Taylor Swift is riding the hormones, buzzing along, giddy, giggling…another meaningless, thoroughly disposable new relationship once it runs outta gas.
Sooner or later she’s gonna dump him, and soooo what? Nobody ever lasts with her, man. Everything winds down, and it’s all stinking bullshit. Plus all football players get fat.
Thank God Kelce isn’t a freckly redhead…at least there’s that.
The “Ruth Bader Biden” paragraph was spoken by Carville.
Remember mumblecore? I’m kidding — of course we remember. But there’s an entire generation out there (Zoomers) that has never heard of it and certainly isn’t interested in knowing or asking questions or anything, and are content to just sit on their couches and inhale streaming content. I can’t believe the world has turned out as it has.
Does anyone remember Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg, which is now 13 and 1/3 years old? Six years ago in Cannes I asked Baumbach about Greenberg and even he barely remembered it. Well, he remembered it but he didn’t really want to talk much about it because it was a huge bomb and because it pissed some people off.
I watched it again, and it’s still one of most daring, balls-to-the-wall, character-driven films I’ve ever seen or laughed with.
On 4.3.10 I posted a piece called “Big Greenberg Divide.” Key passage: “Greenberg is about what a lot of 30ish and 40ish X-factor people who wanted to achieve fame and fortune but didn’t quite make it or dropped the ball after a short burst…it’s about what these people are going through, or will go through. It’s dryly amusing at times, but it’s not kidding around.”
The second half of the article was a Greenberg defense written by HE correspondent “Famous Mortimer”:
“I think it is provoking such strong levels of resentment from viewers because it is a movie very much of these times but not made in the style of these times. It exposes the toxic levels of conceitedness and alienation today with the sincerity and empathy of ’70’s films by Ashby, Altman and Allen.
“First off, it’s a story about people. There is no high concept or shoehorned stake-raising set piece. Viewers either have the patience to connect with the human pain on display or they are lost. Unlike Sideways, there is no charming countryside setting or buddy comedy hijinks to punch up the mood.
“Second, the dialogue is the action. Only when the viewer is willing to think over the dialogue will characters’ seemingly ambiguous motivations and back-stories become clear. There’s no juicy monologue or nauseating flashback to convey these points. Instead, the viewer comes upon them over the course of the film in the form of passing references made by various characters. It is up to us to take these bits and pieces together and unlock the character revelations for ourselves. No more spoon-feeding cinema.
“Third, this film is a labor of love. That means idiosyncratic details are to be found at every level of its making. Only by thinking these details over and feeling the connections between them do we appreciate what the movie is trying to do. It’s a really thoughtful and heartfelt experience.”
HE regrets the passing of David McCallum. Then again the Scottish-born actor lived a rich and mostly robust 90 years, which puts him in a kind of creme de la creme realm. Plus we all have to go sometime.
I never felt much enthusiasm for his Illya Kuryakin character in The Man from U.N.C.L.E, but what could my personal interest in or enthusiasm for a rotely-written exotic second banana in a plastic James Bond ripoff…who cares about any of that stuff?
I was slightly more intrigued by McCallum’s portrayal of Lt. Cmdr. Eric Ashley-Pitt in The Great Escape (’63). Pitt was the guy who created that long-shoulder-sock-with-a-string device that enabled the prisoners of Stalag Luft III to camouflage the dirt that had come from the digging of the three tunnels, Tom, Dick and Harry.
On the other hand I was infuriated when Ashley-Pitt intentionally attracted attention and drew fire from German security forces at that train station so as to protect Richard Attenborough‘s Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (aka “Big X”) and Gordon Jackson‘s Flight Lieutenant Alexander MacDonald.
Where is it written in the annals of honorable war behavior that sometimes a lower-ranked guy needs to sacrifice himself so that two higher-ranked guys can get away?
If I’d been in Ashley-Pitt’s shoes and saw that Bartlett and MacDonald were about to be captured, I would have kept my head down and said to myself “tough break for those guys…I’m very sorry but this is war and them’s the breaks…I’m sure as shit am not going to commit suicide so they can get away…fuck that noise.”
