Month: November 2023

…in the sense that I would never, ever wear black schlubbo lace-up sneakers to a post-screening q&a. I would never wear those ugly-ass shoes anywhere. Look at Julianne Moore’s off-white, bubble-wrap, super-spiked heels (don’t know designer) and Natalie Portman’s shiny black uptown pumps with those angel wings-or-amulets-or-whatever-they-are stuck to the sides. Grade-A.

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Just to clarify or simplify by comparing Blitz the Ambassador‘s The Color Purple (Warner Bros., 12.25) to Steven Spielberg‘s 1985 adaptation of the same 1982 Alice Walker novel, it shakes out as follows:

(a) Fantasia Barrino plays Whoopi Goldberg (the lead role of Celie Harris Johnson), (b) the Oscar-touted Danielle Brooks plays Oprah Winfrey (Sofia), (c) Taraji P. Henson plays Margaret Avery (Shug Avery) and (d) Colman Domingo plays Danny Glover (i.e., the cruel shithead called Albert “Mister” Johnson).

Fantasia Barrino talks about how after saying "No" to producers Scott Sanders and Oprah Winfrey ("Queen O"), it was director Blitz Bazawule that got her to say "Yes" to playing Celie in #TheColorPurple    @Variety pic.twitter.com/96A2RywuYJ

— Clayton Davis (@ByClaytonDavis) November 18, 2023

The 60th anniversary of JFK’s murder in Dealey Plaza is four days off (11.22.23). Ditto the theatrical premieres of Maestro and Napoleon.

I haven’t taken the time to watch Barbara Shearer‘s JFK: What The Doctors Saw (streaming on Paramount +), but I’m not buying the occipital head wound claim. Never have, never will.

Two and a half years ago I explained very carefully why this dog won’t hunt. My argument is contained in seven irrefutable paragraphs.

Posted on 7.2.21: “I’ve watched many, many interview videos with those Parkland doctors, particularly around the time of the 50th anniversary (i.e., 2013), and not a single interviewer or moderator followed up with an obvious follow-up question, to wit:

“’Nobody’s challenging the accuracy of your first-hand observations,’ the doctors should have been asked, ‘but how do you explain the bizarre lack of ANY visual evidence in the Zapruder and Nix films…why is visual evidence that shows a rear-of-the-head blow-out…why is this supposed evidence completely missing in the Zapruder and Nix films? How do you explain this?”

“One could also mention the fact that LIFE’s Richard Stolley — the man who arranged for LIFE’s purchase of the Z film and who saw the raw Zapruder footage in Dallas right after it came out of the lab — it’s surely significant that Stolley never once mentioned any discrepancy between the raw Z film and the various color versions that eventually became ubiquitous after the Z footage was aired by Geraldo Rivera in the late ‘70s.

“Think of all the people who were ostensibly involved in the alleged alteration of the Z film…those at that alleged CIA secret Kodak lab in Rochester, not to mention Bethesda doctors who took pictures of Kennedy’s head wound during the autopsy, and how they all somehow managed to ignore or cover up the gaping occipital head wound WHILE AT THE SAME TIME creating ostensibly fake images of the top of the head and right temple wounds…

“Remember also how the blood and cranial brain matter somehow caught the sun’s reflected glare in Dealey Plaza in the Z film, and how difficult it would have been to fake this…

“Remember also that Jackie Kennedy’s white-gloved right hand touched the rear of JFK’s head right after the fatal shot and yet her glove wasn’t soaked in blood…

“And then imagine the number of people involved in this alleged conspiracy to hide and deceive, and ask why none of them — NOT ONE ALLEGED CONSPIRATOR — blurted out any kind of deathbed confession. People are generally terrible at keeping a secret, especially over a period of several decades. And yet every last photographic conspirator kept their yaps shut for decades on end. EVERY LAST ONE stuck to Moscow Rules to their last dying breath.”

This is one of my favorite passages from Roger Donaldson‘s The Bounty (’84). It contained Daniel Day Lewis‘s third screen performance, and the first that attracted limited attention.

The seven notable films that Lewis appeared in during the ’80s are my all-time favorites of his — The Bounty, My Beautiful Laundrette, A Room with a View, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Stars and Bars amd My Left Foot, which resulted in his first Best Actor Oscar. (I’ve never seen Eversmile, New Jersey — has anyone?)

