Jeffrey Wells Let’s start with One Battle After Another. Identify the three great scenes. The final chase and shoot-out sequence on the rolling hills highway…that’s one. The French 75 assault on the migrant camp at the very beginning…that’s two. The failed French 75 bank robbery…that’s three.
But are there any “bad” ones? Hawks said you can’t have any. At all.
As far as it goes, HE sincerely laments the 11.11.25 passing of Sally Kirkland, who dined out for many decades off her justly praised, Oscar-nominated titular performance in Anna (Vestron), which opened on 10.2.87 and generated a great deal of award-season heat.
In early ‘88 Kirkland, then 47, won Best Actress trophies from LAFCA, HFPA (Golden Globes) and the Spirits.
So she peaked off Anna and not incidentally lived a long, mostly rich and persistently full life (60-year career, 250 film and TV gigs) that was launched, in a sense, by being the daughter of a fashion editor mom, Sally Kirkland, Sr., and was initially sparked, in a sense, by her mid ‘60s association with the jaded, haughty perversity that was synonymous with Andy Warhol’s Factory scene.
Anna also heralded the big-time arrival of then-22-year-old model Paulina Porizkova, who played Anna’s usurper — a character based on Joanna Pacula.
My first reaction to news of Kirkland’s death was “wait, didn’t she pass three years ago?” But I was recalling Sally Kellerman, who resembled Kirkland or vice versa, and was roughly the same age (four years older).
Life passes by so very quickly, recollections tend to blend into ghoulash and every new year is more expensive than the previous one.
Visiting Jett, Cait and Sutton’s home in West Orange, New Jersey has been HE’s default Thanksgiving destination since I moved to Connecticut in ‘22. But not this year. Come 11.27 the Jersey crew will be dinner-ing in Massachusetts so Jody and I are out in the cold.
So last week I started looking around for a nice, home-styled, non-corporate restaurant (fireplace, candles, scent of cinnamon and pine needles) to savor a Thanksgiving dinner in, and guess what? They’re all fucking closed.
Okay, we found one place that’s turkey-serving in Silvermine (Tavern at Graybarns) but they’re charging $150 a head plus extra required gratuities. No, thanks. That’s exploitive.
Right now our best (i.e., affordable) Thanksgiving option is Turkey McNuggets at McDonalds.
I think it’s shallow and rather ungracious of those nice local eateries (Westport’s Terrain, Georgetown’s Milestone) to shut their doors on Thanksgiving. They know there are many people like me with no soothing place to go. Restaurants should respect the customer base and open their hearts on this day of family togetherness.
HE to Friendo: “I caught episode #1 of Rachel Sennott’s I Love LA a couple of nights ago, and while it’s simultaneously revved-up and draining you can’t say it lacks the necessary Zoomer energy or doesn’t understand its own lemme–outta–here vibe— either you submit to this kind of arch–humor–aimed–at–under–35–women–and–gay–dudes thing or you throw up your hands and turn it off.
“Full respect paid to Sennott, the show’s maestro-like creator, star, senior writer and exec producer.
“But if I was a 28-year-old Silver Lake woman looking to somehow nudge my way into talent-managing and all my friends talked like the women on this show (toxic emotional phoniness…migraine–inducing, machine–gun insincerity to the max) I would probably wind up (a) shooting myself with a snub-nosed .38 or (b) becoming a William S. Burroughs-level heroin addict. My motto would be ‘yeah, I love LA but I’m drowning in phoney-baloney, fair-weather friends.'”
Friendo: “It’s just Lena Dunham 2.0…a mix of Girls and Entourage.”
Tatiana Antropova in a scene from I Love LA:
HE commenter Mike Shea: “Die, My Love definitely feels like a new subgenre: the tired, frazzled, going-insane, new mother experience. I thought Amy Adams was great in Nightbitch even as the story chickened out by the end. There was last month’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. There was also Jason Reitman‘s Tully. And now this.”
In this Die, My Love corner, N.Y. Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson. On the ring’s opposing side, Hollywood Elsewhere’s Fearless Fosdick…Jeffrey Wells, I mean. Sepia-amber tint vs. stark black-and-white. In essence, the alleged joys of sisterly solidarity and mad Lawrentian immersion vs. instinctual lemme-outta-here plus an honest, elemental fear of being chomped down on.
Wilkinson….
Wells…
Wilkinson…
Wells…
My “Die, Yuppie Scum” T-shirt was still considered timely apparel when this snap was taken in the spring or early summer of ‘90. “Yuppie” had been a curse word for a good four or five years. A few months earlier Mike Figgis’s Internal Affairs opened theatrically. In the final scene Richard Gere’s Peck, a corrupt cop, angrily taunts Andy Garcia’s Raymond Avila by calling him a “fucking yuppie.”
Jett was nearly two; Dylan was five or six months old.
…and tripping on LSD is not what anyone who knows anything would call a “stoned” excursion — it’s more like the intoxication of sailing clear-headed on the Long Island Sound under marmalade skies.
And I think Grant stopped tripping when his daughter Jennifer came along in ‘66.
At the 1957 Oscars Grant accepted Ingrid Bergman’s Best Actress Oscar (Anastasia) on her behalf.
On top of which the once young and matinee-idol handsome Brendan Fraser turns 58 on 12.3.25. Costar Rachel Weisz celebrated her 55th last March.
No one’s advocating for size or age discrimination here, but traditions are traditions.
The only girthy-protagonist-vs.-monster precedent is Lou Costello in those goofball Abbott-and-Costello horror japes. HE’s favorites are (a) Hold That Ghost! (‘41) and (b) Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy (‘55). But Mummy Costello was ten years younger (48) than Fraser.
10:06 pm: It’ll probably be another hour or so before the vote on California’s Prop. 50 is known, but here’s hoping for a decisive majority.
11:08 pm update: Prop. 50 passes! — 65% pro, 35% con. Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled the dice with his political ass on the line, and he’s won big.
Vice-President Dick Cheney having shot a guy he was hunting with isn’t funny. The victim, a 78 year-old lawyer named Harry Whittington, could have been seriously hurt and thank fortune he’s in stable condition, etc.
What is funny to me is that New York Times report that said Cheney “fired his shotgun without realizing that Mr. Whittington had approached him from behind, spraying his fellow hunter on his right side, on his cheek, neck and chest.”
Full disclosure: I once mistakenly shot one of my own guys with a paintball during a war game I took part in north of Los Angeles, so I know how Cheney might feel. But at least I didn’t tag the guy in the neck and face.
Jeff Goldblum is the only Wicked: For Good cast member I personally relate to, and his character (the Wizard of Oz) is fairly villainous for the most part.
You can’t say Goldblum didn’t have the best line in the original Wicked: “I think it’s a bit much.”
But never let it be said this is not a “safe”, positive-minded, wholesomely diverse cast. They cover the woke waterfront.
What kind of 21st Century ensemble cast do I relate to? Dozens upon dozens. How about the Spotlight guys? The Sentimental Value family? Or the Zero Dark Thirty-ers? Or the Manchester By The Sea pain-bearers? Or the Weapons community? Or Team Irishman? I could go on and on.
What if you have issues with diverse identity brandishing but you don’t consider yourself a MAGA mouth-breather? What if you’re more of a sensible centrist?
From David Brooks N.Y. Times column, posted on 10.30.25:
