…about poor Ozzy Osbourne. Never plugged into the utter, low-rent shallowness of Black Sabbath. Biting off the head of a bat…get outta my life. Never watched The Osbournes during the Dubya years. I tried to find that whimsical “Ozzy contemplates life as an older guy” song, but it wouldn’t come up.
Friendo: “First democracy and now Ozzy. I can’t take any more.”
At long last, a reasonably decent trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another (Warner Bros., 9.26) has finally surfaced.
The first reaction to Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Bob Ferguson character — a grizzled, anti-government leftie blowhard — is that he’s overly verbal about everything, and that Leo seems to be half-improvising his dialogue.
Obviously a must-see for people like myself, but what will Joe and Jane Popcorn say and do? I smell trouble in this regard.
Having suffered grievously from the watching of Inherent Vice, HE stands foursquare against any further Thomas Pynchon adaptations.
It’s apparently not playing Venice and perhaps not even Telluride, but James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg (Sony Classics, 11.7) will have a gala premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, and it’s a hot ticket, I’m told.
Me to Friendo: “If Nuremberg is so good why isn’t it premiering in Venice or Telluride? Why launch it at TIFF, which is but a shadow of its former self?
Vanderbilt did an excellent job with Truth (‘15), which he wrote, directed and produced.
If the buzz is correct, Nuremberg could be a great comeback vehicle for Russell Crowe, who plays overweight Nazi luftwaffer commander Hermann Goring. A good get for costar Rami Malek also.
…a “sexually candid, open relationship comedy” starring these two mooks? The guy especially. I wouldn’t even want to imagine this bear-like beardo in any vague state of intimacy or arousal or even, God forbid, with his shoes off….ugh!
Last night I caught Part One of Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin‘s Billy Joel: And So It Goes (HBO Max). It runs 140something minutes but flies right by.
I was a little worried at first — the beginning is way too obsequious and celebrative and adoring — but it soon after settles down into the basic story of Joel’s youth and early career (late ’60s to early ’80s). And it motors right along.
And it’s really not half bad. It generally feels honest, fairly raw. I didn’t feel the least bit distracted or bored. It’s a solid, well-crafted, first-rate thing. No shade or complaints.
I was reminded what a shrimp Joel is — 5’5″. Which is the same height as James Cagney and Dustin Hoffman, and one inch shorter, even, than Alan Ladd, who was very hung up about standing only 5’6″.
Part One mainly examines Joel’s New York area upbringing (Hicksville, Long Island) and how he had tightly curled, Afro-like hair, and how his mother insisted that he learn the piano, etc. Then comes his deep plunge into suicidal despair (he tried to off himself twice) and then his gradual rocketing to fame between the early and late ’70s (“The Stranger,” “52nd Street”), focusing mainly on his relationship with longtime wife and business manager Elizabeth Weber, from whom he split in ’82.
It ends before Christie Brinkley (four inches taller than Joel and almost certainly with bigger feet than his) strolls into the arena in ’83.
The most surreal moment is Weber recalling how there was a “Stranger” listening party with a few Columbia Records execs and other cool cats in ’77, the idea being to pick which tracks would sell best as a single. And guess what? Nobody responded with much enthusiasm to “Just The Way You Are.” Joel himself didn’t think it was good enough to put on the album, but was persuaded to include it at the last minute.
“Just The Way You Are” is the song that put Joel over the top and made him into a superstar. Paul McCartney says it’s the one Joel song he really wishes he had written and performed himself.
Rahm Emanuel is understandably antsy about defying the fanatical Stalinist wokeys by saying a man can’t be a woman, but you know what? I for one understand and believe that certain men can and do become “women”, so to speak. Because of what they feel in their hearts. They just can’t compete against biofemales in sporting events, and no prompting or goading minors to take hormones or have bottom surgeries….not until they’re 18 or better still 21. And if some of them feel depressed or anguished, say, because they’re stuck in the wrong body…well, poor baby. Man up and tough it out.
Rahm doesn’t have that special X-factor charisma that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have or at least had in their prime….true. But he’s obviously sensible, tough and brilliant, and he understands the importance of good educational basics and ditching all the fucking woke pronoun bullshit, and he believes that wokeys are essentially an insane cult…that they’re the reason Average Joes and Janes despise the Democratic party these days.
Given an academic choice between Emanuel and that authoritarian sociopathic blowhard in the White House, are you telling me that most Americans would prefer Trump over Emanuel? Or that they’d rather elect Vance to succeed Trump rather than elect a sensible, practical-minded Democrat like Rahm or Gavin or Pete?
Presuming that the WSJ has 100% confirmed that Donald Trump drew this, Trump obviously has a thing for women with nice boobs, zaftig bods, no “innie” navels and well-trimmed pubic hair.
His pubic hair signature tells us he’s into oral, because this is actually fairly well drawn…it has a certain professional flair, a certain facility. Some people can’t doodle at all — Trump isn’t half bad.
All hail the 2025 Venice Film Festival (Wednesday, 8.27 thru Saturday, 9.6) for having decided to not show Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, which will probably debut at Telluride before hitting TIFF….spared from another Paul Mescal endurance meditation!
