K-pop is bad for my soul, and vapid synth-pop of of any origin makes me collapse into a fetal position, but four-year-old Sutton likes this song (she sings along!) so I have to shut up about it. I will never ever sit through KPop Demon Hunters, but “Golden:” is apparently fated to be Oscar-nominated.
Exquisite vocals elevating HE’s Thanksgiving Day mood. Thanks, bruhs! Perfect harmonic accompaniment for the crooning, commanding Jeff Goldblum from National Anthem guy Anthony Gargiula and pop singer Jonathan Tilkin.
But I hate, hate, HATE Gargiula’s black cutoffs, white socks and black hat. Plus he’s a ginger…Jesus! If only Anthony had a decent dress sense, but of course he doesn’t.
Oh, and it’s pronounced “poppa-you-lur” (four syllables),
I’ll be catching my second viewing of Hamnet fairly soon, but based upon my first viewing I don’t recall many specifics about the demanding, burdensome life of William Shakespeare. Until the film’s final third, I mean, which is when your under-educated Joe and Jane Popcorn viewers begin to understand that he’s doing well as a combination playwright, director and actor.
Maggie O’Farrell and Chloe Zhao‘s script mainly focuses on how things were in Stratford-upon-Avon for Shakespeare’s eight-years-older wife, Agnes Shakespeare (aka Anne Hathaway), and particularly the arduous responsibilities and domestic family strife that Agnes/Anne had to cope with.
But not much is offered about Will, who, for half or two-thirds of the film, is off galavanting in London doing God-knows-what but was actually working on the writing and performing of his plays. This is what an under-educated viewer might gather or infer.
The film offers damn few specifics about Mr. Shakespeare, particularly (a) his living situations in London, (b) his work habits (i.e., did he write most of his plays in Stratford-upon-Avon or in London?…apparently the former but the film is vague), (c) his all-around success as a playwright beginning in the early 1590s (he wrote and produced most of his plays between 1589 and 1613), and (d) Shakespeare becoming wealthy enough to purchase, at age 33, a sizable, bordering-on-grandiose family home in Stratford, known as New Place, which he bought for about 120 pounds in 1597.
Shakespeare purchased New Place roughly a year after the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet Shakespeare, who had succumbed to the plague.
If Hamnet acknowledges the purchase of New Place, I missed it due to muttered speech or murky dialogue, or a combination of the two.
London and Stratford-upon-Avon are roughly 100 miles apart. In the 1590s, travel between these cities would take about 2 to 3 days by horse, or 4 to 5 days on foot. For some reason horse-drawn carriages were much slower, taking around 10 days.
A general lack of sanitation caused the bubonic plague and Black Death, which “swept through Asia, Europe, and Africa in the 14th century and killed an estimated 50 million people, including about 25% to 60% of the European population,” the Wikipage says.
London had no working sewer system. Waste was often dumped in streets or rivers, contributing to a general foulness and stench.
Shakespeare’s most notable London residences were in the St. Helen’s parish (near the modern-day Lloyd’s Building) and later on Silver Street, near St. Paul’s Cathedral. He also lived briefly in Southwark near the Globe Theatre. Will purchased his first London home in the Blackfriars area in 1613. He moved back to Stratford-upon-Avon that same year. He died three years later at age 52.
Critical Drinker: “We have peaked in terms of a common pop culture movie current…a shared cultural experience that we can all get invested in. It feels like we just don’t have that any more. As compared to the days when a movie like The Matrix, say, would come out and everyone would talk about it. Because it was [a] cultural event.
“But over the past ten years it’s difficult to think of anything that’s come out that we are all invested in**.. We’ve lost that spontaneity…that occasional occurence when something new and really interesting would come along.
“The general consensus is that woke messaging in films is dying down, but you’re always gonna get a few hold-outs. Something like One Battle After Another is a good example of that. Just a straight-up [left] propaganda movie…extolling the virtues of domestic terrorism, and just all the usual nonsense. It’s hard to believe that a movie like that was greenlit in this day and age.
“But it probably speaks volumes to the fact that it was a massive flop at the box-office, [and a film] that contributed to the worst October at the box-office in 30 years, and that’s not even adjusting for inflation.
“OBAA is the kind of movie that people do not want now. There’s an actual political fatigue that has kicked in….people don’t want political propaganda [coming from] one direction or the other.
** HE’s top ten films of the 2020-2025 period thus far: (1) Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (which premiered in Europe in late ’19 but wasn’t pirated for U.S. consumption until early ’20), (2) Sean Baker‘s Anora, (3) Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, (4) Steven Zallian‘s Ripley, (5) Edward Berger‘s Conclave, (6) Steve McQueen‘s Mangrove, (7) David Fincher‘s The Killer, (8) Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers, (9) Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s King Richard, (10) Tran Anh Hung‘s The Taste of Things (The Pot au Feu).
Second Grouping of Ten: (11) Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant, (12) Joseph Kosinski‘s Top Gun: Maverick, (13) Hasan Hadi‘s The President’s Cake, (14) Janicza Bravo’s Zola, (15) Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, (16) Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, (17) Eva Victor’s Sorry Baby, (18) Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, (19) Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro, (20) Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers.
Best of 2019: The Irishman, Joker, Les Miserables, The Lighthouse, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1917, Marriage Story, Bombshell, Parasite, The Farewell (10).
Best of 2018: Roma, Green Book, First Reformed, Cold War, Hereditary, Capernaum, Vice, Happy As Lazzaro, Filmworker, First Man, Widows, Sicario — Day of the Soldado. (12).
Best of 2017: Call Me By Your Name, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, The Square, War For The Planet of the Apes, mother!, The Florida Project. (7)
Best of 2016: Manchester By The Sea, A Bigger Splash, La La Land, The Witch, Eye in the Sky, The Confirmation, The Invitation. (6)
Best of 2015: Spotlight, The Revenant; Mad Max: Fury Road; Beasts of No Nation; Love & Mercy, Son of Saul; Brooklyn; Carol, Everest, Ant-Man; The Big Short. (10)
I’ve listened to Max Richter‘s “On The Nature of Daylight” so many times in so many films. The note progression is so slow and meditative you almost forget where it’s begun before it ends. Hard to get a handle grip, but you certainly know it when you hear it. It’s more of a vibe than a “melody.”
Hamnet, Stranger than Fiction, Shutter Island, Disconnect, Arrival, The Last of Us, Call Me By Your Name, etc.
James Cameron‘s 52-minute recitation of most of the creative challenges he faced and solved over the last 40-plus years….I could listen to him prattle on for hours. Why would a guy who knows so much, who’s so good at crafting high-end epics and thrillers…why would a guy this brave and industrious and gifted devote so many years to making five Avatar films? Why? Surely not for the money. He’s bigger than that.
It’s been 12 years since I last saw Kieran Darcy-Smith‘s Wish You Were Here. It’s technically not half bad…decently composed, well-edited, real-ish, moderately affecting, believably acted. Alas, I didn’t much like it because of a single maddening performance by Felicity Price, the director’s wife who has the lead female role
It’s odd how a film with a hugely irritating performance managed to stay in my mind, but it has. And now I’m watching it again on Amazon. Yes, that’s right — I’m giving it another chance.
I took my original 2013 review down during the height of the #MeToo movement (late 2017 through late ’23) for fear of someone slitting my throat.
Wish You Were Here is about the fallout from a tragic Cambodian vacation — a getaway that married, expecting parents Dave and Alice (Joel Edgerton, Price) have recently shared with Alice’s younger sister (Teresa Palmer) and her new boyfriend, Jeremy (Antony Star).
Jeremy vanished at the end of the getaway and nobody seems to know (or be able to admit) what happened, although it’s obvious that Dave knows and will eventually spill the beans by Act Three.
I’m sorry if this sounds like a primitive reaction, but Wish You Were Here is no one’s idea of a film noir.
Because the film, primarily set in Australia, is mainly about the reaction of Price’s Alice to a brief instance of infidelity that happened in Cambodia. A drunken and woozy Edgerton and Palmer got together on the beach, y’see. The kind of infidelity that happened so quickly with both parties so drunk or stoned that neither party remembers much. And the minute Alice learns of this you’re muttering “oh, Christ, here we go.”
