Day: July 29, 2021

I was told the other night that two branches of the ArcLight (Hollywood and Sherman Oaks) will re-open in October. So I asked someone in a position to know everything and he said (a) the Sherman Oaks Arclight has reopened as a Regal theatre (they announced a major remodel but without a firm completion date) but (b) there’s no date in place to re-open the Hollywood Arclight.

HE reaction: The absence of the Hollywood ArcLight and the Dome is a profound spiritual tragedy for Los Angeles movie culture…truly a gaping wound. The failure of somebody or some outfit to come up with some kind of strategy that will allow it to re-open is just…mystifying. How can the industry allow this to happen? How can everyone just wash their hands? It’s so wrong.

As we speak Jungle Cruise (Disney, opening today) has a cruddy 61% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and an even lower 49% from Metacritic. I won’t be sitting through this sure-to-be-spirit-numbing film until late this afternoon, but I’ve been sniffing its approach for months. Here’s my final general impression reaction:

I understand some critics giving a passing grade to Jungle Cruise because, after all, what’s the point of complaining about hack filmmaking of this magnitude? Just ease up and roll with it — not worth the trouble, right?

But it’s clearly proclaiming its allegiance to nothing-ness and the sensibility of easy-lay audiences who don’t know any better (or don’t WANT to know any better)…whose taste in mainstream entertainment has been systematically degraded over the last few decades by films with a similar ‘80s-flavored, CG-propelled, Spielberg-and-Lucas-on-steroids attitude…this is a movie clearly crafted by forces of expedient corporate Satanism.

The basic idea seems to be “are we proud of our emptiness…you BET we are! Proud and having fun with it! We don’t give a damn about anything but making family-friendly money so why should you, the audience, have any beefs on your end?’

Everything I feel in my gut and can sense from the punishing trailers tells me Jungle Cruise is pure escapist soul cancer.

What doth it profit a man to wave through such a thing? A film that obviously doesn’t give a hoot about anything in terms of true-blue movie transportation…a film that’s having such a good time farting in the faces of people like myself?

And has there ever been an alleged movie star more deeply and systematically opposed to starring in a good, well-crafted movie (i.e., crisp, professional, tightly written) than Dwayne Johnson? All this glib opportunistic Republican wants to do is stay in shape, toss off knowing “ironic wise-ass” dialogue and star in shitty, financially successful films. The man has nothing inside him but ambition — he’s all about the hustle and the stock options. He and Chris Pratt are cut from the same cloth.

I understand and respect the apparent fact that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow lawsuit against Disney, which was filed this morning, has merit.

Her filing said that her agreement with Disney’s Marvel Entertainment guaranteed an exclusive theatrical release, and that her salary was based in large part on the box-office performance of the film. So Disney’s decision to stream Black Widow day-and-date with theatrical constituted, she claims, a wanton breach of the agreement.

In essence ScarJo was paid $20 million but she wants more. She feels that Disney screwed her out of a lot of dough, and the alleged screwing basically happened because of Covid.

For sure, other big-name qctors whose big-studio films have been (or will be) opening theatrically and streaming concurrently will be looking to see how ScarJo’s lawsuit turns out.

Disney’s response: “”There is no merit whatsoever to this filing. The lawsuit is especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Disney has fully complied with Ms. Johansson’s contract and furthermore, the release of Black Widow on Disney+ with Premier Access has significantly enhanced her ability to earn additional compensation on top of the $20M she has received to date.”

That said, I should probably confess that my interest in financial conflict stories (i.e., “You owe me more money”) is limited.

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Jared Leto was almost certainly interested in the role of Paolo Gucci in Ridley Scott‘s House of Gucci (UA Releasing, 11.24) because he wanted to be the total transformation guy — fat suit, shaved head, moustache. His costars — Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons — were almost certainly irked, annoyed, resentful, etc.

Imaginary Irons to Pacino: “Jesus, look at that, will ya?..always something with Leto, isn’t it?…extreme makeup, ‘look at me’, hippie hair, guy never quits.”

Imaginary Pacino replies to Irons: “You wanna talk about never quits, what about Driver? Jesus H. Christ, is there anything he hasn’t starred or costarred in lately? Not to mention that other Ridley movie, the medieval one. And that horse cologne ad….c’mon, man.”

