Jeffrey Wells The axe-throwing wasn’t so bad. I didn’t want to do it due to fear of failure. But I managed a few decent throws, even a couple of bull’s-eyes.
There are two wood-handled axe sizes —I was happier with the smaller, less weighty one. I tended to lightly lob rather than throw hard.
The baked-in-Bloomfield atmosphere is emphatically lower-middle-class — the Montclair swells keep their distance and then some. But I shrugged it off. We’re all bumblefucks underneath our pretensions.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Lovia Guarkye (spell that last name!) approved in a slightly mixed way, but Variety’s Peter Debruge was 100% sold and the closing-night SXSW crowd was reportedly oogah–boogah and ape-crazy.
HE won’t be seeing Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Alex Convery’s Air until Wednesday evening so all good things in their immaculate time and proper proportion, but thank God something has come along to flush out that horrible EEAAO after-taste. It’s almost like the Beatles arriving in the wake of the JFK assassination.
Two days ago (3.16) I took a shot at listing 2023’s likeliest Best Picture contenders. Nine in all. No hopefuls or maybe-level contenders — strictly serious only, “safe bets,” no pikers, etc.
The following day Variety’s Clayton Davis ran his own ‘23 rundown, generously allowing (as he usually does) for any and all possibilities from the Clayton realm. and that’s fine. Then again including The Marvels, Spider–Man: Across The Spider–Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 speaks for itself.
…it’s no good. I’m sorry but in my book coarse, common, not-quite-there horror has never cut it. It has to be Watcher– or Midsommar or Babadook or Repulsion or Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby or Lighthouse-level or not at all.
Ixnay to Pearl, Get Out (racially-stamped, hand-me-down Ira Levin), The Black Phone, Knock at the Cabin, Nope, M3GAN, Bones and All, etc. The Menu was and is an approvable half–and–halfer, but no jumping up and down.
I’m sorry but HE knows pedigree like the back of its hand. Martin Balsam’s Arbogast: “If it doesn’t jell it isn’t aspic…”
The five above-the-line Oscars won by Milos Forman and Ken Kelsey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (‘75) need to be rescinded because watching this movie causes pain to wokesters.
One of the unprosecuted charges against Jack Nicholson’s Randall P. McMurphy was statutory rape involving a 14-year-old girl (i.e., she declined to testify). And the film portrays him as a heroic rebel figure? Unacceptable. Plus all the mental- clinic guards are Black — negative stereotyping. And what about those racist Indian jokes directed at Will Sampson’s “Chief” Bromden? Plus all the patients are white.
Attempting to hide the $130K Stormy Daniels payoff was a violation of NY campaign finance laws, and is definitely something that Orange Plague will have to answer for. HE supports any legalistic claim or prosecution that might hurt or deter Trump.
But the Stormy thing doesn’t strike me as all that dastardly or horrific. Ditto holding on to classified documents in Mar a Lago.
Inciting the Jan. 6th Capitol riot, illegally trying to overturn Georgia vote tallies…those, to me, are serious crimes. Ditto raping and slandering E. Jean Carroll.
Tom Cruise is fine but the bike is doomed…totally doomed to fall 1700 or 1800 feet and crash on the rocks below…smashed, shattered and mangled to death…forever ruined…a terrible way to die.
Addison DeWitt to Eve Harrington near the end of All About Eve (’50): “That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that, in itself, is probably the reason. You’re an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Our contempt for humanity, an inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.”
In short, not only was DeWitt straight but he ended up putting the high hard one to Anne Baxter‘s Eve Harrington on a nightly basis, and sometimes twice on Sundays
Rather than attempting to predict, HE prefers to lament, applaud, dispute, protest, cheer, weep and take potshots as the show moves along.
If I was running the show I would say to all the gown designers and fashion consultants who’ve complained that traditional arterial crimson red doesn’t blend well with certain colors…I would say to them “gee, that’s too bad, I’m sorry to hear this but my answer is “tough shit and you can all kiss my ass because the red carpet is staying.”
From Sara Bahr’s 3.10.23 N.Y. Times story:
