Month: December 2022

IndieWire‘s Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson have posted their latest podcast, a significant portion of which focuses on the recently announced short lists.

Kohn and Thompson have always been sage, sharp and attuned and at the same time careful to stay away from any conversational topic that might translate into some kind of contrary signal as far as the dug-in wokester viewpoint is concerned. In other words they don’t seem to want to discuss anything that might cause political difficulty for them. Plus Kohn is obviously a huge fan of Everything Everywhere All At Once. And so, unless I missed something, they’ve avoided even a brief mention of the significance of EEAAO failing to make the VFX and hair/makeup short lists.**

Obviously I’ve been harping on this story due to HE’s no-retreat EEAAO takedown campaign, but in any sort of dispassionate even-steven realm how can can anyone discuss the shortlists and not at least acknowledge the obvious?

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Jake Tapper: “It’s interesting, so often during this Trump era, I think about I’m, you know, I’m a history buff, not an esteemed historian, but I think a lot about how will history remember people and this era, and it just seems like some of these individuals that are enablers of Trump, just don’t even remotely think that way in terms of how is this going to look in 10 or 20 years?”

Historian/author Douglas Brinkley: “Yeah, because they have no soul and don’t have a deep love for the country. They put self-interest or political power ahead of themselves. The story of Rudy Giuliani alone will be talked about for ages.

“It’s important to realize that Donald Trump is not really part of the presidents club. He’s an outlier. In that way he will be remembered, he’s going to have his fans, but it’s more like Dillinger and Al Capone and Billy the Kid or something. There’ll be a folk cause around him, but he’s an outlaw, and somebody who in the end will be seen as an enemy of the U.S. Constitution. It might sell you some t-shirts in Gatlinburg and Tombstone, Arizona, and might keep Trump’s image alive and well, but in the real game of history, which is serious, in years to come, Trump and all of his enablers are going to be seen on the dung hill of U.S. political history.”

Posted on 12.22.22:

I give him credit, however, for selecting Happening, The Good Boss and Emily The Criminal.

Decision to Leave is almost totally about how handsome it looks plus a heavy-handed over-investment in the film noir trope of the dangerous femme fatale…I didn’t believe it. Plus it’s way too long.

Consider this 2018 riff on Barack’s movie pics by Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman.

In a 12.23 Free Press column by Nellie Bowles, she quotes David Mamet as he explains a renewed passion for cartooning and how he’s otherwise in “retirement” — an apparent allusion to having hung it up as a playwright or screenwriter or novelist. First, writers never retire, and Mamet knows that. And second, the Santa Claus cartoon isn’t that astute. Old-school liberals, centrists, center-rightists and respectable conservatives don’t get blacklisted for “crying” and “shouting.” They sometimes get shunned or cancelled for saying “I haven’t changed but you crazy-fuck lefties have.”

Matt Walsh is being entirely humane and logical here. The fat acceptance and body positivity movements are, at the end of the day, celebrations of lifestyles that lead to shortened lives. Or, put more bluntly, death. The recent passing of Jamie Lopez, 37, says it all.

Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon opens today (12.23). It’s probably too early to ask for reactions, but I was struck by a passage in Manohla Dargis‘s N.Y. Times review. For those who’ve seen it, do you agree or disagree with Dargis’s reaction? And why?

“Compared to the larger-than-life, at times cartoonish, more physically demonstrative performances delivered by Brad Pitt and especially Margot Robbie, Diego Calva is relatively tamped down and reactive, which brings his turn closer to contemporary notions of realism. These differences add complexity and much-needed rhythm changes.

“Similarly to his characters, Chazelle has embraced excess as a guiding principle in Babylon, and like his film La La Land, this one shifts between intimate interludes and elaborate set pieces, one difference being that Chazelle now has a heftier budget and is eager to show off his new toys. At the inaugural bacchanal, the camera doesn’t soar; it darts and swoops like a coked-up hummingbird.

“Despite the relentless churn on set and after hours, the movie is strangely juiceless. I don’t simply mean that it’s unsexy (which it is), but that there’s so little life in the movie, despite all the frantic action. There isn’t much going on other than the spectacle of its busily spinning parts, which might be tolerable if the first two hours weren’t so unrelievedly unmodulated, with everything synced to the same monotonous, accelerated pace.

