Jeffrey Wells

Why Tar’s Ruination Was A Good Thing

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Jason P. Frank and Rebecca Alter’s “49 True Facts About Lydia Tar” is brilliant. But in a vaguely cruel way. Okay, not cruel but certainly subversive. And yet it fits right into the film. Because it’s basically saying, humorously, that Lydia Tar’s banishment and ruination wasn’t such a bad idea.

In other words, Frank and Alter are a pair of cold icepicks who privately salivate at the idea of taking down a dynamic talent who’s long revelled in an elite celebrity orbit but who holds the wrong (i.e., politically brusque, anti-woke, vaguely amoral in the manner of many X-factor genius types) views and — this is the really damning part — has treated Columbus Ave. Joe Coffee baristas rudely.

Friendo: “This is part of why democracy is ending in America in four days. The point of that piece is: ‘We hate Lydia Tar.’ Translation: ‘Our Marxist absolutism trumps ambiguity in art.’”

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Sucker That I Am

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Last night I bought the new “Revolver” remix, but only the album itself and not the expanded outtake version that cost $34 or thereabouts.

via GIPHY

I’m saying again that a significant reason for the Beatles’ success was the fact that three of them were exceptionally good looking. If the Beatles had been burdened with homely faces (i.e., if they had looked like two or three of the dorks in The Association) their trajectory might have been quite different.

Is the ’22 Revolver remix a cash grab? Of course it is, but it’s also the first using a digital technology (developed by Peter Jackson’s team) that allowed Giles Martin to break it all down, instrument for instrument, and remix or even reconstitute the original songs. I can really hear and even feel the enhancements.

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“Bardo” Ate Entire Afternoon

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I had to catch an 11:30 am train to Grand Central in order to arrive early for a 2 pm Bardo screening at the Paris theatre. It all happened according to plan.

Alejandro G. Inarritu’s 8 and 1/2-like epic about a filmmaker’s interior journey of guilt, love, identity, marriage, family and creative frustration is now 20-odd minutes shorter than the version that played in Telluride. I was mostly a thumbs–upper then and I liked today’s version even better. As you might imagine it’s now tighter, trimmer…a tad more concise.

Alejandro and leading cast members Daniel Gimemez Cacho, Ximena Lamadrid and Iker Solano sat for a half-hour q & a following the screening, which began at 2:15 pm and ended at 4:45, not counting closing credits.

I’ll amplify later on my reactions.

It’s now 6:30 pm. I’m sitting in the upstairs dining area at Smiler’s Deli (Madison and 54th) — no wall plugs, no wifi (Smiler’s don’t want no wifi bums) and attempts to use my iPhone as a personal hotspot have failed miserably. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

Young, Rich, Well Educated, Flat Abs, “Dull”

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Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss’s 42 year-old successor, will soon become the youngest Prime Minister in British history. He and wife Akshata, daughter of Indian billionaire N.R. Narayana Murthy, have a combined fortune of $730 million and perhaps over a billion dollars.

Born on 5.12.80, Sunak would be a Millennial if he had begun life a year later. He’s technically a very young GenXer.

From a certain angle Sunak almost seems like a conservative JFK — young, slim, good-looking, loaded. The non-JFK factor, according to British broadcaster and former politician Nigel Farage, is that Sunak lacks charisma. “He’s very, very dull and detached, and doesn’t connect with ordinary folk,” Farage recently told Sky News.

Autocorrect is giving me all kinds of trouble when I attempt to spell the names of Rishi, Akshata and her father N.R. Narayana…stop pestering me!

“Opposite of Crowd Pleaser”

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On 10.11 I passed along some positive reactions to Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (Searchlight, 10.21), and quoted a critic friendo who’d been told by a couple of eccentric colleagues that Banshees might win the Best Picture Oscar…”people adore this film.”

This prompted another critic friendo to pass along the following:

Last night I saw McDonagh’s film. Five minutes after emerging from the 1350 Sixth Avenue screening room I wrote the Los Angeles guy as follows:

“In some respects a lovely metaphorical lament about Irish anguish and turbulence and the general impermanence of things, and fortified by excellent dialogue, fine acting (especially by Colin Farrell and Kerry Condon), handsome cinematography and so on, but in other respects a bizarre, brutal thing that struck me as borderline diseased.

“You were right — the New York people who said that The Banshees of Inisherin might win the Best Picture Oscar are out of their fecking minds….INSANE.

“There were three or four sane characters in that film, Farrell’s Paddy Súilleabháin (at least initially) and Condon’s Siobhan (i.e., Farrell’s sister) being the sanest. Certain measures of rational behavior are also noticable from, I suppose, Sheila Flitton’s old crone, Pat Shortt’s bartender and one or two others.

“But Brendan Gleeson’s Colm Doherty and the mad priest and the belligerent cop and Barry Keohgan’s local loon (a counterpart to John Mills’ village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter, which also occurs in a rural Irish seaside village roughly a century ago), are all lunatics of one kind or another.

“It’s a film about rage and nihilism and futility and banality and bloody finger stumps.

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If Not Newsom, Who?

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The “rage against the Supremes killing Roe” bump is apparently subsiding. Biden’s bad numbers are returning; ditto projections about likely Republican gains. I modestly, half-heartedly approve of Joe’s job performance save for his kowtowing to the wokester wing. But the fact is that something awful might happen if he runs again. A younger, credible and compelling left-centrist Democrat has to primary him.

— from Common Sense / TGIF columnist Nellie Bowles, posted on 10.21.

— “The Point,” Chris Cillizza, 10.19.22.

Sure Thing!

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Patti Lupone recently said that B’way ticket prices are “insane.” I knew they were painful but it’s been a few years since I actually pondered (i.e., fantasized about) a purchase. I also presumed Lupone had turned on the hyperbole spigot. Then I looked at prices for Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt. Okay, Telecharge isn’t as punishing.

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