Donald Trump imagining himself sitting next to Jesus H. Christ in court is…well, that’s one thing. But the brawny, NFL-ish, seriously-pumped, Anglo Saxon linebacker appearance of the Son of God….that’s something else. (This image was actually posted by Trump yesterday on Truth Social.) That’s kinda missing the point of who Jesus was, I think.

…to a low-rent horror aficionado like Allyra Cavidini? Her soul is in the abbatoir. Hey, Allyra, since you’re into horror, have you ever heard of the great Mort Glickman?

As we speak my primary impressions are the ones I was considering last summer — the technically too-old Phoenix will be great, Vanessa Kirby will probably be commanding, their acting behaviors seem too 21st Century (i.e., not Barry Lyndon-ish enough), the battle scenes will be tremendous. I’m sure that the presence of a major film in the wings will manifest before long, but right now I’m not feeling it. All things in their time.

I still say that a towering Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) and a teeny-weeny Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) is visually jarring. They just look weird together. Director Sofia Coppola should have cast to minimize height disparity — a shorter Elvis or a taller Priscilla.

The real-life Elvis and Priscilla were separated by eight inches of height — Elvis was 6’0″ and Priscilla was (and presumably still is) 5’4″. But in the film, the former Priscilla Beaulieu (later Presley) is played by the 59-inch-tall Spaeny (roughly the size of an eight-year-old) and Elvis is played by the 77-inch-tall Elordi.

Shawn Levy and Steven Knight‘s All the Light We Cannot See (Netflix limited series, 11.2) is a danger-fraught World War II saga. Set in Paris and Saint-Malo, it’s mainly about four characters — Marie-Laure Le Blanc (Aria Mia Loberti), a blind French teenager; her father Daniel Le Blanc (Mark Ruffalo); a teenaged German lad named Werner Pfennig (Louis Hofmann); and Marie-Laure’s great uncle Etienne (Hugh Laurie).

Levy and Knight adhered to woke casting requirements by not choosing the best skilled actress to play Marie-Laure (wokesters feel that traditional acting or “pretending” is ungenuine), but Loberti because of her real-life “legal” blindness.

Wiki page: “Loberti landed the part after a global search for a blind and low-vision actor. A fan of the book, she auditioned after learning about the search from a childhood orientation and mobility teacher. Despite no acting training, Loberti beat out thousands of submission to secure the role; it is her first ever acting role and was her first audition.”

The critics are hating it.

From yesterday’s “I’m Not Kidding About Barbie vs. Poor Things” thread:

Friendo notes similarities between Barbie (as played by Margot Robbie) and Bella (i.e., Emma Stone’s character in Poor Things):

1. Both are manufactured creations — Barbie built by Mattel, Bella built Mary Shelley-style by Willem “Scarface” Dafoe. And as such, both are wholly innocent as they begin their journeys.
2. Both are abused by men — Bella blatantly by her cruel, misogynist Londön husband during her first life, Barbie by being infantilized and otherwise diminished or pigeonholed by her Mattel creators.,
3. Both learn hard lessons about the real world.
4. Both acquire social justice awareness during film (awakening/awokening)
5. Both are vag-centric, vag-obsessed — “What’s this thing between my legs”?
6. Both female leads are pretty.
7. Both films feature terrific dance sequences.
8. Both films feature brilliant sets, costumes, makeup,
9. Both films diminish masculinity, reward wimpy background males.
10. Both have fun with meta humor.
11. Both Barbie and Bella trick & transform stupid male characters into falling for this or that.
12. At the end Barbie and Bella choose to live and thrive in the real world, empowered & surrounded by women.

Barbie and Poor Things are almost exactly the same movie — an attractive, spirited and completely naive (or childlike) young woman in her 20s encounters the big, bad, male-corrupted world for the very first time and somehow finds her way through the thicket, and emerges at the end of the tale with an emboldened, seen-it-all, “done with that bullshit” feminist attitude.

The only difference is that Poor Things is somewhere between throbbingly and obsessively sexual in an early ’70s sense of the term, and Barbie is plastic-ironic PG-rated by way of the Mattel corporation and a determination to be gay without actually being “gay”. Plus the only sexual act Barbie engages in, at the very end, is asking about birth control (“I’m here to see my gynecologist”).

Poor Things is obviously more perverse, not to mention more wildly imaginative in a Terry Gilliam kinda way, and Barbie is certainly slicker and more superficial in a consumer-friendly, vaguely toothless, wind-up-doll sort of way.

But when you get right down to it and boil out the snow, they’re pretty much the same movie, and this will factor heavily into the final voting for the Best Picture Oscar.

THR‘s Scott Feinberg, posted on 9.3.23: “While more than a few [Telluride] attendees found Poor Things — which I will only describe as Frankenstein meets Barbie, and which Searchlight will release on Dec. 8 — a bit too weird, and/or risqué and/or lengthy for their taste, the critical response to it has been off the charts.”

Critic friendo: “I agree completely [about the Barbie-Poor Things parallels]. I would add, however, that both movies are show-offy yet half-baked. In this context I’m almost enjoying the pile-up of woke piety — the Poor Things splooge fest.”

I saw Killers of the Flower Moon in Cannes last May, and gave it a B grade. Okay, a B-plus. Since then I’ve written about it from 49 different angles. And I absolutely intend to see it on an IMAX screen when it opens on 10.20. It’s a very well-made film, and it certainly warrants two viewings.

That said, it’s a woke flatliner. I can sense this in the air. In a perfect world Joe and Jane would swamp it like Barbenheimer, but my insect antennae signals are telling me perhaps not.

From “At the New York Film Festival, Delicate Movies and Ones That Go Vroom,” a 9.29.23 N.Y. Times piece by Manohla Dargis:

“One of the festival’s bigger headscratchers is that the latest from Martin Scorsese — a producer on Maestro — isn’t at the event. That would be Killers of the Flower Moon, which had its premiere in May at Cannes and will open theatrically Oct. 20.

“’We loved the film and invited it immediately after seeing it in Cannes,’ Dennis Lim, the artistic director of the New York Film Festival, told me. Days before the festival announced its main slate in August, however, Apple, which is releasing the movie, said that it would not be participating.

“As Lim noted, Flower Moon wasn’t in any of the other major fall festivals, which help usher films into the new season and onto the long road to the Oscars. (Apple could not be reached for comment.) Whatever the reason, its absence is a shame, especially because this is the event that 50 years ago presented a little film titled Mean Streets.”

Posted three years ago:

The famous animal bone sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey lasts one minute and 54 seconds. It shows the moment in which Moonwatcher (Dan Richter) discovers a certain killer instinct that will save his tribe from extinction.

My favorite part is the final six seconds, starting at 1:48. This is when Moonwatcher says “okay, that was cool, I now understand how to kill prey for food…and now that I’ve figured this out I’m going to throw the fucking bone in the air and forget about it.”

Which he does. And then he runs his fingers through the sand and starts…whatever, daydreaming.

I love this part…”fuck it, fuck the bone, I’m not doing this all day, I’m taking a break.”

The legendary Mr. Richter recently merging with Mozart: