If a world–famous movie theatre is being discussed and some mild-mannered fellow asks where it’s located, you don’t play games like Facebook’s WT Solley did the other day. You man up and say it, plain and straight. You certainly don’t pussyfoot around by not mentioning the name of the city or the reason it became a famous venue to begin with.
Set in present-day Los Angeles, Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris‘s You People is a fuck-all racial culture-clash comedy (Jews vs. blacks) that isn’t half bad. In fact it’s darkly, brilliantly funny during the first 25% (I was actually laughing out loud and I never do that), and…okay, slightly less funny but still clever and diverting during the middle section, or roughly 60% of the running time.
The only part that massively sucks is a truly astonishing copout happy ending that occupies the last 12 to 15 minutes, give or take. If you can ignore this huge miscalculation You People doesn’t deserve the mostly shitty reviews — it really doesn’t. 85% to 90% of this well-produced film is not a burn
It’s been described as a 2023 riff on Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, but it’s a lot nervier and crazy-good than anything Stanley Kramer ever had in mind.
Hill is note perfect as a bearded, chunky, vaguely depressed 35 year-old fellow of the Hebrew persuasion; ditto Laurene London as the Muslim-raised cappuccino girl he falls in love with and wants to marry. (And vice versa.) Hill’s trying-way-too-hard-to-be-hip parents are broadly played by David Duchovny and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Eddie Murphy (best of show after Hill) and Nia Long play London’s Baldwin Hills parents. All the major supporting performers are spot-on, especially Sam Jay, Travis Bennett, Deon Cole and Mike Epps.
David Poland‘s “Riseborough: The Drama” appeared around 12 noon eastern. HE agrees (and that’s the difference between Poland and myself– if I like or admire something, I’ll say so regardless of the contentious personality of the author — Poland is too mule-headed to adopt such an attitude).
The two best performances among the five Best Supporting Actress nominees — obviously, hands down, no question — have come from The Banshees of Inisherin‘s Kerry Condon and The Whale‘s Hong Chau. If either one were to win, I’d know in my mind and my heart that the right thing was done.
But neither are fated to win, apparently. Angela Bassett‘s Wakanda Forever turn as Queen Ramonda has it in the bag, we’re told…not because she delivered a richer, fuller, finer performance, but because the word has gone out that it’s time for Bassett to receive a career tribute, partly because she’s in her mid 60s.
I can only tell you that I found her performance tedious, wearying and even painful at times, as I did the film itself. She barks her lines and glares daggers at everyone so they’ll understand her grief over the death of her son, T’Challa (the late Chadwick Boseman). I know for a fact that many others felt similarly challenged when they sat through (or tried to sit through) Wakanda Forever. And it doesn’t matter.
Because the five cops (all black) wouldn’t control their savagery. They acted like wolves mauling a lamb.
But this tragedy, I’m presuming, also had something to do, probably, with Nichols not deferring to their authority. Cops (doesn’t matter what ethnicity) want you to lower your voice, bow your head and mildly submit to their power, and if you don’t do that you’re asking for it.
How many victims (whites included) have died because they refused to use their brains and play it smart?
Nichols ran from the scene, protested his innocence, accused them of needless brutality — and in the last two instances was obviously in the right. Didn’t matter.
Journalists-columnists, I realize, are not allowed to say this. I should know, having said this two or three times before and every time having been accused of gross insensitivity and even racism. Because only an insensitive ayehole would say to a would-be victim of police brutality, “Are you completely lacking in comprehension? Don’t give these animals a reason.”
I’d honestly forgotten that legendary movie composer, conductor and multi-Oscar-winner Alfred Newman composed the 20th Century Fox fanfare theme, and then expanded it by a few bars when CinemaScope came along in ’53. You’d think I’d know this cold, but whatever.
Newman’s scores won nine Oscars, but there are relatively few (Gunga Din, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Wuthering Heights, Foreign Correspondent, The Snake Pit, Twelve O’Clock High, Anastasia, the musical ornamentation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel) that have really reached inside and moved me.
As for Newman’s overture sequence for How To Marry A Milionaire (a reboot of his 1946 “Street Scene” music), it’s fair to observe that he borrowed heavily from George Gershwin. The overture sequence seems strange by today’s standards, especially for a prelude to a middle-range comedy about gold-diggers. But he was quite the composer-maestro, and served as 20th Century Fox’s music honcho for 20 years.
Alfred Newman was the godfather of the Newman musical family — brother of Lionel and Emil, uncle of pop troubador-poet Randy, father of composers David and Thomas Newman.
Robert Pattinson’s career has obviously been damaged by this. Clearly he needs to sit down and watch Point Blank or, you know, a couple of ‘60s Steve McQueen films. Does the man have any self-respect AT ALL? Talk about total emasculation.
It’s not the baggy kilt (although it looks awful — the hemline of kilts should always be above the knees) as much as the heavy brown velour jacket with the ridiculous zipper and absurd elephant collar.
This photo is a metaphor about life on Planet Neptune. Surrounded by effete bumble bee assistants with ties to envelope-pushing fashion designers, famous actors live in separate realms and have no fundamental sense of street reality.
Yes, I’m aware this pic is a few days old.
