Month: April 2019

This morning I read about an upcoming, quality-aspiring, untitled Jennifer Lawrence film. With Scott Rudin producing, Lila Neugebauer (The Waverly Gallery) directing and a script by first-timer Elizabeth Sanders, it’s most likely one of those probing, adult-angled, upmarket things — the sort of project that stage directors are often drawn to and which tend to appeal to actresses going through a rough or fallow patch.

Lawrence has been at it for roughly a decade, or since her breakout performance in Winter’s Bone (’10). Two and a half years later she delivered a grand-slam, Oscar-winning performance in Silver Linings Playbook (’12), which became a sizable worldwide hit on its own steam. But during the six and a half years since that David O. Russell film opened at the Toronto Film Festival, nothing Lawrence has done has really matched it.

She costarred in two Russell follow-ups, American Hustle (’13) and Joy (’15). Hustle collected Oscar noms and earned $150 million domestic and Joy won at least some critical praise. But neither seemed to really connect in a primal, essential, lightning-bolt way. Not in my book, at least.

She costarred in Serena (’14), a ’30s era Susanne Bier film that everyone ignored, perhaps because they didn’t want to see Lawrence paired once again with SLP costar Bradley Cooper.

Lawrence upped her arthouse cred with a brave, go-for-broke lead performance in Darren Aronofsky‘s mother!, a controversial success d’estime that (be honest) a lot of people hated.

Last year she starred in the flat-out atrocious Red Sparrow, which stalled at $46 million domestic. In ’16 she costarred with Chris Pratt in the financially successful but grotesquely misconceived and in some quarters deeply despised Passengers.

The rest of her films have been franchise swill — four X-Men flicks (including the upcoming Dark Phoenix) and four Hunger Games installments.

The plight of a mainstream movie star is never an easy one, and nobody ever said that staying on top was easy, even for the profoundly talented. All I know is that my sense of Lawrence’s journey is that she peaked six and a half years ago (she won her Silver Linings Oscar in early ’13) and since then her arrows haven’t really been hitting the target. Okay, once or twice but certainly no bull’s eyes.

Then again Lawrence is young (her 30th birthday isn’t until 8.15.20) and can survive another few years of in-and-out, mezzo-mezzo career adventures. But sooner or later she needs to get lucky again.

Pete BUDDHA-judge “is a polyglot. He’s conversational in Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, Farsi and French, and taught himself to speak Norwegian. He also plays guitar and piano, and in 2013 performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra as a guest piano soloist.” — from Mayor Pete’s Wikipage.

« Au peuple de France je voudrais dire que la cathédrale Notre Dame, c’était comme un cadeau à l’espèce humaine. Nous partageons la douleur mais nous vous remercions aussi de ce cadeau à la civilisation. » @PeteButtigieg à @BFMTV
Et en français! 🇫🇷🇺🇸#NotreDame pic.twitter.com/0xbf5lGhYH

— Cédric Faiche (@cedricfaiche) April 15, 2019

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There was always something in me that loved slightly longer, grown-out hair, and was oddly repelled by too-short hair — West Point hair, cop hair, whitewalls, undercuts, Hitler youth, etc. To this day I’m vaguely put off by the sight of some guy’s closely-shorn scalp. But at the same time I understand and can roll with cue-ball heads.

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My father was the last guy in the world you wanted to watch a movie with. Or at least he was when I was young. He was the Ultimate Moviegoing Killjoy.

Every so often he’d take me to a film, but for some reason he so hated watching films in the usual way (i.e., from the beginning) that we’d never arrive before the film started but always around the three-fourths mark. 20 or 25 minutes before the ending. We’d watch the conclusion, wait for the next show to start, and then watch the three-fourths or four-fifths that we’d missed and then leave at the point where we came in.

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This trailer for season #2 of Big Little Lies (6.9.19) has a cheap, pandering odor. Soap-opera stuff. I’m presuming it doesn’t represent the actual style and content of it, especially considering that the great Andrea Arnold (American Honey, Fish Tank, Red Road) has directed all seven episodes.

