Month: October 2022

Sebastián Leilo’s The Wonder is a somber, better-than-decent, glacially-paced period drama.

Set in rural Ireland of 1862, it’s about a struggle between the oppression of strict Irish Catholic dogma vs. a woman’s common humanity. I respected the effort, and certainly admired Florence Pugh’s performance as a willful, Florence Nightingale-trained nurse.

Pugh frowns a lot but in a genuine, unaffected way. The film is fortified by believable atmosphere, perfect period sets, appropriately grim, etc. All the supporting perfs pass muster.

I’m not putting the film down. I’m saying it is what it is, and that it exudes authenticity in that it seems to be actually occuring in the mid 1800s, and without a trace of 2022 presentism. That in itself warrants respect.

For me the standout visual element is the raw brownish-green Irish countryside, and particularly those 16 or 17 shots of Pugh trudging across said terrain.

Maggie and I and five-month-old Jett visited Ireland in the early fall of ’88. I fell in love. One of my first thoughts as we left the Dublin region and drove into the countryside was “I could die here.”

If nothing else, The Wonder is an immersion into the stern oppressions of Irish Catholicism, as it existed at the time of Abraham Lincoln. A culture based on forbidding and repressing and the rigors of life for those 19th Century citizens who’d embraced the Bible and resisted the bottle.

For years I flirted with the legend about Ireland loving to bend the elbow but approaching sex with a fair amount of guilt and conflict — kind of a silly, simplistic assessment. Then again Alex Comfort‘s “The Joy of Sex” was banned in Ireland for 12 years (along with “More Joy: The Joy of Sex” and one other). I recall journalist-author Susan Mulcahy, then with the New York Post, passing along an old joke about “The Joy of Irish Sex” consisting of 96 blank pages.

And then I saw 44 year-old Fionnula Flanagan perform a nude masturbation scene in James Joyce’s Women (’85), which she starred in, produced and co-wrote. I quickly realized that at least some in Ireland were just as hot and bothered as anyone else.

Ever since the accidental 8.20 car-bomb killing of Darya Dugina, the 29 year-old daughter of Vladimir Putin‘s Rasputin-like adviser Aleksandr Dugin, Ukrainian forces have been suspected of orchestrating the hit.

In a 10.5 interview with intelligence committee Democrat Jim Himes, a CNN anchor stated that “U.S. intelligence community believes that elements of the Ukrainian government authorized that car bombing.” (Note: It is believed that the explosion was intended to kill the father, not the daughter.) Without confirming this allegation, Himes replied that if it’s true “this raises the spectre of Ukraine having arguably [and] very clearly lost the moral high ground.”

Moral high ground? In a war? After the Bucha massacre? Is that a joke?

There is no morality in war save the absence of it. Once serious hostilities begin between combatants the idea of anyone occupying any moral high ground is ridiculous. As Russell Crowe‘s journalist character says in The Greatest Beer Run Ever, “This war is just one big crime scene.”

Union general William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

Do you want to defeat Russia in the Ukrainian conflict? Sean Connery‘s “Malone character” (from The Untouchables) has some questions.

Malone: “You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? [If so], what are you prepared to do?”

Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness: “Anything within the law.”

Malone: “And then what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they’re not gonna give up the fight until one of you is dead.”

Ness: “I want to get Capone! I don’t know how to do it.”

Malone: “You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I’m offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?”

Ness: “I have sworn to capture this man with all legal powers at my disposal and I will do so.”

Malone: “Well, the Lord hates a coward.”

…we will fire your ass in the blink of eye. This is what is known as management-level wokester terror.

From 10.4 THR piece by Ashley Cullins titled “Moral Clauses: Why a Red Scare Tactic Revived in the #MeToo Era Could Lead to a Fight With the Guilds“:

Excerpt: “In the wake of #MeToo, employers across Hollywood turned to morals clauses as an attempt to deter bad behavior. While these provisions have been criticized by talent reps for being too broad and too subjective, there’s actually a bigger problem with their presence in many contracts: They’re prohibited by the directors and writers guilds’ collective bargaining agreements — and they have been for decades.

“’The origin was the Red Scare,’ says talent lawyer Linda Lichter. ‘Companies put them in contracts so they could fire people if they were accused of being a Red. They’ve come back in the context of #MeToo.’

The clauses — which use language such as “public disrepute, humiliation, contempt, scandal or ridicule” — essentially mean anything that makes a company look bad could be grounds for immediate termination. Or, as Lichter puts it, ‘If you don’t behave, we can fire you.’

According to attorneys, it’s not uncommon for the first draft of a morals clause to include problematic broad phrases, giving examples like “neglects to govern their conduct with regard to social conventions” or “shocks, insults or offends a substantial portion of the community.”

“’Early on with the #MeToo movement we saw companies and brands going very quickly to terminating people, and they wanted to be able to rely on their morals clause to do it,’ says entertainment labor lawyer Ivy Kagan Bierman. “In some cases, the clause as drafted didn’t allow it because it had to be proven.”

“Kagan Bierman says the language has evolved so companies don’t necessarily have to wait on proof — ‘There have been tweaks in the language, where it can be alleged to have happened, or believed to have happened.'”

I received a little pushback about yesterday’s riff about Florida governor Ron DeSantis wearing those awful white rubber boots during a tour of the coastal Florida areas devastated by Hurricane Ian.

