Day: February 16, 2024

Strong principled words, and yet he can’t help muttering and slurring and slightly spacing out…he just can’t do it with command and vigor. But good for Joe calling a spade a spade.

Three prognosticating know-it-alls — Jeff Sneider, Scott Feinberg and Clayton Davis— are predicting that Lily Gladstone will take the Best Actress Oscar after all.

May I ask what happened to the Emma Stone wave? Stone is an absolute total knockout in Poor Things, and it’s an actual lead performance as opposed to Gladstone’s supporting, half-somnambulant, less-is-less performance as Mollie Burkhart.

I’m not saying that anything has necessarily “happened” to Stone’s support, but I’ve been sensing that Stone and her people seem afraid to campaign with serious vigor, apparently out of fear that they might be seen as anti-Gladstone or anti-Native American or something in that realm, which is ridiculous.

Do I have to say this again? Enough with the damn DEI campaigns. The world is quaking, the woke thing is receding (just ask Bob Iger), and we all have to turn the cultural corner and get back to honoring performances based upon actual acting merit.

Yes, other political factors have always gone into wins but ethnicity has become too much of a thing, and it’s time to cut that idea down to size.

Gladstone has had a great bountiful time over the last several months (or since last May if you count the Cannes debut of Killers of the Flower Moon) and has derived a huge career boost. It’s been a happy chapter all around, and she’ll be completely fine in the years to come.

Enough with the ethnic-identity-warrants-awards mindset. We did that between ’17 and ’23, and now it’s over. Move past it, get with the new program, enough. We are here to go.

I for one believe that Fani Willis did fairly well on the stand yesterday. She came off as a tough, focused and highly principled professional, and as a human being. She and Nathan Wade broke up last August over differences in values and estimations of male-female equality, and while the optics are still crazy and ridiculous from a certain perspective I came away thinking “okay, that happened but was it really so bad that they were fucking each other for a certain period?”

Did Willis confess the whole absolute truth about everything? Perhaps not but it felt sufficient. I think she survives this, although Wade might have to be cut loose.

You can call Taylor Hackford a director who’s always been more about flash and impact than depth and emotional spirit, but you can’t say he didn’t enjoy a highly impressive breakout period — a five-year run between ’80 and ’84.

The Idolmaker, which I re-watched about half of last night, kicked things off with a dynamic performance from the late Ray Sharkey and a seriously invested stab at recreating that late ’50s, post-Elvis-explosion period when performers like Tommy Sands and Fabian (portrayed in the film as Tommy D. and Ceasare) were big with teenyboppers.

Two years later came An Officer and a Gentleman, a formulaic romance in some respects but strengthend by Richard Gere‘s Zack “Mayonnaise”, the soulful Debra Winger dealing straight cards and touching bottom in every scene, and Louis “D.O.R.” Gossett Jr., who wound up taking that year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

The Hackford run crested with Against All Odds, an Out of the Past remake with Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward, James Woods, Richard Widmark and Alex Karras. Great Sunset Blvd. car chase, great Yucatan peninsula sex scenes, etc. It’s hard to believe that Bridges was once in really great shape.

None of these three (released in ’80, ’82 and ’84) are great or near-great, but they really do score as engrossing midrange edge-seekers…better-than-decent screenplays, dramatic flair, hormonal hunger, rousing energy, zero boredom, etc. And yet two (Idolmaker and Odds) conclude on downbeat, meditative notes.

Hackford’s next six films, released between ’85 and ’00, lacked the dynamic highs of that opening trio but were respectable efforts — White Nights (’85), Everybody’s All-American (’88), Blood In, Blood Out (’93…great title!), Dolores Claiborne (’95), The Devil’s Advocate (’97) and Proof of Life (’00). Then he hit a solid triple with Ray (’04), which resulted in Jamie Foxx winning a Best Actor Oscar (and in the process stealing it from Sideways‘ Paul Giamatti!)

