Day: November 8, 2022

Morbid obesity is just another way of living, eating, enduring, being, suffering. Revolutionary, balls-to-the-wall cinematic maestro Darren Aronofsky opened my heart, showed me the way. (Digital Fraser-esque makeover by “Zak.”)

Be honest — the films listed in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 10th place slots represent pure political-cultural tokenism. And you can scratch all the “major threats” except for Armageddon Time and The Whale. And all the “possibilities” except for Close and Thirteen Lives.

Industry Friendo: “There’s a historical parallel to this. Drive-in theaters used for swap meets and church services before shopping malls replaced them…”

Reported by The Verge’s Mitchell Clark on 11.7.22.

Rise up en masse like the gladiators in Capua, kill the Roman guards, strike terror in the hearts of your captors…and if they try to make you cower and shudder like you’ve been doing since ‘17 or thereabouts, tell them “sorry, buster but the ball game’s over…the sensibles are taking control and the woke wackos are on the run.”

Lila Neugebauer and Jennifer Lawrence‘s Causeway (Apple, theatrical + streaming), is an extremely solemn, snail-paced, drip-drip recovery drama.

Lawrence is Lynsey, a gay U.S. soldier who suffered brain damage during a recent tour in Afghanistan. I saw it last night, and although the running time is 92 minutes it felt like two hours, minimum.

Lawrence is believably plain, but the performance by costar Brian Tyree Henry struck me as actorish and inauthentic.

Supporting players Linda Emond, Jayne Houdyshell, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Fred Weller are good enough.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and Marcus Jones have posted several Best Picture Oscar predictions. Some of their calls have merit; others are a joke. Their choices are pasted below.

Among the Thompson-Jones picks, HE has boldfaced the titles of films that are either actually good or are thought to be genuinely good, and which may seriously deserve Best Picture consideration.

In fact, before picking apart the Thompson-Jones calls, here are ten of HE’s Best Picture projections, mostly based upon the fact that the films are (or in some cases are presumed to be) actually good and/or held in high esteem, and therefore deserving of a BP nomination. These are not political predictions as much as judgment calls:

1. The Fabelmans
2. TÁR
3. Top Gun: Maverick
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
5. Babylon
6. Empire of Light
7. She Said
8. Armageddon Time
9. Bardo
10. Close

Thompson-Jones reactions: The letters UL (as in “unfortunately likely”) appear next to films that aren’t good enough but will probably be be nominated anyway. The letters NH (as in “not happening”) appear next to films that haven’t much of an emotional or political prayer. The words FORGET IT are placed next to titles which HE regards as absurd and/or ridiculous in this context.

Frontrunners:

The Banshees of Inisherin / UL
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever / FORGET IT
Elvis / UL
Everything Everywhere All at Once / / UL
The Fabelmans
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio / ANIMATION
TÁR
Top Gun: Maverick
The Woman King / FORGET IT
Women Talking / NH

Read more

We all understand that Brendan Fraser‘s performance as the 600-pound “Charlie” in Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale (A24, 12.9) is going to result in a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and perhaps even a win.

What many of us don’t understand is what the tearful Fraser is saying at the 45-second mark. I realize, of course, that he’s not saying “people are meerhit” but I’ve listened seven or eight times with headphones. and that’s what it sounds like — “people are meerhit.”

Update: A director friend informs that Fraser is saying “people are amazing.”

“According to the CDC, obesity impacts 49.6% of African Americans and 44.8% of non-white Hispanic Americans, compared to only 42.2% of white Americans.

“Black and Brown children are also disproportionately affected by childhood obesity. 2017 CDC data indicates that among racial groups, obesity impacts 25.6% of non-white Hispanic children and 24.2% of African American children, compared to only 16.1% of white children. These obesity disparities result from a complex confluence of socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and psychological factors.” — Center for Healthcare Innovation, 6.8.22.

“Only 42.2% of white Americans” are obese? ONLY??

Six years ago: “The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. population has increased steadily since the 1960s — from 3.4 percent of adults in 1962 to 39.8 percent in 2016, the year of the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. In all, 180.5 million people or 60.7 percent of the population, ages 2 and over — were either obese or overweight.”

Whenever someone passes at too young an age or due to some tragic mishap or a stroke of bad luck, someone always says that the recently departed “loved life.” Which I would call a nice but imprecise sentiment. It’s so vague it’s almost meaningless.

HE’s definition of a lover of life would be the Kinks guy who loves living adjacent to Waterloo Station.

I’m actually a lover of the splendor and symphony of all great European train stations. Ditto the great cities and towns — Paris, Rome, Munich, Hanoi, Hoi An, Milan, Prague, Venice, Arcos de la Frontera, Caye Caulker, portions of Key West, the Berkshires, Monument Valley, Lauterbrunnen — and the tens of thousands of beautiful pastoral vistas all over. Ditto my cats, my granddaughter Sutton and her parents Jett and Cait and Sutton’s Uncle Dylan, black Volvo wagons, BMW rumblehogs, heavy leather jackets, Indian or Italian dishes, vinyl record albums, cookies & cream gelato, Italian suede lace-ups, etc.

The only negative that comes to mind amidst all this joy and nurture and rapture, the only aspect of life on planet earth that I consistently have problems with and which generally darkens my worldview are…well, people. Not everyone, of course. The majority are fine. I can just can’t with the three-toed sloths.