From Scott Feinberg‘s 1.28 Oscars Op-Ed — “Why Surprise Nominee Andrea Riseborough Is Unlikely to Face Sanctions for Unusual Campaign“:
“I don’t see how the Academy can penalize Andrea Riseborough because her friends and supporters have chosen to utilize [social media] platforms to champion a film or performance, especially when there is no evidence that they disparaged anyone else in the process. In the United States of America, we call this ‘free speech.’
“And to me, it’s particularly understandable why Riseborough’s friends and supporters adopted this approach. All of her higher-profile competitors who ended up not nominated on Tuesday — including Jessica Chastain for The Good Nurse (Netflix), Olivia Colman for Empire of Light (Searchlight), Viola Davis for The Woman King (Sony), Danielle Deadwyler for Till (UAR), Jennifer Lawrence for Causeway (Apple), Rooney Mara for Women Talking (UAR), Margot Robbie for Babylon (Paramount), Anya Taylor-Joy for The Menu (Searchlight) and Emma Thompson for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Searchlight) — had way more money spent on their behalf by the studios distributing their films.
“Riseborough’s friends and supporters had to act scrappier because they, unlike their competitors, didn’t have the resources NOT to.
“Christina Ricci: ‘So it’s only the films and actors that can afford the campaigns that deserve recognition? Feels elitist and exclusive and frankly very backward to me.’
“But beyond that, I think that the Academy should show a little faith in its own members. Riseborough’s friends and supporters didn’t have some magical potion that compelled other Academy members to vote for something, in the privacy of their own homes, that they didn’t actually like. They just mobilized voters to watch the movie so that they could, well, consider the performance at the center of it. And apparently, once voters did, they — like the critics whose raves propelled To Leslie to a 97 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes — were sold.”
Ringo Starr‘s version of Buck Owens‘ “Act Scrappier” is not purchasable, and is not on YouTube or Spotify.
Tom Verlaine, the Television singer-guitarist and all-around antiheroic late ‘70s punk icon, has passed at the definitely-too-young age of 73 — I’m sorry.
I saw Television play somewhere in Manhattan in the winter or spring of ’77. You might assume that the venue was CBGB, where I saw Patti Smith and Wendy O. Williams perform, but I honestly can’t remember. (I’ve actually seen Smith perform four times — CBGB, Westport Country Playhouse, Paris, L.A.’s Roxy). I felt throttled by Television’s punk metallic whateverism, but they were also the first band that made me feel like I’d somehow missed something, like I already was behind the times.
I bought “Marquee Moon“, but I didn’t like it enough to buy “Adventure“. I dropped out.
This morning’s “Riseborough Convulsions” comment thread turned into a pretty great boxing match — sensible, fair-minded folk vs. woke banshee Torquemadas.
And by the way, the fact that in voting for the Oscar nominations, Academy voters didn’t automatically default to Till Danielle Deadwyler (completely deserving) and Viola Davis (less so). Deadwyler aside they seemed to go more for merit than equity. This suggests that the French terror climate, which was going full guillotine two or three years ago, is gradually ebbing.
HE: “That’s not to say that Deadwyler wasn’t excellent in Till…she absolutely was and certainly merited a nomination, and probably would’ve landed one if only Michelle Williams had come to her senses and realized that her Fabelmans character (‘Ma Spielberg’) is an eccentric supporting character.”
Friendo: “Deadwyler’s performance in Till is good but overrated. There’s something too stentorian about it. And you, my friend, have seriously underrated Riseborough’s performance and To Leslie itself. You’ve said that you don’t like to spend two hours with that kind of character. But with all due respect, I don’t fully understand that, or at all chime with it.”
HE: “In Tender Mercies Robert Duvall does four or five minutes of drunken depravity and 110 or 115 minutes of gradual recovery. In To Leslie, Riseborough does a FULL HOUR’s worth of drunken depravity and then 45 or 50 minutes of gradual recovery. We get the depravity, guys! It’s a skipping vinyl record. What do we derive from an hour of depravity that we wouldn’t get just as fully from, say, 5, 10 or 15 minutes of the stuff? Enough already.”
Friendo: “Nope. Being a depraved drunk is much more dramatically interesting than being a pious person in recovery. Tender Mercies is, and always will be, a watchable but not ultimately all that interesting or even moving a film. It’s an austere art Hallmark card. I worship Robert Duvall but would take The Apostle a thousand times over Tender Mercies. The piety of that movie is precisely that we don’t see his character, Mac Sledge, drunk enough. That’s why Tender Mercies is the Oscar winner as glorified Sunday-school lesson.
HE: “I don’t like pious Christians either, but I felt safe and nurtured and taken care of by Tender Mercies. Andrea Riseborough’s performance, on the other hand, was a barefoot tour through Dante’s Inferno. Thanks but no thanks! I know ALL about being a drunk, thanks. Lessons from my father as well as own vodka-and-lemonade experiences from the early to mid ’90s.”
Today’s (9.28) discussion explored the woke pushback (i.e., Clayton Davis, Matt Belloni, Chinonye Chukwu and friends) against the surprisingly successful Andrea Riseborough Best Actress campaign, which will reverberate around for a while. I think it’s cool for a “little engine that could” movie to try to promote itself against the big entrenched distributors and their well-funded campaigns. Sasha doesn’t agree but there’s the fun of kicking things around. Here’s the link.
And here, as a bonus, is a 2.23.23 chat that somehow got lost in the shuffle.
