Month: April 2022

Woke Critics Out To Discourage Whiteness and Elgort-ness.

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I still haven’t seen J.T. Rogers and Michael Mann‘s Tokyo Vice (HBO Max, 4.7), but I know two things.

One, it’s based on Jake Adelstein‘s “Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan” (’09), and is about Adelstein’s working as the first non-Japanese reporter for one of Japan’s largest newspapers.

And two, it is therefore necessary and appropriate to cast a young American actor as Adelstein. Which is partly why Rogers and Mann hired Ansel Elgort for the role.

So far the Rotten Tomatoes score, based on six reviews, is 83% — a better-than-decent rating.

But the score would be higher if it weren’t for certain toxic critics complaining about the casting of Elgort, who continues to be idiotically tarnished by the woke community over non-factual, mob-rule accusations of “sexual assault” — a completely unsupported charge about Elgort having assaulted a 17 year-old named “Gabby” when he was 20, despite every piece of testimony (Twittered and otherwise) indicating that nothing resembling an assault ever happened and that the worst Elgort could be accused of was ghosting Gabby after being intimate with her.

The lowest score of the six is from Slashfilm‘s Josh Spiegel, who merges an anti-Elgort attitude along with some anti-white racism sauce.

In a review titled “A Moody Thriller Saddled By The Elgort Of It All,” Spiegel claims that
Elgort “makes for a very dull and uninvolving lead actor here…when the show begins in 1999, Jake is already well ensconced in Tokyo, having moved from his home state of Missouri…while he has quickly fallen in love with Tokyo’s culture, he has a very specific goal: becoming a journalist, despite the general hurdle of…well, being a white American.”

In other words Spiegel, besides disliking the idea of Elgort starring, doesn’t care for the idea of a white guy playing the lead in a Tokyo-based journalism drama. Imagine if Mann had produced an HBO Max miniseries about an English-speaking Japanese reporter having been hired by the Los Angeles Times to cover the crime beat here. Would Spiegel have written that this fellow does his best “despite the general hurdle of…well, being Japanese”?

Rolling Stone‘s Alan Sepinwall follows a similar train of thought. In a review titled “What If Miami Vice Had a White-Savior Complex?“, Sepinwall states that “this is a decent show, but one that feels like it would be much better if it were willing to be more Japanese.”

Again, reverse the set-up (Japanese reporter covering the L.A. crime beat) and ask yourself if Sepinwall could or would have declared that L.A. Vice “would be much better if it were willing to be more American, and more specifically more Anglo Saxon.”

In short, Sepinwall and Spiegel are singing the same woke tune. Translation: “We don’t want to know from Jake Adelstein or his book, and we don’t like the idea of a white guy reporting about the Yakuza because white guys are basically bad news. And Elgort, in our humble and misinformed opinion, is double bad because he…uhm, well, he legally had it off with a 17 year-old in 2014 (when he was 20) and then hurt her feelings by ghosting her, and in our judgment Elgort should pay the Polanski price for this. And so we’re doing our part as morally-attuned critics to destroy the toxic bad guys out there…to not only lock arms with the #MeToo community but bring about the ruin of the heartless Elgort.”

Variety‘s Daniel D’Addario echoes the Sepinwall-Siegel mindset, but he’s a little more fair about it.

“Say this much for Elgort, a controversial figure off-screen after allegations of sexual assault surfaced in 2020: On screen, he’s able to avoid many of the pitfalls into which an actor who looks like him on a Japan-set series might have fallen,” he writes. “The show is aware of what’s potentially uncomfortable about Jake as savior figure, and undercuts the narrative, and its protagonist, accordingly, starting with the performance.”

It is unlikely but entirely possible that I will agree with Spiegel and Sepinwall when I see Tokyo Vice, but for now I think it’s fair to post the above-mentioned judgments and suspicions about their viewpoints.

Close To The Heart

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My old Wilson baseball glove means almost as much to me as my two Mac laptops (15″ Macbook Pro, 13″ Macbook Air). There’s something eternal and devotional about slightly worn baseball mitts. I’ll be driving the VW Passat back east before leaving for Cannes, and I’ll be bringing the Wilson along with a TPS first baseman’s mitt that Jett used in the old days.

Now Playing at Oswald Cinema

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There’s something strangely synchronous in a classic American nightmare sort of way about the 4K Godfather playing (or having recently played) at the famous Texas theatre (231 W. Jefferson Blvd., Dallas, TX 75208), which is otherwise known as the Lee H. Oswald Memorial Cinema.

Okay, I’m kidding but the Oswald identification has stuck for decades.

It was during a showing of War Is Hell in this very theatre that Oswald was arrested by Dallas detectives roughly 80 minutes after the murder of President Kennedy on 11.22.63. And now, in the very same theatre, people are watching and contemplating the murders of (a) Khartuom, the black racehorse, (b) Luca Brasi, (c) Paulie Gatto, (d) Virgil Solozzo, (e) Cpt. McCluskey, (f) Sonny Corleone, (g) Appolonia, (h) Barzini, (i) Bruno Tataglia, (j) Moe Greene, (k) Carlo, etc.

Dishonest Francis Flicks

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When I speak of the Great Francis Betrayal, I refer to the fact that in almost every Francis film the mule’s ability to speak (and in English yet!) is revealed to an outsider or two, and in Francis Goes To The Races (’51) to an entire courtroom of witnesses. Which in real life would eventually mean worldwide celebrity for Francis and great wealth for Donald O’Connor‘s “Peter Stirling” character.

This never happens, of course — no one ever says boo about Francis’s talking ability. The legend never grows. Once the next film comes out it is completely forgotten and the basic situation reverts to a private rapport between Francis and Peter.

If the Francis screenwriters had been a little more daring, they could have had a much bigger franchise. Francis could have become a TV star, an adviser to the U.S. President, the leader of a Pacific Island nation, a game-show contestant, a mule-poet looking for his own mule-soul…the sky was the limit.

“Francis the Talking Mule: 7 Film Bluray Collection” will be released by KL Studio Classics on 5.3.22.

More Than Anything Else

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…and besides reminding me that Madonna doesn’t seem all that stable and centered (at least in terms of social-media posts), last night’s pre-Grammy TiKTok video told me that Madonna’s forthcoming biopic, co-written by Madonna, Diablo Cody and Erin Wilson with the Material Girl herself expected to direct, is going to be a problem.

You can just tell. You can just sense it. The aura of self-adoration and general lack of honesty is too pernicious.

I wish it could be otherwise. I wish, in fact, that Elyse Hollander‘s Blonde Ambition (which Madonna read and hated) was being made instead. Because that script, trust me, is a keeper.

Posted on 10.6.18: Yesterday a friend said A Star Is Born would’ve been much more interesting if the genders had been flipped — if the Jackson Maine character had been Sheryl Crowe with a drinking problem and if the ingenue had been some young guy (Shawn Mendes, Jaden Smith…someone in that realm). That way the plotline grooves wouldn’t seem so familiar and the whole vibe and atmosphere would’ve felt fresher and nervier.

I would have been delighted, in fact, if Bradley Cooper had instead directed Elyse Hollander‘s Blonde Ambition, the top-rated Black List script about Madonna‘s struggle to find success as a pop singer in early ’80s Manhattan.

It was reported last summer that Madonna is no fan of the script, and that she doesn’t want the film version to happen. They should make it anyway. If and when Blonde Ambition activates it’ll be a Universal thing. The producers will be RatPac Entertainment, Michael De Luca Productions and Bellevue Productions.

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Judd Apatow’s George Carlin Doc

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…pops sometime in May. No trailer yet but in the meantime…

George Carlin’s American Dream, directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, chronicles the life and work of the legendary comedian.

