22 years ago Javier Bardem played Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban poet, in Julian Schnabel‘s Before Night Falls — a performance that launched his career. This year he portrayed another Cuban in Being The Ricardos — the band leader, conga-player and and TV comedian-producer Desi Arnaz, and the wokesters (including Variety’s Clayton Davis) gave him shit for it.
In response to this bullshit, HE hereby approves of Bardem playing any character from any culture in any part of the world who seems to speak with a Spanish or Mexican or any south-of-the-Border accent. He can play Spanish, Cuban, Argentinian, Chilean…he can play a Columbian immigrant living in the Bronx…he can play cops, drug dealers, heads of state, henpecked husbands from Rio de Jainero, a quadraplegic looking to humanely commit suicide…he can play an auto mechanic from Tijuana, a Venezuelan diplomat based in Washington, D.C., a smooth womanizer from Barcelona, drug dealers, arms dealers, a confused poor guy…he’s free to play anyone and everyone, including the voice of God.
I’ve eaten at Lilia, the Williamsburg Italian joint on Union Avenue. Classy but low-key…a loose-hang type of place, and a long ways from “puttin on the Ritz.” So you’re sipping wine and twirling your linguini when in strides the over-dressed Kim Kardashian in an ostrich outfit you need dark sunglasses to even glance at…words fail. And those girlfriend-of-Leslie Neilsen-in-Forbidden Planet space boots!
Accompanied by “normcore” Pete Davidson in a butch haircut (i.e., not even an Aaron Paul-styled “tennisball” coif), baggy-ass hiphop jeans from the ’90s, flannel shirt, wrap-around shades, black sneakers…give me a break.
What is wrong with Davidson? He looks like Matthew Modine‘s “Joker” after emerging from the Parris Island barber in Full Metal Jacket. Who tries to look like a member of an Aryan gang in Attica state prison?
Newsflash: Davidson is 6’3″, or basically a basketball player. I somehow never realized this until recently. The widespread rumor is that he’s hung like Milton Berle.
In his "Jimmy Kimmel Is Right About The Oscars" piece, Variety's Owen Gleiberman considers 25 Best Picture nominees from the past that were anything but artful and highbrow. These films were certainly audience-friendly. As Gleiberman remarks, "I was surprised to be reminded at times of what a low-to-middlebrow affair [the Oscars] used to be."
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There are now five opinion-spreaders who’ve argued that Spider-Man: No Way Home should have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar — myself (two months ago), Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Jimmy Kimmel and Kevin Smith.
Key passage: “The Academy Awards, even as they seem to be discovering a new kind of ‘integrity,’ could end up withering on the cross of that integrity.
“Today, the Oscars reflect an increasingly dichotomized thinking: small movies (good) vs. popular movies (not so good), movies that wear their art on their sleeve (good) vs. movies that just want to have fun (not so good).
HE interjection: Since the woke thing took hold in ’17, Academy members have favored smallish films, true, but especially those that seem culturally meaningful (signifying some form of social awareness or advancement) or emotionally touching in a socially-healing way.
The last five winners: Nomadland (dispossessed nomads, living hand to mouth, shitting in buckets), Parasite (rich vs. poor, social hostility, a director of color, wasn’t another Scorsese goombah film), Green Book (a parent-child road movie, racial rapprochement in 1962), The Shape of Water (great fish sex for homely woman vs. Michael Shannon rage and perversity), Moonlight (three stages in the life of a gay black dude + “ohh, that handjob on the beach!”).
Back to Gleiberman: “That thinking is there on the part of both the media and the Academy voters. Even King Richard, one of the 10 best picture nominees (and one that’s likely to bring Will Smith his first Oscar for best actor), may, at this point, be too conventional and wholehearted for the Academy. I was happy to see it nominated (I think, after Drive My Car, that it’s the best film on the slate), but a decade ago I believe it would have won. Why isn’t it being talked about as a contender?
“It’s hard to generalize about the Oscars — whenever you point to a trend, there’s probably some example from the past that can be used to contradict it. But what my gut says, along with Jimmy Kimmel’s, is that what most of the world thinks of as the quintessence of entertainment is starting to be something the Academy no longer trusts.
“If so, that’s a serious problem. As a night of showbiz, the Oscars should be a lot of things: traditional and audacious, intimate and spectacular, frivolous and sincere.
“It was hard“, Thompson said during a Berlinale press conference. “This is homework for all of you. We’re only used to seeing bodies that have, you know, been trained…I knew that Nancy wouldn’t go to the gym. She would have a normal body of a 62-year-old woman who’s had two children.
“I can’t stand in front of a mirror like that. If I stand in front of a mirror, I’ll always pull something in [or do] something. I can’t just stand there. Why would I do that? It’s horrifying. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?
