Partial solar eclipses (i.e, if you’re not in the direct path) are almost nothing. They’re just shade — like it’s gotten cloudy or a heavy thunderstorm is about to hit. I have my solar eclipse glasses with me all the same.
As I said the other day, who wants to be in Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh? Who even thinks about those towns?
Just officially announced…
Dakota Fanning was a very cute nine-year-old when she played a kidnapping victim in Tony Scott’s Man on Fire (‘04). Now 30, she’s matured into a skilled actress with appealing features — call her mid-range attractive.
As I watched her last night in Ripley (shot in ‘21 when Fanning was 27) I was thinking how some kid actors are just “wow, feel that personality and look at those eyes!” But when they grow up their genetic destiny takes them somewhere else and that knockout quality recedes.
There’s obviously nothing wrong with being a moderately attractive actress with approvable skills, but sometimes getting older doesn’t quite work out in a way that casting agents think it might when the actress is a tyke.
I’m thinking also of the differences between Caroline Kennedy when she lived in the White House vs. the somewhat horsey-faced woman she became as she got into her 30s.
Sometimes it works in the other direction. I was commonly regarded as a dorky-looking, Wayne Newton-ish kid with odd, vaguely Japanese or Keanu Reeves-like features in my early-teen years, but it all turned around when I hit my mid 20s.
I distinctly recall an attractive, sexually active female contemporary telling me when I was 18 or thereabouts that she didn’t think of me as the kind of guy who would have a girlfriend, no offense. She was just being honest in a kind of kidding way.
The casting of 20somethings as college students or even teenagers is common Hollywood practice, but 40ish guys playing characters who look, think and behave like younger, less thoughtful fellows and are therefore less believable — this is less common.
I’m thinking, of course, of the Tom Ripley situation — 47-year-old Andrew Scott playing the titular sociopath in Ripley. The eight-episode series was shot in ‘21 when Scott was 45 or thereabouts. Matt Damon was 28 when he played the same fellow in The Talented Mr. Ripley (‘99). Alain Delon was 24 when he played Ripley in Plein Sud (‘60).
I think Scott’s performance is masterful, but there’s still no hiding the fact that he seems too old to be playing a young opportunistic sociopath who’s more or less floating through life and improvising each new hustle on the fly. We tend to think of 40something guys as being past all that.
Which other older actors else have prominently portrayed characters who should have been played by 20somethings or at least 30somethings?
Robert Redford was 47 when he played the 36-year-old Roy Hobbs in The Natural…he seemed a little too old but Redford’s handsome features and athletic frame made up for that. Redford’s Hobbs is actually less of a stretch than Scott’s Ripley.
Who else?
Deep down Andrew Scott’s Ripley is terrified, of course…waiting for the guillotine to drop. He wears a mostly blank face to protect himself, but who wouldn’t under these circumstances?
Because once Ripley embarks upon his elaborate deception (i.e., pretending to be Dickie Greenleaf) he knows he’ll be unmasked sooner or later.
Because in the world of 1961 photographic capture and proof are a common fact of life, and he knows that Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) has a few snapshots of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) lying around her Atrani cottage.
Plus any fan of detective stories knows that sooner or later Inspector Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi) is going to have a major brainstorm by (a) asking Marge for Dickie snaps and (b) asking Dickie’s father to mail a photo or two, and (c) searching for photos taken of Dickie in college and (d) asking the U.S. passport agency to send a copy of Dickie’s passport photo.
Not to mention the eventual publication of Marge’s Atrani book, which Ripley knows from the get-go is going to be half photos and is sure to include a shot or two of Dickie.
The fact that Ravini doesn’t start hunting around for Dickie photos immediately upon beginning his investigation of Freddy Miles’ death…this is a King Kong-sized plotting problem.
Director Steven Zallian’s solution, of course, is to simply ignore it. He just turns off the 1961 reality light switch and calmly maintains that despite the calendar year photos are an exotic invention that average people doesn’t have access to…despite the fact that 60-odd years ago nearly every inhabitant of western civilization owned a Kodak Instamatic or an 8 mm movie camera (or had parents or rich uncles who did) and that snapshots of everyone and everything were fairly ubiquitous.
I watched episode #8 of Ripley last night, and the final few minutes are an obvious set-up for another eight episodes down the road. They’re certainly not an “ending.”
John Malkovich’s performance as the deliciously perverse Reeves Minot is a blessing.
Posted on 6.15.18: I was crashing with a married couple, Frank and Karen, in a smallish Boston apartment in the general vicinity of Symphony Hall and Hemenway Street. They had a linebacker-sized friend named Eddie who lived nearby and was also hanging out a lot. Mainly the four of us sat around in the evenings and got high. I distinctly remember not rolling joints as much as tapping the tobacco out of filtered cigarettes and then-filling the cigarette with what I recall was low-grade pot. Moderately potent, lots of stems and seeds.
