Channelling William Goldman: I don’t like the idea of Adam Sandler and Carey Mulligan being a couple, and so, naturally, I’m not at all interested in a story about whether or not they work through their troubles and get back together. With or without the help of a third party. That’s the nub of it.
Wiki synopsis: “Sent on a mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut encounters a creature that helps him put his earthly problems back together.”
What has happened to our culture over the last 15 years….hell, over the last seven or eight years…has been seismic. Obviously, inescapably.
And yet there are bright people like “Cat’s Cradle” out there…tens if not hundreds of thousands of them…who will listen to what I’ve just said, think about it for three or four seconds, look me in the eye, shrug their shoulders and go “naah, don’t think so…you’re living in your own world, man…life moves on, things change.”
Fellows like Cat’s Cradle aren’t blind as much as they don’t want to see. Because seeing would make them feel antsy or threatened. It’s a stone cold fact that over the last seven or eight the monsters have not only infiltrated Maple Street but are pretty much running the show, at least by way of changing the language and introducing a new form of puritanism, not to mention political terror.
Edit: I meant to say “the difference betweeen 2009 and 2024 has been seismic.”
…as reported by Paul Schrader in a Facebook thread. Devotional comments by all, and then along came Davey Holmes…
I’ll tell ya where. A black and an Asian dude turn up at the 1:24 mark so let’s not hear any shit talk about He’s Just Not That Into You (New Line, 2.6.09) being some kind of white-ass, whiter-than-white heart of darkness romcom. 15 years ago, and it feels like a half-century. The makers of this film knew they should’ve blacked it up more, but they dropped the ball.
Yesterday New Yorker critic Richard Brody posted the following comparison between Barbie and 2001: A Space Odyssey (which Barbie briefly spoofed, of course, by aping the “Dawn of Man” sequence):
This is primarily a political tweet, of course. Brody is giving Barbie director Greta Gerwig a sympathetc fistbump after she was snubbed for a Best Director Oscar nomination last Tuesday.
I also think Brody likes to throw around eccentric, extreme opinions. Does he really, actually think Barbie is a “better” film than Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 mastepiece? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think he mainly wants the congnoscenti and the wokerati to consider that he might be the Albert Einstein of film critics…that he’s seeing things on a white-light, laser-beam level no one else has quite managed…that he’s some kind of Rasputin-like genius.
I understand that sometimes the best writing happens when you don’t think it through that much in advance. Just go with it, jump off a cliff and see where it all lands. But once you get into the afore-mentioned Rasputin provocation game (not a fact but a perception on my part) what you write becomes more performative than persuasive.
Dev Patel‘s Monkey Man (aka “John Wick in Mumbai“) is not a Hollywood Elsewhere-type film. Did I even need to write that?
Monkey Man completed shooting in early March of ’21. or roughly 34 months ago. Why did the producers need three years before it was ready for release? Netflix had originally expected to release it in ’22, then it was pulled from their lineup. They sold it to Universal last year. That studio will release it on 4.5.24.
You know it has problems.
Actual narration excerpt from Monkey Man (1:17 to 1:21): “Every day I’ve prayed for a way to protect the weak.”
Ditto (:20 to :36): “A demon king and his army…they brought fire and terror to the land until they faced the protector of the people…the white monkey.”
Monkey Man is obviously bottom-of-the-barrel pulp exploitation, aimed at action-fan guttersnipes…the lowest of the low. It actually looks more like John Wick meets RRR sans musical scenes.
Logline: “A recently released ex-felon living in India struggles to adjust to a world of corporate greed and eroding spiritual values.”
Patel directed, produced (along with many others), stars, wrote the story and co-wrote the script (along with Paul Angunawela and John Collee).
HE thinks it will be a better thing if American Fiction‘s Sterling K. Brown wins the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and in so doing denies Barbie‘s Ryan Gosling his moment in the sun. Because the outraged reactions to Greta Gerwig not being nominated for Best Director have been excessive, and Gosling, I feel, needs to be disciplined for throwing fuel on the fire.
Now, appropriately, there’s a pushback against that pushback. No whining or stamping your feet if you’re not nominated in your category. Suck it in, congratulate the nominees and let it go. Let the caning of Gosling be a lesson to all future would-be complainers.
“We’re just a shittier people than we used to be…sorry.” — Bill Maher, last night’s “New Rules” rant.
The vast majority of well-regarded films shot in frigid temperatures share a basic visual trait — snowscapes.
The highest ranking members of this fraternity include Fargo, The Revenant, The Hateful Eight, The Dead Zone, the ‘51 and ‘82 versions of The Thing, The Shining, Cliffhanger, Snowpiercer, Everest, Misery, Society of the Snow and, last but not necessarily least, the currently unfolding True Detective: Night Country.
But there have been damn few shot in miserably cold climes that aren’t swamped in whiteness, and there may, in fact, be only two of these: Elia Kazan’s On The Waterfront (‘54) and William Freidkin’s The French Connection (‘71).
I’m not saying there aren’t more that qualify in this regard; I’m saying I can’t think of any.
I realize that only a morally bankrupt admirer of a director who behaved selfishly and hurtfully 45 years ago would even flirt with paying to see Roman Polanski’s WWII-era masterpiece, but…
