Day: December 17, 2019

NYC Journo “Cats” Shakeout

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HE to NYC journos (some at early afternoon Cats screening, two who’ve already seen it): “What’s the likely aggregate numerical opinion of Cats going to be? Straight from the shoulder….most people are likely to give it a 9, an 8.5, a 7, a 6…what?”

Journo #1 “I’ll say 45% on Rotten Tomatoes unless expectations going in are lower than expected.”

Journo #2: “Saw it last night. It won’t be a high number.”

Journo #3: “I’m here at 1 pm screening where they have real people ‘recruited ny marketing firms.’ And when I asked a prominent independent publicist, she said “I saw it last night…it’s the play.”

Journo #1: “I’m here too. Not sure why they need seat-fillers who probably will tweet about the movie while we can’t.”

Journo #4: “I guess you are all at Cats? Very good performances, but it’s an odd show. It was odd on Broadway. There is no plot, which is why Japanese audiences flock to it. They loved the music and the costumes. There is a slight plot line which makes no sense. Jennifer Hudson is amazing. Judi Dench is lovely. RT 75%.”

Journo #5: “I have a long-standing record of never having seen Cats. I don’t intend to break that now.”

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Initial “Skywalker” Fallout

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Based on the bees-in-the-brain reactions to last night’s premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (or at least the first half of it), the word is that J.J. Abrams hasn’t so much dumbed it down as fanned it down — i.e., “course-corrected” some of Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi inclinations in order to appease old-school loyalists.

“I think approaching any creative process with [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result,” Johnson said in 12.13 Radio.com interview. “What I’m aiming for every time I sit down in a theater is to have the experience [I had] with The Empire Strikes Back.

“I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized…I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater.”

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Short List Slumber

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Yesterday’s announcements of short lists weren’t exactly earthshaking. We all know Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite will win the Best International Feature Oscar…right? And that the Best Doc Oscar will go to either Apollo 11 or American Factory. I’m not feeling the suspense element. Is anyone?

It’s pleasing that six HE faves — Ladj Ly‘s Les Misérables, Pedro Almodóvar‘s Pain and Glory, Mati Dop‘s Atlantics, Kantemir Balagov‘s Beanpole, Jan Komasa‘s Corpus Christi and Václav Marhoul‘s The Painted Bird — were short-listed. Ditto doc faves The Edge of Democracy, One Child Nation, The Biggest Little Farm, The Cave, The Great Hack and especially Knock Down the House.

Continuing HE heartbreak: Once again A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name, easily among the strongest and most penetrating docs of the year, has been completely blown off.

The reason for this is that mid-July dustup between Crosby and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, which ended with Feinberg throwing up his hands and Crosby walking out.

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Is Paris Burning?

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Yesterday’s USA Today presidential poll dropped me into a terrible pit of despair. The Beast, it said, is running ahead of all Democratic contenders. Trump is bettering “Typewriter” Joe Biden by 3 percentage points, Bernie Sanders by 5, Sen. Elizabeth Warren by 8, Mayor Pete by 10 and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg by 9.

This country has never been led by anyone as remotely horrific and diseased as Trump, and yet a majority of Average Joes prefer him to any or all of the Dems? Thoughtless swine. Reprehensible cattle. Diseased scum. Disciples of fascism.

This plus BoJo’s decisive trouncing of Jeremy Corbyn has me scared shitless. British Joe Bumblefucks couldn’t stand Corbyn, and our domestic variety can’t abide immigrant-embracing, big-government progressives and their general submission to the p.c. twitter narrative.

Better a strong sociopathic gangster with all his myriad corruptions and dedication to increasing the pace of climate change, they seem to be saying, than allowing the country to be overrun by immigrants, minorities and LGBTQs and operating on a general principle that white, under-educated, working-class people are bad news.

This is a living, gasping, bleeding nightmare. How can this be happening? The only thing Trump hasn’t done to defy decency and the general principle of lawful behavior is shoot someone in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and the bumblefucks are still with him. We’re living in a facsimile of Hitler’s Germany.

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