One night around 10 pm or so we decided we needed a straw for sucking in hash smoke. A tiny chunk of hash placed on the burning embers of a cigarette, etc. No, I don’t remember why we didn’t just use rolled-up dollar bills. Probably because it would’ve been unsanitary.
I recall that it was fairly cold out and that we were probably broke or close to it, and so going to a market and buying a pack of straws was out. So I decided to start knocking on doors and asking Frank and Karen’s neighbors if they had a straw to spare. It wasn’t just the vaguely strange notion of a long-haired guy in jeans and boots with bloodshot eyes looking to bum a straw from strangers, but that it was too late to knock on doors and bum anything from anyone.
Her name is Ada (@ada_akpala)…
I can’t explain why I feel more jolted and jazzed by The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars now than I did 52 years ago. I liked David Bowie’s 1972 landmark album but didn’t adore it — now I’m head over heels, can’t stop listening to it. I was actually more into Lou Reed‘s Transformer back then, although they weren’t exactly concurrent. Ziggy popped in June ’72 — Transformer arrived five months later.
I always thought glam rock and glitter rock were one and the same. They’re certainly synonymous today.
“Yes, there’s still a long way to go, and [there’ll be almost certainly] more horrendous shit to endure over the coming few years. But I genuinely believe we’ve seen the worst of it. In fact, I would say the scale of change has been quite abrupt.
“Something like Disney’s Strange World, released just over a year ago, would probably not be greenlit, produced or released today….”
Posted on 8.26.14: Last night I tried to explain my sense of frustration about The Leftovers to a guy pretending to be Damon Lindelof, the co-creator of the HBO series. I wasn’t as articulate as I could have been because I posted my thoughts on Twitter rather than in an e-mail. But I made a few points that added up to something, I think.
And then the fake Lindelof tried to blow me off or at least denigrate what I was trying to say by addressing me as “Ma’am.” He did so, he later said, because I reminded him of his aunt. But the conversation had merit nonetheless because I meant what I said.
I tried to say that it’s always seemed to me that there’s a huge empty hole in the middle of The Leftovers, and this is due to an absence of awe and wonder on the part of just about everyone in the series, both in front of and behind the camera.
A cosmic event of extraordinary significance has occured three years before the series begins, and in the wake of the disappearance of 2% of the world’s population, it seem as if everyone in The Leftovers is saying “Wow, we didn’t get chosen…that’s fucked up…this feels bad…I guess we’re all spirituallly deficient on some level…shit.” And yet no one is saying “Wow, the religious wackos were right all along! There is a God and a heaven and a scheme of some kind…what a mindblower! Bill Maher and Woody Allen and all the great existential philosophers were wrong all along, and…well, even if some of us don’t wind up in paradise, at least we know for the first time in the history of humanity that there really is a plan and a scheme and some kind of order to things. The term intelligent design is no longer a right-wing slogan. It’s obviously real and serious as a heart attack.”
And yet the scheme is not particularly intelligent. It’s arbitrary and random as fuck. There’s no special moral glow or distinction shared by the departed. They’re just gone. A woman of Indian descent who smokes cigarettes and is having a fast fuck in a motel room with Justin Theroux‘s Kevin Garvey…she gets taken along with Vladimir Putin, Gary Busey, Jennifer Lopez and the Pope? Along with Carrie Coon‘s husband and two kids? And an unborn fetus in the womb of Amy Brennaman? What the hell for? If anything the design is malevolent and perverse. Nothing calculates or balances out. It’s all a big sick joke, and it’s all from the head of evil Lindelof.
Here’s how I put it to fake Lindehof on Twitter and how he replied. Note: I’ve clarified and expanded upon a couple of thoughts here — in actuality they were a bit shorter and blunter. Senior Variety editor Marc Graser was kissing Lindehof’s ass about something and I jumped in with…
Wellshwood: “Does it bother anyone that there’s never been even a mention of wicked design in this series?”
Wellshwood: “What kind of idiotic God removes an unborn fetus from a mother’s womb? To what possible fucking end?”
Wellshwood: “In short, [the series] has a big fat empty hole in the middle of it — a hole it doesn’t know what to do with, much less fill.”
Wellshwood: “The show says over and over that God is one ruthless fucker, a master of infuriating fate.”
Lindelof (later on): “Ma’am, I would make fun of you, but I honestly can’t even tell what you’re trying to say.”
Wellshwood: “Go ahead and make fun. Your series is about cosmic malevolence and the utter absence of wonder.”
Wellshwood: “And where’d you get the idea I’m a ‘Ma’am’?”
Lindelof (this morning): “Honest mistake. Sorry about that. Your haircut and ramblings about religion reminded me of my aunt.”
Wellshwood: “Funny.”
..we all know what this is going to be. A feminist Bride of Frankenstein empowerment saga by way of Poor Things….same deal, back from the dead, recreates herself spiritually, sets the world on fire.
