Day: February 4, 2024

From Owen Gleiberman‘s “The Theatrical Success of Anyone but You Sends a Message: Has Streaming Become a Form of Stockholm Syndrome?“:

“Last fall, Richard Linklater’s Hit Man was one of the hits of the Venice Film Festival. It was a critical darling built around a charismatic performance by an up-and-coming star named…Glen Powell. Distributors were hot for it, and it was bought for $20 million.

“Here we are five months later, and Glen Powell is a star, and Hit Man, set to come out in June, will certainly advantage of all the marquee capital that Powell built up in Anyone but You. Which is a distributor’s dream, right?

“Wrong. Because it’s actually not going to happen that way.

“Hit Man was bought by Netflix, so no one was ever going to see it in a theater. And no one will see it in a theater now. Hit Man was a festival sensation that had the makings of an indie hit, but now it will be another movie that vanishes into the Bermuda Triangle of the streaming ocean.”

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This is utterly brilliant. A student accuses @jk_rowling of being transphobic. This teacher skilfully dissects the claim and challenges it by asking questions.

He teaches not what to think, but how to think critically.

Watch until the end.
You see the epiphany in real-time. pic.twitter.com/x00gWdOugc

— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) February 3, 2024

Very few major-league Hollywood stars have suffered such an abrupt and precipitous hair decline as James Stewart, and it all happened during his service as a bombardier squadron leader during World War II.

Before the war the rail-thin, tousle-haired Stewart looked fairly boyish; when he returned in ’45 he had developed widows’ peaks and stress fissures, and soon after (probably during filming of It’s A Wonderful Life or certainly before Call Northside 777) began to wear toupees. By the mid ’50s his hair was mostly gray and barely hanging in there.

Without the rug the older Stewart looked like an aging middle-management businessman or an Air Force General (which he was); with the rug he definitely looked younger but also like an actor wearing a rug.

Why didn’t Stewart take care of things “in Prague” via micro scalp implants? Because the technology didn’t really come into being until the ’90s or the early 21st Century.

Ayo Edebiri to Nikki Haley: “I was just curious, what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War? And do you think it starts with an S and ends with a lavery?”

Haley to Edebiri: “Yep, I probably should have said that the first time.”

Yesterday HE gifted Sutton Wells with a 30-inch, red-and-white kids guitar — made by Master Play, Fender Stratocaster-resembling, etc. A totally decent little axe, and inexpensive to boot.

During the drive down from Connecticut HE was hit with an engine problem. The engine was coughing, struggling. I found a friendly West Orange garage. Everything’s fine now, but the total damage is/was $570.00.

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HE is more or less down with this Joe Rogan rant.

Rogan on 70% of HE commentariat: “They know who and what they are…they won’t admit it but they’re in a cult…the very definition of a cult…they’ll attack you.”