From the corner of B’way and 43rd you can see the golden Ben-Hur signage atop the Loew’s State marquee at B’way and 45th; ditto the building signage above it. You can also spot the DeMille’s Psycho billboard at Seventh Ave. amd 47th.
Ben-Hur had opened in late November of ’59 and was still playing on a reserved-seat basis eight months later. Psycho opened on 6.16.60.
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Written by Daryl Hannah and posted in the N.Y. Times on 3.6.26:
“The character ‘Daryl Hannah’ portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John. The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue.
“I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s.
“It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show. These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.
“When so many people watch a dramatization that uses a real name, real-life consequences follow. In the weeks since the series aired, I have received many hostile and even threatening messages from viewers who seem to believe the portrayal is factual. When entertainment borrows a real person’s name, it can permanently impact her reputation.
“I know that as an actress I will be in the public eye. I’ve endured a number of outrageous lies, crappy stories and unflattering characterizations before. I chose not to battle them but to focus on my work and respect my loved ones by keeping my private life private. But my silence should not be mistaken for agreement with lies. Apparently, my discretion makes me a target.”
Hannah, in short, has basically told Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Connor Hines and the other Love Story producers to go fug themselves.
No one will ever, ever accuse The Bride! of being plodding or conventional. It is really, really looney-tunes in a headache-inducing way. Manic this and that, turned up to eleven or even twelve.
Thematically it exudes sputtering feminist rage and an all-around, never-say-die contempt for…well, dudes, obviously, but also the sensibilities of Joe and Jane Popcorn. It all but vomits in their laps.
It’s wildly “creative”, you bet, but it also struck me as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s professional suicide note.
Friendo: “Stop it! Maggie Gyllenhaal will be fine! Mark my words: She’ll make another film every bit as good as The Lost Daughter.”
HE to Friendo: “Okay. She just had to get the spitting, shrieking rage out of her system, you’re saying.
“But Jessie Buckley’s licking, cat-shrieking, super-wackazoid performance is all on the surface. Superficially grotesque. Will you please tell me what she was so enraged about in that opening nightclub scene? She was just growling, howling and hissing…it all boils down to showboating.
“We all know Martin Landau’s famous observation that when called upon to play a character with a drinking problem, only bad actors pretend to be sloppy drunk. Real alcoholics do everything in their power to conceal the fact that they’re bombed.
“Buckley is delivering a howling, brute-male-hating feminist fury, but she’s so unplugged and such an exhibitionist in this instance, she’s like Landau’s bad actor playing a lush.
“Thank God for the logical, plain-spoken normality of Annette Bening’s Dr. Cornelia Euphronious; ditto Peter Sarsgaard’s Jake Wiles, a grubby, unshaven detective on Ida and Frank’s trail.”
Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is heavily blanketed in inky shadow, and to no discernible benefit. HE to Sher: A palette of gloopy darkness is not, in and of itself, a cool way to go. Really. And yet so many dp’s feel otherwise these days. I’m not talking about traditional Gordon Willis stylings, which were always choice and immaculate. I’m taking about sheer mud.
One good thing: There’s a vigorously well-choreographed dance sequence inside a swanky Chicago nightclub, Buckley’s “Ida” and Christian Bale‘s “Frank” front and center. It woke me up and put me into a vaguely hopeful place. “Hey, this is half-decent”, I muttered to myself. “Good, good…keep it up.” And then the mood was shattered by gunfire.
Oh, and by the way: 3D films requiring 3D glasses didn’t come along in the early ‘50s — they became ubiquitous in the mid ‘30s! You need to bone up on your cinema history, pal.
Seriously, Gyllenhaal’s alternate 3D reality is another eccentric splurge thing. The film is full of them. A lot of movie-watching on Frank’s part. And Frank and Ida are performers in the films. Which is “fun” in a certain fuck-all, Purple Rose of Cairo sense.
“Building a model from your own material…that’s how this works…it’s about taking out all the technical, logistical stuff that gets in the way.” — from Ben Affleck‘s attempt to explain Interpositive.
But there’s something incongruent about the term “Oscar season expert” and Chris Rosen‘s blue-plaid flannel shirt.
