The closest competitors are Charlie Meadows (aka “Madman Mundt”) in Barton Fink (’91) and, of course, Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski (’98). But the heroin-addicted Roland Turner in Inside Llewyn Davis (’13) is nastier and snarlier, and therefore funnier.
Goodman: “Well, if you make a livin’ at it, more power to ya. (beat) Solo act?” Isaac: “Yeah, now.” Goodman: “Now? Used to…what? Work with a cat? Every time you played a C-major he’d puke a hairball?” Isaac: “Used to have a partner.” Goodman: “What happened?” Isaac: “Killed himself off the George Washington Bridge.” Goodman: (beat) “Well, shit, I don’t blame him. I couldn’t take it either, havin’ to play Jimmy Crack Corn every night. Uh, pardon me for saying so but that’s pretty fuckin’ stupid, isn’t it? George Washington Bridge? You throw yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge…traditionally. George Washington Bridge? Who does that? What was he, a dumbbell?” Isaac: “Not really.”
…as Elvis Presley. A sweatin’, hard-workin’ performance start to finish. No one will deny this. I said that from the get-go.
Bruce Campbell, who portrayed Elvis Presley in 2002's "Bubba Ho-Tep," shares his reaction to Austin Butler's work in #Elvis: "He tried, didn't he? He sure tried hard." pic.twitter.com/McooRmCqr3
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward acted together in ten films, but they never really hit the jackpot, quality-wise. Only their first outing, Martin Ritt‘s The Long, Hot Summer (58), holds up reasonably well by today’s standards. The next four — Leo McCarey‘s Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! (’58), Mark Robson‘s From The Terrace (’60), Martin Ritt‘s Paris Blues (’61) and Melville Shavelson‘s A New Kind of Love — are on the dicey or strained or underwhelming side.
James Goldstone‘s Winning (’69) and Stuart Rosenberg‘s WUSA (’70) are decent but unexceptional. Rosenberg’s The Drowning Pool (’75), a Lew Harper detective film, wasn’t anywhere near as good as Jack Smight‘s Harper (’66). Harry and Son (’84) was never anyone’s idea of a knockout, and their final film together, James Ivory‘s Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (’90) is…well, it’s okay.
And yet nobody acknowledges in Ethan Hawke‘s The Last Movie Stars that the Paul-and-Joanne brand was never that stellar. Separately they were great from time to time (Newman more than Woodward) but never as a couple.
One of Hawke’s strategies is to choose clips that reflect Paul and Joanne’s real-life issues. Example: Prior to shooting The Verdict director Sidney Lumet challenged Newman to use his own drinking problem to give dimension to the character of Frank Galvin, a lushy, ambulance-chasing Boston attorney. It would follow that Hawke might also use a clip from Mark Robson‘s The Prize (’63), in which Newman plays an alcoholic novelist who’s been awarded a Novel Prize in Literature. But he doesn’t.
We’re allowed to mention the fact that Elvis Presley was attracted to women who had petite, geisha-like feet and that the sight of non-dainty feet made him run for cover.
We’re allowed to acknowledge that John Wayne had relatively small feet for a guy who stood six-four — his shoe size was eight and 1/2.
We’re allowed to write about Greta Garbo having had long feet and long toes — a combination that would have made Presley shriek with horror.
But we’re not allowed to mention the fact that a certain, much beloved actress had feet that might (I say “might”) have been larger than her husband’s, and possibly larger than Wayne’s.
Ethan Hawke would never touch this topic with a 20-foot pole, I can tell you.
I can only say generally that perception-wise, a woman with man toes is…well, somewhat on the periphery. That’s fair to say, surely.
The well-reviewed French-language docudrama is listed on the AMC website without opening dates or showtimes. If it were playing today I would see it right away, no hesitation. I’m an agnostic Hindu LSD guy, but Notre Dame is my cathedral. I’ve been eyeballing it upclose for 45 years or so. I’ve been to mass twice there.
Oh, and by the way? The fact that investigators have never revealed what caused the fire tells you it was embers from a workman’s cigarette. Of course it was, but the Macron government doesn’t want to alienate the French proletariat.
“Jean-Jacques Annaud’s dramatization of the 2019 Notre-Dame fire holds a vice-like grip as it records the 12 hours or so of the blaze in forensic detail. Considering we all know how it ended — spoiler: the cathedral didn’t fall into the Seine — it’s a seriously impressive feat.
“The fire’s cause is kept vague. It’s yet to be established in real life, though Annaud hedges his bets by showing us both a workman’s rogue ciggie and an electrical short. But when the flames start to consume the upper reaches of the cathedral, melting scaffolding and pouring molten lead through the mouths of its gargoyles and on the city below, the 2,200 degree blaze takes an almost demonic presence at the heart of the drama. It’s a formidable villain.
