Day: October 15, 2024

HE to Friendo: “It pains me to say after catching the first two episodes of Disclaimer, Alfonso Cuaron‘s seven-part miniseries, that it feels underwhelming. Almost in an awful way even, which sounds like a terrible thing to say about a film by the great Alfonso.

”It certainly doesn’t do what most of us want films of this sort (psychologically complex adult soap opera-slash-melodrama) to do. It doesn’t pull you in or energize. The dialogue feels clunky, on-the-nosey.”

Friendo to HE: “It gets maddeningly worse in the final episode. Are you on episode 4 yet?”

HE to Friendo: “Just the first two. I didn’t want to to watch it on the Macbook Pro. I wanted the 65-inch experience.”

Friendo to HE: “Episode 3 is very sexual. The series has its moments, and is beautifully shot, but it mainly feels like trashy TV.”

HE to Friendo: “Beautiful spacious sets. Shot in London, Mexico and Sydney. Under-lighted, bluish-gray, way-too-shadowy cinematography from the great Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel. But the painful dialogue! And puffy-faced, bewhiskered Kevin Kline’s narration!

“What mostly comes through is the lavishly handsome, highly sophisticated design of the sets…no expense spared.

“I don’t know the exact budget but it feels like Alfonso kicking back with a nice, flush paycheck gig. He didn’t have a strong idea or theme so he decided ‘fuck it, I’ll make a blue-chip Gillian Flynn-meets-Nicole Kidman movie, only starring Cate Blanchett.’ And poor de-balled Borat, grim and half-frowning all through it.”

Friendo told me the full Disclaimer story, including the curious ending. I won’t be sharing it, of course, but down the road someone will need to explain a couple of things. Because the final twist doesn’t seem to add up. What is revealed about a certain years-old narrative concerning Blanchett’s character…I can’t say anything but it doesn’t feel right.

Al Pacino is everywhere now, plugging his autobiographical “Sonny Boy” (Penguin Press, 10.15). I have the Kindle version, mainly bought on blind faith.

I’ve read a few sample pages on the Amazon site, and it’s an easy, soothing soul cruise that doesn’t feel “written” — it reads like a transcription of Pacino talking it through. Which feels right for what it is. One of those “this is what happened, and how it felt then and how it feels now” books.

But this morning I had a glorious time re-reading John Lahr’s decade-old Pacino profile in The New Yorker, and man, it’s one of the most fulfilling, perceptive and elegantly written profiles of the now 84-year-old actor…really wonderful.

Consider two excerpts:

Here, by the way, is a re-posting of a Hollywood Elsewhere Pacino phoner, recorded just before the 1.23.15 opening of Barry Levinson‘s The Humbling.

Please listen to a two-and-a-half-minute excerpt in which Al recalls the relatively recent “would you please take our picture?” episode. Starting at the 15-minute mark and ending around 17:25.

Two days ago I was frowned upon for not conveying empathy in the case of that bear-like, ponytailed guy who was belching and “urp”-ing like Mighty Joe Young in the Wilton Library.

Today another bear-body issue surfaced [see below], and I wanted to react in a slightly nicer way. It’s obviously vulgar of me to mention this, but real life is real life. Imagine the discomfort among the library staffers, not to mention the women using the room. This guy was flashing everyone.

My first thought was that it would be embarassing for the guy if I was to lean over and whisper, “Hey, man…you’ve got a bit of an issue going on.” I figured it would be even more embarassing to ask the library clerk if she would mind speaking to him. The best response, I finally decided, would be to slip him a yellow Post-It note. But a library staffer I spoke to was unable to find any Post-It paper.

So the hell with it, I told myself. I would have appreciated a word of concern if I’d been the ass-crack guy, but that’s me. The photo is after the jump. Not for sensitive eyes.

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Kamala Harris made a huge blunder on The View last week when she couldn’t or wouldn’t distance herself, proposed-policy-wise, from the Biden administration. Tens of millions of Average Joes and Janes are apparently convinced that Biden is a bad guy, and Kamala couldn’t come up with anything other than “uhhm, Joe did fine and so will I”?

All U.S. vice-presidents are obliged to show allegiance and respect to the Oval Office occupant, but she had to know that “in what way will you act differently than Biden as president?” would be asked here and there.

Dick Cheney excluded, the vice-presidency is largely a ceremonial position…no independent agency, a warm pitcher of spit, etc. But as Hubert Humphrey learned during the ’68 campaign against Richard Nixon, separating one’s self from the boss is a good thing — it indicates character, strength, resolve.

Basic political protocol says that vice-presidents need to express loyalty and show deference to the president. But they also have to hit the reset button when they succeed. Very quickly after 11.22.63, Lyndon Johnson, who was miserable while serving as JFK’s vp, became his own man despite having committed himself to fulfilling Kennedy‘s administrative agenda. Harry Truman embarked upon his own program within a year (or less) of FDR’s death.

If I’d been in Harris’s shoes, I would have told my View questioner, “I don’t intend my presidency to be a rubber-stamp presidency. I am my own person. I am very strong on fair-minded domestic policies and women’s rights, of course. Did Joe Biden and I err a couple of times? Were we a tad over-liberal about Mexican border immigration? Could the Afghanistan withdrawal have been handled better? Were we imperfect? You can argue that and we could kick it around, but I’ve learned some things over the past three and two-thirds years. Wiser for these difficult episodes.”

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