“‘Bonnie and Clyde‘ is a 1968 French-language song written by Serge Gainsbourg, and performed by Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot. The song is based on an English-language poem written by Bonnie Parker herself a few weeks before she and Clyde Barrow were shot, titled “The Trail’s End”. The French song was released on two 1968 albums: Gainsbourg’s Initials B.B., and Gainsbourg and Bardot’s Bonnie and Clyde.” — Wiki page.
The hyena yelps are fantastic.
So MUBI subscribers should unsubscribe because MUBI France is respectfully acknowledging Brigitte Bardot’s passing or….what, is streaming one or two of her films? Lefty fanatics like Rolo Tomassi…sorry…fanatics like Rolo Tony make me want to vomit.
..but it snags my attention anyway.
When you get right down to it I’ve seen only five Brigitte Bardot films (And God Created Woman, The Night Heaven Fell, A Very Private Affair, Contempt, Viva Maria). On top of which throughout my life I’ve failed to catch what Bardot herself said was her only truly good one — Henri-George Clouzot’s La Verite (’60).
Bardot’s death at age 91 settles it — I’ll stream La Verite (aka Truth) this evening.
You could argue that Bardot’s grandest achievement was splashing into the sexually tepid waters of the straightlaced ‘50s and heating things up by way of brazen, unapologetic nudity and infinite intimations of erotic delight…starting with her break-out performance in And God Created Woman (‘56) and for a good 12 to 15 years after, Bardot inspired hundreds of millions of stiffies among men living grim lives of quiet desperation.
Sex, sex, sex, nudity, nudity, nudity, barefoot barefoot barefoot, pear-shaped ass pear-shaped ass pear-shaped ass…teasing erotica, playfully defiant manner…damp tongue, luscious lips and heavily mascara’ed eyes.
Bardot certainly went her own way, and didn’t shrink from saying what she damn well thought and felt. Passion was her guiding light. From her mid teens through her early ‘40s it was mostly dudes who lit her fire, and then, starting in the early to mid ‘70s, the welfare and protection of pets and animals became her primal cause.
The older Bardot got the less liberal or even tolerant she seemed. When she hit her 70s and 80s her racial views weren’t that far from Alain Delon’s, and in the late 20teens she made it clear she was no friend of the #MeToo movement.
Physically she was primarily known for her pouty expressions and blonde tousled hair (although she was born a brunette). Behaviorally she admitted to being a habitual infidel, time and again. She admitted not long ago to having “done” over a hundred guys in her lifetime…energetic and frisky, yes, but almost par for the course by the standards of the ’70s and ’80s.
Bardot posted this sign next to a country path that leads to her surfside St. Tropez compound:
Earlier this month I posted a list of 20 safe bets to be released in 2026 — i.e., presumptions of quality based upon esteemed critical regard and/or aspirational histories. Most of these represent my idea of festival toppers or possible award-worthy titles, or both.
Within this list, the big festival attractions will almost certainly include (1) Alejandro G. Inarritu and Tom Cruise‘s Digger, (2) Aaron Sorkin‘s The Social Reckoning, (3) Ruben Ostlund‘s The Entertainment System is Down, (4) Asghar Farhadi‘s Parallel Tales, (5) Anton Corbijn‘s Switzerland, (6) Lukas Dhont‘s Coward, (7) Pawel Pawlikowski‘s 1949, (8) Tony Gilroy‘s Behemoth!, (9) Paul Schrader‘s The Basics of Philosophy, (10) Cristian Mungiu‘s Fjord, (11) Joel Coen‘s Jack of Spades, (12) Luca Guadagnino‘s Artificial, (13) Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Minotaur, and (14) Martin McDonagh‘s Wild Horse Nine.
The Joe and Jane Popcorn titles include (1) David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino‘s The Adventures of Cliff Booth, (2) Chris Nolan‘s The Oydssey, (3) Steven Spielberg‘s Disclosure Day, (4) Antoine Fuqua‘s Michael, and (5) Zach Cregger‘s Resident Evil.
Possible Standout Exceptions: (a) Ink (d: Danny Boyle) — Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch back in the old days, based on a James Graham stage play….yes!; (b) David O. Russell‘s Madden, biopic of football coach and commentator John Madden w/ Nic Cage, John Mulane, Kathryn Hahn, Sienna Miller; (c) Ben Affleck‘s Animals, political crime thriller costarring Affleck, Gillian Anderson, Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun; (d) Laszlo Nemes‘ Moulin, French resistance WWII drama w/ Gilles Lellouche, Lars Eidinger, Félix Lefevre.
As always, Terrence Malick‘s The Way of the Wind remains a wild card.
Asking again: What am I missing?