How do fires start outside of arson? Electrical sparks, a carelessly tossed burning cigarette…what else? News reports indicate it had something to do with wooden scaffolding that was being used for restoration. A good portion of the main roof has reportedly collapsed; ditto the famous tall spire.

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The just-released Cannes ’19 poster is an image of the late Agnes Varda shooting her first film, La Pointe Courte, sometime in the summer of ’54. Pic costarred the unpaid Phillipe Noiret and Silvia Monfort. Shot in the Mediterranean coastal city of Sete, the film’s total budget was $14K.

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I watched an episode of Game of Thrones back in 2012, and my immediate response was “this is grandiose melodrama but it’s well made, well acted…intelligent people are behind this.” I’ve watched a few slivers since but never another full episode, and I feel quite serene about that. Mainly because I hate the faux-medieval milieu. I hate those expensively designed, finely stitched tunics and gowns and exquisite fur hoodies and fur-lined seal boots. And I hate stories in which a semi-significant character reveals in Episode 8 that he/she is actually someone else with a heretofore unsuspected agenda or, you know, is secretly descended from a certain well-thought-of character or whatever. I’ve always found Lena Headey foxy but I’ve never been able to decide whose face I hate more — that of Kit Harington or Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. I hate sagas in which little kids are pushed out of windows. I hate pretentious-sounding character names like Daenerys Targaryen, Davos Seaworth, Theon Greyjoy, Tyrion Lannister, Samwell Tarly. I hate the idea of flying dragons despite their gargantuan bulk and weighing at least as much as a blue whale. I hate long-running miniseries that seem to be mainly about perpetuating their own mythology. I guess you could say I hate the general GoT sprawlingness, the go-for-the-bucks attitude, everyone pocketing their paychecks. Fuck all of that.

When you pull into a supermarket parking spot, what’s the first thing you do? Turn off the engine and the lights, right? Because you’re about to go shopping and you have no need for either until you return with groceries…right? Except there are sociopaths out there who pull into parking spaces and don’t turn their lights off until 15, 30, 45 or even 60 seconds have elapsed. For no reason that makes any sense to anyone. They just do this. Because they’re sociopaths.

Earlier this evening I was sitting in my little car in the parking lot of West Hollywood Pavilions. Engine off, lights off, surfing Twitter and thinking things over.

Directly across from me a big fat Range Rover pulled in, and as it sat there and sat there with no one getting out, the lights were flashing right in my face for the longest time. The lights were so bright I was squinting and shielding my eyes. After 25 or 30 seconds I was muttering “what the fuck are you doing, man?” After about 60 seconds, the dick behind the wheel finally turned his lights off and got out and went into the market.

For what it’s worth I’ve never done this. After I pull into my spot I kill the lights and the engine because — logic! — I’m there to buy some yogurt, cat food and mineral water, and I won’t need the lights or the engine until I return.

Three or four minutes later a white SUV pulled in next to the Range Rover and did the same damn thing. Sat there, sat there and fucking sat there with the lights still burning. Has the driver changed his/her mind? Is he/she wondering whether he/she should be shopping this evening, or whether there’s something more important that he/she needs to do? Okay, maybe so, but what’s the problem with turning your fucking lights off while you think things over? Has it occured to you that others (i.e., people like myself) might find your super-glarey lights obnoxious? Oh, this hasn’t occured to you? I see.

45 seconds later the lights on the white SUV finally went off. Thanks for the squinting session!

15 minutes later the Range Rover guy returned with a couple of grocery bags. He loaded them into the back seat, got in and turned on the lights. And just fucking sat there again. If you’re like me and you don’t feel like driving off into the night, fine. But why sit in your car with your lights on? Are you doing this to, what, aggravate people or something?

Please turn them off. Please. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. I was sitting there going “you dick, you dick, you dick, you dick…what is your MALFUNCTION?”

Hell is other people in a parking lot.