Month: December 2023

HE has posted a stinging retort to the nagging pestilence known as “Seasonal Aflac Disord” after he ignorantly stated that George Clooney’s The Boys in the Boat (MGM/Amazon, 12.25) was, in a manner of speaking, superfluous to the cultural conversation.

This was a coded way of saying this 1930s Olympic sports saga is of no interest to under-40s because it doesn’t reflect our 2023 reality, in part due to the non-diverse cast.

HE to SAD: It’s NOT a “snoozefest”, you woke ayehole. It’s engrossing, nicely paced, attractively shot, well-performed by an engaging cast, etc. And it’s set in 1935 and ‘36, not “WWII.”

Repeating: Certain critics on your side of the cultural divide are apparently dismissing The Boys in the Boat for racial reasons — i.e., the cast being entirely white.

They’re not saying this in so many words, of course, but it’s a very safe assumption, trust me.

This is no different than certain critics hypothetically dismissing, say, The Color Purple or Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom over ethnic identity signage.

Racism is racism.

The Boys in the Boat feels familiar and conventional, yes, but it’s very nicely done in every category and is emotionally affecting. It’s Clooney’s best directed film since Good Night and Good Luck.

Magic hour, air raid sirens, Iron Dome, etc.

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Hands down, no question…I hated John Wick, Chapter Four so much I began dreaming about strong opiates running through my blood…what a relief that would be, I mean.

TheWrap‘s Steve Pond is reporting that 64 voters for the Golden Penske Awards “are threatening to withhold their final ballots after being told that they will not be given tickets to the Globes ceremony in January.”

HE to readership: Do you care if 64 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association don’t get to sit in the ballroom as the show unfolds? I certainly don’t.

Pond is reporting that “a block of 64 members are expected not to vote as a protest in the final round of balloting. The Golden Globes currently have 300 voters, so the boycott would affect a little more than 20% of the voters.”

What’s that time-honored expression? Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

Pay zero attention to the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic pissheads who’ve given George Clooney‘s The Boys in the Boat (MGM/Amazon, 12.25) failing grades. They’re wrong and mean.

I saw it a couple of weeks ago and it’s fine. It’s a familiar underdogs-take-on-the-powerful-guys sports saga…certainly not the most ambitious film of the year but it’s been assembled with clarity and confidence…it’s clean and unfettered and on-track, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of film.

I realized about halfway through The Boys in the Boat is Clooney’s best film — the least troubled or problematic, I mean — since Good Night and Good Luck (’05).

I had problems with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Leatherheads, The Ides of March, The Monuments Men, Suburbicon, The Midnight Sky and The Tender Bar. Given this 18-year history I wasn’t expecting much from The Boys in the Boat, God knows. But it surprised me. It’s really quite decent. There’s nothing really wrong with it. I’m speaking serious truth here.

Friendo: “The Boys in the Boat is the very definition of competence and likability.

“The reason for the low score is obvious. It’s allegedly a bad movie because it’s about WASP white men, and only WASP white men. Robert Daniels, the racist black critic, dissed it for that.

“And that (implicitly) is what everyone else is doing. It’s the woke militia saying: Enough movies of this sort!”

“When Seattle ‘Boys’ beat Aryan Krauts,” posted on 10.4.23:

George Clooney speaking in Boys in the Boat featurette: “These guys at the University of Washington are taking on the seniors, and then taking on the fraternity [something], and then taking on the Nazis.”

Clooney is using the usual shorthand, of course, but does he really mean that the young athletes who belonged to Germany’s 1936 Olympic rowing team were devout “seig heil” guys? Yes, Adolf Hitler saw the Berlin ’36 Olympics as a a potential proof of Aryan supremacy (Jesse Owens screwed that pooch), but how many German citizens were ardent supporters of the Nazi party that year, and how many were playing along to get along? A third or less?

How many blue-state liberals today pretend to be wokester sympathizers but are just keeping their heads down in order to stay out of trouble?

Let’s imagine, God forbid, that The Beast might win the ’24 election. He would therefore be president during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Would it then be fair or accurate to describe the U.S. Olympic team as “the MAGAS”?

On top of which I don’t like his bee-stung nose…I never have.

Schneider: “Not that the Oscars count anyway. It used to be 100 million [viewers]…remember when they were really the Academy Awards? Barbara Walters interviewing Sean Connery or whomever was nominated that year and you’d watch with your parents and it was like ‘this is amazing!’

“And now the Academy is saying you have to have 40 percent LGBTQ-plus handicapped whatever…people who are challenged, emotionally challenged…it’s kind of like people have checked out…this isn’t really the best any more…it’s about how much they can suck up to this particular ideology of idiocy….it just turns people off…it turns me off. I haven’t watched [the Oscars] in years.”

Please start watching at 37:43 — Carolla answers with a riff about excellence in sports that is spot-on.

For whatever dumb reason I thought it was important to be able to covertly smoke cigarettes inside Wilton High School when I was 17 and 18. Talk about a stupid bullshit distraction but in my infinite infantile wisdom I thought it was cool to light up in the boy’s bathrooms (there were two or three) and get away with it. Four or five friends felt the same away.

But then we were busted by the head English teacher (his last name was Moore) and then a week or two later by the head disciplinarian, Richard Sell. We were told we’d be suspended if it happened again. I couldn’t risk this so I came up with a new plan — cigarettes in the girl’s room! I proposed the idea one day to a couple of 17 year-old female friendos and they said “sure, c’mon inside, no worries.” So I caught a smoke or two in their girls-only sanctuary, and of course I was busted again.

But this time the stink of tobacco wasn’t the problem. For I was immediately suspected by Sell, you see, of possibly taking unwelcome liberties with the girls and, you know, acting inappropriately. Sell privately questioned two or three who were there at the time, asking “did Jeff say or do anything that made you feel funny or otherwise crossed a line?” No, they all said — he was just looking to light up without being caught. For a day or two this was actually a thing.

The idiotic stuff that wraps you up and ties you down in high school…amazing.

This morning I watched portions of the new Titanic 4K UHD Bluray (12.5), and I was seriously impressed by the super-sharp detail, enhanced compositions and generally exquisite fine-grain clarity.

My eyes recall very clearly what the film looked like 26 years ago (I saw it five or six times), and James Cameron‘s classic looks appreciably upgraded. It’s relatively rare for a 4K disc to deliver this kind of bump, but this one qualifies. The downside is that they’re charging $30 but I’m thinking I might pop for it.

@DemetriosPatsiaris (12.11): “As someone who worked on the 2011/2012 restoration/stereo conversion of Titanic, I can tell you that the raw scans looked very clean and well preserved. This UHD accurately reflects what was there, but better.”

@rmn070 (12.14): “Every review has given it a perfect score, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. As nitpicky as it sounds but I’m pretty disappointed that the changes made in 2012 have been carried over. That original sunset would have looked glorious on 4K, but looks like it will stay in SD for the rest of time. Preservation purposes, you know?”

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