Month: August 2022

“Are You Fuckin’ High?”

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Louis CK: “It’s kind of conflated things, Twitter has. I don’t think anyone on Twitter means anything they say. I don’t think a single tweet is really sincere. It’s just a calculation of “what is this tweet gonna do?”, and it’s based [upon] fear and hope, which [are] both dumb things…”

HE response: Not true when it comes to a certain percentage of political tweets, and not true when it comes to “this is what I know” life-wisdom tweets. And I never tweet insincerely. I mean every damn word, even when I’m being facetious.

If A Power Couple’s Movie Fails

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…it’s bad karma for the relationship. Because a film jointly made by a famous couple is like a child, and if the child fails to make its own way by winning respect from critics or at least from paying audiences, this is often…okay, sometimes interpreted as a referendum on the couple itself. And then a certain vibe takes hold.

There is some evidence to back up this theory, but with significant exceptions. The success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? aside, the union of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor endured several mediocre films. The marriage of George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere not only survived the debacle of The Savage Is Loose (‘74) but 25 subsequent years of living until Scott’s passing in ‘99.

I’m mentioning this theory because I’m starting to suspect that the response to Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling (Warner Bros., 9.23), a ‘50s-era white-male-conspiracy creeper in the vein of The Stepford Wives, is not going to strengthen Wilde’s relationship with Harry Styles.

Have I seen Darling? No. What do I actually know about its quality? Apart from the fact that no big-name film festivals will be screening it except for an out–of–competition slot in Venice, very little.

So why don’t I just shut the hell up? Because I can feel it. Because the insect antennae vibrations are ringing in my ears. Largely due to the trailer.

The general presumption is that Amazon’s My Policeman, a gay-themed British indie in which Styles plays the lead (and which is debuting in Toronto), is the better bet.

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Uhm…No Thanks!

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Three to four hundred bills for high-end heating pots at Bed, Bath and Beyond? You can pay even more, of course, for Nancy Meyers-style copper pots**. If you’re into fashion or status statements with kitchen ware, $400 is a drop in the bucket…right? Not this horse.

** No filmmaker living or dead has done more to promote the magnificent owning of copper pots than Meyers.

Don’t Get Me Wrong

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As far as they go, HE approves of high–end compact wallets. The built-in tracking devices are especially welcome as I’m sometimes unsure of my wallet’s hiding place. But I prefer my old–school, king–size, elephant–hide leather wallet, which I’ve had since the mid ‘90s. Ample and manly and worn down by time…an Ernest Hemingway wallet that can hold a passport, wads of cash, eight hard-plastic cards, unfolded Telluride passes and so on.

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Guy In Fourth Row

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On 3.30.22 I pointed out the presence of Bruce Willis as a courtroom observer in The Verdict (’82). But I noticed something new today — an out-of-focus Willis grinning when the foreman asks if the jury can award a sum greater than initially requested, and the corrupt judge (Milo O’Shea) answering that the jury can increase the amount “based on your good judgment.”

The Willis reaction happens between 1:10 and 1:26.

Nearly Half A Billion

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Industry friendo: “Hired in the aftermath of #MeToo, no experience in features and someone known not to even read scripts while at NBC, Amazon’s Jennifer Salke has always been a smoke and mirrors executive, and right now Jeff Bezos is getting snowed by her hype and penchant for overspending. Amazon Studios’ first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power ia rumored to have a price tag of $465 million for the first season alone. And yet little buzz has resulted since Jackson’s original trilogy is all anybody needs. There’s no way to justify that cost. Somebody nicknamed it ‘Late Night Tolkien’ in reference to the fortune that Salke spent and lost on Mindy Kaling’s woke comedy, which ended up minus $40 million.”

Orwellian Fear Calling Shots

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Sasha Stone‘s 8.18 essay about Hollywood’s blue–pill attitudes and certain inconvenient truths that apply blends right in with Tom Leonard‘s Daily Mail piece about woke-minded films tanking or under-performing with Joe and Jane Popcorn.

Here’s an excerpt from Stone’s article:

“The Boomers are responsible for having created most of American culture up to Obama’s presidency. They are on their way out and eventually, the Millennials will be taking over as the dominant generation that is inventing and re-inventing American culture. That is good in some ways, bad in others.

“The Boomers aren’t really going to help us through this moment because they remember their counter-culture days and that makes them more sympathetic to the ‘woke’ movement.

“My generation, Gen-X, is the only group that has maintained most of our subversive, or questioning authority mindset, which is why you see a lot of Gen-Xers like me pushing the boundaries of what is and what isn’t acceptable to talk about, think about or write about. This is the first time in my life I’m grateful to be part of that generation.

“I come from the unique vantage point of having spent the last 28 years of my life, exactly half, online. That means I had a full life before smartphones, the internet and social media. But if you imagine everyone you know who is around 28 or younger, they have spent their entire lives with an internet, and much of it with social media and smart phones.

“Human evolution, culture, society — it’s all a dance. It’s about adaptation, survival, endurance. It is a test for who has the right stuff to make it through.

“Zoomers have come of age as social media natives. They know no other way of living except that they use their phones a lot. Everything that happens to them happens on their phones. They have already grown up knowing that they must self-censor or they will be swarmed and attacked by their peers.

“Unless they make a conscious effort to unplug, which I hope they do, Zoomers are never coming out of their online spheres. That is the future, full stop. But we’re not quite there yet. There is still a whole America that isn’t yet living online the way Zoomers do. They’ll turn out to buy tickets to movies if it’s something that catches their fancy but it isn’t something they’re committed to as previous generations were.

“Zoomers are most definitely in the Matrix and blue-pilled. They don’t yet know, most of them I figure, that they can rebel against the system if they want to. They tend to be mostly agreeable and compliant when it comes to a society ordering them how to think, speak, behave, etc.

“But there will come a day when that changes. They will likely push back against all of it. And THAT, my friends, will be a time to be alive.

“Right now, though, we’re dealing with a media that doesn’t quite get the message yet about why people are going to tune out content that they see as inorganic and contrived to serve a specific agenda. The new religion of the [wacko] left is more or less like any religion. Where virtue is the goal, nothing else can survive. The idea is that they want to be good, and so all movies have to also be about being good.”

From Kat Rosenfeld‘s “The Progressive Puritans Will Fail,” an 8.18.22 Uherd essay:

“Here’s the thing: you can only see them online, and here they are preaching to the choir in an otherwise empty church. It is only the true believers who are left, feeding on and off each other, stewing in fear and resentment while everyone else goes outside and has fun. And as loud as they might seem to themselves, and each other, within the confines of their echo chamber, the truth is that outside of it they’re not just irrelevant, but nearly invisible. Their power, and their numbers, are diminished by the mere existence of normal people living normal lives.”

A Tragedy That I Missed This

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I’ve visited Paris 14 or 15 times since the ’70s, and not once have I attended a concert at the Stade de France. This mass performance of The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” happened during the summer of ’19, and I’m saying here and now that it breaks my heart that I didn’t share in this moment of pure rhapsodic power-chord joy.

15-and-Unders vs. Traditional Cinema

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A little more than three years ago N.Y. Times reporter Kyle Buchanan posted an intensively researched piece about the future (if any) of movies, especially in the minds of Millennials and Zoomers. The piece was called “How Will the Movies (As We Know Them) Survive the Next 10 Years?“.

The basic answer was that movie loyalty is a thing of the past and that cinema culture as most of us know it isn’t likely to survive.

The keeper quote was from Kumail Nanjiani. The basic thrust was about 20somethings not being into movies as a rule, and watching them sporadically at best. The quote is pasted below. It would seem that Nanjiani’s “friend who directs big movies” was on to something.

Today the youngest Zoomers are ten years old, and anyone younger is Gen Alpha. For years the running joke with Millennials and Zoomers is that ADD isn’t a bug but a feature. I’m presuming that the Kumail observation goes double or triple when it comes to 15-and-unders.

Ask a typical tween or young teen what their favorite films are and a good percentage, I’m guessing, will give you a slightly quizzical look. Focusing on anything longer than a TikTok video is a challenge. Phone screen and streaming content, sure, but I would be hugely surprised to hear that even a small percentage watch “films.”

We all understand that attention spans, at least as far as scripted stand-alone dramas and comedies lasting 90 minutes or longer are concerned, have been diminishing among younger people since the ‘80s.

When I was a tween and young teen, I was watching actual films made by name-brand filmmakers. I saw King Kong and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms when I was eight or nine. I saw and loved Red River when I was ten. I knew who Julie Christie, Terrence Stamp, David Hemmings, Olivia Hussey, Paul Newman, John Wayne, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and Kenneth Tobey were. I watched adventures, comedies. My mother used to go to Ingmar Bergman films and come home and rave about them.

What do I actually know about where young Zoomers and Generation Alpha are at in terms of cinema? Not much but I can guess.

Present-tense despair: If there was ever a demographic whose taste in films represents a blend of Dante’s Inferno (or my idea of it) and a metaphor for the ruination and death of cinema as you and I and people like David Fincher, Ari Aster, Todd Field, Peter Farrelly, Luca Guadagnino and Chris Nolan know it, it’s almost certainly tweens and young teens of 2022.

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Hilarious Smile Drop

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In no way, shape or form is HE criticizing Ben Affleck for his abrupt mirth abandonment in this video clip. I’m applauding him, in fact. We all do this at parties, but Affleck does it better. The laugh and the smile disappear in the space of one-third of a second. You can’t say it’s not funny. It’s like a rehearsed bit in a comedy.

@faux.celeb.love Jennifer Lopez & Ben Affleck. His smile drops so fast 😳 ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ #jlo #jenniferlopez #benaffleck #batman #celebgossip #teenagedirtbagbaby #foryoupage #yourfyp #popculture #celebrities ♬ original sound – faux.celeb.love

Looks Like D.C. Comics Villain

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Those glaring dark eyes. That butch-boss Marine haircut. The garish rouge splotch on her cheeks. Those thick red lips. Those dangling earrings. All she needs is a big fat lighted cigar, the kind that Edward G. Robinson smoked in Key Largo.

Wyoming Republican House candidate Harriet Hageman, who defeated Liz Cheney in Tuesday’s Republican Wyoming primary, looks like an ally (or perhaps a nemesis) of Colin Farrell‘s Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot. She has the grotesque super-villain look down cold.

Queerty‘s Graham Gremore: “Despite appearing to draw her makeup inspiration from Tina Burner’s makeover of Rosé on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Hageman actually hates LGBTQ people.”