Tran Ahn Hung‘s The Taste of Things (aka The Pot au Feu) has been near the top of my best-of-2023 list since I first saw it in Cannes last May. (Here’s my 5.24.23 review.) Pretty much everyone with a semblance of taste in film and/or food adores it. It’s not just endearing but a form of religious rapture by way of a series of loving, nurturing food orgasms. But it’s more than just a fine foodie flick.

The Taste of Things has been in theatres for a week now (since February 9th), and to my shock and surprise I discovered this morning that there’s a sizable neghead consensus among Rotten Tomatoes ticket buyers. These people are animals — there’s really no other way to put it. Barbarians. Indications of a coarse and slovenly culture.

I’m sorry but you’re simply not allowed to dislike this all-but-perfect film. It’s not “slow” but meditative…quietly humming with spiritual joy. I’m truly disgusted by the people who’ve thumbs-downed it. Pigs in the trough.

And I really, really, really don’t like the idea of backup for a dangerous special ops mission in the southwest Phillippines (the Sulu Sea area) coming from an overweight (what else?) Russell Crowe, sitting in a comfortable high-tech bunker in Las Vegas.

From Glenn Kenny’s 2/15 N.Y. Times review:

N.Y. Times correspondent Peter Baker, reporting from Munich: “Just hours after her husband was reported dead, Yulia Navalnaya made a dramatic, surprise appearance at a gathering of world leaders in Munich on Friday. Taking the stage, she denounced President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and vowed that he and his circle “will be brought to justice.”

“The diplomats and political leaders at the Munich Security Conference were already reeling from reports that her husband, Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian dissident, had died in prison under suspicious circumstances when Ms. Navalny stunned the hall by striding in. Conference organizers quickly wrapped up a session with Vice President Kamala Harris and turned the microphone over to Ms. Navalnaya.

“’We cannot believe Putin and his government,’ Ms. Navalnaya told the audience. ‘They are lying constantly. But if it’s true, I would like Putin and all his staff, everybody around him, his government, his friends, I want them to know that they will be punished for what they have done with our country, with my family and with my husband. They will be brought to justice, and this day will come soon.”

“Ms. Navalnaya spoke clearly and calmly, with remarkable composure, her face etched with evident pain but under complete control. Standing at the lectern, she clasped her hands in front of her and stared straight ahead as if willing herself to focus on her message.

“The audience was captivated and gave her an emotional standing ovation when she finished.”

Read more

From “Democrats Have A Better Option Than Biden,” a 2.16 N.Y. Times opinion piece by Ezra Klein.

Please fucking read this. (Or listen to the recorded version.) This is the way out of our horrible ongoing nightmare.

Klein: “It is February. Fatalism this far before the election is ridiculous. Yeah, it’s too late to throw [the Democratic party selection process] to primaries. But it’s not too late to do something.

“So then what? Step one, unfortunately, is convincing Biden that he should not run again. That he does not want to risk being Ruth Bader Ginsburg** — a heroic, brilliant public servant who caused the outcome she feared most because she didn’t retire early enough. That in stepping aside he would be able to finish out his term as a strong and focused president, and people would see the honor in what he did, in putting his country over his ambitions.

“The people whom Biden listens to — Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Mike Donilon, Ron Klain, Nancy Pelosi, Anita Dunn — they need to get him to see this. Biden may come to see it himself.

“I take nothing away from how hard that is, how much Biden wants to finish the job he has started, keep doing the good he believes he can do. Retirement can be, often is, a trauma. But losing to Donald Trump would be far worse.

“Let’s say that happens: Biden steps aside. Then what? Well, then Democrats do something that used to be common in politics but hasn’t been in decades. They pick their nominee at the convention. This is how parties chose their nominees for most of American history. From roughly 1831 to 1968, this is how it worked. In a way, this is still how it works.

“The whole convention structure is still there. We still use it. It is still the delegates voting at the convention. What’s different now than in the past is that most delegates arrive at the convention committed to a candidate. But without getting too into the weeds of state delegate rules here, if their candidate drops out, if Biden drops out, they can be released to vote for who they want.

