Being woke refers to “waking up to invisible alleged societal injustices, based on genetically inherited attributes — race, sex/gender and sexual orientation. And further, it creates a heirarchy, based on these genetic attributes, that says you’re either an oppressor or a member of an oppressed class.”
This is it — couldn’t be simpler or more concisely stated.
Matt Johnson‘s BlackBerry (IFC Films, 5.12) gets an HE stamp of approval, but at the same time it’s not as good as that Rotten Tomatoes 96% rating would indicate.
A couple of months ago Deadline‘s Pete Hammond said it was “as triumphant and tragic as Elvis“…nope. But it’s pretty good, and sometimes better than that. It’s certainly not a burn.
It’s a business-and-nothing-but saga of the meteoric rise and tragic collapse of the Blackberry device, spanning between the mid ’90s and 2012 or thereabouts.
I was never a BlackBerry owner but I loved the look of the later models (the convergent smartphone BlackBerry wasn’t released until ’02), and I understood the love from owners that I knew.
The three main characters are co-founder Mike Lazaridis (a white-haired Jay Baruchel), Jim Balsillie (a bald-headed Glenn Howerton) and Douglas Fregin (Johnson). It’s broken up into three chapters — awkward beginnings, riding high and crash-and-burn.
I didn’t really believe the first third (too clumsy and infantile), but the downfall section is quite gripping. BlackBerry is nowhere close to The Social Network, which is heads and shoulders more believable and better made. But it feels authentic (mostly) and generally hangs together
I’m not blaming Hammond for overselling BlackBerry in his Deadline review. He was a BlackBerry guy for years and years, and was shouldering a considerable emotional investment. Understandable.
To my slight surprise I liked Howerton’s “baldy” Balsillie more than I expected to. He’s a flinty hardnose with an explosive temper, but at least he’s a realist, which is more than you can say for Lazaridis and Fregin, or at least how they’re portrayed.
During the first half Baruchel and especially Johnson WAY overplay the nerd-child behavior…these guys behave like precocious twits who are verbally clumsy and certainly inarticulate, and they don’t seem to have a semblance of a notion of how to behave in a business-world realm. Guys this infantile and retarded can’t survive — I just didn’t believe their performances.
Johnson’s performance is especially infuriating. There’s an Act One scene in which he and Baruchel are making a presentation with an easel and several posterboards, and Johnson drops the presentation cards THREE TIMES. After the third time I threw up my hands and said “fuck this guy.” And he behaves like a precocious eight-year-old autistic savant. Over and over he’ll say maybe six or seven words to Baruchel and then freeze with his mouth open….stop acting with your mouth open!! And the GAH-GAH-DUHH-DUHH expression…Jesus!
Johnson to Howerton during their first meeting: “The internet is like the force….have you seen Star Wars?” Howerton (around 32 at the time) says no. What 30 year-old hadn’t seen Star Wars by the early ’90s? Howerton was 16 or 17 when it came out. No way he hadn’t seen it!
I can’t overemphasize how much I hated Johnson’s performance. I HATE GUYS LIKE THIS…guys with their infantile nerd-genius personalities and the head bandana and terrible dress sense. There’s no way the real Doug Fregin looked or behaved like that….there’s no way he used that frozen, open-mouthed, brain-meltdown expression over and over. I never want to see Johnson in a movie ever again. I wanted to see him shot or get hit by a car.
But the film is definitely decent and sometimes better than. It certainly held my interest, although it seemed to under-dramatize the heyday period. I wanted more specifics, more details about the tech and how this and that happened. The best parts of the film are the opening and closing chapters.
It should be noted that the real Mike Lazaridis, who’s worth hundreds of millions, appears to weigh at least twice as much as Jay Baruchel.
…aren’t the things you did wrong, but the things you didn’t do. These are the things that will surely haunt your soul into eternity.
Roger W. Smith is one such haunted individual — tortured by the fact that Grace Kelly expressed a covert interest in meeting him clandestinely in Paris 40-odd years ago, in response to which Smith dropped the damn ball. Shame!
HE friendo Bill McCuddy has recorded 18 podcasts with this writer, marketing whiz, editor and entrepreneur. Yeah, I don’t know him either.
Smith (not the late husband of Ann-Margret) is the co-founder and executive editor of Global Media Intelligence, a media research service for major investors in media companies, and a former entertainment industry executive (1974-1996) with Warner Bros., Carolco and Live! Entertainment.
Smith worked for Carolco (Andy Vajna, Mario Kassar) in the mid ’80s, which is also when I worked as a Carolco under-publicist in the employ of Bobby Zarem and Dick Delson, so maybe I ran into him at one point. My memory is a blank.
The only thing that stands out for me is the Kelly episode. Smith was allegedly “hit on” by Monaco’s princess in July ’82. Smith took a meeting in Monaco with Grace and Prince Rainer, and in so doing pitched her on playing the Mary Astor part (a divorcee) in a remake of Dodsworth. Kelly was allegedly “quite keen” to play the part but was killed in a car crash, of course, in September of that year.
The important thing is that after the meeting Kelly discreetly asked Smith to pay her a visit a week or two hence at a certain Paris hotel. If you know anything about Kelly’s adventurous sexual history the invitation may have led to something (who knows?), but any self-respecting, red-blooded male would have at least given Kelly a call when she was in town.
What did Smith do? He either blew her off or forgot or had another appointment or something. Ignominious!
Here’s the podcast link.
Luther Vandross, Ava Cherry, Robin Clark and who else? Love these guys.
Obviously the assertion that Cleopatra was black, put forth by an episode in the Netflix African Queens series, is dicey at best.
The Egyptian queen (70 BC — 30 BC) was most likely olive-skinned, being a blend of Macedonian Greek ancestry (descended from Ptolemy I Soter) along with some Iranian blood. She almost certainly wasn’t black — that’s just some Jada Pinkett Smith-approved revisionist woke balderdash. There’s some kind of current Egyptian consensus that’s saying “no way.”
On top of which the dialogue and the acting in the Netflix doc are just this side of atrocious.
I think “Hitler” says it best: “Saying Cleopatra was black is like saying Jada Pinkett Smith is a faithful loving wife.”
I’m horrified about Kokomo City star Koko Da Doll, 35, having been shot and killed last Tuesday in Atlanta. Variety‘s Angelique Jackson reported her death last night (4.20).
The immediate assumption, of course, is that Koko (aka Rasheeda Williams) may have been killed by a hate-crimer, but no one seems to know what actually happened so let’s see how the story unfolds. Obviously a terrible tragedy. Hugs and condolences to friends, fans, colleagues.
Atlanta cops are saying Koko was found with a gunshot wound in Southwest Atlanta shortly before 11 p.m. eastern on Tuesday.
Directed by D. Smith, Kokomo City is a feature-length doc about four trans sex workers living in Atlanta and New York City — Koko, Daniella Carter, Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver — as they confront the dichotomy between the Black community and themselves, as well as the persistent threat of violence they face each day.”