“This hyperventilated quality initially serves the story and Chazelle’s concept of the era’s delirious excess, but the lack of modulation rapidly becomes enervating. After a while, it feels punishing.”

I’ve been listening to Sarah Polley‘s podcast chat with Megan Daum (“The Unspeakable”). There’s a special focus, of course, on Polley’s Women Talking (UA Releasing, 12.23). Which many will respect but few outside of the feminist #MeToo take-power community is going to love…be honest.

Within its own realm Women Talking is a “respectable” effort, but it’s still a dialogue-driven political piece — a dimly-lighted, dusk-to-dawn discussion among several Mennonite women in a barn, about how they should respond to a series of horrific rapes within their community. The question is “do we stay or do we go?”

The question for critics is “where is the political upside for me if I say I have problems with this?” The answer is there is none, which is why almost all the critics (especially the wokester Branch Davidian types) have completely fallen for Polley’s film while insisting it’s a Best Picture contender

I know what Women Talking is, good and not-so-good, and that it’s aimed at a certain mindset and demographic even. Anyone who says “this film is just wonderful and eloquent and powerful and you simply have to see it”…if that’s all they say, they’re absolutely lying by omission.

From her first professional encounter with callous behavior on Terry Gilliam‘s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (’88), Polley has been very concerned about safety…safety on sets, protection from abusers. This is partly who she is, what she’s experienced…naturally she’s drawing from this well. She’s a serious person and a serious filmmaker.

It’s just that her film didn’t speak to my older-white-dude way of seeing things. It certainly didn’t reach in and touch me. I was checking my watch, waiting for it to end.

Women Talking‘s basic idea is basically “stand up to the pigs…condemn them, abandon them, isolate them.” Agreed! But the idea isn’t that a few sex-starved, cold-blooded Mennonite men are brute beasts, but that the overall patriarchy (straight white men) is to be regarded with extreme suspicion as too many white males seem amoral, heartless and exploitive. They probably need to be fought tooth & nail and perhaps even overthrown.

Last September a friend opined that Polley’s film is “almost comically male-hating.” When the wimpy and wimpering Ben Whishaw is the only male they can trust, you know what Polley is saying…”tearful, guilt-stricken-on-behalf-of-their-gender gay men are cool but forget straight guys!!”

Really? There isn’t one decent straight guy in the community who can be trusted? Not one regular dude who’s disgusted by the rapes and pledges to support the women? Imagine how the film could be spiritually and emotionally opened up, so to speak, if there was such a character. Or if a second straight male were to intrude only to speak skeptically about the assaults and argue against leaving.

Women Talking is oppressive because (a) it’s oxygen-starved and visually claustrophobic, (b) there’s no dramatic tension to speak of because from the perspective of the horribly brutalized victims it’s ludicrous to argue for staying, (c) the characters don’t sound like isolated Mennonites but smart, educated, worldly women playing their idea of isolated Mennonites.

Presumably some HE regulars have seen it and would care to weigh in?

Wednesday night Jody and I were having a light dinner at Terrain, and a guitar lady (late 30s, cute face, pleasant pipes) was singing the usual pop Christmas tunes.

But we were hearing too many kid-level songs (“Jingle Bells,” “Frosty the Snowman”), so I asked the waitress if the troubadour would consider something a little more adult-sounding. Like, say, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” — a once popular, more recently derided 1944 holiday tune about a hound’s crude attempt at seduction. Icky, yes, but at least an improvement over “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Our cheerful server pretended to be horrified — “Oh, she can’t sing that! Somebody’ll get mad.” Could you ask her to sing it anyway? I asked. Maybe she’ll brave it? The waitress said she’d pass along our request. Deaf ears. The thought passed.

But we ran into the singer as we were leaving and mentioned our interest in “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and to our surprise she said she was a fan and would’ve absolutely sung it, no prob. She seemed to simply like the idea of a Christmas holiday tune about possibly getting poked, and didn’t care about the 21st Century Harvey Weinstein creepitude**.

I’d forgotten that Alvin Lee, the fastest guitarist in the west, died in 2013 at age 68. Martin Scorsese was one of the camera guys filming this legendary Woodstock performance.

**