Month: October 2023

Funny Comment on Launch of HE Takedown Season

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Posted this morning by freeek as part of the “Stop Cillian Murphy” thread: “We have officially entered that phase of the year again…that dreaded time when Jeff feels obliged to drag movies or actors through mud to make his favorites prevail.

“Such predictable behavior often translates into pure BS, and the BS keeps snowballing in his head in uncontrolled fashion for weeks and weeks, until this big pile of fabricated arguments feels like pure neurotic hysteria to the innocent bystander.

“What’s that now? Murphy “exhibits aloof-zombie expression” in Oppenheimer? Jesus. Act dilligently and put yourself together, man. There’s a big difference between speaking one’s mind and spurting a stream of stupidities so heinous that you should turn blue in the face.

“Look, Giamatti got robbed for Sideways — I can relate to that. He may be good in The Holdovers and that movie may be one of the best of the year — no problem with that. But any way you spin it, The Holdovers will remain a small movie. Whereas Murphy carries a generational, pure-event movie alone for three hours. The two performances don’t belong to the same conversation.”

HE to freeek #1: You can say that again!

HE to freeek #2: Re-read my takedown campaign articles from five, ten or twenty years ago. They may have sounded a bit extreme in dweeb circles, but what I was saying was actually spot-on.

Alien Andronicus Oppenheimer succumbs to trademark space-cadet stare.

Shut The Fuck Up

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A federal judge ruled that former President Trump has to cool his Mussolini bully-boy jets even more than he’s already been instructed to do. Verbally, I mean.

Early this afternoon Judge Tanya S. Chutkan imposed a limited gag order on Orange Plague, restricting Trump from making public statements attacking the witnesses, prosecutors (i.e., Jack Smith) or anyone else involved in the federal criminal case in which he stands accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

N.Y. Times: The order, however, “left Trump free as he pursues his presidential campaign to continue disparaging the Justice Department, President Biden — and even to assert that he believed his prosecution was politically motivated. Judge Chutkan also apparently left Mr. Trump free to attack her.”

Trump campaign response: “Today’s decision is an absolute abomination and another partisan knife stuck in the heart of our Democracy by Crooked Joe Biden, who was granted the right to muzzle his political opponent, the leading candidate for the Presidency in 2024, and the most popular political leader in America, President Donald J. Trump. President Trump will continue to fight for our Constitution, the American people’s right to support him, and to keep our country free of the chains of weaponized and targeted law enforcement.”

Stop Cillian Murphy

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There is something truly skewed and bent out of shape about Best Actor contender Cillian “I walked with a zombie” Murphy having more predictive support from your damp-finger-to-the-wind Oscar spitballers (largely due to the fact that Oppenheimer surprised everyone by becoming a huge financial success) than The Holdovers’ Paul Giamatti, who gives a wonderfully snippy, peculiar, emotionally vulnerable, multi-faceted performance that blows the bloody door off…c’mon!

Plus Giamatti was robbed 19 years ago when his exquisite, time-honored Sideways performance as melancholy “drink and dial” Miles failed to land even a Best Actor nomination. How many times has Sideways been re-watched compared to Taylor Hackford’s Ray, in which Jamie Foxx played Ray Charles and was not only nominated but won the Best Actor trophy? Ray is a good film and Foxx (also nominated the same year for his taxi-driver performance in Collateral **) is excellent in it, but in the intervening years I haven’t given Ray a single solitary re-watch. How many times have I re-watched Sideways since the fall of ‘04? Oh, at least 10 or 12 and probably closer to 15.

** Since late ‘04 I’ve rewatched Collateral at least ten times.

Never Really Got Laurie’s “Hustler” Character

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Apart from the usual sentiments I couldn’t think of anything pointed to say about the passing of Piper Laurie. She was an excellent actress and lived for a presumably fulfilling 91 years. I’m sorry her journey ended but we all have to go sometime.

Laurie’s most celebrated performance was as Sarah, the alcoholic and melancholy girlfriend of Paul Newman‘s Eddie Felson in The Hustler. I could never figure what Sarah wanted from Eddie or from life itself. She liked drinking — that’s for sure. She admired Felson’s brilliant gift as a pool player, but strongly resented his playing pool for money or at least his partnering with George C. Scott‘s Bert Gordon.

What did she want Eddie to do, play for the sheer sport of it and forego the dough because money is the root of all evil? Kind of a silly, college-girl attitude.

Laurie was 28 or 29 when The Hustler was filmed. She was 44 or thereabouts when her other big role, Sissy Spacek‘s religious nut mother in Brian De Palma‘s Carrie, was filmed.

Guaranteed Nomination Lock: “Ferrari’s” Penelope Cruz

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The Best Supporting Actress buzz for Penelope Cruz‘s Ferrari performance — the bitter, burning, marginalized-but-nonetheless-tough-as-nails wife of Enzo Ferrari, holding his fate and that of the car company itself in her hands — started roughly six weeks ago at the Venice Film Festival, and here I am adding a log to the fire.

Cruz and the bewigged and paunchy Adam Driver, who portrays the nearly 60-year-old Ferrari with a current of earnest conviction, perform a dining-room tabletop sex scene that out-points, I feel, the last historic milestone in this realm — the Jack Nicholson-Jessica Lange table-top in Bob Rafelson‘s The Postman Always Rings Twice (’81).

The difference is that the Cruz-Driver sex is joyful and eruptive and therapeutic while the Nicholson-Lange is merely hot and hungry.

Due respect to The Eyes of Tammy Fae‘s Jessica Chastain, but there’s no question that Cruz’s bravura performance in Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers (’21) should have won the Best Actress Oscar — everyone understands that. So the Ferrari nomination will likely result in Cruz being regarded as the front-runner — one of those “the Academy apologizes buut this will make things right” deals.

First 70mm Film & The Grandeur of a 23-Year-Old John Wayne

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On its opening day (10.2.30) the widescreen 70mm version of Raoul Walsh‘s The Big Trail (2:1 aspect ratio) played in exactly two theatres — Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles and the Roxy Theatre in New York City. The rest of the country saw a 35mm boxy version.

The exceptional clarity of image and seemingly enhanced sound in the 70mm version is worth the price in itself. The 70-mm version ran 122 minutes; the 35mm boxy was 12 minutes shorter.

And that was all she wrote for widescreen cinema until the debut of CinemaScope in 1953.