Day: January 2, 2025

“A Wing and a Prayer,” posted on 9.23.12: If you’re driving your Lexus drunk your reaction time is slower than if you’re cold sober, and if you’re really stinko you’re definitely a menace to all humanity. But drunk or semi-drunk driving isn’t all bad, and sometimes it works. Or at least it did for me.

I know, I know — did I just say that? In today’s world DUI is a felony punishable by huge fines and jail time in some cases, and rightly so.

But in the ’70s tens of thousands of people drove from place to place every night with a buzz-on and in some cases plain shitfaced, and some awful things resulted, I’m sure. But quite often, probably the vast majority of times, drunks just drove home and parked their cars and watched a little TV and went to sleep on the couch. And then woke up at 3 am, undressed and flopped in their bedroom.

May God forgive me but in my early drinking days when I lived in Wilton and Westport, Connecticut, I drove late at night with several beers and/or Jack Daniels on the rocks in my system, and I just cruised on through, and I mean weekend after weekend after weekend after weekend. No accidents, no fender benders, nothing. Others plowed their cars into ponds and trees and guard-rails, but not me.

There were times, in fact, when I drove down those winding country roads at high speeds and I would focus like a motherfucker, and I was convinced at times that I was driving like Paul Newman at Lime Rock.

I started to tell myself, in fact, that I drove better when half-bombed because I was less intimidated by the possibility of something going wrong. I drove without fear, without hesitation. I took those hairpin turns like a champ.

Present tense: In short, if you’re as good a driver as I was and you’re not flat-out wasted, driving with booze in your system isn’t such a bad thing. Or at least it doesn’t need to be. Would I drive drunk now? Of course not. I stopped drinking 12 and 2/3 years ago (3.20.12) and I’m not an asshole. I’m just saying that I got away with it for years, and…well, I’ve said it.

The Penske Golden Globes are insanely corrupt. The most likely winners, it is widely presumed, will be the nominees backed by the deepest pockets….the price is right…if ya wanna slide, ya gotta grease…simple as that.

Which means, of course, that since poor little Neon can’t compete with Universal and Netflix in terms of Penske spending splurges (FYC Phase One ads in Deadline, Variety and THR, special facetime-luncheon whore events) that poor little Anora will probably get edged out, most likely by Wicked.

The second act of Anora is hilarious but it’s not really a comedy, and yet the Globes have categorized it as a musical or comedy. Wicked is obviously and emphatically a musical so it’ll probably win.

I’ve just submitted my Gatecrashers GG prediction ballot…see below…I know the deck is stacked against Anora but I can’t vote for Wicked…I just can’t.

From Richard Rushfield‘s Ankler piece about the Globes…”How to Watch a Second-Tier Awards Show“…essential reading:

“There’s something fitting about the timing of Sunday’s Golden Globes, [roughly] two weeks ahead of the second inauguration of Donald Trump. The gaudiness, the scandals, the obeisance to corrupt foreign powers, the random bit players elevated to high office — and Hollywood’s willingness to shrug and play along with the madness.

“That said, even amid an Attorney General’s probe into the legitimacy of the purchase (as I exclusively reported in November and which of course, was not covered in Variety, Deadline or THR), this ethics-challenged, anticipated-by-no-one awards show must go on.

“So if you’re the producer of an awards contender, does buying ads in a Penske publication help your shot at a nomination from the Globes? We don’t know that it does or doesn’t.

“The rules are on the site, of course, and they specify a voting body which includes the former HFPA members, but keeping the lines of church and state separate hasn’t exactly been a specialty of the Penske portfolio.

“If you have any question about how blurred the lines are, the fact that the Penske Big Three (Deadline, Variety, THR) have uniformly refused to so much as glance at the problems outlined above suggests the answer.”

30 years ago Kathleen Turner was hit with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that affects feet, joints and organs. It pretty much destroyed her career. The steroids and pain medication she took to treat the disease made her fat, and a few years later she developed a drinking problem. (Since arrested.) But how did she get that deep, raspy, rough-sandpaper voice?

The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney is the only one among three (Jon Frosch and Lovia Gyarkye being the other two) to include Anora, the year’s finest film, among his top ten.

So many critics are lost in their own dweeb vapors…in a realm of their own elite sensibilities. Average ticket buyers pay them no mind, and who can blame them?

Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer is Rooney’s #2:

HE-posted on 10.7,24:

No one will argue that films were generally better 19 years ago. They obviously were. Herewith a reminder, posted or or about 12.15.05:

Creme de la Creme: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, Hustle & Flow, In Her Shoes, Match Point, The Family Stone, Cinderella Man, The Beautiful Country, Last Days, Grizzly Man, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (13).

70% Masterful…Merging of Lovers From Different Cultures in the Midst of a Splendorous Natural Symphony…But Goes off The Rails, Drop-Kicks the Mood and Leaves You Stranded at the 110-Minute Mark: The New World (1)

Overly Schematic But Clearly Delineated (hasn’t aged well): Crash. (1)

Pretty Damn Good to Reasonably Good: Good Night and Good Luck, The Wedding Crashers, Syriana, Munich, The Aristocrats, Batman Begins, Broken Flowers, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, Cache (Hidden), The Interpreter (for the bomb-on-the-bus scene alone), Nine Lives (for Robin Wright Penn alone), Cronicas, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach has an assured place at the table), The Upside of Anger (for Kevin Costner’s performance), The Thing About My Folks (for Peter Falk’s performance), Mrs. Henderson Presents, Kung Fu Hustle, Kingdom of Heaven, Rent, Broken Flowers, Brothers (for Connie Nielsen’s performance and the austere and upfront tone of Suzanne Bier’s direction), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, War of the Worlds, Casanova, My Date With Drew (a good-humored rendering of a metaphor about youthful pluck and persistence and team spirit), My Summer of Love, Paradise Now. (27)

Not Half Bad: The Producers, The Dying Gaul, The World’s Fastest Indian, Four Brothers, Layer Cake, The Great Raid, Reel Paradise, Green Street Hooligans, Everything is Illuminated, Proof, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (13)

Gets Worse The More I Look Back Upon it: King Kong (1).

Unquestionable Failure That Nonetheless Half-Saves Itself as It Comes to a Close: Elizabethtown (1)

Biggest Bummer (and splattered milkshakes don’t matter): The Weather Man (1)

Solid First Stab by Talented Director: Scott Caan’s Dallas 362. (1)

Grudging Approval (i.e., respect for an obviously first-rate film that I didn’t particularly enjoy watching all that much): Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 (1)

Blaaah: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, North Country, Shopgirl, Jarhead, The Libertine (5)

Tediously Acceptable: The 40 Year-Old Virgin (Catherine Keener’s fine performance helped); March of the Penguins. (2)

Crap Marginally Redeemed By…: Sin City (heavenly Nevada silver-mine black- and-white photography); House of Wax (Paris Hilton’s death and some fairly inventive pizazz shown by director Jaume Collet-Serra). (2)

Cavalcade of Crap…Moneyed, Honeyed, Sullied…an Affront to The Once Semi-Respectable Tradition of Mainstream Hollywood Filmmaking: The Dukes of Hazzard, The Island, Bewitched, Rumor Has it, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Must Love Dogs, Memoirs of a Geisha, Domino, The Legend of Zorro, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Constantine, Aeon Flux, Fantastic Four, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. (15).

The fun starts around the 5:30 mark.