The thing that gets me about England is that fewer than 5% of the households have air conditioning. I know what it feels like to weaken and slowly melt. I was living in Paris during the summer of ‘03 (23 rue Tourlaque) so don’t tell me. All we had were fans.
HE is experiencing a Fairfield County brown-out as we speak…right now. But everyone has a.c., of course.
Regional power will be restored around 10 pm, give or take.
I’d like to believe that Halloween Ends (Universal, 10.14) will be the last and final flick in this soul-draining franchise. A pox upon those who always pay to see witless franchise horror flicks and almost never support elevated horror. We are what we eat, and we make our own beds.
My favorite David Gordon Green films are Pineapple Express (except for Danny McBride‘s performance) and the Terrence Malick-y George Washington.
A few months ago I watched the first episode of The Last Movie Stars (HBO Max, 7.21), a six-part Ethan Hawke documentary about Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward that seemed, based on episode #1, to be a celebration piece — a portrait of a fairly wonderful, for the most part glorious relationship.
I posted my understanding of the six-part doc series around 10 days ago.
Paul and Joanne first met in ’53 or thereabouts, got married in 1958 and stayed together for 50 years. Paul died on 9.26.08.
Hawke’s admiration for Newman-Woodward is upfront and unfettered, and his fascination with the transformative acting world of New York in the 1950s is fully conveyed. But this seems to basically be a valentine doc, and having dug into Shawn Levy‘s “Paul Newman: A Life” (’09), a very thoroughly researched and written biography…I shouldn’t say more but the basic approach seems to have been one of serious admiration.
I’ve since been told that this entirely isn’t the case. I’m told that Hawke doesn’t mention the name of a journalist, Nancy Bacon, with whom Newman had an affair in ’68 and ’69, but the affair is definitely mentioned. It’s also acknowledged that Newman was a functioning alcoholic, and that the booze was a real problem for a while. Woodward even kicked Newman out of their Westport home at one point, or so the story goes.
So I’ll be marathoning it starting tomorrow.
Before last night’s screening of Nope I had never paid much attention to Keke Palmer. I’m sorry but nothing she’d appeared in seemed edgy or alluring enough. But now Palmer is a name — she’s crossed over. And not just over her noteworthy Nope performance, but because of the Being Mortal thing.
I probably shouldn’t mention this, I realize, because everyone in the media seems to have sworn an oath of silence. But why is everyone being so silent?
I’m sorry but there was that kerfuffle last April (technically in late March) in which people were asking “what happened on the Being Mortal set, and what was it that Bill Murray did to piss somebody off so badly that the whole movie shut down…how is it that Aziz Ansari’s stab at launching a directing career was blown to pieces because of something that happened of a relatively minor, non-assaultive nature…something that nobody will talk about?”
Filming on Being Mortal was suspended after the mysterious, never-described incident of 3.28.22, and then the whole project vaporized. Nearly four months have passed and that film has been all but forgotten about.
All we know is that Murray did something he “thought was funny but it wasn’t taken that way.”
Palmer was asked about the incident on a Nope red carpet, and apart from saying that she loved working with Ansari she claimed to know nothing.
When’s the last time that a film stopped shooting over someone taking offense over something that happened that didn’t involve anything felonious?
I KNOW NOTHING, but the fact that nobody will say anything almost certainly proves that some kind of hot-button, hot-potato, avert-your-eyes issue is behind it. Murray aside nobody has said boo about it for three and a half months, which suggests that the complainer wasn’t a makeup or wardrobe person or a craft services guy or a truck driver.
Keke Palmer on production of Searchlight Pictures ‘Being Mortal’ pic.twitter.com/3Q5GmXw6ec
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) July 19, 2022
On 4.29.22 or two and two-thirds months ago, I posted a theory about Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie: “As far as I can determine there’s only one way for Gerwig to go story-wise, and that’s to make a Barbie variation of The Truman Show” — a film about whether it’s better to live a life of plastic, isolated perfection or one that grapples with the unruly ups and downs of the real world.
Four weeks and one day later or on 5.27, World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy posted the following description: ‘The film is set in Barbieland, a beautiful, colorful society with Kens and Barbies. Ryan Gosling‘s Ken, said to be a ‘complete doofus’, is obsessed with Margot Robbie‘s Barbie, but loves the real world for all the reasons Barbie hates it (beauty standards, sexism, etc).
“Gerwig’s film eventually becomes a ‘fish out of water comedy’ as Ken and Barbie leave Barbieland for the real world. This motivates the Mattel CEO (Will FerrellJason on Twitter: “Sounds like the meta aspects of Gerwig’s Little Women mixed with Splash and Truman Show [with] Jacques Demy musical influences.”
Jordan Peele‘s Nope (Universal, 7.22) is a fairly empty diversion — a wacko visual-effects thrill ride and a Signs-like alien visitation thing.
The alien stuff aside, it has three cool elements — (a) a 1998 flashback scene involving a chimpanzee named Gordy, (b) the re-birth of Fry’s Electronics, the defunct chain store that died from Covid in early ’21, and (c) incessant third-act appearances by an army of “tall boys” or “air dancers” — those shimmering tube-like balloons that used-car lots use to attract attention.
It’s about the owners of a remote horse ranch somewhere in the Southwest, a brother and sister named OJ and Emerald Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer) who inherit the ranch when their horse-loving dad (Keith David) is killed by falling objects, apparently dropped by mean-as-fuck aliens.
Bit by bit and more and more, the aliens (whose presence is chiefly signified by saucer-like spaceships and a massive, floating, cloud-like bedsheet thing) begin to intimidate and then terrify OJ and Emerald.
And then OJ and Emerald hire a Fry’s guy (Brandon Perea) to capture video images of the visitors, and then they bring in a documentarian (Michael Wincott‘s “Antlers Holst”, a character cut from the Robert Shaw/”Quint” mold) to capture the alien spacecraft on celluloid. And then the threat element increases. And then it ends.
I saw Nope last night. I developed a thesis this morning that the aliens are a metaphor for white people’s oppression of BIPOCs. This is what Peele does, of course — racial re-fittings of genre tropes. Get Out was a racial spin on The Stepford Wives, and Us was a horror film about doppelgangers but finally about the absolute terror of Ken Kragen‘s “Hands Across America.”
Friendo: “Naah, you’re reading too much into it…Nope is just a UFO thriller.” HE: “But it’s not SAYING anything except ‘boo!’ It has no content…UNLESS you, the viewer, interpret the aliens as metaphors for white oppression. THEN it’s saying something.”
Nope has no structure, no real story, nothing that digs in and pays off. It’s an alien horror film equivalent of a Jasper Johns painting — paint flung and dripped and splattered upon the canvas.
Basic Nope strategy: Start with basic spooky UFO premise and then (a) throw out the rule book, (b) disconnect the logic terminals, (c) throw everything you can think of at the canvas, and (d) see what sticks.
Oh, and by the way? It’s really hard to understand Palmer and especially Kaluuya. As Eddie Murphy might say if he catches Nope, “I don’t what the fuck these guys are sayin’.” Remember Barbara Billingsley’s imitation of black “jive” in 1980’s Airplane? That’s how Palmer talks — half Billingsley, half vocal fry. Remember Murphy’s imitation of James Brown with those guttural scat riffs? That’s how Kaluuya sounds. I was able to understand him maybe 20% of the time, if that.
And they don’t look like brother and sister. Palmer could be Keith David’s daughter, no prob, but no way is Kaluuya his son. Kaluuya’s parents are from Uganda, Palmer’s are from Chicago, David’s are from Harlem/Queens.
No discipline, this fucking film. It’s “imaginative,” if you want to call it that. As slow and talky and stodgy as Cleopatra was, it at least made sense. Which is more than you can say for Nope. So Cleopatra is better.
Say it again — when Gordy appears, the film comes alive. What Gordy has to do with the dumbshit rascal white-oppressor aliens is anyone’s guess.
Steven Yeun costars in Nope, and I couldn’t understand why he was in it. Yes, he has something to do with Gordy (I won’t say) and he wears a red suit and a big white cowboy hat in one scene, but he has NOTHING to do with anything.
I need to re-watch this movie with subtitles some day.
Why the hell is Kaluuya’s character named “OJ,” of all things? That’s a statement of some kind, but what?
If Dore Schary had somehow returned from the dead and become the producer on this film, before filming began he would have invited Peele to lunch and said, “Look, I’m just a Jewish white-guy producer and I don’t know much about African Americans or horse ranches or Fry’s Electronics, but WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MOVIE ABOUT?? You don’t know, do you? You’re just farting around with spooky alien visitors and trying to cook up something different and trippy, but THIS MOVIE IS BULLSHIT, JORDAN…you know it and I know it.”
And Peele would reply, “It’s a metaphor about white people’s oppression of BIPOCs.” And Schary would reply, “What are BIPOCs?” And Peele would say, “Don’t worry about it, bruh…I got this.”
No white-ass producer would dare say “bullshit” to Peele, of course, lest he/she be accused of harboring racist attitudes. Which is why Nope turned out this way…a crazy, impressionistic, Jasper Johns-like mess. Peele was apparently given carte blanche control, and this is what happens.
I do approve, however, of Peele bringing Fry’s back to life after it shut down all 31 locations in early ‘21. And I’l always approve of tube men and chimpanzees and stuff like that.
I was studying Palmer closely throughout the film, by the way. I don’t know if it was Palmer who didn’t get along with Bill Murray on the set of Being Mortal, but if it was I can see why. Palmer is buried inside herself and cranked up about everything, and Murray, I’m guessing, thought she was “wrapped too tight for New Orleans” and tried some kind of stilly, loosening-up prank, and she reacted badly, I’m guessing. She not only told him to back off but brought the temple down. Again — I don’t know what happened. I just want to make that clear. But Palmer excited my imagination.
Scott Mantz, one of the happiest, smiling-est and most effusive film buffs and Will Rogers-like operators in the early-screening fraternity, has posted a “no” reaction to Jordan Peele‘s Nope.
Yesterday Nextbestpicture.com‘s Matt Neglia posted what seems to me like a reasonably savvy and comprehensive guess list of what the hot fall festivals may (and probably will to a large extent) be screening. I’ve heard this and that, and Neglia’s guesses seem pretty spot-on. Boldfaced HE = exceptional interest and unseen (and in some cases Cannes-viewed) approval.
Which projected festival are giving me the slight willies? Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, for one. Aronofsky’s The Whale, for another.
Why isn’t Neglia projecting Blonde to play Telluride? Venice and Toronto but not Telluride? Doesn’t figure.
VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The Banshees Of Inisherin (Dir. Martin McDonagh) – WORLD PREMIERE
Bardo (Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu) – WORLD PREMIERE / HE
Blonde (Dir. Andrew Dominik) – WORLD PREMIERE / HE
Bones & All (Dir. Luca Guadagnino) – WORLD PREMIERE / HE
Don’t Worry Darling (Dir. Olivia Wilde) – WORLD PREMIERE
The Master Gardener (Dir. Paul Schrader) – WORLD PREMIERE / HE
Tár (Dir. Todd Field) – WORLD PREMIERE / HE
The Whale (Dir. Darren Aronofsky) – WORLD PREMIERE / HE
TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL
Aftersun (Dir. Charlotte Wells)
Armageddon Time (Dir. James Gray) / HE
Bardo (Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu) / HE
Broker (Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Close (Dir. Lukas Dhont) / HE
Decision To Leave (Dir. Park Chan-wook)
EO (Dir. Jerzy Skolimowski)
Holy Spider (Dir. Ali Abbasi)
The Master Gardener (Dir. Paul Schrader) / HE
One Fine Morning (Dir. Mia Hansen-Løve)
The Pale Blue Eye (Dir. Scott Cooper) – WORLD PREMIERE / HE
See How They Run (Dir. Tom George) – WORLD PREMIERE
She Said (Dir. Maria Schrader) – WORLD PREMIERE / HE
Showing Up (Dir. Kelly Reichardt) / HE
The Son (Dir. Florian Zeller) – WORLD PREMIERE
Tár (Dir. Todd Field) / HE
Tori and Lokita (Dir. The Dardenne Brothers)
Triangle Of Sadness (Dir. Ruben Östlund) / HE
The Whale (Dir. Darren Aronofsky) / HE
Women Talking (Dir. Sarah Polley) – WORLD PREMIERE
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has posted an essay about the iconic pairing of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, formerly known as Bennifer or, if you will, “B-Lo”, and their recent Las Vegas marriage and especially Gigli, their 2003 box-office bomb that was directed by Martin Brest.
But what got my attention was the following passage: “And, of course, just as Liz and Dick had a famous bad movie to launch them, so did J. Lo and Ben. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had begun their torrid love affair on the set of Cleopatra in 1961, and by the time the movie came out, in 1963, it seemed to be all about the two of them.
“The same can be said for Gigli, the infamous debacle of a 2003 romantic comedy. Lopez and Affleck first got involved during the shooting of it, in 2002, and by the time the film came out, in August 2003, what was happening on screen seemed a mere footnote to the real-life dramatic series of their romance.
“Cleopatra was an iconic movie, a four-hour spectacle of ancient glitz bloated with expense and designed to lure audiences back from their pesky new loyalty to the small screen. Nothing about Gigli, when it came out, looked especially iconic; it wasn’t showy or expensive, and it was given such a rude collective backhand by the critics that it died a quick death.”
HE response: I don’t think it’s quite fair to dismiss Cleopatra as a “bad movie.” It’s a slog to sit through, of course, but it’s so handsomely and expensively produced and Leon Shamroy‘s cinematography is luscious eye candy, and Rex Harrison’s Julius Caesar is crisp and rousing, I feel, especially during the opening 15 or 20 minutes, and Roddy McDowell’s Ceasar Augustus is easily the best adult performance he ever gave and Martin Landau’s Ruffio is very good also, and even Burton and Taylor have their moments. And you can’t fault those first 15 or 20 minutes, and the opening credit sequence is wonderful. So you can’t just dismiss it as a “bad movie,” although it obviously has pacing and story-tension problems.
Told by Bill Maher to Cedric the Entertainer…begins at zero and ends at 2:35.
Jordan Peele‘s Nope opens on Friday, 7.22, which really means Thursday night. I’ll catch it at 7 pm this evening.
Premise: “After random objects falling from the sky result in the death of their father, ranch-owning siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer) attempt to capture video evidence of an unidentified flying object with the help of tech salesman Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) and documentarian Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott).”
If your first name is Antlers, what do your friends call you — Ant? Anty?
[Tapped out this morning in comment thread for Harry Styles story]: “I’m standing up for straight X-factor male identity in the public eye. I’m standing up for normal boilerplate hetero guyness.”
“Normal”, that is, according to social gender standards of ten years ago. Today all bets are off, at least within urban Left and East Coast cultures.