1. Digger (d: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, p: Tom Cruise)
2. The Adventures of Cliff Booth (d: David Fincher)
3. The Oydssey (d: Christopher Nolan)
4. Disclosure Day, (d: Steven Spielberg)
5. Artificial (d: Luca Guadagnino)
6. Jack of Spades (d: Joel Coen)
7. The Entertainment System is Down (d: Ruben Ostlund)
8. Fjord (d: Cristian Mungiu w/ Renate Reinsve, Sebastian Stan)
9. Parallel Tales (d: Asghar Farhadi)
10. Minotaur (d: Andrey Zvyagintsev)
11. Coward (d: Lukas Dhont)
12. The Way of the Wind (d: Terrence Malick)
13. Resident Evil (d: Zach Cregger)
14. 1949 (d: Pawel Pawlikowski)
15. The Basics of Philosophy (d: Paul Schrader)
16. Switzerland (d: Anton Corbijn)
17. Michael (d: Antoine Fuqua)
18. The Social Reckoning (d: Aaron Sorkin)
19. Behemoth! (d: Tony Gilroy)
20. Wild Horse Nine (d: Martin McDonagh)
Anthony D’Alessandro’s Saturday box-office report for Deadline:
In four days, A24’s Marty Supreme will make more than Timothee Chalamet’s Christmas movie from last year, A Complete Unknown, did in 5 days, $26M-$27M to $23.2M.
Rivals are impressed by this number: It’s a period film about a ping-pong player from the Lower East Side, not an easy subject matter that creates a line to the multiplex, but it helps when you have the force of Chalamet in the campaign. The viral of it all sparked with the zoom sketch below. We already told you that the social media universe for Marty Supreme stood at 197M before opening across TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube; that’s with Chalamet standing atop The Sphere in Las Vegas. There was also a Marty Supreme blimp flying over Beverly Hills in further stunts.
When polled by Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak, moviegoers said the most influential form of advertising for Marty Supreme was social media (28%) and friends and family (19%).
Friday was $6.7M, -30% from Christmas Day’s $9.5M for a 3-day that stands at $16M-$17M at 2,668 theaters. Don’t be shocked if it’s higher, like a $17M 3-day and $30M 4-day. A24 has 70MM locations which are generating big bucks, and there’s some PLFs. Comp this to the previous Safdie Brothers movie, the zany gangster drama, Uncut Gems, which went wide over a 2019 5-day Christmas stretch with $18.8M. The Adam Sandler movie finaled at $50M.
The PostTrak definite recommend on Marty Supreme is a great 60% with 4 1/2 stars. Men over 25 are first in line at 36% followed by women over 25 at 27%, followed by men under 25 at 21% and women under 25 at 16%. 18-34 turnout is 66%. Even though women under 25 were surprisingly the smaller to show up yesterday, they love their Marty the most with a 94% positive and a 73% definite recommend. Diversity demos are 51% Caucasian, 23% Hispanic and Latino, 10% Black and 11% Asian American. Very good walk-up business with 52% buying their ticket same days. 50% went for Chalamet.
Marty Supreme is playing best on the East and West with close to half the gross coming from those regions versus a norm of 39% compared to all other films in the marketplace. Overperforming cities are NYC, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, DC, Boston, Toronto and more. The trajectory is showing that this Josh Safdie directed movie is playing more broadly than an art film. Regal Union Square is currently the top-grossing multiplex in the nation for the pic with close to $74k.
Six and a half years ago…late May 2019…I think.
Something’s Gotta Give (’03) is probably a better film that I’ve given it credit for over the last couple of decades.
This is a first-rate dinner table scene. Awkward discussion, truth grenades. Jack Nicholson and Frances McDormand (playing a brutally honest lesbian playwright) are especially good.
The film’s speed bump (a big one) is director-writer Nancy Meyers insisting upon the then-39-year-old Keanu Reeves‘s cardiologist character feeling serious romantic hots for the eternally attractive Diane Keaton, who was then 57.
A 39 year-old doctor might fall into a serious relationship with, say, a 45 year-old woman, or maybe even a 50-year-old if you want to push it. But not a 57 year-old, especially one who refuses to have “work” done (hence the incessant turtlenecks). There’s just no buying it.
Frances McDormand (around 45 or 46 during filming) looks so young here!
HE was out and about during last night’s snowstorm, which began around 6 pm Friday (12.26) and came down hard and heavy. Mounds and ridges of the stuff, 4″ or 5″ deep. Traffic necessarily slowed on Westchester County’s Hutchinson River Parkway and Connecticut 95 northbound, but the real problem wasn’t so much the snowfall (quite heavy with very little snowplowing going on) as the chickenshit drivers.
In a deluge of this intensity you have to keep your speed down to 25 or 30 mph for fear of skidding (everyone had their flashers on), but the 95 was congested as fuck — much slower than necessary because of all the pussies driving 10 or 15 mph, if that. I just pushed on through, bypassing this and that slowpoke as I changed lanes like a champ. Did I slip and slide a little bit? Yeah, but not to any scary degree.
JFK to Stratford usually takes a couple of hours — last night it took a little more than four. If I had kept pace with the wimps it would have taken five or longer.
When I dropped off the client (a Parisian dude) he shook my hand and said “good driver!” What he meant was that my wheel-and-breaking skills were appropriately cautious but Steve McQueen-ish, and that I don’t drive like a 85 year-old candy ass.
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“Since it was announced that the Safdie brothers, the lads behind Uncut Gems and Good Time, would be splitting up, the one question on everyone’s mind has been ‘so which brother has the sauce?’ Having seen Benny’s The Smashing Machine and Josh’s Marty Supreme, the answer, I’m afraid, is painfully obvious” — from Karsten Rundquist‘s “Is Marty Supreme The Movie of the Year?”