The increasingly choosey DDL made only five films in the ’90s, although all of them were utterly first-rate — The Last of the Mohicans, The Age of Innocence, In the Name of the Father, The Crucible and The Boxer.

Archie (Britbox, 11.23), a four-part biopic of Cary Grant (aka Archie Leach), might be tolerable or even agreeable by direct-to-streaming standards. Give it a chance, right? But you have to wonder about the casting…God.

60 year-old Jason Isaacs, who plays the older, gray-haired, bespectacled Grant in his ’50s and ’60s, is a gifted actor and probably delivers some kind of acceptable Cary inhabiting. But he doesn’t begin to resemble the fellow. Not for a blink of an eyelash.

The producers were presumably aware that Grant had brown “cow eyes,” as Myrna Loy described them in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (’48). Isaac has icy blue eyes — intense, crinkly, a bit warlocky.

And 19 year-old Oaklee Pendergast, a young beanpole with rodent eyes, plays Grant at age 27 or thereabouts. Not a hint. Nothing. Why?

The producers probably figured “well, Isaacs doesn’t look like Grant so that lets us off the hook with Pendergast.” Except Pendergast doesn’t look like a young Isaacs either. Why do casting agents cast biopics in this crazy-ass way?

And yet Laura Aikman is a dead ringer for the young Dyan Cannon, who was married to Grant from the early to mid ’60s. And Ellie MacDowall seems like an acceptable stand-in for Jennifer Grant, the now 57-year-old daughter of Grant and Cannon.

A likely reason for these two resemblances is that Dyan Cannon and Jennifer Grant are executive producers of Archie.

Dainton Anderson and Calam Lynch reportedly also play Grant at different stages of his journey.

Archie was created and written by Jeff Pope; the four episodes were written by Paul Andrew Williams.

I’ve searched around over the years and have never found anything to dissuade me of the understanding that Joni Mitchell created the term “city of the fallen angels” (i.e., Los Angeles). Court and Spark, 1973. Taylor Swift would suffer cardiac arrest if she even tried to compose stuff of this depth and dimension.

“Never in human history has age–driven decline reversed itself” — written last night by HE commenter “Correcting Jeff.”

The reasonable and well-intentioned Joe Biden is obviously age-impaired as we speak, There is only one way his 2nd term (1.20.25 at age 82 to 1.20.29 at age 86) can possibly pan out. Slower, weaker, slurrier, droopier, less dynamic. Joe is not a flinty, scrappy, X-factor elder like Bernie Sanders or 93 year-old Clint Eastwood, who’s currently directing Juror No. 2. I’m very sorry but Biden is clearly not the guy he was in ’09 when he talked to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes…he radiates assisted–living diminishment, and like “Correcting Jeff” has just said…

In any kind of sane and rational world no one would even flirt with voting for a lying, flabby gut, criminal-minded, run-at-the-mouth, saliva-spraying, anti-Democratic, sociopathic authoritarian crime boss for U.S. president, for God’s sake.

Alas, there are tens of millions out there (yokel Christians, intelligent sensibles, gun nuts, sane oldies, scowling old-school ex-liberals, free thinkers, iconoclasts, under-educated mouth-breathers, none-too-brights) who are so freaked out by the insane ravings of your under-40 DEI LGBTQ woke TikTok ideologue wackazoids that they’re actually flirting with certain 2024 political scenarios and options that could lead to The Beast taking power and subsequently perverting, crippling, poisoning and suffocating our democracy in order to weaken these raving woke lunatics.

Don’t kid yourselves about the fact that Average Joes and Janes despise the Tyrannical Woke Left Thought & Speech Police…it’s horrifying but it’s happening, God help us.

Not to mention the independent candidacies of RFK, Jr., Jill Stein, Cornel West and possibly Joe Manchin. Admit it — if Dean Phillips and Joe Biden were to magically switch places by the wave of a wizard’s hand, a lot of this chaos and terror would quickly melt away. Because to most of us the future would suddenly seem a lot more tenable and pragmatic, and certainly less ideological or foam-at-the-mouth. I prefer the idea of HE favorite Gavin Newsom stepping into the breach, but Phillips is cool.

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Democratic Presidential hopeful Dean Phillips spoke earlier today with All-In’s Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks & David Friedberg.

