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Hollywood Elsewhere - Movie news and opinions by Jeffrey Wells

“There’s Hollywood Elsewhere and then there’s everything else. It’s your neighborhood dive where you get the ugly truth, a good laugh and a damn good scotch.”
–JJ Abrams
(Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Super 8)

“Smart, reliable and way ahead of the curve … a must and invaluable read.”
–Peter Biskind
(Down and Dirty Pictures Easy Riders, Raging Bulls)

“He writes with an element that any good filmmaker employs and any moviegoer uses to fully appreciate the art of film – the heart.”
–Alejandro G. Inarritu
(The Revenant, Birdman, Amores Perros)

“Nothing comes close to HE for truthfulness, audacity, and one-eyed passion and insight.”
–Phillip Noyce
(Salt, Clear and Present Danger, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Dead Calm)

“A rarity and a gem … Hollywood Elsewhere is the first thing I go to every morning.”
–Ann Hornaday
Washington Post

“Jeffrey Wells isn’t kidding around. Well, he does kid around, but mostly he just loves movies.”
–Cameron Crowe
(Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky)

“In a world of insincere blurbs and fluff pieces, Jeff has a truly personal voice and tells it like it is. Exactly like it is, like it or not.”
–Guillermo del Toro
(Pan’s Labyrinth, Cronos, Hellboy)

“It’s clearly apparent he doesn’t give a shit what the Powers that Be think, and that’s a good thing.”
–Jonathan Hensleigh
Director (The Punisher), Writer (Armageddon, The Rock)

“So when I said I’d like to leave my cowboy hat there, I was obviously saying (in my head at least) that I’d be back to stay the following year … simple and quite clear all around.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE, January ’09

“If you’re in a movie that doesn’t work, game over and adios muchachos — no amount of star-charisma can save it.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE

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9 Comments
Exceptional

Historians will certainly note the obvious — three earth-shaking or at least peak-passion political events, three Wednesdays in a row over 15 days — 1.6, 1.13 and 1.20. Two weeks and a day that sealed Trump’s ignominy & place in history. Beast ignites physical attack upon Capitol, is resultantly impeached (for the second time) 7 days later, leaves in withered disgrace for Mar a Lago 7 days after that. Wretched, wicked, deranged.

January 16, 2021 10:13 pmby Jeffrey Wells
25 Comments
Legs Aren’t Right

Ape legs are fairly short — everyone knows this. Their arms are long, thick and brawny but their legs are almost stubby. From the hips up this guy looks like a big CG fantasy ape but his legs belong to an NFL linebacker…definitely human-shaped.

January 16, 2021 10:10 pmby Jeffrey Wells
1 Comment
Footloose

Elizabeth Lo‘s Stray “shines a piercing light on what it means to be an outcast in a teeming metropolis. Though they do find attentive people with whom to pass an hour or two, it’s remarkable how often the dogs go unnoted by pedestrians; luckily, drivers heed them.

“Through a finely calibrated ebb and flow of insight and emotion, Lo offers a fresh perspective on life in the shadows — the freedom as well as the neglect — building toward an end-credits coda, a song from the heart that’s not to be missed.” — THR‘s Sheri Linden, posted on 4.15.20, Tribeca Film Festival.

January 16, 2021 7:54 pmby Jeffrey Wells

6 Comments
Hell Is Other People

Travel Beans: “Another reason you may not want to visit Positano…if you’re one of those people who cannot stand Instagram culture with so many tourists taking loads of photos every time you look around…if this is something that really grinds your gears and winds you up, best to avoid it.” — gently phrased by Travel Beans on 10.24.20.

“Amalfi Coast,” HE-posted on 11.18.09: “Positano has been overtaken by schmuck tourists…degraded by the tour buses and hee-haw Americans who keep the local economy going. I remember being in a Positano internet cafe and overhearing a guy with some kind of Kentucky or Tennessee accent using the international land line and speaking or bellowing too loudly (‘Great Italian fewd!’), and immediately flinching and saying to myself, ‘Uh-oh, the Cancun crowd is here.’

“But it’s such a beautiful place anyway. The feeling of being cut off from the world is so special and serene. The magnificent Moorish architecture, the 45- or 50-degree incline, the view from a cheap hilltop restaurant that Jett and I visited during magic hour, etc. Even with the Clem Kadiddlehoopers, I’d go there again in a heartbeat.”


Snapped in June 2007.
(More…)
January 16, 2021 6:50 pmby Jeffrey Wells
34 Comments
“Potential For Damage”

I’m still grinning about Trump getting kicked off Twitter and other social-media platforms, including YouTube. If anyone in the history of this planet deserves to be muzzled (at least temporarily), it’s Donald J. Fuckface. I realize it’s wrong to celebrate this toxic sociopath having been permanently de-Twitterized. I recognize, obviously, that it’s a bad idea to choke off free speech. Even the free speech of proven liars, delusionals and demagogues.

Then again Germany wiped Naziism off the map in the wake of World War II — zero tolerance, no quarter, no remnants except for concentration camp memorials. And that was certainly a good thing. Nobody whined about Hitler followers being deprived of free speech. With ample justification an evil regime was suffocated and so why, I’m asking myself, is it so terrible to shut down a delusional leader of the looney-tune, QAnon-embracing, armed-militia right? There’s no such thing as pure goodness or pure evil, but if anyone personifies a very real and toxic social poison, it’s Trump. It may sound extreme to call him an embodiment of obsessive, neurotically generated, fact-averse Satanism. But he really is a living beast.

If Trump were to somehow fall off some swanky yacht in the Caribbean and get eaten by sharks…what reasonable person would be truly sorry about that? Be honest.

(More…)
January 16, 2021 2:00 pmby Jeffrey Wells
14 Comments
Silent Treatment

There’s nothing “wrong” with silent opening-credit sequences. Silence can put the hook in, build anticipation levels, etc. But there’s a limit. We all prefer some kind of aural current, something telling us that someone understands the frustration that some of us are feeling — music, ambient atmosphere sounds, an off-screen conversation, etc. The HE handbook (2019 edition) states that the usual distributor and production company logos + above-the-line credit sequence shouldn’t generate total dead-mouse silence for more than 15 or 20 seconds. Obviously there are exceptions. The opening credits for Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (’17) kept the silence going and the audience hooked for roughly 45 seconds, but that was pushing it. Most filmmakers realize that too much prolonged silence has a way of sucking up energy, especially in a theatre. (Remember theatres?) They know audiences will cut them a certain amount of slack, but not too much. HE to pretentious silence-loving directors: Don’t overplay this card — people like me are out there in force.

January 16, 2021 1:36 pmby Jeffrey Wells

44 Comments
She Died In Debt, You Bet

During last night’s “New Rules” finale, Bill Maher discussed the sad saga of QAnon fruitcake Ashli Babbitt, who was in a financially precarious position before she was killed inside the Capitol building on 1.6.21.

Maher passed along information from a 12.7.21 N.Y. Times story about Babbitt (“Woman Killed in Capitol Embraced Trump and QAnon“). The article reported that Babbitt, who ran a pool-cleaning business, took out a “costly” short-term business loan for $65K in in 2017, and that it required Babbit to pay back 169 percent above and beyond the principal, or $140K and change.

Is that roughly correct? A total debt load of $140K, I mean. Math has never been my strong point.

What kind of predatory scumbag pirate outfit charges 169% interest?

(More…)
January 16, 2021 11:35 amby Jeffrey Wells
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