It was announced yesterday 4.2.26) that David Kelley is writing a miniseries version of Tom Wolfe‘s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” with Matt (Let Me In, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Batman) Reeves inked to direct and executive produce. This is a chance to properly resurrect Tom Wolfe’s great Balzac-ian novel of mid … Read more
Four and 2/3 years ago (2.3.19) I posted a piece about Bradley Cooper‘s then-forthcoming Leonard Bernstein biopic. The title of the piece (“Bernstein’s Melodies Are Everything“) accompanied the news that Cooper’s film had secured music rights from the Bernstein estate. Excerpt: “I respect Cooper’s intention to both direct and star. A comprehensive Benstein biopic would … Read more
The great Tom Wolfe passed…Jesus, two days ago and I’m only just getting around to this. The festival demands. And I still haven’t time to really sink into the sprawling legend of it all. Wolfe was one of the sharpest and most dashing literary figures of the 20th Century, and the very personification of ’60s … Read more
Two good things happened last night after I watched Richard Dewey and Michael Lewis‘s Radical Wolfe (Kino Lorber), a decent, mildly approvable documentary portrait of the magnificent Tom Wolfe, who passed in mid-May of 2018, during that year’s Cannes Film Festival. One, it prompted me to read the Vanity Fair article that inspired the doc … Read more
In a Promising Young Woman thread, I noted this morning that ’20 and early ’21 have been an especially weak year for the kind of rich undercurrent award-season films that less–than–woke, middle–class people (including X–factor types like myself) tend to respond to and pay to see. For since wokeness began to take hold in ’18 … Read more
The Right Stuff, a Disney Plus eight-hour miniseries produced by Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Appian Way, is based on Tom Wolfe’s best-selling book. Originally intended to be a National Geographic Channel presentation but then Disney+ stepped in, etc. It begins streaming on 10.9 with a two-hour opener, and continues with six one-hour episodes. It costars Patrick J. … Read more
“When I think about what makes a good story — a tale that traces out a plot and a path from A to B — the answers don’t always square with the parts of movies I love best. “I’m not super hot on Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, Maestro, but the scenes in which Lenny … Read more
I knew Maestro ignores Leonard Bernstein‘s West Side Story score as well as the famous Tom Wolfe “Radical Chic” episode. Today I learned that it also ignores his On The Waterfront score…terrific! Friendo: “Yes, it leaves out On The Waterfront and 100 other important things in Leonard Bernstein’s career. If you don’t accept the film … Read more
HE to Correcting Jeff [posted this morning in “Don’t Lecture Me” comment thread]: I’ve read and read every day of my life, although to be honest I’m better at reading chapters or portions or halves than entire books. Life often distracts, intervenes. Each and every day I drop a ball, it seems, and fail to … Read more
Mid ‘70s baseball superstar Willie Hammer vs. Manhattan mad men Foley and Lane. Lunch at The Palm. Fast talk, undercurrents of agitation, lotsa racket. From a perfectly written Tom Wolfe short story, “The Commercial”:
A 50th anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band will pop in early June — a six-disc, all-in, bells-and-whistles cash grab. The selling point will be a a newly remastered stereo mix by Giles Martin and Sam Okell (a friend says it “sounds a bit more mono-ish” than previous editions). $117 and change. … Read more
After John Glenn died on 12.8 someone in the comment thread mentioned how great Phillip Kaufman‘s The Right Stuff (’83) was, and I disagreed as follows: “I’m sorry but The Right Stuff is not great. It’s a diverting film with some above-average passages, agreed, but too much of it feels like commoner soup. I expected … Read more