“From there, Notre-Dame on Fire zeroes in on the often haphazard, but ultimately heroic response to the unfolding disaster. The Paris traffic, sluggish response times (early photos of the fire on social media are initially dismissed as fakes), locked doors, and the struggle to get firefighting equipment up medieval spiral staircases all ramp up the tension.
“But Notre-Dame on Fire is really good at conveying an iconic building’s place in a nation’s soul, and the grief that its potential loss can provoke. Most of its symbolism is well-earned and resonant.”
There’s nothing “wrong” with the strategy behind Ethan Hawke’s TheLastMovie Stars, the six-part HBO Max series that examines the lives of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
It’s actually half-inspired in a workmanlike way. Shot during the pandemic dog days, the (roughly) 360-minute epic leans upon 20-plus actor pallies (George Clooney, Laura Linney, Sam Rockwell, Vincent D’Onofrio, et. al.) to voice scores of transcribed interviews conducted by Newman collaborator Stuart Stern along with 20-plus original interviews. (All of it Zoomed.) The doc reps a livelier, more inquisitive approach to this kind of worshipful tribute, and Hawke certainly deserves points for orchestrating.
But it wore me down. I felt the sand particles of my soul starting to drain out of the hourglass. Hawke’s opus gradually made me feel as I was carrying it rather than vice versa. Too much gush, not enough meat. It was sometime during the third episode that I started to say “man, I’m getting a little sick of all these performative Zoom players expressing so much damnable delight and fascination for this rightly admired power couple…can we wrap this up, please?”
Three hours would’ve sufficed; I might have even been okay with four. But not six.
I’m certainly indebted to Hawke for educating me about Newman-Woodward in various ways that I wasn’t expecting. Newman’s description of himself as an “emotionalRepublican” is not something I’m likely to forget. We all knew he was a steady beer drinker but somehow the term “problem alcoholic” had never sunk in. The doc afforded me a fuller understanding of Newman’s journey, of how much better he was when he got older and stoppedtryingsohard. And it made me want to watch Hud for the 13th or 14th time.
I’d like to believe that my own Hud-like traits have been schooled and diminished over the years, and perhaps even locked in a box. But they haven’t been erased, and I strongly suspect that traces of same existed within Newman himself. Nobody’s perfect; some people behave badly from time to time. Hawke’s doc implies this but mostly slip-slides away.
San Diego ComicCon 2011 vs. the ‘22 version. I’m not saying things haven’t changed over the last 11 years. I’m asking what, if anything, has changed. Heart open, ready to listen…lay it on me.
During a CinemaCon 2022 presentation, Olivia Wilde said that Don’t Worry, Darling (Warner Bros., 9.23) had been inspired by Inception, The Matrix and The Truman Show. To that I would add Don Siegel‘s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (’56), Martin Ritt‘s No Down Payment (’57) and Bryan Forbes‘ The Stepford Wives (’75).
Eight words: The white guys are up to no good.
The second video captures Wilde’s presentation of the Don’t Worry, Darling trailer at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Tuesday, 4.26.22, and of course the moment when she was served custody papers by lawyers representing ex-fiance Jason Sudeikis. Wilde and Sudeikis have two kids. They split up over Wilde’s affair with Don’t Worry, Darling star Harry Styles, which reportedly began sometime in October 2020. Wilde and Styles are still together.
Before moving into Graceland in the spring of ’57, Elvis Presley and his mom and dad (Gladys, Vernon) lived in eight Memphis residences, starting with their initial arrival in November 1948.
6. They moved to 2414 Lamar Avenue in 1954 — the year when things began to happen for Elvis.
7. In late 1955 they moved into a slightly nicer home at 1414 Getwell Road.
8. In March 1956, two months after Elvis struck it rich with sales of “Heartbreak Hotel”, they all moved into a spacious ranch-style home at 1034 Audubon Drive.
Steven Spielberg‘s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans (Universal, 11.22), co-written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner, will have its big premiere at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival. Word around the campfire is that it’s not a Telluride-type film, but it takes all sorts to make a fall festival world.
Official synopsis: “The Fabelmans is a coming-of-age story about a young man’s discovery of a shattering family secret and an exploration of the power of movies to help us see the truth about each other and ourselves.”
The ensemble cast includes Michelle Williams as Spielberg’s mom and Gabriel LaBelle as young Spielberg, plus Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Jeannie Berlin, Julia Butters, Robin Bartlett, Keeley Karsten and Judd Hirsch.
What about that Rodrigo Perez report about David Lynch allegedly playing a John Ford-like director who bawls out young Spielberg/LaBelle?