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This morning Glenn Kenny tweeted about a Carroll Park encounter with a Black dude who behaved in a way that indicated (a) mental or emotional instability, (b) a garden-variety hair trigger temperament, or (c) a combination of both. The dude in question “feigned” a fall, fell into Kenny’s lap and in so doing squashed a raw egg. The dude apologized, Kenny said “it’s okay, it’s okay” and the dude replied “I KNOW it’s okay.”

My interpretation is that “I KNOW it’s okay” meant one of two things — the dude was/is an asshole who gets into confrontational situations with strangers if he’s in a bad mood (some street wackos are like this), or he meant “you can’t say shit to me…whatever I do or say you have to sit there and fucking take it…new rules.”

If it had been me I would have figured “okay, just another anger-management asshole, New York City’s full of them” and let it go. But Glenn called the fuzz and reported this jerk, and then — here was his mistake – he tweeted about it. Kenny surely understands that white guys aren’t allowed to call the cops in any dealings with any person of color about anything because it…well, doing so might imply something about the way they see the world. Not in my opinion, of course, but in the minds of certain Twitter jackals. So Kenny had to apologize or walk it back or something in that vein.

HE rewrite of Kenny apology: “I, Glenn Kenny, do hereby apologize to the Twitter comintern for not turning the other cheek after that dude fell into my lap. The next time something like this happens, I will smile and say ‘thank you’ and maybe even buy the guy a cappuccino.”

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“The current laws of civility mean that no, it can’t be exactly what it once was” — Gawker editor Leah Finnegan, quoted in Katie Robertson‘s 7.28.21 N.Y Times piece titled “Gawker: The Return.”

The nickname for the revived site, of course, is New Gawker, although it’s using the same old gawker URL.

What Finnegan means by “the current laws of civility” is that if you’re editing or writing a gossip site in mid-2021, you have to be really careful. You have to totally tiptoe around everyone and everything and I mean very daintily, with ballet shoes on. You can’t talk shit (i.e., post snarky or even meanish comments) about anyone except for members of that one ethnic group that anyone can take a dump on any time they want — older white guys.

Otherwise our current wokester laws, edicts and stipulations, taken together, constitute a climate that is dead set against even the slightest scent of irreverence.

Finnegan: “We are here to make you laugh, I hope, and think, and do a spit-take or furrow your brow.”

Spit-takes? As in real spit-takes? Not in this Stalinist climate. Either way you can’t go home again.

Friendo: “I predict New Gawker will become another arm of cancel culture. Another megaphone for people who want to amplify targets. We’ll see if [this prediction] turns out to be right.”

Bustle Digital Group’s Bryan Goldberg, who bought the Gawker name three years ago for $1.35 million, quoted by Robertson: “If there is one website that could get me sued into oblivion, then it is almost certainly Gawker. Let’s face it — do we think that Bustle or Nylon Magazine is going to pick a petty and ill-conceived fight with a deca-billionaire? Probably not.”

“Deca-billionaire” refers to Peter Thiel, the powerful Silicon Valley hotshot who became enraged at Nick Denton‘s previous Gawker for mentioning his sexuality and resultantly funded a Hulk Hogan invasion-of-privacy lawsuit, which shut Gawker down.

From last night’s “Sandbag Cosh” post:

“I’ve been shoved from time to time, but I haven’t been in an actual fist fight since my late teens, and the odds of getting into any kind of altercation these days are close to nonexistent. I don’t drink or even ‘go out’ except to films, and I can’t recall the last time I visited a Patrick Swayze tough-guy bar. Plus you never know how hair-trigger crazy a would-be opponent is, especially in these crazy times. Plus I wouldn’t want to risk getting my fingers snapped or swollen, as this would hinder my daily writing. Plus I’m not in good enough shape these days to fight anyone more than 15 or 20 seconds.

“But I like the idea (and I mean the ‘idea’) of carrying a sandbag cosh. The kind, you know, that Tim Roth carried around in Stephen Frears‘ The Hit. As a totem, mind — a weapon I’d almost certainly never use but could theoretically use if, say, some kind of brute threat were to manifest. So yes, I’ll admit it — I like the idea of carrying one of these guys around. And it’s a far less crazy notion that carrying a loaded pistol.”