Month: September 2018

Arizona Hired Gun Pinch-Hitting For Republicans

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Christine Blasey Ford will testify tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her 36-year-old recollection of alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was 17 at the time. But the 11 Republican Senators who sit on that committee won’t question her. Like, at all. Because they don’t want to personally contribute to nationwide female-voter pushback in the coming midterm elections. In short, they’re too chicken.

And so a rightwing surrogate inquisitor — Rachel Mitchell, an Arizona prosecutor who specializes in sex crimes — will do the dirty work instead.

Mitchell has been a Maricopa County prosecutor since 1993, which is the same year when the notorious pro-Trump blowhard Joe Arpaio became sheriff of Maricopa County. (He stayed in that office until losing re-election in 2016.) One can infer that Rachel and Joe weren’t too far apart politically. It can also be presumed that the 11 Senators wouldn’t have arranged for Mitchell to question Ford unless they knew she would do her best to weaken (i.e., cast doubt upon) her anti-Kavanaugh testimony as much as possible.

But as the former head of Maricopa County’s sex crimes bureau, which handles child molestations as well as adult sexual assault, Mitchell has a certain expertise. She’s now the head of the Special Victims Division, which investigates sex crimes and family violence. “She’s one of these career prosecutors who specializes in sex crimes,” Paul Ahler, who worked at the county attorney’s office years ago, told The Arizona Republic. “It’s hard to find those people because a lot of people get burned out on those issues, but it’s kind of been her life mission.”

Interesting Mitchell quote: “People think that children would tell right away and that they would tell everything that happened to them. In reality children often keep this secret for years, sometimes into their adulthood, sometimes forever.” Ford was 15 when she was allegedly assaulted by Kavanaugh. She obviously wasn’t a child at the time, but she wasn’t an adult either.

Showing Obeisance Before “Mid90s”

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I’ve been a Jonah Hill admirer from the get-go. It’s not just his nervy, envelope-pushing talent that I love, but his moxie and ambition. He began as a Millennial jokester but since The Wolf of Wall Street and Moneyball Hill has been upping his serious actor game, and now he’s a director of considerable merit. You can call me one of Hill’s obedient little bitches, but I know a serious X-factor talent when I see one.

Now, I wasn’t over-the-moon about Mid90s (A24, 10.19), his autobiographical West L.A. skateboard-culture film, but I definitely felt respect and admiration. And in my 9.10 review I included three or four blurbs that could have been easily been used in the new, just-posted Mid90s trailer:

(1) “Mid90s holds its own, and that ain’t hay”; (2) “Jonah Hill has stepped up to the plate and swung on a fastball and connected…crack!”; (3) “[Hill] has honored that straight-from-the-pavement aesthetic by dealing no-bullshit cards, at least by the standards that I understand”; and (4) “This is a fully realized, nicely shaded, highly engaging first film.”

So what review quotes did A24 marketers choose for the new trailer? Fellatio quotes. Review excerpts that are so gushingly positive that the likely Average Joe response is “Uhm, really?…it’s that good?”

According to the trailer the Globe and Mail‘s Barry Hertz has called Mid90s a “straight-outta-the-gate masterpiece.” Now that’s just ridiculous. That’s an undisciplined effusion. Mid90s is a real-deal, shrewdly honed and honestly observed film but it’s not a “masterpiece”…c’mon!

Little White Lies critic Hannah Wooodhead has called it “a scrappy triumph with heart, soul and boundless energy.” Really? “Boundless” energy? Does anyone remember Tom Tykwer‘s Run Lola Run? That had boundless energy. Mid90s is mostly a dialogue-driven thing, group shots and two-shots and whatnot. Some skateboard action but mostly a hang-out deal. And what does she mean by “triumph”? A triumph over what?

Business Insider‘s Jason Guarrasio called it “beautifully authentic.” Yes, that’s true, I’ll go along with that.

On the other hand Vice‘s Justin Staple has allegedly called Mid90s “the film of the year.” Whoa there, sunshine. You can’t call a very well done, emotionally trustworthy skateboard flick “the film of the year”…c’mon! The film of the year in what sense? Critics who ejaculate without discipline accomplish one thing and one thing only — they diminish their cred.

Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff called Mid90s “masterful” Okay, I’ll buy that. Within its own realm Hill does exert a certain masterful command.

All to say that A24 should’ve come down to earth and used one of my quotes. Because unlike 80% of the critics whose blurbs they used, I’m a Hill admirer whose feet are on the ground and who hasn’t gotten carried away.

Beto Is New Obama

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46 year-old El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke, currently running against Ted Cruz for a Texas U.S. Senate seat, is the only Democratic rock star around. If he beats Cruz, he could theoretically make a run for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2020. Would Beto be pushing his luck by doing so? Yes. Traditional grooming strategies suggest that O’Rourke will make a big splash at the Democratic convention in July 2020, by which time he will presumably have been serving for a year and a half, and then run for President in 2024. But what if A Democrat beats Trump in ‘2020?

Barack Obama officially launched his Presidential campaign in February ’07, at which time he had been serving as one of Illinois’s U.S. Senate reps for two years. Then he’d been laying the groundwork for months previously. It wouldn’t be that crazy if Beto runs for Prez in 2020; he’d be 48 by then and (if all goes well) a seasoned Washington Senator.

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The New Jeanne Moreau

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Are we allowed to talk about this or that actress delivering a certain unzipped quality? Or has that kind of talk been outlawed? I don’t know if I’m any good at describing stand-out, X-factor, special-allure qualities when it comes to actresses, but since seeing Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War last May I’ve become more and more convinced that Joanna Kulig, the 36 year-old Polish actress who plays femme fatale “Zula” Lichon, is the new Jeanne Moreau. Or, if you will, the new Laura Antonelli.

What does that mean exactly? It means that she has a certain irreverent-but-sensuous thing going on. A quality of impudence. Besides being highly fetching there’s something about Kulig that feels a tiny bit bothered or madhouse. In a good way, I mean. Because the slightly crazy ones are always (and please don’t lynch me for saying this) great in the sack.

Moreau wasn’t devastatingly beautiful in a Catherine Deneuve sense, but she had a look on her face that told you she’d been around the block and had known disappointment and unhappiness. Her face had a hard-knocks, downturned-mouth quality. Kulig has this also. There’s something in her eyes and manner that is direct and yet slightly mocking and melancholy. She’s got it, whatever it is. In my book she’s earned consideration for a Best Actress Oscar — no question.

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Orange Jumpsuit For At Least Three Years

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Bill Cosby, 81, was handed a three-to-ten-year prison sentence “for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home in 2004. He will almost certainly go straight to prison today. Before sentencing, Judge Steven T. O’Neill upheld a state board’s finding that Mr. Cosby is a sexually violent predator. The court released Constand’s full victim impact statement, in which she wrote that Cosby “took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it.” The two jurors who refused to convict Dr. Cliff Huxtable during deliberations over the first trial are presumably feeling disheartened.

A statement from Joan Tarshis, whose account of her own Cosby episode was posted on Hollywood Elsewhere on 11.16.14: “I’m very happy about the verdict.”

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Ultimate “Matchstick” Supercut

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From David Ehrlich‘s 9.21 Matchstick Men piece, in which he praised Ridley Scott‘s 2003 film as “The Movie that Made Cage Impossible to Forget“:

“Cage’s fidgety central turn as Roy Waller, which channels the most elegant of the actor’s natural talents — and the most egregious of his meme-ified tendencies — into a singularly humane portrayal that’s too holistic to be sliced into supercuts, but also too feral to have been performed by anyone else. Matchstick Men came out right in the sweet spot of Cage’s career, flitting into theaters through the open window between his last Oscar nomination and his first direct-to-VOD schlockfest. It was after he’d become a punchline, but before he’d become the joke.

“Cage is not as unhinged as he was in Vampire’s Kiss, or as cartoonish as he was in Face/Off or as virtuosic as he was in Adaptation. His performance here isn’t subdued by the middle-class malaise of It Could Happen to You, or possessed by the white man’s kabuki of his police work in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Roy calls to mind a little something from all of those roles, but he doesn’t belong to any one of them.

“And yet, if you took Cage’s entire filmography and crammed it into a blender, Roy Waller is the puree you’d be left with inside.”

A few years ago I took the time to record two Matchstick Men supercuts, both from a discussion between Waller and Bruce Altman‘s Dr. Harris Klein — clip #1 and clip #2. Then, years later, I discovered this clip:

This Is Not 1991, So “Don’t Mess”

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Excerpt for the defensive mansplainers living in the right-wing legislative membrane, we all have Christine Blasey Ford‘s back. The bad guys are naturally going to Anita Hill her as best they can, but if they overplay their hand the blowback will be profound.

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If You Say The Wrong Thing…

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Or imply the wrong thing. Or say something even a little bit complimentary about the wrong kind of person. Or hint at the wrong kind of attitude. Or argue for the wrong position or perhaps even imply that you’re thinking the wrong kind of thoughts…you’ll be disciplined like a bitch. The politically correct Robespierres will arch their backs and point at you and shriek on Twitter about how you need to be shunned, admonished, fired from your job, whipped, corrected, spanked with a wooden paddle, sent into the desert to cleanse yourself of your grotesque mansplaining and male-gazing, etc.

This is in no way a plea for leniency for the odious fraternity of Les Moonves, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey and Charlie Rose. The world is obviously a better, more humane place without the abusive sexual buccaneering that these guys have come to represent. We are, on the other hand, living through a kind of Twitter-ized French terror. Nobody’s perfect and we’ve all probably over-stepped at one time or another, but the mere presence of a dusted-off guillotine is…well, unpleasant. Society is being course-corrected, of course, but whew, the anxiety vibes.

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Carol Reed’s “The Third Woman”

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So Michael Avenatti’s as-yet unnamed client, a woman who was “both” a witness and a victim of Kavanaugh’s who “had a number of security clearances issued by the federal government over a number of years,” will come forward…what, later today? Certainly by tomorrow. A friend predicted yesterday that when the “third woman” comes forward, Kavanaugh might turn tail and withdraw himself from the process. That would be Trump’s smart play — cut Brett loose, nominate another anti-choice hardliner. I suspect, however, that Congressional Republicans are so angry and obstinate about what they see as a fiendish liberal conspiracy to destroy a good man (i.e., an entitled conservative cut from their own cloth) that they’re telling each other “damn the torpedoes….we’re pushing Brett through no matter what.”

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Nine Astonishing Years

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“Buster Keaton was tragic, shattered, a survivor in name only and a genius — he was company for Bresson, Ophuls.

“And it was in the 1920s that Keaton hit his great purple passage: The Three Ages; Our Hospitality; Sherlock Jr; The Navigator; Seven Chances; Battling Butler; The General; College; Steamboat Bill Jr; The Cameraman. In those years, Chaplin made The Gold Rush and The Circus, two fabulous hits. [But] Keaton worked at a more rapid pace, and he made one thing — masterpieces.

“These are the films that any newcomer needs to see. And in that process he or she should realize that the experience is not only comic — it has to do with space, light, movement, duration, time. It is great theatre, but it is music and form, too. These are among the most beautiful films ever made in the silent era.” — from David Thomson‘s 1.29.06 Independent essay, titled “Buster Was Stoked By Genius, But He Hit The Buffers Hard.”

Cohen Media Group will release Peter Boghanovich‘s The Great Buster on 10.5

Cuaron’s Cojones

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If there’s one ironclad rule that pretty much every Hollywood-employed director has to follow, especially those working in the fantasy, urban thriller or action-adventure genres, it’s that you have to grab the ADD crowd before their concentration ebbs and they switch the channel.

Which is why almost every film starts with a grabber scene — some jarring activity that seizes the idiots by the lapels and says “wait, hold on, stick around…we know you’re looking for an excuse to watch something else so here’s a little stimulation for your inner 12 year-old.”

Example: Even The Post, an upmarket film about an epic chapter in 20th Century journalism that was aimed at educated GenX-boomers, started with a combat scene in Vietnam (i.e., RAND corporation egghead Daniel Ellsberg embedded with an infantry unit and carrying an M16) with the enemy engaged and tracer bullets flying every which way.

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