I was informed that DeSantis is wearing standard-issue shrimp boots, which are common apparel for fishermen on shrimp boats. Moisture protection, snake protection.

My reply is that it doesn’t matter how many Cajun shrimpers own a pair of those Nancy Sinatra go-go boots — they look ridiculous.

Any allegedly straight male who wears white go-go-boots on a shrimp boat automatically causes his alpha male credentials too be questioned. And it WAS DeSantis’s Michael Dukakis on a tank moment (aka “Rocky the squirrel”).

If DeSantis was a MAN, he would have worn these black boots. If I was a shrimper, these would be my jam.

This is a distasteful subject, but I’ll just mention it and be done with it. I’ve ridden on underground subway systems all over the world — Paris, Boston, Berlin, Prague, Washington, D.C., Barcelona, London, Zurich, Rome, Munich, Frankfurt, Firenze — and New York’s subway system is the only one that has a serious problem with homeless urine stink. Okay, I might have encountered one or two faint whiffs in the Paris metro, but it’s not a regular thing there. You can, on the other hand, absolutely count on The Unpleasant while waiting for the IRT, IRT Lex, R or IND trains in Manhattan. Is it because homeless guys in Barcelona, London, Berlin and Prague are slightly more sanitary? Is alcoholism less of a problem over there? Do the overseas subway systems use more effective (i.e., more fragrant) disinfectant or employ more clean-up crews?

I’ve been saying for years (and there’s no question about this) New York City subways are the slowest, stinkiest and least reliable of all the major metro systems worldwide. Things have improved since the ’90s but the substandard service has been in place for decades.

Any guy knows that if you put on a pair of tallish rubber wading boots, the color has to be olive drab or dark blue. Or black-and-yellow fireman boots. But what kind of clueless dork puts on a pair of white go-go boots a la Nancy Sinatra? That’s more than clueless — it’s borderline suicidal from an image standpoint. And worse when you throw in the pot belly. If I was DeSantis I would drop at least 15 or 20 pounds — he’s too chubby to be a Presidential candidate. And while I’m working on the gut I would wear a midriff girdle under my shirt. Orson Welles wore one while playing the fresh-out-of-college Charles Foster Kane.

Being something of a clueless baseball “fan” (i.e., having not really followed the sport since I was 10 or 11), I was initially confused by last night’s Washington Post story, written by Chelsea James, about Aaron Judge‘s historic 62nd home run against the Texas Rangers.

In so doing the Paul Bunyan-sized Judge (6’7″, 282 pounds) passed Roger Maris “for the most homers in a single season by an American League player.”

That’s very commendable, I thought, but why didn’t James’ lead paragraph convey two basic, crucial facts? One, Judge’s 62-home-run record was topped six times by three National League players — Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa — during the steroid era (mid ’90s to early aughts). And two, Judge had beaten Maris’s American League record without the aid of steroids. Or, put another way, that he had slammed those 62 in a “clean” way.

In paragraph #3 James gently puts it as follows: “All three played at a time when MLB did not test for performance-enhancing drugs as stringently as it does now.”

And how come the TV cameras — here comes the ignorant, don’t-follow-baseball part — how come the cameras cut away to an older white couple (Patty and Wayne Judge), jubilant and hugging, when it seemed apparent they they weren’t related to the biracial Judge? Oh, I see…the 30 year-old Judge was adopted by the Judges in ’92. Didn’t realize that…sorry.

What a relief when I came upon a story by Sports Illustrated‘s Thomas Neumann, titled “Baseball World Debates True Home Run King After Judge Hits No. 62.” A story that doesn’t pussy-foot or beat around the bush….thank you!

“One thing is certain after Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge hit his 62nd home run of the season Tuesday,” Neumann began. “The American League has a new home run king.

“The blast lifted Judge past another famous Yankees outfielder, Roger Maris, giving him sole possession of the AL record.

“However, that mark was exceeded six times in the National League during the heyday of the steroid era. Barry Bonds set the MLB record of 73 in 2001. Mark McGwire hit 70 in ’98 and 65 in ’99. Sammy Sosa hit 66 in ’98, 64 in ’01 and 63 in ’99.

“By being associated with performance-enhancing drugs, the feats of Bonds, McGwire and Sosa are discredited by some fans who view their accomplishments as tainted.”

We could celebrate the "clean home run king", whatever that means, or we could watch this two minute collage of balanced breakfast Barry Bonds nuking balls out of the park and into the bay https://t.co/FhoxKxnayk pic.twitter.com/eLm3lU2WUT

— Jeff Veillette (@JeffVeillette) October 5, 2022

Posted on 9.17.21: “Kidman is describing a kind of theatrical experience that happened every so often (i.e., infrequently) in the 20th Century and up until fanboy movies began to take over about a decade ago, give or take, and certainly since wokester cinema became a persistent presence about five or so years ago, and since cable and streaming became the the default end-game for any Hollywood or English-language film with serious aspirations. You can also find ‘the Kidman experience,’ so to speak, at film festivals.

“Otherwise anyone who gets around (Kidman included) knows that the kind of levitation she describes in the spot has all but ceased in the plexes, which have become gladiator arenas and repositories for rancid formulaic crap. Except during award season and even then on a mostly-miss-the-mark basis, the suppliers of commercial fare aren’t the least bit interested in even trying to fulfill the Kidman aesthetic.”