Jeffrey Wells

Intriguing But Not Fetching

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The Bear’s Ayo Edibiri is obviously surging career-wise. She’s a first-rate actress as far as the Emmy voters are concerned, and her performance as an ambitious academic type in Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt, premiering later this month in Venice, will certainly intensify her brand.

And I’m talking about internals here. All the Lido critics and hotshots, trust me, will be fixating on her character’s personality, character, integrity. This is key.

There is nonetheless a sexual aspect to consider (her character alleges that she was assaulted), and even with a general understanding that sexual assault has relatively little to do with an alleged victim’s basic allure, it still has something to do with it…c’mon.

There has to be a non-inflammatory way of saying that whatever Edibiri is thought to possess or radiate as a respected actress, hetero hottie vibes are not part of the package.

Am I allowed to state the obvious, which is that Ayo is no Gugu Mbatha-Raw, no Lena Horne, no Lupita Nyongo, no Whitney Houston, no Diahann Carroll, no Iman, no Rihanna, no Janelle Monae, no Beyoncé, no Zendaya, no Cassie Ventura? Or is this a verboten thing to mention?

Friendo: “Because she’s black and queer and a good actress, she’s the perfect virtue signal.”

Artist/Creative Types Going Through A Spiritual Crisis

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In yesterday’s Jay Kelly thread, HE commenter “We’re Totally Fine” said the premise of this upcoming Noah Baumbach film seems to belong to a favored sub-genre — films about Hollywood guys who’ve run out of gas, are going through a bad patch or have otherwise lost their way.

HE additions to this list:

(a) Vincente Minnelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town (‘62), which is about an alcoholic, burnt-out actor (Kirk Douglas) trying to get back into the swing of things while assisting an old director friend (Edward G. Robinson) in Rome.

(b) Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (‘63)…obviously. I don’t want to even glancingly mention Rob Marshall’s Nine (‘09), but it’s closely wedded to the Fellini so I haven’t much choice.

(c) Paul Mazursky’s Àlex in Wonderland (‘70) — another 8 1/2 descendant.

I’m not including Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (‘93) because except for that one gloomhead scene with Orson Welles in Musso and Frank’s, Johnny Depp’s titular protagonist doesn’t behave like a filmmaker who’s lost his way — he’s actually a relentless optimist.

Totally Wrong Actor Will Portray James Stewart

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In Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (‘59) James Stewart and Ben Gazzara were about as opposed and disparate as they come.

Gazzara was an urban, method-y, dark-eyed “ethnic” type with a sassy, laid-back personality, and Stewart was an American heartland beanpole type (i.e., tall, corn-fed, blue-eyed, non-ethnic) with an upfront manner and an improvisational, half-gawky manner of speaking.

And yet the curiously named KJ Apa, a half-Samoan Gazzara look–alike from New Zealand, has been cast to portray Stewart in a forthcoming feature.

Stewart in heaven after reading Marc Malkin’s Variety story: “All right, now wait a minute, just hold on…this swarthy Apa guy just isn’t my type…hell, I grew up in Pennsylvania and never even visited Samoa…he doesn’t even look like a cousin of mine…plus I was 6’ 3” and he’s 5’11” so there goes the beanpole resemblance. Plus he has a heavy beard-stubble thing going on.”

Idea: What If Collegiate Sex Kittens Were Transies?

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A former vaudeville theatre, the RKO Mayfair (719 Seventh Ave. at 47th Street — 1735 seats) was converted into a movie palace in 1930. Karl Freund’s The Mummy opened on 12.22.32.

Contrary to what you may have heard or assumed due to his representation by Henry Willson, Guy Madison (aka the star of the hit TV series Wild Bill Hickock between 1951 and 1958) was straight. Madison was no one’s idea of a gifted actor, but he did a little better, career-wise, than Rick Dalton. His only serious A-level film was David O. Selznick and John Cromwell‘s Since You Went Away (’44). Madison died from ephysema in 1996, at age 74.

Jonathan Kaplan’s “Over The Edge” Stands Alone

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A few hours ago THR’s Mike Barnes posted a report on the death of director Jonathan Kaplan, whose finest feature was and always will be Over The Edge (‘79), a fact-based teen crime film that included the screen debut of Matt Dillon.

The subhead of Barnes’ story acknowledges Over The Edge, but the article doesn’t mention this 46-year-old film (made when Kaplan was 30 or so) until paragraph #16, and even then in a no-big-deal, keep-your-shirt-on fashion. That’s not cool. It’s also derelict. Over The Edge is historic…drills it down, wakes you up.

Two Observations

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It strikes me as vaguely odd that for the filming of Lolita (‘62), director Stanley Kubrick chose to build a sizable sound-stage set for a simple daylight scene in Shelley Winters’ suburban backyard.

This seems like an awful lot of trouble and expense for a boilerplate dialogue scene that might last 50 or 60 seconds.

It’s interesting, however, to discover stills of James Mason and Sue Lyon chatting in this backyard — presumably from a cut scene that follows the initial first-glance or “cherry pies” scene between Mason, Lyon and Winters.

I Remember Pips

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But Rodney Dangerfield in shorts and open-toed whatevers (they’re not sandals)…no, man…just no…can’t unsee this either.

2005 Emmons Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11235 (shuttered now). Late ‘70s, maybe ‘80 or so, judging by the bell-bottoms.

Commenters of a Lesser God

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HE strongly suspects that a majority of the haters who saw red yesterday and went crazy toxic over a mild-mannered notion that Liam Neeson ought to take certain measures in order to look 63 again…

HE strongly suspects that many of these meltdown cases haven’t even caught one of Neeson’s finest films ever, 2024’s In The Land of Saints and Sinners, much less urged their friends to see it or talked it up on HE or whatever.

Some may have seen and admired it, I’m guessing, but the others need to wake the fook up.

In The Land of Saints and Sinners is “a Liam Neeson movie,” and we all know what that means. It means adherence to a certain slow-build formula.

Repeating for the record: To a steady and stalwart Neeson fellow who’s not looking for trouble and in fact would like to back off into a shelter or backwater of some kind, shit inevitably happens.

A slow burning, a gradually tightening situation, implications of tough terms, bad people up to bad stuff (including the threat of serious harm to a couple of innocent characters as well as to Neeson’s guy) until it all blows up in the end.

But the story, set in rural Ireland in the mid ’70s, pulls you in bit by bit, and the script has been carefully and compellingly written by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane.

In The Land of Saints and Sinners began shooting in Ireland (County Donegal, Dublin) in March ‘22. It premiered 18 months later at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Netflix began streaming it on 4.26.24.

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Not A Big Deal

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Liam Neeson turned 73 a few weeks ago, and that’s fine. What isn’t entirely fine is the fact the movie stars are expected to look ten years younger than their age, and Neeson — no offense, love the guy — looks 73, if not 75.

You know where this is going. Neeson needs to lose the neck wattle, clean up the eye lids and eye bags, brighten (and possibly enlarge) his teeth, etc. The usual usual. He basically needs to look 63 again…is that such a terrible thing? It’ll extend his career, for one thing.

If HE can submit to certain measures, Neeson can surely do the same.

On top of which he probably needs to invest in the latest and most effective…uhm, performance pills, given his much-commented-about relationship with the makeup-averse Pamela Anderson, 58, who’s apparently not much of a stayer when it comes to boyfriends. A bit volatile, I mean. Two years or less. Rumor has it that Neeson is hung like a horse, but a voice is telling me he’s too nice of a guy to hook up with a hair-trigger hellcat. Just ask Jon Peters.