Jeffrey Wells

It didn’t feel like a burn, I mean. I was mildly intrigued as far as it went. It’s a mid-level creeper about the lure of idyllic fantasy realms, and how people are so forlorn or morose in their day-to-day that they find fantasies all the more tantalizing.

That’s not a bad thematic premise to rest a film upon. You have to give DWD credit for aiming at people with the capacity to process a metaphor.

Florence Pugh is given all the big “what the fuck is going on?” acting moments, and she handles them pretty well. Harry Styles absolutely passes the test — he’s a completely decent actor and pleasing to gaze upon, and can dance reasonably well. Chris Pine is passable as the Manipulative Bad Daddy of Victory.

Yes, I had a few logic quibbles but I’d rather take issue tomorrow. It’s kinda late and I’m on a slightly bumpy train.

After all the alleged bad blood and off-screen scandal I guess I kinda expected something mildly shitty or a tiny bit disappointing. But DWD is mildly watchable, and that I didn’t expect.

Do I think it’s an extra-brilliant, extra-delicious, top-tier film? No, but it’s certainly tolerable, and the ‘50s cars are in great shape. I especially liked the black T-bird.

Honestly? I found it slightly more engrossing than Booksmart.

Okay, one complaint: The first time Harry goes down on Miss Flo he doesn’t yank off the undies so I didn’t believe it. Why didn’t he just flip ‘em off? (That’s a lyric from “Louie Louie” — “It won’t be long now…she’s flippin’ ‘em off”). But the second time he does.

One more: You can’t run barefoot up a hard dirt road — it would be painful as hell and you’d wind up limping.

The strangest thing happened about one-third of the way through — there’s a close-up of a large, thick uncooked steak that’s been marinated and sprinkled with peppercorns. And then it’s cooked and placed on the dining table, and I couldn’t stop thinking about eating at least a portion of it. My mouth was literally watering.

I don’t know how many minutes of screen time Michelle Williams has in The Fabelmans, but the tally was apparently low enough to persuade some that her performance as Sammy Fabelman’s mom belonged in the Best Supporting Actress category.

Screen time, of course, is not the ultimate measure. Patricia Neal’s Hud performance only amounted to 21 minutes and 51 seconds (or one-fifth of the 112-minute running time) and she was nominated for Best Actress anyway. And she won.

Second to last paragraph in Sasha Stone’s Awards Daily piece (9.20.22) about Hollywood’s devotion to to radiant Academy values (virtue, goodness, inclusion, equity, Millennialism): “It isn’t just that people are no longer watching the Oscars; it’s that people are tuning out the whole community.”

Excerpt #2:

Posted by The New Yorker’s Richard Brody on 9.20.22:

Posted by HE on 9.17.22:

…is an excellent thing to smell, taste, feel. I spent two hours getting tickets for the NYFF. I was right at the front of the line and OF COURSE they were sold out of seats for both She Said screenings. And then I caught a 2 pm screening of a film I can’t write about until Tuesday, 10.4.

A Woody Allen rep is spinning Allen’s recent quote (provided to La Vanguardia, a storied Spanish publication) about making his currently shooting film his last and final.

“Currently [Allen] has no intention of retiring,” the rep said. “He said he was thinking about not making films, as making films that go straight to streaming platforms is not so enjoyable for him, as he is a great lover of the cinema experience.”

HE to Allen rep: Allen is first and foremost a filmmaker, and has been for the last 50-plus years. How is “thinking about not making films” not a de facto declaration of an intention to retire, at least as far as filmmaking is concerned?

The same thing happened four years ago when Robert Redford announced he was packing it in. The very next day a p.r. spokesperson said “no, no, not true…Bob is still very much active and in the game!” Redford said that his retirement statement was “a mistake.” And then, of course, he retired.

Two nights ago Bill Maher devoted his “New Rules” segment to a rant about presentism. Terrific, I told myself — one of HE’s pet peeves will get an airing on Real Time! Then I watched it and went “oh.”

