Home
Subscribe
Archives
About
Contact
Twitter
Facebook
Search
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

  • Home
  • Subscribe
  • Archives
  • About
  • Contact
  • Merch
  • He Plus
Follow @wellshwood
56 Comments
Weide’s Perry Mason Challenge

Woody Allen‘s chief defender disputes Allen v. Farrow producers…the plot thickens…

February 23, 2021 9:50 pmby Jeffrey Wells
8 Comments
Larry Gelbart’s “Sly Fox”

Olivia Colman‘s expression conveys a trace of amusement. Her face says, “My clever dad has his occasional moments…he worries me and amuses me at the same time.”

Anthony Hopkins‘ face says, “I know I’m amusing, heh-heh, and I’m glad to see you’ve noticed….you’re welcome!”

This father-daughter dynamic is not what the movie is about, of course, but that’s okay. The ad has its own mindset — its own movie to sell.

February 23, 2021 6:11 pmby Jeffrey Wells
18 Comments
I’ve Been To Mars With Matt Damon

It’s hot and cold there. The soil is reddish or brownish terra cotta. The topography is like Twentynine Palms or east of Indio, mostly flat with occasional sand dunes, hills and scattered boulders. So where’s the exotic excitement?

(More…)
February 23, 2021 5:19 pmby Jeffrey Wells

25 Comments
McDormand Moment

When Kyle Buchanan wrote a profile about Promising Young Woman‘s Carey Mulligan a couple of months ago, attention was gained and the pot was stirred. Especially when Mulligan was quoted saying that she “took issue” with Dennis Harvey‘s Variety review of her film.

Yesterday Buchanan posted an interview with Nomadland‘s Frances McDormand, and the motive was more or less the same as Mulligan’s had been — perk up the conversation, blow a favoring breeze.

On 3.15 McDormand and Mulligan will almost certainly be announced as competitors for the same Best Actress Oscar. Why do I have this feeling that this is not McDormand’s year to win? Partly because she won an Oscar three years ago for her performance as an angry mom in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, her second such honor after winning for her Marge Gunderson in Fargo 24 years ago. Enough, right?

But now McDormand has offered another reason. She’s told Buchanan that she’s still looking to live under the radar. Buchanan notes McDormand “is highly skeptical of any ceremony where actors are done up like glamorous gladiators“, adding that when her husband Joel Coen “was asked to produce the Oscars alongside his brother, Ethan, McDormand suggested they set the telecast at Coney Island, which would have forced Hollywood glitterati to mingle with the freak show.”

Buchanan further notes that McDormand sometimes appears “barefaced instead of Botoxed and once wore her own jean jacket in lieu of borrowed couture,” a form of “mild noncompliance [that] is tantamount to a declaration of war in Hollywood.”

Right after Fargo, McDormand “made a very conscious effort not to do press and publicity for 10 years,” she says, “but it paid off for exactly the reasons I wanted it to. It gave me a mystery back to who I was, and then in the roles I performed, I could take an audience to a place where someone who sold watches or perfume and magazines couldn’t.”

“To her,” Kyle writes. “Nomadland is the culmination of that effort to keep herself unspoiled in the public eye. ‘That’s why it works,’ she said. ‘That’s why Chloé could bear to even think of doing this with me, because of what I’ve created for years not just as an actor, but in my personal life.”

Get the picture? Low-key, no thanks, we’re good, the Oscars are a bit gaudy, we have our own deal.

(More…)
February 23, 2021 4:57 pmby Jeffrey Wells
17 Comments
Bad Break

I’m very sorry about Tiger Woods having been injured this morning in a “serious” one-car accident, and that a Jaws of Life rescue was necessary to extract him.

It happened around 7:12 am. Woods’ vehicle (a Genesis GV80, made by Hyundai) was heading north on Hawthorne Boulevard at Blackhorse Road, on the border of Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes.

People who drive at a reasonable speed with both hands on the wheel don’t, as a rule, wipe out and flip over. Usually accidents of this type happen as a result of speeding. Woods has reportedly injured his legs. His golf career may be seriously impacted.

February 23, 2021 3:09 pmby Jeffrey Wells
45 Comments
Texas Idiots, “Government Snow”

A certain number of QAnon-influenced Texas morons are using TikTok to share suspicions about all the “fake snow” that has blanketed their homeland. The idea is that government baddie-waddies, possibly aided and abetted by Bill Gates, engineered the snowstorm in order to get the righties. The “proof” is in the fact that the stuff on the ground isn’t real snow, certain Texans are claiming. Because if you try and melt the “fake snow” with hair dryers. matches or bunsen burners, it turns black rather than melts.

Ain’t that America?

(More…)
February 23, 2021 9:57 amby Jeffrey Wells

  • Limp “Rifkin” Against Scenic Backdrop
    Limp “Rifkin” Against Scenic Backdrop
    February 12, 2021

    Last night I streamed Woody Allen‘s Rifkin’s Festival, and I’m afraid I can only echo what critics who caught it...

    More »
  • King Vidor’s “The Crowd”
    King Vidor’s “The Crowd”
    February 11, 2021

    Lewis Allen and Richard Sale‘s Suddenly (’54), a thriller about an attempted Presidential assassination, runs only 82 minutes with credits...

    More »
  • Full Ferrara
    Full Ferrara
    December 5, 2020

    It’s been 17 years since I last saw Rafi Pitts‘ Abel Ferrara: Not Guilty. The kids and I caught it...

    More »
  • Bring Back The Nannies?
    Bring Back The Nannies?
    February 14, 2021

    When Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering‘s four-part Woody Allen hatchet-job doc, Allen vs. Farrow, begins airing on HBO on Sunday,...

    More »
  • Movie Poster Violation
    Movie Poster Violation
    February 13, 2021

    The appearance of actors in a movie poster should never, ever argue with how they look in the film itself....

    More »
  • 21st Century Fizz Whizz
    21st Century Fizz Whizz
    February 13, 2021

    The banner headline on the March issue of Empire, which has been on sale for three weeks, teases “The Greatest...

    More »

© 2004-2018 Hollywood-elsewhere.com / All rights reserved.