I’m presuming that someone figured that it’s wrong to promote smoking of any kind so the cigar was zotzed. HE is calling this an advertising form of woke “presentism.” What’s next? Digitally erasing Robert Mitchum‘s cigarettes in Out of the Past?
Filed by THR‘s Aaron Couch, Sydney Odman and Borys Kit: “The footage shown included a big sequence during a New York ticker tape parade, a horseback chase in a subway tunnel, a train sequence and Indy using his iconic whip to take on a dozen guns.”
How do you “take on a dozen [presumably loaded] guns” with a bullwhip? Remember that scary bedouin villain threatening Indy with a huge sword in the 1981 original, and Indy pulling out his pistol and shooting the guy? I could see Indy using his whip to disarm a swordsman but a dozen guns?
This has already been kicked around, but Owen Glieberman’s Lost King review got me going again.
HE to Gleiberman: “Very keen on seeing this, and your TIFF review excited me. But why oh why does the film insist that Richard III wasn’t a vaguely grotesque figure, or the glint-eyed. hunchbacked fellow played by Laurence Olivier in the mid ‘50s? Why does the film insist on depriving us of that perversely pleasurable characterization?
“Even if you claim that Richard III was contorted into a deformed or misshaped figure whom dogs barked at…even if you assert that Shakespeare mangled him into a creep in order to please the Tudors, Richard was still a scheming bastard who murdered his way to the throne. And Harry Lloyd’s beatific expression is infuriating in this light. One glance at Lloyd and I felt a surge of instant loathing. How dare you, Stephen Frears and Steve Coogan? The ghost of Lord Olivier is puzzled; ditto the alive-and-well Ian McKellan, Ralph Fiennes and Al Pacino. Unwelcome revisionism, to put it mildly.”
From Owen Gleiberman’s The Lost King review (9.9.22): “As Philippa Langley, a middle-class British divorcée who, with no special knowledge or skill, goes on a quest to find the remains of King Richard III, Sally Hawkins, who has given so many extraordinary performances, may, in this movie, have given her greatest one yet.”
We all understand that Michelle Yeoh has been grandfathered in by the powers-that-be. And there’s absolutely no question about Cate Blanchett and Olivia Colman…don’t even question it. Whatever the general response to Blonde, Ana de Armas will probably qualify because of the Cuban-actress-plays-Marilyn factor (reassuring to non-white actors who may one day aspire to play this or that famous white character) plus the touching metaphor of MM, bruised and maimed by pig males all her life, dying from a combination of their sins and her own calamitious childhood.
British royalty is mostly about the notion of high-born continuity, which most of us find vaguely comforting on some level. (My heritage and bloodline come from England, a fact that automatically makes me a racist cad, so I can feel it to some extent.) Nostalgic, misty-eyed history, pomp and circumstance, and tourism. When did the British monarchy become ceremonial rather than authoritative? During the mid to later stages of Queen Victoria’s reign (1860s-1901), most would say. 130 or 140 years ago. Exalted in a sense but mainly about soft, symbolic power throughout the entire 20th Century and into today. And yet…
For those who may have ignored the initial link (posted yesterday), I'm reposting this nine-year-old Politico piece, It's very refreshing when a political campaign staffer admits to simply having made (or more precisely been part of) a colossal mistake. I would love to watch a political campaign series called "Boy, Did We Fuck Up or What?"
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We’re all familiar with those unfortunate biological quirks of nature in which people of quality and achievement are occasionally stuck with lesser, weaker family members or in-laws, otherwise known as the black-sheep or bad-seed syndrome.
There’s the bad-son syndrome (i.e., Hunter Biden, Cameron Douglas), as well as the bad-brother syndrome (Billy Carter) or the bad half-brother syndrome (Roger Clinton). My younger brother Tony, who passed in 2009, was closer to an under-achiever than a bad seed, but everyone is familiar with this. Remember George Clooney‘s no-account brother in Michael Clayton, the guy with the substance issues who stole steel-belted radial tires from his sister’s garage?