Posted from Telluride on 9.1.23: The last time I bolted out of a theatre because a character had yanked or otherwise torn off a fingernail was during a January 1993 screening of Lodge Kerrigan‘s Clean, Shaven.
For the following 30-plus years I enjoyed a moviegoing experience that was free of fingernail trauma, but then along came Christos Nikou‘s Fingernails, which I saw last night.
Officially described as a “science fiction romantic psychological drama“, Fingernails is also a kind of dry absurdist comedy. I would also call it an odd form of psychological stress. It’s basically saying that aggressive technology and innovation are preying upon romantic couples, and that this situation is basically fucked up.
It’s about a cohabiting couple, Jessie Buckley‘s Anna and Jeremy Allen White‘s Ryan, and how their relatively healthy relationship runs aground when Anna lands a job at an institute that helps romantic couples determine if their relationship is on solid footing and fated to last. The institute’s clients are asked to submit to eccentric and occasionally bizarre exercises that will presumably reveal true emotional leanings or priorities.
Anna is assigned to work with Amir (Riz Ahmed), a soft-spoken, senior-level trainer. You know from the get-go that Ann and Amir (who has a steady girlfriend) will hook up and that the usual turbulence will result. But that’s nothing compared to the turbulence I went through last night during not one but two fingernail-yanking scenes. I made it through the first but freaked out during the second. I grabbed my computer bag and escaped.
It’s also worth nothing that during my 70 minutes of viewing my attention was constantly divided between (a) the usual elements (plot, dialogue, milieu, vibes) and (b) Buckley’s intensely annoying chopped-off hipster haircut. I’m sorry but it bothered the shit out of me.
Official synopsis: “Anna and Ryan have found true love, [and] it’s been proven by a controversial new technology. There’s just one problem: Anna still isn’t sure. Then she takes a position at a love testing institute, and meets Amir.”
Fingernails is produced by Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton and Coco Francini for Dirty Films and Lucas Wiesendanger for FilmNation Entertainment. Executive producers are FilmNation Entertainment’s Glen Basner, Milan Popelka and Alison Cohen, alongside Ashley Fox, Kevin Lafferty and Jerome Duboz.
Supporting cast members include Annie Murphy, Luke Wilson and Nina Kiri.
Fingernails will enjoy a limited theatrical release on 10.27. Apple TV will begin streaming it on 11.3.
It's just a feeling. Try to hold it in.
Enjoy this first look at Fingernails, a new Apple Original Film starring Jessie Buckley, Jeremy Allen White, and Riz Ahmed. pic.twitter.com/fU7dnDiUDp
— Apple Original Films (@AppleFilms) August 29, 2023
Imagine if a straight white male had directed May December (Netflix, 11.17), a movie about a Savannah-residing, May-December couple (Julianne Moore, Charles Melton) and the arrival of a famous actress (Natalie Portman) who will soon be portraying Moore in a film about the couple’s scandalous history.
The couple is based, of course, upon the notorious Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, who began a sexual relationship in 1996 when Letourneau, a grade-school teacher, was 34, and Fualaau, one of her sixth-grade students, was 12. Letourneau did a seven-year stretch for the rape of a minor (1998 to 2004).
They were married in May 2005 when Letourneau was 43 and Fualaau was 22. The marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019. Letourneau died of cancer the following year, at age 58.
May December concerns the long-term outcome of a relationship that began under diseased circumstances — i.e., the sexual grooming of a lad by a woman 22 years his senior. Has anyone said boo about the icky aspects since the film premiered in Cannes last May? They have not.
Imagine if May December was about a gray-haired actor paying an extended visit with a Woody Allen-ish director in his mid 80s along with the director’s wife, a 50ish Asian woman. As with May December, the actor would have been signed to portray this Allen-like director in a film, and his goal would be to learn as much as he can about the beginnings of their relationship in the early ’90s and how they’ve dealt with the public condemnation that resulted from some quarters.
Do you think if Manohla Dargis were to review such a film that she would cream in her slacks like she did when she saw May December four months ago?
Hollywood Elsewhere approves only the white-haired guy in the center . The other two are the tea-drinkers.