Month: October 2021

Forbes Scott Mendelson has explained the Dune 2 greenlighting as follows:

(1) Warner Bros. and Legendary think that Dune 2 will perform better theatrically amid more conventional circumstances than the presently-playing Dune, which is still likely going to end up with $375 million-$405 million worldwide;

(2) Announcing a sequel creates the impression of success (think Jungle Cruise 2 and Cruella 2) and encourages folks to check out the movie without fear of ending on a cliffhanger;

(3) Legendary perhaps wants to put itself in a rosier position to get purchased by a conglomerate;

(4) Whether or not Dune makes money theatrically is less of a concern as long as it’s perceived as a Covid-era theatrical success and/or a launching pad for HBO Max television shows.

Posted today (or yesterday) on Adam Grant Thinks Again:

Titles, I mean, that seem so deeply embedded in the hole of precious that they sounds like satires.

When Pomegranates Howl may be Australia’s Oscar submission, but this 2020 film is actually (a) an Afghan-Australian co-production, (b) written and directed by Granaz Moussavi, an Iranian woman, and (c) set in Kabul, which of course is a whole different (one could say horrific) thing now.

“Denis Villeneuve has decided to make cinema for a global audience. Dune is smooth, vitrified, spherical. (…) The production design comes before everything else; in fact, it compensates for everything. The result is plasticized, a constant grayish metallic glaze, a screen saver.” — Cahiers du Cinema.

This is about the recent LexG aggressive identity thing, and is specifically directed at Bill Traschke, Eddie Ginley, SpiceFlow, JBM and Downtown Vibe, among others. I am telling you all straight and true that I will have no more talk about a certain producer being a LexG impersonator or a shadow presence of any kind in any recent threads (like, for instance, “Sorry, Let’s Be Cool, Never Mind“)

I am not being played or duped or misdirected or boondoggled or flim-flammed by anyone. I know exactly who’s who and what’s what. So just drop it…drop the subject, drop the focus, leave it there, move on with your lives.

I have known LexG’s email address from way back, and as recently as two months ago he wrote me one of his hateful, dismissive, pus-filled screeds. I know who and what he is and what his address and phone number are, and I will have no more HE commenters insisting that a certain producer is impersonating him. That shit ends right now, and if any of the above commenters persist in this vein I will stamp their ticket and eject their asses faster than the wind out of duck’a ass.

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Late last week Harrison Ford, 79, lost his credit card in the Sicilian beach town of Mondello.

It was found and quickly returned (great!), but the more important question was why the hell was Ford, a man of wealth and taste, chilling in an area adjacent to Palermo, which is widely regarded as one of the ugliest and most plundered cities in Europe, largely due to the influence of greedy Italian mafiosos**?

Jett and I were in Palermo 11 and 1/2 years ago, and more precisely on 5.27.10. While waiting for an overnight ferry to Napoli I filed a piece called “Sack of Palermo.”

A day or two earlier we had hung our hats in Cefalu, which is east of Palermo about 35 or 40 kilometers.

Ford’s untitled Indiana Jones film, which is being directed by former HE friend and subsequent betrayer James Mangold, will open on 6.30.23, at which point Ford will be just short of his 81st birthday.

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Without this scene in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Jessica Chastain wouldn’t be a Best Actress contender. It was clearly telegraphed early on that teh combination of Chastain’s showboat performance, her agressive makeup and vigorous effort as the film’s senior producer…all this would combine to ensure a nomination. But this is the scene that locks it all in. Even with Tammy Faye‘s shitty box-office ($2.4 million), Chastain has decent heat.

In my view the general the general Best Actress contender situation is as follows: (a) Penelope Cruz‘s lead performance in Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers is the most likely winner, (b) Olivia Colman probably won’t happen because Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter is only mildly respected; (c) Kristen Stewart will allmost certainly happen because people are oddly taken with her nutty-as-a-fruitcake performance as Diana, Princess of Wales, in Pablo Larrain‘s Spencer; (d) no opinion on Nicole Kidman‘s performance as Lucille Ball in Being The Ricardos, but the apparent fact that she hasn’t made the slightest attempt to sound like Lucy (listen to the teaser) cancels her out; (e) Frances McDormand‘s Lady Macbeth performance will not happen; (f) Jennifer Hudson‘s performance as Aretha Franklin in Respect will probably happen, and (g) Tessa Thompson in Passing…no opinion just yet.

At the end of the day it will all boil down to Cruz, Chastain, Stewart and Hudson. Am I wrong?

I only began to pay attention to Glenn Youngkin, Terry McAuliffe‘s Republican oppenent in the 11.2 election to decide who will be Virginia’s governor, a few days ago. Youngkin looks like an old-fashioned, country-club Republican, but he’s been kowtowing to the rabid yahoo faction (foam-at-the-mouth Trump loyalists, no masks or vaccines, own the libtards) and is basically just another animal.

Six months ago I posted a piece titled “Caviezel QAnon Fruitcake.” It was about Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ, The Thin Red Line) pushing child blood-harvesting adrenochrome QAnon bullshit at a lunatic COVID-19 conspiracy “health and freedom” conference in Oklahoma. He seemed to cut loose even worse the other night in Las Vegas. Mad hatter Jesus-vs.-Satan stuff. When I first met him 24, 25 years ago he seemed mild-mannered, reasonable, sane.

Jim Caviezel gives a speech riddled with religious fanaticism and Q propaganda at the QAnon conference in Las Vegas. pic.twitter.com/9gugWfoyaG

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 25, 2021

Dave Chappelle: “To the transgender community I am more than willing to give you an audience. But you will not summon me. I am not bending to anyone’s demands. But if you wannq meet with me, I am more than willing to. But I have some conditions. First of all, you cannot come if you haven’t watched [The Closer] from beginning to end. Secondly, you must come to a place of my choosing, and a time of my choosing. And thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny.”

Oh, and this especially: “Thank God for Ted Sarandos and Netflix…he’s the only who didn’t cancel me yet.”

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Outside of literary types like Lewis Lapham and Sinclair Lewis, it seems as if more people pronounce it “louie” rather than “louis.” at least when it comes to “Louie Louie,” Claude Rains‘ Louis Renault character in Casablanca, Huey, Dewey and Louie, Louie Anderson and King Louis (i.e., “Louie”) of France. But if there’s one famous Louis who certainly avoided the “ouwee”, it was Louis Armstrong.

Why Armstrong on this agreeably rainy Los Angeles morning? Partly because Satchmo’s rendition of “We Have All The Time in The World” is played over the closing credits of No Time To Die, but mainly because Variety critic Guy Lodge mentioned him this morning.

If “many people are terrified of doing something objectionable and getting called out ,” as Matt Belloni reports in his latest “What I’m Hearing” column, it naturally follows that there exists a climate of Robespierre–like terror in this town, which I’ve been asserting for two or three years now.

If I had a quarter for every toxic tut-tutter in this town (starting with Variety’s Steven Gaydos) who’s said I’m full of shit about this, I could buy a new Beemer and have a fair amount left over.