Day: January 8, 2021

HE “Parasite” Animus Finds Ally

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6 pm update: Scott Roxborough’s original THR article described Parasite as “odd“. The words “downright weird” were also used to describe offbeat international films. Both terms were recently deep-sixed by THR editors.

Earlier: For 15 or 16 months Hollywood Elsewhere has stood alone in claiming that Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite is half very good and half looney-tunes. The latter portion starts around the halfway mark when the drunken con-artist family lets the maid in during the rainstorm. I’ve said this 36 or 37 times.

You think it’s fun or easy standing up to the woke Oscar mob? Well, this is a moment of rejoicing because someone, finally, has stood up and called Parasite an “odd” film also.

THR‘s Scott Roxborough: “Parasite has blown open the doors of the international feature category, long thought to be the purview of ‘serious message movies,’ to the experimental and the strange.

“If a movie about a family of South Korean con artists — one that shifts in tone among thriller, horror and straight-out farce — can win the highfalutin’ international feature Oscar, than even the weirdest overseas films have a shot this awards season.”

Posted on 7.23.20: “Parasite obviously won because a sufficient number of voters agreed with the blunt-social-assessment aspect (life is unfair for the poor) plus the wokesters loved the idea of choosing a well-made film by a filmmaker of color, and one that didn’t fit the usual definition of a Best Picture winner. Plus Bong Joon-ho worked the town like a locomotive.

“The first half of Parasite is very good (it goes off the rails when they let the fired maid in during the rainstorm) but it won because of identity (i.e., non-white) politics. Don’t argue, don’t lie, that’s why.”

Earlier version of THR headline and subhead:

Current, changed (i.e., tamer) headline and subhead:

Discovery

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There are three or four versions of John Lennon‘s “Across The Universe” out there, but this version — messy and rehearsal-ish but full of brash spirit — is easily the best I’ve ever heard, and largely for two reasons. One, Paul McCartney singing harmony in the main verses, and two, Lennon’s improvisational asides. (Example: “Nothing’s gonna change my world” followed by John’s “I wish it fuckin’ would!”). Recorded at Twickenham during the Get Back sessions. It’s been sitting on YouTube for two and 3/4 years. Sorry!

Impeachment: The Sequel

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N.Y. Post‘s Ebony Bowden: “An articles of impeachment accusing President Trump of ‘inciting an insurrection‘ have been drafted by House Democrats in the wake of the deadly Capitol siege and will be formally introduced on Monday, according to reports.

“The document, which has over 150 sponsors, accuses Trump of violating his Constitutional duty by encouraging a crowd of his supporters to fight the vote to certify Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

“In all of this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transfer of power, and imperiled a coordinate branch of government,” the document reads.

It is the second time that Congress has moved to impeach Trump. He was impeached by acquitted at trial by the Senate last year after he was accused of improperly pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden.

“No president has ever been impeached twice.”

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Greatest Hot Streaks

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Let’s change this question to “which director had the hottest run of any length…who enjoyed the greatest cavalcade of grand-slam films, whether it was four or six or even ten?”

The answer in this instance would be Howard Hawks and his nine-year, nine-film run of one bull’s-eye after another…it began in 1938 with Bringing Up Baby and ended in 1946 with Red River (even if that classic western wasn’t released until ’48).

The rundown: Bringing Up Baby (’38), Only Angels Have Wings (’39), His Girl Friday (’40), Sergeant York (’41), Ball of Fire (’41), Air Force (’43), To Have and Have Not (’45), The Big Sleep (’45 and ’46) and Red River (shot in ’46, released in ’48).

If you want to be strict and keep it to four, I would say that Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory (’57), Spartacus (’60), Lolita (’62) and Dr. Strangelove (’64) was an extraordinary run.

No Sympathy Whatsoever

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It would appear that Ashli Babbitt, who was killed two days ago while trying to climb through a smashed Capitol Hill window during the big riot…it would seem she overdid the zeal. Babbitt was a rightwing fanatic who bought Trump’s stolen-election bullshit hook, line and sinker. In the sense of “those who live by the sword, die by the sword,” Babbitt died unluckily but, in a sense, appropriately. By her own hand, I mean.

I certainly have no sympathy for her — a married resident of Ocean Beach, an ex-Air Force veteran and the CEO of Fowler’s Poll Service & Supply, an allegedly struggling outfit based in Spring Valley. Babbitt died a true believer in rightwing horseshit. She may have been a decent person to know and work with, but she walked right in and reaped the whirlwind, and now she sleeps with the fishes. Hollywood Elsewhere sheds not a tear.

Babbitt had a complex history and had coped with her share of detours and speedbumps. She wasn’t always a Trump nutbag, for example. She was reportedly an Obama supporter before switching her loyalty to Trump in ’16 because she hated Hillary Clinton so much. Plus she was possessive and had a temper. And her corresponding intensity led to embracing unambiguous attitudes and beliefs.

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Dukes of Desk-itude

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Two occupiers enjoying temporary triumph — Richard “Bigo” Barnett, 60, of Gravette, Arkansas sitting at Nancy Pelosi‘s desk during Wednesday’s Capitol hill riot, and poet David Shapiro smoking a cigar at the desk of Columbia University president Grayson Kirk during a student takeover on 4.30.68. Shapiro went on to teach at Columbia. What kind of a future will Barnett encounter, I wonder? Besides death, I mean.


Richard “Bigo” Barnett at Nancy Pelosi’s desk.

David Shapiro sitting at desk of Columbia University president Grayson Kirk.

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A “Sopranos”-Type Deposit

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There was this late-night robbery scene in a Sopranos episode. Christopher Moltisanti was one of the burglars, and he explained to the other guy that they needed to leave a brown torpedo on the rug as a kind of calling card.

I remember thinking to myself “gee, Frank Sinatra and the Ocean’s 11 guys didn’t do this when they knocked off those five casinos.”