Carlin’s career spanned half a century during which he headlined 14 HBO comedy specials and appeared on The Tonight Show over 130 times, constantly evolving with the times and staying sharply resonant up until his death in 2008 and beyond. The documentary examines a cultural chameleon who is remembered as one of the most influential stand-up comics of all time.

The two-part documentary tracks Carlin’s rise to fame and opens an intimate window into Carlin’s personal life, including his childhood in New York City, his long struggle with drugs that took its toll on his health, his brushes with the law, his loving relationship with Brenda, his wife of 36 years, and his second marriage to Sally Wade.

Intimate interviews with Carlin and Brenda’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, offer unique insight into her family’s story and her parents enduring love and partnership.

Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Patton Oswalt, Stephen Colbert, Bill Burr, Bette Midler, W. Kamau Bell, Sam Jay, Judy Gold and Jon “demonic white people” Stewart are among those interviewed for the project.

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“Fill The Silence”

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Zelensky’s Grammy speech was rather good — morally urgent, concisely written, well delivered, presumably rehearsed. Did the Oscars blow him off? If so, they shouldn’t have.

Bridges, Not Solos

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Feverish rock-guitar solos are the topic of this interactive N.Y. Times piece, “Why We Can’t Quit the Guitar Solo” by Nabil Ayers.

I’ve never been a fan of wailing, reach-for-the-heavens solos; the short guitar bridges are what matter, and the more concise the better. The 23-second bridge in Eric Clapton‘s “She’s Waiting” (2:10 to 2:33), say. Or the 3:02 to 3:19 bridge in this Jackson Browne song. Or my all-time favorite, the twelve-second bridge in “The Song Is Over” (:42 to :54).

“Was I Surprised?”

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I have this idea that “Pretty Ballerina” is kind of timeless. Okay, maybe not but it feels like a close relation of a 21st Century Emo song. If it had never been recorded and released several decades ago but if someone current had recorded it in precisely this baroque way, would it fit right in or would your music cognoscenti go “the fuck?”

HE to Jett: “If this song was released today, would it fit in as a kind of EMO thing?”
Jett to HE: “It would be more indie pop-rock. Not really Emo by today’s standards.”
HE to Jett: “What is it missing Emo-wise? I thought EMO was defined by a kind of whiny feeling…a soft emotional core.”
Jett to HE: “Emo is just more over-the-top these days, lyrically and production-wise.”
HE to Jett “Ballerina has strings, a falsetto singing voice, a feeling of longing.”
Jett to HE: “That’s fine but Emo is a subculture that’s completely detached from this.”
HE to Jett: “Detached from what? Good lyric writing?”
Jett to HE: “I’m not saying Pretty Ballerina is bad. It’s just not Emo. Today’s Emo is hyper-pop. You’d hate it.”

“Meet Marlon Brando”

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From The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody: “During the New York press junket for the film Morituri, in 1965, its star, Marlon Brando, received a series of journalists for brief interviews at a table in the Hampshire House hotel and toyed with them gleefully and mercilessly.

“This 1966 documentary, by Albert and David Maysles, captures Brando’s transformation of the setup, through the sheer force of his personality, into a grandly ironic variety of performance art.

“Brando brazenly flirts with several female journalists, complimenting them on their appearance, and aggressively questions male interviewers about their looks, too (with particular attention to their fingernails and their clothing). Challenging the interviewers’ readiness to act as ‘hucksters,’ Brando mocks the blatantly promotional conversations with sly or flamboyant sarcasm and disarmingly sincere reflections.

“In a streetside interview, Brando speaks French with a French interviewer, and in response to a political question about the circumstances of black people in the United States, he beckons to a black woman who’s passing by and poses the question to her. The resulting portrait of Brando — sexual, intellectual, aggressive, vulnerable, seductive, rebellious — shows him creating a greater character than any ever written for him: himself.”