Earlier today another Toronto-to-LaGuardia Air Canada flight was cancelled — HE’s second in 24 hours. Over bad weather, they said. And I guess I just snapped. I trudged through customs for the fourth time, found my suitcase and booked myself on a Flixbus — a ten-hour journey from downtown Toronto to midtown Manhattan (10 pm to 7:30 am)
A 6.2.22 N.Y. Times piece by A.O. Scott stirs an old pot of porridge — classic, decades-old notions of Hollywood being a liberal town with (many of) the studio-era films routinely espousing conservative, community-friendly values, at least up until the late ‘60s.
It’s titled “Are The Movies Liberal?”, and it struck me as noteworthy as I observed a similar thing in a 1995 Los Angeles article, called “Right Face.”
Compare two paragraphs from the Scott piece…
…to a couple of paragraphs from my Clinton-era probe:
We love Air Canada!…delays, weather phantoms, seemingly chickenshit excuses. How are things in Queens as we speak? WeatherBug says cloudy.
Beware of anyone who claps his or her hands as a way of getting your attention in a crowded room. One clap = you get up and leave.
…for decades if not centuries, right up there with Andy Warhol‘s “in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”
In a 6.122 THR article by Borys Kit, Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman is described as “an expensive vanity project.” The statement is Kit’s own, and I’m sorry but it’s bullshit.
The Irishman is easily one of the greatest films of the 21st Century, and the last 30 or 40 minutes delivers perhaps the most devastating passage about grief, regret and facing the end of one’s life in the history of movies.
For the 47th time, “Wild Strawberries with handguns.”
Parasite is a toy movie…a toy movie about class conflict, made by a serious, super-crafty cineaste and blah blah. Don’t crank me up again about the drunken con-artist family letting the fired maid into the house, etc. History will not be kind.
If there’s a general consensus about the Depp-Heard verdict, it’s probably something like “it’s finally over…let it go…whatever the truth of it, Depp seemed more honest than Heard plus he’s certainly more likable…it’s gone on long enough…let it go.”
From “Why We Love to Watch a Woman Brought Low,” a 5.20 N.Y. Times essay by Jessica Bennett:
“One might have thought — or, at least, I might have thought — that we’d be in a more enlightened place by now. And yet despite the public reckonings of #MeToo and the recent reexaminations of pop culture figures — Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, Janet Jackson and others — there is precious little introspection over the widespread hatred of Ms. Heard.
“This trial seems to have exposed some of the rhetorical weaknesses of #MeToo. ‘Believe women’ for example — a phrase that was meant to underscore how rare it is for a woman to lie about her own abuse — had somehow morphed into ‘believe all women,’ which left no room for the outlier. That has apparently become, as the comedian Chris Rock put it this week, ‘Believe all women…except Amber Heard.’
“The intent of that early slogan was, in part, to encourage the public to treat women who speak up with basic dignity and respect, however messy and imperfect they or their stories may be. Yet none of that seems to have trickled down here.”
@gamethinkingtips Initially, I believed #amberheard. Then I watched the trial, saw the evidence… & realized that I’d been CONNED 😡 @gamethinkingtips #justiceforjohnnydepp #deppvsheard #johnnydepp ♬ original sound – Amy Jo Kim
Still in Toronto due to a pair of Air Canada flight cancellations yesterday (one due to a sick pilot, the other due to New York weather)…you don’t want to know. Not to mention Justin Trudeau‘s infuriating insistence upon masking. I left Paris yesterday morning at 8 am. By the time I arrive tonight I’ll have been travelling for roughly 42 hours.
Here’s what Gene Maddaus’ 6.1 Variety story partly reported about today’s Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial verdict:
Here’s how Maddaus summed it all up:
And here’s the Variety headline above Maddaus ’ story — technically correct but obviously a spin job — an attempt to portray Depp’s victory as a bit muddled, a half-and-halfer.
I’m truly astonished that Johnny Depp has won his defamation case against Amber Heard.
I thought the system had irrevocably decided the following: (a) “believe all women or at the very least give them the benefit of the doubt” and (b) “older white guys are generally bad news, especially the rich ones who’ve struggled with drugs.”
Is it fair to interpret this shocking verdict as some kind of seminal #MeToo setback? As in “the carte blanche era has come to an end”? Or is it just a matter of “Amber couldn’t sell it but Johnny could”? You tell me.
Something about sitting in seat 18C, high above the Atlantic and coping with vague screaming boredom makes me want to listen to lightweight mid ‘60s pop songs, especially those that lean on catchy harmonies.
But after doing this for five or ten I tell myself “no, stop this, enough.”
And that turn in the road leads to one of my all-time favorite mid ‘60s ditties — Tony Powers and George Fischoff’s “98.6”, an unpretentious shuffle tune with arguably one of the catchiest melodies ever crafted. Lead vocal by Keith (still with us) and backing harmonies by The Tokens (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”).
You need to try and imagine listening to “98.6” in a car driven by a friend, and you’re both ripped.
Two days hence Watcher (IFC Midnight), which I’ve been hyping since last January, finally opens. It’s an expert, quietly creepy, Polanski-level thriller, and well worth the price.
Set in present-day Bucharest and costarring Maika Monroe (It Follows), Karl Glusman and Burn Gorman, Chloe Okuno and Zack Ford‘s film is unquestionably scary and unnerving.
In my view it stops short of elevated horror — it’s more of a low-key, Roman Polanski-level thriller in the vein of Repulsion and The Tenant. First-rate chills and anxieties ensue. And not the “midnight movie” kind either.
Scream-level morons may respond in their usual way, but Watcher is as good as it gets with this kind of palette and approach.