It follows that many fathers or older brothers or wealthy benefactors from within the family, motivated by love or misplaced loyalty or a simple urge to protect and defend, sometimes do what they can to clean up the messes caused by bad-seed types.
No reasonable person will dispute that Hunter Biden behaved like a fairly bad seed during his crack-and-cocaine-and-hookers addiction period. We all understand that during the Obama administration Hunter profited in various ways from being Joe Biden‘s son. (Are you telling me that Donald Trump‘s sons are any better from an ethical perspective?) At the same time no reasonable person would argue that Hunter’s behavior casts any kind of substantial reflection upon President Joe Biden‘s character or moral behavior. Fathers will always try to help their bad-seed sons. For much of his life Hunter was a wrong one — weak, derelict, craven, maybe even depraved. And so what? American families are full of Hunter Biden types.
Which is why bullshit rightwing movies like My Son Hunter are disreputable distractions. Distributed by Breitbart News, directed by Robert Davi and costarring Gina Carano as a secret service agent…hah!Laurence Fox plays Hunter Biden, and John James plays his dad. Production began in October 2021 in Serbia and lasted for four weeks (!).
A trustworthy friend has passed along a story involving a debunked Marilyn Monroe myth...a 32-year-old anecdote that touches upon the legendary relationship between Monroe and JFK, a phony paternity story, an alleged Monroe impersonator and Oliver Stone.
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I was looking yesterday for an enthusiasm trigger as I read several Venice Film Festival reviews of Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix, 9.28). Alas, I found myself in a depression pit after hearing from a critic friend that the only encounter between Ana de Armas‘s Marilyn Monroe and Caspar Phillipson‘s John F. Kennedy is a blowjob scene. Just that, nothing more.
I understand that the basic Blonde game is about conveying how much of Monroe’s life was shaped by cruel and callous sexism, but my heart sank when I heard this all the same.
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, a Netflix doc that relies on investigative reporting by Anthony Summers, claims that Monroe’s relationship with JFK dates back to the early ’50s, and repeats the legend that in 1961 and ’62 Monroe was on intimate terms with both Kennedy brothers. Not to mention the May 1962 “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” showstopper in Madison Square Garden plus the after-party encounter at Arthur Schlesinger‘s Manhattan apartment. A whole lot of swirling subcurrents, and all of it reduced to a single act of servitude. That hurts, man.
We’ve all understood for decades that the life of poor Marilyn (aka Norma Jean Baker) was too often defined by bruisings and anguish and emotional starvation at the hands of heartless scumbags, but I was hoping against hope that Blonde might spare us to some extent, perhaps by injecting or even inventing some unusual or unexpected emotional grace notes from time to time. The reviews indicate otherwise.
Of all the Monroe biographers, Donald Spoto is probably the most scrupulous. Consider this excerpt from a Popsugar article, written by by Bret Stephens and posted on 8.29.18:
“Multiple Marilyn historians, including respected biographer Donald Spoto, who wrote the 1993 book ‘Marilyn Monroe: The Biography’, allege that the most plausible time that Marilyn and JFK could have had a sexual encounter was during a party at Bing Crosby‘s home in Palm Springs, CA, on March 24, 1962.
“Marilyn’s masseur and close friend Ralph Roberts told Spoto that he received a call from the actress asking him for massage techniques for muscles of the back, and that he ‘heard a distinctive Boston accent in the background’ before Marilyn handed the phone to President Kennedy.
“Roberts added, ‘Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her ‘affair’ with JFK. A great many people thought, after that weekend, that there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: it happened once, that weekend, and that was that.”
Back to Stephens: “It was reportedly that night at Crosby’s home that John asked Marilyn to perform at his upcoming birthday party at Madison Square Garden.
“Despite the fact that JFK’s philandering ways were well known, it’s most likely that his connection with Marilyn was just a dalliance and nothing more than a one-night stand. Was it salacious? Yes. But was it the torrid, persisting affair that we’ve been told it was? All signs point to ‘nah.'”
HE feels that it’s morally and artistically wrong to confine the JFK-MM thing to a single oral episode. Talk about cutting the heart out of things. Talk about harshly dismissive.