HE commenters can crack wise and be shitheads and piss all over everyone and everything as usual, but Phillips is a steady, all-right guy. He’s just trying to wake everyone up to (God help us) the potential tragedy of the ‘24 Biden candidacy, the expanding candidate field and (God help us) the potential Trump ascendancy.

Kim Jorgensen on Facebook: “Saltburn (Searchlight, 11.17) is my film of the year. We’re talking cinema, baby — attitude, style, irreverence, confidence, rebellion. It’s out there.

“I didn’t care for Emerald Fennell’s previous effort, Promising Young Woman, but this one makes up for it. She’s the most accomplished new European voice since Ruben Östlund.

“I really hate to harp upon our wonderful critics, but they gave it only a 58 Metacritic score. Most of them saw it at Telluride, where it screened AFTER the rhapsodically received All of Us Strangers (91 score), and they seem to have expected the same boring, method-acting, nuanced, character-driven piece of politically correct gay banality.

“[But with Saltburn] they got an expressionist opera: Brideshead Revisited meets Idol/Euphoria and Tom Ripley (with a dollop of Barry Lyndon). Giving away the plot would rob you of the constant unexpected twists, including the truly inspired last shot.

“Unlike Searchlight’s Strangers and its low-to-nonexistent theatrical potential, Saltburn at least has the feel of a possible commercial arthouse hit (to the extent that such creatures are not extinct). Here’s hoping.”

HE to Jorgensen: As you know, the Telluride reactions to Saltburn were sharply divided. I hated it so much that I had to take a brief lobby break. You can actually call it an extended bathroom break mixed with buying popcorn. I

I liked hanging with good-looking Jacob Elordi but that’s where it stopped. I spent most of the time staring at Barry Keoghan’s bee-stung nose. And the bulbous nose isn’t his only sizable characteristic, by the way, as the final naked Greek satyr scene makes clear.

Fennel can tell us that England’s wealthy and corroded elite are sick in the head…jaded, poisoned, appalling…until she’s blue in the face, but the conceit is standard woke positioning and the design is…okay, it’s inventive but also shallow and gaudy. I hated everyone except Elordi, and the film basically feels arch and perverse and eventually dull. Did I mention suffocating and oppressive? Well, I have now.

When Saltburn finally ended I let out a HUGE sigh of relief.

That said I agree with your remarks about All of Us Strangers.

Several days ago The Marvels director Nia La Costa shared some disapproving sentiments about Marvel fanboys with Variety‘s Angelique Jackson.

Now, wrote Jackson, The Marvels is “flooded with comments criticizing Disney for ‘going woke’ and rooting for the film to flop.”

Some of what La Costa said seemed to echo the complaints of last February’s sore-loser quartet — Till director Chinonye Chukwu and lead actress Danielle Deadwyler, along with Woman King director Gina Prince-Bythewood and its star, Viola Davis — all of whom claimed that their films got blanked by embedded white elitism or misogynoir or some other racist variant.

“Andrea Riseborough + Duelling Concepts of Meritocracy vs. Equity,” posed on 2.15.23 or nine months ago:

We’re all familiar with the recent complaints about the Oscar nominations by the sore-loser quartet — Till director Chinonye Chukwu and lead actress Danielle Deadwyler, along with Woman King director Gina Prince-Bythewood and its star, Viola Davis.

In their minds they all got blanked by embedded white elitism or misogynoir or some other racist variant.

In response Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Michelle Yeoh, a Best Actress nominee, suggested that they should cool their jets and wait their turn.

Prince-Blythewood: “There is no groundswell from privileged people with enormous social capital to get behind Black women. There never has been.”

Deadwyler: “We’re talking about misogynoir. It comes in all kinds of ways. Whether it’s direct or indirect, it impacts who we are.”

The essence of the lament seemed to be “we’re looking for some equity here and we haven’t received it…progressive Academy members know that the BIPOC narrative is about giving us the respect and adulation that is our due for the work but also in a payback sense, considering the decades upon decades of racist exclusion in this industry…we know we delivered first-rate work and yet we got shut out…some of you won’t say what happened but we can smell it in the wind…Andrea Riseborough‘s white supporters pushed her though but perhaps at our expense, or so it seems.”

In short, the sore losers were saying that in this time of revolutionary overhaul and the diminishing of Hollywood’s white-male heirarchy, equity needs to count as much as meritocracy (and perhaps even a bit more) in terms of handing out Oscar nominations.