Month: December 2018

On 12.28 World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy posted titles of 13 late 20th Century comedies that couldn’t be made today, and if they were made would be torn apart on Twitter by “woke” dogs and eaten alive. Tropic Thunder, Blazing Saddles, Airplane, There’s Something About Mary, Team America, The Jerk, MASH, Animal House, Borat, Caddyshack, Trading Places, Bad Santa and A Fish Called Wanda. Was he right? Did he forget a few titles?

We all understand that almost all good comedies are about tweaking social norms and giving some kind of offense, and these days, of course, giving offense is out. Hollywood Elsewhere believes that almost any late 20th Century comedy that focused on a straight male character living any kind of louche lifestyle (including any with a moderate, comme ci comme ca sexual appetite) would be dead in the water if someone attempted to remake it. A Shampoo remake wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in today’s climate…not a chance.

Other verboten comedies mentioned on Facebook comment thread: Soul Man. Watermelon Man. Four Lions. The Hangover. Private Benjamin. Trading Places. Dr. Detroit. 1941. The Breakfast Club. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

Facebook comment #1: “A lot of these movies could get remade it’s just more likely the elements read now as offensive would be excised, toned down, or re-conceptualized to turn them on their ear in some wokey way. And they’d almost certainly be worse.”

Facebook comment #2: “They should teach a class in school called ‘context.'”

Facebook comment #3: “Altman’s MASH would never get made and I’m surprised they haven’t tried to burn it yet.”

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Hotshot Hollywood journalist who knows everyone and everything: “There’s no question that Barack Obama and his people had someone put this list together based on other critics’ lists. No way [did Obama choose] Annihilation [on his own steam]. It’s purely a critical conceit when movies like this appear on year-end lists. Ditto a lot of the other titles on there. I doubt Obama has seen two thirds of them.”

HE repeat #1: “Barack Obama knows a Marvel superhero flick when he sees one. He’s been around the block, knows the score. And he’s certainly on to the historical and cultural achievement game that Black Panther and its admirers are playing. There was no alternative, no other way to go — he had to put Black Panther high on his list.”

HE repeat #2: “Obama almost certainly saw Green Book. I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t at least glancingly aware that across the board it’s among the top five Gold Derby Best Picture hotties. Five’ll get you ten he saw it, recognized its value and decided against including it because he didn’t want to invite the derision of the woke thugs.”

HE repeat #3: “I would respectfully argue that Obama’s sense of taste is flawed, as the presence of the obviously mediocre, wildly over-praised Blindspotting on his list confirms.”

It’s my fault for failing to get Anya, our 18-month-old Siamese, spayed last spring or summer. Guilty. But I wasn’t the one who let her out when she was in heat. She wound up doing the deed with a dark gray alley cat — a commoner. She gave birth to seven kittens two days ago around noon, and every one is the spittin’ image of trampy dad. I was hoping at least one or two would be a junior Anya (creamy beige coat, bright blue eyes, exceptional intelligence) but no dice.

Worse, Anya is apparently uncomfortable with the challenge of nursing seven kittens. (She has eight nipples so go figure.) For reasons I can’t fathom she’s been carrying one, two or three kittens out of the kitten box and into the bedroom and under the sheets. She’s constantly moving them around. She seems to be saying one of two things: (a) “Help me out…I can’t do this alone” or (b) “I’m not comfortable with the kitten box being in the living room…the bedroom feels safer.”

I’ve read that if feline queens decide they have too many kittens they’ll isolate one from the brood, the idea being to let nature takes its course. To guard against one of them dying from malnutrition I’ve bought a can of KMR (kitten milk replacer) and a tiny plastic nursing bottle. I’ve been nursing two or three every so often, at random.

You can’t tell them apart. All the same shade of gray, their eyes closed…seven squeaky little mice.

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“And I wish I’d been out in Stone Canyon /
When the lights on all the Christmas trees went out /
But I been burnin’ my bell, book and candle /
And the restoration plays have all gone ’round” — from “Winter“, a Jagger-Richards song on Goat’s Head Soup, their least admired ’70s album.

It’s been obvious from the get-go that Disney’s forthcoming Jungle Cruise (7.24.20) is strictly for the family-moron trade. It therefore shouldn’t matter (certainly not to HE readers) how much Dwayne Johnson or Emily Blunt were paid for their services. Nonetheless TMZ reported yesterday with some hoo-hah that Johnson was paid $22 million while Blunt “only” received a piddly $9 million.

Sorry but this doesn’t have the same pay disparity ring as the notorious Mark Wahlberg-Michelle Williams additional shooting compensation saga on All The Money in the World.

As the term “jungle” connotes thrills and danger in a wild, slithery, Tarzan-like atmosphere with hippos, pythons and chimpanzees, the film is obviously geared to allow Johnson to perform his brawny machismo routine at certain critical junctures in the narrative.

If the template is a dumbshit African Queen, Johnson is aping Humphrey Bogart‘s Charlie Allnut character with Blunt playing Katharine Hepburn‘s Rosie. Two-handers are all about conflict and chemistry and give-and-take so why isn’t the pay even-steven? Fair question.

But Jungle Cruise is obviously adhering to a classic formula — a flawed male alpha figure in the front-and-center position with a spirited woman of refinement and sensitivity who steps in and gradually ups his game. Blunt isn’t the Jungle Cruise charisma magnet — Johnson is. She knows it, Disney knows it, HE readers know it.

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Wiki synopsis for Greg Pritikin‘s The Last Laugh (Netflix, 1.11.19): “Buddy Green (Richard Dreyfuss), a former stand up comedian who retired from the spotlight 50 years ago, reunites with his former manager Al Hart (Chevy Chase) after being convinced to do one last comedy tour.”

Green is presumably meant to be in his early 70s, or roughly Dreyfuss’s age. Does it make any sense that Green retired in ’68, or five years before Dreyfuss’s glow-of-youth breakout performance in American Graffiti (’73)? Why couldn’t he at least have retired in the late ’80s as he was hitting 40? I could half-buy that, but nobody retires at age 21. Or 31, for that matter.

Pritikin Wikipage warning: “Pritikin feels very strongly about people using electronic devices on airplanes. Quote from a 2013 New York Times article: ‘I’ve almost come to fisticuffs with some passengers who refuse to turn off their phone. I take airplane safety very seriously.’

Vast majority of filmgoers, including under-45 movie fanatics: You expect us to pay attention and respect to some admittedly intoxicating signature films by an Austrian-born emigre who peaked in the ’20s and ’30s (particularly during his legendary Paramount period of 1927 to ’35), or between 80 and 90 years ago?

Wiki anecdote: “Between 1959 and 1963, Sternberg taught a course on film aesthetics at the University of California at Los Angeles, based on his own works. His students included Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek, who went on to form The Doors. The group recorded songs referring to Sternberg. Manzarek has described Sternberg as ‘perhaps the greatest single influence on The Doors.'”

Barack Obama‘s list of his favorite 2018 films reflect his sophisticated-cineaste sense of taste (he knows the turf) and eye for quality. It’s a list that Eric Kohn, Alison Willmore, Justin Chang or any scholastically correct, Sight and Sound-approved critic might have assembled.

And yet I’m sensing that Obama chose these films very carefully, which is to say with a partial eye toward what the cool kidz on Twitter (i.e., the SJWs, the woke fascists) might say. Which is to say his list doesn’t seem entirely, real-deal honest. You know why? Because he blew off Green Book.

Obama is way too sophisticated a filmgoer to not recognize how confidently made, exquisitely honed and humanistically touching Green Book is. He knows exactly how good it is, he likes feel-good stuff in general, and he knows all about the antiquated black-white dichotomy of the early ’60s with his white mom and grandparents. And he’s way too smart and perceptive to buy into the SJW bullshit about Green Book being a white-savior or magic-negro film (it’s essentially a parent-child relationship-on-the-road movie). And yet he side-stepped Green Book because he knew that the cool kidz would otherwise frown.

I’m presuming that a list attributed on Twitter to outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is a parody. But if it was real I would respect it more than Obama’s. Not for the choices but because it’s more straight-from-the-gut — more “take it or leave it but this is who I am.” Obama’s list is partly “this is who I am” and partly “these are the films that I know are the most critically approved and therefore the safest for me to include.”

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (Netflix) “is definitely an experience worth playing around with, and easily the only time in movie history that an interactive storyline on this level hasn’t turned out to be a steaming pile of garbage.” — from review by The Gate‘s Andrew Parker. I felt good about this right away due to Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk) having the lead role. Then I wimped out. Then I went on a hike last night. Then I filed today. I might see it tonight.