Is Barbie the supreme post-#MeToo architect of white-guy-despising or white-guy-pitying cinema? Which isn’t to say, of course, that white-male behaviors haven’t generally warranted enormous enmity and condemnation over the centuries. Too many men are dogs, animals, wolves, brutes. We all know this.
Then again when, you could also note or at least ask, have older white guys not played proverbial villains? But over the last decade or so leftist Hollywood ideology has steadily and persistently maintained that older white guys are the main bringers of toxicity, venality, ignorance, arrogance and immaturity. Call them a basic proverbial problem afflicting everyone and everything — a “theme” that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
And yet the persistence and dependability factors alone naturally reduce dramatic engagement — how could they not?
There are two major films opening later his year in which — in script form, at least — a deceptive, two-faced white guy is revealed to have behaved like a sexual scumbag, and is in fact a ground-zero shithead. You’ll know them when they open. How many have there been since ’15 or thereabouts?
A bit less than three months ago (3.26) I sent $2K and change to Tommaso, my Dorsoduro-residing Airbnb host. That was the tab for 13 days in his spacious one-bedroom apartment (8.25 thru 9.7) during the Venice Film Festival.
It was all locked in — no worries, not too pricey, friendly messages from Tommaso and his dad, Valentino, etc. And a really nice neighborhood.
Yesterday (6.19) I asked Tommaso about the two beds, and he replied as follows around midnight:
Roughly nine hours ago Airbnb told me Tommaso had cancelledthebooking. My Citibank app said Airbnb had sent a full refund — the money will be liquid and usable on Tuesday, 6.24. The fuck?
Nearly three months of soothing Tomasso vibes, and suddenly I was Joe Pesci in his final Goodfellas scene…pop and flop.
Tommaso may have blown me off because somebody offered him more dough for the place. If so, that was unethical, shitty, inconsiderate, dishonorable…all of that stuff.
I immediately reserved another place on VRBO, a little smaller but close to the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop and oh, yeah..,about $900moreexpensivethanTommasso’srental.
You fucked me in the ass, Tommaso. Left me high and dry. Uncool, dude…you cost me and it hurts.
Why doesn’t Greenwich Entertainment announce a distribution plan for Michael Franco‘s Dreams? Why don’t they firm up a release date, release a trailer, etc.? Franco is one of the most interesting major-league directors out there right now, and I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to just watch summer crap movies between now and the Venice Film Festival. Hubba-hubba.
I’m trying to think of an urban territory that exudes more deep-down misery than the shitty parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Dull tenement buildings, miles and miles of gloom…cornucopias of character-free, hand-me-down ugliness.
I’ve roamed around the boring, dull-as-dishwater outskirts of many European cities (Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona, Geneva, Belgrade), and while these regions are rarely what any visitor would call intriguing or delightful or agreeably colorful, none feel as culturally gutted or meaningless as downmarket Brooklyn or Queens (East Midwood, Bensonhurst, Canarsie, East Flatbush, Brownsville, South Ozone Park).
What a ghastly proposition for a resident of these nabes to stand on a streetcorner and look around and say, “Yup, this is it…I”ll be spending the rest of my life here.”
[Previously paywalled] This morning on Facebook Michael McDaniel passed along a conversation he had with AI Writer about Bill Forsyth‘s Local Hero. He asked the software which character is the actual “local hero” of the title. The AI said it was eccentric, beach-dwelling Ben (Fulton McKay)
“Wise old Ben is the only Ferness resident person who refuses to sell his land to Knox Oil and Gas. Ben is a symbol of the old way of life, and represents the values of community and tradition — a reminder that there is more to life than money, and that some things that are worth more than oil,” blah blah.
HE dispute: “Ben is an eccentric old coot who doesn’t care about anything but his own notion of basics — living in his beach hut, having enough to eat and enough firewood to keep warm with — and he certainly believes in his own theology. Ben believes, quite properly, in the stars and tides and eternity and sand granules. He’s the soul of this half-mystical film — the sardonic, good-natured fool on the beach who allegedly grasps the whole cosmic equation.
“But that little handful-of-sand trick he plays on Peter Reigert‘s MacIntyre is a tiny bit cruel. On top of which Ben is obviously complacent and calm about depriving the residents of Ferness of a huge payday that will make their lives much more comfortable and secure. Ben is not morally wrong in his priorities, but he’s also a bit of a shit. There’s certainly nothing heroic about the guy.
“Local Hero is not Ben’s story, of course, but the story of MacIntyre’s spiritual awakening. As the film begins Reigert is a brusque Houston oil executive, ‘a telex man,’ no girlfriend and no pet, skimming along and not especially bothered or moved by anything or anyone. But at the end ‘Mac’ is a changed man. For the first time in his adult life he’s begun to feel strong emotions about fundamental things, and has fallen in love with Jennifer Black‘s Stella, a married Ferness woman, and at the very end he’s rocked by heartbreak.
“Local Hero delivers one of the saddest ending of any movie, ever. But it’s moving for that.”
Facebook’s Rex Gordon: “I don’t recognize the movie that the AI watched. There is no evidence that Ben is kind or generous. He shows no traits that represent ‘the values of community’; he’s a loner who keeps himself apart from the community (the type who only has one cup for visitors. He obviously knows the stars and tides, but there’s no other evidence that he’s wise. I can’t think of a scene in which he helps anybody else, although he helps himself to more than his share of food at the cèilidh. The community hates his stubborn refusal to sell the beach. But Ben is “a reminder that there is more to life than money and things worth more than oil.”
Facebook’s Derek Davidson: “At least the AI gave a thoughtful answer. This has me thinking what does it actually mean by hero anyway? Hero to who? I assume all the town are still taking their buy out anyway to make way for the observatory? If it’s Gordon, is he hero for selling the town out? We see Mac (presumably) calling in the end. In one year, will any of those people in town even be there to return to? Gordon and Stella I assume will move away… it’s not such a happy conclusion, even if it’s not strictly an Knox Oil site.”
Upon reading last night’s 28 Years Later pan and particularly a money paragraph that called Danny Boyle‘s newbie “the filthiest, emptiest, most repellent and nihilistic film of this sort…almost certainly the most physically disgusting film of any kind that I’ve ever seen in my life”, HE commenter “Tomosophy” called this “huge praise…exactly what I want from this kind of film.”
He will therefore “definitely be seeing this in a theatre,” he added.
Either Tomosophy was being flagrantly insincere or was flaunting his perversity for egoistic reasons…showing off for the commentariat. Or he’s simply one sick fuck. Because 99% of moviegoers (i.e., the sane ones) don’t want to wallow in miserableism, which is definitely what 28 Years Later is selling.
I’m the kind of guy who can laugh joyously at lines like “I wish I was in hell with my back broken” but being dragged through the malevolent and very bloody predations of Boyle’s film….forget it.
Two famous quotes apply: (a) “I’m a human being, goddamit…my life has value!” (Peter Finch in Network) and (b) “I’m not an animal” (Albert Brooks in Lost in America).
Like the headline implies, people may pay for escapism but they sometimes wind up neck deep in the grim.
Moviegoers are not interested in what willful auteur-level directors like Boyle are composing or assembling, much less what his actors are feeling or conveying unless the actor in question happens to be someone on the level of Ralph Fiennes.
Moviegoers, boiled down, are interested in what they’re feeling, and what I was feeling last night was profounddisgust. And I don’t care what film critics who are filing from the planet Pluto (guys like Bob Strauss) are saying. For I am King Solomon…the ultimate arbiter, the one-man jury, inspector of the final product, giver or denier of the HE seal of approval.
A performance or a movie, in other words, is not about some idea or theme or cultural undercurrent propelling the filmmakers, but about how I fucking feel as I contemplate the finality of it. And what I wanted to do last night was throw up in a bucket.
