Day: May 30, 2015

Posted last night by Raw Story‘s Kati Holloway: “As if to prove there are new depths to be plumbed in the world of reality television (because who knew?), CBS just debuted The Briefcase, a show which takes poverty porn, class anxiety [and] emotional exploitation and packages them all neatly into a despicable hour of primetime television. Kicking off each episode with the question ‘What would you do with $101,000?’, the show asks two unwitting, financially strapped families to choose between two no-win options: being financially solvent yet appearing heartless and greedy, or drowning in debt yet having audiences recognize them as selfless and giving.”

Holloway suggests that the idea for The Briefcase almost certainly came from the ‘Button, Button‘ episode on the relaunched ’80s version of The Twilight Zone. It’s highly unlikely that the team behind The Briefcase wasn’t at least aware of this precedent, and given this you have to wonder what kind of cold-blade shitheels decided to produce this show…God!

Based on an original 1970 story by Richard Matheson, ‘Button Button‘ is about a financially hurting couple (chipper, upbeat Brad Davis and bitter, cigarette-smoking layabout Mare Winningham) who are given a wooden box with a red button and then visited by a tall creepy guy who offers a weird deal. If they push the button, he explains, they’ll receive $200 grand as a tax-free gift but someone they don’t know will die. Davis doesn’t want anything to do with the proposition but after some delay Winningham pushes the button. The creepy guy returns to reclaim the box and deliver the $200K. He also mentions to Winningham that the next person to receive the box won’t know her. She realizes in a flash that she’s dead, that each button pusher will be killed by the next one.

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“Accusing women of supporting Hillary Clinton just because she’s female is misogynistic [bullshit],” Lena Dunham recently wrote on her Instagram account. “Women are smart enough to make decisions based on a number of factors: policy, track record, campaign strategy. Yes, I think it’s time for a female president but I’m not part of a witch’s cabal that senses ovaries and suddenly must vote.” And the default reason that the vast majority of African-Americans voted for Barack Obama wasn’t for kinship. And the default reason that many boomers and GenXers voted for Bill Clinton in ’92 and ’96 wasn’t because he shared their generational perspective and vice versa. And the default reason that Hillary is expected to win in ’16 has little if anything to do with the fact that a woman in the Oval Office will symbolically strengthen the hand of women everywhere. I don’t blame Dunham or any thinking progressive woman for being on Clinton’s team for gender reasons — it totally makes sense. But in the same breath it’s obvious that Dunham is talking right through her hat.

Clinton’s gender will of course be the default consideration for women during the ’16 election. But Dunham tries to deny it anyway and other women are (presumably) raising their fists and going “yeah!” Or are they? There’s so much rage and animus among Type-A media and showbiz women these days, obviously and justifiably directed at the suppressive chauvinists of the other side of the canyon. And yet the tone of much of the commentary from go-getter women is fierce and militant and “shut up, you’re full of it.” The mantra seems to be “I despise men or at least I frequently sneer at their bullshit and therefore I am.” I’m not saying women are the least bit unwarranted in pushing back at sexist bullshit, but too much rage leads to intemperate statements. It’s like a guerilla war out there. It’s almost like the Irish against the British in the 1920s.

Paul Dano‘s extremely vulnerable, dug-in performance as the young Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy (Roadside, 6.5) is an Oscar-worthy achievement if I’ve ever seen one. On the other hand SAG and Academy members are notorious for ignoring this or that performance if it doesn’t seem like their kind of thing so you never know. On the other hand they’ve often saluted performances for which an actor has gqined or lost a lot of weight (i.e., Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull, Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club). Perhaps the fact that Dano packed on 30 pounds to play Wilson and then turned around and lost it…maybe.

Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano at Cannes premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth.

The last time I checked David Jones‘ Betrayal (’83), a note-perfect adaptation of Harold Pinter’s 1978 stage play, is still not available via disc or high-def streaming. Until recently the only way you could see it was to watch a murky version on YouTube. Now, via recent uploads, you can watch four of the best scenes in a somewhat cleaner condition. Pinter’s scheme, of course, is to run the natural order of the scenes backwards but for the sake of this post, here they are in sequence. The first is between literary agent Jeremy Irons, publisher Ben Kingsley and Kingsley’s wife Patricia Hodge — a scene that I love for the repeated use of the term “brutally honest.” It’s followed by a hotel-room scene in Venice (actually happening a year earlier) in which Kingsley discovers that Hodge and Irons have been lovers for five years. The third is the “modern prose” scene in which Kingsley, post-Venice, says nothing about the affair to Irons during lunch, but at the same indicates everything. The fourth clip is a scene in which Irons and Hodge meet at a pub to talk about their long-past affair and how she’s just told Kingsley everything. The fifth and final clip, in which everything is hung out to dry, is a scene between Irons and Kingsley. This is one of Kingsley’s greatest-ever performances, and you still can’t find a decent-looking version of Betrayal anywhere, for any price.

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I hate paying $30 dollars for a Bluray when I know that a high-def streaming version will be available down the road. I’ve nonetheless ordered the Bluray of Edward Dymytryk‘s The Young Lions (Twilight Time, 6.9), mainly because I’m a sucker for black-and-white Scope as well as an admirer of legendary dp Joe McDonald (My Darling Clementine, Call Northside 777, Viva Zapata).

The Young Lions has always been sold as a war drama when it’s actually a rather talky piece about three guys who aren’t very lion-like or war-daddyish at all, and are more caught up in wrestling with personal issues than in fighting the enemy.

On the German side is blonde-haired officer Christian Diestl (Brando) who becomes more and more repelled by war as his military experiences accumulate. Stateside there’s a just-enlisted American Jew with jug ears — Montgomery Clift‘s Noah Ackerman — grappling with anti-Semitism in the ranks along with a louche showbiz type — Dean Martin‘s Michael Whiteacre — dealing with his own selfishness and cowardice.

Given Diestl’s disdain for war and the fact that he spends almost the entire film not shooting or even aiming at anyone, it’s a joke that the Twilight Time Bluray jacket features an image of Brando pointing a handgun at the camera.

At least I now have an excuse to trot out an eight-year-old piece about one of Brando’s greatest death scene, which happens near the finale of this 167-minute film.

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Kardblock is an AdBlock software that prevents any mention of the Kardashians from appearing on your computer, iPad or phone screen. The founder/creator is James Samir Shamsi, a Los Angeles marketing guy behind a “social media growth hackers” site called Chameleon. Shamsi is also working, he says, on coding that will block any Justin Bieber-related content.

Yesterday Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus‘ Hot Girls Wanted, a doc about the cruel underbelly of the amateur porn industry, had its Netflix debut. (I was going to write “unseemly aspects” but do porn producers have any seemly aspects?) Pretty young women have been used, abused and exploited for…well, centuries, of course, but more particularly since the advent of the industrial age and aggressive capitalism and all that. This is simply the latest wrinkle, and it’s not going to stop. For years I’d regarded amateur porn as a bit less odious and predatory than the established, old-school porn industry. But impressions change. Particularly, judging by this trailer, when you let docs of this sort sink in. I tried watching this last night but for some reason Tunnel Bear won’t let me access my Netflix account.

It’s the same with the meat industry in a sense. You go to the market and see those nice red cuts of sirloin and tenderloin and think of that grilled aroma with the sauteed peppercorns and garlic butter– a pleasure. But then you watch this and this and the idea of eating meat seems distasteful if not appalling. The meat industry has shrunk by over a third since the mid ’70s and more and more of us are leaning vegetarian, but is the meat industry going to fold up and die any time soon? No.

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