“The last open convention Democrats had was 1968, a disaster of a convention where the Democratic Party split between pro- and anti-Vietnam War factions, where there was violence in the streets, where Democrats lost the election.

“But that’s not how most conventions have gone. It was a convention that picked Abraham Lincoln over William Seward. It was a convention that chose F.D.R. over Al Smith. I’ve been reading Ed Achorn’s book ‘The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History.’ My favorite line in it comes from Senator Charles Sumner, who sends a welcome note to the delegates, “whose duty it will be to organize victory.”

“Whose duty it will be to organize victory — I love that. That’s what a convention is supposed to do. It’s what a political party is supposed to do: organize victory. Because victory doesn’t just happen. It has to be organized.

“Everybody I have talked to about this, literally everybody, has brought up the same fear. Call it the Kamala Harris problem. In theory, she should be the favorite. But she polls slightly worse than Biden. Democrats don’t trust that she would be a stronger candidate. But they worry that if she wasn’t chosen it would rip the party apart. I think this is wrong on two levels.

“If [the dreaded] Kamala Harris cannot convince delegates that she has the best shot at victory, she should not and probably would not be chosen. And I don’t think that would rip the party apart. There is a ton of talent in the Democratic Party right now: Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Jared Polis, Gavin Newsom, Raphael Warnock, Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, Ro Khanna, Pete Buttigieg, Gina Raimondo, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chris Murphy, Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker — the list goes on.

“Some of them would make a run at the nomination. They would give speeches at the convention, and people would actually pay attention. The whole country would be watching the Democratic convention, and probably quite a bit happening in the run-up to it, and seeing what this murderer’s row of political talent could actually do. And then some ticket would be chosen based on how those people did.

“Could it go badly? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it will go badly. It could make the Democrats into the most exciting political show on earth. And over there on the other side will be Trump getting nominated and a who’s who of MAGA types slavering over his leadership. The best of the Democratic Party against the worst of the Republican Party. A party that actually listened to the voters against a party that denies the outcome of the elections. A party that did something different over a party that has again nominated a threat to democracy who has never — not once — won the popular vote in a general election.”

** Bill Maher said this last September (i.e., “Ruth Bader Biden”).

Read more

The N.Y. Times is reporting that Vladimir Putin’s most vocally outspoken and high-profile political foe, the imprisoned but until recently very much alive and relatively young Alexei Navalny, 47, is dead…just like that.

The story is that Navalny, whom Putin henchmen irrefutably poisoned and nearly killed in 2020, suddenly lost consciousness and died after taking a walk inside the Arctic prison compound to which he was transferred late last year.

Navalny was somehow iced by Putin henchman, of course, and it’ll take a long time to prove it, of course, if it can ever be proved at all.

Perhaps Tucker Carlson could be persuaded to return to Russia and launch a no-holds-barred investigation?

It’s been understood for years Putin is a murderer, plain and simple. The Navalny hit is just another notch on his belt. Do I have incontrovertible proof that Navalny died at Putin’s behest? No, I do not. But we all “know.”

Navalny had been serving a trumped-up, bullshit 19-year prison sentence on extremism charges. He has been behind bars since he returned from Germany in January 2021, serving time on various charges that he rejected as a politically motivated effort to keep him imprisoned for life.

U.S.-based Putin-fellating righties will sidestep or otherwise ignore this killing, but the same MAGA fanatics who’ve either supported Putin’s Ukraine invasion or have at least lobbied against the U.S. support of the war…this cabal of serpents will not be mourning Navalny’s death with any passion. In my opinion they share a certain degree of responsibility for what has happened to Navalny.

I feel so enraged about this, I almost feel sick. If there’s any kind of anti-Putin, pro-Navalny demonstration in NYC this weekend, I’ll be there with bells on. It won’t accomplish a damn thing, of course, but I can feel molten lead in my veins. I’m on fire.

Posted on 1.29.22: