Month: August 2022

One of the most loathsome and repellent social media practices is to rip into someone famous for having tweeted unenlightened stuff a decade or more ago. Or, in the case of the deeply annoying Taika Waititi, nine years ago.

Tweeting transphobic dismissals or dead-naming a trans person is unfortunate within any time frame, but trans consciousness has obviously evolved by leaps and bounds over the last five or six years, and it doesn’t seem quite fair to roast Waititi today for having been behind the curve in 2013.

I’ll never be a Waititi fan, but the fanatics need to cut the guy a little slack.

Friendo: “I don’t think her grillz work. She should cut her hair and wear suits or something.”
HE: “I wasn’t even sure what ‘grillz’ meant when she said that. Teeth, of course, but what the fuck? Fucking blue teeth?”
Friendo: “It’s a hip-hop thang. She looks like a midget.”
HE: “She’s in good shape mentally and spiritually, but she looks like a kind of mannequin balloon. She doesn’t look human.”
Friendo: “Her body is so tiny and her head so big. It’s a strange look. Makes me sad. I followed her and admired her my whole life. But she’s umable to handle age
HE: “She’s not that small. 5’4 and 1/2 inches.”
Friendo: “I think age has made her recede a bit.”

Urban Dictionary: “Caps or fitting worn over ones teeth, either on top, bottom, or both. To be mostly made out of gold, silver, diamond, or platinum.

Two lines are spoken in the teaser, and I can’t make heads or tails. I need help, please — thanks.

Timothee Chalamet: “Yadohn pickalum peppers.”
Taylor Russell: “Waikiki is forev-yuh.”‘

Costarring in this Reagan-era road odyssey (UA Releasing, 11.23) are Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Jessica Harper, Chloë Sevigny, Francesca Scorsese (daughter of Marty) and David Gordon Green.

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Attorney General Merrick Garland, a highly cautious man, didn’t want to say anything about the FBI Mar-a-Lago document raid or reveal the contents of the search warrant, but MAGA nutters have created such a stink since the raid that Garland has decided to unseal the search warrant, if only to take heat off the FBI.

Former President Donald Trump (aka Orange Plague) could have revealed the contents of the warrant any time since the raid, but he hasn’t.

“Given the intense public interest presented by a search of a residence of a former President, the government believes these factors favor unsealing the search warrant, its accompanying Attachments A and B, and the Property Receipt, absent objection from the former President.” — from DOJ motion to unseal Mar-a-Lago search warrant.

Obviously The Menu is a black social satire. The focus is on the repulsion that some gifted artists feel for consumers, including the rich elite. The idea, apparently, is that Slowik, the celebrity chef behind an exclusive restaurant called Hawthorne, is a sociopath. He’s probably a variation of Leslie Banks‘ “Count Zaroff” in The Most Dangerous Game (’32). The menu ingredients probably have something to do with cannibalism or, you know, gourmet-level “soylent green.”

The Searchlight pic will debut at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, and will open theatrically on 11.18.22.

“…but it’s not funny to me.” — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke to heckling Greg Abbott supporter in Mineral Wells, Texas, two or three hours ago.

Moments like these are magnetic bullets…bullets that are infinitely repeated on social media, and which everyone sees and responds to favorably or negatively. Methinks this is a huge boost for O’Rourke. He might win now.

Throughout most of the ’90s, when you thought of Brad Pitt you thought of two moments in David Fincher‘s Se7en — the head-in-a-box finale and the Yoda line. (Detective David Mills is as classic a character as Humphrey Bogart‘s Fred C. Dobbs.). And it stayed that way until Fincher’s Fight Club (’99), when Tyler Burden took over. The Durden thing reigned for eight years, and then came three landmark roles in relatively quick succession — Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (’07), the dumbshit workout-instructor role in Burn After Reading (’08), and Billy Beane in Moneyball (’11), which is still Pitt’s finest all-time performance.

You’re a rooster trapped in a miserable cockfighting life. You’ve been brought up this way by cruel humans, and you have no choice but to fight other roosters to the death. An awful way to live. But when the ostensible good guys rushed in last weekend and shut down a large cockfighting operation, “they were forced to euthanize nearly 150 roosters found at a Southern California home.” I don’t know about you but if I was a fighting rooster, I would rather keep fighting and live my life, however miserable, rather than be killed by the authorities. The miserable gladiator is always in a better spot than a dead one.

And no one’s disputing evidence (including first-hand victim accounts) of Armie Hammer‘s disturbing sexual psychology and behavior. Then again bondage, discipline and dominance is a game…a weird game that has never seemed the least bit intriguing to most of us, but a game nonetheless. Yes, ignoring “safe words” is wrong and contemptible. Yes, Armie made his own bed — no one to blame but himself. Yes, the history of the Hammer family is a perverse one.

Nonetheless there’s something about this Discovery+ trailer for House of Hammer that feels a wee bit tacky and tabloidy. The three-part documentary series will launch on Friday, 9.2.

“…on the grounds that [answering] may tend to incriminate me.”

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