But I’m also genuinely sorry that Scott Cooper‘s Bruce Sringsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere, won’t have its premiere screening on the Lido. Ditto Edward Berger‘s Ballad of a Small Player. The latter two, I’m guessing, will probably also debut in Telluride.
And seven or eight years after completing principal photography, when oh when will Terrence Malick‘s The Way of the Wind finally peek out? What an indecisive coward-flake.
Otherwise HE is pleased and gratified by most of the official Venice selections (29 HE standouts), which popped early this morning and almost all of which were forecast by HE on 7.17:
Competition faves: (a) The Wizard of the Kremlin (d: Olivier Assayas), (b) Jay Kelly (d: Noah Baumbach), (c) A House of Dynamite (d: Kathryn Bigelow), (d) In the Hand of Dante (d: Julian Schnabel), (e) The Testament of Ann Lee (d: Mona Fastvold), (f) Father Mother Sister Brother (d: Jim Jarmusch…shockingly turned down by Cannes), (g) Bugonia (d: Yorgos Lanthimos…cuidado…bald Emma Stone), (h) Orphan, (d: László Nemes), (i) No Other Choice (d: Park Chan-wook…HE is no fan of this guy, who is almost all DePalma hat and not much cattle), (j) Sotto Le Nuvole (d: Gianfranco Rosi); (k) The Smashing Machine (d: Benny Safdie). (11)
Competition sans any particular interest or excitement: Frankenstein (d: Guillermo del Toro…no offense but how many times can we go to this same damn well?), L’Étranger (d: François Ozon); and La grazia (d: Paolo Sorrentino) (3)
Sans competition faves (fiction): (a) After the Hunt (d: Luca Guadagnino), (b) The Last Viking (d: Anders Thomas Jensen), (c) Dead Man’s Wire (d: Gus Van Sant). (3)
Sans compettion faves (documentaries): Cover-Up (d: Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus); Kabul, Between Prayers (d: Aboozar Amini),(b) Marc by Sofia (d: Sofia Coppola), (c) Ghost Elephants (d: Werner Herzog), (d) Nuestra Tierra (d: Lucrecia Martel); (e) Kim Novak’s Vertigo (d: Alexandre Philippe), (f) Broken English (d: Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth), (g) Notes of a True Criminal (d: Alexander Rodnyansky and Andriy Alferov); (h) Director’s Diary (d: Aleksander Sokurov. (8)
Sans competition faves (shorts): How to Shoot a Ghost (d: Charlie Kaufman). (1)
Horizons faves: (a) Rose of Nevada (d: Mark Jenkin), (b) Late Fame (d: Kent Jones); (c) Human Resource (d: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit). (3)
Grand total: 29 films over an 11-day period.
The social-media response to Coldplaygate (i.e., a playfully roaming kisscam exposing an apparent affair between former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and the company’s not-yet-fired chief HR officer Kristin Cabot) took an exceptionally cruel turn when some in the chorus referred to Cabot as Byron’s “sidepiece.”
What kind of vulgar crap is that? What do these jackals know about it? Maybe Byron and Cabot had been gradually, seriously falling in love — the head-over-heels, what’s-wrong-with-me?, real-as-it-gets kind — and, given the tendency of some lovers to succumb to barking insanity…maybe this crazy feeling of theirs led to that incredibly bone-headed decision to be openly demonstrative that night. Who knows?
All I can tell you is that I’ve been there. (A People magazine affair between early ‘98 and late ‘00.) I know how it feels to have wings on your heels, and so did Rodgers & Hammerstein.
Maybe….make that probably the sex between them was amazing, breathtaking, heart–stopping, etc. It’s really extra shitty of YouTubers and Instagram-ers to cynically imply that the Byron-Cabot affair was just some kind of rip-roaring fling…one of those brief, self-destructive manifestations of ridiculous teenage hormones between consenting 50somethings…a guilty blowjob in Byron’s parked car on the company lot after hours…pure impulse, no plan, no poetry, no heart.
Well, that’s a seriously cheap and rancid thing to say, assholes. At least speculate positively. Have a little faith.
Byron and Cabot have only one play in this social media maelstrom, and hiding out and hoping it’ll blow over is not it. They should co-author a short novelette about the affair..,how it began, how they completely and gloriously lost their minds, how long they knew deep down that their mutual lust and longing was unsuppressable…how long it simmered, how long they fought it, A real-life Damage or Betrayal or a combination of the two.
Once the book has been written or even while it’s being written, the movie rights should be sold, and I mean to a classy, A-level producer…the reformed and semi-exonerated Scott Rudin, say, or somebody in that realm. Persuade the great David Cronenberg (he really knows how to shoot first-rate, deliciously perverse sex scenes) to direct it. Hire Vincent Cassel to play Byron, and…I don’t know, maybe Jennifer Aniston to play Cabot. Shoot the film quickly but earnestly. And put the film into select theatres or least into a grade-A streaming feed within a year or less .
Sinners (a Samuel Z. Arkoff vampire + cunnilingus + Delta blues + ghost of Robert Johnson film just doesn’t warrant Best Picture hoopla) + Wicked For Good (enough! go away!) Plus I’m nursing doubts about Hamnet because of the dreaded Paul Mescal factor.
