Day: October 20, 2021

I love how one of the anti-Chappelle supporters grabbed a pro-Chappelle placard being held aloft by a bespectacled, cap-wearing pudgy guy, and ripped the cardboard sign off. And then one of the anti-Chappelles shouted that the pudgy guy had a “weapon” — i.e., the stick that remained in his hands once the sign had been trashed.

“You want me to drop the weapon?” the pudgy guy asked, mocking the mania. “Yes,” came the reply, “and then leave.”

I also love how a short anti-Chappelle demonstrator with a tennis-ball haircut attempted to push against the pudgy guy by holding his/her arms up, getting right into his 18 inches of private space. There was also a small woman with a shrieky, agitated voice shaking some kind of noisemaker at the pudgy guy. Talk about impolite, rude and disrespectful.

The pudgy guy nonetheless held onto a joshing, light-hearted attitude.

🚨#BREAKING: Dozens of Netflix employees and their supporters staged a walkout outside Netflix Headquarters

📌#Hollywood l #California

To protest the transphobic comments made by Dave Chappelle in his latest comedy special released earlier this month by the streaming giant pic.twitter.com/zkNnSDaE95

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) October 20, 2021

Read more

Official Focus Features description: “Written and directed by Academy Award® nominee Kenneth Branagh, Belfast (11.12.21) is a poignant story of love, laughter and loss in one boy’s childhood, amid the music and social tumult of the late 1960s.”

Based Elena Ferrante‘s same-titled novel, The Lost Daughter (Netflix, 12.17) is the directorial debut of Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Olivia Colman is Leda, a middle-aged professor vacationing in Greece for a week or two. Her obsession with Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her daughter causes Leda to reminisce about her own motherhood trials as a conflicted 20something.

Katie Smith-SWong’s Flickfeast review: “Gyllenhaal incorporates an [intensely] artistic approach that heightens the film’s psychological tone. Beautiful and visually affecting, this creates an unsettling but unnecessary sense of paranoia that [modifies] the sentimentality behind Leda’s emotional journey.

“Plus the heartbreaking dialogue in Gyllenhaal’s adapted screenplay isn’t helped by the close-up shots that border on pretentious and the drawn-out narrative that prolongs the suffering of its key characters.

“Overall The Lost Daughter is an ambitious directorial debut. Colman shines as Leda but its overlong runtime and uneven supporting performances cause its dramatic effect to falter for the sake of style.”

I could and should have seen The Lost Daughter during Telluride, but I couldn’t fit it in.

Update: I’ll say this much — the coolest hombre in Dune is Jason Momoa‘s “Duncan Idaho, the swordmaster of House.” Moma is beardless here, and so he looks a bit heavyish — as if Joe Don Baker had succumbed to a cheeseburgers and beer and pasta diet after the success of Walking Tall. But Duncan has that macho mojo Han Solo thing going on. They should have ignored the Herbert narrative and kept him alive. Born in ’79, Momoa is no spring chicken but he’s got what audiences want.

Earlier: I’ve been watching Dune for 35 minutes, and it’s obviously an intelligent, expensive, thoughtfully composed film of its type. But within the first ten minutes I was dying within, dying of cancer and almost weeping with sympathy for poor Timothee Chalamet. Strange as it sounds, Dune made me want to shelter Chalamet and protect him from the sand storms of corporate boredom. Dune is so slow and suffocating that, even stranger, I almost wanted to forgive him for throwing Woody Allen under the bus.

Kill me now, Paul Atreides. Kill me now, sand worms. Suffocate me with spice, Denis Villeneuve. This is the equivalent of cinematic waterboarding.  I just can’t stand the idea of watching another Joseph Campbell saga…a hero’s journey of self-discovery and heroic destiny…I’m choking on it.

George Lucas had obviously been influenced by Dune when he made Star Wars in ‘77, and that was 44, 45 years ago. The basic template has since been copied to death. It’s the same old Skywalker story, more or less. Only grimmer, and with ugly-ass worms, and from a political royal family perspective, and with tons upon tons of swirling dust storms, and actors dressed in olive drab sand rags.

155 minutes later, not counting phone breaks, food breaks, writing breaks and cat-petting breaks: Thank God it’s over. Yes, Chalamet’s performance improves as it goes along — the closer he gets to becoming “Paul Muad’Dib, the Fremen messiah”, the better he is.

I’ll never watch Dune again — that’s for damn sure. No way this thing becomes any kind of serious Best Picture contender…not a snowball’s chance.

Read more

If it was my call and I had absolute power (and I’m not exaggerating for exaggeration’s sake), I would put Donald Trump‘s fat, half-naked ass into a Roman Colisseum-like arena and make him face three ferocious tigers, just like Russell Crowe in Gladiator and Victor Mature in Demetrius and the Gladiators. Yes, I would allow Trump to defend himself with a short sword, but you know he’d die anyway.

It goes without saying that Steve Bannon should suffer the same fate.

I’m not kidding — these guys are sociopaths, animals…hellbent on anti-Democratic revolt and sparking anti-Democratic insanity among the rural bumblefucks. They’re truly insane, and the crimes they’re guilty of deserve the ultimate penalty. A firing squad would afford them too much dignity. They need to face what Christians faced under the rule of ancient Romans.

Alternate scenario: Trump is murdered — stabbed to death — by the Praetorian guard, and in a mimicking of John Hurt‘s death scene in I, Claudius, he weeps and wails as the knives plunge in and out.

Read more