Month: November 2018

The E! People’s Choice Awards — aka “the Empties” –were held last night in Santa Monica. The list of winners was pure Eloi, pure American nightmare — a celebration of the most vapid and insipid actors, celebrities and movies as well as a portrait of the spiritual vistas and values of the voters (God help us).

Typical acceptance speech by winners: “I’d like to thank all the brainless ditzoid teenage girls who voted for me…it’s a great honor.”

Did Melissa McCarthy win for her landmark performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Of course not — she won the Comedy Movie Star of 2018 award for Life of the Party, which many people of taste didn’t even see. The leading Best Movie of 2018 contenders were Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Incredibles 2, Fifty Shades Freed and A Quiet Place. Did the morons choose Panther or Place, which would have bestowed a thin veneer of respectabilty? Of course not — they chose Avengers: Infinity War. And so on. Less than zero.

The roster of Hollywood supporters of Jimmy Carter, compiled during the winter-spring of ’80, told you he was in trouble. Kennedy, Anderson and Brown had all the cool people. Willie Nelson, Sylvia Miles, Stephen Stills, Johnny Cash, Mary Tyler Moore, James Dickey, Harold Prince, Shana Alexander…the writing was on the wall. Incidentally: Andy Williams was an insincere, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing Kennedy supporter, having been a Republican all along. He became a serious rightwing asshole in the aughts. In 2009, Williams was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as accusing President Barack Obama of “following Marxist theory” and “wanting the country to fail”. He was also chummy with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Williams passed in 2012.

All would-be Jesus actors need a lean, slightly hungry look, not to mention a hank of hippie-ish, middle-parted, not-quite-shoulder-length hair. GOP Jesus is a revisionist Nazarene in more ways than one — a guy who enjoys regular cheeseburger dinners followed by Ben and Jerry’s desserts, and who visits a hairdresser on a regular basis. Produced by the Chicago-based Friend Dog Studios. Some of the disciples are wearing tight jeans, sweat pants, leotards, cross-training shoes and flip-flops with socks, presumably because the weather alongside Lake Michigan was cool that day. All this aside, most of the Sermon on the Mount revisions are on-target.

Douglas Rain, the mellow-toned Canadian actor who voice-acted HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, has passed at age 90. Condolences to friends, family, fans.

The genius of Rain’s HAL performance (and Stanley Kubrick‘s writing and direction) is that he double-edges the Dave-disconnects-HAL scene. You feel half-sorry for this homicidal heuristically programmed algorithmic computer as he faces his last minutes of sentient existence (“When a man knows he’s about to be hanged, it concentrates his mind wonderfully“), but at the same time you’re half chuckling, or at the very least amused.

The only character in 2001 to express strong (not to mention unruly) emotions, HAL is openly terrified of death. Like Peter Sellers trying to dissuade James Mason from plugging him in the opening moments of Lolita, HAL tries every psychological gambit he can think of — denial, anger, bargaining, pleading. Then comes depression and finally acceptance with the singing of “Daisy.” Has any other malevolent character in movie history ever sung a romantic love song as he slips into the void? HAL’s a capella farewell is something we’ll all experience sooner or later, in one form or another.

Sidenote: I’ve mentioned this before, but Apple’s decision to not offer a HAL version of Siri was insane. It could have been so easy. Last summer a company called Master Replicas began offering a personal HAL device for home or office use, but at a cost I can’t afford.

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From “Beto 2020 Calls Multiply Among Dems,” posted on The Hill by Amie Parnes on 11.11: “’I hate to say this because it would piss off a lot of Democrats, but the fact is we have so many people and we really have nobody who’s thrilling, nobody who would send a thrill up Chris Matthews‘ leg except for Beto,’ a Democratic strategist said, referencing the MSNBC Hardball host who expressed such excitement about hearing former President Obama speak.

“’You know how I know? I had friends calling me to ask about him. I would overhear conversations about him. He’s generating the kind of buzz we haven’t seen since ‘hope and change’,” the strategist added.

“Even Republicans express surprise at O’Rourke’s performance.