“Women have been brainwashed all our lives. That’s the fact of it. And everything that surrounds us reminds us how imperfect we are and how everything is wrong. Everything is wrong, and we need to look like this.”
“So you try. You try standing in front of the mirror and don’t move. Don’t move. Just accept it — just accept it, and don’t judge it. That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I’ve done something I’ve never done as an actor.”
HE to Thompson #1: You’re contradicting yourself here. On one hand you’re saying that staring at your buck-naked 62 year-old bod is “horrifying,” but the reason is because of the “brainwashing” that we’ve all been subjected to by advertising, movies and TV shows. I don’t happen to believe that my own bod is horrifying or even distressing, but I can imagine being less than pleased with my physical self 10 or 20 years hence, especially if I stop going to the gym. Most of us understand that bodies which have gone to seed are dismaying all on their own — no “brainwashing” is needed to complete the lamentable fact.
HE to Thompson #2: Nobody who’s seen better naked days ever stands in front of a mirror and just stares…nobody. I didn’t do this even when I was in my absolute prime (i.e., late teens, 20s, 30s). I gave myself a quick glance or two but I never stared…not once. So why the hell would a 62 year-old do this, and why the hell would a director of a movie want an audience to contemplate an older, saggier bod? To what end? Who needs it? Answer: No one.
The trim and tanned Cary Grant was 62 when he made his final film, Walk, Don’t Run (’66). He was one of the best-looking, most-in-shape older males on the planet at that time, and there’s no way he would’ve shot a scene in which he stands in front of a mirror and studies his 62-year-old bod, even if he was wearing swim trunks or gym shorts. No way. Because (again) people never do this, and an audience would rather watch the 50ish Grant with his shirt off in North by Northwest or To Catch A Thief, because he looked better then.
My point, I suppose, is that Sophie Hyde…well, who knows what she was thinking? But if you ask me shooting an MCU of a full-frontal, present-tense Thompson was an act of sadism. To me anyway. Or exploitation. Or even cruelty.
It was sad to hear of the gunshot suicide of pro baseball player Jeremy Giambi. Not because I'm a huge baseball fan or had followed Giambi's career all along, but because I vividly recall Nick Porrazzo's performance as Giambi in Bennett Miller's Moneyball ('11). It's fair to say that Giambi's career peaked when he was with the Oakland A's from 2000 through '02.
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Among others, THR‘s Scott Feinberg and Variety‘s Marc Malkin have reported about last night’s “surprise appearance” of Kanye West at a preview screening of the biographical Netflix docuseries Jeen-Yuhs.
Directed by Coodie & Chike, the Kanye doc is divided into three chapters. Chapter one, “Vision”, will premiere on Netflix on 2.16.22 chapters two and three will be released soon after.
A friend says Jeen-Yuhs is “impressive…sort of like Hoop Dreams in chronicling Kanye’s journey over the years, how he came to be the way he is.” In other words, an ass-kisser.
I wonder to what extent the doc will get into Kanye’s erratic behavior during the Kim breakup, his friendship with Donald Trump, the reasoning behind his run for the Presidency in ’20, etc.
HE to friendo after watching clip of Kanye’s post-screening remarks: “Who cares what this rich, over–indulgedjerk has to say about anything? Particularly regarding matters of God, spirit and the cosmic truth of it all?”
Question: Los Angeles is enjoying a heat wave. (Right now it’s 84 degrees.) And it was definitely on the warmish side last night. So why was Kanye wearing a big bulky, Alaskan-winter jacket with a hoodie? Does he have a deal with Balenciaga to wear their stuff in front of the cameras?
Below is an honest-to-God paragraph from an honest-to-God 2.11 Wall StreetJournalarticle, written by Andrew Gutmann and Paul Rossi and titled “InsideTheWokeIndoctrinationMachine”…seriously, not a put-on.
I have to drive down to Compton again and am therefore unable to share expansive reactions to Michel Franco‘s Sundown, but it’s easily the most interesting (or do I mean fascinating?) film of 2022 so far.
It’s basically a drop-out movie like Michelangelo Antonioni‘s The Passenger (’75), but I wish it had less plot, which is to say less motivational explanation. I was wishing it would just devote itself to the idea of pissing off and nihilistically doing whatever the hell. But it’s not, and that, for me, is a slight problem.
It’s about Neil (Tim Roth), a wealthy co-heir to  a pig-slaughtering business who’s vacationing in Acapulco with his sister Allison (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two teenage children.
Allison and the kids pack and leave when news comes that she and Neil’s mother has died. But Neil decides against going — he lies that his passport is missing, and returns to Acapulco, and then checks into a shitty little hotel. And that’s it, at least for a while. Neil drinks a lot of beer, finds a somewhat older girlfriend (IazuaLarios), hangs out and basically does jack shit.
From Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review: “Here, we realize, is that most scandalous of creatures: the human who wants nothing. I’ve seen enough films about people who rush to make the most of their mortal span, ticking off bucket lists and reaping rosebuds while they may, so it’s a relief to come across Neil, the lolling foe of the upbeat. The title of the movie doesn’t do him justice. It should be called ‘The Fuck-it List.'”
Last night Hollywood Elsewhere watched Steven Soderbergh‘s Kimi (aka KIMI). My basic take is “minor Soderbergh but pretty good…a reasonably decent Rear Window meets The Conversation tribute film, set in Seatlle during the pandemic. (With a tiny spritz of The Parallax View.) Nicely shot, cut, acted, produced…betterthandecent.”
Directed by Sodie, shot by “Peter Andrews“, written and produced by David Koepp.
Every compelling protagonist in a thriller needs a handicap of some kind. In Rear WindowJames Stewart‘s handicap was that his leg was in a cast. In Vertigo his handicap was that he suffered from a fear of heights. Kravitz’s handicap is that she’s agoraphobic.
And boy, she sure lives in a nice loft! How can she afford a place like this? Her mom bought it for her? She’s just a WFH tech — can’t be earning enough to buy a loft this spacious and bucks-up.
75% to 80% of Kravitz’s performance is absorbed or dominated by her perfectly styled blue hair. Kimi‘s hair stylist needs to stand up and take a bow…enjoy your moment! We’re watching the movie and thinking “okay, snappy Soderbergh and some nice Rear Window action” but two-thirds of the time all you can think about is HER HAIR!…HER HAIR!…LOOK AT THAT EXQUISITE COIF AND DYE JOB!
Friendo: “Yes, it’s true — the hair dominates. But Kravitz gives a good minimalist performance. She creates an intriguingly brittle character. She’s very true to everythingthatweallloatheaboutMillennials (i.e., Kravitz is 33).”
“I agree that it’s minor Soderbergh, but it’s good minor Soderbergh.”
HE: I loved it when she suddenly becomes a kind of Charles Bronson figure at the very end. Obviously a Hollywood-style solution to her troubles, but I emotionally wanted this to happen.
The paranoid mindset of The Conversation and The Parallax View influenced everyone and everything back in the early to mid ’70s. Ever since that time the corporate world has been the source of all the bad guys. A corporate guy appears, you KNOW he’s up to no good. It’s an idea that’s dominated thrillers for a good half-century, and will continue to dominate for the foreseeable future. Because corporations have been running the real domestic realm since Gerald Ford-slash-Jimmy Carter, and certainly since Ronald Reagan.
Friendo #2: “It’s a woke thing, right? Sexual assault. Zoey discovers an incident of sexual assault and possible murder.”
HE: True — a woman being assaulted by a rich corporate pig.
Friendo #2: “Textbook woke. There are only two melodramatic themes today — sexual assault and racism. I guess we can add LGBTQ concerns.”
HE: Except Rita Wilson, Kravitz’s boss and allegedly a sister-in-arms, doesn’t help when Kravitz reports the possible murder.
Friendo #2: “Yeah, but it’s more woke fan fiction. They always make these unbelievable scenarios at a time when it would NEVER happen. Maybe ten years ago. Not now. They want to tell stories about the world that existed before it became what it is post-#MeToo, post-George Floyd, etc. The nonstop obsession with women as victims is so tired by now. They’re like girl people. Not adults. Still children.”
HE: It would be more interesting if they threw in an unusual crime. Like dog-napping a la Lady Gaga. Or an older gay guy murdering his partner over infidelity a la Prick Up Your Ears.
Friendo #2: “Anything other than this. Make the victim a dude. Plus who wants to watch people wearing masks in movies now? It’s nice to see faces. So Zoey is just paranoid?”
On 12.21.21 a Death on the Nile trailer popped through, and it seemed immediately obvious that Kenneth Branagh‘s film was an all-CG shit show. The “S.S. Karnak” seemed completely digital. The cruiser in the 1978 version may have been “real”, but not this one. Branagh may have used some second-unit footage of ancient Egyptian statues and whatnot, but mainly it’s all fake, fake, FAKE.
Variety should have titled it “Filmed in England, Death on the Nile Is Total CG Bullshit (Except for Some Second-Unit Photography).” But the headline was too long, and it sounded kinder and friendlier to ask if Nile was actually filmed in Egypt, etc. Tangcay gently explains that “more than a little movie magic was involved” — i.e., the principal actors never even saw the Nile. Not on the production budget’s dime, I mean.