I naturally figured Maher would mention the movie manifestations of this trend, or an insistence among producers, directors and casting directors over the last four or five years that POCs were just as socially prominent in the past as they are today (hence Bridgerton, the Yale girlfriend switch-out in George Clooney‘s The Tender Bar, Jodie Turner Smith playing Anne Boleyn, African and Asian actors filling costarring roles in Mary, Queen of Scots, Olivia Wilde‘s Don’t Worry Darling**, wealthy travellers of color in Kenneth Branagh‘s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile). Not to mention the virtue-signalling reflected in the absence of Dahomey slave-trading in The Woman King,

But Maher decided against mentioning this because…I don’t know…because it might sound to some like he was against diverse casting of any kind when it comes to any historical sagas or settings? Which, certain factual histories aside, might get him into trouble. So he side-stepped it.

What he focused on instead was a James H. Sweet article called “IS HISTORY HISTORY? / Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present,” which was posted a month ago on historians.org.

** Seemingly presentism, I should say. As it turns out it actually isn’t.

From a 9.17 Air Mail piece, written by Jonathan Dean, about Moonage Daydream director Brett Morgen:

I wrote this last summer, but it was precisely Morgen’s “clear set or rules” that gradually put me off Moonage Daydream when I caught a Cannes midnight showing on 5.23.22. Now that Neon’s Moonage Daydream is finally playing here and there, I’m wondering what the HE consensus might be.

Here’s how I put it:

Here’s a wise comment from Justin Michael Ptak, posted on 5.234.22:

“I realized a way to reinvigorate the band/artist biopic. The filmmaker cannot go through their entire, randomly ordered, rags-to-riches-to-rags to rehab to rejuvenation to what-come-may tale, but instead focus on one specific, seminal moment in that artist’s/bands creative/destructive life and just allow the audience to soak that in and bring them along for a ride in that specific time and place.

“One can think of any number of tales told about this artist or that band that would make a very cool, condensed retelling if kept to those constraints.

“George Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue moment, Jimi Hendrix realizing he can really play guitar in his own stratospheric way, Brian Wilson creating Good Vibrations, Bob Dylan‘s transition from folk to electric, the Beatles making Revolver, Ronnie Van Zant insanity surrounding Sweet Home Alabama, Pat Benatar‘s Battlefield of Love, Spike Jonze shooting the Beastie Boys Sabotage video, any 48 hours with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis connecting with Lou Barlow, a week in Athens, Georgia with Jeff Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel, etc.

“Tie these creative sagas into the on goings and vibe of the period and times a la Quentin’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and you have yourself a pretty chill picture.”

…it’s “why oh why hasn’t Lorne Michaels hired a non-binary cast member?” The absence of such a weekly presence may have really hurt the show, and now we can all relax…we can all say “this glaring flaw has finally been addressed.”

Does this mean, in this particular instance, that Molly Kearney (aka Molly Meatbrick) was born…er, male-ish but has since transitioned?

There are very few things in life that are more depressing (to me personally, I mean) than being in the company of a relentlessly joyous and alpha-minded person who is completely and totally in love with life or movies or what-have-you…who is so happy and buoyant that he/she can’t stop glowing and smiling and tingling. No offense but I would much rather spend time with sardonic, gravel-voiced, half-cranky types like Paul Morrissey or Paul Schrader.

Posted on 11.14.12: “It was sometime in the early ’80s when I began using ‘happiness pills’ as a term of disdain and derision. It came from a phoner I did with screenwriter Ed Naha, who later went on to co-write Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (’89). Ed was nice and obviously bright, but a little too euphoric and positive-minded. Alpha, alpha, gimme-a-break alpha. Like he was scared of even glancing at the sardonic or cynical or battle-weary side.

“It got to the point in our conversation that I started to mutter to myself, ‘Is there anything in the world that you’re not fucking delighted by or blissed out about, you relentlessly Pollyannic fuck?’

“I complained about him later with a friend, saying that he must have been swallowing great handfuls of happiness pills. Ever since then I’ve used this term whenever I meet someone who overdoes the cheerful. Because it feels like a kind of cover-up. It feels strenuous. Like Sally Hawkins‘ Poppy character in Mike Leigh‘s Happy Go Lucky (’08).

“And yet oddly, I haven’t been feeling this way since I stopped drinking. But I still can’t abide the kind of happiness that seems to come from a place of fear and/or avoidance.”