Flannel shirts are downmarket “normcore.” Back in the 20th Century they were favored by lesbians. Today their wearers are basically saying “I don’t care how much of a rural Maine backwater hayseed type I resemble or how indifferent or unconcerned wearing one of these shirts makes me seem.”
You just can’t sell the idea of being on top of the antsy, prickly, terminally diseased, ever-shfting world of Oscar-odds calibrating while wearing a blue-plaid flannel shirt. I haven’t done an on-camera thing for several months, granted, but if I did one I wouldn’t consider wearing anything other than small-collared Kooples shirts or black Zara T-shirts, possibly shielded by a black leather motorcycle jacket.
Richard Rushfield‘s threads are okay; ditto Katey Rich‘s unpretentious, open-collared Iowa college professor shirt.
Apparel-choices aside, this is a reasonably “engaging” discussion. I didn’t find it boring, exactly, but I began to lose patience early on. Why don’t they just blurt stuff out? You know what I mean. Have these guys ever heard the terms “woke-friendly” or “virtue-signalling” or “culturally isolated”? Or, you know, “completely indifferent to the likes and dislikes of Joe and Jane Popcorn”? Academy voters live on their own little planet. Just effing say that.
The fact that I’m flirting with the idea of buying a 4K UHD Bluray version of Hell or High Water, even though i’ve seen it five or six times….this means something.
Trump voter hinterland food (smoked meats, ribs, baked beans, mac ‘n’ cheese) served at Hell or High Water party.
I was going to title this post “God help me.” But God has never once helped me get through a problematic film so why the hell would he suddenly change course and come to my assistance a few hours hence? God doesn’t care if I suffer through a downer movie. He/She/It is supremely indifferent. God to HE: “If you’re enough of a sadomasochist to submit to Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s just-opened film, that’s on you. But I’ll watch it with you, and we can talk it out after the show, if you want.”
“Hit me”, said the masochist. “I won’t”, said the sadist.
Sony Picture Classics’ upcoming release of Kirk Jones I Swear (4.24). an origin story about Tourette’s syndrome sufferer John Davidson in the ’80s and ’90s, is suddenly a hot-potato thing.
Davidson sparked a furor during the recent 2026 BAFTA award ceremony by shouting out the N-word while Sinners costars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage. Davidson’s Tourette-spasm outburst led to Jordan winning the Best Actor prize at the SAG Actor awards a week later, primarily due to a virtue-signalling sympathy vote.
Suggested slogan for SPC’s I Swear poster: “He said it, but he didn’t mean it.”
Posted on 2.23.26: Tourette’s sufferers have no ability to control their tics, spasms and vocalizings, but it’s hard to believe that Davidson’s terminology had nothing to do with Jordan and Lindo being front-and-center. Davidson is more specifically grappling with coprolalia, or “the utterance of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks.”
Did Davidson shout out “ferris wheel!” or “muff diver!” or “Lamborghini!” or “muscle car”? No, he shouted out a racial slur. How can anyone argue that this wasn’t a form of commentary?
Consider the famous Tourette’s scene from Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square (’17).
During a one-on-one between Dominic West‘s Julian, a famous artist, and Annica Liljeblad‘s Sonja, a Tourette’s sufferer starts interrupting with sexually provocative taunts like “show us your boobs!,” “whore!” and “camel-toe!”
These remarks were responses to Liljeblad, an attractive Nordic blonde with great gams. The Square guy didn’t blurt out anything racial or scatalogical — he went sexual for an obvious reason.
I haven’t had a brewski in almost 14 years (I went sober on 3.20.12) so I’m hardly an authority on old-fart beers. But allow me to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut and say that the brands nobody seems to drink any more are Rheingold, Schaefer, Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Ballantine Ale (“What’ll you have?”).
I know nothing, but the only old-time beers that seem to be still commercially vital are Budweiser, Miller High Life and Heineken. Am I wrong? Probably to some extent.
I don’t know from craft beers.
During my drinking years I used to swear by lime- or guave-flavored beers. I used to buy six-packs of Desperado bottled beer in Cannes….loved that taste.