Not that it’s wrong or unnatural for Alice to be outraged, but it becomes sooo tedious — the same piano chord played over and over. The four characters in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal were much, much better at dealing with infidelity and whatnot.
After a while I started muttering to Price, “Jesus, get over it, for God’s sake…it wasn’t planned, it was just beach sex, they were drunk and they’re both really sorry…Jesus.”
So basically we’re stuck with a horse-faced pregnant wife who can’t let this one bad thing go, and a seriously fetching and tormented sister named Steph you’d like to hang with more and a good-looking missing guy whom you’d also like hang with a bit more.
But Steph has been relegated to the sidelines and Jeremy is missing. So we’re stuck with angry Alice and conflicted, shaggy-faced Dave going through the pains of hell because he hasn’t told the truth to anyone about what really happened.
Wish You Were Here is basically a “get away from me, you fucked my sister!” movie with a side-plot about what happened in Cambodia. It’s about the cost of suppressing the truth and not coming clean, and the cost of coming clean about meaningless infidelity.
Price to Edgerton: “You effed my much more attractive sister? You loathsome animal. You contemptible hound. You think you know what marital misery is? Well, you’re going to suffer like never before. In fact, I’m so enraged that I’m going to put the audience through as much agony as you, my dear husband. We’ll all sink into the quicksand together — you, me, Jeffrey Wells, all the other people in the audience.”
I’m sorry but my Amazon viewing (it ended an hour ago) left me feeling no better than I did 12 years ago when I first saw the film at Sundance.
Reminder to all infidels: Never admit to catting around, deny it until death. Nothing good can ever come out of admitting to infidelity. This goes for Olivia Nuzzi as well.
HEtofriendoafewhoursago: “That’s it — between Richard Brody’s ‘trivial baby food’ put-down and Joel Edgerton’s ‘masculinity is a word that should be thrown out’ quote, TrainDreams is all but FINISHED as a possible Best Picture nominee. Stick a fork in it.”
HE’s “Jeremiah Johnson was better” review, posted on 11.17.25.
An amusing if tough-minded 11.24 Washingtonianpiece by Sylvie McNamara, based on a chat with a pair of married-but-anonymous crisis p.r. professionals, pretty much spells out the Olivia Nuzzicareer–optionsituation, and it isn’t good.
This drama could potentially end tragically for her. I hope it doesn’t, of course, but man, right now it seems quite bad.
Especially if “AmericanCanto”, Nuzzi’s autobiographical book that’s mostly about the RFK “digital affair” mishegoss (it pops on Tuesday, 12.2) doesn’t mention her other alleged (according to ex-boyfriend Ryan Lizza) sexual affair with a big-time politician, formerSouth Carolinagovernorandonetimepresidentialcontender Mark Sanford.
If the book ignores Sanford, “Nuzzi’s credibility is shot,” one of the p.r. sources flat-out states.
I recently noted that the difference between Nuzzi’s glancing “digital affair” with RFK, Jr. (which may or may not have included oral pleasuring) and the curiouslycloserelationship between President Lyndon Johnson and NBC and CBS TV correspondent Nancy Dickerson in the ‘60s may not have been all that different in this or that way, but who knows?
I doubt that Johnson and Dickerson were ever as decisive (much less athletic) as was Nuzzi in her reported 2020 tryst with Sanford.
Either way Nuzzi’s unfortunate infamy has resulted in an impressionist IsabelleBrourman painting of a mostly nude Nuzzi in a forthcoming Vanity Fair issue (i.e., also next Tuesday).
To me, this seems kinda cruel if not voracious, but when there’s blood in the water, the sharks tend to go crazy.
Update: RyanLizza‘s latest Telos chapter just dropped (just before 4 pm eastern), and it nails Nuzzi hard for questionable journalistic ethics and behavior. The finale mentions Olivia’s portraitist, the above-mentioned Isabella (aka “Izzy”) Brourman, whom Olivia asked to surreptitiously record an encounter with 2024 candidate Donald Trump.
