The info’s a little vague, but after endless delays the commercial release of Oliver Stone‘s JFK Revisited, which premiered in Cannes last July, is finally happening. And, oddly enough**, only a few days from now — on Friday, 11.12 via the Showtime app, and on the Showtime network beginning on Monday, 11.22, the 58th anniversary of the JFK murder.
The longer version, JFK: Destiny Betrayed, will be commercially streamed (sale or rental) next February.
** Who waits to announce the availability of a new film only seven days in advance?
…of hate-watching Eternals? I can feel it, sense it, smell it, detect it…I know what it is without seeing it. How do I know this? Because it’s two…make that threedosesofpoison is a single glass — dreamy Zhao wokester mythology + Angelina Jolie + same old Marvel horseshit. I cringe at the idea of submitting to it.
It makes you look weak or woozy or somehow dependent upon the warm bath of booze in the blood. If someone picks up a camera, always put the glass down. That said, Newman and clan look awfully good here. Those moist Connecticut lawns and especially the fragrance following a rainfall. Judging by the gray in his hair, I’d say it was taken around the time of Fort Apache, The Bronx (’81) or The Verdict (‘82).
I did a lot of good publicity work for New Line Cinema and Cannon Films (mostly press kits) during the mid to late ’80s. New Line-wise I’m especially proud of my nimble-witted promotions of ANightmare on Elm Street2 and Critters. During the Critters shoot I bonded with M. Emmet Walsh and Billy Greenbush (whose folksy manner reminded me of my Kentucky-born grandfather). For all my efforts I only managed a single mention during closing credits (i.e., Critters). Back then I had a problem with “Jeffrey” — I thought it sounded too frilly or delicate.
As I suggestedyesterday, Jane Campion’s The PowerofTheDog is far more respected than loved or even liked. It is either the blindness or the obstinacy or the political temperature-taking of IndieWire’s Eric Kohn that has led to this headline — an absolutefantasy. KingRichard has the Best Picture Oscar in the bag.
Colleen Camp hosted a lavish SquidGame party this evening…Doheny Road, hills above Sunset. Director-writer HwangDong–hyuk, lead actress HoYeonJung, Oscar-winning Minari grandma YuhJung-Youn, K-pop star Eric Nam, Phillip Noyce, Billy Zane, John Goldwyn, cast and crew…everyone, everything.
Posted on 7.16.17: Remember the Cool Hand Luke sand-shovelling scene on that hot country road? When Paul Newman inspires his chain-gang homies to cover the tar with sand as fast as they can, and they all get into it and shovel so quickly that the tar truck runs out and drives off, and the prisoners have nothing to do but relax for a couple of hours?
In the mid ’70s I worked as a tree-trimmer in Connecticut (ropes, saddles, chain saws, pole saws), and a couple of times I tried to apply the Cool Hand Luke approach to some jobs. The salesman (always an easy-going smoothie in a nice car) would point to a couple of trees and explain what we had to do, and then he’d say “I’ll be happy if not surprised if you can finish by the end of the day.” Then he’d take off, pledging to return by 3:30 or 4 pm.
As soon as he left we’d say to each other (me and the other climber and the clean-up crew), “Hey, let’s get this done fast so we can relax the rest of the day.” So we’d all double down and get the job done ahead of schedule, sometimes even shaving an hour by skipping lunch. We can do this!
The salesman would return at 3:30 pm and say, “Whoa…you’re done already? You guys are amazing!” And then he’d think it over and say, “Jesus, we’ve got another couple of hours. Let’s load up and head over to the next job!” Me: “Wait, whoa…the next job? You said if we finished this job here we’d be good for the day.” Salesman: “Yeah, but we can’t just sit around so c’mon, put the stuff on the truck and follow me.”
So after this happens a couple of times you learn. Never work fast, never exceed expectations, don’t drag ass but always pace yourself and work at an even keel.
I knew where Newman’s house was located in Westport back then, and I occasionally imagined that I’d run into him and tell him this story and he’d laugh and say, “Yeah, if only life was like the movies.”
“Spencer (Neon, 11.5) won’t do if you’re looking for fresh insights into Diana, Princess of Wales, or even an absorbing rehash of one of the most rehashed stories ever. That’s not to minimize the achievement of Kristen Stewart, who portrays the former Diana Spencer as a woman possessed by outer demons as well as inner ones. The problem is the dramatic vacuum, or suffocating bell jar, in which her performance plays out.
“Pablo Larraín’s film, written by Steven Knight, calls itself a ‘fable from a true tragedy.’ It might also be called a fever dream, a surreal nightmare, a reductio ad tedium or just an inherently limiting concept that slowly but inexorably squeezes the life out of itself.” — from Joe Morgenstern’s 11.4 Wall Street Journal review.
“Spencer “is a simplistic, impressionistic head-trip film…a surreal mindscape movie…a kind of nightmarish Stepford Wives (or wife) in the country. Kristen Stewart will be Best Actress nominated, I’m presuming, [but she] plays the mad, close-to-cracking-up Diana to the unstable-adolescent-teenager, Julie Harris-in-The Haunting hilt — beset by visions & nightmares & the ghost of Anne Boleyn.
