Day: April 12, 2024

Warning — the following riff contains a Civil War spoiler:

On 10.23.23 L.A. Times critic Justin Chang scolded The Holdovers over an incident of racial animosity between two minor characters — a snotty white kid named Teddy Kountze (Brady Hepner) and a fragile Korean student named Ye-Joon Park (Jim Kaplan). Early on Kountze belittles Park by calling him “Mr. Moto” — a trigger in more ways than one.

Chang: “In reducing Ye-Joon to such an abused prop, is The Holdovers really any better [than Kountze]? Can anyone watch a scene this callous and then be honestly moved by [Giamatti’s] speech about the injustices of American racism, classism and white privilege?”

In short Chang felt obliged to admonish The Holdovers, which is mostly set in December 1970, for having committed a woke crime.

Chang is back with the same kind of complaint in his 4.14 New Yorker review of Civil War. There’s a scene in which the lives of a pair of journalists come to a terrible end. Because of the ethnicity of these characters, Chang calls this scene “dubiously contrived.” He then asks “was it really necessary to introduce and then immediately sacrifice two nonwhite characters to score a point about the racism that lurks in America’s heartland?”

The below New Yorker illustration is by Clay Rodery.

I’m very sorry about the passing of Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis Coppola.

On her own creative steam Eleanor is best known for having shot George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr‘s masterful Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, a saga of Apocalypse Now — arguably the best making-of-a-famous-movie doc ever made.

Wiki excerpt: “The documentary was begun by Eleanor, who also narrates the behind-the-scenes footage. Coppola turned her material over to Hickenlooper and Bahr in 1990. The pair subsequently shot fresh interviews with the original cast and crew, and then intercut them with Coppola’s footage.

“Hickenlooper and Bahr premiered Hearts at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.”

Warning: Civil War spoilers herein…

On Friday afternoon (4.12), HE chatted with entertainment critic, on-air host, podcaster and movie maven Neil Rosen (“Talking Pictures with Neil Rosen“), comedian, critic, podcaster and East Hampton go-to guy Bill McCuddy for a nice Zoom encounter.

The principal topics were Alex Garland’s just-opened Civil War, Steve Zallian’s delectable eight-part Ripley and Charlie Sadoff’s Against All Enemies.

I started to pass along the story behind HE’s GoFundMe Cannes reach–out (i.e., the happiest story of my recent life), but McCuddy smirked and changed the subject.

McCuddy also swears Monkey Man (aka Monkey Wick) is a better bloodbath–revenge flick than one might initially expect. I watched the last 20 minutes’ worth two nights ago…effort appreciated but no thanks.

Again, the Substack link.

Right now I’m leaning more toward Clapton than Guadagnino, but perceptions can change very quickly. There’s a NYC screening on Monday evening (4.15).

Robert MacNeil, who’s passed at age 93, was the co-host of The MacNeil/Lehrer Report with Jim Lehrer between 1975 and ’95.

He had the most soothing voice…a voice that I absolutely loved the sound of; ditto the professional consistency of McNeil’s cool, relaxed manner and that dry, slightly aloof, faintly sardonic attitude that seemed to be part of who he was deep down.

Robert MacNeil: “I was very close” to JFK on the morning of Friday, 11.22.63, outside that Fort Worth hotel. “Almost at his shoulder as he went around working the crowd, and it was really extraordinary, what that crowd felt for him.

“Then he emerged from it…I walked with him, right beside him, back into the hotel. And his eyes rested upon mine a couple of times. He didn’t know me well but he knew me slightly, and his eyes were absolutely cold, always…really cold gray. The smile was in the crinkles [around his eyes] and in the mouth and the big teeth, but the eyes always remained, I thought, very cold.”

Read more

I’m presuming that at least some HE regulars have seen Civil War by now, and naturally have some impressions to share.

Is there anyone nursing any doubts at all about who Nick Offerman‘s U.S. president is based upon? (HE opinion: Obviously a non-liberal mixture of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon.) Is there anyone who’s uncertain about the ethnicity of the opposing armies (Offerman-allied white camoflaugue-fatigue yokels vs. diverse ragtag guerillas representing the secessionist Western Forces), and who therefore understands what the opposing sides are basically about?

I saw Civil War a second time last night at a West Orange AMC, and there were maybe five or six people in the theatre, if that. It was a 9:15 pm show, which means it didn’t actually start until 9:35 pm or thereabouts.

Read more