“’He was able to raise an enormous act of money and that alone separates him from the crowd,’ said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist based in Texas. ‘He has a bit of a star quality to him. People in Texas were mesmerized and moved by him. [And] the fact that he lost by 3 percent is impressive.

“O’Rourke finds himself in an unusual situation. Most candidates who lose a race typically go back to the drawing board on career plans. Sometimes, with luck, they can run for the same office again. But rarely do candidates who lose on a lower scale have aspirations for a larger office — never mind the presidency.

“Those who know O’Rourke say he has no plans on running for president and had his sights purely set on winning the Senate seat. When he met with campaign aides earlier this week there was no talk of a White House bid. In an interview earlier this week, he reaffirmed that he has no intention of running.

“’I will not be a candidate for president in 2020,’ O’Rourke told MSNBC. ‘That’s, I think, as definitive as those sentences get.’

“But if he chooses not to run, some strategists say he could miss a prime opportunity.

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Black sneakers with white midsoles are the pits. Whenever I see someone wearing a pair I mentally write them off. And right now Manhattan and Brooklyn are swarming with these damn things, so that’s a lot of people I’ve dismissed out of hand. Make no mistake — white midsoles (which I call whitesides) are about as 100% outre as it gets right now. There are so many different shoe styles, textures, color combos, tints and side-colors out there, but if you choose whitesides you’re no better than someone who wears Crocs. I’m not trying to be some kind of judgmental Torquemada but whitesides really don’t make it. I wouldn’t wear a pair of whitesides if somebody paid me $100 to do so. Really — I would politely turn them down. If they offered me $200 to wear a pair, I’d take the money and put them on and say thanks…and then I’d walk a block or two and take them off and throw them into a trash bin.

A comic-book aficionado who had a relationship with legendary cartoon illustrator Jack Kirby (1917 – 1994) has a script that he cowrote with Kirby sometime in the early ’90s (earlier?) called NOCTYRNVS. The title alone would make me avoid this script for the rest of my life, but this guy has a notion that Guillermo del Toro might want to produce or direct it. Yeesh.

So this guy appealed to Tatyana on social media after seeing her in a recent photo with GDT at a party for Julian Schnabel‘s Vincent Van Gogh movie, At Eternity’s Gate (CBS Films, 11.16). Then he reached out to me on Messenger, thinking I might offer an introduction of some kind. But I don’t want to know from comic-book crap…nothing, stay away. And I said so.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

A few days ago Indiewire posted comments from director Cary Fukanaga about the the three major movie-watching formats of our time — cinema, TV and streaming. The Maniac director basically said that the “old distinctions” between the three have pretty much evaporated, and that they’re “definitely 100% blended now.”

Fukunaga claimed that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma being a leading Best Picture contender while at the same time being offered as a Netflix feature (albeit one that will first play in cinemas for a couple of weeks) means that cinema is blurring into streaming and vice versa.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Everyone understands that in order to be nominated for an Oscar you can’t just be deserving — you also need a compelling narrative. A narrative is either a tidy summary about the career history of this or that contender (i.e., Glenn Close is beyond overdue, having been Best Actress-nominated six times without a win) or a concise explanation about why this or that film is a deserving Best Picture contender at this juncture in the zeitgeist.

I’m not claiming knowledge of each and every narrative out there, and there are too many categories to lay it all down in a single article. So for openers here’s a summary of the Best Picture narratives — a rundown of the loglines that seem to make sense as we speak — the actor narratives will follow tomorrow:

1. A Star Is Born — Bradley Cooper delivers and then some, best version of this oft-told tale, Academy needs to get behind this hugely popular film or risk seeming out of touch with Joe and Jane Popcorn;

2. Green Book — Most beloved Best Picture contender, expert craft meets pure feel-good, three great performances, forgive contrite Viggo Mortensen for a single verbal slip, Peter Farrelly catapults out of comedy realm;

3. Roma — Cuaron is an Art God, cinematic monochrome splendor of the highest order, women (especially a saintly maid) holding a family together, Netflix wants in so badly they’re abandoning their basic strategy by booking theatres;

4. First Man — Damien Chazelle switches gears again, makes intimate art film on a large scale, avoids Ron Howard-ish template;

5. Black Panther — Probably the only 2018 Best Picture contender that historians will be readily discussing 50 years from now, obviously an historical groundbreaker, the greatest African-American mythology film ever made, and the most socially and emotionally resonant Marvel film ever released;

6. Can you Ever Forgive Me? — I loved it but I can’t think of a narrative. “Melissa McCarthy gives her greatest performance” is a Best Actress narrative;

7. The Favourite — Yorgos Lanthimos goes commercial and delivers the best Barry Lyndon-ish film since Barry Lyndon;

8. First Reformed — Easily the most moralistic film of the Best Picture contenders, the greatest directorial comeback in years, Paul Schrader‘s best since Hardcore;

9. If Beale Street Could Talk — I can’t think of a catchy narrative — prettiest, gentlest Wong Kar Wai film in years?;

10. Vice — Nobody’s seen it, no narrative.

Originally posted on 4.6.09: Gather round, boys, for a story about the Del Monte bean and pea plant in Markesan, Wisconsin…yowsah!

Fresh out of Wilton high school, five or six of us drove out to America’s heartland to earn a little money and have an adventure….hah! It was mostly an ordeal. We wound up working different jobs and different shifts — pushing cans, operating fork lifts, doing end-of-shift cleanup, hosing down freshly picked peas and beans. It was fairly miserable work all around — back-breaking, tedious, soul-smothering. Migrants did the actual picking in the fields.

For a week or two some of us were working the 8 am to 5:00 pm shift. We’d clean up, eat and head out for a night of beer-drinking at a local tavern. We’d sometimes go to a place in Fond du Lac called the Brat Hut. And when we got back to the plant around midnight or so we got into a habit — for a couple of weeks, I mean — of taking out our rage at Del Monte. Or at ourselves for being dumb enough to work at this godforsaken place.

A friend worked the evening shift atop a wooden chimney-like structure. His job was to clean freshly-picked beans and peas. Every night they were unloaded off trucks and sent up to his area on electrically-powered conveyor belts set at a 45 degree angle. The vegetables were then dropped into huge spinning cylindrical containers made of chicken wire. Our friend operated sprayers that bathed them in steaming-hot water.

The beans and peas were then dropped into tall metal chutes that fed them straight into a stream of open-topped, label-free cans about 20 or 25 feet below — constantly moving, spotless and gleaming. It would take no more than a second or two to fill up each can, maybe less. It went on like this all night, every night, and with a fairly deafening sound.

Each and every night for about two weeks, my beered-up friends and I would climb to the top of the tower, say hello to our friend, and piss right into the chutes that fed the beans and peas into the cans. We hit maybe 200 to 250 cans each night, minimum.

We were anarchic, fuck-all middle-class kids, but we’d been raised by good people in well-to-do homes and weren’t psychopaths. If guys with our backgrounds had the rage to piss into cans of vegetables every night you can bet others have done this since. A lot. Pissing into prepared food containers is what powerless people do to give them the feeling that they’ve somehow evened up the score. Think of this the next time you buy Del Monte.

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Hollywood Elsewhere is overjoyed to report that Guillermo del Toro‘s Bleak House, the Thousand Oaks manse that contains the greatest-ever collection of life-size movie mannequins and related paraphernalia, has so far survived the Woolsey blaze. HE to GDT: “So did Bleak House escape the blaze? Please tell me…I’m sick about this.” GDT to HE: “So far, safe. Winds can change. Still evacuated!” HE to GDT: “Fingers crossed!”

Another structure that I care about in the Woolsey-threatened realm is The Old Place, the storied restaurant-saloon in the Agoura hills. This morning at 5:45 am the Malibu Times‘ Emily Sawicki reported that there is “no known damage” to The Old Place….hooray!

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” — Winston Churchill.

29983 Mulholland Hwy, Cornell, CA 91301