“Spencer follows the wokester narrative that British Anglo elitism is evil and rancid and needs to be resisted at all costs. Because Diana needs to breathe, love, live, talk to pheasants and save her sons from those toxic royal traditions and soul-smothering attitudes.” — from HE’s 9.4. Telluride review.
Pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, quoted by Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan: “Those saying ‘education’ is simply a proxy for racism, and that this result is proof that white or conservative parents really don’t want schools to teach about topics like slavery or give a complete picture of American history, have misread the full picture of parents’ anxieties.”
Anderson found 77% of Republicans and 96% of Democrats agreeing “we should acknowledge the terrible things that have happened in our nation’s history regarding race so students can learn from them and make the future better.” But parents were “alarmed” by “anything that seems to be deterministic about race, such as telling children their skin color will shape their future.” They are uncomfortable “with anything that feels like it is separating children by race.” They’re “also alarmed” by the learning loss that happened during the pandemic, and “upset” over efforts to gut gifted-and-talented education in the name of equity.
“Democrats have allowed themselves to be associated with — to become the political home of — progressive thinking. They thought they had to….[that] progressives would beat them to a pulp if they didn’t get with the program. They thought it would play itself out. This was a mistake. You can’t associate a great party with cultural extremism and not eventually pay a price.
What happened in Virginia, Noonan writes, translates to what a crusty political operative told her decades ago. “He had no patience for high-class analyses featuring trends and contexts,” she recalls. “When voters moved sharply against a party he’d say, ‘The dogs don’t like the dog food.’ Tuesday they vomited it up.”
In a recent chat with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, Sopranos godfather & creator David Chase acknowledged for the second time that Tony Soprano was indeed “hit” in the final seconds of the last episode, “Made in America,” which aired on 6.10.07.
Chase’s first acknowledgement happened during a 2018 q & a with “Sopranos Sessions” co-authors Matt Seitz and Alan Sepinwall. Chase accidentally let it slip that Tony died in the final minute, and even cursed at Alan and Matt for making him cough this up.
Does anyone recall that in the immediate aftermath of that 6.11 airing, a lot of people didn’t know what had happened, and some declared that the ending was inconclusive?
N.Y. Times columnist Alessandra Stanley, 6.11.07: “David Chase’s last joke was on his audience, not his characters. Tony, Carmela and A. J. are gathered at a diner in a rare moment of family content that cried out for violent interruption. A shifty-looking man walks in and eyes them from the counter, then, in a move echoing a scene from The Godfather, ominously enters the men’s room. Outside, Meadow is delayed, trying to parallel park, then begins walking toward the restaurant.
“Nothing happens. Credits. What?”
N.Y. Post headlines — ‘SOPRANOS” FINALE WHACKS FANS…SHOW’S FINALE FIRES ‘BLANKS’…DARK SCREEN CAPS DISAPPOINTING WRAP…PHIL’S GRISLY HIT IS THE LONE HIGHLIGHT.
“Tony Soprano lives on in perpetual dread and uncertainty — unpunctured, undead, and prevailing after a fashion. That, for better or worse, is what the final episode of The Sopranos left viewers with this evening.
“And anyone who writes in complaining that I’m spoiling the party by writing this can go stuff it. A comprehensive sum-up piece by the AP’s Frazier Moore went up at 11:50 pm eastern, Nikki Finke ran a negative reaction piece even earlier, and finale details are all over Monday morning’s N.Y. Post.
That long-simmering, much-whispered-about rumor about Kirk Douglas having sexually assaulted Natalie Wood at the Chateau Marmont in the summer of 1955…that story has been confirmed by the late actress’s younger sister, 75 year-old Lana Wood, in a forthcoming memoir called “Little Sister” (Dey Street, 11.9).
At the time of the incident Douglas was 38 and Wood had just turned 17. The get-together had been arranged by their mother, Maria Zakharenko, who thought that “many doors might be thrown open for her, with just a nod of his famous, handsome head on her behalf,” according to Lana, who was around eight at the time.
AP: “It seemed like a long time passed before Natalie got back into the car and woke me up when she slammed the door shut,” Lana writes. “She looked awful. She was very disheveled and very upset, and she and Mom started urgently whispering to each other. I couldn’t really hear them or make out what they were saying. Something bad had apparently happened to my sister, but whatever it was, I was apparently too young to be told about it.”
“According to Lana, Natalie did not discuss with her what happened until both were adults and Natalie, after describing being brought into Douglas’ suite. She told her sister, ‘And, uh…he hurt me Lana. It was like an out-of-body experience. I was terrified. I was confused.’
“Lana recalls Natalie and their mother agreeing it would ruin Natalie’s career to publicly accuse him. ‘Suck it up’ was Maria’s advice.
“Douglas’ son, actor Michael Douglas, said in a statement issued through his publicist: ‘May they both rest in peace.'”
