, but then you knew that. Dortmunder would have to be ethnically reimagined (Riz Ahmed?), be given an annoying wardrobe, made to wear whitesides, etc.

Wiki excerpt:

Costa Gavras’ “Missing”

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I was reading in the living room last night when I suddenly realized that my very best bifocals — prescription, forest green frames, tinted lenses, sturdy, comfortable — were nowhere to be found.

I went upstairs, searched all around, looked in jacket pockets…nothing. Went out to the car…zip. Back inside, thought harder about it, retraced my steps….couldn’t figure it. “It’s okay, they’ll turn up,” I said out loud.

Sat down again, tried to watch a film, tried to write something…couldn’t concentrate.

I was wearing them.

The entire Lost in Space episode ate up a bit more than a half-hour.

Peet Paired With Another Neurotic Schlubbo

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On HBO’s Togetherness (the debut was eleven years ago) Amanda Peet‘s Tina fell into an awkward, in-and-out relationship with Alex, played by the bright but pudgy and obviously-inappropriate-by-classic-standards Steve Zissis.

Now, in Matthew Shear‘s Fantasy Life (Greenwich, 3.27.26), she settles into a relationship with another chubby Jewish intellectual type (played by Shear).

The older but still radiantly attractive Peet is now boxed in — she’ll almost certainly never be cast as a partner, wife or significant other of a slender, good-looking guy ever again.

I’ve written about this lopsided dynamic before, and more than once.

The East Wing Ballroom Must Be Wrecking-Balled

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But all the people cheering this coming scenario (myself included) must understand that as of 1.21.29 transies must leave minors alone, now and forever…and no more anti-white-male racism or feminist anti-male hostility (i.e., especially belittling young struggling, screen-obsessed males living in their parents’ basements), and no more accusing this or that person of racism in a screechy, hair-trigger manner, and no more ignoring the basic binary nature of gender and sexuality, and no more refusing to arrest hoodie-wearing shoplifters, and no more anti-common-sense woke crap in general…all of that excessive horseshit must come to an end.

Offer respect and you will get respect, and the nation may have a shot at decency and civility.

True Confession

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Before today I’d never once seen even a portion of Elaine May‘s A New Leaf (Paramount, 3.11.71). But now I have. Two clips, to be exact.

It seems obvious that May’s deadpan black comedy was (and is) very well written as well as steadily, confidently paced (no hurry or worry), and that May and Walter Matthau had great, low-key fun as the two leads, and that Gayne Rescher‘s cinematography is most agreeably pro-level.

A 55th anniversary 4K restoration of A New Leaf will open at Manhattan’s IFC Center on Friday, 5.15.

It was well reviewed by all the top-dog critics (“The picture as it now stands is very funny indeed, but more charming than uproarious, and quite surprisingly romantic” — Molly Haskell), but Joe and Jane Popcorn weren’t in the mood or something.

Wiki excerpt:

“In what would become a hallmark for Elaine May, the film’s original $1.8 million budget shot up to over $4 million by the time it was completed. Shooting went 40 days over schedule, and editing took over ten months. Similar problems dogged her subsequent projects, Mikey and Nicky and Ishtar.

“During shooting, producer Howard W. Koch tried to have May replaced, but she had put a $200,000 (equivalent to $1.6 million in 2025) penalty clause into her contract, and he was persuaded to keep her.

Alternate versions:

“After May would not show Paramount Pictures a rough cut of the film ten months into editing, Robert Evans took away the film from her and recut it, although she had the right to approve the final cut in her contract. May’s version was rumored to run 180 minutes; Evans shortened it to 102 minutes. Angered by the alterations, May tried to take her name off the film, and unsuccessfully sued Paramount to keep it from being released.

“The original story included a subplot in which Henry discovers from the household accounts that Henrietta is being blackmailed on dubious grounds by lawyer Andy McPherson (Jack Weston), and another character played by William Hickey. Henry poisons both of them. This darkly casts Henry’s eventual acceptance of a conventional life with Henrietta as his ‘sentence.'”

Sight Unseen, I’ve Already Seen It

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Or, as Luis Guzman said in The Limey, “You could see the sea out there if you could see it.”

Matt Damon rules, and Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron sound like cool topliners, but what exactly is historically “sincere” about the casting of Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, RPatz, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Tom “Spider Man” Holland, John Leguizamo, etc.?